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MY RELATIONS WITH
CARLYLE

BY

JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE

TOGETHER WITH A LETTER FROM THE QTE
SIR JAMES STEPHEN, BART., K.C.S.1.
DATED DECEMBER 9, 1886

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

1903
 

 

 

 

Cornell Mniversity Library

BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME
FROM THE

SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND

THE GIFT OF

Henry W. Sage

1891
MY RELATIONS WITH CARLYLE
MY RELATIONS WITH
CARLYLE

BY

JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE

TOGETHER WITH A LETTER FROM THE LATE
SIR JAMES STEPHEN, BART., &.C.S.1.
DATED DECEMBER 9, I886

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1903

\
All rights reserved
PREFATORY NOTE

In making facts public on which Mr. Froude had,
after long and anxious consideration, decided to be
silent, we are fully aware of the responsibility we
are taking on ourselves. For the re-opening of the
controversy, however, we are not to blame. The
following private account, written by Mr. Froude
himself, of his own relations with Mr. Carlyle would
never have been given to the world had not the
production of the ‘New Letters and Memorials of
Jane Welsh Carlyle,’ with the serious charges con-
tained in the Introduction and Footnotes, appeared
to us to demand its publication.

In the face of such charges, we feel that we
should not be doing our duty as Mr. Froude’s rep-
resentatives if we failed to use the means which we
possess of vindicating his memory. It seems to
us best that Mr. Froude should speak in his own
words, even though they may not be those which
he himself might finally have chosen, had he been
vi

now living, and had he consented at last to speak
in his own defence.

The history of the Notes is given on a subse-
quent page. As the style itself shows, they have
received no literary revision; and none has been
attempted by ourselves. We have corrected a few
clerical errors; we have omitted a few passages,
containing intimate reflections and recollections, un-
connected with the point at issue; and two pas-
sages, dealing not with Mr. Carlyle but with certain
business complications which arose out of the pub-
lication of his Memoirs, we have transferred in ex-
tenso to the Appendix.

With the Notes we publish, by permission of Sir
Herbert Stephen, a letter from Sir James Stephen
to Mr. Froude, which was printed in 1886 for pri-
vate circulation only, and in which reference is
made to the above business matter. The letter is
evidence which cannot be disputed as to Sir James
Stephen’s opinion of his co-executor’s conduct,
throughout a difficult and most painful business,
and it shows incidentally the complications which

resulted from Mr. Carlyle’s changes of purpose.

Asuitry A. Frovups.

Marcaret Frovupe.
. May 22, 1908. -
MY RELATIONS WITH CARLYLE.

Mr. Froude’s account of his ‘Relations with Car-
lyle’ was found after his death in a despatch-box
with a copy of Mr. Carlyles will and a few business
papers. The notes are written in pencil in a note-
book, and, so far as ts known, Mr, Froude had
shown them to no one. The first few pages are of too
intimate a nature to be given to the public; but they
are painful evidence of how acutely Mr. Froude had
suffered under the criticism to which he refused to re-
ply. The short account which he gives of his own
early life, is only important because of the light
thrown by tt upon his first acquaintance with Mr.
Carlyle. He describes how he had been bred up in
the usual way, had gone to school and college, passed
fairly through his university career, and in process
of time gained a fellowship, the natural result of
which had been ordination. He had taken deacon’s
orders, and looked to the Church as his regular pro-
Session. So much as a doubt, he tells us, had so far
never crossed his mind of the truth of the creed in
which he had been brought up.
2

‘ Tt was at this time, he says, ‘that Carlylés books
came in my way. They produced on me what Evan-
gelicals call “a conviction of sin.” They taught me
the intense seriousness of life; the inevitable conse-
quence, in the injury to the moral nature, of every
careless wrong act, which no repentance could com-
pletely remedy. For the first time I was made to
realise the meaning of duty and the overpowering
obligation to doit. But, along with this, Carlyles
books taught me that the religion in which I had
been reared was but one of many dresses in which
spiritual truth had arrayed itself, and that the creed
was not literally true so far as it was a narrative
of facts,

Under this influence he gave up his fellowship and
abandoned his orders, feeling that the change which
was taking place in his own belief made tt impossi-
ble for him honestly to adopt the career designed for
him. In taking this step he compromised all his
earthly prospects. His father was severely dis.
pleased, and refused to do any more for him. He
was turned adrift upon the world to struggle as he
might, and as the law then stood every profession was
closed to him. The period of struggle in his case did
not last long; within a few years Mr. Froude had
made a position for himself; but while it lasted it
was hard, and he had voluntarily embarked upon tt.
This crisis in his life was due to Mr. Carlyles in-
fluence. ‘I mention tt, he says, ‘to show how Tittle
3

likely it is that for any motive of my own I should
have wilfully misrepresented his character when it
came to me to tell what that character was. LI had
every conceivable motive, spiritual and earthly, to
show him in the most favourable of all possible
lights, with nothing on the other side save the sense
which he had himself impressed upon me, that, wider
all hazards to oneself and under all circumstances,
it was necessary to stick to the truth.

The narrative can now be continued in Mr.
Proudés own words :

I was introduced to Carlyle soon after I left the
University. I saw him from time to time, not
often, for I lived far off in the country. He was
very good to me. He helped me when he could. I
became intimate to some extent with Mrs. Carlyle,
with whom I occasionally corresponded. She liked
me, I believe, at least, so Carlyle told me, while I
thought her the most brilliant and interesting
woman that I had ever fallen in with; so much
thought, so much lightness and brilliancy, such
sparkling scorn and tenderness combined, I had
never met with together in any human being. It
was evident that she was suffering ; she was always
in indifferent health, she had no natural cheerful-
ness, at least, none when I knew her. Rumour said
that she and Carlyle quarrelled often, and I could
4

easily believe it from occasional expressions about
him which fell from her. But it was clear, too, that
she greatly admired him. Various hints were
dropped in the circle which gathered at the house
in Cheyne Row, about the nature of the relations
between them, that their marriage was not a real
marriage, and was only companionship, &¢. I paid
no attention to a matter which was no business
of mine. I have never been curious about family
secrets, and have always as a rule of my life de-
clined to listen to communications which were no
business of mine. It was enough for me to be
admitted to the Cheyne Row tea-parties on my
occasional visits, and enjoy the brilliancy of the
conversation, whether it was with him or with
her.

In 1860, I removed to London to live. Such
acquaintance as I had with the Carlyles I hoped
to keep up, but I did not expect, and for the reasons
which I have mentioned I did not wish, that it
should be closer than it was. Carlyle himself J ad-
mired intensely, but it was with admiration too com-
plete for pleasant social relationship. His manner
was impatient and overbearing. .He denounced.
everybody and everything, and, though what he said
was in my opinion intensely true and right, yet I
felt that it would be impossible to live with him on
equal terms. One loves those who are not too far
removed from oneself. He seemed to me a superior
a

order of being, whom one approached with genuine
reverence, but could scarcely dare to love.

To my surprise, one evening in 1861, Carlyle
called on me, expressed a wish to see more of me,
invited me to come more often to his house, to be
his companion in his walks and rides, &c. Nothing
could be more flattering. I consented, and I was
now continually in Cheyne Row. In all this the
advances were on Carlyle’s side. I had made no
effort to press myself into his intimacy, still less into
intimacy with Mrs. Carlyle. To refuse such hands
when they were held out to me I thought would be
ungracious and unnecessary. I felt myself highly
honoured besides, and I promised myself pleasure
and advantage from increased opportunities of quiet
conversation with him. When more than one per-
son was present he spoke in monologue, pouring out
cataracts generally of denunciation against all man-
ner of things and persons. When alone with a
single companion he was delightful, brilliantly en-
tertaining, sympathetic, and even occasionally toler-
ant of what at other times he would execrate, and
full of the widest information about all things and
subjects.

Introduced thus into closer relations with the
life at Cheyne Row, I could not help becoming ac-
quainted with many things which I would rather
not have known. If Carlyle was busy he was in
his sound-proof room and never allowed himself to
6

be interrupted. Any one who disturbed him at
such times was not likely to repeat the experiment.
Mrs. Carlyle was very much alone. She was in bad
health and he did not seem to see it, or if he did, he
forgot it immediately in the multitude of thoughts
which pressed upon him. She rarely saw him ex-
cept at meal-times. She sat by herself in her draw-
ing-room, either reading or entertaining visitors who
bored her, and of whom she dared not ask him to
relieve her. She suffered frightfully from neural-
gia, which she bore with more than stoical endur-
ance, but it was evident that her life was painful
and dreary. She was sarcastic when she spoke of
her husband—a curious blending of pity, contempt,
and other feelings. One had heard of violent quar-
rels from others who were admitted within the cir-
cle, and one began to realise that they might per-
haps be true. One had heard that she had often
thought of leaving Carlyle, and as if she had a right
to leave him if she pleased. To those whom she liked
she was charming—bewitching, and the thought
of such a person suffering as she evidently suffered,
with so little sympathy bestowed upon her, and
suffering through the negligence of a man whom
nevertheless one admired as one’s own honoured
master and teacher, was exquisitely painful. He
too suffered from dyspepsia and want of sleep. But
whereas she was expected to bear her trouble in pa-
tience, and received homilies on the duty of submis-
7

sion if she spoke impatiently, he was never more
eloquent than in speaking of his own crosses. He
himself had really a vigorous constitution. He
never had a day of serious illness. He used to walk
or ride in the wildest weather and never carried so
much as an umbrella. Yet I never knew him ad-
mit that he felt well. He never spoke of himself
without complaint as if he was an exceptional vic-
tim of the Destinies. She was weary of hearing a
tale so often repeated, the importance of which she
was so well able to value. Some degree of self-
restraint is expected from all of us, even when there
is something real to complain of. Without it none
of us could live together. In Carlyle’s catalogue of
his own duties, self-restraint seemed to be forgotten.
She was very little alone with him. She presided
at the tea-table at the small evening gatherings of
his admirers in her own charming fashion. But
Carlyle on these occasions did not converse. He
would not allow himself to be contradicted, but
poured out whole Niagaras of scorn and vituper-
ation sometimes for hours together, and she was
wearied, as she confessed, of a tale which she had
heard so often and in much of which she imper-
fectly believed. She would herself occasionally say
this. She admired his genius as much asever. She
had accepted the destructive part of his opinions
like so many others, but he had failed to satisfy her
that he knew where positive truth lay. He had
8

taken from her, as she mournfully said, the creed in
which she had been bred, but he had been unable to
put anything in the place of it. She believed noth-
ing. On the spiritual side of things her mind was
a perfect blank; she looked into her own heart and
into the world beyond her, and it was all void and
desert; there was no word of consolation, no word
of hope. She was so true that it was impossible for
her to satisfy herself with fine phrases about the In-
finite. That confidence which sustained him in his
uncertainties that ‘the Maker of all things would
do right,’ he had never succeeded in conveying to
her. He believed, or thought he believed, in a
special Providence. To her it was an unmeaning
phrase. I suppose that his own inconsistencies in-
terfered with the effect of his teaching. He ‘recked
not his own rede,’ and those whose practice falls
short of their theories do not seem to believe really
in their theories themselves. Carlyle was impatient,
uritable, strangely forgetful of others, self-occupied
and bursting into violence at the smallest and ab-
surdest provocation—evidently a most difficult and
trying household companion. All this was very
distressing. Mrs. Carlyle’s pale, drawn, suffering
face haunted me in my dreams. I set most of it
down to ill-health. I did not allow my reverence
and admiration for Carlyle’s intellect and high moral
greatness to be interfered with. I considered him
an exceptional person, whose infirmities were greater
0

than the virtues of most other persons. I suppose
I considered that to be the wife of such a man was a
sufficient honour in itself, and I was more distressed.
than interested by the bitter things which she occa-
sionally said of him, only I felt that I could never
live with such a man. Nothing would do but the
most absolute submission to him of your whole be-
ing, and then you would do only indifferently.

In 1862, her health finally broke down, and there
came on that strange illness of hers which doctors
failed to understand, or, if they understood it, they
did not venture to speak plainly. For a year she
lay in agonies, her nervous system torn to tatters—
sleepless, racked with pain which was unlike any
pain that she had ever felt or heard of. Carlyle’s
wild irritability (in one of her letters at the time
she described her life with him as like keeping a
madhouse) had shattered her at last. The wisest of
her doctors insisted as a first necessity on her sepa-
ration from him, the constant agitation of his pres-
ence, and the equally constant provocation which
his forgetfulness or preoccupation made incessant in
spite of efforts, taking away all hope of amendment
while the cause remained. She went to Hastings,
to Scotland: she was all but dead. She had again
and again been given up. To all inquiries there
was but one answer: ‘No better. No hope. Sud-
denly, as if from the grave, she came back. The ill-
ness had seemed preternatural, the recovery equally
10

so. She had been dying. She was apparently well.
She came back into society. She was weak, ex-
tremely so, but in good spirits. Carlyle had been
frightened into realising how ill she had really
been. It had not been that he was consciously in-
different, but he was preoccupied. He made little
of other people’s sufferings; she had rarely com.
plained at the worst, and was a Stoic in the sternest
sense of the word. He thought more of her com-
fort; he gave her a carriage. He had felt to his
heart what her loss would have been to him.
Those last eighteen months, he often told me, were
the happiest in his married life, since the first year
of it. She, too, seemed to feel more for him; not
entirely as he perhaps thought, for she was unfor-
giving, and she had more to forgive than any one
knew, but the atmosphere in Cheyne Row had
cleared a little. She still mocked to me at times
about him, and the resentment was there, though it
showed itself less. In the midst of the improve-
ment, and when he was absent as Lord Rector at
Edinburgh, she suddenly died in her carriage. The
injury had gone too deep. There had been no real
amendment. Her nerves had been so shaken by
her many years of suffering that some singular dis-
ease had developed itself, I believe, in her spine.
At any rate, she went out one afternoon to drive
round Hyde Park. I was to have been with her in
the evening at tea. She had had a shock at some
11

injury to her dog, and died without a word or a
struggle.

