: ■:■ : ■'■'-' ' ::
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
NEW LETTERS AND MEMORIALS
OF JANE WELSH CARLYLE.
Annotated by Thomas Carlyle, and Edited by
Alexander Carlyle, with an Introduction by Sir James
Crichton-Browne, M.D., LL.D., F.R.S., with sixteen
illustrations. In two volumes, demy 8vo., 2$s. net.
SOME PRESS OPINIONS.
The Daily Chronicle.— '"Let us turn with all gratitude to the new
series of letters which the editor here gives. . . . Mrs. Carlyle has
long ranked with Byron, Lamb, her husband, and one or two more,
amongst the best letter-writers in our language."
The Daily News. — "The publication of these volumes is not
only the most important literary event of the year. It is an act
of elementary justice."
Westminster Gazette.—' 1 It is a pleasure under any circum-
stances to have more of Mrs. Carlyle's letters. Few letters in the
language have in such perfection the qualities which good letters
should possess."
TIu Times. — "About Mrs. Carlyle's conversation there has been
only one difference of opinion among those who had the privilege
of hearing it. Some put it just above her husband's, and some just
below. But after reading her letters, we feel inclined to ask
whether Jane was greater than Thomas, or Thomas greater than
Jane."
RE A D V I MM EDI A TEL Y.
NEW LETTERS OF THOMAS
CARLYLE. Edited and Annotated by Alexander
Carlyle. In two volumes, with illustrations. Uniform
with "New Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh
Carlyle." Demy 8vo., 2ls. net.
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THE NEMESIS
OF FROUDE
A REJOINDER TO J. A. FROUDE'S
"MY RELATIONS WITH CARLYLE," BY
SIR JAMES CRICHTON-BROWNE, M.D.,
AND ALEXANDER CARLYLE © © ©
JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
LONDON AND NEW YORK. MDCCCCIH
i '
Copyright
in U.S.A.
By John Lane.
-
:
Wm. Clowes & Sons, Limited, Printers, London.
• • •
to
CO
en
TR
g PREFACE
In the Prefatory note to " My Relations with
Carlyle," by James Anthony Froude, it is stated
by the Editors, Mr. Ashley A. Froude and Miss
^Mar^aret Froude, that it would never have been
2>given to the world had not the production of the
m" New Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh
Carlyle," with the serious charges contained in the
Introduction and Foot-notes, appeared to demand
its publication. But the serious charges referred to,
co although no doubt rendered more serious by the
" fresh evidence in their support brought to light in
-< the " New Letters and Memorials " — evidence which
^Mr. Froude had suppressed — were not in any case
new charges, but the mere repetition of charges
which were first made twenty years ago, and which
are not really traversed by " My Relations with
^Carlyle." Mr. Froude attempts to explain his
^superabundant verbal inaccuracies, but has not a
£ word to say in answer to the grave charges brought
.against him, of giving garbled extracts of docu-
3 -ments and omitting of set purpose such portions
of them as did not fit in with his own views, of
contravening again and again the solemn injunc-
tions imposed on him by Carlyle, of making claims
to advantages to which he was not entitled, of
VI
PREFACE
refusing to implement an unconditional promise,
and generally of producing a Biography elaborated
with the art of the practised romancer in which
the true features of the subject can scarcely be
recognised, but in which assertion and inference,
unsupported by evidence, are palmed off for correct
statement. On all these points he has allowed
judgment to go by default. His defence consists
in the accentuation of what he had already said
derogatory of Carlyle, with the addition of fresh
charges against him of a very odious description,
which, had they been true, should in decency have
been kept concealed, but which, being groundless,
as we hope to prove, reflect discredit on those who
have rashly, or in the spirit of retaliation, thrust
them prominently forward. That Mr. Froude ever
decided to keep silence on these charges we take
leave to doubt.
As early as 1881 Mr. Froude, in a letter which
appeared in the Times of May 6th, alluded to
reasons which he could not give " without entering
on a subject on which it is better to be silent," and
added that he would be sorry if the difficulty of
his task was " increased by a demand for further
explanations which I shall be very reluctant to give."
He was at once challenged by Mrs. Alexander
Carlyle in the Times, to satisfy the curiosity he had
awakened by his reference to " hidden reasons and
explanations." To this challenge he made no
reply; but on the 20th of April, 1886, when he
heard that Professor Charles Eliot Norton was
about to publish the " Early Letters of Carlyle,"
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Um Kjl k^hLUlir a dv UL W* b^ . (^} u*oA K
FACSIMILE OF CARLYLF.'s HANDWRITING IN I 832. AT THE AGE OF 37.
See "Reminiscences." Norton's Edition, i., p. 5; Froude's Edition, i., p. 8.
See also Frontispiece.
PREFACE
Vll
he wrote to Mrs. Alexander Carlyle, drawing atten-
tion to the passage in Mrs. Carlyle's Journal relating
to " two blue marks on the wrist," and hinting that
this secret might have to be revealed. Again, in
1896, there was a threat to publish "My Relations
with Carlyle," merely because Mr. Alexander Carlyle
had requested that a private letter by Mr. Froude
to Mr. McPherson, which was published in his
short Life of Carlyle, should not be allowed to appear
in a second edition, lest it should involve a renewal
of the old controversy about the papers. On this
occasion Mr. Leman, Mr. Ashley Froude's solicitor,
wrote as follows : " Mr. Froude's representatives
have no desire to re-open any controversial questions
in relation to Mr. Thomas Carlyle, but I know that
there is in existence a Memorandum by the late
Mr. Froude written in anticipation of any further
controversy on the lines of the former one (the
main point in which is however known to me and
I believe to a few other people), which, if published,
would throw perhaps an unexpected light upon the
whole business, and materially justify what he has
written and printed."
It is clear that this Memorandum, which was
found in a despatch box after Mr. Froude's death,
but which, it is said, he had shown to no one, has
not been kept altogether private by his representa-
tives, but has been held in readiness for a convenient
moment for that publication which Mr. Froude,
notwithstanding his alleged decision to remain silent,
had obviously all along contemplated and intended.
Towards the end of the Memorandum he writes,
V1I1
PREFACE
" 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. . . . The whole facts are
now made known. ... I have nothing more to
reveal."
It is to be regretted that " My Relations with
Carlyle " was not published at an earlier period,
for many persons, who could have refuted state-
ments contained in it, have passed away ; still, even
now, Carlyle's friends rejoice that it is brought forth,
so that they are enabled to grapple with allegations
against him, for which Mr. Froude has made
himself responsible, but which so long as they
remained impalpable rumours it was impossible for
them to deal with. The rumours reflecting on
Carlyle, which can be now traced to their source,
at first mere gaseous gossip, have become gradually
congealed and glued to his name with many
offensive accretions, and there are certainly multi-
tudes of persons amongst us who believe that he was,
as represented in Mr. Froude's posthumous Frag-
ment, a man of transcendent ability, but selfish,
over-bearing, cruel, and contemptible. To show, as
we hope to be able to do, even at this late hour, that
Mr. Froude was wrong — that he believed a myth,
betrayed his trust, and must himself take the place
of the man he has so unmercifully pilloried, will
supply as striking an example as modern literary
history affords of what the Greeks called " Nemesis "
and Carlyle the "Justice of God."
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
• > » ....
i ) J >
• ' '■'
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
Mr. Froude's account of his relations with Carlyle,
found written in pencil in a notebook after his death,
was prepared while he was in Cuba in 1887, and he
had not therefore, while writing it, access to the
correspondence and documents bearing on the
matters with which he dealt. One would have
thought that in composing a vindication of him-
self in connexion with his discharge of a trust
which he was accused of having betrayed — a
vindication which he bequeathed to his children
that they might have something to rely on should
his honour or good faith be assailed — he would
have desired to consult authorities and to verify
every statement he made ; but that was not
Froude's way of going to work. It its obituary
notice of him the Times said : "He was not a
student, in the real sense of the term ; he had
neither the desire to probe his authorities to the
bottom nor the patience to do so. . . . It is said
that at the time when Froude was busy on the part
of his history where Burleigh plays a leading part
he was invited to stay at Hatfield and make an
examination of the masses of Cecil papers there
preserved — at a time, it must be remembered,
before the Historical Manuscripts Commission had
published any of them — and that Froude went, and
B
2 THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
stayed one day. . . . Scholars who read his brilliant
sketch of Caesar can see plainly that he had never
properly read Cicero's letters, or not many of them.
When he visited the West Indies, with a view to
writing his ' English in the West Indies,' he pre-
ferred to sit in the shade reading Dante rather than
to see for himself the institutions of Jamaica, about
which, he told his host, he knew enough already.
And, most noteworthy of all, though he visited
Simancas and stayed some time there, it is un-
questionable that he learned comparatively little
about the records there preserved." True to his
usual method, in writing " My Relations with Car-
lyle," Froude disdained the assistance of records or
witnesses, but trusting entirely to his memory and
imagination, in the intervals of his study of Dante
and while absorbing the history and institutions of
Cuba at the pores, produced an Apology which is
itself in need of an apologetic. There is scarcely
one line of Froude's pamphlet that does not require
correction or qualification, and the general impression
it creates is as wide of the truth as it is possible to
be. A paragon of errors, Froude has never shown
himself more inaccurate. Never has his treacherous
memory more signally beguiled him or more in-
dubitably proved itself to have been an organ, not for
retention and reproduction, but for transformation.
It did not, like other men's memories, yield up what
it had appropriated, but a special secretion of its
own. In Carlyle's case it was supplied with heart's
blood and has given out bile. The honoured master,
the old familiar friend has been converted into a
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 3
grotesque monster compounded of strength and
weakness, dignity and deformity. The pamphlet is
made up of the writhings of wounded egotism and
of virulent attacks on the character and conduct of
the man whom he had extolled as a great spiritual
teacher. Having first assassinated the reputation of
Carlyle, Froude now mutilates the remains. What-
ever merits his Life of Carlyle possessed — and no
one denies it some merits — are now destroyed by
this posthumous pamphlet. Having drawn a por-
trait of Carlyle possessing at least some more or
less distant resemblance, he has deliberately thrown
a pailful of liquid lampblack over it and rendered it
irrecognisable as the portrait of anything human.
It is to be regretted that Froude's paper, " My
Relations with Carlyle," has not been published
exactly as it was found in the despatch-box after his
death. The first few pages have been withheld,
because they are "of too intimate a nature to be
given to the public ; " but that may be truly said of
the whole essay, and it is clear that Froude himself
had drawn no distinction of this kind, but had
anticipated that all of what he had written would
be published. It may be assumed that the omitted
pages would not in any way have strengthened
his case against Carlyle, but they might have
supplied the means of testing the fidelity of his
narrative in matters of great personal moment,
in respect of which, even a recreant memory
rarely goes astray. The epitome of some of the
omitted matter given as an introduction to the
essay undoubtedly suggests that, in the interests
b 2
4 THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
of veracity, omission was advisable. It is the
object of this epitome to show that Froude could
have no earthly motive to misrepresent Carlyle,
to whom the crisis of his life was due and in sub-
mission to whose teachings he had made great
personal sacrifices. But the facts quoted in support
of this contention will not bear critical examination.
"He [Froude] had taken deacon's orders, and
looked to the Church as his regular profession. So
much as a doubt," he tell us, "had so far never
crossed his mind, of the truth of the creed in which
he had been brought up." " It was at this time,"
he says, " that Carlyle's books came in my way.
They produced on me what Evangelicals call ' a
conviction of sin.' . . . They 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." It seems a
pity to have to overthrow such a moving little bit
of autobiography, but the tyranny of dates makes
it untenable. It was in 1841, at Falmouth, that
Carlyle's books first came in Froude's way, when
they were brought to his notice by John Sterling,
and at once arrested his attention, and it was not
until 1844 that he took deacon's orders. He has
himself told us in "The Nemesis of Faith," that it
was the " French Revolution," which he read in
1 84 1, that first stirred his conscience, so the alterna-
tives are these : either he is wrong in saying that it
was Carlyle's books that undermined and overthrew
his faith, or he took deacon's orders after his faith
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 5
was disintegrated, and went on assuming faith when
he had it not, for he preached a funeral sermon in
St. Mary's Church, Torquay, in 1847.
For the purposes of " My Relations with
Carlyle " Froude has clearly exaggerated Carlyle's
early influence over him. He would have us
believe that it was this influence which led him to
give up his fellowship and abandon his orders, and
which changed the whole current of his life, but it
would not be difficult to show that many other
influences contributed to shape his career. When
he tells us now, that it was Carlyle's writings which
first made him "realise the meaning of duty and the
overpowering obligation to do it," we must remember
that he wrote to Hallam, Lord Tennyson, " I owe
to your father the first serious reflexions upon life
and the nature of it." When he tells us now, that
it was Carlyle's writings that deprived him of belief
in the facts of his creed, we must remember that he
has previously stated that it was his studies for the
Life of St. Neot, which Newman had invited him
to write, that put the breaking strain on his credulity.
Goethe, Lessing, Neander, Schleiermacher, the
Tractarians and the Evangelicals had all a hand in
the making of Froude, whose views underwent a
gradual development. Not till long after he had
definitely left the Ark of tha Covenant, could he
find a twig on which to settle. Carlyle's doctrine
ultimately obtained the ascendency in his mind, but
his personal influence was not brought to bear
on him until 1849, when he was introduced by
Spedding, not perhaps until i860 when he settled in
6 THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
London and was admitted on friendly terms to the
circle at Cheyne Row.
In the first instance Froude, according to his
own account, was repelled by Carlyle's objurgations
and demeanour. "He denounced everybody and
everything ! " and although Froude was of opinion,
being then apparently in a damnatory mood, that
this wholesale denunciation " was intensely true
and right," he felt " that it would be impossible to
live with him on equal terms." Carlyle, on the
other hand, must have been powerfully attracted to
Froude, for, contrary to what was ever known of
him in any other case, he forced his acquaintance
upon him : so Froude tells us. He called on him,
wished to see more of him and invited him to be his
companion in his walks and rides ; and as it would
have been ungracious to reject such advances,
Froude grasped the proffered hand and was placed
on a friendly footing in Carlyle's home, where he
seems to have begun at once to make those un-
favourable observations which have dimmed and
defaced his Biography of his host, and which are
marshalled with relentless candour in his posthumous
pamphlet.
That Froude himself frequently begged to be
admitted to the Cheyne Row household is certain.
Mrs. Carlyle has placed a photograph of him in her
album, and pasted underneath it a characteristic
cutting from a letter in Froude's handwriting which
reads, "May I come to tea on Friday?" Intro-
duced into closer relations with the life at Cheyne
Row he could not help becoming acquainted, he
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 7
tells us, with many things which he would rather
not have known, but which he has carefully treasured
up against the day of wrath.
First of all it was borne in upon Froude that
Carlyle had an ungovernable temper which caused
much domestic unhappiness. " Rumour said, that
she [Mrs. Carlyle] and Carlyle quarrelled often, and
I could easily believe it," he added, "from occa-
sional expressions about him which fell from her."
Farther on he states explicitly that they quarrelled
fiercely and violently, and by various allusions
throughout his paper he seeks to convey the idea
that they lived a cat and dog life, owing mainly to
Carlyle's fractious, impatient and selfish disposition.
"In Carlyle's catalogue of his own duties self-restraint
seemed to be forgotten." But Froude and rumour
cannot on this question stand against the phalanx
of witnesses on the other side. Almost without
exception, the other intimates of the household at
Cheyne Row, who had as good opportunities of
judging as Froude and perhaps more discernment
than he, take a directly opposite view and testify to
the generally amiable terms on which Carlyle and
his wife jogged along together. Moncure Conway
observed that " when Carlyle's mood was stormiest,
her voice could in an instant allay it : the lion
was led as by a little child." " In the conversa-
tion which went on in the old drawing-room at
Chelsea, there was no suggestion of things secret
or reserved ; people with sensitive toes had no
careful provision made for them, and had best keep
away ; free, frank and simple speech and inter-
8 THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
course were the unwritten but ever-present law.
Mrs. Carlyle's wit and humour were overflowing,
and she told anecdotes about her husband under
which he sat with a patient look of repudiation,
until the loud laugh broke out and led the chorus."
Emerson wrote in his Diary, " Carlyle and his wife
live on beautiful terms. Their ways are very
engaging and in her book-case all his books are
inscribed to her as they come from year to year,
each with some significant lines." Professor Masson
placed on record that, " One of the pleasantest sights
in the Cheyne Row household, on a winter evening,
was Carlyle himself, seated in a chair by the fire, or
reclining on the hearth-rug, pipe in mouth, listening
benignantly and admiringly to those caricatures of his
ways, and illustrations of his recent misbehaviours,
from his beloved Jane's lips. Insufficient appreciation
of the amount of consciously humorous, and mutu-
ally admiring give-and-take of this kind in the
married life of the extraordinary pair, both of them
so sensitively organised, has had much to do, it
seems to me, with that elaborately studied contrast
of them which Mr. Froude has succeeded in
impressing on the public." " The notion of Carlyle,"
says Masson, referring to Froude's portrait of him,
"as in any sense a misanthrope, a hard-hearted
man, a mere raging or railing egotist, is one of
those absurdities, those perversions of the actual
truth into its very opposite, which arise not from
mere insufficiency of knowledge, but from a moral
incapacity of understanding anything unusually com-
plex in character, and a malevolent predetermination
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 9
to resist evidence." And yet, once at any rate,
Froude himself seems to have had some inkling of
the truth which Masson insists on, for in one place
in the " Life of Carlyle " he speaks of Mrs. Carlyle
" telling stories at her husband's expense, at which
he laughed himself as heartily as we did," — a be-
haviour on her part somewhat difficult to reconcile
with her condition as depicted in " My Relations
with Carlyle," as a poor, dejected, down-trodden
woman, whose " pale, drawn, suffering face " haunted
Froude in his dreams. It was "exquisitely pain-
ful," he says, to see this bewitching woman suffering
through her husband's neglect and violence.
Amongst others who have borne generous
testimony to the cordial and affectionate terms on
which the Carlyles lived may be named Tennyson,
G. S. Venables, Mrs. Oliphant, John Tyndall, Sir
Charles Gavan Duffy and A. J. Symington ; but
their testimony, strong and weighty as it is, and that
of a host of other responsible witnesses who might
be summoned, cannot elucidate the true conjugal
relations of Carlyle and his wife half as clearly and
convincingly as the letters which they wrote to each
other, during the forty years of their wedded life.
Enough of these have been already published to
put it beyond a shadow of a doubt that, from their
first acquaintance to the end of their days, they were
united by almost unbroken trust and love which
only deepened as the end drew near. Conscious
that these letters, if referred to, must reveal the
hollow mockery of the grim Cheyne Row tragedy
he had set himself to compose, Froude attempts to
io THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
discredit them, by quoting Mrs. Carlyle as saying
that her husband's letters were written for his
biographer. Where did she say so ? Not in her
replies to these letters, which are full of grateful
acknowledgment and sympathetic response. The
remark, it is to be suggested, must have been made
in one of Froude's imaginary conversations with
her, or if it did actually fall from her lips, it must
have been ironical, for the letters, as she well knew,
came from the fulness of the writer's heart, and
were meant for no eye but hers. We have Froude's
authority for it, that until long after his wife's death
Carlyle was resolved that no express biography of
him should be written ; and here we have the man
who tells us that the task of biography was ulti-
mately confided to him, insinuating that Carlyle
in his familiar correspondence with his wife, while
denouncing " the brute of a world," was posing for
future generations. But Mrs. Carlyle's letters, the
sincerity and spontaneity of which Froude would be
the last to impugn, even more strikingly than her
husband's, bring out that their matrimonial pathway,
if not all strewn with flowers and free from rough
places, was on the whole felicitous, and that they
never parted hands while journeying along it.
They had their little differences and misunder-
standings and sometimes their sharp encounters.
