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• ;?:: ;;,;, h, , ;'o : ^y.r;,-'^; >-y I :y; : _ : r. 1 CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND GIVEN IN 1891 BY HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013460948 CONVERSATIONS WITH CARLYLE 'kvttwv- Conversations WITH Carlyle SIR CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY, K.C.M.G. NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, 743 & 745 BROADWAY. 1892. |.UNIVEfigJWl " •. ^pm 11 ifi ii ' ^fJr PR PREFACE. These papers were originally published in the Contemporary Review, chiefly For the purpose of presenting a more real, as well as a more human, picture of the philosopher of Chelsea than readers have been accustomed to of late. It has been no little gratification to me to receive letters from cultivated and thoughtful people, declaring that the conversations and corres- pondence, and, in some degree, the testimony of the author, had enabled them to accept anew an estimate of Carlyle which they had relinquished with pain, and to be assured that the nature and habits of the eminent man were not unworthy of his position as a teacher and leader of his age. They have incidentally served another purpose : they furnish a striking gallery of portraits, and an unique body of criticism on the writers of the century, by one of the most impressive painters of men that ever existed. The criticisms have some- times been called harsh and unjust, by impatient vi PREFACE. partisans of this or that personage; but when they are dispassionately examined, they will be found, in almost every instance, to be just judg- ments, the exact truth uttered by a critic as com- petent to discern and express it as Bacon or Burke. The conversations have not been pre- maturely published ; it is more than forty years since the earliest of them were written, and it is not too soon to hear the judgment of such an expert on the men and things among which he lived. Critics of these papers have recognised that Carlyle is made to use the exact phraseology he was accustomed to employ. The conversations were, in fact, written down immediately after they took place, when his emphatic and significant language was still fresh in my memory. Readers who knew Carlyle will, I think, recognise the familiar cadence, and those who did not know him will have the means of realising his ordinary speech and method for themselves. Villa Marguerite, Nice, Alpes Maritimes, April, 1892. CONTENTS. PART FIRST. PAGE Visit of the Young Irelanders to Carlyle . I Letter describing the Visit .... 4 First Letter from Carlyle to Gavan Duffy 7 Letter from Mrs. Carlyle .... 8 Letter accompanying "Past and Present" 10 The "Curse of Cromwell" 12 Letters projecting First Visit to Ireland . 15 His Visit . ... 22 W. E. Forster . ... 23 Letter of Felicitation .... 28 Correspondence respecting his Second Visit to Ireland 33 Second Visit commenced 45 Carlyle in 1849 46 Extracts from "Irish Reminiscences" 49 His Opinion of Wordsworth 53 Of Francis Jeffrey 55 Of Browning and Coleridge 56 Of Savage Landor 64 Odds and Ends 67 CONTENTS. PART SECOND. An Irish Poor-House . CONTENTS. PART THIRD. The Irish Land Question in 1849 Mr. Espinasse Mr. Linton "Wanted, a Few Workmen" ... Carlyle's Article in the "Nation" Latter-Day Pamphlets .... A Paper to Supersede Parliament—The First Tenant-Right Movement Cardinal Wiseman John Stuart Mill " Dr. Murray and the '•' Edinburgh Review Disraeli Specimen of an Harangue . PART FOURTH. A Friendly Proposal . A Talk with Thackeray . Edmund Burke .... The Malvern Water-Cure Sir Arthur Helps Apropos of W. C. Macready Letters from Macready Sir Henry PaRkes Letter. from Mrs. Carlyle on his Return from Australia CONTENTS. PAGl stories about lord p 21( Mrs. Carlyle and the Dog-Stealer 2I( Two Stories of Carlyle's Good Temper 22C George Sand . 22; A Dispute with Carlyle 22j Modern Art 22? Mrs. Carlyle's Death . .... 23c Letters in Favour of Young Men in Australia 232 Letter from John Forster .... 24c Letter approving of Duffy's Ministerial Career 242 Second Letter from John Forster 249 Carlyle in 1880 252! Carlyle's Death 256 Index 257 ILLUSTRATIONS. Portrait of Thomas Carlyle . Frontispiece Portrait of Mrs. Carlyle . 187 Carlyle on Horseback in Hyde Park . 