Such an end was tragically in keeping with her
singular character and history. I have spoken else-
where of Carlyle’s misery. He shut himself up in
the house with her diaries and papers, and for the
first time was compelled to look himself in the face,
and to see what his faults had been. The worst of
those faults I have concealed hitherto. I can con-
ceal them no longer. He found a remembrance in
her Diary of the blue marks which in a fit of passion
he had once inflicted on her arms. He saw that he
had made her entirely miserable; that she had sacri-
ficed her life to him; and that he had made a
wretched return for her devotion. As soon as he
could collect himself he put together a memoir of
her, in which with deliberate courage he insert-
ed the incriminating passages (by me omitted)
of her Diary, the note of the blue marks among
them, and he added an injunction of his own that,
however stern and tragic that record might be, it
was never to be destroyed.

It was now that I learnt to regard Carlyle with a
more human feeling. My admiration of him had
never wavered; but the contempt with which he
treated everybody and everything, the anecdotes
which I had heard from his wife, and his manifest
forgetfulness of every other person’s interest or com-
fort where his own wishes were concerned, had made
12

it difficult for me to dike him in the common sense
of the word. He had seemed to me like a person
apart from the rest of the world, with the mask of
destiny upon him, to whom one could not feel ex-
actly as towards a brother mortal. Another side of
his character was now opened to me—the agony of
his remorse for a long series of faults which now for
the first time he saw in their true light. For the
next four years I never walked with him without
his recurring to a subject which was never absent
from his mind. His conversation, however it opened,
always drifted back into a pathetic cry of sorrow
over things which were now irreparable. It was at
once piteous and noble; for it was manifest that his
faults, whatever they had been (and I did not then
know completely what they had been), were no
faults in his real nature. A repentance so deep and
so passionate showed that the real nature was as
beautiful as his intellect had been magnificent. He
was still liable to his fits of temper. He was still
scornful and overbearing and wilful; but it had be-
come possible to love him—indeed, impossible not
to love him.

It was in 1871, that suddenly, without a word of
warning, without permission given or asked for, he
one day brought to me a large parcel of papers. It
contained a copy of the memoir which he had writ-
ten of his wife, various other memoirs and frag-
ments of biography, and a collection of his wife’s
13

letters to himself and other persons. He had put
them together, he said, they were not completely
prepared for publication, but he could do no more
with them, nor could he tell what ought to be done
with them. He gave them simply to me. After-
wards he seemed to have forgotten this, for he be-
queathed them to me in his will. But at the time
he said: ‘Take these for my sake; they are yours
to publish or not publish, as you please, after I am
gone. Do what you will. Read them and let me
know whether you will take them on these terms.’
I did read them, and then for the first time I real-
ised what a tragedy the life in Cheyne Row had
been——a tragedy as stern and real as the story of
(Edipus. The quarrels, I found to my sorrow, had
been no surface differences of married life, but fierce
and violent. Surely enough the remorse was need-
ed. The collecting of those letters was an expia-
tion, an expiation so frank and so complete that it
washed the stain away. I for myself felt that he
had done rightly, that his character never could be
put fairly and honestly among the records of the
great men to whom he belonged unless the faults
were confessed and absolution granted on the only
fitting terms. I felt at the time that he was laying
upon mea cruel test of friendship, though he did
not mean to be cruel. He ought to have come toa
resolution himself, and not to have left the decision
to me. I believed, however, that his hesitation rose
14

from a sense that to order such a publication would
seem ostentatious, as if his affairs were of so much
consequence to mankind that he was entitled to call
on them to occupy themselves with the seamy side
of his life. At all events, and with the still uncom-
pleted story in my hands, I told him my own opin-
ion, that he had done right and that the letters
ought to be brought out, but that if they were
brought out, in justice both to her and to himself,
his own memoir of his wife ought to be made known
also. When he first wrote it he added a note for-
bidding its publication, but he had included it in
the gift to me, and it had been copied out for that
purpose. I might therefore have acted on his gen-
eral instructions and dealt with it as I pleased, but I
required and I received his own special permission,
and on these terms the manuscripts remained with
me.

I was so anxious, however, and I felt so seriously
the load of the responsibility, that I asked him to
allow me to consult John Forster, as it was too heavy
for me to bear alone.

Forster read both memoir and letters. To me he
gave no opinion. He said that he would speak to
Carlyle about it, and I believe that he did. I do
not know what passed between them. He said that
he should tell Carlyle to make my position clear in
his will, or trouble would come of it. This Carlyle
did. He knew my own feeling, and never once to
15

the end of his life, not once at any moment, did he
give me a hint that he wished the letters suppressed.
He left me always to the end under the impression
that he wished them published, but he wished the
act of publishing to be mine.

This incident, however, led to fuller communica-
tions between Forster and myself about Carlyle’s
history than we had ever exchanged before, and he
told me a very singular story. I knew generally
that the Carlyles had been very intimate with Lord
Ashburton, then Mr. Baring, and his first wife,
Lady Harriet Baring. I knew that the friendship
had been more on Carlyle’s side than on his wife’s,
who, I had gathered, generally, did not like Lady
Harriet. But I had myself no acquaintance with
the Ashburtons. I trouble myself as little as possi
ble at all times with other people’s affairs, and
whether Mrs. Carlyle liked the people whom her
husband liked was no matter to me. Forster, how-
ever, alluded to some mysterious secret in connection
with the Ashburtons. When I said I knew noth-
ing about it he seemed greatly surprised, and pro-
ceeded to tell me that Lady Ashburton had fallen
deeply in love with Carlyle, that Carlyle had be-
haved nobly, and that Lord Ashburton had been
greatly obliged to him. That Carlyle should be-
have nobly under such extraordinary circumstances
seemed extremely likely to me, but I was greatly
astonished. Lady Ashburton was a great lady of
16

the world. Carlyle, with all his genius, had the
manners to the last of an Annandale peasant.
Wonderful things did happen—and women did
strange things. I supposed that Forster must know
what he was talking of. But if his account was
true, I wondered why Mrs. Carlyle should seem
so angry when Lady Ashburton’s name was men-
tioned. She ought to have felt proud and amused.
This too, however, was no business of mine, and I
thought no more about it till two years later, when,
just as before [in 1871, ed.] Carlyle had brought me
the first parcel, he again [in 1878, ed.] sent me in a
box a collection of letters, diaries, memoirs, miscel-
lanies of endless sorts, the accumulations of a life.
He told me that I must undertake his biography,
and that there were the materials for me.

It happened that I had laid out my plans for the
occupation of my later life in a way that would
have been pleasant and profitable to me. I had
finished my ‘History of England.’ I had nearly
finished my ‘English in Ireland. After that my
hands would be free. I foresaw, with the knowl-
edge I already possessed, that I could not write a
‘Life of Carlyle’ that would have a chance of being
popular. I foresaw that I should be involved in
endless difficulties. To undertake it would involve
the sacrifice of all the arrangements which I had
made. It would be a certain loss in money. It
vould be fortunate for me if it did not lead me into
Le

perplexities which even at a distance looked suf-
ficiently formidable. I had already, however, un-
dertaken one dangerous part of the business. He
seemed bent on my undertaking the rest. He had
originally intended that no biography of himself
should be written. He had said in his journal that
there was a secret connected with him unknown to
his closest friends, that no one knew and no one
would know it, and that without a knowledge of it
no true biography of him was possible. He never
told me in words what this secret was, but I sup-
pose he felt that I should learn it from his papers.
At any rate, he had made up his mind that I was to
do it, and I said that I would, provided I was left
free to deal with the story exactly as I might think
right, and that I was not to be interfered with. I
set myself to study the enormous mass of manu-
scripts. I saw more than ever how complicated a
task had been imposed on me, as the singular and
tragical story unfolded itself. He had put these
papers in my hands just as he had placed the others,
with directions to burn freely as I might think
right,—without an inventory, without a word to
show that I was to render any further account of
them.

I supposed them to have been given to me as
the memorials of his wife had been, and if he had
any other intention he ought to have informed me
of it. He did not. When any subject was dis-
18

agreeable, it was his habit to thrust it away, and
desire to hear no more of it. So these papers were
thrust upon me, and so for seven years they re-
mained. The picture which they presented was in-
tensely interesting, in many respects intensely beau.
tiful. His wife’s journal, however, had come with
the rest, and here was the explanation of part at
least of the bitterness which had appeared in her
letters. It was not, as Forster had told me, that
Lady Ashburton had been ever devoted to Carlyle.
‘That would have been no cause of complaint, and if
Carlyle had behaved as Forster said, she would only
have loved him the better for it. Quite evidently
the feeling ran the other way. Carlyle had sate at
the feet of the fine lady adoring and worshipping,
had made himself the plaything of her caprices, had
made Lady Ashburton the object of the same idola-
trous homage which he had once paid to herself.
What was the meaning of Forster’s story? He died
soon after, and I had no opportunity of asking him.
But where had he learnt it? Of the actual truth
there can be no doubt at all. It was no creation of
Mrs. Carlyle’s jealous fancies. There are in exist-
ence, or there were, masses of extravagant letters of
Carlyle’s to the great lady as ecstatic as Don Qui-
xote’s to Dulcinea. There was one even in which he
had asked Lady Ashburton not to tell Mrs. Carlyle
of some visit which he had paid to her, as she was
so angry when she heard of his having been with
19

her. It was of course the purest Gloriana worship,
the homage of the slave to his imperious mistress.
But such it was; while on the lady’s side, whose
letters after what Forster had said I looked into
with interest, there was nothing else but the im-
perious mistress, to whom Carlyle was a passing
amusement. It was not jealousy only on Mrs. Car-
lyle’s part. She was ashamed and indignant at the
unworthy position in which her husband was plac-
ing himself. Rinaldo in the bower of Armida or
Hercules spinning silks for Omphale. What could
Forster have been talking of? It seemed equally
impossible (1 think it was impossible) that Carlyle
himself should have entertained any such extrava-
gant notion. I did indeed know an instance of a
peasant of high genius in whom another great lady
took an admiring interest under somewhat analo-
gous circumstances. A relation of the peasant who
disliked the acquaintance persuaded him that the
lady wanted to marry him. He was weak enough
to believe it, and an intimacy which had lasted for
many years was brought to an end. The vanity of
the wisest will carry him far when he is flattered by
a woman’s attentions.

It is not conceivable to me that such a person as
Carlyle could ever have been so extravagantly de-
luded. At any rate, there was the story; a myth of
a portentous kind already current. I tried once to
approach the subject with Carlyle himself, but he
20

shrank from it with such signs of distress that I
could not speak to him about it again. He had put
in my hands the letters and journals which told
Mrs. Carlyle’s view of it. He left them to speak
for themselves.

This was one of the Cheyne Row secrets which
was the cause of so much heart-burning and misery.
But it was not all. Carlyle’s mysterious allusion
evidently did not refer to anything connected with
Lady Ashburton. Iam not sure that I know now
what he meant; but a mystery was communicated
to me, if I can call that a mystery, which had forced
itself upon me from the study of the papers—some-
thing which I would infinitely rather have remained
in ignorance of, because I could not forget it, be-
cause it must necessarily influence me in all that I
might say, while I considered I must endeavour if
possible to conceal it.

Geraldine Jewsbury was Mrs. Carlyle’s most in-
timate and most confidential friend. Their corre-
spondence, a large part of which Miss Jewsbury
gave me, and which is now in my possession, proves
sufficiently how close the confidence was. Geral-
dine herself was a gifted woman. She had been at-
tracted by Carlyle’s writings, had introduced herself
to him as one of his most ardent worshippers, which
to the end of her own life she continued to be in
spite of all which she saw and knew. She was
about Mrs. Carlyle’s own age. She was admitted
21

into Cheyne Row on the closest terms. Mrs. Car-
lyle, in her own troubles, spoke and wrote of Ger-
aldine Jewsbury as her Consuelo. I had myself
some external acquaintance with Miss Jewsbury.
When she heard that Carlyle had selected me to
write his biography she came to me to say that she
had something to tell me which I ought to know.
I must have learnt that the state of thimgs had been
most unsatisfactory ; the explanation of the whole
of it was that ‘Carlyle was one of those persons
who ought never to have married.’ Mrs. Carlyle
had at first endeavoured to make the best of the
position in which she found herself. But his extra-
ordinary temper was a consequence of his organisa-
tion. As he grew older and more famous, he had
become more violent and overbearing. She had
longed for children, and children were denied to
her. This had been at the bottom of all the quar-
rels and all the unhappiness.

The nature of the relationship between the
Carlyles I was not unprepared to hear. I had felt
all along that there must be some mystery of the
kind. Indeed, as I have already said, there were
floating suspicions long before in the circle of
Cheyne Row. That Mrs. Cariyle had resented it
was new to me. I had supposed that probably in
the struggling and forlorn circumstances in which they
began their married life they had agreed, being both
of them singular persons, that they would do better
22

without a family. Miss Jewsbury entirely dispelled
this supposition. She said that Mrs. Carlyle never
forgave the injury which she believed herself to
have received. She had often resolved to leave
Carlyle. He, of course, always admitted that she
was at liberty to go if she pleased.