What married pair has not ? What man of genius
and his wife ever escaped them ? Who has proposed
a competition for the Dunmow Flitch after forty
years of wedlock ? Mrs. Carlyle was prone to take
offence and could speak daggers. Carlyle, as he
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE n
said of his wife's grandfather, had a hot impatient
temper, breaking out into fierce flashes as of light-
ning, if you touched him the wrong way, but they
were flashes only, never bolts. But on the whole
they were happy and contented with each other,
and it is impossible now to determine which was
more to blame for any disagreements that varied
the monotony of their existence. Carlyle has
chivalrously taken most of the blame for these on
himself, but hear what Jane says referring to one
little quarrel that occurred on one occasion between
them. " Nothing less than a devil (I am sure) could
have tempted me to torment you and myself as I
did that unblessed day. Woe to me, then, if I had
had any other than the most constant and generous
of mortal men to deal with. Blessings on your
equanimity and magnanimity." Even the idolatrous
Miss Jewsbury admits that Jane was provoking ;
and this is certain, that she was very well able to
take care of herself, and that Froude's vision of her
as the sweet, forlorn, submissive spouse of an
irritable, inconsiderate and violent husband, is either
the illusion of an exuberant imagination or the
creation of a malicious caricaturist. Mr. Percy
Fitzgerald says : " I used often of a Sunday to go
and talk with the late Mrs. Forster, who was a
shrewd and very observant lady. She met all her
husband's many friends and knew a great deal. I
remember her talking much of the Carlyles and
their manage, and once I said — albeit a friend and
admirer of Thomas — that she must have had a
rough time. Mrs. Forster smiled, and said, ' Don't
12 THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
you believe all that ! She was rather an actress,
and liked to pose as a martyr, talking of her suffer-
ings and getting sympathy. I assure you he was
the great sufferer. ' " Lady Eastlake wrote in her
" Letters and Memorials," " Mrs. Carlyle interested
me ; she is lively and clever, and evidently very
happy."
In view of what Froude tells us as to the
" Niagaras of scorn and vituperation " which
Carlyle poured out for hours together in his wife's
presence, one would have thought that it would
have been a relief to her to be left alone and that
she must have thanked Heaven when her husband
shut himself up in his sound-proof room. But not
at all. Froude will not have it so. This was an
additional grievance. " She was very much alone."
Carlyle, whom Froude is now, with tears in his
eyes and a tremor in his voice, unveiling to us as the
thoroughly bad man he was, was not only violent to
his wife but neglectful of her. He was engrossed
in his own pursuits, " she rarely saw him, except
at meal-times. She sat by herself in her drawing-
room, either reading or entertaining visitors who
bored her and of whom she dared not ask him to
relieve her." She was a sad, solitary, stricken
woman ; the glaring absurdity of all which may
perhaps be best demonstrated by recounting the
ordinary routine of daily life at Cheyne Row.
Carlyle rose at 7.30, had his bath and went out
for a short walk. He breakfasted about 9, and
after smoking a pipe, reading the newspaper (when
he took one in, which was not always), and-convers-
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 13
ing with his wife, he retired to his study. When
he was engaged in writing anything, he worked
steadily till 1 or 1.30, when he had his luncheon
while Mrs. Carlyle dined, his luncheon being light
and consisting generally of a cup of beef-tea or a
biscuit and a glass of sherry. Then he went out
walking, accompanied by his wife when she was
able to walk. When he had a horse, he rode for
two hours in the afternoon, getting in an hour
before dinner which was generally at 5 or 6, but
the hour was frequently changed. Before dinner
he was joined by Mrs. Carlyle, who talked to him
and told him the news of the day while he was
dining and while he lay on the sofa, when the meal
was over. After dinner, when they were not invited
out, they spent the whole evening together, reading
or chatting with any guests who chanced to
call. This was the general routine, but when he
was not engaged in any special task, Carlyle rarely
retired to his study, but read beside his wife. And
sometimes even when he was writing she was his
companion. He says : " Wife and I sat together
in the library-room, as the warmest, all the time I
was writing ' Scott.' "
Now, is it not apparent that Froude has again
attempted to mislead his readers in representing
Mrs. Carlyle as being left much alone by a callous
husband, careful about his own interests and nought
else, and that as a matter of fact she had more
of her husband's society than married ladies of a
certain age generally have ? Beyond the riding
exercise, which he took with a view to the main-
i 4 THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
tenance of his working power, on which his bread
depended, Carlyle had no pursuits or amusements
apart from his home. He was not a club-man or
sportsman or billiard-player. He spent his leisure
at his own fireside with his wife and friends, and it
was his wife's own choice if she did not accompany
him on his very occasional excursions into society at
Bath House or Addiscombe. His visits to Scot-
land were made that he might see his kindred or
recover his health, and during them he wrote to his
wife daily, not laconic notes, but richly effusive
letters, which she so hungered for, that she had an
hysterical attack if the post failed to bring one.
What modern husband does as much ? How many
twentieth-century wives can boast of as much
uxorial devotion ?
Mrs. Carlyle was no Mariana in a Moated
Grange, dreary and deserted, but a highly appre-
ciated wife, whose complaint was that she had too
much and not too little society. " So long as I am
in what the French call ' my room of reception,' '
she says, " it never occurs to me to feel lonely."
"It is odd," she remarks, in another place, "what
notions men have of the scantiness of a woman's
resources. They do not find it anything out of
nature that they should exist by themselves, but a
woman must always be borne about on some-
body's shoulders, and dandled or chirped to, or
it is supposed she will fall into the blackest
melancholy ! " " I have as much society as I like,
but I prefer none when I am ill."
But Mrs. Carlyle had other interests and enjoy-
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 15
ments beyond those which society afforded. She
keenly relished the management of her little house-
hold and the conquest of those practical problems
which, for many years, their limited means made
difficult of solution. She had been brought up to
take part in household work ; she revelled in
economic contrivances, and even her "earthquakes"
or annual cleanings brought her a grim satisfaction.
But here again the lugubrious Froude shakes his
head. She was " a household drudge," quoth he,
and in saying that in " My Relations with Carlyle "
he is merely disinterring those old misinterpretations
of his which were killed and buried long ago.
It was in connection with the life at Craigen-
puttock that Froude first made this charge. He
depicted that as one round of menial drudgery for
Mrs. Carlyle, unsolaced by more than an occasional
word of encouragement, sympathy, or compassion
from her husband. " Every household duty fell upon
her, either directly, or in supplying the shortcomings
of a Scotch maid-of-all-work She had to cook, to
sew, to scour, to clean ; to gallop down alone to
Dumfries if anything was wanted ; to keep the
house, and even on occasions to milk the cows."
The story of the hard time this poor woman had
to pass at Craigenputtock, Froude derived from
Miss Geraldine Jewsbury's recollection, and he had
the effrontery to adhere to it and to introduce it
into the " Early Life " after he had himself published
Carlyle's denial of it, generally and in detail.
11 Geraldine's Craigenputtock stories," Carlyle
wrote, " are more mythical than any of the rest.
16 THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
Each consists of two or three in confused exaggerated
state rolled with new confusion into one," and then
he goes on to show that his wife's participation in
any of the menial occupations enumerated by
Froude must have had a spice of frolic or adventure
in it, as there were a servant and milk-maid and
farm men at call, zealous to help the young couple.
He states explicitly that the happiest and whole-
somest days of their married life were these seven
years spent at Craigenputtock, where his helpmate
made the desert blossom and converted into a fairy
palace " the wild moorland home of the poor man."
And in all this he is fully borne out by the testimony
of that helpmate herself. Her letters, dated from
Craigenputtock, are bright as the unpolluted sun-
light on the mountain, breezy as the atmosphere
that undulated around her ; lucent and hopefully
babbling like the streams that hurried to the valley
below. And more than that, they teem with
expressions of joyous satisfaction with her lot, and
contain direct contradictions of every one of Froude's
allegations. To " this dreariest spot in all the British
dominions," as Froude, with pitiable topographical
insensibility, described it, she was glad to return
from Edinburgh and from Templand when visiting
her mother ; and from it, after four years' experience
of it, she wrote to Miss Eliza Miles, " For my part
I am very content. I have everything here my
heart desires that I could have anywhere else,
except society, and even that deprivation is not
wholly an evil. . . . My husband is as good com-
pany as reasonable mortal could desire. Every fair
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 17
morning we ride on horseback for an hour before
breakfast. . . . Then we eat such a surprising
breakfast of home-baked bread and eggs, etc., etc.,
as might incite anyone that had breakfasted so long
in London to write a pastoral. Then Carlyle takes
to his writing, while I, like Eve, 'studious of house-
hold good,' inspect my house, my garden, my live
stock, gather flowers for my drawing-room, and
lapfuls of eggs and finally betake myself also to
writing, or reading, or mending, or whatever work
seems fittest. After dinner, and only then, I lie on
the sofa, and (to my shame be it spoken) sometimes
sleep, but oftenest dream waking. ... In the
evening I walk on the moor and read. Such is
my life." And one is tempted to ask what was
wrong with it, in the case of a young Scotchwoman,
reared in the frugal home of a country doctor,
whose husband was earning his living by his pen,
and, as she even then knew, laying the foundation
of a great reputation ?
To Miss Stodart Mrs. Carlyle wrote : " Indeed,
Craigenputtock is no such frightful place as the
people call it. ... I read and work and talk with
my husband and am never weary. I ride over to
Templand [to see her mother]. Grace Macdonald
[that is Froude's Scotch maid-of-all-work with her
short-comings] is turning out a most excellent
servant, and seems the carefullest, honestest creature
living." ..." The fact is I have no delight in
cows, and have happily no concern with them," and
so on. Every statement that Froude made about
the Craigenputtock life has been specifically traversed
18 THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
by Mrs. Carlyle herself, and yet, knowing this, he
ventured to put them forward, and although his
attention was called to their incorrectness he never
had the grace to withdraw them. As was her
manner, Mrs. Carlyle often dilates with mock and
merry consternation on her housewife difficulties,
and amplifies into haystacks the molehills that
obstructed her path, but no one with a milligram of
humour could take these sallies seriously. Looking
back on these old times when she was ill and
depressed, the far slanting shadows may have
darkened them and caused her to speak of them
with repugnance and gloom, but the chronicles
she has left of them prove that they were full of
healthful activity and tranquil happiness.
Froude does not refer to the Craigenputtock
stories in " My Relations with Carlyle," but he still
represents Mrs. Carlyle as a household drudge in
London, thus repeating a thrice-refuted fallacy.
The care and direction of her small establishment
was no heavy burden to her, and to have attempted
to relieve her of it would have been to give her
pain. " Perfection of housekeeping was," said
Carlyle, " her clear and speedy attainment," and as
a woman takes pride in doing that which she can
do well, Mrs. Carlyle gloried in her marketings,
and mendings, and lustrations, and recounts, with
exquisite burlesque, her experiences of her domestic
servants. That she had for many years only one
servant was her own choice ; her husband urged
her to have two, but she long resisted his entreaties,
and when at last she yielded to them she was miser-
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 19
able until the second servant was got out of the
house. " So I am now mistress of two servants,"
she wrote, " and ready to hang myself. Seriously
the change is nearly intolerable to me, though both
these women are good servants, as servants go. But
the twoness ! The much ado about nothing!" In
all domestic affairs it was she and not her husband
who restricted expenditure. " With great diffi-
culty," he writes, " I had got her induced, persuaded,
commanded to take two weekly drives in a hired
brougham (more difficulty in persuading you to go
into any expense than other men have to persuade
their wives to keep out of it)." Instead of being
"a household drudge," she had often not enough to
do, and it might have been an advantage to her if,
in the absence of children, she had taken up some
definite employment. For serious literary work she
had not sufficient persistence. The letters were
brilliant spurts, but a continuous flow she could not
maintain, although her husband gave her every
encouragement. In 1842 he wrote to her: "My
prayer is and has always been that you would rouse
up the fine faculties that are yours, into some course
of real true work which you felt to be worthy of
them and of you. ... I will never give up the
hope to see you adequately busy with your whole
mind, discovering, as all human beings may do, that
even in the grimmest rocky wilderness of existence
there are blessed well-springs, there is an ever-
lasting guiding star. Courage, my poor little
Jeannie." In July of the same year he wrote to
his brother Alick : "Jane is still altogether weakly,
c 2
20 THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
but she grows better ; time alone can alleviate that
kind of sorrow [the loss of her mother]. She is
left very lonely in this world now ; her kindred
mostly gone ; very few of the people vaguely called
' friends ' worth much to her! It would be better
for her also if she had more imperative employment
to follow : a small portion of the day suffices for all
her obligatory work, and the rest, when she cannot
seek work for herself, is apt to be spent in sorrowful
reflexions."
Having shown to his own satisfaction that Mrs.
Carlyle was on the one hand bullied by her husband
and on the other neglected, Froude next proceeds
to assure us that she was sarcastic when she spoke
of him, " a curious blending of pity, contempt, and
other feelings." And no wonder, if Froude is right ;
but in a matter like this we cannot entirely depend
on his ipse dixit, and, until some one can point out a
single utterance in any one of Mrs. Carlyle's writings
betokening pity or contempt of her husband, we
shall believe that Froude is once more indulging in
one of his imaginary conversations. She had a
sharp tongue : angry words about her husband
sometimes escaped her. He and she now and
then no doubt exchanged taunts in private, and
in company they chaffed and quizzed each other
unmercifully, but that she ever expressed pity and
contempt for him, to one of his professing friends,
behind his back, is unbelievable. Why, pride in him
was the mainstay of her life. " Thanks, Darling,"
writes Carlyle, " for your shining words and acts,
which were continual in my eyes, and in no other
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 21
mortal's. Worthless I was your divinity ; wrapt in
your perpetual love of me and pride in me, in
defiance of all men and things." " She had from an
early period," wrote her sorrowing husband, " formed
her own little opinion of me (what an Eldorado to me
blind, ungrateful, condemnable, and heavy-laden, and
crushed down into blindness by great misery, as I
oftenest was), and she never flinched from it for an
instant, I think, or cared or counted what the world
said to the contrary (very brave, magnanimous, and
noble truly she was in all this), but to have the world
confirm her in it was always a sensible pleasure
which she took no pains to hide especially from
me." She was an honourable woman and a faithful
wife, and could not have been guilty of the treach-
ery that Froude ascribes to her. In 1846, after
twenty years of married life, when all her husband's
faults and weaknesses must have been known to her,
she wrote to him : "I have grown to love you the
longer, the more, till now you are grown to be the
whole universe, God, everything to me, but in pro-
portion as I have got to know all your importance
to me, I have been losing faith in my importance to
you." Is this pity and contempt ?
It was necessary to show some ground for Mrs.
Carlyle's alleged pity and contempt of her husband,
and so Froude reduces him to the rank of a
miserable egotist and valetudinarian. He suffered,
he admits, from dyspepsia and want of sleep, but
whereas his wife " was expected to bear her trouble
in patience, and received hints on the duty of
submission if she spoke impatiently, he was never
22 THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
more eloquent than in speaking of his own crosses."
He himself, Froude opines, " had really a vigorous
constitution. He never had a day's serious illness.
He used to ride and walk in the wildest weather."
Carlyle was therefore in point of fact a malingerer,
or a robust invalid, selfishly and querulously vexing
those around him by his unmanly appeals for
sympathy in his purely imaginary ailments. Hypo-
chondria in Froude's eyes is a sort of sick-robe, put
on for toilet purposes, and that can be laid aside at
pleasure. He never himself suffered from it, but he
ought to have remembered, even in his eagerness
to prove Carlyle an impostor, that many other men
of genius have suffered in exactly the same way.
Hypochondria is, indeed, a frequent accompaniment
of great intellectual activity. That Carlyle had
naturally a fine constitution may be inferred from
the age to which he lived, but length of days is not
incompatible with a suffering existence. The active
exercise he took was essential to alleviate the
irritability of the nervous system, which his strenuous
work induced, and he was, from first to last, one of
those workers to whom production was not facile
but arduous and exhausting. Hypochondria is a
terribly real disease ; often, as all medical men
know, involving more distress than graver and more
mortal maladies. Dyspepsia and insomnia com-
bined, as literary men do not require to be told,
may prove afflictive and incapacitating to an extra-
ordinary degree. They have driven many a man
of rare ability and promise to madness and suicide,
and that Carlyle did not succumb to them, in the
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 23
concentrated form and inveterate type, in which
they attacked him, is evidence of his fortitude and
will power. From his twenty-fourth year until his
work was laid aside they never left him alone, and
there can be no question that they often caused him
what he called torture and purgatorial pains. The
dyspepsia was set up by the ill-cooked and somewhat
scanty food supplied to him when he was living
in lodgings in Edinburgh on 15^. a week, and in
Kirkcaldy on £60 a year, out of which he helped
his family, and bravely working his way, and the
insomnia followed in its train, when he began to
overtax his brain. Froude makes light of Carlyle's
sufferings, and in order to bring him into contempt
hints that he roared loudly when little hurt. The
many doctors he consulted did not think so, nor did
his wife, who best knew what he endured, and was
unflagging in her sympathy and efforts to devise
alleviations. He grasped at all feasible remedies,
and even for some years gave up smoking, his chief
solace, in the hope of obtaining relief.
But while Carlyle was in Froude's view sham-
ming, Mrs. Carlyle was really suffering poignantly
from the effects of his cruel and inconsiderate treat-
ment of her. " In 1862," says Froude, "her health
finally broke down, and there came on that strange
illness which doctors failed to understand, or if they
understood it, they did not venture to speak plainly "
— a sentence which includes two erroneous state-
ments and an unwarrantable reflexion on Mrs.
Carlyle's medical advisers. The final breakdown
in her health occurred not in 1862, but in 1863,
24 THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
and was the immediate result of shock and injury
sustained in a serious street accident in the City.
Her illness was not at all strange, and was well
understood by her doctors as the culmination of
a nervous affection, the seeds of which were
born with her, fostered by her bringing up, and
brought to full growth and fruition by the cir-
cumstances of her life. Her doctors would not
have hesitated to speak plainly had they agreed
with Froude that it was her husband's " wild
irritability " that had shattered her nerves ; and how
utterly reckless Froude's assertions are may be
realised when we read a few lines further on in his
pamphlet that these doctors whom he had just
accused of poltroonery " insisted as a first necessity
on her separation from him [her husband], the
constant agitation of his presence and the equally
constant provocation which his forgetfulness and
preoccupation made incessant in spite of efforts,
taking away all hope of amendment while the cause
remained " — a statement which is equally erroneous
with all the rest. The doctors never insisted
on Mrs. Carlyle's separation from her husband,
and never attributed her condition to his irri-
tability. " By everybody it had been agreed,"
wrote Carlyle, "that a change of scene (as usual
when all else has failed) was the thing to be
looked to : St. Leonard's as soon as the weather will
permit, said Dr. Quain and everybody, especially
Dr. Blakiston ; " and it is remarkable that if the
doctors regarded separation from her husband " as
a first necessity," she was not removed to St.
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 25
Leonard's until March, 1864, although her illness
began in October, 1863. That Mrs. Carlyle did
not regard separation from her husband as either
necessary or healing may be gathered from her ten-
derly affectionate letters to him from St. Leonard's.
No sooner had she arrived there than she wrote to
him, " Oh, I would like you beside me ! I am so
terribly alone / " " She had been again and again
given up," says Froude, blundering on ; but nobody
ever gave her up, and she died ultimately, not from
the nervous malady from which she was suffering in
1863, but from heart failure. She was, of course,
despondent about herself, but that was an inevitable
part of her illness, and the anxiety of her doctors
was connected more with her mental than with her
physical state. She said of herself, "The actual
suffering if cleared of the aggravations of the
Imagination would be nothing to make a fuss
about." " Suddenly, as if from the grave," exclaims
Froude, " she came back ; " but the recovery which
began in July, 1864, was very gradual, and was not
complete until October of that year, if then. " She
still mocked to me," goes on Froude, "about him
[Carlyle], and the old resentment was there, though
it showed itself less." If she did so, she must have
been the most deceitful of women, for at this very
time she was writing to her friends pouring forth
her gratitude to her husband for his solicitous care
of her. " I cannot tell you," she wrote to Mrs.
Austin, " how kind and good Mr. Carlyle is ! " " The
injury had gone too deep," proceeds the sepulchral
Froude. . . . "Her nerves had been so shaken by
26 THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
her many years of suffering that some singular
disease had developed itself, I believe, in her
spine." But Mrs. Carlyle never had anything the
matter with her spine, her nervous disease was in
no degree singular, and had in it in its later stages
a large element of hysteria, and she died, as we
have said, of heart failure, from which she had
suffered at intervals for many years.
No one can, we think, read Froude's account
of Mrs. Carlyle's illness in the light of the expla-
nations now given, without feeling that it was
throughout calculated to create prejudice against
her husband, whom he almost accuses of having
caused her death. No one can read it and realise
that it is typical of Froude's treatment of Carlyle
in other matters, without understanding the indig-
nation that his elaborate fabrications have induced
amongst Carlyle's friends.
