CHAPTER VIII. LETTER FROM JANE WELSH CARLYLE. Με 1860-1861. AGE, 32-33. "13th June, 1860, 5, Cheyne Row. Y DEAR! Behold a cap! Fresh from Indiaa delicate attention to Mr. Carlyle on the part of a Lady! But the cap fits Mr. C.'s large head like an inverted tumbler! so I laid it aside to give you when you came as a delicate attention to Percy on the part of me! "Now you have come so seldom short a time, that I have never got lately and staid so subsided into recollection of the cap-so I transmit it by Charlotte-who is much obliged to you for sending her tea all in a heap instead of in quarters, as it insures her better weight, measured out by me! Affectionately yours, JANE CARLYLE "DEAR MRS. GILCHRIST: Here is a letter I have had to-day from that dear little Mrs. Hawkins, so amusing that it seems a shame to keep it all to myself when there is another intelligent reader otherside the wall. Let me have it back to-morrow. Yours affectionately, JANE W. CARLYLE." Anne Gilchrist was an excellent housewife: Carlyle liked her home-made bread so much, that his wife took lessons in the art of bread-making. Jane Carlyle did not prove an apt pupil; to knead well, plump hands and patience are the necessary qualifications. "DEAR MRS. GILCHRIST: I would go in to speak, but that I should probably bring you away from something. So I write to ask can you conveniently come in and stand over me while I make the bread myself today? My cousins are not coming to-day and are coming to-morrow; so perhaps I had best avail myself of the present opportunity. If to-day; tell me what hour— and tell me where Emma gets the yeast. And when Charlotte shall come for the flour? A precious Bother I am to be sure to you! But if I can never reward you on earth you are pretty certain to have two little additional wings for it in heaven! Yours most gratefully JANE CARLYLE." With what are termed amusements, Anne Gilchrist had little to do; but she enjoyed a chat with lively Jane Carlyle, who possessed charming audacity and winning gaiety of manner; for instance, she would greet Monckton Milnes and Forster with a kiss; given in so natural and unaffected a manner as to cause no surprise. "Friday, 17th. Annie called upon Mrs. Carlyle, who mentioned that her husband had received, two days ago, a parcel inscribed, to be delivered on the fourth'. On opening it, was disclosed an expensive Prayer-Book, one of Pickering's, with ornamental borders, texts on the fly-leaf, and pasted in : CHARLES DICKENS. 'For dear Carlyle a Valentine : 81 "The other day, Mrs. Carlyle, in company with Barlow, met Dickens coming out of Burlington Arcade. 'God bless my soul, you here!' says Dickens, in such a droll way as has made Mrs. Carlyle laugh ever since; such an arch face and tone of voice he has, sharp as a needle. She asked Dickens to come and see them; Dickens said he would, one day next week. And bring 'the girls, Mrs. Carlyle was going to say; then, thinking that would be too formal, said: 'one of the girls.' Yes! I'll bring one of the girls'! responds Dickens." "Mr. Carlyle likes Dickens personally very much, though he never reads his books." < Speaking of Thackeray and his wife, Mrs. Carlyle alluded to his want of means when an artist; but Sterling found him employment in reviewing books in the Times. Married Miss Shawe in part to take her away from a disagreeable mother. She, far too small a thing for a great riotous, energetic man like Thackeray, -sunk under the anxieties; went silly after her third confinement.' "The day that The Cornbill was first published, Thackeray set up a pair of handsome greys to his carriage. A lady met him; Thackeray said he was going to look at, and buy if he could, Lord Macaulay's house. She told him that Lady Airlie had bought it, and added, What a good thing it was to be so rich.' 'Shall I tell you the secret to be rich?' answered the novelist; set up a Magazine!' "Mrs. Carlyle mentioned having had a letter from Ruskin, who had returned from the Continent, very out of humour with the Munich doings in Art. Had made up his mind to give up writing and painting, and everything, except reading. Mrs. Carlyle said, 'No one managed Carlyle so well as Ruskin; it was quite beautiful to see him. Carlyle would say outrageous things, running counter to all Ruskin valued and cared for. Ruskin would treat Mr. Carlyle like a naughty child, lay his arms round him, and say, 'Now, this is too bad! "Talk fell on the two Scottish books that I left for Carlyle on New Year's Day: James the First's Poems' and Pennycuick's Poem'; pleased with both, especially with James the First's Christ's Kirk on the Green, which was on the model of Chaucer. Carlyle read the first few stanzas, entering into the humour and picturesqueness with much gusto. Pennycuick very scarce; did not know before a copy was to be had, only having seen parts extracted in Burns.' I said he was a Scottish Cleveland, which Carlyle assented to; and then read a satirical poem on one Captain a noted Border robber of horses, from whom Mrs. Carlyle claims collateral descent with some pride, as from a remarkable man, a kind of eighteenth century Rob Roy. Carlyle read the poem with some sly satisfaction over his wife. "I asked Mrs. Carlyle about Lady Ashburton? Oh, she had been completely vanquished;' resolved not to like her, but had been obliged to; 'stood out five days.' It was not her fascinations in the drawing-room, |