A fresh light was thus thrown on the Lady
Ashburton affair. Intellectual and spiritual affec-
tion being all which he had to give, Mrs. Carlyle
naturally looked on these at least as exclusively her
own. She had once been his idol, she was now
a household drudge, and the imaginative homage
which had been once hers was given to another.
This had been the occasion of the most violent out-
breaks between them.

I had observed in Mrs. Carlyle’s Diary* that im-
mediately after the entry of the blue marks on her
arms, she had spent a day with Geraldine at Hamp-
stead. I asked Miss Jewsbury if she recollected
anything about it: she remembered it only too well.
The marks were made by personal violence. Geral-
dine did not acquit her friend in all this. She ad-
mitted that she could be extremely provoking.
She said to me that Carlyle was the nobler of the
two. Her veneration for her teacher never flagged
in spite of all. She looked on his failings as aberra-

1 The passage in Mrs. Carlyle’s Diary to which Mr. Froude refers
is as follows :
“June 26.—The chief interest of to-day expressed in blue marks on
my wrists !”—Ep.
23

tions due to his physical constitution. But the facts
were as she told me. She did not live long after
this. In her last illness, when she knew that she
was dying, and when it is entirely inconceivable
that she would have uttered any light or ill-consid-
ered gossip, she repeated all this to me, with many
curious details. JI will mention one, as it shows
that Carlyle did not know when he married what
his constitution was. The morning after his wed-
ding-day he tore to pieces the flower-garden at
Comeley Bank in a fit of ungovernable fury. The
London life was a protracted tragedy. When the
intimacy with the Ashburton house became estab-
lished, she had definitely made up her mind to go
away, and even to marry another person. She told
him afterwards on how narrow a chance it had
turned. His answer hurt her worse than any other
word she ever heard from him: ‘Well, I do not
know that I should have missed you; I was very
busy just then with Cromwell.’

She still admired him, even loved him in a sense
for the beautiful and noble traits in his character.
His letters to her when they were separated were
uniformly tender and affectionate; so extreme in-
deed was the contrast between the letters and pres
ent realities that she used to say bitterly that he
wrote them for his biographer. Still she knew that
essentially he was generous, upright, and true.
Having begun the sacrifice of herself, she struggled
24

to carry it through for better or for worse as she
had promised ; the trial, however, was so protracted
that when her health began to fail it seemed more
than she could bear. She would not make a scandal
by revealing the truth and dissolving her marriage,
but once at least she had resolved to put herself out
of the way altogether. She was to have gone to
Scotland by sea. She meant in the darkness to
have dropped over the stern and disappeared in
such a way that it might seem as if her death had
been an accident. Something prevented the sea
voyage, but Geraldine’s entire conviction was that,
had she gone that way, she would never have been
seen again. The life in Cheyne Row was to her, as
Mrs. Carlyle said, like keeping a madhouse. Her
entire system was shattered by the scenes which
were continually recurring. She broke down at
last with the strangest illness that ever woman
died of.

I have since learnt that the nature of Carlyle’s
constitution was known to several persons, that in
fact it was an open secret. Perhaps it was dis-
covered by the physicians who attended in Mrs.
Carlyle’s illness. Perhaps she herself revealed her
wrongs to more than Geraldine. Miss Jewsbury’s
information was given to me under too solemn cir-
cumstances, and was coupled with too many singular
details, to allow doubt to be possible. It is as cer-
tain as anything human can be certain that what
25

she related to me was what Mrs. Carlyle had related
to her, and to all who knew Mrs. Carlyle that is
evidence enough.

Any way, these things were communicated to me,
and I was to be Carlyle’s biographer. What was I
to make of them? It was so weird, so uncanny a
business that the more I thought of it the less could
I tell what todo. I could well understand now how
grave the occasion for Carlyle’s remorse, which I had
often thought morbid and exaggerated. I found
myself entangled in painful family differences of
exactly the kind which I most disliked to hear of,
and acquaintance with which I had always avoided.
It was all left to my discretion, but how was my
discretion to be exercised ? Carlyle’s faults had been
great, and he had endeavoured to make an atone-
ment for them. It was an atonement complete in
itself, so complete that he himself directed the pub-
lication of the memoir of his wife with her own
letters; it swept the faults away and exhibited his
real character in its brightest and tenderest light. If
I suppressed all that—if I made my biography a
mere panegyric on his writings and his generally
noble and self-denying life, I should nevertheless
give the world nothing but a mockery. Legends
like that which I had heard from Forster were
already flying. Innumerable letters were scattered
about, from which partial and incorrect versions
of his history would inevitably be passed into
26

currency. I knew from anonymous letters, written
to myself, that the state of things in Cheyne Row
was no secret at all. The lives of great men are
scrutinised to the bottom. Mankind will not rest,
and do not rest till they have learnt all that can be
discovered about such men. ‘The lives of Switt,
of Byron, and a hundred others were standing
examples. Had I a right to keep concealed an
authentic narrative compiled by Carlyle himself, in
which he frankly acknowledged his own errors? I
was not blind to the risk which I should run so far
as I myself was personally concerned, but Carlyle
was one of those rare and exceptional men who had
exerted an immense influence on his ownage. Inmy
opinion, that influence would continue and would
enlarge; and in such instances men are entitled
to know everything which can be known of the
character of those who have addressed them from
the elevated position of prophet and teacher.

My acquaintance with the graver aspects of the
story had, on the whole, not impaired my admiration
of Carlyle.’ Taken for all in all, I admired him no
less. I loved him better for the feeling which he
had shown. He was human; he had his faults like
other men. The consequences had been miserable.
But he was miserable himself when he thought of
them. I felt as if I had never realised how great a
man he was till I saw what he suffered. I supposed
that what I felt myself would be felt by others, when
27

they had taken time to consider, but I did know that
the first impression would be a painful one. I could
not tell what it would be wise to do or what it
would be right to do. I continued to work at his
papers, to copy for myself the most important of his
manuscripts, since I could trust no other to do it for
me, and I put off my final decision till Carlyle him-
self should be gone and I could think more calmly
over ny responsibilities and of the manner in which
I was to act. I anticipated as not unlikely the re-
sentment of relations, but Carlyle had selected me
apparently because I was not a relation and would
be free from influences of a private kind.

The position became more complicated when,
about a year before his death, he suddenly said one
day to me when we were driving in a carriage,
‘When you have done with those papers of mine
give them to Mary,’ ‘Mary’ being his niece, Miss
Aitken,’ who had lately married her cousin and was
living with Carlyle in Cheyne Row. Hitherto I had
looked on those papers as my own. He had em-
powered me to burn freely. They had then been
in my hands for six years, and he had never hinted
to me that they were intended to pass out of my
possession.

Of course I acquiesced, but for many reasons I
felt uneasy. I had been trusted with the most deli-
eate and difficult of responsibilities. My action,

‘Mrs. Alexander Carlyle.
28

whatever it might be, would be open to objection of
one sort or another, as no one knew better than Car-
lyle, since he could not decide for himself. If he
had intended that these papers should be made use
of by others, and in opposition to the judgment at
which I should arrive should that judgment not co-
incide with theirs, then he was not dealing fairly
with me. No one would undertake so dangerous a
task on such conditions. He ought to have given
me the opportunity of deciding whether under this
arrangement I would go on with it; and could I
have guessed that I should be treated as I have been
treated, of course I should at once and with infinite
relief have restored my trust into his hands. I was
content, most incautiously, with a promise that Mary
Carlyle would do nothing without consulting me
and without my consent. Of course I should have
gratefully acknowledged errors into which I might
have fallen and misreading of his handwriting, which
at the end of his life became almost illegible. I
should have welcomed and encouraged any more
satisfactory biography should my own seem insufhi-
cient or inaccurate. I was not prepared for, and I
ought not to have encountered, a passionate and
angry challenge of my right to make the revelations
which were left to me to make or not to make. I
was not prepared for attacks on my character as a
gentleman and aman of honour. I acquit Carlyle
of having meant this. He was incapable of treach-
29

ery, least of all to me. But faith has not been kept
with me. I see now—I saw it before, but I was
unwilling to worry him—that I ought to have insist-
ed on receiving from him in writing his own distinct
directions. If they were not satisfactory to me I
could then have declined to go on.

There were other reasons why Carlyle should not
have been contented with a mere instruction that I
was to give the papers to his niece, and why he
should have given specific orders about them. I
had believed them to be my property, and that he
had given them to me. I believed, as being mine, I
could give them to her, and that if this was not so
questions would inevitably arise as to the legal own-
ership, and the consequent right to the profits of
publication. He had made me one of his executors,
though I did not know it. In his will he had left
his papers to his brother John. This, too, I did not
know, and I ought to have been informed of it; but
his brother died before him, and the bequest lapsed,
and then Mary Carlyle informed myself and my co-
executor that the papers had been given to her by
word of mouth, as I supposed them to have been
given to me. She had no writing to give in evi-
dence. If it was so, I had again been treated un-
fairly, for I ought to have been informed of it; but
all was left uncertain, all was in confusion. The ex-
ecutors did not know, and do not know now, to
whom the papers in law belonged. We agreed to
30

act on Carlyle’s verbal instruction to me, and to give
them to Mary Carlyle, as he had said; but whether
they were mine to give, or ours to give, is still an
open question.

It was a question of no importance in itself, but it
was important as affecting the right of property on
publication. Not a word having been said upon the
subject, and the whole undertaking having been
thrust upon me, I assumed as a matter of course that
the copyright and the profits of it would be mine
whatever they might be, and that I might dispose of
them as I thought fit. By this time I had drifted
towards a cowardly conclusion that I would suppress
Mrs. Carlyle’s letters after all, that I would write a
biography such as would most surely be to my own
advantage, dwelling on all that was best and bright-
est in Carlyle, and passing lightly over the rest. I
wrote the first volume of the ‘ Life’ as it now stands
in this sense. I had found among the papers the
‘Reminiscences’ of old Mr. James Carlyle, of Irving,
of Jeffrey, of Wordsworth, and Southey. They were
written, all but the account of his father, after Mrs.
Carlyle’s death. I thought them extremely beauti-
ful. I thought they gave the most favourable pict-
ure of Carlyle himself which could possibly be con-
veyed. I thought that they ought to be published
as they stood in a separate volume. I proposed it
to him and he readily assented.’

1 The first of the two passages given in the Appendix occurs here.
31

So the matter rested till three months before
Carlyle’s death. Had nothing more happened I
should have brought out the ‘ Reminiscences’ in the
form which I first proposed, have buried or burnt
Mrs. Carlyle’s letters and Carlyle’s memoir of her,
and finished my biography as I had begun, and the
real story would, through me at least, never have
been known. One day, however, on one of our
drives (I was with him constantly, as I had been
for many years, walking or driving), he began upon
the ‘Letters and Memorials, and asked me what I
had finally decided to do. He knew what my own
feeling had originally been—that the intended col-
lection of those ‘ Letters ’ was the most heroic act of
his life; that they ought to be published, and the
‘Memoir’ published along with them. He had
then been evidently pleased. He left it all to me.
At my own desire he had allowed me to consult
Forster ; but Forster had given me no advice at all,
and was now dead. I had not told Carlyle that my
own mind had begun to waver about it, and I had
never entered on the subject again, because I was
afraid he would be disappointed, or would say
something which would make it more difficult for
me to do what I had brought myself to intend. He
himself, however, began to speak about it exactly in
the tone which I had feared: in the old melancholy,
heart-broken way which I knew so well. I had not
the courage to tell him that I had changed my
32

mind. Indeed, I had not changed my mind so far
as the right and wrong were concerned. I had
been merely cowardly. I told him that the ‘Let-
ters’ should be published and the ‘Memoir’ also.
He seemed at once relieved and easy. He said I
must do asI pleased. He never gave me any order.
Then and always he avoided giving any order. He
threw the responsibility on- me; but neither then,
nor at any time before, or after, from the first time
in 1871, when he placed the manuscripts in my
hands, did he ever indicate in the slightest degree
that he himself had any reluctance or doubt about
the propriety of the publication. If he ever spoke
in a different tone to others, again I have been un-
fairly dealt with. To me the expression of such a
doubt would have been more than welcome. To
me, if to any one, that doubt ought to have been
communicated.

This being so settled, I made up my mind to the
worst. The whole story must now come out. I
thought that still I might keep back the secrets
which Geraldine Jewsbury had told me, but the
main facts which appeared in the letters would now
have to be brought out, except what I could not
bring myself to print, the fatal passage in the Diary
about the marks on the arm. Instead of it I would
insert another extract from the same Diary which
explained the cause of the quarrel, suppress such
passages as would hurt other people, and thus once
33

for all discharge myself of the whole burden. The
‘Memoir of Mrs. Carlyle’ I proposed to attach to the
‘Reminiscences,’ recomposed in part from the other
notes and fragments which he had given to me. In
view of what was to come and in order to show
how true his affection had really been all along, in
order to show what she had been—because when
her letters appeared the blame of much might be
thrown upon her—for both their sakes I was satis-
fied that the ‘Memoir’ had better appear at once,
and those tender and suffering passages which I
was universally reproached for having published,
I thought and I still think, were precisely those
which would win and command the pity and sym-
pathy of mankind. The story, I often said to my-
self, was as sternly tragic, as profoundly pathetic
as the great Theban drama. The genuine and
heartfelt expression of remorse and sorrow must
touch the very deepest chords of every serious
heart.