Froude set himself, in writing " My Relations
with Carlyle," to improve on the mixed picture of
the Life and to exhibit him as a hard, heartless man
with no redeeming traits of character. " He made
little of other people's sufferings," he says. But is
this true ? " Miss Martineau," says Professor
Masson, " in her description of Carlyle from her
own knowledge, actually singled out for special
note, as that in his character which distinguished
him most from all other men she had seen, his
enormous power of sympathy. It was a most
correct observation. No one who knew Carlyle
but must have noted how instantaneously he was
affected or even agitated by any case of difficulty
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 27
or distress in which he was consulted or that was
casually brought to his cognisance, and with what
restless curiosity and exactitude he would inquire
into all the particulars, till he had conceived the
case thoroughly, and, as it were, taken the whole
pain of it into himself. The practical procedure, if
any was possible, was sure to follow." This very
Froude, who declares that Carlyle made little of
other people's sufferings, had written elsewhere — he
must have forgotten it — " I had not expected so
much detailed compassion in little things. I found
that personal sympathy with suffering lay at the
root of all his thoughts ; and that attention to little
things was as characteristic of his conduct as it was
of his intellect." In another place he wrote —
" No one, however, can read these letters [his
letters to his wife] or ten thousand like them with-
out recognising the affectionate tenderness which
lay at the bottom of his nature." No one can recall
the incidents of Carlyle's career, his contributions to
one brother's education and to another's farming,
when he was still poor and struggling, his frequent
little gifts to his father and mother, his never-
forgotten birthday presents to his wife, his exertions
on behalf of the Misses Lowes, and scores of like
acts, without recognising that he was a thoughtful,
sympathetic and large-hearted man, and that Froude
has cruelly maligned him. How did this man, who
was, Froude tells us, in the habit of " bursting into
violence at the smallest and absurdest provoca-
tions," comport himself at that terrible juncture
when John Stuart Mill came to announce the burn-
28 THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
ing of the first volume of the manuscript of the
11 French Revolution " ? He never lost his com-
posure, and the first words he spoke to his wife
when Mill was gone were, "Well, Mill, poor fellow,
is very miserable. We must try to keep from him
how serious the loss is to us."
But not only, Froude would have us believe, did
Carlyle shatter his wife's nerves and shorten her
days, he also made cruel shipwreck of her faith.
" She had accepted," he writes, " 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 taken from her, as she mourn-
fully said [when did she say it or where ? save in
one of Froude's imaginary conversations], the creed
in which she had been bred, but he had been unable
to put anything in place of it. She believed nothing.
On the spiritual side of things her mind was a per-
fect 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." It is strange that these teachings of
Carlyle, which produced on Froude what he calls
" a conviction of sin," which taught him the intense
seriousness of life, and awakened him to the mean-
ing of duty and the overpowering obligation to do
it, and " saved him from atheism," as he has in-
formed us, thus enlarging and bracing his existence,
should have had such an opposite effect on Mrs.
Carlyle, rendering her hopeless and void. One
would have supposed that this thoughtful woman,
the most brilliant and interesting Froude had ever
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 29
fallen in with, would have been influenced by
Carlyle's doctrine very much as Froude himself
was. But not so. What was his meat was her
poison. Froude was redeemed, Mrs. Carlyle was
cast into outer darkness.
Long before her marriage, Miss Jane Welsh had
emancipated herself from the creed in which she was
brought up. When she was still a school-girl at
Haddington, so Froude tells us, " her tutor intro-
duced her to ' Virgil,' and the effect of ' Virgil ' and
her other Latin studies was to change her religion
and make her into a sort of Pagan." And a sort of
Pagan she ever afterwards remained. Her words
were as follows : " That my Latin studies pursued far
too closely and strenuously for so young a girl had
changed my religion, if I could be said to have one,
is strictly true, and it wasn't my religion only that
they influenced, my whole being was imbued with
them." In giving this passage Froude has omitted,
surely, we are entitled to say, has curiously omitted,
the words, " if I could be said to have one," i.e., a
religion. The letter which she wrote to her grand-
mother, on the occasion of her father's death when she
was eighteen years old, is a clear proof that she had
then parted company with revealed truth, as taught
in the Church of Scotland. She bows to the
chastisement of the Divine Power, and acknow-
ledges that the ways of the Almighty are mysterious ;
but there is not, in that letter, one ray of Christian
faith or hope. No believing Scottish girl of the
period could possibly have written such a letter
under such circumstances.
30 THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
That Miss Welsh had shed whatever faith she
once possessed and had developed some of the
unlovely traits of character which so often accom-
pany that disrobement in a woman, long before she
fell under the influence of Carlyle, is abundantly
clear. In 1821, that is to say in the year in which
Carlyle was introduced to her, we find Edward
Irving expressing serious anxiety as to her spiritual
state. He had laboured with all his energies to
lead his pupil to think of Christianity as he did
himself, but he had serious misgivings respecting
her. " She contemplates," he wrote to Carlyle, " the
inferiority of others rather from the point of ridicule
and contempt than from that of commiseration and
relief ; and by so doing she not only leaves objects
in distress and loses the luxury of doing good, but
she contracts in her own mind a degree of coldness
and bitterness which suits ill with my conception of
female character and a female's station in society.
... I could like to see her surrounded with a more
sober set of companions than Rousseau and Byron
and such like ... I fear Jane has already dipped
too deep into that spring, so that unless some more
solid food be afforded I fear she will escape alto-
gether out of the region of my sympathies and the
sympathies of honest home-bred men. In these
feelings I know you will join me." In 1822, Irving
wrote to Miss Welsh herself, " Now it does give me
great hope that God will yet be pleased to open
your mind to the highest of all knowledge, the
knowledge of his Blessed Son, and give therewith
the highest of all delights, of being like his Son in
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 31
character and in destiny, when I see you not
alienated from men of genius by their being men of
religion, but attracted to them I think rather the
more. I could wish indeed — and forgive me when
I make free to suggest it — that your mind were less
anxious for the distinction of being enrolled amongst
those whom this world has crowned with their
admiration, than among those whom God has
crowned with his approval. . . . Oh, how few I
find, my dear Jane, hardly have I found a single
one, who can stand the intoxication of high talents
or resist presuming to lord it over others."
In Carlyle's numerous letters to Miss Welsh,
from his introduction to her in 1821 till their
marriage in 1826, there is not a sentence calculated
to inspire doubt, while there is much that ought to
have exalted her moral nature, and after marriage
his creed might have saved her from blank scepticism
had she chosen to accept it. But she was a worldly
little woman, and her Godlessness, until she was by
severe illness brough back to some semblance of
piety, was perhaps a rather disenchanting element
in her character. Froude would have us believe
that in relation to his wife Carlyle was an icono-
clast and a faith wrecker, an atheist of the most
blatant type. But what are the facts — the facts of
things — as Carlyle would have had it ? He was
a fervid Theist, proclaiming the existence of God
with as much earnestness and insistence as the
inspired camel-driver of Arabia. He was an
intensely religious man, who, while rejecting
theologic dogmas and formulas, accepted Chris-
%2 THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
o
tianity in its ethical aspects, and was never tired
of preaching truth, honesty, temperance, mercy,
humility and God-fearing. He had the deepest
reverence for the life and character of Christ as
represented in the Gospels. He retained a con-
viction of the efficacy of prayer, and had a lurking
belief in a Particular Providence, and a clinging hope
of the immortality of the soul. When stricken in
years he found that expression was best given to his
spiritual needs in Pope's verses in the " Universal
Prayer " —
" Father of all ! in every age,
In every clime, adored,
By saint, by savage and by sage
Jehovah Jove or Lord !
Thou Great First-Cause, least understood,
Who all my sense confined
To know but this, that Thou art good,
And that myself am blind."
" Not a word of that," he wrote in 1868, " requires
change for me at this time, if words are to be used
at all."
Carlyle's creed might have given some support
to Jane Welsh and filled up the blank in her mind
had she been able to grasp it and believe that the
Maker of all things will do right ; but, as clever,
self-sufficient women are apt to do when they have
thrown away faith, she went to the extreme of
scepticism. Perhaps if she had read " The
Nemesis of Faith " she might have been cured of
her doubts. That she was what she was, was no
fault of Carlyle's. Had she remained in the fold in
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 33
which she was brought up, he would never have
called her out of it, for he recognised that spiritual
truth may have many different vestments. After
his own re-birth we find him writing to his aged
mother thus : " Often, my dear mother, in solitary
pensive moments, does it come across me like the
cold shadow of death that we two must part in the
course of time. I shudder at the thought, and find
no refuge except in humbly trusting that the great
God will surely appoint us a meeting in that far
country to which we are tending. May He bless
you for ever, my dear mother, and keep up in your
heart the sublime hopes which at present serve as
a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night,
to guide our footsteps through the wilderness of
life. We are in His hands. He will not utterly
forsake us. Let us trust in Him."
Two years before her death, when his wife was
visiting Dr. Russell at Thornhill amidst the scenes
of her girlhood, Carlyle wrote to her : " What
strange old days (sunk like old ages) you look out
upon from your windows there, my poor heavy-
laden little woman. Yes ; but it is for ever true
' The Eternal rules above us ' and in us and around
us ; and this is not Hell or Hades but the ' Place
of Hope ' — the Place where what is right will be
fulfilled. And you know that, too, in your way, my
own little Jeannie — and you will not and must not
forget it ; forgetting it one would go mad."
But all this was hypocrisy, Froude suggests.
" I suppose," he remarks of Carlyle, " that his own
inconsistencies interfered with the effect of his
D
34 THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
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."
So Mrs. Carlyle knew her husband for an impostor,
and laughed in her sleeve at his invocations of the
Silences, the Eternities, etc. And yet of this very
man, whom Froude thus estimates, in 1887, he had
written to Mrs. Alexander Carlyle in 1880: "I
have been reading over the letters to his mother
and brothers. They are so admirable, and give so
full a picture of his inner life — so consistent from
first to last, that I think, when the ' Reminiscences '
are published, these letters ought to form an
accompanying volume. No life could be written
which would furnish so complete a conception of
him — of his own nature and of the circumstances
under which he had to work."
We have thus far followed Froude in his
pamphlet, " My Relations with Carlyle," and have
found it really an exposition of Mr. and Mrs.
Carlyle's relations with each other. If we ask what
the impression left by this exposition is, the answer
must surely be that Carlyle, if Froude is to be
believed, was a bully and a brute, selfish and
vaporish, incessantly wrangling with his unhappy
wife whom he neglected, ill-treated, compelled to
engage in menial offices and alienated from religion,
thus undermining her health and hastening her
death. Fine phrases are all very well, but they
cannot obscure the " facts of things," if they are
facts, and when Froude tells us that he did not
allow his reverence and admiration for Carlyle's
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 35
intellect and high moral greatness to be interfered
with by what he saw and heard, we can only
marvel at his moral obtuseness and his heed-
lessness in writing down his own condemnation.
Nay, it must be said that if his tale is true,
there was more than moral obtuseness in Froude's
conduct ; there was cowardly acquiescence in a
flagrant wrong. For six years, by his own account,
he stood by, consenting to the slow martyrdom of
a woman whom he has described as bright and
sparkling and tender and uttered no word of remon-
strance or protest. He saw her involved in a
perpetual blizzard and did nothing to shelter her.
He witnessed at Cheyne Row the enactment of " a
tragedy as stern and real as the story of CEdipus,"
but it was no business of his. It was enough for
him to be admitted to the Cheyne Row tea parties
and enjoy the brilliancy of the conversation.
Froude's representatives must ultimately feel grate-
ful to us for showing that he was not altogether as
callous as he has endeavoured to prove himself
to have been.
For what we have heard hitherto about Carlyle
from Froude, Froude is himself responsible. For
the general description of the life at Cheyne Row
and of Carlyle's treatment of his wife, he has, in
" My Relations with Carlyle," drawn entirely on
his own reminiscences. We are expected to
receive with faith his recollections of what he
noticed and of the gossip he heard when admitted
to Carlyle's family circle, which, with an unparalleled
abuse of hospitality, he has made use of to sully
d 2
36 THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
the good name of his host. No particular instance
is recalled ; no confirmatory evidence is quoted ;
no documentary corroboration is referred to. The
charges rest on the unsupported testimony of an
habitual blunderer.
But besides the general charges against Carlyle
in connection with his treatment of his wife, which
Froude has made, he has three specific charges to
bring forward, and for these, while he has adopted
and published them, he does not make himself
directly answerable. They are grave charges. One
impugns Carlyle's conduct in connection with his
friendship with Lady Ashburton. Another traces
the unhappiness of his married life to a physical
defect under which, it is alleged, he laboured, and
which made his marriage no marriage. A third
accuses him of using personal violence to his wife.
Each of these three charges rests exclusively upon
the evidence of one witness, and in each case that
witness is the same person, Miss Geraldine Jewsbury.
The whole edifice of imputation which Froude has
with so much ingenuity and apparent ingenuousness
erected, rests solely on confidential communications
made to him by this lady, and the first and most
essential point to determine is her credibility.
Froude did not, of course, fail to realise this.
He perceived that it was of paramount importance
to his case that Miss Jewsbury should be believed,
and he has therefore taken pains to show that she
had the best opportunities of knowing what she
spoke about, and was a faithful, guileless creature ;
and in doing this he has resorted to methods which
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 37
are certainly not characterised by an excess of scru-
pulosity. Mrs. Carlyle, he tells us, spoke and wrote
of Geraldine Jewsbury as her Consuelo ; but if she
did so, she must have used the appellation in an
ironical sense, for their correspondence proves that
she never took any bit of advice Miss Jewsbury
offered, snubbed her peremptorily whenever she
ventured to express an opinion, and looked upon
her more as an exasperator than as a com-
forter. That they were often on terms of close
intimacy is true. Miss Jewsbury was a gifted
woman who had introduced herself to Carlyle by
writing to him as one of his ardent worshippers and
became a hanger-on of the Cheyne Row household.
But her intimacy with Mrs. Carlyle was not of the
sort which Froude would have us believe and which
he indicates by the incorrect statement that Miss
Jewsbury "was about Mrs. Carlyle's own age":
the truth being that there were eleven years between
them — Mrs. Carlyle having been born in 1801, and
Miss Jewsbury in 18 12. Miss Jewsbury was never
admitted to the penetralia of Mrs. Carlyle's thoughts
and feelings, but was kept waiting and serving in
the courts without, and there was always an element
of patronage and protection in Mrs. Carlyle's attitude
towards her. Mrs. Carlyle was flattered by the
worship she offered, and was grateful for the many
delicate attentions she bestowed ; but from first to
last she treated her as a weak and wayward being,
destitute of discretion and good sense, and it is
surely a significant fact that Froude deliberately
suppressed every letter of Mrs. Carlyle's in which
IS*.
38 THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
her candid opinion of her friend is set forth.
In the " Letters and Memorials " that Froude
selected and edited, there is nothing reflecting
unfavourably on Miss Jewsbury, whereas in the
" New Letters and Memorials " may be found
abundant proofs of the light esteem in which
Mrs. Carlyle held her. She described her as a
fussy, romantic, hysterical woman, a considerable
fool, with her head packed full of nonsense, and
nick-named her " Miss Gooseberry." " It is her
besetting sin," she said, " and her trade of novelist
has aggravated it — the desire of feeling and pro-
ducing violent emotions." Miss Jewsbury's intrigues
and love affairs are often contemptuously alluded
to by Mrs. Carlyle. " Geraldine," she wrote,
" has one besetting weakness. She is never happy
unless she has a grande passion on hand, and as
unmarried men take fright at her impulsive and
demonstrative ways, her grandes pissions for these
thirty years have been all expended on married
men." In another place she mentions that she was
" openly making the craziest love to a man " who
was engaged to be married, and in another that she
was " in a frenzy over a letter from her declared
lover, an Egyptian," who had one wife already, and
in still another that she had herself allowed that
she had "absolutely no sense of decency." And
beyond all this Miss Jewsbury's feelings towards
Mrs. Carlyle herself, which were well-known to
Froude, were of a nature that should have made
him pause before listening to her revelations
on ticklish topics. They were highly extra va-
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 39
gant, and in some degree perverted. The mani-
festation by Mrs. Carlyle of some preference
or supposed preference for another woman led
on one occasion to a wild outburst of what
Miss Jewsbury herself called " tiger jealousy,"
which, says Mrs. Carlyle, " on the part of one
woman towards another it had never entered my
head to conceive. I am not at all sure she is not
going mad." Other instances of violent emotional
perturbations over Mrs. Carlyle are recorded, and
the language of Miss Jewsbury's letters to Mrs.
Carlyle, preserved by Mrs. Ireland, is often highly
charged and erotic. It is not customary for a
woman of thirty-two years of age to write to her
female friend, eleven years her senior, in such terms
as these : " You are never out of my thoughts one
hour together ; " "I think of you much more than
if you were my lover ; " "I cannot express my
feelings even to you — vague undefined yearnings to
be yours in some way." Of delicate, nervous,
highly-strung constitution, Miss Jewsbury became a
morbid, unstable, excitable woman, constantly com-
plaining of headaches and other ailments, and
suffering from mental depression, for she chronicles
of herself: "For two years I lived only in short
respites from this blackness of despair. It is not
sorrow ; one could endure that. Oh, it is too
frightful to talk about ! The depression which falls
upon one in a moment, enveloping one body and
soul for hours or days, as it may be, and the horrid,
lucid interval which we spend in dread of its return,
knowing full well that it will come." All the
4 o THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
biographical details of Miss Jewsbury which we
possess, and they are ample, establish that, notwith-
standing her interesting personality, her brilliant
conversational powers and fine literary talent, she
was unreliable and erratic, or, as Carlyle summed
her up, " a flimsy tatter of a creature."
In order to show that Carlyle placed some
confidence in Miss Jewsbury, we are told by Froude
that he " had requested Miss Geraldine Jewsbury,
who had been his wife's most intimate friend, to tell
him any biographical anecdotes which she could
remember to have heard from Mrs. Carlyle's lips,"
and that after reading these he wrote, " Few or
none of these narratives are correct in details,
but there is a certain mythical truth in all or
most of them." This in the original is as follows,
being a letter to Miss Jewsbury: "Dear Geral-
dine, — Few or none of these Narratives are correct
in all the details ; some of them, in almost all
the details are incorrect. I have not read care-
fully beyond a certain point which is marked on
the margin. Your recognition of the character
is generally true and faithful ; little of portraiture
in it that satisfies me. On the whole, all tends
to the mythical; it is very strange how much
of mythical there already here is ! As Lady
Lothian set you on writing, it seems hard that she
should not see what you have written : but I wish
you to take her word of honour that no one else
shall ; and my earnest request to you is that,
directly from her Ladyship, you will bring the Book
to me and consign it to my keeping. No need
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 41
that an idle-gazing world should know my lost
Darling's History, or mine ; — nor will they ever ; —
they may depend upon it ! One fit service, and one
only, they can do to Her or to Me : cease speaking
of us through all eternity, as soon as they conve-
niently can." The words, "There is a certain
mythical truth," etc., are transferred and altered
by Mr. Froude from a subsequent passage, and
Miss Jewsbury's Narratives, which nobody but Lady
Lothian was to see, were of course published in
full by Froude.
Of Miss Jewsbury's Narratives of his wife,
Carlyle said that her accounts of her childhood
were substantially correct, but as regards the rest
" few or none are correct in all the details, some of
them in almost all the details are incorrect." He
subsequently refers to the Narratives as a " Book of
Myths," and declares that they grow more and more
mythical as they go on. " Geraldine's account of
Comley Bank and life at Edinbugh is extremely
mythic." "Geraldine's Craigenputtock stories are
more mythical than any of the rest ; " and it is upon
these Craigenputtock stories, mythical of the mythic,
that Froude based his primary indictment against
Carlyle for his treatment, or rather maltreatment, of
his wife.
And this Geraldine, this weaver of myths, this
hysterical and irresponsible woman, is the sole
witness he has to call in support of his serious
charges against Carlyle, two of which are now for
the first time brought to light.
It was in what may be called the " Ashburton
42 THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
Affair " that Froude first invoked Miss Jewsbury s
aid — an affair in connexion with which the injustice
he has done Carlyle may be made clearly apparent.
His first knowledge of it — for he was never
himself admitted to the Ashburton circle — came to
him, he states, in 1871, more probably in 1873,
when a' large parcel of papers, including the Memoir
of Mrs. Carlyle and her Letters, handed to him by
Carlyle, led him to place himself in communication
with John Forster, who told him a singular story.
He told him, he says, " that Lady Ashburton had
fallen deeply in love with Carlyle, that Carlyle had
behaved nobly, and that Lord Ashburton had
thanked him." Those who knew John Forster — a
generous, straightforward man, trained and even
sworn, as a Commissioner in Lunacy, to silence as
to family secrets — will be chary in believing that,
even had he been certain of all this, he would have
communicated it to Froude, whose reputation for
literary indiscretion was already established, and
thus have compromised the reputation of a woman
of high rank and brilliant ability, of whose hospitality
he had often partaken. But as it turns out that he
had and could have had no foundation for the
defamatory statement, it may be taken as certain
that he never made it. Familiar as he was with the
usages of society, knowing as he did the terms of
close intimacy on which the-Ashburtons and Carlyles
remained after her ladyship's alleged indiscretion
and Carlyle's noble conduct, it is impossible that he
could have harboured such a suspicion. His alleged
communication to Froude on the subject, of which
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 43
no shred of corroboration can be adduced, may be
set down therefore as one of Froude's imaginary
conversations.