213 CONVERSATIONS AND CORRESPONDENCE WITH THOMAS CARLYLE. part fftrst. It is nearly half a century since I made the ac- quaintance of Thomas Carryle. In the only frag- ment of her diary saved from the flames, and published with her " Letters and Memorials," Mrs. Carlyle describes the visit of three Irish law- students, who were, moreover, intense Nationalists, to her husband in April 1845. She had seen Italian, German, and Polish patriots beyond count, but Irish specimens of the genus were altogether new to her ; and here were, as she says, " real hot and hot live Irishmen, such as she had never sat at meals with before." On the whole, they did not displease her, and one of them had afterwards the good fortune to be admitted by the lady to a frank and cordial friendship, lasting to the day of her death. Her description of her visitors may still have an interest for inquisitive readers. Mr. Pigot, mentioned first, was son of the Irish Chief Baron, and afterwards became a successful advocate at the A 2 THOMAS CARLYLE. Indian Bar ; the person whose name she could not recall was John O'Hagan (afterwards Mr. Justice O'Hagan, recently head of the Land Commission in Ireland) ; and the third visitor was the present writer. They were introduced to the Chelsea recluse by Frederick Lucas, then editor of the Tablet, afterwards Member of Parliament for the County of Meath, and one of the leaders of the first Irish party of Independent Opposition. "The youngest one, Mr. Pigot [says Mrs. Carlyle], a handsome youth of the romantic cast, pale-faced, with dark eyes and hair, and an ' Eman- cipation of the Species' melancholy spread over him, told my husband, after having looked at and listened to him in comparative silence for the first ' hour, with How to observe ' written in every lineament, that now he (Mr. Pigot) felt assured he (my husband) was not in his heart so unjust towards Ireland as his writings led one to suppose, and so he would confess, for the purpose of retract- ing it, the strong feeling of repulsion with which he had come to him that night. " ' Why, in the name of goodness, then, did you ? come ' I could not help asking, thereby producing a rather awkward result. Several awkward results were produced in this 'nicht wi' Paddy.' They were speaking of the Scotch intolerance towards Catholics, and Carlyle as usual took up the cudgels for intolerance. 'Why,' said he, 'how could they do otherwise? If one sees one's fellow-creature ' THOMAS CARLYLE. 3 following a damnable error, by continuing in which the devil is sure to get him at last, and roast him in eternal fire and brimstone, are you to let him go towards such consummation ? or are you not rather to use all means to save him ? " ' A nice prospect for you, to be roasted in fire and brimstone,' I said to Mr. Lucas, the red-hottest of Catholics. 'For all of us,' said poor Lucas, laughing good-naturedly; 'we are all Catholics.' Nevertheless the evening was got over without bloodshed—at least, malice prepense bloodshed, for a little blood was shed involuntarily. While they were all three at the. loudest in their defence of Ireland against the foul aspersions Carlyle had cast ' on it, and scornfully ' cast on it, one of their noses burst out bleeding. It was the nose of the gentle- man whose name we never heard. He let it bleed into his pocket-handkerchief privately till nature was relieved, and was more cautious of exciting himself afterwards. " The third, Mr. Duffy, quite took my husband's fancy, and mine also to a certain extent. He is a writer of national songs, and came here to ' eat his terms.' With the coarsest of human faces, decidedly as like a horse's as a man's, he is one of the people that I should get to think beautiful, there is so much of the power both of intellect and passion in- his physiognomy. As for young Mr. Pigot, Iwill here, in the, spirit of prophecy, inherited from .my great-great-ancestor, John Welsh, the Covenanter, make a small prediction. If there be in his time an — ; 4 THOMAS CARLYLE. insurrection in Ireland, as these gentlemen con- fidently anticipate, Mr. Pigot will rise to be a Robespierre of some sort; will cause many heads to be removed from the shoulders they belong to and will 'eventually' have his own head removed from his own shoulders. Nature has written on that handsome but fatal-looking countenance of his, quite legibly to my prophetic eye, 'Go and get thyself beheaded, but not before having lent a hand " towards the great work of immortal smash.' 1 The young Irishmen were greatly impressed by the philosopher and his wife. They did not accept his specific opinions on almost any question, but his constant advocacy of veracity, integrity, and valour touched the most generous of their sym- pathies, and his theory that under the divine govern- ment of the world right and might are identical, as right infallibly became might in the end, was very welcome teaching to men struggling against enor- mous odds for what they believed to be intrinsic justice.

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