Carlyle died, and the book came out. It was re-
ceived with a violence of censure for which I was
wholly unprepared. It was received also with an
indignation of a different kind from Mary ‘Carlyle
and her friends. They were surprised and angry at
the appearance of the ‘Memoir,’ being ignorant of
what had passed about it between Carlyle and my-
self. They expected, I suppose, that the publica-
tion of the ‘Memoir’ would involve the publication
34

of the ‘ Letters,’ which I, as well as they, would have
willingly avoided if I could.

Another and more paltry cause of disagreement
had arisen simultaneously in a form at which I con-
fess I was astonished. I had thought I was stand-
ing clear in the money part of the business; I had
to find myself mistaken.

Here Mr, Froude refers at some length to certain
complications which arose from the publication of the
‘ Reminiscences’ in the United States, and from a
claim preferred by Mrs. A. Carlyle to the literary
profits of the book, These matters are only impor.
tant from the consequences to which they led, and have
therefore been omitted from the text in order that they
might not interfere with the continuity of the narra-
tive, but the original passages are given in their in-
tegrity at the end of Sir James Stephen’s letter, in
which the legal aspect of Mrs, A. Carlyle’s claim is
Sully discussed. (Appendix, pp. 64-70.)

Though I had accepted Mary Carlyle’s version
of my engagement to give her the literary profits
of the ‘Reminiscences,’ the copyright was still mine.
Thad restored the originals to her as Carlyle had
directed ; but I retained the literary control. More
than once inquiries had been made of me through
her lawyers when there would be any further money
coming to her from other editions. The book went
-out of print, and I was at some loss what to do, for,
being unable to do anything in England, Mary Car-
35

lyle had applied to Mr. Charles Norton to bring out
an edition in America. I saw it announced, with
an intimation that it was to appear at the desire of
Carlyle’s family, and that the edition which I had
published was full of printer’s blunders. I thought,
and I still think, that Mr. Norton ought to have com-
municated with me. I should have raised no difh-
culty. I knew that there might be many errors of
the press in the book. Mary Carlyle has reminded
me that I said her uncle’s handwriting was beauti-
ful. It was beautiful when he was in his vigour;
after his hand began to shake it became harder to
decipher than the worst manuscript which I have
ever examined. I copied out the greater part of
the ‘Reminiscences’ myself. A large part of them
I copied twice; I had to work at them with a mag-
nifying glass, and in many hundred instances I was
at a loss to know exactly what particular words
might be. My own hand is not a good one, and
there was a further source of error in the printer’s
reading of this. At least I was not careless, except
perhaps that I had found the manuscript so difficult
that in reading the proofs I trusted too much to
my own transcript. The ‘Memoir’ of Mrs. Car-
lyle was printed directly from the copy which
Carlyle gave me. If there were mistakes in this
the fault did not rest with me. I was not sur-
prised, however, when I heard that the book re
quired much correction. I do not let judgment go
36

by default. When I was so often in doubt my
self, others may have been wrong and I may have
been right, but I did not and I do not stand upon
this. I waited for the promised American edition
to make the necessary corrections. For some reason
it did not appear. A new edition was called for.
I thought that the right of editing ought to lie with
the possessor of the originals. I therefore frankly
surrendered my own right unconditionally, and the
result is the edition now published. I should have
raised no objection if Mr. Norton had himself ap-
pled to me. It would have been more courteous
had he done so. For the rest, I went on with my
task and I finished in the best way that I could,
amidst threatened lawsuits, lawyers’ letters pressing
for the papers, feeling throughout that I was han-
dling burning coals and under a hailstorm of un-
favourable criticism, which under the circumstances
was perfectly natural. I was keeping back the es-
sential part of the story which had governed my
own action, and the world, not knowing the full
truth, considered that I made too much of trifles
which need not have been spoken of at all. If I
have now told all, it is because I see that nothing
short of it will secure me the fair judgment to which
I am entitled. I am certain that I have done the
best for Carlyle’s own memory. The whole facts
are now made known. The worst has been said
that can be said, and anything further which can
37

now be told about him can only be to his honour;
already the tendency is to acquit Carlyle and lay
the blame (such blame as there is) upon her. The
usual custom is to begin with the brightest side
and to leave the faults to be discovered afterwards.
It is dishonest and it does not answer. Of all liter-
ary sins Carlyle himself detested most a false biog-
raphy. Faults frankly acknowledged are frankly
forgiven. Faults concealed work always like poi-
son. Burns’s offences were made no secret of.
They are now forgotten, and Burns stands without
a shadow on him the idol of his countrymen. By-
ron’s ‘Diary’ was destroyed, and he remains and
will remain with a stain of suspicion about him
which revives and will revive, and will never be
wholly obliterated. ‘The truth shall make you
free’ in biography as in everything. Falsehood and
concealment are a great man’s worst enemies.

Such at least is the doctrine about the matter
which I learnt from Carlyle himself; such is my
own opinion, and on this I have acted. I cannot
discover in myself any other motive for the course
which I have taken. All motives of worldly pru-
dence lay the other way. Personally I never met
with anything but the warmest kindness from Car.
lyle. I had no secret injuries to resent. I had al-
ways admired him, and in his later days I learnt to
love him. No one does what he knows to be wrong
without some object. If any one will suggest what
38

unworthy motive I can have had, he may perhaps
assist me in discovering it. I cannot discover it
myself.

It is likely enough that I have made mistakes in
matters of fact as well as in the reading of the manu-
scripts. Let all such be made known. No one will
be better pleased than I shall be. I complain only
of reflections on my good faith and personal hon-
esty, which I fling off me with legitimate indigna-
tion.

I am told that Mary Carlyle possesses documents
which show parts of Carlyle’s story in another light.
If so, they ought to have been communicated to me.
She says now that they were considered too sacred.
I cannot help that. I could judge only by what
Carlyle put into my hands. : She offered to show
them to my solicitor. If too sacred for me to see,
they were too sacred to be exposed to a lawyer. If
she wished me to know what they contained she
ought to have sent me copies, or have told me gen-
erally their contents.

It is of no importance now. The manuscripts
and all that is in them are in her hands. She has
released herself from the engagements which were
made with me. I am quit of it and for ever. I
have made many blunders—the worst and greatest
that when I knew what the circumstances were I
did not at once decline to have anything to do with
them. Iwas misled by a too confiding admiration
39

of Carlyle’s own. heroism. It was unwise of me,
and I regret my imprudence too late.

When Carlyle decided that his niece was to have
the manuscripts after I had done with them, I ought
not to have been contented with a promise. I ought
to have insisted on his defining precisely and with
his own hand the respective positions in which we
were to stand. He was impatient of being spoken
to on a subject which he wished to thrust from him.
I concluded that he would himself have left in
writing something that was to guide me. He left.
nothing.

If I have erred in other ways I may plead the
worry and perplexity in which I was involved and
the nature of my task, which perhaps the wisest man
could not have dealt with without stumbling in
places. My book, if it is still to be condemned at
present, will be of use hereafter. A hundred years
hence, the world will better appreciate Carlyle’s
magnitude. The sense of his importance, in my
opinion, will increase with each generation. The
unwillingness to look closely into his character will
be exchanged for an earnest desire to know all
which can be ascertained about him, and what I
have written will then have value. It may not be
completely correct, but it will have made conceal-
ment impossible, and have ensured that the truth
shall be known. The biographies of the great men
of the past, the great spiritual teachers especially,
40

with whom Carlyle must be ranked, are generally
useless. They are idle and incredible panegyrics,
with features drawn without shadows, false, con-
ventional, and worthless. The only ‘Life’ of a man
which is not worse than useless is a ‘Life’ which
tells all the truth so far as the biographer knows it.
He may be mistaken, but he has at least been faith-
ful, and his mistakes may be corrected. So _per-
haps may some of mine, especially if particular
papers have been purposely withheld from me.

I have discharged the duty which was laid on
me as faithfully as I could. I have nothing more
to reveal, and, as far as I know, I have related
exactly everything which bears on my relations with
Carlyle and his history. This is all that I can do,
and I have written this that those who care for me
may have something to rely upon if my honour and
good faith are assailed after I am gone.

Writtenlin Cuba, Vedado,
March 12-15, 1887,
41

LETTER FROM SIR JAMES STEPHEN TO
MR. FROUDE:

THE LATE MR. CARLYLE’S PAPERS.

Havine been exposed to much criticism for my conduct
about Mr. Carlyle’s papers, and being reluctant to enter
into any public controversy on the subject, I asked my
friend Sir James Stephen, who himself managed a great
part of the matter, to give me his account of it. I have
had my letter to him, and his answer, printed. So far as
he relates anything the knowledge of which he derived
from me, he has related accurately what I told him. The
remainder rests on his own authority and on that of the
documents, the bearing of which he understands better
than I can do.

The points in discussion do not touch the larger issue
whether I have done well or ill in the discharge of my
duty as Carlyle’s biographer, but it is better that these
points should be cleared up than that they should remain
to confuse the broader question.

J. A. FROUDE.

ONSLOW GARDENS :” December 9, 1836.

5 OnsLow GARDENS: November 30, 1886.
My prar SrerHen,—The question of my action in
connexion with Carlyle’s biography having been again
raised with some acrimony, I venture to ask you to put in

' The following {pages were printed in pamphlet form in 1886 for
private circulation.
42

writing your own impressions on a part of the matter
with which you, as my fellow-executor, were immedi-
ately concerned. I am unwilling, for many reasons, to
prolong a personal controversy, as if I thought that my
own conduct required defence: but life is uncertain ; it
will be more satisfactory to me to know that there is an
authoritative statement in existence, to which, if circum-
stances make it necessary, an appeal may hereafter be
made. I am not now speaking of the larger contention,
whether I made a right use of the discretionary powers
which were entrusted to me as to the publication of
Mr. Carlyle’s letters. A subsidiary question was raised,
as you know, on the ownership of the materials which I
used for the ‘Reminiscences’ and for the ‘ Biography.’
Claims were put forward, as a matter of right, on the
profits arising from the former of these publications; and
where I had supposed myself to be acting liberally (I
might almost say with generosity) of my own free will, I
was met with threats of a legal action. You are aware of
everything that took place. You are in a position which
no one else occupies, or can occupy, to relate all the cir-
cumstances completely and impartially. I am not asking
for a report which can be published, but for a narrative
and a judgment, to which I, or my friends after me, may
be able to refer should a continuance of the controversy
seem to make such a reference desirable. I hope that
you will consider my request a reasonable one, and will
not refuse to comply with it.
Yours faithfully,
J. A. FROUDE.

82 DE VERE GARDENS: December 9, 1886.

My prsr Frovupr,—At your request I put into writing
what I know of your connexion with the papers of Mr.
Carlyle which formed the materials of your works about
43

him and his wife. The story is long and intricate, but
the facts can for the most part be ascertained beyond
dispute, as most of them are stated in three voluminous
correspondences — one between Messrs. Farrer, the
solicitors to Mr. Carlyle’s executors, and myself, on one
side, and Messrs. Benson, Mrs. Alexander Carlyle’s
solicitors, on the other; the other two between your
solicitor (Mr. Leman) and Mrs. Alexander Carlyle’s
solicitors (Messrs. Benson). All these and many other
papers I have carefully examined before writing this
letter. Parts of it rest on what you at various times
have told me. Some of the papers are in the possession
of Messrs. Benson, and these I have not seen since they
were written.

The story is this.

Mrs. Carlyle died in April 1866. My. Carlyle, after
her death, passed much of his time in writing and arrang-
ing papers relating to her. In particular he wrote in
a memorandum book an account of her which formed
the principal material for the sketch of her life pub-
lished in the second volume of the ‘ Reminiscences.’
To this he added a note, saying in solemn terms that it
was not in case of his death to be published as it stood.
This you tell me was written in 1866, or soon afterwards.
I call it the Sketch.

After this Mr. Carlyle put together a number of let-
ters and other matters, which he called a ‘Memorial of
Jane Welsh Carlyle. Mrs. Alexander Carlyle made by
his directions a fair copy of both the Memorial and the
Sketch. This fair copy was placed in your hands in
1871. The original letters and draft remained with her,
with the exception of the original Sketch just mentioned,
which was delivered to you.

On February 6, 1873, Mr. Carlyle made his will. He
left the Memorial to you absolutely, ‘ with whatever other
fartherances and elucidations may be possible,’ which
44

words you regarded as covering the Sketch. He added
elaborate provisions as to your consulting his brother,
Dr. Carlyle, and Mr. Forster as to the publication of these
matters. The three, he said, ‘will make earnest survey
of the MS and its subsidiaries there or elsewhere. He
adds: ‘The manuscript is by no means ready for publica-
tion; nay, the questions, How, when (after what delay—
seven, ten years) it or any portion of it should be pub-
lished are still dark to me, but on all such points James
Anthony Froude’s practical summing-up and decision,is
to be taken as mine.’

The direction as to Dr. Carlyle and Mr. Forster became
inoperative by the fact of their dying in Mr. Carlyle’s
lifetime, and in your view both the Memorial and the
Sketch became under these provisions yours absolutely,
with an express direction to use your discretion as to pub-
lication, overruling the note appended to the Sketch.

The ‘imperfect copy’ and the original letters which
Mrs. Alexander Carlyle had copied were bequeathed to
her. The rest of his MSS. Mr. Carlyle bequeathed to his
brother Dr. Carlyle, directing that one of them, a sketch
of his father, should be ‘ preserved in the family.’ On Dr.
Carlyle’s death this bequest lapsed, and the documents
not specially bequeathed in the will or otherwise disposed
of during his lifetime passed to the executors of the will
by the general bequest of all personal property.