But even if John Forster had told Froude what
he repeats, the introduction of the little bit of
scandal into Froude's narrative is gratuitous and
inexcusable. It was, he assures us, wholly untrue.
Then why cause annoyance to Lady Ashburton's
family and friends by referring to it at all ? Merely
to secure an antithetical effect. The story was not
only untrue, but the opposite of the truth. It was
not, Froude now informs us, Lady Ashburton who
was deeply in love with Carlyle, but Carlyle who
was deeply in love with Lady Ashburton. And
here let us mark in passing an illustration of the
unblushing inconsistency of our informant. " That
Carlyle should have behaved nobly," he writes,
"under such circumstances [that is in rejecting
Lady Ashburton's advances] seemed extremely
likely to me," and in the next paragraph but one
he represents Carlyle as behaving with detestable
meanness in making love to his friend's wife at the
very time when he was accepting favours at that
friend's hand. This is indeed characteristic of
Froude's handling of Carlyle. He presents him to
us as a bundle of contrarieties and incompatabilities
and mutually destructive elements such as never
lodged together in one human body.
It was not until 1871, according to Froude (or
1873, as we shall hereafter show), when he read
Mrs. Carlyle's Journal, that the true inwardness
of the Ashburton affair dawned on him. There,
44 THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
he says, was the explanation of much of the bitter-
ness that appeared in her letters ; but writing in
Cuba in 1887 he seems to have forgotten what he
wrote in London in 1883, for then he unequivocally
stated, in his note to the Journal, that he did not
understand it and submitted it to Miss Geraldine
Jewsbury, who supplied him with the version of
the Ashburton affair, which he now adopts and sets
forth as his own.
Froude had no personal knowledge of the Ash-
burton affair. Mrs. Carlyle's Journal remained dark
to him. He invited Miss Jewsbury to let in the
light on it, and she burned magnesium and strontium
with dazzling and blinding effect. He unhesitatingly
accepted this variety artist's interpretation of what
was cryptic in the Journal, and in " My Relations
with Carlyle " he presents it as his own without
even mentioning Miss Jewsbury's name, and con-
veys the idea that it was in the papers placed in
his hands that he himself found the solution of the
Ashburton mystery. There he discovered, he would
have us believe, that " 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
idolatrous homage which he had once paid to
herself" [his wife].
That is a grave charge to bring against " a
great spiritual teacher," and on the face of it
somewhat improbable as brought against a man
between fifty and sixty years of age, and of such a
constitution that according to Froude he ought
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 45
never to have married. But let Froude call his
witnesses. He has but one. Miss Geraldine Jews-
bury steps into the box. " This flimsy tatter of a
creature," as Carlyle called her, this hysterical
woman, this practised romancer, this volume of
" exaggerations and affectations and got-up feelings,"
is the sole prop of Froude's case. And how did he
take her evidence ? Not by asking her what she
knew of the affair, but by sending her Mrs. Carlyle's
private Journal, which she had kept locked up and
never meant human eye to see, and asking her to
read for him between the lines of the obscure
passages. The task was no doubt a congenial one
to Miss Jewsbury. She gave wings to her fancy.
She had never been admitted to the real confidence
of that sensible and discreet woman Mrs. Carlyle,
but she had no hesitation in imagining that she
had been behind the scenes and had seen the actors
in undress. She accused Carlyle of having lingered
" in the primrose path of dalliance " and of being
" a philosopher in chains " to a great and capricious
lady, and so subjecting his poor wife to " sufferings
real, intense, and at times too grievous to be borne "
Froude instantly and implicitly accepted Miss
Jewsbury's key to the Ashburton cypher. Forster's
alleged story had to be put aside, and here, again,
crops up Froude's inaccuracy. " What," he asks,
"was the meaning of Forster's story? He died
soon after, and I had no opportunity of asking him."
But Miss Jewsbury supplied her key to the Ash-
burton cypher either in 1871 or 1873, and Forster
died in 1876, and was vigorous to the last, and yet
46 THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
in three or four years Froude could not find an
opportunity of asking him to explain an entirely
erroneous story, for which he had made himself
responsible, and to clear up a point vitally affecting
the character of the great man whose life he (Froude)
had undertaken to write, and to write, as he is
always assuring us, with such scrupulous fidelity.
Was the penny post suspended ? Could he not
walk a mile, or spare a quarter of an hour ? The
truth is Miss Jewsbury's theory suited him exactly,
being in harmony with his preconceived opinion,
and he did not think it necessary to submit it to any
close scrutiny. Carlyle lived for seven years after
Froude was put in possession of it, and surely, in
common justice, he ought to have been asked to
confirm or contradict it. " I tried once," says
Froude, " to approach the subject with Carlyle him-
self, but he shrank from it with such signs of distress
that I could not speak to him about it again."
Strange conduct this on the part of a man who
during four years never walked out with Froude —
and they walked out together twice weekly — with-
out drifting back, so Froude tells us, into a pathetic
cry of sorrow over things that were irreparable, and
giving expression to a repentance that was deep
and passionate. One would have thought that it
would have been a relief to him to have made a
clean breast of it to his father confessor. A repent-
ance that consists of pharisaical generalities, and
does not condescend to particulars, is not of the
noble type which Froude affirms Carlyle's to have
been ; and it seems probable, therefore, that Froude's
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 47
approach to Carlyle on the Ashburton affair must
be put down amongst the imaginary conversations,
more especially as with others, Carlyle never in his
declining years manifested the slightest|disinclina-
tion to talk about his friendship with the Ashburtons.
Never did Carlyle, in conversation or in his writings,
even in the gloomiest hours of his bereavement,
express the least sorrow or contrition, or blame him-
self in connection with his intimacy with Lady
Ashburton. He always refers to it with pride ; and
there is, as Venables had justly remarked, " a total
unconsciousness of any questionable conduct or
feeling" on his own part. " Least of all, does he
regret the long-continued friendship which at one
time caused her [Mrs. Carlyle] so much discontent."
No one can read Carlyle's moving note on the
death of Lady Ashburton, without perceiving that
he looked back on his friendship with her with no
qualms of conscience : — " Monday, 4th May, 4^ p.m.,
at Paris, died Lady Ashburton : a great and irre-
parable sorrow to me ; yet with some beautiful
consolations in it, too." In annotating his wife's
letters after her death, when in the full flood of his
grief, and when remorse for any wrong done to her,
if, as Froude affirms, it visited him, must have been
tormenting his soul, he could thus write of the
woman whom Froude points to as her rival in his
affections: "The most queen-like woman I had ever
known or seen. The honour of her constant regard
had, for ten years back, been amongst my proudest
and most valued possessions — lost now ; gone — for
ever gone ! ... In no society, English or other,
48 THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
had I seen the equal or the second of this great
lady that has gone ; by nature and by culture facile
princeps, she, I think, of all great ladies I have ever
seen." In Mrs. Carlyle, a great change took place
in her view of Lady Ashburton after that lady's
death. She was then, in 1857, recovering in
some measure from the morbid melancholy which
was at its acme in 1856, and the scales fell from her
eyes. Regarding Lady Ashburton's funeral, which
Carlyle attended, she wrote, " All the men who used
to compose a sort of Court for her were there in
tears." As to her first visit to the Grange after
Lady Ashburton's death, she wrote : " The same
household of visitors ; the same elaborate apparatus
for living ; and the life of the whole thing gone
out of it ! Acting a sort of Play of the Past, with
the principal Part suppressed, obliterated by the
stern hand of Death." She actually accepted from
Lord Ashburton some of the belongings of his late
wife, which she could scarcely have done had her
feelings towards her continued as they were in
1856. " I wish you would thank Lord Ashburton
for me," she wrote to her husband from Haddington ;
" I couldn't say anything about his kindness in
giving me those things which she had been in the
habit of wearing ; I felt so sick and so like to cry,
that I am afraid I seemed quite stupid and
ungrateful to him."
But if Froude hesitated to sound Carlyle on the
Ashburton affair and could not in three years find
time to interrogate Forster, there were, at the time
Miss Jewsbury's version of it was communicated to
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 49
him, various other ways of getting at the truth.
Miss Mary Aitken, whom he at that time addressed
in his letters as " My dear Mary," was living with
her uncle, and had access to all his papers and could
have helped him. Dr. John Carlyle, who knew
more than any one else of what the married life of
his brother and sister-in-law had been, was alive
and could have settled the point. The second Lady
Ashburton was alive, and could have resolved his
difficulties. To not one of these did he apply. Not
one of them is he able to quote. To none of
Mrs. Carlyle's friends at the time of the Ashburton
affair, save Miss Jewsbury, did he apply for en-
lightenment. He buttoned up in his breast that
lady's precious disclosure and reserved it for post-
mortem application. True, he says, " there are in
existence, or there were, masses of extravagant
letters of Carlyle's to the great lady as ecstatic as
Don Quixote's to Dulcinea," but he does not
say that he has ever seen these letters, or has
derived his knowledge of their nature, from any one
who has seen them. It ought to be a sufficient
answer to Froude's statement to recall the fact that
these letters passed, on Lady Ashburton's death,
into the hands of her husband who read them, and
cannot have thought them offensive in any way, as he
continued one of Carlyle's warmest friends until his
life's end, that on his death they were read by his
widow Louisa, Lady Ashburton, who also main-
tained an uninterrupted friendship with the writer.
A little while before Carlyle's death, Louisa, Lady
Ashburton, told Mrs. Alexander Carlyle that she
E
5 o THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
had burnt, or was going to burn, the letters, that
they were friendly intimate letters, expressive of
admiration, but in no way transgressing proper
bounds. If in one of these letters, as Froude
declares, Carlyle asked Lady Ashburton not to tell
his wife of some visit he paid her, the circumstance
is susceptible not merely of an innocent but of a
laudable explanation, for during part of the Ash-
burton friendship, his wife was in her morbid
jealousy, feverishly counting his visits to Bath
House, and it might have been humane to conceal
from her that he had dined there.
But if Carlyle's letters to Lady Ashburton have
been destroyed, Lady Ashburton's replies to them
have been preserved. Carlyle said they were " dry
as sticks," but they read now as simple, friendly,
kindly epistles. In not one of them is there any
chidinof of the Ouixotic exuberance of the corre-
spondent, which Froude has affirmed ; in not one
is there a trace of the imperious mistress to whom
Carlyle was a passing amusement and a slave, as
Froude has phrased it, going far beyond even the
transcendental Miss Jewsbury, who is obliged to
admit that any other wife than Mrs. Carlyle " would
have laughed at Mr. Carlyle's bewitchment with Lady
Ashburton." Froude insinuated that Carlyle was
extravagantly deluded, and having drawn the con-
trast that Lady Ashburton was a great lady of the
world, while " Carlyle with all his genius had the
manners to the last of an Annandale peasant," he
recalls an instance of a peasant of genius who was
weak enough to believe that a great lady who had
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 51
taken an admiring interest in him, under analagous
circumstances, wanted to marry him. All this is
designed to bring censure and derision on Carlyle,
and all is wide of the mark. Carlyle was proud to
call himself a peasant's son, but at the same time
he had some good Scottish blood in his veins.
Froude said, and he must have forgotten he
had said it, " There was reason to believe that
his own father was the actual representative of the
Lords of Torthorwald ; and though he laughed,
when he spoke of it, he was clearly not displeased
to know that he had noble blood in him. Rustic
as he was in habits, dress and complexion, he had a
knightly, chivalrous temperament, and fine natural
courtesy ; another sure sign of good breeding was
his hand, which was small, perfectly shaped with
long fine fingers and aristocratic finger nails."
Venables, too, had said, " Notwithstanding his
humble birth and rustic training, he was keenly
sensible to refinement of character and manner,
and his own demeanour, tho' not conventional,
was gracious and on fit occasions courtly." " My
recollections of him are of almost uniform geniality
and unfailing courtesy, tho' his cheerfulness might
not be always undisturbed." Carlyle's manners of
an Annandale peasant did not exclude him from
the highest circles of London Society, and were
assuredly no barrier to the friendship of that great
Lady, Lady Ashburton, which was the utmost that,
in her case, he ever aspired to.
Stripped of the bedizenments that Froude and
Miss Jewsbury have decked it in, the Ashburton
e 2
52 THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
affair is innocent and intelligible enough. It was
Mrs. Carlyle who made the acquaintance of Lady
Ashburton in the first instance, when she formed a
high opinion of her merits, describing her as the
cleverest woman she had ever met, full of energy
and sincerity, and with an excellent heart ; and it
was she who urged Carlyle to accept the invitations
which Lord Ashburton, then Mr. Baring, gave him
to his town and country houses, realising the advan-
tages which might accrue from the acquaintance of
the distinguished people that he met in these places.
Carlyle was reserved and fastidious, and, had he
declined the hand which the Ashburtons held out,
London Society of the better sort might long have
remained closed to him. As the Ashburtons' guest,
he met on equal terms men of rank and letters.
Until the death of Sir Robert Peel, he probably
entertained some hope of entering public or official
life, and it was therefore desirable that he should
become known to the leading politicians of the
period. He took pleasure, too, legitimate pleasure,
in the society of the brilliant and ambitious woman,
so full of intellectual gaiety and satirical caprice,
who presided over the Ashburton circle ; but that he
was not, as Froude suggests, an interloper in that
circle, paying clandestine homage to its mistress,
let Lord Houghton, writing when both Lady
Ashburton and Carlyle were dead, attest : " There
could," he says, "be no better guarantee of these
qualities (a joyous sincerity that no conventionalities,
high or low, could restrain — a festive nature flower-
ing through the artificial soil of elevated life) than
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 53
the constant friendship that existed between Lady
Ashburton and Carlyle— on her part one of filial
respect and duteous admiration. The frequent
presence of the great moralist of itself gave to the
life of Bath House and The Grange a reality that
made the most ordinary worldly component parts
of it more human and worthy than elsewhere."
That the friendship between Carlyle and Lady
Ashburton never, on either side, drifted into ex-
travagance, the character and conduct of Lord
Ashburton are a sufficient Guarantee. He had
been engaged in vast monetary transactions in
various parts of the world ; he had, as Mr. Bingham
Baring, formed part of the Administration of
Sir Robert Peel in 1835. He was a man of the
noblest and purest purpose, with an entirely un-
selfish and truthful disposition, who, while mani-
festing lover-like delight and intellectual wonder in
the display of his wife's genius and gaiety, main-
tained, we are told, a quiet authority over her in all
the serious affairs of life. Is it likely that such a
man would tolerate the slightest indiscretion on the
part of his wife or of Carlyle, or permit, under his
roof, anything calculated to cause just pain and
anger to Mrs. Carlyle, for whom he felt the highest
regard ?
In the early days the Ashburton friendship was
a source of unalloyed pleasure to Mrs. Carlyle.
The invitations to Bath House or Addiscombe
invariably included her — unless in the case of a
gentlemen's dinner-party — and she many times went
alone, leaving her husband at home. But, as time
54 THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
went on, a certain jealousy of Lady Ashburton took
possession of her mind. Lady Ashburton was as
clever a conversationalist as she, and had social
prestige which gave her an advantage, and Mrs.
Carlyle could not bear to be outshone. She first
grudged Lady Ashburton the attention and admira-
tion she commanded in the general circle, she then
grudged specifically the attention and admiration
that Carlyle openly gave her, and finally she got it
into her head that Carlyle had transferred to her
the attention and admiration he once surrendered
to his wife, and was in love with her. Then it
was that in pathetic, sometimes in bitter accents,
she gave utterance to the morbid jealousy that
consumed her —
" Oh, waly, waly, love is bonnie
A little while when it is new;
But when it's auld
It waxeth cauld,
And melts away like morning dew."
" Beautiful verse, sweet and sad, like barley-
sugar dissolved in tears. About the morning dew,
however ! I would say, ' Goes out like candle
snuff' would be a truer simile ; only that would not
suit the rhyme."
This last phase, however, morbid jealousy,
only came when Mrs. Carlyle's health had given
way, and was indeed but a sign of mental disorder.
It may be laid down as axiomatic in medical psy-
chology, that when a highly neurotic and childless
woman, at a critical period of life, takes to morphia,
morbid jealousy will develop itself. Mrs. Carlyle
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 55
was highly neurotic and childless, and at a critical
period of life she became addicted to morphia
and other drugs, and ultimately developed morbid
jealousy of her husband. No medical man can look
carefully into her case without being convinced that
she suffered from neurasthenia and climacteric
melancholia, and that the piteous outcries of the
Journal, which Froude, guided by Miss Jewsbury,
accepted as proofs of her husband's perfidy and
cruelty, were really but the empty ejaculations of
her disordered feelings. Only the husband who has
gone through the ordeal of living for years with
a wife emotionally deranged, but intellectually clear
as Mrs. Carlyle was, can realise what Carlyle must
have endured, at a time, too, when he was struggling"
and almost sinking under a heavy task. His
sympathetic gentleness and forbearance are beyond
all praise. Froude having thrown off all constraints
now declares that Mrs. Carlyle was " ashamed and
indignant at the unworthy position in which her
husband was placing himself. Rinaldo in the bower
of Armida or Hercules spinning silks for Omphale."
It must have escaped his memory that he had
formerly written " Carlyle's letters during all this
period [the Asburton affair period] are uniformly
tender and affectionate, and in them was his true
self, if she could but have allowed herself to see it."
The Ashburton affair was truly, as Froude
remarks, the cause of much heartburning and
misery at Cheyne Row, but it was so only because
Mrs. Carlyle's diseased fancies fastened upon it, as
they would have fastened on something else had
56 THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
Carlyle broken with the Ashburtons altogether.
Froude has wholly misunderstood it, has published
abroad the midnight mutterings of a sick woman,
and has based on them discreditable reflections on
her long-suffering husband. That Carlyle took the
correct view of his wife's condition is clear, for
looking back on it in 1866, he ascribed the
dispiritment and unhappiness of his wife "chiefly
to the deeper downbreak of her own poor health,
which from this time [1856, the date of the Journal],
as I now see better, continued its advance upon the
citadel or nervous system."
But bad as in Froude's sight the Ashburton
affair was, something worse remained behind.
Carlyle " had said in his Journal that there was a
secret connected with him unknown to his closest
friends," and without a knowledge of which no true
biography was possible; and so, when selected as
his biographer, Froude set himself to find out this
secret, which if unearthed must necessarily influ-
ence him in all he might say. He had no doubt
from the first that it was connected with some
moral delinquency, and how wildly awry he went
in his reading of Carlyle's papers may be best
shown by quoting the passage in the Journal, and
the only passage, in which the so-called secret is
referred to. It is dated 29th December, 1848,
and runs as follows : " Darwin said to Jane, the
other day in his quizzing-serious manner, ' Who
will write Carlyle's < Life ' ? The word reported
to me, set me thinking how impossible it was and
would for ever remain, for any creature to write
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 57
my ' Life ' ; the chief elements of my little destiny
have all along lain deep below view or surmise,
and never will or can be known to any son of
Adam. I would say to my biographer, if any fool
undertook such a task, ' Forbear, poor fool ; let no
life of me be written ; let me and my bewildered
wrestlings lie buried here, and be forgotten swiftly
of all the world. If thou write, it will be mere delu-
sions and hallucinations. The confused world never
understood, nor will understand, me and my poor
affairs ; not even the persons nearest me could
guess at them ; — nor was it found indispensable ;
nor is it now, for any but an idle purpose, profitable,
were it even possible. Silence, and go thy ways
elsewhither.' " To the common man, to say nothing
of the student of Carlyle's writings, but one inter-
pretation of this is possible. It refers not to one
secret but to many — to the bewildered wrestlings
of the writer's soul with the mysteries of being,
to those incommunicable stirrings that agitate the
depths of every human heart. It is but a variant
of what Carlyle has said many times in his books
about the sacramental nature of life, and the
barrier that must always shut out one human
being from another. But that would not do for
Froude ; he detected a personal secret in this
passage, and determined to ferret it out. And help
came to him in that daughter of Eve, Miss Jewsbury,
who at once detected what Carlyle had said no son
of Adam could find out, and made patent what he
had thought not even the persons nearest him —
therefore not even his wife — could guess at. Purely
58 THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
in the interests of the frank biography, Miss Jews-
bury, hearing that Froude was to write Carlyle's life,
hurried to him and disclosed that " Carlyle was one
of those persons who ought never to have married,"
and, like a flower that perishes in the blossoming,
Froude tells us, she died soon after. But of course,
Froude is wrong, for, as a matter of fact, she
survived seven years after her revelation. This
unmarried lady went to Froude, who was not a
medical man, and soiled the memory of the man
towards whom she had professed undying gratitude,
and Froude is not ashamed to say that she entered
on " curious details." We need not suppose that in
doing so she suffered from maidenly embarrassment,
or was suffused with blushes, for we have it on
Mrs. Carlyle's authority that she had herself allowed
that she had " absolutely no sense of decency," and
that her tendency towards " the unmentionable "
was too strong to be stayed. She informed Froude
that Carlyle's extraordinary temper, which as he
grew older and more famous became more violent
and overbearing, was a consequence of his organisa-
tion, that Mrs. Carlyle never forgave the injury
done her in her marriage, and that her disappointed
longing for children had been at the bottom of all
their quarrels and unhappiness.
