CHAPTER XI. JANE WELSH CARLYLE WRITES TO "MY 1861-1862. AGE 33-34. Y DEAR FRIEND: Will you be brave and good, and come to me? You might wait till after dark, when you would only have to throw a shawl over your head-and I would send you the latch-key, and you could let yourself in, and come straight up to my bedroom without having to see or speak to anybody. I have been on the drawing-room sofa most part of the last two days. I am much better-and please God I shall soon be able to go to you-I mean to ask Mr. Barnes if I may go out in a carriage to-morrow." So wrote Jane Carlyle. Dante Gabriel Rossetti writes : "14, Chatham Place, Blackfriars, Dec. 5, 1861. "MY DEAR MRS. GILCHRIST: I have doubted hitherto whether it could be pardonable to address you at such a terrible time; but the pain of this still almost inconceivable loss has so pervaded everything for me since the news reached me on Tuesday, that I cannot forbear venturing to say to you that, even for me, no greater shock has ever occurred in my life than this. "I truly valued and loved your husband, more I think than I had ever felt towards anyone on the same length of acquaintance or, I should say friendship, for such I believe it was on both sides. And I know that, since this appalling calamity, the very room I sit in, to which no one brought more welcome cheerful friendship than he did, seems like a ghost to me, and I feel like a ghost myself. The awful mystery of such an event is beyond all words, when I think of him as I saw him in his own house so few days before. "Neither I, nor any of the various friends of his who feel as I do now, could have a right to speak of comfort to you. Yet comfort and compensation there must be somewhere, sooner or later, when so good and gifted a man is snatched suddenly from all whose love he deserved. This can hardly be thought or said now, yet surely so it must be. "I had not the heart to be present yesterday; [the funeral] but believe me, none who were there could well have been more possessed by the thought of the terrible time than I was then. "Whenever you are able again to think of other matters, I will rely on you to permit my brother and myself, if there is any opportunity of doing so, to assist you in the management of such works as he may have left in progress. From this point of view also,-as a farsighted and nobly honest writer on subjects of which few indeed are able to treat worthily, his loss is I believe an irreparable one. DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 105 "Mr. Macmillan has begged me to express to you, on his part all the deep concern which he feels "At such a moment it seems almost intrusive for one friend even to venture on the expression of what all feel. I must ask you again to pardon this attempt to convey a grief and sympathy which I know are at least truly heartfelt. "I hope and pray that your anxiety on your children's account may now be lessened, as well as that which all friends must feel for your own health, And remain most sincerely yours, Jane Welsh Carlyle says: D. G. ROSSETTI." "MY DEAR MRS. GILCHRIST: Are we still to go on not seeing each other,—you in sorrow, I in sickness; with just a partition between us,-of no comfort to each other at all? "For more than three months now, I have been ill and confined to the house-Three times I have seemed to be recovering, and made an attempt at getting about; but after one drive in a Fly, there was always a relapse; and since New Year's Day I have had the worst bout of all! "The visit to the Grange which has lain so long a-head of me, and to which I looked for some fresheningup, is finally thrown over altogether as far as I am concerned. Mr. Carlyle will go on Monday by himself for two or three days. "Since the mild weather came, I have been so much better, however, that I am again projecting a drive ; being heartily sick of my two rooms. I should have tried it to-day. But for the rain "Will you come here? or must I wait till I can go to you? that is till it is quite dry; for I should be foolish to expose myself to the damp, after such long shutting up. Yours affectionately, JANE CARLYLE." And again on Monday "DEAR MRS. GILCHRIST: I am puzzled to understand why you send me back these miserable debts without a word of answer to my Saturday's note about seeing you. I must take for granted from your silence that you would still rather be left alone at least so far as I am concerned. "You sent me a sovereign, of which I spent only five and ninepence halfpenny-so there is owing you out of that 14s. 21d.-and long ago you paid a bushel of brown flour for me as the last was ten shillings, I suppose that would be the same. Which makes a balance due to you of one pound four shillings and 2d. What wretched What wretched particulars to write about, after so long as a separation. Yours ever truly, JANE W. CARLYLE." No sooner was the funeral over, than scarlet fever attacked the younger son, who, some few days prior to taking it, had been conveyed to Colne. The following letter of Jane Carlyle's was received by Anne Gilchrist when nursing him : 5, Cheyne Row, Friday, Dec. 7, 1861. "MY DEAR MRS. GILCHRIST: I was glad and thankful to get your letter this morning. I knew thro' the JANE WELSH CARLYLE. 107 nurse that the little Boy was going on favourably; but I needed some token from yourself, that you were not dwelling quite shut up within the black circle of your own great sorrow; without a thought for anything beyond it, or any of us who care for you, and sympathize with you so sincerely. "It is a strange thing to say; but I was glad when I heard your little Boy had taken the fever, and that you had gone off to him! I felt sure-perhaps because so much had been taken from you already—that he would be spared; and in the meantime, the anxiety on his account would recall you to a sense of what you had still left to lose!-and the very movement, and change of scene, and of air, would rouse you out of that blackness of despair in which your last lines to me were written, poor dear soul ! you Things seem to go on very well in your house. That nurse, from all my girls say of her, seems to be a most anxious painstaking woman, I have had good accounts of the children every day.. I sent in this evening to ask if she [the nurse] wished anything told as I was going to write, and she said she had already mentioned everything to Mrs. [Edwin] Ireland, who would write. Anne has been much better the last two days it was announced to me quite radiantly by Maria that 'Anne had eaten a chop!'-The nurse thinks that by next week Anne will be quite up to her work.... I do hope you will tell me if there be anything you want done, that I can do, either directly or Yours affectionately, indirectly. JANE CARLYLE." |