Dr. Carlyle, you, and I were made executors by a
codicil dated November 8, 1878, and Dr. Carlyle having
died in his brother’s lifetime, you and I took out pro-
bate. /

So far as the will was concerned no difficulty arose, at
least no legal difficulty, but after the making of his will
Mr. Carlyle dealt with his papers in a way which caused
much embarrassment. The will says, ‘ Express biography
of me I had really rather that there should be none.’
Upon this point Mr. Carlyle changed his mind, and not
45

very long after the will, either in the course of the year
1873, or at all events not later than the beginning of 1874,
he sent to you as materials for his biography a great mass
of papers and MS. books without any sort of inventory or
written directions of any sort. Verbally, he told you to do
as you pleased with them, adding in particular that you
were to ‘burn freely.’ The sketch of his father and the
other papers used as materials for the ‘ Reminiscences *
were amongst these, or were sent afterwards.

Mrs. Alexander Carlyle informed us through her solici-
tors, some months after her uncle’s death, that in 1875 he
made a verbal gift to her of all his papers, and gave her
his keys. Of this gift neither you nor I had any notice
till we were informed of it by Mrs. Alexander Carlyle’s
solicitors in June 1881.

About a year before his death Mr. Carlyle told you that
after you had done with the papers to be used for his
biography you were to give them back to Mrs. Alexander
Carlyle.

All this afterwards gave rise to three distinct views as
to the property in the papers not disposed of by the will.
You considered that they were yours by a gift accom-
panied by delivery, but you admitted yourself to be
bound, morally at least, to give them to Mrs. Alexander
Carlyle after you had written the biography. Mrs. Car-
lyle claimed them as hers in virtue of the gift which, as
she said, was made to her in 1875. Lastly, the executors
were advised that, notwithstanding the delivery of the
papers to you, those which were not specifically be-
queathed passed to the executors under the general be-
quest of personal estate. The effect of this upon the
right of the residuary legatees to the proceeds and copy-
right of the works was a separate question of much deli-
cacy.

There was a further distinct question, or set of ques-
tions, about the ‘Reminiscences.’ Your account to me
46

of what took place is that not long before Mr. Carlyle’s
death it occurred to you that it would be well to publish
in a separate form his accounts of his father, of Irving,
and of Lord Jeffrey. Your first plan was that he should
edit them, but this he was unable to do; you also meant
to publish in America, being led to believe that a very
large profit would be made there, and you promised to
give the whole profits of the American edition to Mrs. A.
Carlyle, but owing to circumstances these profits became
very small. You then formed an intention, which you
believe you afterwards expressed in a letter to her, to
give her half the profits of your ‘ Biography ’ as well as
the ‘Reminiscences;’ but her view on the other hand
appeared to be that she was entitled to the whole of the
profits of the ‘Reminiscences,’ wherever published, by
your promise, and further that she was entitled by Mr.
Carlyle’s gift to the whole of the papers necessary for
writing his life, but this last claim was never known
either to you or to me till June 1881.

Apart from this, before publication and after your
promise, whatever it was, you altered the plan of the
‘Reminiscences’ and included in it the sketch of the life
of Mrs. Carlyle, entitled ‘Jane Welsh Carlyle,’ which
formed a third of the whole work.

Mr. Carlyle died on February 4, 1881. On February
21, 1881, I called on Mrs. Alexander Carlyle and had a
long conversation with her, of which I there and then
made a memorandum, which is now before me. I showed
it to her and her husband, and I sent her a copy of it
next day. I never received from her any disclaimer of
its correctness. Mr. Ouvry (Mr. Farrer’s late partner),
who was then acting as solicitor for all parties, and Mr.
Alexander Carlyle were present on the occasion. At the
time when the memorandum was made I was very super-
ficially acquainted with these “matters. The memoran-
dum is as follows:
47

Memorandum of Mrs. A. Carlyle’s understanding of
the facts relating to Mi. Carlyle’s papers.

1. Papers relating to the late Mr. Carlyle bequeathed
to Mr. Froude by the will of Mr. Carlyle. These papers
Mrs. A. Carlyle considers to be Mr. Froude’s absolutely.

2. The papers relating to Mr. Carlyle’s father, Mr.
Irving, and Lord Jeffrey, intended to be published under
the title of ‘ Reminiscences,’ Mrs. A. Carlyle also under-
stands to have been given to Mr. Froude after the death
of Mr. Forster, though she does not know what may have
passed between Mr. Carlyle and Mr. Froude on the sub-
ject. She, however, says that Mr. Froude some time ago
promised to give to her the whole of the proceeds of the
‘Reminiscences’ when published, and that she informed.
her uncle of this intention, and that he approved of it,
and under these circumstances she declines to receive any
share of the proceeds less than the whole.

3. The papers relating to Mr. Carlyle and intended to
serve as materials for his biography. These papers Mrs.
A. Carlyle understands to have been given to Mr. Froude,
so that the property in them passed to him. She also
understands that her uncle intended that any profit to be
derived from the book, for which they are to be materials,
was to go to Mr. Froude, and she has no wish to interfere
in any way with Mr. Froude’s discretion as to the use to
be made of these papers; on the other hand, Mrs. A.
Carlyle considers that Mr. Froude ought not to burn or
otherwise destroy any of these papers, but to return them
to her (Mrs. A. Carlyle) after the biography for which
they are to be used as materials is published.

J. F. STEPHEN.
February 21, 1881.

This was written in the presence of Mr. and Mrs. Car-
lyle and Mr. Ouvry, and was accepted by Mrs. Carlyle as
48

a full statement of her views. I sent her a copy of it this
day, February 22, 1881.—J. F. 8.

This memorandum gives no hint of the gift of papers
afterwards alleged to have been made to Mrs. A. Carlyle
in 1875. It states as to the ‘ Reminiscences,’ that, as you
had promised her the whole of the proceeds of the ‘ Rem-
iniscences,’ she would not take less. I was not at that
time aware that you had made any proposal to her about
the profits of any other work about Mr. Carlyle, nor did
I know the precise details of what you have since told me
till very lately. I had told her that you proposed to give
her half, and you afterwards told me that the original
promise was to give her the whole profits of an edition
not comprising the Sketch, to be published in America,
and that your offer of half of the proceeds of the English
edition including the Sketch was regarded by you as
equivalent to the falling short on the American edition
excluding the Sketch. The probable proceeds of the
American edition had, you told me, been originally repre-
sented to youas likely to be much greater than you found
they would actually be. However this may be, it is ob-
vious that Mrs. A. Carlyle at the time of the memorandum
thought that your promise, whatever it was, had refer-
ence to an edition exclusive of the Sketch, as the memo-
randum enumerates all the papers contained in the ‘Rem-
iniscences’ except the Sketch and the appendix entitled
‘Reminiscences of Southey.’

With regard to the materials for the biography the
memorandum says: ‘These papers Mrs. Carlyle under-
stands to have been given to Mr. Froude, so that the
property passed to him.’ I have a distinct independent
recollection of the words which are here recorded. She
was making a very diffuse statement as to the details,
when I said,‘ At all events they were given to Mr. Froude,
so that the property passed to him.’ She said,‘ Yes.’ The
49

wording therefore was mine and not hers, though she ac-
cepted and never disclaimed it. No dispute had arisen
at this time, nor did I expect any, but I thought her
statement important and took it down.

The ‘ Reminiscences’ were published soon afterwards.
The MS. notebook containing the Sketch was on May 3
returned to Mrs. A. Carlyle (see her letter to Mr. Ouvry
dated May 11). It was regarded as a part of the * imper-
fect copy and original letters’ bequeathed to her by Mr.
Carlyle. Ms. Alexander Carlyle was apparently much
offended at the publication in the ‘ Reminiscences’ of the
Sketch, and a controversy between you and her in the
‘Times’ newspaper followed. She accused you (May 5,
1881) of violating Mr. Carlyle’s express directions in pub-
lishing the Sketch. You replied (May 6) that the direc-
tion written in 1866 was revoked by the will made in 1873,
which gave you absolute discretion as to publication, and
you added that Mr. Carlyle was in his lifetime made
aware of your intention to publish these papers. You
have often told me in conversation how this was: that
his mind was much exercised on the question whether the
publication should take place or not; that he appeared
to you to wish that it should, but that he wished the de-
cision to be yours and not his; that you, thinking the
publication proper, and wishing also to set his mind at
rest, told him you meant to publish; that he said ‘ Very
well,’ seemed relieved and satisfied, and never afterwards
returned to the subject. Substantially the same state-
ment is made in the last volume of his biography, pp.
466-7.

Mrs. Alexander Carlyle wrote (May 7) to suggest that
you should ‘surrender the papers now to be examined
and decided upon by three friends of Mr. Carlyle. You
(May 9) refused this suggestion, and said, ‘The remain-
ing letters (i.e. the materials for the biography), which I
was directed !to return to Mrs. Carlyle so soon as I had
50

done with them, I will restore at once to any responsible
person whom she will empower to receive them from me.
I have reason to complain of the position in which I
have been placed with respect to these MSS. They were
sent to me at intervals without inventory or even a me-
morial list. I was told that the more I burnt of them
the better, and they were for several years in my posses-
sion before I was aware that they were not my own.
Happily I have destroyed none of them, and Mrs. Car-
lyle may have them all when she pleases.’ You after-
wards considered yourself entitled, and I entirely agreed
with you, to refuse to carry out the intention thus ex-
pressed. It had no legal validity. It was a mere state-
ment of your intention, and was at the most a voluntary
promise, founded on no consideration, made in a moment
of irritation, and which did not in any degree alter Mrs.
Alexander Carlyle’s position. If a man made an un-
qualified promise to leave all his property to another, he
would, I think, be entitled to withdraw it at any time be-
fore it had affected the plans in life of the person to
whom it was made.

To have given up the papers would have been to
waste the labour of seven or eight years of your life,
and to fail in carrying out the wish of Mr. Carlyle, that
you should write his life, and your promise to him to
do so.

Quite apart from this a further question arose. You
discovered soon after writing the letter of May 9 that you
had no right to give the papers up without my consent
We were advised by counsel, on May 13, 1881, and upon
a case which embodied your statement of the facts, that
the papers in question belonged not to you personally
but to Mr. Carlyle’s executors, and that Mr. Carlyle’s di-
rection to give them up to Mrs. Alexander Carlyle when
you had done with them was ‘an attempted verbal testa-
mentary disposition, which has no legal authority’ You
ol

could not therefore have given them up without my con-
sent, and I never gave, or would have given, it.

I saw Mrs. Alexander Carlyle, and heard from her sev-
eral times upon this matter. I have only a general recol-
lection of these interviews, which took place nearly six
years ago. Mrs. A. Carlyle appears to have written me
a letter of some importance, February 26 or 27, 1881, but
I have not got it and do not remember its contents. On
May 29, 1881, however, she wrote me a letter, in which
she says, ‘I should like very much to accept your offer to
talk the matter over with my solicitor, but, strictly speak-
ing, I have at present no solicitor of my own entirely ac-
quainted with the case. Messrs. —— act for me; but, as
it appeared to friends of mine who have taken a very
kind interest in the case that they had nothing practical
to suggest, these friends, with my permission, have stated
the facts to their solicitor, who is drawing up a case for
an opinion of counsel. I have given them copies of the
most important papers in my possession relating to the
subject, and have told them all the facts I know, some of
which have only lately come to my knowledge, and of the
importance of most of which I was not myself aware.’
It is obvious from this that, till she talked over the mat-
ter with the friends referred to, she was not aware of the
importance of her conversation with My. Carlyle in 1875.

On May 31 [received a letter from Mr. Benson, the
gentleman referred to as the solicitor of Mrs. Alexander
Carlyle’s friends. It states that he is drawing up a case,
and the case itself must, from further letters, have been
sent to me early in June, though I cannot give the exact
date. The case was returned to Mrs. Alexander Carlyle’s
solicitor, and I have no copy of it, but I well recollect its
principal statement, and my recollection is confirmed by
references to it in subsequent letters in the hands of Mr.
Farrer. The effect of it was that in the year 1875 Mr.
Carlyle had made a present verbally of all his papers to
52

Mrs. Alexander Carlyle, and had given her the keys of the
receptacles which contained them. I had never heard a
hint of this before; it appeared to me to be extremely
difficult to reconcile with the delivery of the MSS. to you,
though I did not then know at what precise time it had
taken place, and it seemed inconsistent with the statement
which she made to me, as recorded in my memorandum of
February 21. You were afterwards able to state positively
that the papers said to have been given by Mr. Carlyle to
Mrs. Alexander Carlyle, in 1875, were delivered to you not
later than the very beginning of 1874, and probably in
1873. Your reason was that you remembered observations
made by your late wife, who died in February 1874, on
matters of personal interest to her contained in the papers.
Of course, if the documents were put into your possession
in 1873, with directions to burn what you pleased, it was
difficult to believe that in 1875 they were comprehended in
a verbal gift made to Mrs. Alexander Carlyle, of which gift
no notice was given to you. If in 1873 they were, as Mrs.
Alexander Carlyle told me in February 1881, given to you
‘so as to pass the property in them,’ they were not Mr.
Carlyle’s to give in 1875. Besides, it is a rule of law that
a claim upona dead man’s estate cannot be admitted upon
the uncorroborated statement of the claimant, and it
appeared to me that there was no corroboration here.
Several circumstances were mentioned in the case which,
as Mrs. Alexander Carlyle’s advisers contended, supplied
the necessary corroboration, but I could not accept them
as such. On June 10, 1881, I wrote to her solicitor, Mr.
Benson, saying that I could not ‘consent to the recog-
nition of Mrs. Alexander Carlyle’s claim as against the
residuary legatees, unless and until it was duly estab-
lished in a court of law,’ and that you, as my co-executor,
put yourself in my hands.