" I have never been curious about family secrets,"
says Froude, " and have always as a rule of my
life declined to listen to communications which
were no business of mine," and yet he seems to
have opened his ears widely to Miss Jewsbury's
unpleasant family communication. That communi-
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 59
cation was made to him in 1873, and must have
been always present to his mind while writing
" The Life of Carlyle," and yet in that life he says,
" I for myself concluded, though not till after long
hesitation, that there should be no reserve, and
therefore I have practised none." . . . . " To have
been reticent would have implied that there was
something to hide, and taking Carlyle all in all,
there never was a man, I at least never knew one,
whose conduct in life would better bear the fiercest
light that could be thrown upon it." .... "There
ought to be no mystery about Carlyle, and there is
no occasion for mystery." And the man who
penned these sentences in 1883 is he who wrote in
1887, "The worst of these faults [Carlyle's faults]
I have concealed hitherto," and who then and there
placed on record, evidently with a view of its being
ultimately uncovered to the public gaze, a mystery,
which he had concealed, but which he believed had
dominated and clouded the life of the man whose
entirely candid biographer he professed himself
to have been.
Delicacy forbids that we should here discuss
Froude's mystery or Miss Jewsbury's communi-
cation. They have been fully examined in the
pages of a medical journal, where alone they could
be properly considered, and we believe we may say
they have been proved to have been the offspring
of a prurient imagination. There is no truth in them.
The evidence of their falsity is absolutely conclusive.
The use made of them by Froude and his representa-
tives must be regarded as deplorable and a stain on
6o THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
English literature. There was no corroboration of
Miss Jewsbury's statement. Not one line or word
could she point to in all her confidential corre-
spondence with Mrs. Carlyle, extending over a
quarter of a century, or in Mrs. Carlyle's secret
Journal and most retired communings with herself,
when her bitterness against her husband was at its
height, giving the faintest colour to the disclosure.
It depended entirely on her recollection of alleged
conversations with Mrs. Carlyle, to support which
she could produce no collateral evidence; and yet
without the smallest confirmation Froude accepted
her wild and whirling words. He did not think it
necessary to apply any tests, although he regarded
the statement, not as a bit of idle talk, but as of
vital moment, and allowed it to tincture and control
his whole biography of Carlyle. The substance of
it has been concealed until now, but emanations from
it have been for years floating about. Rumour has
given currency to Miss Jewsbury's slander, for slander
it must be called ; as, rightly or wrongly, a certain
degree of opprobrium does attach to the organisation
Miss Jewsbury ascribed to Carlyle, with which
certain intellectual disabilities are often associated.
All readers of Carlyle must allow that his
writings are characterised by splendid virility, and
that he was every inch a man. The Carlyles lived
on a higher plane than Froude conceived. Their
married life of forty years' duration was essentially
beautiful. It was not blessed with offspring. It
was chequered, as all married lives are, with cares,
anxieties and sorrows, it was ruffled by angry
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 61
breezes, it was shadowed by sickness, which at one
time gathered into a thunder-cloud, but it was
irradiated throughout by the pure white light of
wholesome human love.
It seems almost a profanation to quote from the
letters which passed between Carlyle and Jane
Welsh during their courtship, and between Carlyle
and his wife during the early years of their married
life, but it is to be remembered that these are
already on record, having been published by
Froude, and they certainly throw a pleasing light
on the relations which subsisted between them.
During their engagement Jane Welsh wrote to
Carlyle, after a visit to Hoddam Hill, " I love you,
tenderly, devotedly." " I am yours, oh ! that you
knew how wholly yours," in response to some ardent
expression of Carlyle's, whose anticipations of
matrimony were normal enough. " Here," he wrote
from Scotsbrig, "are two swallows in the corner
of my window, that have taken a house this summer ;
and in spite of drought and bad crops are bringing
up a family together with the highest contentment
and unity of soul. Surely, surely Jane Welsh and
Thomas Carlyle here as they stand have in them
conjunctly the wisdom of many swallows. Let
them exercise it then, in God's name, and live
happy as these birds of passage are doing." Mrs.
Carlyle's letters after the marriage, and indeed at
every period of their married life, bear no trace of
disappointment. Six weeks after her marriage she
wrote to her mother-in-law, " We are really very
happy ; and when he falls upon some work we
62 THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
shall be still happier. Indeed, I should be very-
stupid or very thankless, if I did not congratulate
myself every hour of the day on the lot which it
has pleased Providence to assign to me. My
husband is 'so kind, so, in all respects, after my
own heart ! "
During one of her first separations from him,
when visiting her mother at Templand, she addresses
him, " Kindest and dearest of husbands, Are you
thinking you are never to see my sweet face any
more ? . . . I wish I were back to see it and to
give you a kiss for every minute I have been
absent. . . . Dearest, I do love you. God bless
you, my Darling. — Ever ! ever your true Wife."
Again she wrote from Templand within two
years of their marriage, " Goody, Goody, dear
Goody. You said you would weary, and I do hope
in my heart you are wearying. It will be so sweet
to make it all up to you in kisses when I return.
You will take me and hear all my bits of experiences,
and your heart will beat when you find how I have
longed to return to you." Are these the utterances
of an amatively disappointed and mortified wife ?
Carlyle's letters to his wife are not less tenderly
and naturally affectionate than hers to him. His
first letter to her, when they were parted for the
first time since their marriage, is dated 16th April,
1827, and begins thus: "Dearest Wife, — What
strange magic is in that word, now that for the first
time I write it to you. I promised that I would think
of you sometimes ; which truly I have done many
times, or rather all times, with a singular feeling of
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 63
astonishment, as if a new light had risen on me
since we parted, as if, until now, I had never
known how precious my own dearest little Goody
was to me, and what a real an^el of a creature
she was. I could bet a sovereign that you
love me twice as well as ever you did ; for
experience in this matter has given me insight.
Would I were back to you, and my own Jane's
heart would beat against her husband's." Froude
prints Mrs. Carlyle's reply to the foregoing, but with
characteristic alterations. He puts a cold "you"
where Mrs. Carlyle has written " Darling ; " he
puts " my husband " where Mrs. Carlyle has written
" my dearest husband ; " and he omits the amatory
ending, "God keep you, my dear good husband.
Write and love me. Your own Goody."
Another letter in early wedlock runs thus :
" Not unlike what the drop of water from Lazarus's
finger might have been to Dives in the flame
was my dearest Goody's letter to her Husband
yesterday afternoon. . . . No, I do not love you in
the least ; only a little sympathy and admiration, and
a certain esteem, nothing more ! — O my dear, best
wee woman ! — But I will not say a word of all this
till I whisper it in your ear with my arms round
you." Is this the language of an impotent man
addressing the woman to whom he has done a
grievous wrong which she is bitterly resenting ?
Miss Ann Carlyle Aitken and Miss Margaret
Carlyle Aitken, now living in Dumfries, recall that,
twice whilst at Craigenputtock, Mrs. Carlyle con-
sulted their mother, the late Mrs. Aitken, about
64 THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
her maternal hopes, which alas ! came to nought ;
and the late Mrs. Alexander Carlyle, when, on
her aunt's death, she became her uncle's com-
panion, was much touched to find in a drawer at
Cheyne Row a little bundle of baby clothes made
by Mrs. Carlyle's own hands. This reminds us of
Carlyle's pathetic and significant allusion in the
" Reminiscences" to the child's chair which his wife
had herself used when young, and kept in her house
with feelings no woman can fail to understand.
" Her little bit of a first chair, its wee, wee arms,
etc., visible to me in the closet at this moment, is
still here and always was ; I have looked at it
hundreds of times, from of old with many thoughts.
No daughter or son of hers was to sit there ; so it
had been appointed us, my Darling. I have no
Book thousandth-part so beautiful as Thou; but
these were our only ' Children,' — and in a true sense
they were verily ours ; and will perhaps live some
time in the world, after we are both gone ; — and be
of no damage to the poor brute chaos of a world,
let us hope ! The Will of the Supreme shall be
accomplished. Amen"
In the epitaph in Haddington Churchyard Jane
Welsh is described, not as the faithful companion,
but as "the spouse of Thomas Carlyle," "for forty
years the true and ever-loving helpmate of her
husband." Carlyle was a true man, no hypocrite or
slave to convention, and he would not have used
these words had Jane Welsh never been his spouse
in any true sense, but his ill-used thrall who had
been often on the point of leaving him.
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 65
To any one with a spark of knowledge of human
nature, Carlyle's long and passionate mourning for
his wife, his lonesome visits to her grave, where he
knelt down and reverently kissed the green mound,
must betoken a tenderer tie than mere platonic
fellowship.
A word may be said on one or two of the
deductions drawn by Froude from Miss Jewsbury's
extraordinary statement. We are assured that it
was Mrs. Carlyle's disappointed longing for children
that was at the bottom of all the domestic unhappiness
and quarrels at Cheyne Row. How much exagger-
ated by Froude that unhappiness and these quarrels
were has been already shown. How little Mrs.
Carlyle's unfulfilled maternal hopes had to do with
any asperities that did exist, may now be indicated
merely to illustrate Froude's incomprehension of
Mrs. Carlyle's character. A child at Cheyne Row
would have been an unspeakable boon and blessing,
but Mrs. Carlyle had probably during the greater
part of her life there no very strong desire for its
arrival. In the early days at Craigenputtock " she
had the passions of her kind," and longed for a
child, but it was only when they made up their
minds that there was not likely to be a family, that
the Carlyles determined to remove to London, and
there Mrs. Carlyle soon became involved in ambi-
tious projects, with the fulfilment of which the
claims of the nursery must have interfered. Like
some of the fashionable women of the day, she
became more alive to the drawbacks than to the
pleasures of motherhood. She had no great liking
66 THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
for children, and there is not to be found in her
writings a single affectionate reference to them. She
calls them "wersh gorbs " and "insipid offspring,"
and, writing to Mrs. Russell, she exclaimed, " Gra-
cious ! what a luck I had no daughters to guide."
There is no reason to suppose that the want of
children seriously ruffled Mrs. Carlyle's equanimity
at Cheyne Row.
Three times over Froude informs us that Mrs.
Carlyle had resolved to leave her husband. '■ One
had heard that she had often thought of leaving
Carlyle, and as if she had a right to leave him if she
pleased." "She had often resolved to leave Car-
lyle. He, of course, always admitted that she was
at liberty to go if she pleased." " She had definitely
made up her mind to go away, and even to marry
another person." But, in order to marry another
person, she would have had to divorce Carlyle, or
obtain a decree of nullity of marriage ; and with his
inimitable inconsistency, a little further on, Froude
says, " She would not make a scandal by revealing
the truth and dissolving the marriage, but once, at
least, she had resolved to put herself out of the way
altogether." Which is it to be, desertion, divorce
or suicide ? Froude cannot be allowed to juggle
with all three. Mrs. Carlyle contemplated suicide
even before her marriage, and many times after it,
but that she had ever, as is alleged by Froude,
made up her mind to go to Scotland by sea and
drop off the stern of the steamer cannot be believed.
It is one of Geraldine Jewsbury's stories, and is,
of course, apocryphal. Mrs. Carlyle had plenty of
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 67
morphia and henbane and prussic acid and chloro-
form, and could have made away with herself,
without going to sea, of which she had always a
horror. It was Froude's lack of humour, a saving
quality — the essence of which is sensibility ; warm,
tender fellow-feeling with all forms of existence —
of which he was entirely destitute, that led
him into the ridiculous canard about Mrs. Carlyle
running away and marrying another person ; the
sole discoverable origin of it being this passage in
one of her letters to Mrs. Russell, " Do be so good
as to give Mr. Dobbie an emphatic kiss from me,
for if Mr. C. become unendurable with his eternal
Frederick, I intend running away with Mr. Dobbie
to the backwoods, or wherever he likes." If Froude
had made a little inquiry, he would have discovered
that Mr. Dobbie was Mrs. Russell's father, a
reverend gentleman then in his eightieth year. It
was probably confusion of ideas that betrayed
Froude into his accusation against Carlyle of cruelty,
in retorting to his wife, when she told him how near
leaving him she had been, " Well, I do not know
that I should have missed you ; I was very busy
just then with my Cromwell," words which hurt her,
he says, more than any others she had ever heard
from him. But if we are to believe all Froude has
told us, these words were mild, compared with his
many savage onslaughts on her, and the truth seems
to be that Froude has applied to Carlyle and his wife
a story which Carlyle used to tell, and at which his
wife laughed merrily. It was the story of a North
of England farmer, whose wife, with whom he had
f 2
68 THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
had a tiff, left him and went back to her parents,
but soon tired of the separation and returned home.
Meeting her husband, she addressed him thus : <l I'se
back again, thou sees ! " to which her husband replied,
" Back again ? I never kenned thou was away ! ,:
That Mrs. Carlyle, whatever she may have said
in her tempestuous moods, ever seriously harboured
the idea of leaving her husband, no one who has
conned her letters will believe. In 1844, before
there was any Lady Ashburton on the scene, she
wrote to him, " I am always wondering since I
came here how I can even in my angriest moods
talk about leaving you for good and all ; for to be
sure, if I were to leave you to-day on that principle,
I should need absolutely to go back to-morrow to
see how you were taking it." All the letters written
both by Carlyle and his wife during their temporary
separations teem with affectionate anticipations of
reunion.
Froude's third specific charge against Carlyle is
that he used personal violence to his wife. Carlyle,
he tells us, when examining his wife's papers after
her death, " found a remembrance in her Diary of
the blue marks which in a fit of passion he had once
inflicted on her arms. ... As soon as he could
collect himself he put together a memoir of her,
in which with deliberate courage he inserted 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."
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 69
Now all this is fiction — a tissue of ingeniously-
concocted fiction, and we can only suppose that
in writing it Froude anticipated that when his
" Apologia " was given to the world there would be
no one who would care to take the trouble to
examine too minutely into the foundation of his
plausible tale. He conveys to us, that it was from
Carlyle he derived his knowledge that the two blue
marks were due to his violence, and yet two years
later we find him asking an explanation of them
from Miss Jewsbury, who of course remembered
them only too well, " The marks were made by
personal violence," said she.
It is in itself suspicious that Froude does not
quote the exact words of the incriminating passage
in the Diary. We are able to supply this omission.
This was the entry. " 26th June. Nothing to
record to-day but two blue marks on the wrist."
That is all. The previous entry for 24th June
records a visit to Kensington Palace to see the
old German pictures, and a family party at Lady
Charlotte Portal's at which she was accompanied by
Mr. Carlyle. The following entry for June 27th
records a visit to Hampstead with Miss Jewsbury
and a dinner at the " Spaniards." It will be
observed that Mrs. Carlyle does not say that the
blue marks on her wrist (zvrist, be it noted, not
"arms" as Froude has it, an important distinction),
were caused by her husband or give any hint as to
how they came there. And that Carlyle, after an
interval of ten years, should, on reading the Diary
have connected the entry with personal violence of
jo THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
his own and have made confession to Froude, and
insisted on the retention of the incriminating passage
is incredible.
The Memoir which Froude says as soon as he
could collect himself, he put together, was under-
taken on the occasion of his reading Miss Jewsbury's
" little book of myths," reminiscent of Mrs. Carlyle.
As soon as the book was sent to him by Miss Jews-
bury, he began to jot down, on its vacant leaves, his
corrections of the stories, and when the book was
filled he took another note book, which had been
his wife's, and went on writing down what memories
recurred to him of her parentage, girlhood, and life
beside him. These two books constitute the
manuscript of the Memoir, — "Jane Welsh Carlyle,"
which was part of the " Letters and Memorials,"
but which Froude, on his own authority, published
as part of the " Reminiscences." The so-called
incriminating passage was contained in the later
portion of Mrs. Carlyle's Journal, which alone had
been discovered at the time, and Carlyle introduced
the zvhole of this bodily into the above-mentioned
note book which had been his wife's, at the proper
place in point of time. He added no injunction as
to the incriminating passage, but he prefaced
Mrs. Carlyle's Journal with these words : " But in
1856" [it was in 1856 that the Journal with the
so-called incriminating passage was written], " owing
to many circumstances — my engrossment otherwise
(sunk in Frederick, in, etc., etc., far less exclusively,
very far less than she supposed, poor soul !) ; — and
owing chiefly, one may fancy, to the deeper down-
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 71
break of her own poor health, which from this time,
as I now see better, continued its advance upon the
citadel, or nervous system, and intrinsically grew
worse : — in 1856, too evidently, to whatever owing,
my Darling was extremely miserable ! Of that
year there is a bit of private diary, by chance left
unburnt ; found by me since her death, and not to
be destroyed, however tragical and sternly sad are
parts of it. She had written, I sometimes knew
(though she would never show to me or to mortal
any word of them), at different times, various bits of
diary ; and was even at one time upon a kind of
autobiography (had not stept into it with swine's
foot, most intrusively, though without ill intention —
finding it unlocked one day ; — and produced thereby
an instantaneous burning of it ; and of all like it
which existed at that time). Certain enough, she
wrote various bits of diary and private record,
unknown to me ; but never anything so sore, down-
hearted, harshly distressed and sad as this (right
sure am I !), — which alone remains as specimen."
Now what is there here about " blue marks,"
" incriminating passage," or " fit of passion " ? The
words " tragical and sternly sad " are not applied
by Carlyle to any incriminating passage but to the
whole Journal, or parts of it, and the real signifi-
cance of the Journal, as an outcome of nervous and
mental disorder, he had been compelled to recognise.
He puts it as euphemistically as possible, but he
cannot shut his eyes to the fact that his wife was
morbidly melancholic at the time. In June, 1856,
she was labouring under profound despondency, and
72 THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
Froude, in his letter of intimidation of April 20th,
1886, in which he threatened Mrs. Alexander
Carlyle with the publication of " the blue marks,"
adds, " I know also that on this or on some other
similar occasion Mrs. Carlyle had made up her
mind to destroy herself." He knew very well —
for in violation of decent reserve he had himself
published the fact — that Mrs. Carlyle had on several
occasions made up her mind to destroy herself : he
knew very well that she was at this time taking
morphia, which is a deliriant as well as an anodyne
and soporific : he knew very well that she passed
through what her husband called "a desperate
time " and Dr. Blakiston " hysterical mania," and
yet it never occurred to him that two blue marks
on the wrist might have come in the humane exer-
cise of necessary restraint. Could <l two blue marks
on the wrist " suggest an assault to anyone but
Froude ? What warrant had he for saying that
Carlyle caused them in any way ? Mrs. Carlyle
does not say so. Nowhere in her letters or diaries
is there the remotest suggestion of such a thing.
She understood afterwards how ill she had been
at this time, for exactly a month after the surmised
assault we find her writing to Mrs. Russell : " I
was very poorly indeed when I left home [in the
middle of July], but I am quite another creature;
on the top of this Hill with the sharp Fife breezes
about me." At the same time, July 29th, she is
writing to her brutal assailant, her husband, " Of
course I am sad at times, at all times sad as death,
but that I am used to and don't mind. And as for
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 73
the sickness, it is quite gone since the morning I
left Chelsea." That the two blue marks on the
wrist business cannot have had any very serious
consequences may be inferred from the facts that
within one week of the record of them she gave
sittings for her portrait, went through the ordeal of
the dentist's chair, and attended " the most magnifi-
cent ball of the season." It may indeed well be
doubted, whether the blue marks had any such
significance as the melodramatic Froude has attri-
buted to them, and ought not to be regarded in a
comic rather than a tragic light. Mrs. Carlyle has
elsewhere chronicled similar marks on Carlyle's
skin caused by the operations of her bete noir,
the bug, if an insect may be so designated, which,
in spite of her vigilance, several times invaded
5, Cheyne Row, and her hunts after which she
has described with the exciting realism of one of her
favourite novelists, Fenimore Cooper, and the wrist
is a favourite point of attack of the Cimex Lectularius.
