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PREFACE Mr.
Carlyle was for many years, especially during his early manhood, an
industrious letter-writer . A great many of his letters have been
preserved and are in the possession of his niece, Mrs. Alexander
Carlyle. It is at her desire that I have undertaken to edit a selection
of them.
“Express
biography of me I had really rather that there should be none,” said
Carlyle in his Will, and a biography of him, correct at least if meager,
might perhaps have been gathered from
his letters, his Reminiscences, and the Memorials of Jane
Welsh Carlyle. Mr. Froude, however, thought otherwise, and has given
to the public an “express biography” of him. The view of Mr.
Carlyle’s character presented in this biography has not approved
itself to many of those who knew Carlyle best. It may be a striking
picture, but it is not a good portrait.
For the present, at least, it appears impracticable to prepare
another formal biography. The peculiar style of Mr. Froude’s
performance, already in possession of the field, might perhaps put a
portrait of Carlyle drawn by a hand more faithful to nature, and less
skilled in fine artifices than his own, at a temporary disadvantage
with the bulk of readers. But it has seemed right to print some of
Carlyle’s letters in such wise that with his Reminiscences they
might serve as a partial autobiography, and illustrate his character by
unquestionable evidence. They do not indeed afford a complete portrait;
but so far as they go the lines will be correct.
The earliest letters of Carlyle that are known to exist are those
which he wrote in 1814 and the three or four following years, while he
was at Annan, Edinburgh, and Kirkcaldy. He seldom let a week pass
without sending a letter home; not infrequently he wrote three or even
four to different members of his family on the same day. I have printed
a large number of these letters in spite of the sameness in their tone
and topics, because of the light they throw upon Carlyle’s character
during an important period in his intellectual growth, and also because
they are of more than personal interest from the striking illustration
they afford of the simpler side of Scottish life.
Carlyle’s chief correspondents, outside his own family, during
the first years after his leaving the University, were three college
friends, James Johnstone, Robert Mitchell, and Thomas Murray.
Carlyle, in his later years, writing of Johnstone, says, “He
was six or seven years my elder, but very fond of discoursing with me,
and much my companion while we were in Annandale together within reach.
A poor and not a very gifted man, but a faithful, diligent, and
accurate; of quietly pious, candid, pure character, - and very much
attached to me. In return I liked him honestly well; learnt something
from him (he always diligently exact in book-matters); perhaps
ultimately taught him something; and had great satisfaction in his
company (in the years 1814-16, and occasionally afterwards).” Mainly
through the efforts of Miss Welsh (made for Carlyle’s sake), he was in
1826 appointed Parish Schoolmaster at Haddington, where, towards the end
of 1837, he died.
Mitchell was an Annandale man, who upon leaving college had
looked forward to becoming a minister in the Scotch Kirk; but, like
Carlyle, he soon gave up this outlook, and he became and remained a
schoolmaster. He was for some years tutor in the family of the Rev.
Henry Duncan, of Ruthwell, Dumfriesshire, was afterwards Rector of the
Grammar School at Kirkcudbright, and latterly one of the masters of the
Edinburgh Academy. Carlyle notes in his journal, 1st August
1836: “Poor R. Mitchell dead, and buried with public funeral, Calton
Hill, Edinburgh; many sad thought I had sent towards him, but in
silence.”
Thomas Murray was a cheery, kindly youth. He became a minister,
wrote a respectable literary history of Galloway, his native county, was
for a time editor of the Edinburgh Weekly Chronicle, and lived to
a good old age.
Still more interesting than these letters would have been
Carlyle’s letters to Edward Irving, but it is believed that they were
destroyed after Irving’s death.
As to what use I might be justified in making of another series
of letters at my disposal, those from Carlyle to Miss Welsh from their
first acquaintance in 1821 until their marriage in 1826, I have felt
grave doubts. The letters of lovers are sacred confidences, whose
sanctity none ought to violate. Mr. Froude’s use of these letters
seems to me, on general grounds, unjustifiable, and the motives he
alleges for it inadequate. But Carlyle himself had strictly forbidden
their printing. When he was editing for Letters and Memorials of Jane
Welsh Carlyle, of her letters to him, and of his to her which were
written before their marriage, only one short note Miss Welsh, dated 3rd
September 1825, printed by Mr. Froude (Life, i. 308, 309), could
be found; the rest were missing. To the copy of this short note Carlyle
appends the words, “In pencil all but the address. Original strangely
saved; and found accidentally in one of the presses to-day. Her note,
when put down by the coach, on that visit to us at Hoddam Hill in
September 1825! How mournful now, how beautiful and strange! A relic to
me priceless (T.C., 12th March 1868).” As to the then
missing Letters written before their marriage, his and Miss Welsh’s,
Carlyle, in the original manuscript from which the copy given to Mr.
Froude was made, says, “My strict command now is, ‘Burn them, if
ever found. Let no third party read them; let no printing of
them, or of any part of them, be ever thought of by those who love
me!’”
I decided not to open the parcels containing these letters. But I
was gradually led by many facts to the conviction that Mr. Froude had
distorted their significance, and had given a view of the relations
between Carlyle and his future wife, in essential respects incorrect and
injurious to their memory. I therefore felt obliged to read these
letters, which I have done with extreme reluctance, and with reverential
respect for the sacredness of their contents. The conviction which
determined me to read them was confirmed by the perusal. The question
then arose whether further publication of them was justifiable for the
sake of correcting the view presented by Mr. Froude. The answer seemed
plain, that only such of these letters, or such portions of them, as had
not any specifically private character could rightly be printed. I have
therefore printed comparatively few of Carlyle’s letters to Miss
Welsh, while, in an Appendix to Volume II., I have tried to set right
some of the facts misrepresented by Mr. Froude, and to show his method
of dealing with his materials.
CHARLES ELIOT NORTON
Cambridge, Massachusetts
July 1886 |