I expressed at the same time the opinion that, as
between her and you, the matter might be easily settled.
28

In order to explain what I proposed, I must go back a
little. Whatever might have been the exact understanding
between Mrs. Alexander Carlyle and yourself as to the
proceeds of the ‘Reminiscences,’ you had long been pre-
pared to let her have the whole of them except 300/.,
which was to be reserved on account of your having edited
the book, and of the fact that it included the sketch of
Jane Welsh Carlyle, which was your property by the will.
These profits amounted at that time, ‘after the deduction
of 3002.,’ to 1,5002. and upwards, and subsequently reached
1,6307. You had paid about 1,5002. to Mr. Ouvry in May
—namely, 1,400/. from the English edition and 1002. from
an American edition. He had put it on deposit at
Coutts’s Bank in May (see his letter of May 13, 1881, to
Mrs. A. Carlyle), but about that time I raised the ques-
tion of the rights of the executors on behalf of the resid-
uary legatees, and it remained at the bank at interest.

Again, it was clear that, whoever might be the actual
proprietor of the papers used as materials for the biogra-
phy, it was Mr. Carlyle’s intention that you should use
them until the biography was written, and that when it
was written you should return them to Mis. Alexander
Carlyle. I therefore proposed that a deed should be
drawn, to which the residuary legatees were to be parties,
reciting all these facts and settling all questions by
declaring that Mrs. A. Carlyle should have all the past
and future profits of the ‘Reminiscences’ except 300/.,
you retaining the literary control over the work ; that you
should keep the materials of the biography till you had
done with them, and that you should then return them to
Mrs. Alexander Carlyle, and that the residuary legatees
and executors should consent.

Much discussion followed. In the course of it the
residuary legatees consented to our settling the matter as
we thought fit, but Mrs. A. Carlyle refused to consent, on
the ground that the compromise gave her nothing but
54

what she was entitled to apart from your letter to the
‘Times’ of May 9, and apart from the alleged gift to her,
said to have been made in 1875, and that it practically
recognised your right to withdraw your letter of May 9,
already referred to. Her counter-offer was that you
should give up the papers and not complete your book,
and that you should, on the other hand, take the 1,500/.
profits on the ‘ Reminiscences.’ We wholly refused this
offer. She afterwards proposed that the papers should
be returned to her, but that you should have access to
them at her house, and this also was refused. This dis-
cussion lasted till the autumn of 1881.

At last, after many letters and several interviews, Mr.
Farrer wrote to Mr. Benson on October 15, 1881, the fol-
lowing letter:

66 Lrncoun’s Inn Freips, Lonpon, W.C..
October 15, 1881.

Carlyles Hxecutors.

Dear Sir,—The executors have written to me to say that
they have fully considered the matter, and are not disposed to
modify the views which Sir James Stephen expressed to Mr.
Benson at our office, that further discussion seems likely to
lead to no good result, and that the offer then made must be
accepted before November 1 or refused ; and unless it is ac-
cepted as made, it will be considered as wholly withdrawn on
that day. In that event Mr. Froude will withdraw every prom-
ise of every description he has made to Mrs. Carlyle, and will
leave her to enforce any legal rights she may have. That there
may be no misconception, I repeat the terms proposed by the
executors.

1. Mr, Froude offers to make over to Mrs, Carlyle all the
proceeds of the ‘ Reminiscences,’ past or future, subject to a
deduction of 3002 Mr. Froude is to retain the literary control
over the book. Mrs. Carlyle’s right to these proceeds is to be
considered as arising solely from this agreement,
55

2. Mrs, Carlyle agrees that Mr. Froude shall keep the papers
now in his possession as materials for the life of Mr, Carlyle
until that work is completed, and that he shall use them as
materials for that work. She also renounces all claim upon
the copyright.

Mr, Froude agrees that the papers shall be given to Mrs,
Carlyle when the work is completed or on his death.

It is understood on both sides that this does not apply to
the Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle given by
Mr, Carlyle to Mr, Froude in 1870 or 1871, and bequeathed to
him by Mr, Carlyle’s will.

3. If Mr. Froude and Mrs, Carlyle come to this agreement
the executors will not press their claim either to the MSS. or
to the proceeds of the ‘ Reminiscences.’

I may add that the Letters and Memorials of J. W. Carlyle
bequeathed to Mr, F. by Mr. Carlyle’s will were given to him
in 1870 or 1871 by Mr, Carlyle, and consist of a large number
of letters, all numbered, annotated, and with autobiographical
matter prefixed and interspersed. Mr. Froude considers that
these are his absolute property, With reference to the papers.
given to him in 1875 [1873], he considers not only that they
are his prdperty by Mr. Carlyle’s gift, but that under the will
he has a right to such of them as are illustrative of the Letters.
and Memorials of J, W. C.

Yours truly,
(Signed) FREDK, WILLIS FARRER.

I quote this letter at length because it expresses the
position which we took up, and from which neither of us
receded. It was followed by a long correspondence which
lasted till August 3, 1882, and in which a great variety of
matters were discussed. There was at first a prospect of
an administration suit, and no express comprehensive set-
tlement was ever made. Long letters were written, and
proposals and counter-proposals were made. Our princi-
pal difficulty was to arrange for the payment of the 1,500/.
56

without admitting Mrs. A. Carlyle’s claim to the papers
on which she founded her claim to the money. There
was also a great deal of discussion as to the length of
time during which you were to keep the papers, the steps
by which they were to be delivered over to Mrs. A. Car-
lyle, and the making of an inventory of them. These
matters were settled by degrees, and I think I may say
on the terms which were stated in Mr. Farrer’s letter of
October 15, 1881. The stipulation that Mrs. Carlyle
should admit that her right to the proceeds should be
considered as arising from the agreement only, was, how-
ever, not insisted on.

On June 29, 1882, Mr. Benson, Mrs. A. Carlyle’s solic-
itor, signed a receipt for four bundles of letters connected
with the first part of the Biography of Carlyle, which
was published in 1882. You had then done with these
papers.

On August 3, 1882, Mr. Benson gave a receipt for
Messrs. Farrer’s cheque for the sum of 1,544/. 3s. 8d.,
being the then proceeds of the ‘ Reminiscences,’ less 3002.
Mrs. A. Carlyle’s receipt I have not seen, but I believe
she gave one. No doubt she duly received the money.
You afterwards paid her two sums of 1202. and 10/.,
which you received from America, J think in 1882 and
1883.

There was never, so far as I know, any acknowledg-
ment, written or otherwise, as to the terms on which the
money was givenorreceived. You always considered that
from first to last the whole was voluntary generosity on
your part. This also was and is my own opinion. She
persistently. claimed it as a right. This is, no doubt, the
explanation of an apparent contradiction between Mrs. A.
Carlyle and yourself in letters relating to Mr. Norton’s
publication about Mr. Carlyle. You said you had given
her the proceeds of the ‘Reminiscences.’ She said
(November 4, 1886), ‘The assertion that I received the
57

proceeds of the “Reminiscences” as a gift from Mr.
Froude I simply deny, and can, if necessary, produce my
lawyer’s statement on the point.’ Mrs. Carlyle has a
right to her own opinion. Mine is that you paid the
money voluntarily, and she received it asa right. She
never sued for it, and I do not believe she could have re-
covered it if she had; for she could have claimed it as
her own only on the ground that the MSS. were hers by
virtue of a gift of Mr. Carlyle, a claim which I think no
court would have acted upon on her uncorroborated as-
sertion, especially if it were proved, as it could have
been, that the papers were deposited with you more than
a year before, as she said, they were given to her. It
was my whole object throughout to prevent a lawsuit for
the determination of what I felt was a merely speculative
question, and to defeat the attempt made to prevent you
from writing Mr. Carlyle’s life, and Iam happy to say I
succeeded.

You finished the biography and published the two
remaining volumes in 1884.

A long correspondence took place between your solic-
itor, Mr. Leman, and Mrs. A. Carlyle’s solicitor, Mr. Ben-
son, as to the delivery to her of the papers. There were
various delays, owing to your absence abroad,! to your
wish to make some final corrections, &c., but on December
5, 1884, your solicitor handed the papers in two boxes to
Mrs. Carlyle and took her receipt for them.

On March 28, 1885, Mr. Benson told Mr. Leman that
she was ‘much pleased at the contents of the boxes,’ and
Mr. Leman adds in his letter to you: ‘It appears that they
contained more papers than she had expected to find in
them.’ There was subsequent correspondence about a
particular MS. which had been accidentally mislaid.

In 1885 a further correspondence took place about
the assignment to Mrs. Carlyle of the copyright of the

1 Mr. Froude went that summer to Norway.
58

‘Reminiscences.’ It ended by your assigning the copy-
right to her last June, protesting at the same time that
you were under no contract to do so.

I have told the story at full length in order to put
upon record the particulars of your conduct in all this
matter. You appear to me to have acted throughout
quite straightforwardly. You carried out precisely what
from the first you acknowledged to be your moral obli-
gations. Indeed, where only your own interests were
concerned, you went beyond them; for you accepted
Mrs. A. Carlyle’s recollection of the arrangement about
the profits of the ‘Reminiscences’ instead of your own, -
and you gave up the claim to retain the literary control
of that work—which you admittedly possessed—for the
sake of peace. On the other hand, where your duty to
Mr. Carlyle was in question you stood firm, and per-
formed your promise to write his life and to use the
materials which he had provided for that purpose, not-
withstanding Mrs. A. Carlyle’s attempts to prevent you
from doing so, and in opposition to claims which she did
not attempt to enforce by law. You returned the papers
to Mrs. A. Carlyle when you had done with them, accord-
ing to her uncle’s wish, though you were advised that it
was not legally binding. You gave Mrs. A. Carlyle
above 1,600/., which she could not have compelled you to
give her, as your original promise was made voluntarily.
No doubt she had a moral claim to a part of it, but toa
large part of it she had no moral claim, except upon the
supposition, which you accepted, that her recollection of
conversations which took place about two years before
was right and your own wrong. You were provoked into
writing a hasty letter to the ‘Times, which you after-
wards withdrew. It was a letter which imposed no legal
obligation, and, as I think, no moral obligation, and you
could not have fulfilled the intention which you there
expressed without wasting the labour of eight years of
59

your life, breaking afpledge to Mr. Carlyle to write his
life, and violating a legal duty of which, when you wrote
the letter, you were not aware. In a word, in your whole
conduct I see nothing to regret, and I wish to add that I
was just as much responsible for it morally as you were,
though your letters were written independently of me.

Of Mrs. Alexander Carlyle I will say only that she
took a view of the publication of the ‘ Reminiscences’
which many people do take, and tried to stop the publi-
cation of the biography on what she believed to be valid
legal grounds. I think she was erroneously advised ;
but the question is one of mere curiosity, which can
never now be decided in an authoritative way.

I know you have suffered much worry and annoyance
from all this matter, and this is the main reason why I
have gone over it so fully. After a close intimacy of
nearly thirty years, it would be impossible to me to be-
lieve that your conduct had fallen short of the highest
standard of truth and honour. The whole difficulty in
this matter arose from the feebleness and indecision—
natural enough in extreme old age—which prevented Mr.
Carlyle from making up his mind conclusively as to what
he wished to be done about his papers, and having his
decision put into writing. The paralysis which latterly
disabled his hand from writing was no doubt a partial
explanation of this. His sending his papers to you was
inconclusive ; whatever he said to Mrs. Alexander Car-
lyle in 1875 was inconclusive ; so much so that she seems
not to have appreciated its importance till her friends
pointed it out to her some months after his death, and
after she had conveyed a totally different impression to
my mind of the state of affairs. Lastly, the conversa-
tions about the profits of the ‘Reminiscences’ were even
more inconclusive and difficult to ascertain precisely
than the rest. This, however, was no fault of his. The
natural result of leaving such matters in such an ill-
60

defined position was to cause the difficulties which sub-
sequently arose.

I should like to add one further remark. People will
of course differ as to the way in which you exercised the
most painful discretion which Mr. Carlyle, in order to save
himself the pain of a decision which he wished you to
make for him, chose to impose upon you. I can bear
testimony which throws light on the motives which
influenced you in writing as you did. I believe them to
be stated with absolute truth in your prefaces to the first
volume of each of the two parts of his biography, and in a
few words in a letter to Mr. Farrer of May 12, 1881, which
I think he must have sent to Mrs. A. Carlyle: ‘ Carlyle’s
memory is as dear to me as it can possibly be to Mrs. A.
Carlyle. I honoured and loved him above all men that
I ever knew or shall know. It is my duty to show him
as he was, and no life known to me, taken as a whole, will
bear a more severe scrutiny. But he wished, especially
wished, his faults to be known. They are nothing,
amount to nothing, in the great balance of his qualities.
But such as they were they must be described. Surely
this is no unfriendly hand.’ I believe this to be the truth,
the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

For about fifteen years I was the intimate friend and
constant companion of both of you, and never in my life
did I see any one man so much devoted to any other as
you were to him during the whole of that period of time.
The most affectionate son could not have acted better to
the most venerated father. You cared for him, soothed
him, protected him as a guide might protect a weak old
man down a steep and painful path. The admiration you
habitually expressed for him both morally and intellectu-
ally was unqualified. You never said to me one ill-natured
word about him down to this day. It is to me wholly in-
credible that anything but a severe regard for truth,
learnt to a great extent from his teaching, could ever have
61

led you to embody in your portrait of him a delineation.
of the faults and weaknesses which mixed with his great
qualities.

