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CHAPTER VII.

LETTER FROM JANE WELSH CARLYLE.

1859.-AGE 31.

Humber-Aberdour, Fife.

Summer of 1859.

"MY

Y DEAR MRS. GILCHRIST: I don't remember whether I engaged to write to you or not; but anyhow the spirit moves me to write--and exactly at the wrong moment! when I have the softest pen and the thickest ink that has fallen in my way since I left home!

"I suppose you are long removed to your country quarters and have derived I hope, more benefit from the change' than I have done as yet. I suppose the dreadfully fatiguing journey knocked me up to such an extent, that it has taken all this time of ' pure air,' 'quiet' and new milk and rum' to overcome the bad consequences. Certainly, between ourselves, I am not sensible of having gained an atom of strength, either bodily or mental, since I left Chelsea! And yet; what a difference between the dead-wall one looks out on in Cheyne Row, and the 'view' from our windows here, unsurpassed I am sure by the Bay of Naples or any other view on Earth! and between the exhalations

from the Thames,' complicated with the vitriol Factory and Chancellor's dung-hill; and these airs from the Atlantic blowing on our hill-top! One ought to be well here and now that one has a cuddy' (donkey) all to oneself' (as the children say) to walk about on the four legs of; one's two own legs being no go, one ought to admit one has everything needed for happiness-except indeed one thing, the faculty of being happy!

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"Mr. Carlyle is much pleased with the place and the soft food' it yields for himself—and horse—and, as he hardly works at all, he would be much better-if he didn't, as he always does in the country,' take health by the throat (as it were) Bathing as if he were a little boy in the Serpentine, walking as if he had seven-league Boots, and riding like the Wild Huntsman !-the consequence of all which is that he keeps up in him a continual fever of biliousness

"Charlotte [the housemaid] is the happiest of created girls-everything so new to her, everything delightful! especially the open admiration of Aberdour Lads; who call her Bonnie wee Lassie' in the public highway! So kind of them!' she says when they never saw her before and don't so much as know her name!!' Mr. Carlyle remarked justly that the compliments to herself, were the only words of Scotch she could manage to understand! and these she understood at once, by instinct!'

"Nero is a much improved dog, by sea-bathing with his master, he snores less, scratches less, and is less selfish. And the Horse'--Oh, Mr. Carlyle declares 'It is in perfect raptures over its soft food-but incapable of

WHALES AND WHALEMEN.

71

recovering from its astonishment at the badness of the Fyfe roads!'

"So we shall do very well at the Farm House for as long as we have it-till the 6th of August, after that our plans are still in the vague. Good-bye dear woman I do hope Mr. Gilchrist will find some work in winter to keep you still our neighbours.

Yours most truly,

JANE CARLYLE."

Anne Gilchrist received the letter which we have read when staying with her mother (Mrs. Burrows), at Earls Colne. In the summer of 1859 she wrote a short article, "Whales and Whalemen," which appeared in the April number of Chambers, 1860.

Upon returning to Great Cheyne Row, neighbourly intercourse was resumed with the Carlyles; we will call with Alexander Gilchrist, and hear the gossip :

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Talking of the now well-known destruction of the first volume of the French Revolution,' Jane Carlyle thought that "the MS. was not lost in Mill's, but in Mrs. Taylor's house, whom Mill was then much with, and afterwards married; and much more likely to have happened in a wholesale druggist's house, as her husband's was, than in a literary man's. The name kept secret for a long while; but ultimately the Mills themselves let it out. Very uncomfortable affair for Mill before the name was known. Mrs. Austin, for instance, said in his presence, there seemed to her only one plan open to the man-to have gone home and shot himself. Carlyle almost wild at the time: with great difficulty re-wrote it.

It never seemed to him as good as the first copy ; and yet he could not remember what that first was.'

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Carlyle "asked me how long I had been at work today? From the time I got up till tea-time.' How many hours? Eight clear.' 'Too long.' He never got more than six at the best of times. Only three or four clear now. Over the French Revolution, six hours a day. Used to go out about two or three in the afternoon; read in the evening.' Carlyle said that 'people in England had an interest in the Cromwell; in the Frederick, he had to create it all; do everything for his readers.'

Carlyle "spoke of a small French volume (1685) on 'Ziska,' he had had from Palmer, and returned. Two things in it new to him, and amused him. One, in besieging a town, Tabor, which the Hussites built for themselves, which Frederick once took and was often in; the other side threw over into the town waggon-loads of carrion. The other incident, how 'Ziska' in a battle when he was sore beset, got the women of his side to strew their veils, laces and other light garments; he then provoked the opposite cavalry to advance into them. They got entangled-their spurs and so forth, in these things; then 'Ziska' attacked and cut them up. Carlyle laughed much at this.

"Talking of the Leader to George Henry Lewes, Carlyle asked When will those papers on Positivism come to an end?'

'I can assure you they are making a great impression at Oxford,' says Lewes.

"Ah! I never look at them, it's so much blank paper

THE DUC DE MALAKOFF.

73

to me. I looked into Comte once; found him to be one of those men who go up in a balloon, and take a lighted candle to look at the stars.'

"Lewes mentioned that he had given up literature for Natural Science.

"Carlyle likes Lewes, and was so pleased with him that in the evening he said to his wife, Well, I don't know why you shouldn't call on Miss Evans . . .'

"Mrs. Carlyle alluded to the sudden death of Lady Clementina, who was very beautiful but getting passé. At a party at which that brute, the Duke of Malakoff was present, conversation turned on our regrets for the past. Lady Jersey foolishly boasted she did not understand them; she had no regrets. Ce n'est pas vrai, Madame: you regret your youth, and you regret the fading beauty of your daughter.'

[The Duc de Malakoff was the Maréchal Pelissier, who commanded the French troops during the Crimean War, and who not only beat the Russians, but got on well with the English, which no doubt influenced the Emperor in giving him the exalted civil appointment which he afterwards held-that of Ambassador to the Court of St. James.]

"He affects the brutal and brusque in his style. The Duke of Malakoff and 'Skittles' [the courtezan]' a lady I hope you do not know, Mr. Gilchrist?'

"I had heard of her.

"A very pretty and very wicked lady who rides about the Park'

"Here Carlyle entered at last, and stopped the anecdote about Skittles,' to my regret.'

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