Let us take the tale of the blue marks seriously,
however, and put the worst possible construction on
Mrs. Carlyle's words, supposing that her husband in
some domestic altercation had roughly grasped her
wrist, thus causing two blue marks on her sensitive
and very bruisable skin. Is it believable that such
an incident — not unknown even in well-regulated
families — would rankle in his mind, after an interval
of ten years, during the whole of which his wife had
given copious expression of her gratitude for his
unremitting gentleness and loving-kindness, and fill
his declining days with remorse as Froude affirms ?
74 THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
Is it believable that if, as Froude asserts, it was
this incident, that in the after years, caused him so
much pain, he would not have mentioned it amongst
all the unsparing self-reproaches in which he
indulged ? Never once does he refer to it in his
most rackingly retrospective writings. Never once
did he mention it to his niece, who was his confidant
in his darkest days. According to Froude,
Carlyle's nobility of nature was conspicuously
exhibited in the penitential reparation he resolved
to make to his wife's memory. But was this man,
with his hatred of hypocrisy and fearless sincerity,
likely to content himself with half an expiation ?
Was he likely to parade his peccadillos and hide
away his mortal sins ? Is it not certain that if he
had been guilty of any act of violence towards his
wife, he would have repented in dust and ashes
and confessed his fault ? The fact that, while
seizing on every allusion in his wife's writings in
connexion with which he could upbraid himself, he
passed over the entry as to the "two blue marks
on the wrist " without comment, is a sufficient proof
that it had no sinister meaning for him, and
that all that Froude says about it must have been
drawn from his imaginary conversations. The
words that spring to one's pen on reviewing this
attempt to brand Carlyle as a brute are best left
unwritten.
As brutality and selfishness were, according to
Froude, the keynotes of Carlyle's youth and prime,
remorse gave the tonality to his declining years.
When his wife was no more, says his gentle
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 75
biographer, he saw " that he had made her entirely
miserable ; that she had sacrificed her life to him ;
and that he had made her a wretched return for
her devotion. . . . For the next four years I never
walked with him without his recurring to a subject
which was never absent from his mind. His conver-
sation, however it opened, always drifted back into
a pathetic cry of sorrow over things which were
now irreparable." He suffered "an agony of
remorse for a long series of faults which now for
the first time he saw in their true light." All which
shows that Froude did not understand the meaning
of the word remorse as employed by Carlyle, and
was incapable of entering into his feelings.
" Between the Carlyles and Mr. Froude," as Mr.
Augustine Birrell justly observes, " there flowed
both Tweed and Trent, and the history of the
whole world." But Froude, unconscious of this,
tried to make his shallow notions the plummet of a
nature infinitely deeper than his own. It can be
demonstrated beyond dispute, that what Froude
called remorse was simply poignant grief, in the
guise it so often assumes, in the fine-fibred and
magnanimous. Carlyle was not maddened by the
stings of conscience, but borne down by sorrow,
on the clouds of which he saw reflected, from
time to time, huge Brocken spectres of even his
minutest faults and failings. He nursed his sorrow
to the last and seemed to say, " Assuagement, in
this world there is none for me. Obliteration I
would not have. My grief is my only comfort."
Death is a mighty alchemist. It transmutes much.
76 THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
On the erring woman it leaves "only the beautiful."
It makes instruments with which to scourge us,
not only of our pleasant vices, but of our paltry
neglects and trivial trespasses. When it bereaves
the aged, golden memories are converted into
leaden regrets.
Carlyle constantly used the word remorse some-
what indiscriminately, sometimes in the sense of
compassionate regret, sometimes of mere vexation.
He had " remorse," as he calls it, when visiting the
grave of his mother, to whom he had been the
kindest and most devoted of sons, when he did not
succeed as well as he had expected in a lecture,
and when Froude came in and interrupted his
studies. In the case of his wife his remorse hinged
on his having failed adequately to estimate her
sufferings and on having bored her with his
" Frederick." " Oh, I was blind not to see how
brittle was the thread of noble celestial (almost
more than terrestrial) life ; how much it was all in
all to me, and how impossible it should long be
left with me." " I had at last conquered Mollwitz,
saw it all clear ahead and round me, and took to
telling her stories about it, in my poor bit of joy,
night after night. I recollect she answered little,
though kindly always. Privately, she at that time
felt convinced she was dying : — dark winter, and such
the weight of misery, and utter decay of strength ; —
and night after night, my theme to her was Mollwitz /
This she owned to me, within the last year or
two ; — which how could I listen to without shame
and abasement ? ' : And this was the sort of thine
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 77
poured forth to Froude, "shame and abasement,"
for prosing about Mollwitz, and Froude, catching
at the shame and abasement, and dropping the
Mollwitz, turned it, in his crooked imagination,
into deep and passionate repentance for heinous
offences against his wife. The whole thing would
be ludicrous, if it were not so shocking. There is
not to be found, in all Carlyle's writings, after the
death of his wife, when he was probing his heart
and memory to their depths, any specific instance
of an offence against her more heinous than his
refusal to shake hands with the dressmaker at
Madam Elise's when she desired him to do so :
this " cruelty " he afterwards called it. Mrs.
Carlyle had caught from her husband the exaggera-
tive use of the word " remorse," for a lady writer in
" Blackwood," who has recorded her reminiscences,
says that when she had upset a work-basket and
was rather profuse in her apologies Mrs. Carlyle
twitted her with her "delicate remorses."
It was Carlyle's septuagenarian remorse that
first endeared him to Froude. Up till then,
although he had been for years his most obse-
quious follower, and a constant guest at his fireside,
he had never liked him, he admits. But now it
was possible, not merely to admire but to love him.
His sin had found him out ; he repented and
resolved to make an atonement, which was to con-
sist in the publication after his death of a full cata-
logue of his misdeeds. Froude hailed this as "an
expiation so frank and so complete that it washed
the stain away," and felt honoured in being appointed
78 THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
Lord High Executioner. He felt that Carlyle's
" 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 abso-
lution granted on the only fitting terms." The
confession was to be made to the British public,
in book form, but by whom the absolution was to
be granted and on what fitting terms are not
made clear. To most men it will seem that the
line of conduct which Froude attributes to Carlyle,
and which was, in his estimation noble, was abject
and cowardly. Penitence when sincere is praise-
worthy, but it should be indulged in in silence
and solitude and not proclaimed in lamentations,
in the highway. Reparation, where practicable,
is its sweetest fruit, but it can scarcely be held
to include an apology to the injured person who
is dead, tendered in the obituary notice of the
transgressor. If Carlyle had felt that any public
acknowledgment of his ill-treatment of his wife was
required of him, it would have been made while he
was still alive to bear the brunt of just condemnation,
and not delayed till he was beyond the reach of
censure in Ecclefechan kirk-yard. He was honest
and manly and never cringed before his fellow-men,
and to suppose him capable of a craven subterfuge,
by way of expiation, is to reveal a radical miscon-
ception of his character. His pusillanimous resolve,
that the grave faults with their miserable conse-
quences which he had been ceaselessly bemoaning
for fifteen years, should be made known when he
was gone earned him Froude's " love." Had he
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 79
ever formed such a resolve it must have made him
despised by all right-minded persons.
In accepting the office of undertaker for Carlyle's
good name and in promising to smother his tomb-
stone with wormwood and rue, Froude felt that it
was not unlikely he might incur " the resentment of
relations." Did it ever occur to him what the
nearest of relations might have had to say to him ?
Edifying, indeed, would have been Mrs. Carlyle's
expository notes on his proceedings had speech, out
of the Silences, been conceded to her for just five
minutes. Her husband's reputation was the apple
of her eye, her most precious possession, that which
above all things she desired should remain untar-
nished. About a week before her death, when
congratulating him on his Rectorial Address in
Edinburgh, she wrote to him, " I must repeat what
I have said before — that the best part of this success
is the general feeling of personal goodwill that
pervades all they say and write about you. Even
' Punch ' cuddles you, and purrs over you, as if you
were his favourite son." How proud she was of
him ! "I tore it open," she wrote [the telegram
announcing the success of the Address], -' and read,
From John Tyndall.' (Oh, God bless John Tyndall
in this world and the next !) ' A perfect triumph ! '
And strangely enough there was at this time an
anticipatory glimpse of the evil that was in store.
Three days before her death she read a " Memoir "
of her husband attached to a pirated issue of his
Rectorial Address which he had sent to her, and
she thus wrote to him about it : "If you call that
8o THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
' laudatory ' you must be easily pleased. I never read
such stupid, vulgar janners. The last of calumnies
that I should ever have expected to hear uttered
about you was this of your going about ' filling the
laps of dirty children with comfits.' Idiot ! My half-
pound of barley sugar made into such a legend ! The
wretch has even failed to put the right number to
the sketch of the house — ' No. 7 ! ' " Decidedly the
Memoir, with its inaccuracies, its legends, itsjanners,
was an appropriate forerunner of Froude's " Life."
The three specific charges against Carlyle which
we have analysed and proved worthless, Froude
spoke of as the secrets of Cheyne Row. They
were divulged to him by Miss Jewsbury ; but he
found from anonymous letters that they were no
secrets at all ; and that Froude should have given
heed to anonymous letters is only less surprising
than that the anonymous miscreants should have
taken the trouble to apprise him of the covert
nastiness of Cheyne Row, rather than any other of
Carlyle's friends. And, indeed, Froude's attitude
towards these secrets, as described by himself, is
unintelligible. They were secrets which were no
secrets at all, and he painfully debated within himself
whether he should conceal them. If he suppressed
them he made his biography a mere panegyric. If
he published them he might incur resentment.
"What was I to make of them?" he piteously
exclaims. At one time he confesses he had drifted
to " the cowardly conclusion " that he would sup-
press everything unpleasant, dwelling " on the
brightest and best in Carlyle and passing lightly
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 81
over the rest," thus baulking his illustrious friend of
that post-mortem atonement on which he had set
his heart. At another time he felt that concealment
would be wrong, that faults frankly confessed are
frankly forgiven, that, as Carlyle himself had taught
him, it is " the truth shall make you free " in bio-
graphy as in everything else, and so he resolved
to disburthen his friendly bosom of the perilous
stuff that weighed upon his heart.
Now, the frank biography is unquestionably
desirable ; but even the frank biography has its
limits, and has not hitherto been held to include
details of physiological functions or stenographic
records of every unguarded and hasty word. It
should not pander to unworthy curiosity. In every
human life there is a highest and a lowest which
even the frankest biography should leave untouched ;
a Shechinah which should remain enshrined in
cloud, a scullery which should be hidden from view.
In ignoring this, and in laying bare, with shameless
incontinence, the most sacred emotions and private
details in the life of his dead friend, Froude has
exposed himself to the full force of Tennyson's
withering denunciation of those who traffic in post-
humous tittle-tattle and defamation.
" For now the Poet cannot die,
Nor leave his music as of old,
But round him ere he scarce be cold
Begins the scandal and the cry :
" ' Proclaim the faults he would not show :
Break lock and seal : betray the trust :
Keep nothing sacred : 'tis but just
The many-headed beast should know.' "
G
82 THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
But it is not only the too frank biography that
in Froude's case is complained of, but the false and
grisly biography, that misrepresents its subject and
perpetuates, if it does not originate, dishonouring
false witness regarding him. "A well-written Life,"
said Carlyle, " is almost as rare as a well-spent
one." Never was Life worse written than his own.
Froude complains that in preparing for his bio-
graphy of Carlyle he was much embarrassed by the
vacillation of Carlyle himself, and in this connexion
it is requisite to examine his statements as to the
biographical material placed in his hands. It was
in 1 87 1, he says, that Carlyle, without a word of
warning, brought him his wife's letters and a copy
of the Memoir of her which he had written, made
him a gift of them, and asked him to publish them
or not as he thought fit, when he was gone ; and it
seems highly probable that in this, as in so many
other matters, Froude's memory played him false, for
if Carlyle had made a gift of these papers to him in
1871, it is remarkable that he should specifically
bequeath them to him by will in 1873. Froude does
not allege that these manuscripts were ever seen by
Carlyle after he handed them to him, and yet they
contain notes by Carlyle, dated 1873. It was in
that year (1873), Froude alleges, that Carlyle sent
him in a box a collection of letters, diaries, memoirs,
miscellanies of endless sorts, with a request that he
would undertake his biography, for which these were
the materials, and yet in that very year Carlyle left
by will to his brother John all his manuscripts,
except the Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 83
Carlyle, given to Froude, and directed that in all
such matters he wished his brother John to be
regarded as his second and surviving self.
At the very moment when Froude represents
Carlyle as thrusting papers upon him, and insisting
on his undertaking the unsought-for task of com-
posing his biography, Carlyle wrote in his will,
" Express biography of me I had really rather that
there should be none."
Froude stumbled over dates in this matter in
an inexplicable way. It is in the highest degree
unlikely that papers of any kind were put in his
hands until 1873 ; and then it was that, after
the making of the will, the Letters and Memorials
of Jane Welsh Carlyle, which were to Carlyle, in
his bereaved state, " of endless value," were given
to him in order that he might take " precious
charge of them, and, together with John Forster
and Dr. John Carlyle," the other Executors,
"make earnest survey" of them, and of the auto-
biographic notes attached to them, and decide
whether they or any portion of them should be
published. It was not until 1877 and the following
years that the biographical materials, which Froude
alleges were given to him in 1873, were sent to
him, not by Carlyle, but by Miss Mary Aitken, to
whom they were given in 1875, and who, at the
request of her uncle, gave the loan of them to
Froude, for biographical purposes. After Carlyle's
death Froude disputed the gift to Miss Mary Aitken
in 1875. He tried to discredit her statement by
urging that she could only say that the manuscripts
G 2
84 THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
had been given to her by word of mouth, and had
no writing to show, overlooking the fact that he
was himself in exactly the same position, and that
Carlyle's commission to him to write his biography
was by word of mouth, and that he had no writing
to show for that or for any of his other proceedings
in dealing with these papers. He had no credentials
to exhibit. Whenever exception was taken to any
step he took, he pleaded oral instructions from
Carlyle.
If the decision on this disputed point had had
to be given, solely on the conflicting statements of
Froude and Mrs. Alexander Carlyle, no one, looking
into the matter, would have hesitated to give a
verdict in favour of the latter. Froude's inaccuracy
and reminiscent extravagances were proverbial.
To Mrs. Alexander Carlyle a special gift was
bequeathed in the codicil to Carlyle's will " as
a testimony of the trust I repose in her, and
as a mark of my esteem for her honourable,
veracious and faithful character, and a memorial
of all the kind and ever faithful service she has
done me."
But the gift of the manuscripts in 1875 to
Mrs. Alexander Carlyle did not rest on her un-
supported recollection. They had been bequeathed
by the will of 1873, together with the Furniture,
plate, linen, china, books, prints, pictures and other
effects in the house at Cheyne Row to Dr. John
Carlyle. But in the Codicil of 1878, Dr. John
Carlyle, being then sick unto death, the Furniture,
plate, linen, china, books, prints, pictures and
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 85
other effects in the house, are left to his niece,
Mary Carlyle Aitken, absolutely, while no mention
is made of the manuscripts which in the will formed
part of the bequest to Dr. John Carlyle. Why so ?
Because they had already been disposed of and
given in 1875 to Mary Carlyle Aitken, who had
been dealing with them. This gift of these
manuscripts to her in 1875 was corroborated by
Carlyle himself on several occasions, and was testi-
fied to by Mr. Alexander Carlyle, Mrs. Aitken,
Miss Ann Aitken, Mr. Allingham, Mr. Friedmann,
Mrs. Venturi and Mrs. Anstruther ; and Mr.
(now Lord Justice) Cozens-Hardy, with the whole
case, on both sides, before him, said that there
was " good ground for contending that the owner-
ship of these documents was not vested in the
Executors, but was vested in Mrs. Alexander
Carlyle, to whom they were given in June, 1875."
Froude's contention, therefore, in " My Relations
with Carlyle," that the manuscripts for the bio-
graphy were given to him by Carlyle in 1873, falls
to the ground, and may be rebutted by what he
has himself written. On the 23rd of September,
1879, he wrote to Carlyle, " I conclude from what
your niece said in her last letter, that you are
again in London. We return ourselves in three
weeks. She implies that you wish me to pro-
ceed at once with the task [the biography] which
you have imposed on me. So of course I will do
so. I began it two years ago, but I found so many
injunctions attached to the letters by yourself that
there was nothing to be done until long after you
S6 THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
had yourself gone." That letter was written in
1879, and if Froude began his biographic work two
years previously, that would be in 1877, or exactly
at the time when, according to Mrs. Alexander
Carlyle, the manuscripts were lent to him by her.
Froude is once more wrong in stating that all the
multifarious materials for the biography were sent to
him at one time. The letters of Carlyle to his brother
Alick were sent in instalments during 1878 and 1879,
and in November, 1879, Mr. Alexander Carlyle
himself carried a bundle of them to Froude's
house. The letters to Dr. John Carlyle, the most
voluminous and important of all, were returned to
Chelsea by his executor, and were not delivered to
Froude till some months after Dr. Carlyle's death,
which took place on 15th September, 1879. In
" My Relations with Carlyle," Froude says dis-
tinctly that the materials for the biography were
sent to him in 1873 in a box. In a letter to the
Times on May 9th, 1881, he complained that these
materials had been sent to him at intervals without
inventory or numerical lists.
It is hard to understand how Froude can bring
himself to say that until Carlyle said to him a year
before his death, " When you have done with these
papers of mine, give them back to Mary," he had
regarded them as his own. He was explicitly
told when the first papers were lent to him in 1877
that when he had finished with them they were to
be returned to Mrs. Alexander Carlyle. In Feb-
ruary, 1879, when driving with him, Carlyle spoke
to Froude about the papers, and on coming
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 87
home told his niece, " Froude perfectly under-
stands that the papers are all yours, and will
return them all to you. He has promised to do
so." In February, 1880, Mrs. Alexander Carlyle
accidentally discovered that Froude did not seem to
consider himself bound by this condition, and at
once wrote to remind him of it. On the same day
on which he received the reminder, Froude replied,
" I perfectly understood that all the papers were to
be returned to you when I had done with them.
Your Uncle, however, told me the other day that
you were expecting them now, and that you thought
I must have forgotten about them." Two days
later (10th February, 1880) he wrote again to Mrs.
Alexander Carlyle, "It has, however, long been
settled that you were to have the entire collection
when I had done with it. Even if nothing- had
been arranged about it, I should of course have
replaced it in your hands." These admissions,
made in Carlyle's life-time, put it beyond cavil
that Froude, who, in " My Relations with Carlyle,"
tells us that until a year before Carlyle's death,
he had looked on these papers as his own, and
had been empowered to burn them if he liked,
was at that very time acknowledging that it had
been " long settled" that they were to be re-
turned to Carlyle's niece and "replaced" in her
hands. The power to burn could only have been
conferred in respect of the Letters and Memorials
of Jane Welsh Carlyle, which were undoubtedly
his, and not in respect of papers, which were lent
him by Mrs. Alexander Carlyle, to be employed
88 THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
in preparing the Life, and which were, he admits,
to be returned to her. Froude could only use a
comparatively small portion of the mass of papers
inadvisedly lent to him, and he could scarcely
expect that his projected " Life of Carlyle " was to
be the last word on the subject.
But still more unequivocal acknowledgments
by Froude of Mrs. Alexander Carlyle's property
in the manuscripts are forthcoming. He wrote to
the Times on the 25th February, 1 881, specifically
correcting the misstatement he had previously
made, claiming the papers as a gift from Carlyle, for
in a letter to Mrs. Alexander Carlyle of the 23rd
February, 1881, he said : " As to the Times, I think
I had better write a little note to Chinery (the
Editor) to say that by ' gave ' I only meant ' gave
in charge to make use of,' and that the MSS. belong
to you." Accordingly in his Times letter of the
25th of February, 1881, he wrote: " I wish to add
that in saying that Mr. Carlyle gave me these
papers I did not mean that he gave them to me as
my property, but that he entrusted me with the use
of them. . . . The papers belong to his niece,
Mrs. Alexander Carlyle, to whom he directed me
to return them."
And yet Froude has the audacity — there is no
other word for it — to say in " My Relations with
Carlyle " in 1887 that it is still " an open question "
whether the papers- were his, forgetting that he has
again and again privately and publicly acknow-
ledged that they were not his. Carlyle had told
him they were not his. He had been merely
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 89
"entrusted with the use of them," as he himself
said in his letter to the Times.