Of him I will make only one remark in justice to you.
He did not use you well. He threw upon you the respon-
sibility of a decision which he ought to have taken him-
self in a plain unmistakable way. He considered him-
self bound to expiate the wrongs which he had done to
his wife. If he had done this himself it would have been
a courageous thing; but he did not doit himself. He did
not even decide for himself that it should be done after
his death. If any courage was shown in the matter, it was
shown by you, and not by him. You took the respon-
sibility of deciding for him that it ought to be done. You
took the odium of doing it, of avowing to the world the
faults and weaknesses of one whom you regarded as your
teacher and master. In order to present to the world a
true picture of him as he really was, you, well knowing
what you were about, stepped into a pillory in which you
were charged with treachery, violation of confidence, and
every imaginable base motive, when you were in fact
guilty of no other fault than that of practising Mr.
Carlyle’s great doctrine that men ought to tell the truth.

Make any use you like of this, and give it any degree
of publicity which you think desirable.

I am ever, my dear Froude,
Most sincerely yours,
J._F. STEPHEN.
APPENDIX.

Passages omitted from pp. 31 and 34, dealing with the publi-
cation of the ‘ Reminiscences’ in the United States, and
a claim to the literary profits of that book preferred by
Mrs. A. Carlyle.

A SINGULAR fatality has attended me from first to last in
this business, which has cost me so dear. I call it fatal-
ity. It was rather my own uncertainty of the road that I
ought to follow which has left me exposed to so many
accidents. J have now to mention a small collateral mat-
ter, insignificant in itself, but important from the conse-
quences to which it led. It became known that Carlyle
had written fragments of an autobiography, and that
they were to be edited by me. An American friend, Mr.
X., said to me one day that to his knowledge an Ameri-
can publisher, Mr. ——, would give an ‘immense sum’
for the right of bringing out such a volume in the United
States if Carlyle would edit it himself, that Mr. had
been Mr. Carlyle’s American publisher, and had a right
to the preference. He ought to have told meat the same
time that he was Mr. ’s agent in England, which I
never suspected. He never named any particular sum
except that it would be excessive and unusual. He spoke
to me merely as a friend, and as a preliminary as I sup-
posed, to a formal negotiation. I did not like his inter-
ference. Messrs. Scribner had been my own publishers
in America, and I had always found them liberal and sat.

 

 
64

isfactory. But as I supposed that a very large price in-
deed would be forthcoming I thought myself bound to
tell Carlyle what Mr. X. had said. He replied at once
that Mr. —— was no publisher of his, that to his knowl-
edge he had never had anything to do with Mr. ——;
but he did for a time think it possible that he might un-
dertake the editing. He wished to do it, but on reflec-
tion he found it would try him too much. He turned it
over tome. I must do it, he said, and he must be trou-
bled no more about the matter. He only added that the
book had better be brought out as soon as possible after
his death. People would then be talking about him, and
they would have something authentic to go upon. Mr.
X. still advised that Mr. should bring the book out,
giving as his opinion that the very large sum would still
be forthcoming. I believed him. I said if that was so I
was ready to make an agreement. I expected to hear
from Mr. more particularly and directly. Meanwhile
I did not think it could be right of me to keep a large
sum of money for myself, coming as it did from Carlyle’s
work. That it would be mine legally I never doubted ;
but I told Mary Carlyle that I would give itto her. Car-
lyle himself never said a word to me on the subject, nor
Ito him. So far as Iwas concerned it was aspontaneous
resolution of my own, and one which no one at all had a
right to expect me to make. Mary Carlyle certainly did
not think at the time that she had any claim to the profits
of the ‘Reminiscences.’ She said when I mentioned the
matter to her, as I think she must recollect, that all that
would be mine. She had no pretension to it. I said, to
make it easy for her to take a present from me, that she
had more right to it than I; that the book would be Car-
lyle’s, not mine; that she had worked hard for him, &c.,
&c. She said it was very generous of me. It appeared
afterwards that she had misunderstood me, so far that she
thought I was speaking of all the profits, English as well

 

 
65

as American. I had not considered the English profits.
I had merely in my mind the ‘immense sum’ of which X.
had vaguely spoken. Possibly I was not sufficiently ex-
plicit. But, at any rate, if Mary Carlyle then supposed
that she had any legal right she ought to have said so.

* * * * * * * *

Thad waited in vain to hear more particularly about the
immense sum from Mr.——. From himself, or as far as
I knew from any accredited agent of his, I had received
no communication at all; and as time went on and noth-
ing came from Mr. ——, and no specific sum at all was
named, I dismissed the matter from my mind. I thought
it had been some unauthorised notion of X.’s or that
Mr, —— finding that Carlyle was not to edit the book had
ceased to concern himself about it. I had made arrange-
ments with my usual publisher, Mr. Scribner, and the
book was in print in America as well as England, and was
on the point of appearing when it came out that X. had
all along been Mr. ——’s formal representative, that he
had informed Mr. that I had promised the book to
him—that I was bound by an engagement, as if I could
be bound to anything before any terms had been speci--
fied. Mr.—— would undoubtedly publish a rival edition
and the anticipated profits would come to nothing. The
‘immense sum,’ the amount of which I then learnt for
the first time, was to have been a mere bagatelle, which
had it been mentioned at first would have saved me from
any difficulty or uncertainty, but it became too patent to
me now, that the American profits would not amount at
most to a tenth of what X. had led me vaguely to look
for. It was nothing to me, but I had raised Mary Car-
lyle’s expectations, and I had to consider what I would
do. In fact, I was considering seriously the question of
the profits of the book altogether. The undertaking it-
self had been a serious sacrifice, and, so far as money was

 
66

concerned, I was likely to have made a bad bargain for
myself if I had kept all. The ‘Biography,’ as it was now
to be written, I was well aware could never be a popular
one. Still there would be a certain sale. I was unwill-
ing to lie under a shadow of suspicion that I had any pe-
cuniary interests in a publication for which half the
world would inevitably ery out upon me. I had decided
to give Mary Carlyle, in addition to such profits on the
‘Reminiscences’ as might still come from America, half
the English profits besides, and I had meant to give her
half the profits of the ‘ Biography’ as well, if I lived to
write it. From this point of view at least I thought that
no fault could be found with me. I even looked on my-
self as acting generously. To my extreme surprise, Mary
Carlyle insisted that I had promised her the whole profits
of the ‘ Reminiscences, English and American. She re-
fused to take less. She put herself into the hands of
lawyers and commenced legal proceedings against me.
At first she laid her claim upon my promise only—a
strange enough proceeding save if she had no other. I
explained to her what that promise had been. She would
not believe, and accused me virtually of lying and trying
to cheat her. Afterwards, when the world was open-
mouthed upon me about the ‘ Reminiscences,’ she refused
to take any money at all from me, expecting, I suppose,
to get it otherwise. She insisted that the manuscripts
were hers, that they had been given to her by her uncle.
She put in a claim no longer resting on my promise, but
on an independent right of her own. She had taken down
my own incautious words when I first mentioned the
‘subject: that she had a better right to the money than I
had, that the book was her uncle’s writing, not mine, and
she actually made it a part of her case. I was much
astonished at all this. Nota doubt had ever crossed my
mind that so far as legal right was concerned the money
was my own, to keep or give away as I pleased, and I
67

thought that I had been behaving liberally. To whom
the manuscripts belonged was uncertain, but I had un-
questionably the use of them for the composition of the
‘Biography.’ Mary Carlyle now said that they had long
since been given to her. If so, I ought to have been told
of it; as in that case I had been left for more than six
years in possession of another person’s property with di-
rections to destroy what I pleased of it. Besides my lit-
erary duties in the matter, I was one of Carlyle’s execu-
tors and had to act in a double capacity. My own offer
and my own incautious words about it were being made
the basis of a lawsuit against me which would and must
involve my whole position as Carlyle’s biographer. I
had no wish to keep the money ; I supposed that really I
had not been distinct enough in what I had said about the
American profits, and that she had in fact misunderstood
me. In the storm that was raging I did not wish to have
any fresh troubles about me. She was holding me literally
to the words of my promise as she had understood it. I
accepted her account. It had reference only to two-thirds
of the book. For the ‘Memoir’ of Mrs. Carlyle was an ad-
dition to the original plan, and that was my own by her
uncle’s special bequest. The English profits of the book
were 1,700/. Another 100/. had come from America. Of this
1,8002., 6002., even according to her own view, was strictly
mine; of this 600/. I proposed to give her half, keeping
but 3002. for myself. She told her lawyer that she would
take nothing at all if she was to take it from me. I
deposited 1,500/. (to which I afterwards added as further
American profits about 130/.) with Mr. Carlyle’s lawyers,
that when she pleased she might take it, or that she might
go to a court of law to recover it as her own. I, for my
own part, was now anxious that a court of law should be
appealed to. I should see my way as executor, and in my
own capacity I should be delivered out of complications
which threatened to choke me. Either the papers would
68

be declared to belong to me, or to belong to the executors,
or to belong to Mary Carlyle. If they belonged to me or
to the executors, I could go on peaceably with my work, so
far as I could have peace at all amidst the world’s out-
cries. If to her, I should be delivered altogether from
further trouble about the matter. I should have lost ten
years of labour and anxiety, but I was ready to sacrifice
anything to escape out of a situation which was intolerable.
I would not then, I would not now, if I could help it, tell
the whole truth about Carlyle. If I had, the world would
at any rate have comprehended howI was situated, and
why I was acting as I did. I had more than once re-
solved to throw the work up,and go no farther, but I had
promised Carlyle to write his ‘ Life,’ and I did not like to
have my commission wrenched out of my hands by pre-
tensions which had not been proved to have a foundation.
A court of law would settle all that. The intricacies of
the situation would be disentangled under cross-examina-
tion, and we should all know where we stood. If Mary
Carlyle did not press her own claim, I wished to appeal
myself to the Court of Chancery to interpret Carlyle’s will
and determine our several rights and duties. I was over-
ruled by my brother-executor, who was unwilling that
Carlyle’s name should be soiled in a lawsuit. I have no
doubt that on the whole Sir James Stephen was right in
this. Ihad myself been worried into too great impatience.
At any rate, I submitted to his opinion. Mary Carlyle
might do as she pleased. I left the money in Mr. Carlyle’s
solicitor’s hands, that she might take it when she liked.
I did not insist that she should acknowledge that she took
it from me as a present. A tedious correspondence fol-
lowed, with no issue save a long lawyer’s bill for myself,
which I confess I thought a most needless aggravation.
In the end I believe Mary Carlyle was advised that the
result of a lawsuit would be uncertain, and after long
hesitation she took the money. I do her the justice to
69

say that she never thanked me for it. She received it
assuming it to be her own, and publicly denied that I had
given her anything; 3002. of what she had was mine under
any aspect of the matter. But I will say no more of this
sordid aggravation of a situation which from the first had
been anxious and now had become detestable. Of course
she acted on high motives; she regarded herself as the
protector of her uncle’s reputation, which she considered
me to have injured and to be injuring.
70

WILL AND CODICIL OF THOMAS CARLYLE, ESQ.

WILL dated 6th February 1873.
CODICIL dated 8th November 1878.

4, THOMAS CARLYLE of 5 Great Cheyne Row
Chelsea in the County of Middlesex Esquire declare this to
be my last Will and Testament Revoking all former Wills.
I prrecr all my just debts funeral and testamentary ex-.
pences to be paid as soon as may be after my decease AND
it is my express instruction that since I cannot be laid in
the Grave at Haddington I shall be placed beside my
Father and Mother in the Churchyard of Ecclefechan I
APPOINT my Brother JoHN AITKEN CaRLYLE Doctor of Medi-
cine and my Friend Joun Forster of Palace Gate House
Kensington Esquire €recutors and Crustees of this my
Will If my said Brother should die in my lifetime I
APPOINT my Brother JAMES CARLYLE to be an EXEcuror and
TRUSTEE in his stead and if the said Jonny Forster should
die in my lifetime I aprorst my friend James ANTHONY
Frovupe to be an Execuror and Trustex in his stead I
GIVE to my dear and ever helpful Brother Jonny. A. CARLYLE.
my Leasehold messuage in Great Cheyne Row in which I
reside subject to the rent and covenants under which I
hold the same and all such of my Furniture plate linen,
china, books prints pictures and other effects therein as are
not hereinafter bequeathed specifically. My Brother John
has no need of my money or help, and therefore in addi-.
tion to this small remembrance I BEQUEATH to him only the
charge of being Executor of my Will and of seeing every-
71

thing peaceably fulfilled. If he survives me, as is natural,
he will not refuse My poor and indeed almost pathetic
collection of books (with the exception of those hereinafter
specifically given) I request him to accept as a memento of
me while he stays behind I GtiveEmy Watch to my Nephew
Thomas the son of my Brother Alexander, “ Alick’s Tom”
as a Memorial of the affection I have for him and of my
thankful (and also hopeful) approval of all that I have ever
got to know or surmise about him Hecan understand that
of all my outward possessions this Watch is become the
dearest tome. It was given me on my Wedding by one
who was herself invaluable to me; It had been her Father’s.
made to her Father’s order ; and had measured out into
still more perfect punctuality his noble years of well-spent
time ; and now it has measured out (always punctually, it)
nearly forty-seven years of mine, and still measures, as
with an everloving solemnity, till time quite end with me:
and may the new Thomas Carlyle fare not worse with it
than his two predecessors have done. To Maggie Welsh
my dear Cousin (and Hers) One hundred pounds. To my
House servant Mrs. Warren if in my service at the time of
my decease Fifty pounds. Having with good reason, ever
since my first appearance in Literature, a variety of kind
feelings obligations and regards towards New England, and
indeed long before that a hearty good will, real and steady,
which still continues, to America at large, and recognising
with gratitude how much of friendliness, of actually credi-
ble human love, I have had from that Country, and what
immensities of worth and capability I believe and partly
know to be lodged, especially in the silent classes there, I
have now after due consultation as to the feasibilities, the
excusabilities of it, decided to fulfil a fond notion that has
been hovering in my mind these many years; and I do there-
fore hereby bequeath the books, (whatever of them I could
not borrow, but had to buy and gather, that is, in general
whatever of them are still here) which I used in writing

 
72

on Cromwell and Friedrich and which shall be accurately
searched for, and parted from my other books, to the
President and Fellows of Harvard College, City of Cam-
bridge, State of Massachusetts, as a poor testimony of my
respect for that alma mater of so many of my Trans-
Atlantic friends, and a token of the feelings above indi-
cated towards the Great Country of which Harvard is
the Chief School, In which sense I have reason to be
confident that the Harvard authorities will please to ac-
cept this my little bequest and deal with it, and order
and use it, as to their own good judgment and kind fidel-
ity shall seem fittest. A certain symbolical value the
bequest may have, but of intrinsic value as a collection
of old books it can pretend to very little. If there
should be doubt as to any books coming within the cate-
gory of this bequest my dear Brother John if left behind
me, as I always trust and hope who already knows about
this Harvard matter and who possesses a Catalogue or
List drawn up by me of which the Counterpart is in pos-
session of the Harvard Authorities, will see it for me in all
points accurately done. In regard to this and to all else
in these final directions of mine I wish him to be regarded
as my Second Self, my Surviving Self. My manuscript
entitled “ Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle ”
is to me naturally, in my now bereaved state, of endless
value, though of what value to others I cannot in the least
clearly judge ; and indeed for the last four years am im-
peratively forbidden to write farther on it, or even to look
farther into it. Of that manuscript my kind considerate
and ever faithful friend James Anthony Froude (as he
has lovingly promised me) takes precious charge in my
stead. To him therefore I give it with whatever other
fartherances and elucidations may be possible, and I sol-
emnly request of him to do his best and wisest in the
matter, as I feel assured he will. There is incidentally a
quantity of Autobiographic Record in my notes to this
73

Manuscript ; but except as subsidiary and elucidative of
the text I put no value on such. Express biography of
me I had really rather that there should be none. James
Anthony Froude John Forster and my Brother John, will
make earnest survey of the Manuscript and its subsidi-
aries there or elsewhere, in respect to this as well as to
its other bearings; their united utmost candour and im-
partiality. taking always James Anthony Froude’s prac-
ticality along with it. will evidently furnish a better
judgment than mine can be. The Manuscript is by no
means ready for publication; nay the questions How,
when (after what delay, seven ten years) it, or any portion
of it, should be published, are still dark to me; but on all
such points James Anthony Froude’s practical summing
up and decision is to be taken as mine. The imperfect
Copy of the said Manuscript which is among my papers
with the original letters I give to my Niece Mary Car-
lyle Aitken, to whom also dear little soul, I bequeath Five
hundred pounds for the loving care and unwearied pa-
tience and helpfulness she has shown to me in these my
last solitary and infirm years. To her also I give at her
choice, whatever Memorials of my Dear Departed One
she has seen me silently preserving here, especially
the table in the Drawing-Room at which I now write
and the little Child’s Chair (in the China Closet) which
latter to my eyes has always a brightness as of Time’s
Morning anda sadness as of Death and Eternity when
I look on it; and which, with the other dear Article, I
have the weak wish to preserve in loving hands yet
awhile when I am gone. My other Manuscripts I leave
to my Brother John. They are with one exception of no
moment tome. I have never seen any of them since they
were written. One of them isa set of fragments about
James First which were loyally fished out for me from
much other Cromwellian rubbish, and doubtless carefully
copied more than twenty years ago by the late John
74

Chorley who was always so good to me. But neither
this latter nor perhaps any of the others is worth print-
ing. On this point however my Brother can take Coun-
sel with John Forster and James Anthony Froude and
do what is then judged fittest. Many or most of these
papers I often feel that I myself should burn; but prob-
ably I never shall after all. The “one exception” spoken
of above is a sketch of my Father and his life hastily
thrown off in the nights between his death and burial, full
of earnest affection and veracity, most likely unfit for
printing ; but I wish it to be taken charge of by my
Brother John and preserved in the Family. Since, I
think, the very night of my Father’s Funeral (far away
from London and me) I have never seen a word of that
poor bit of writing. In regard to all business matters
about my Books (of which not only the Copyrights but
all the Stereotype plates from which the three several
collected Editions have been respectively printed and
which are at present deposited with my Printers Messrs.
Robson and Son belong exclusively to me) Copyrights,
Editions, and dealings with Booksellers and others in re-
lation thereto. John Forster’s advice is to be taken as
supreme and complete, better than my own ever could have
been. His faithful, wise, and ever punctual care about all
that has been a miracle of generous helpfulness, literally
invaluable to me in that field of things. Thanks, poor
thanks, are all that I can return, alas! I arve the residue
of my personal estate to my Trustees before named, In
trust to convert into money such part of my Estate as
shall not consist of money or securities for money, and
Upon trust to invest in such securities as they shall think
fit the moneys to arise from such conversion and the
moneys and securities of which my personal Estate shall
consist at the time of my decease: With power to change
investments from time to time And to stand possessed
thereof In trust as to one-fifth"part thereof for my Brother
75

Alexander absolutely And as to one-fifth part In trust for
my Brother James absolutely And as to one other fifth
part thereof In trust for my Sister Mary Wife of James
Austin, farmer at Gill Cummertrees, Dumfriesshire abso-
lutely for her separate use independent of the debts con-
trol or engagements of her present or any future Husband
And as to one other fifth part thereof In trust for my
Sister, Jean, the Wife of James Aitken of Dumfries abso-
lutely for her separate use independent of the debts con-
trol or engagements of her present or any future hus-
band. And as to the remaining fifth part thereof In trust
for my Sister Janet, Wife of Robert Hanning of Ham-
ilton Canada, absolutely, for her separate use inde-
pendent of the debts control or engagements of her
present or any future husband ProvipED aLways that if
my said Brothers Alexander and James or my said Sisters
or any or either of them shall die in my lifetime, the
share or shares of him her or them so dying shall be
In trust for the Children of my Brothers or Sisters re-
spectively so dying who shall attain the age of Twenty-
one years or being Daughters shall marry in equal shares
but if there shall be no such Child then such share or
shares shall go to the others or other of my said Brothers
and Sisters in equal shares but so that the shares which
may thus accrue to my Sisters shall be for their separate
use in the same manner as their original shares. I direct
all legacies to be paid free of duty I pirecr that not-
withstanding the trust for conversion hereinbefore con-
tained my Trustees shall have absolute authority to post-
pone the conversion for any period not exceeding two years
after my death of all or any part of my personal estate
and I say this with especial reference to my Copyrights.
And the income to be derived from my Estate previous to
its conversion shall be applied in the same way as the in-
come of my estate if converted would be applicable To
my dear friends John Forster and James Anthony Froude
76

(Masson too I should remember in this moment and
perhaps some others) I have nothing to leave that could
be in the least worthy of them but if they, or any of them,
could find among my reliques a Memorial they would like,
who of Men could deserve it better. No Man at this time.
Tf no such choice be made by themselves I leave to Forster
Faithornes Print of Cromwell between the Pillars, now in
the Drawing Room here, and to Froude Pesne’s Portrait of
Wilhelmina with the Fontange on her brow, now in the
same Room. Jn witness whereof I the said Thomas
Carlyle the Testator have to this my last Will and Testa-
ment set my hand this sixth day of February One thousand
eight hundred and seventy-three

Signed and DEcLARED by the said Thomas
Carlyle the Testator as and for his
last Will and Testament in the pre-
sence of us both present at the same
time who in his presence at his re-
quest and in the presence of each
other hereunto subscribe our names
as Witnesses.

T.. CARLYLE

ea

WILLIAM HARES
Butler

Palace Gate House;

FREDERIC OUVRY
66 Lincoln’s Inn Fields Solicitor.

This 1s A CODICIL to the last Will and Testament
of me THOMAS CARLYLE of No. 24 Cheyne Row
Chelsea in the County of Middlesex Esquire which said Will
bears date the Sixth day of February One thousand eight
hundred and seventy-three Wuereas by my said Will I
have appointed my Brother Jonn AITKEN CARLYLE Doctor of
a

Medicine and Joun Forster Esquire Executors and Trus-
tees thereof and appointed and directed that if my said
Brother should die in my lifetime my Brother James Car-
LYLE should be an Executor and Trustee in his stead And
that if the said JoHn Forster should die in my lifetime my
friend James AnrHony FRovpE should be an Executor and
Trustee in his stead AND WHEREAS my dear and ever faith-
ful friend the said Joun Forster has been taken from me
by death and I am desirous of revoking the said appoint-
ment of Executors and Trustees contained in my said Will
and of appointing my said Brother Jonn AITKEN CARLYLE
the said James ANTHONY Frovupe and Sir James FirzJames
StrepHEN of No. 24 Cornwall Gardens South Kensington in
the said County of Middlesex K.C.S.I Q.C. to be Executors
and Trustees of my said Will Now THEREFORE I do here-
by revoke the above recited appointment of Executors
and Trustees contained in my said Will and do hereby
appoint my said Brother JoHN AITKEN CARLYLE the said
James ANTHONY Froupe and the said Sir James FrrzJ ames
STEPHEN to be Executors and Trustees of my said Will I
HEREBY REVOKE the gift in my said Will of the Writing table
belonging to me which stands in the Drawing Room at
No. 24 Cheyne Row aforesaid and hereby give and be-
queath the same writing table to the said Sir James Fitz-
James Stephen I knowhe will accept it as a distinguished
mark of my esteem He knows that it belonged to my
honoured Father in Law and his daughter And that I
have written all my Books upon it except only Schiller and
that for the fifty years and upwards that are now past I have
considered it among the most precious of my possessions
I Give and BEQUEATH the Screen which stands in the Draw-
ing Room at No. 24 Cheyne Row aforesaid to my dear Niece
Mary Carlyle Aitken who best knows the value I have
always put upon it and will best take care of it to the end
of her life when I am gone She knows by whom it was
made and I wish her to accept it as a testimony of the
78

trust I repose in her and as a mark of my esteem for her
honourable veracious and faithful character and a memo-
rial of all the kind and ever faithful service she has done
me The Faithorne Portrait of Oliver Cromwell which I
had intended for my loving and ever faithful friend John
Forster the only bequest he would accept of from me I
now give and bequeath to his Widow Mrs. Forster and I
beg her to accept it in memory of him and of me I Givz
and BEQUEATH to my dear friend David Masson my photo-
graphically printed folio copy of Shakespeare’s Works in
memory of me The two pictures of Luther’s Father and
Mother which were a gift to me from Mr. Robert Tait of
Queen Anne Street Cavendish Square in the said County
of Middlesex I give back to him The large oil painting
which hangs in the Drawing room at No. 24 Cheyne Row
aforesaid and which has been engraved under the title of
“The little Drummer” I give and bequeath to Louisa
Caroline the Dowager Lady Ashburton for her life and
after her death to her Daughter The Honorable Mary
Florence Baring absolutely AND WHEREAS by my said Will
Ihave given to my said dear Brother John Aitken Carlyle
my Leasehold messuage No. 24 Cheyne Row aforesaid in
which I reside subject to the rent and covenants under
which I hold the same and all such of my Furniture plate
china linen books prints pictures and other effects therein
as are not by my said Will bequeathed specifically AND
WHEREAS I am desirous of revoking such gift and of mak-
ing such bequest of the said messuage property and effects
as hereinafter appears Now THEREFORE I do hereby re-
voke the said gift of the said messuage property and ef-
fects and hereby bequeath the said last mentioned lease-
hold messuage and all such of my Furniture plate linen
china books prints pictures and other effects therein as
are not by my said Will and this my Codicil bequeathed
specifically unto my said Brother John Aitken Carlyle for
his life he paying the rent and all rates taxes and outgo-
12

ings payable in respect of the same messuage and per-
forming the covenants and conditions under which I hold
the same and after his death I give and bequeath the
same messuage furniture plate linen china books prints
pictures and other effects unto my said Niece Mary Car-
lyle Aitken absolutely In all other respects I confirm my
said Will Ju witness whereof I have to this Codicil to my
said Will set my hand this Eighth day of November One
thousand eight hundred and seventy-eight

Signet and DecLaRrep by the said Thomas
Carlyle the Testator as and for a
Codicil to his last Will and Testament
in the presence of us who in his pre-
sence at his request and in the pre-; T. CARLYLE
sence of each other (both being present
together at the same time) have here-
unto subscribed our names as Wit.
nesses.

Solr Messrs. FARRER OUVRY & CO
C. ERNEST. BOWLES. Solts
66 Lincoln’s Inn Fields London.

VICTOR*®H DEACON | Clerks to
relations with Carlyle,