Mrs. Alexander Carlyle had left Froude in
undisturbed possession of her papers until the publi-
cation of the " Reminiscences." Up to that time
Froude was on terms of intimate friendship with
her and her husband, and they never doubted that
he would faithfully discharge his trust. But the
appearance of the " Reminiscences " was a shock
to them, and what Froude calls "the hailstorm of
unfavourable criticism " which the book provoked
made them feel that it was incumbent on them to
do something to protect their uncle's memory, and
to prevent further desecration of it. The inclusion
of the Jane Welsh Carlyle Memoir in the " Remini-
scences," about which not a word had been said to
them, convinced them that Froude would not be
bound by Carlyle's directions, and could not there-
fore be safely entrusted with the more momentous
work of preparing the " Life." Mrs. Alexander
Carlyle, who had not, as Froude insinuates, any
sordid motives, but a single eye to her duty
to her uncle and her family and to truth,
suggested that Froude should have associated
with him in his labours, which he described
as arduous and oppressive, two or three other
friends of Carlyle, men of judgment and dis-
cretion, to be agreed on. This proposal Froude —
intensely chagrined by the publication of Carlyle's
prohibition on the publication of the Jane Welsh
Carlyle Memoir — strongly resented. On the 9th of
May, 1 88 1, he wrote to the Times as follows : "The
9 o THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
Memoir of the late Mrs. Carlyle and the collection
of her letters made by Mr. Carlyle and partially pre-
pared by him for publication, are my personal pro-
perty, given to me to make such use of as might
seem good to me. I am the sole judge what parts
of them should or should not be printed, and neither
Mrs. Alexander Carlyle, nor any one else has a
right to call in question the discretion which
Mr. Carlyle left with me alone. These papers,
which are mine, I shall keep. The Memoir is
published, the letters will be published. I decline
to allow any person or persons, whether friends of
Mr. Carlyle or not, to be associated with me in the
discharge of a trust which belongs exclusively to
myself. The remaining papers, which I was directed
to return to Mrs. Alexander Carlyle as soon as I
had 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 numerical list. I was told that
the more I burnt of them the better, and they were
for several years in my possession before I was even
aware that they were not my own. Happily, I had
destroyed none of them, and Mrs. Alexander Carlyle
can have them all when she pleases."
" The remaining papers, which I zvas directed to
return to Mrs. Alexander Carlyle as soon as I had
done with the?u, I will restore at once to any respon-
sible per son whom she will empower to receive them
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 91
from me." " Mrs. Alexander Carlyle can have them
all when she pleases."
Here we have a voluntary, unequivocal, uncon-
ditional offer, twice repeated in a letter to the Times.
A responsible person, her Solicitor, empowered by
Mrs. Alexander Carlyle, applied to Froude for the
papers the following day. Froude refused to give
them up. No explanation was given. He had
changed his mind. It has since been said, that
Froude's co-executor, Sir James Stephen, objected
to the delivery of the papers, on the ground of some
shadowy claim that the residuary legatees might
have upon them. That was an after-thought.
Nothing was said about it at the time the delivery
was refused. Froude's own subsequent explanation
was that he was provoked into making the offer,
and had been " worried into great impatience,"
but it was necessary to find some better reason
than that for the non-fulfilment of a definite and
deliberate offer made in the columns of the Times,
and so the co-executor and his objection came upon
the scene. That this objection was not valid may
be gathered from the way in which Mr. Cozens-
Hardy brushed aside any claim of the executors
on these papers, and that it was not genuine, may
be inferred from the fact, that the offer remained
still unfulfilled, after Mrs. Alexander Carlyle had
undertaken to procure the assent of all the
residuary legatees, or to provide the executors
with an indemnity against any possible claim that
might be made against the residuary estate. If
the papers belonged to the executors on behalf
92 THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
of the residuary estate, one is constrained to ask
how came it that Sir James Stephen, on behalf
of Mr. Froude, was at this time offering Mrs.
Alexander Carlyle the profits of the " Remini-
scences," which in that case neither he nor Froude
had a right to touch ? How came it that Froude
appropriated the profits of the " Life," which in that
case, in part at least, ought to have gone to the
residuary legatees ?
Plain men with non-legal minds will perhaps
raise their eyebrows a little when they read Sir
James Stephen's defence of Froude's breach of
promise. " You afterwards considered yourself
entitled, and I entirely agreed with you, to refuse to
carry out the intention thus expressed. It had no
legal validity. It was a mere statement 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 affect
Mrs. Alexander Carlyle's position." At all events
it was a promise to which Froude had called the
world to bear witness, by publishing it in the Times,
and Sir James Stephen's statement that his delibe-
rate breach of it in no way affected Mrs. Alexander
Carlyle's position is incorrect. It caused her much
suffering and distress, and as things turned out,
although that consideration did not weigh with her
at the time, it deprived her of a very large sum of
money which went into Froude's pocket. If the
papers had been returned to her she could have
herself undertaken the Biography, as Froude had
once said she was well able to do, or she could
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 93
have arranged with some other literary man
to write it, retaining such a share of the profits
as she was fairly entitled to, seeing that all the
materials were undeniably hers. Froude retained
the papers and wrote the " Life," and all the profits
of it, which were very large, were his.
The fact remains that Froude deliberately broke
his deliberate promise. The humiliating position in
which he thus placed himself does not seem to have
been improved by the excuses of his friends.
The Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Car-
lyle were absolutely Froude's property, given and
bequeathed to him to do his best and wisest with,
and to publish when made ready for publication,
after what delay, seven, ten years, he might in his
discretion decide. The only questions that arose
regarding them were whether they were not pub-
lished prematurely and whether they were wisely
edited. Instead of waiting for seven years after
Carlyle's death — and most people will, we think,
accept that as the plain meaning of the Will, they
were out within two years of that event, and " fit
editing" there was none. " Forster," says Froude,
" read both memoir and letters. To me he gave
no opinion." His widow assured Mrs. Alexander
Carlyle that Forster was altogether opposed to the
publication of either Letters or Memoir, and there can
be no question that Dr. Carlyle took the same view.
But a much more serious question arose in regard
to the Memoir that was attached to the Letters and
Memorials, entitled "Jane Welsh Carlyle." This
was written by Carlyle, not as an expiation, as Froude
94 THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
represents, but as a relief to his feelings in his most
dejected moments, after his wife's death, and it was
assuredly his most earnest wish that it should never
see the light in any public sense, or go beyond a
small circle of private friends. Could there be a
prohibition against publication more solemn or
binding than this, which in Carlyle's handwriting
was attached to the Memoir ? —
" I still mainly mean to bum this Book before
my own departure ; but feel that I shall always have
a kind of grudge to do it, and an indolent excuse,
'Not yet; wait, any day that can be done!' — and
that it is possible the thing may be left behind me,
legible to interested survivors, — -friends only, I will
hope, and with worthy curiosity not « #worthy !
"In which event, I solemnly forbid them each
and all, to publish this Bit of Writing as it stands
here ; and warn them that without fit editing no
part of it should be printed (nor so far as I can
order, shall ever be) ; and that the 'fit editing ' of
perhaps nine-tenths of it will, after I am gone, have
become impossible."
Notwithstanding this stringent and impressive
embargo, Froude published the Memoir within a
month of Carlyle's death, torn from the Letters
and Memorials to which Carlyle had attached it,
and included in the " Reminiscences," made up of
papers on Carlyle's father, Edward Irving, Lord
Jeffrey, Southey and Wordsworth. The prohibi-
tion against publication, which formed part of the
Memoir, was suppressed, and would never have been
heard of, had not Mrs. Alexander Carlyle discovered
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 95
it and sent it to the Times. Froude then explained
that the written prohibition, indited at a time when
Carlyle was fully conscious of the character of his
work, was subsequently cancelled by oral commu-
nications, when or where he did not say. This
Mrs. Alexander Carlyle firmly denied. During the
thirteen years she was her uncle's constant com-
panion and amanuensis, she knew of the existence
of this fragment, and often heard him speak of it,
always in the sense that it should never be pub-
lished, and she was astounded when she heard from
Mr. Allingham that it was actually in print. Mrs.
Alexander Carlyle's letter which appeared in the
Times of May 5th, 1881, which Froude called "a
passionate and angry challenge," was studiously
moderate in tone, and was written because she
thought it only right that people should know that
her uncle had, when his mind was clear on the
subject, forbidden the publication of the Jane Welsh
Carlyle Memoir, which was the part of the " Remi-
niscences" which gave most offence. Froude's
defence was " My conviction is that he wished it
to be published, though he would not himself order
it." In another place on this very point, Froude
says, " He [Carlyle] never gave me any order,"
so the responsibility was his. Froude took the
plunge from which, he says, Carlyle shrank, but
which, as a matter of fact, he had absolutely
declined. Even while asserting that the injunction
against publication had been withdrawn, Froude
never ventured to say that Carlyle had sanctioned
the removal of the Memoir from the Letters
96 THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
and Memorials and its inclusion in the " Remini-
scences," and the reason given for this transference
is remarkable. Froude removed the Jane Welsh
Carlyle Memoir from the Letters and Memorials,
and published it with the " Reminiscences "
"because," he coolly tells us, "when the Letters
appeared, the blame of much might be thrown on
her." His object, therefore, was that people might
blame Carlyle for what ought really to be laid to
Mrs. Carlyle's charge. The proceeding was in every
way an unjust one, for the Letters, or a fair selection
of them, published along with the Jane Welsh
Carlyle Memoir, would have relieved its gloom and
prevented many wrong impressions, difficult to
smooth away when once stamped in.
Even had there been no prohibition on the
publication of the Jane Welsh Carlyle Memoir, its
publication and those of the other papers with
which it was bound up, without fit editing, was a
colossal mistake. The papers are beautiful, but
scattered through them are acrid and stinging
things that Carlyle had, in his dyspeptic moods and
incongruous way, said about his most eminent
contemporaries and private friends. There is not
one of us who would like to see his or her private
diaries and familiar epistles given to the world
without fit editing. Froude took seriously, what
were in Carlyle often mere manifestations of
biliousness or only fantastic tropes. And even if
he had Carlyle's directions — which he assuredly had
not — to publish his undress and unpremeditated
asperities, he erred in doing so, for no man is entitled
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 97
to depute to another the doing of that which is in
itself wronsf and ruthless. Over-statement was
habitual with Carlyle, and his hard words not
seldom concealed the tenderest sentiments. Mrs.
Gilchrist relates that once, when he had just been
advocating the shooting of Irishmen who would not
work, he was affected until the tears ran down his
face, when Mrs. Carlyle read aloud the account
of the execution of the Italian Burnelli ; and that
on another occasion he was caught lavishing
endearments on the little dog Nero, the uselessness
of whose existence he had been, a few minutes
before, denouncing in unmeasured terms. He was
sometimes a rough-rinded but always a soft-hearted
man.
The " Reminiscences" was, Froude himself tells
us, " received with a violence of censure for which
he was wholly unprepared," but which was not to
be wondered at. They presented an altogether
unexpected and intensely painful outline of Carlyle ;
they wounded the feelings of many living persons,
and they bore obvious traces of haste and careless-
ness on the part of the editor. They were printed
in so slovenly a manner as to obscure the sense.
The punctuation, the use of capitals, parentheses,
italics, characteristic of Carlyle's style, were entirely
disregarded. Professor Charles Eliot Norton found
that, in the first five pages of the printed text, there
were more than a hundred and thirty corrections to
be made of words, punctuation, capitals, quotation
marks and such like, and these pages were not
exceptional, and were printed from MS. written in
H
9 8 THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
1832, when Carlyle's hand-writing was at its best.
For this blundering, Froude has excused himself in
" My Relations with Carlyle," by saying that
Carlyle's manuscripts were harder to decipher than
the worst manuscripts he had ever examined, and
that he was often at a loss to know what particular
words might be. But he had himself described
Carlyle's manuscripts as " beautiful," and they are
still in existence, and can be submitted to competent
judges, who will assuredly pronounce them deserving
of that description. They are clear, distinct and
easily read, and in connection with Froude's excuse,
it is instructive to note that it is, in the printed
text of Carlyle's latest writing, when his hand was
shaky, which, Froude says, he had to work at with
a magnifying-glass, that the fewest mistakes occur.
But, as will be seen presently, the liberties that
Froude took with Carlyle's manuscripts were not
confined to literal or verbal inaccuracies, but
included material alterations affecting meaning.
It was not only in connection with the inclu-
sion of the Jane Welsh Carlyle Memoir in the
" Reminiscences," and the flagrant errors that
deface that work, that serious difficulties arose.
The disposal of the profits of it gave rise to
complications, which first came to the surface when
arrangements for an American edition had to be
made. Froude's version of these complications
has been cut out of the text of " My Relations
with Carlyle," by the editors and relegated to the
appendix, so that it may not interfere with the
continuity of the narrative ; but, as it raises a
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 99
question vitally affecting Froude's good faith
and is really the introduction to an essential
part of the case against him in relation to the
Carlyle manuscripts, we think it better to discuss
it here.
" A singular fatality," Froude observes, when
approaching the American negotiations, " has
attended me from first to last in this busi-
ness." That is quite true, but the fatality was
in his own mind and methods, and that it was so
is clearly established by the fact that we find an
American publisher, with whom he had dealings,
bringing exactly the same accusations against him
which have been made by all those who have
closely scrutinized his conduct and work in literary
affairs in this country. Messrs. Harper and Brothers
of New York (the Mr. of Froude's Essay,
but we see no reason why their name should be
concealed) have accused him of having, by giving
Carlyle's "Reminiscences" to his own American pub-
lishers, disregarded the usage which, in the absence
of international copyright, has been found to be the
fairest practicable arrangement, and is observed by
all the leading publishers in America, under which
is conceded to the house which has issued the work
of an English author, the option of republishing
upon mutually satisfactory terms the subsequent
works of the same author. They accuse him of
inaccuracy, and not merely of lapses, but of ter-
giversations of memory. They accuse him of
repudiating a formal engagement and of having
said what was to his knowledge incorrrect in
H 2
ioo THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
informing Messrs. Scribner that they were the
recognised publishers of only one small work of
Carlyle's, whereas they were his publishers for the
"Early Kings of Norway" and "Frederick," and
purchased several of his other works from G. P.
Putnam.
It is not necessary for us to enter on the dispute
of the publishers, but in the course of it there came
out a bit of evidence which effectually disposes of
Froude's contention, which, in view of his own
admission to the contrary, it is truly astonishing to
find repeated in " My Relations with Carlyle," that
Mrs. Alexander Carlyle had no claim to the profits
of the " Reminiscences " and that his offer to let
her have any part of them was "a spontaneous
resolution " of his own, and a piece of gratuitous
generosity. Mr. Moncure Conway (the Mr. X. of
Froude's essay, but why should his name be con-
cealed ?), was in 1879 representing Messrs. Harper
and Brothers in England, and, hearing that the
" Reminiscences " were in contemplation, he ap-
proached Carlyle on the subject, suggesting that
the book should appear during his lifetime. On
the 4th November, 1879, Mr. Moncure Conway
wrote to Messrs. Harper and Brothers as follows : —
" The old man was evidently gratified by your
thoughtfulness in considering whether he might not
like to have some of the money while yet alive.
However, he does not desire any money . . . and
he desires that all the money which his auto-
biographical work shall bring shall be paid to his
niece, Mary Aitken Carlyle, who has lived with him
. '
THE NEMESIS OF FRQGJD-E !r4>l
since his wife's death and is now nursing him,
night and day. This book is to be added to her
share as she well deserves."
Now here we have the testimony of an inde-
pendent and disinterested witness writing in 1879,
and after direct communication with Carlyle, that,
as Mrs. Alexander Carlyle consistently main-
tained, Carlyle had decided that the profits of the
" Reminiscences " should go to her as part of the
provision he intended to make for her. And that
was an equitable arrangement, for the " Remini-
scences," as Carlyle understood them, consisted
entirely of his own literary work which he had given
to his niece. He had no foreshadowing that his
instructions would be set at naught, and that the Jane
Welsh Carlyle Memoir, which none but loving eyes
should see, would be incorporated in the book for
public gaze in both hemispheres. These essays were
amongst the manuscripts which Mrs. Alexander
Carlyle had too liberally lent to Froude for his Life
of her uncle, but they had a biographic rather than
an autobiographic value, and when they were
separated from the other material for publication as
a separate work, they were placed outside Froude's
commission. Froude ultimately established a
personal interest in the work by adding to it the
Jane Welsh Carlyle Memoir, which formed part of
the manuscripts given and bequeathed to him by
Carlyle, but during Carlyle's life he never ventured
to moot such a proceeding. Froude wrote to
Carlyle on the 29th September, 1879, enumerating
the names of the articles that were to form the
!0'2 THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
" Reminiscences," and the Memoir is not amongst
them !
While Carlyle lived Froude made no claim to
the profits of the " Reminiscences." He told
Mrs. Alexander Carlyle that she had a better right
to the money than he, as the book was her uncle's
writing and not his. His exact words, one month
before Carlyle's death were, " The book was written
by your uncle, not by me, and there would be no
propriety in my receiving the money for it." He
regarded himself merely as a trustee of the copy-
right for her, and when she was dining with him
on the 20th of November, 1879, her husband, Mr.
Alexander Carlyle, Mr. Ashley Froude and Miss
Margaret Froude being present, he confirmed this
in the most explicit manner, promising to hold the
whole profits of the " Reminiscences " for her.
Carlyle died in the belief that these profits were
part of the provision he had made for his niece. It
was, therefore, with astonishment that on the
14th of February, 1881 (Carlyle being then dead,
and the " Reminiscences " not yet published), she
heard from Froude that Longman had paid him
^"650 for the first edition, out of which he proposed
to pay her ,£300 as half of his receipts — "the odd
^"50 I keep for another purpose," that other purpose
being, it turned out, a subscription in his own name
to a fund then being raised to buy 5, Cheyne Row,
and present it to Mrs. Alexander Carlyle. To this
Mrs. Alexander Carlyle demurred, as being incon-
sistent with her uncle's intentions and Froude's
engagement with her ; and on the 21st of February.
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 103
1 88 1, Sir James Stephen wrote to her that Froude
was perfectly satisfied with the note of a conversa-
tion with her which Sir James Stephen had himself
drafted. The note on this point ran thus : —
" Mrs. Alexander Carlyle says that Mr. Froude
some time ago promised to give her the whole
proceeds of the ' Reminiscences,' and that she
informed her uncle of his intention, and that he
approved it, and that under these circumstances she
declines to receive any share of the proceeds less
than the whole."
On the same day, 21st February, 1881, Froude
wrote to Mrs. Alexander Carlyle : " I had settled
in my own mind that you ought to have half of
the English copyright of both books, the ' Remini-
scences ' and the ' Life and Letters ' to follow. Of
course you shall have every farthing that comes
from the ' Reminiscences ',' whether from England,
America, or the Continent, and I hope that it will
prove as good a bargain for you as the other would
have been. ... I may as well remind you that
two-thirds of the second volume of the ' Remini-
scences ' is from the ' Letters and Memorials,' and
so mine, if I wished to insist on such a thing, which
I don't."
Two days later, on the 23rd of February, Froude
wrote to Mrs. Alexander Carlyle as follows : "I am
bound to tell you that Ashley [Froude's son], who
was present, it seems, at one of the conversations
about the copyright, entirely confirms your account
of it. I am utterly ashamed of myself, and I can
only suppose that the addition of a new volume
io4 THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
with fresh matter [the Jane Welsh Carlyle Memoir]
and a general sense that I had been thinking a
good deal about the American part of the business,
had confused my memory of what had passed
and led me to believe that I was free to arrange
the details over again. I do not wonder now at
anything which you may have thought of me."
Whether Froude ever had definitely settled in
his own mind that half the English copyright of the
" Reminiscences" and " Life and Letters " ought to
be Mrs. Alexander Carlyle's, cannot now be known.
That bargain would have been largely more advan-
tageous to her than the one she had made and
adhered to, which, although Froude afterwards
repudiated it, he at this time acknowledged in the
frankest manner. Even Sir James Stephen, Froude's
fidus Achates and champion, was constrained to admit
Mrs. Carlyle's claim to the profits of the " Remini-
scences," for in the preamble to an agreement he
proposed, he wrote, " That it was understood between
Mrs. Alexander Carlyle and Mr. Froude that Mrs.
Alexander Carlyle should have the profits of the
publication of the said volume [' Reminiscences '],
and that such an undertaking was communicated to
Mr. Carlyle in his lifetime and approved by him."
With reference to the proposal that all the profits
of the " Reminiscences," less ^300 retained by
Froude in respect of the addition to the book of
the Jane Welsh Carlyle Memoir, Sir James Stephen
wrote, "It seems to me that this arrangement
would be essentially just. It would give Mrs.
Carlyle what both her uncle and Mr. Froude
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 105
intended her to have. ... It is, indeed, not
improbable that she would have been better pro-
vided for in the will if this expectation on the part
of her uncle had not existed."
Will it be believed that after all this, after the
acknowledgment of her uncle's intentions, and of his
solemn understanding on the subject with him, of her
equitable right to the proceeds of what was entirely her
uncle's work, of his own engagement with her which
he felt so much shame in having attempted to depart
from, of his written and many times repeated promise,
Froude actually refused to pay over the profits of
the " Reminiscences " to Mrs. Alexander Carlyle
unless she would admit that it was a free gift from
him ? Will it be believed that he was supported in
this by Sir James Stephen ? Sir James Stephen
wrote to Dr. Benson, Mrs. Alexander Carlyle's
solicitor, on the 20th September, 1881 : " Mr. Froude
admits that she has a moral right to the proceeds,
less ^300, if she is willing to accept it as a present
and to admit his property in the MSS. But if she
refuses what he offers on the terms he offers it, he
says she has no right to it at all." In reply to a
letter from Dr. Benson declining any such admission
on the part of Mrs. Alexander Carlyle, Sir James
Stephen wrote, " I altogether dissent from the view
that, if Mrs. Carlyle sues Mr. Froude and fails to
establish any legal claim against him, he will still be
under a moral obligation to give her the proceeds
of the ' Reminiscences ' or to return the papers. I
think that a promise unaccepted is simply an offer
which the promiser is both legally and morally
106 THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
justified in revoking at any time before it is
accepted."
Sir James Stephen had previously written, be it
remembered, that Mrs. Alexander Carlyle's claim
was " essentially just."
Froude's position seems to have been : " You
say that I am indebted to you £10 in virtue of my
engagement with you and with your uncle, in faith
of which he died. I admit it, and here is the
money ; but you shall not have it unless you admit
that it is a free gift from me."
Sir James Stephen's was : " I spontaneously and
unconditionally promised you ^10, but you said I
was indebted to you in that amount and failed
to establish your claim, my promise is therefore
legally and morally null and void."
Mrs. Alexander Carlyle received the profits and
copyright of the " Reminiscences " as a gift from
her uncle ; she declined to accept them or any part
of them as a gift from Froude, who received ^300
in respect of the "Jane Welsh Carlyle Memoir,"
and every penny of the profits from his " Life
of Carlyle," notwithstanding that the materials he
used were her property (and the custom is, we
believe, that the owner of the material receives
half the profits), and likewise every penny that
came from the " Letters and Memorials," notwith-
standing that she had copied with her own hand the
Memoir of Jane Welsh Carlyle and the whole of her
aunt's letters and Carlyle's notes on them, twice
over. Froude's generosity in handing over the
profits of the *' Reminiscences," as arranged with
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 107
Carlyle, while keeping a firm grip on all the rest, is
not very apparent.
In claiming the profits of the " Reminiscences,"
Mrs. Alexander Carlyle was only asking for what
she believed was justly due to her, and her object in
seeking legal advice was not, as Froude suggests,
to enforce the payment of the money, but, if
possible, to prevent him from misusing the materials
for the Biography as by common consent he had
misused those of the " Reminiscences." She
repeatedly offered to give up the whole proceeds
of the first issue of the " Reminiscences," which
amounted to ,£1,530, exclusive of the ^300 retained
by Froude in respect of the Jane Welsh Carlyle
Memoir, as well as the copyright of the book and
all future profits, if he would act upon his public
undertaking contained in his letter to the Times
of May 9, 1 88 1, and would at once restore to
her the papers and proceed no further with the
Biography. When Froude and his co-executor, Sir
James Stephen, suggested that the proceeds of the
" Reminiscences," as well as the papers, might
belong to Mr. Carlyle's residuary estate, she offered
to provide a substantial and approved indemnity
against any possible claim by the residuary legatees.
She never sought from Froude, nor did he ever
offer to her any profits beyond those derived from
the publication of the " Reminiscences," less ^300,
which he retained "in satisfaction," as Sir James
Stephen put it, "of any claim he might have in
respect of the MS. called 'Jane Welsh Carlyle,' or
in respect of his own labour in preparing the work.'
108 THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
Seeing that the " Reminiscences " was entirely the
work of Carlyle's pen, and that the book was sent
forth practically unedited and loaded with errors,
most literary men will think that Froude was not
inadequately paid for his labour.
Mrs. Alexander Carlyle, however, found herself
powerless to prevent the further desecration of her
uncle's memory. She was not at liberty to with-
draw from Froude the loan of the papers, given to
her by her uncle, until the purpose for which the
loan was given was fulfilled, and he was at liberty
to go on with that work, even after he had twice
voluntarily offered to give it over into other hands.
When in 1877 she consented to let Froude have
the papers she had implicit faith in his loyalty.
That was the time when Sir James Stephen saw
him deporting himself as the affectionate son to the
venerated father. That was the time when he was
habitually beginning his letters to her " My dear
Mary." That was the time when, with all these
shameful stories now belched forth, dwelling in his
mind, he wrote to her, " You know well that there
is no man on earth that I love and honour as I
do your uncle, and in that spirit I hope to work."
She never doubted his loyalty, and being young
and inexperienced in the ways of the world, and,
moreover, much occupied in waiting on her uncle,
she did not attempt to make any selection from the
papers, but sent him a mass of material, keeping
no inventory, so that she never had any definite
idea of what she had forwarded, from time to time,
to Onslow Gardens. Had Froude known how he
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 109
came to be possessed of all Carlyle's private letters,
journals, etc., he would scarcely have boasted as
he did in his letter to the Times, of February 14th,
1 88 1, of the trust Carlyle had placed in him. It
was Mrs. Alexander Carlyle who so bountifully
trusted him, not Carlyle, and for having done so
she bitterly repented. She discovered, when too
late, that she had placed in Froude's hands much
that her uncle had never intended him to see, and
the knowledge that she had thus unwittingly aided
him in his work of disparagement, preyed on her
health and spirits, or, as she herself said, broke her
heart. The complete justification of her forebodings
and suspicion of Froude's designs has come in
11 My Relations with Carlyle."
Amongst the papers which Miss Mary Aitken
too confidingly lent to Froude were the love-letters
which passed between Carlyle and Miss Welsh
before their marriage, and which would assuredly
never have been seen by his or any other eye, had
she noticed what Carlyle had written respecting
them. " My strict command now is, ' Burn them ij
ever found. Let no third party read them ; let no
printing of them or any part of thein be ever thought
of by those who love me! ' And yet in defiance of
this heart-felt and, we may say, death-bed conjura-
tion, Froude opened the packet, read all the letters,
and published a selection of them in the Early
Life. He never ventured to assert that there had
been any verbal withdrawal of this most earnest
written command, and his conduct in iofnorine it
may be left to the judgment of right-minded men.
no THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
And not only did Froude read the love-letters
which Carlyle held sacrosanct, not only did he
publish some of them, but he so selected those
which he published and so put a gloss on them by
his accompanying comments, that they convey an
entirely erroneous impression of the relations in which
Carlyle and Miss Welsh stood to each other. It
fell to the lot of Professor Charles Eliot Norton to
compare the love-letters published by Froude with
the originals — a duty, however uncongenial, made
imperative by Froude's conduct — and, although
Professor Norton gives us but partial glimpses of
the courtship in a few selections, withholding the
rest on the ground that they are too sacred for
publication — he has done enough to prove that the
characters and relations of Carlyle and Miss Welsh
to each other during that period were different,
both in particulars and in general effect, from those
depicted by Froude. Professor Norton openly
charged Froude with having in the case of the
love-letters diverged from the truth, made assertions
incompatible with the evidence, and with having
coloured by his own imagination, those statements,
having the form of truth, which he preserved.
This was no irresponsible chatter in a newspaper ;
it was not a mere rumour. It was a well-weiohed
charge, by an eminent man of letters, and supported
by convincing documentary evidence. It was made
in 1886. Froude never replied to it. He has no
word to say about it in " My Relations with Carlyle,"
written the following year. With reference to
Professor Norton's charges against Froude the
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE in
AthencEum (November 6th, 1886) said: "The
charges are very grave indeed, and as Froude in
his letter to the Times makes no answer to these
statements, it must be assumed that he allows
judgment to go by default."
Space will not permit of the reproduction of the
series of striking instances given by Professor Norton
of Froude's warping and varnishing of the love-
letters, but one illustration, of his style of going to
work and of the amount of trust to be reposed in
him, may be given. " Mr. Froude tells the story,
which will be remembered by all readers of the
book, of the relations between Edward Irving and
Miss Welsh, of his falling in love with her after
his engagement to his future wife, of her reciproca-
tion of his feeling, of her refusal to encourage him
because of the bonds by which he was held, and
of the conclusion of the affair by his marriage to
Miss Martin. It was an affair discreditable to
Irving, and for a time it brought much suffering
to Miss Welsh. Mr. Froude is aware that the
telling of such a private experience requires excuse,
and he justifies it by the following plea : — ' I should
not unveil a story so sacred in itself, and in which
the public have no concern, merely to amuse their
curiosity ; but Mrs. Carlyle's character was pro-
foundly affected by this early disappointment, and
cannot be understood without a knowledge of it.
Carlyle himself, though acquainted generally with
the circumstances, never realised completely the
intensity of the feeling which had been crushed.'
" Both of these alleged grounds of excuse are
ii2 THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
contradicted by the evidence of the letters of Miss
Welsh and Carlyle. Her letters show that her
feelings for Irving, first controlled by principle and
honour, soon underwent a very natural change. Her
love for him was the passion of an ardent and inex-
perienced girl, twenty or twenty-one years old,
whose character was undeveloped, and who had but
an imperfect understanding of the capacities and
demands of her own nature. In the years that
followed upon this incident she made rapid pro-
gress in self-knowledge and in the knowledge of
others, chiefly through Carlyle's influence, and she
came to a more just estimate of Irving's character
than she had originally formed. Irving's letters to
her, his career in London, his published writings,
revealed to her clear discernment his essential
weakness, — his vanity, his mawkish sentimentality,
his self-deception, his extravagance verging to cant
in matters of religion. The contrast between his
nature and Carlyle's did ' affect her profoundly,' and
her temporary passion for Irving was succeeded by
a far deeper and healthier love. ' What an idiot I
was for ever thinking that man so estimable,' she
wrote in May, 1824.' " It will be recollected that she
afterwards pointedly remarked, that if she had married
Irving there would have been no gift of tongues.
The whole tendency of the love-letters, as given
by Froude, is to put Carlyle in an unpleasant and
intensely selfish light. This is evinced " in many
minor disparaging statements, so made as to avoid
arousing suspicion of their having little or no
foundation, and arranged so as to contribute artfully
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 113
to the general effect of depreciation. Like the
" Reminiscences," the love - letters are thickly
studded with errors and with unnoted omissions of
words, clauses, and sentences, which sometimes
interfere seriously with the meaning.
What has been said of the Froude version of the
love-letters as regards their disposition to make the
worst of Carlyle, applies to all the early letters made
use of by Froude. One has but to read these
letters in Froude's " Life " with his comments, and
compare them with Professor Norton's series of
early Letters without comment, to recognise two
different streams of tendency. The latter do not
leave a bad taste in the mouth. The impression
they make is vastly more agreeable. The sense
of sourness and cynicism is submerged in floods of
kindliness and geniality. Even when Froude is
most favourable to Carlyle, he does not succeed in
inducing the same degree of sympathy and admira-
tion, that Norton's Letters evoke. Froude depicts
Carlyle's relations with his father and mother and
brothers and sisters as creditable to him — he could
not avoid doing so — but in Norton's letters these
relations become generous and delightful. We dis-
cover him there the affectionate, thoughtful, reverent
son, and considerate monitor and liberal-handed
guide of the rest of the family circle. We see him
in far manlier, gentler, more gracious form than
Froude has suggested to us.
Froude's allegation — made to suggest a sordid
motive — that " more than once inquiries had been
made of me by her [Mrs. Alexander Carlyle's]
1
ii 4 THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
lawyers when there would be any further money
coming to her from other editions ? " is at variance
with the facts. Copies of all Mrs. Alexander
Carlyle's lawyer's letters have been preserved, and
in not one of them is there any inquiry about a
second edition. The lawyers are happily alive and
are ready to meet Froude's statement with a flat
denial. It was Froude's lawyers who first raised
the question of a second edition of the " Remini-
scences." On the 1 2th of January, 1886, they wrote :
" The ' Reminiscences ' of Thomas Carlyle are now
out of print and a new edition is, or soon will be,
required .... He [Mr. Froude] proposes that, as
Mrs. Mary Carlyle is to have the profit of the work,
she should correct and edit the new edition, but
with this proviso that the Memoir of Mrs. Jane
W. Carlyle is withdrawn from the book. This
Memoir being Mr. Froude's property in every sense
of the word, he does not intend it to appear again
with the ' Reminiscences,' but will attach it as a
preface to the ' Letters of Mrs. Carlyle.'
The nonchalance of this proposal will be under-
stood when it is remembered that ^"300 had been
paid to Mr. Froude for the use of this Memoir in
the " Reminiscences " together with his editorial
labours. Of course the proposal was objected to
and the objection was sustained. How interesting-
it is to note that Froude had at length discovered
that the Jane Welsh Carlyle Memoir had been
dislocated from its proper attachments, and that its
right place was as a preface to the Letters !
Throughout " My Relations with Carlyle " Froude
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 115
assumes the attitude of an injured person and solicits
public commiseration. The task of writing Carlyle's
Biography was, he says, thrust on him, he accepted it
with reluctance, he several times resolved to go no
further with it, but disinterested friendship carried
him on at a great personal sacrifice, and, while he
might have produced a popular work that would
have pleased everybody, he courageously chose to
incur obloquy in order to insure to Carlyle that
post-mortem immolation which he had so earnestly
desired. No one kept faith with him. Carlyle ought
to have informed him that he intended the papers
should be made use of by others. Mrs. Alexander
Carlyle ought to have informed him that the papers
were hers. Mr. Norton ought to have communicated
with him. But everybody did what they ought not
to have done and he was left lamenting.
Whether the work of becoming Carlyle's biographer
was thrust on Froude, or whether he diligently
sought it, it is now impossible to say. It was unlike
Carlyle to thrust such a task on anyone, and up till
1877 he abjured any biography of himself. That
Froude was reluctant to undertake it, is not apparent.
He did twice threaten to throw it up, but, when
pressed to surrender it, he clung to it stubbornly.
However much friendship may have mingled with
it, that it was a disinterested undertaking cannot be
maintained, for it brought Froude very large profits.
It is distasteful to have to allude to the money
question ; but it is Froude who has introduced it by
attributing to Mrs. Alexander Carlyle the most
mercenary motives, and indeed even dishonesty,
1 2
n6 THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
in making a claim to money to which she was
not justly entitled, while at the same time he is
dwelling on his own generosity, A casual reader
of " My Relations with Carlyle " might rise from
the perusal of it, believing that Mrs. Alexander
Carlyle had greedily grasped at everything and that
Froude had worked for nothing. It is therefore
necessary to point out that Froude was well paid for
all he did. We have reason to believe that his
" Life of Carlyle " was the most remunerative piece
of literary work in which he ever engaged. He
has told us that the profits of the first issue of the
"Reminiscences" amounted to .£1,830. Let his
representatives tell us what have been the profits of
his seven subsequent volumes, and the public will
then be in a position to judge whether he was quite
as disinterested and badly used as he tries to make
out. The " Letters and Memorials," which he had
merely to edit for the press, were a handsome
legacy, and from the other papers he drew no small
reward, or what he himself would describe as " an
immense sum."
That Froude, in order that Carlyle might enjoy
that posthumous penance which he extolled as
heroic, but which common men must regard as
idiotic, braved a storm of public censure, is mere
moonshine. He has told us that he was " quite
unprepared for the violence of censure " with which
the "Reminiscences" was received. "Those
tender and suffering passages," he wrote, "which I
was universally reproached for having published,
I thought, and I still think, were precisely those
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 117
which would win and command, the pity and sym-
pathy of mankind." The fact is that he made
a miscalculation, — a huge and grievous one, — and
mankind at once found him out and condemned him
accordingly. If Carlyle did hanker after a moral
cremation, and there is not a shred of evidence
beyond Froude's imaginary conversations that he
ever did so, it was a senile and morbid epiphe-
nomenon of distracting grief, which a true friend
should have taken at its real value. What good
could come to any mortal man from perpetuating the
wailings of a grief-tortured soul, from reverberating
them and founding on them a story of life-long
delinquency ? The only effect that Froude's action
could have would be to impair and weaken the
influence of Carlyle, of the importance of which, he
declares, he had such a high sense, and which will,
he prophesied, increase with each generation. He
has done his best to put a stop to it. If all the
world is to be made every great man's valet, and if
the tenderest tremors of his heart-strings, in the
pensive twilight, are to be trumpeted abroad as the
quakings of a guilty soul, we had better have no
biographies at all.
In "My Relations with Carlyle " Froude has
advanced in rancour far beyond the " Life," and
while attempting to blacken his subject has hope-
lessly stultified himself. "The only life of a man,"
he has written, " which is not worse than useless is
a ' Life ' which tells all the truth so far as the
biographer knows it." He wrote what purported to
be a true Life of Carlyle, in which he expressly
n8 THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
stated he had concealed nothing, but all the time
he had up his sleeve a series of shocking charges
which he held ready, on occasion, to produce, and
which his son and daughter have now tabled. The
charges are false, but if they had been true, what
good could their production do ? Surely it was
fatuous to imagine that Froude could clear his
own honour if assailed, by throwing shame on the
memory of the dead man who had trusted him, whose
loving friend he professed to be, whose reputation
he had already injured, and from whom he had
derived large pecuniary advantage ? The charge
against Froude was that he had misunderstood
Carlyle, and had in his haste, inaccuracy of vision,
and imaginative misconception, depicted him in a
sombre and unfavourable light, and made him appear
quite other than he was. His retort to that charge
is, "I was too kind to him : he was hideous and
repulsive, and I knew it all the time." Is there in
the history of Biography another instance of perfidy
like this ? There has assuredly been no literary
outrage approaching it since the publication of
Hogg's brochure on "The Domestic Manners and
Private Life of Sir Walter Scott."
With plaintive air Froude asks what motive he
could have had beyond his desire to gratify Car-
lyle's remorse, and to mete out stern justice, for the
course which he took in his " Life of Carlyle " ?
We would rather leave motives alone and deal
with actions, but it is Froude who twice over has
challenged an examination of his motives. It is
true, as he says, that no one does wrong with-
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 119
out some motive, but motives are often beyond
sounding depth — and the most potent of them are
sometimes the most unfathomable. It is possible
that some of the motives which actuated Froude
in his dealings with Carlyle's biographical material
were sub-liminal in their; operation and unknown
to himself; but on the surface, motives, not wanting
in strength, are discernible. Froude is not entitled
to say " I had no secret injuries to resent." It
is not improbable that some of Carlyle's too out-
spoken strictures on his writings, such as that
they displayed " a fondness for indecent exposure,"
and his far from complimentary references to
him in the letters he read, may have rankled
in his breast, and it is at any rate certain, from
the contents of this pamphlet, that there was a
sense of injury as to the manner in which Carlyle
had disposed of his papers. " If he had intended,"
says Froude, " 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
coincide with theirs, then he was not dealing fairly
with me." " In his will," he says, " he had left his
papers to his brother John. This, too, I did not
know and I ought to" have been informed of it."
" If it was so," he says again [if the papers had been
given to his niece Miss Mary Aitken, as they un-
doubtedly were], " I had again been treated unfairly,
for I ought to have been informed of it ; but all was
left uncertain, all was in confusion." Finally he
puts it bluntly enough, " but faith had not been
kept with me." Froude does not seem to have
120 THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
kept his sense of grievance to himself, but infected
with it Sir James Stephen, who says : " 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."
Unquestionably when Froude came to arrange and
comment on these papers the old reverence which
led him at one time to regard Carlyle as almost
superhuman, so that he reflected how every word
he wrote would seem in his eyes, in order that
affectation might be avoided, had evaporated, and
there had come in its place a rigorous appraisement
of the many faults and failings of the erstwhile hero
— amongst which had been some want of candour
in his conferences with James Anthony Froude.
Love and admiration there still were, Froude assures
us, but mingled with these was grave reprehension
and — shall we say — wounded amotir propre ?
But if it was in this mood that Froude entered
on his biographical campaign, other motives deter-
mining its course and issue soon came into play.
The " Reminiscences " appeared, and were received,
as he has told us, with a violence of censure for
which he was quite unprepared, and from that
moment it became an object with him to justify
himself. Instead of bowing to the universal con-
demnation of his indiscretions and observing
reticence and discrimination in his further progress
in the work, he bent himself to make good his case,
and influenced no doubt by the knowledge that he
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 121
had in his keeping, as a last resort, those shocking
secrets which he has enshrined in the pamphlet now-
given to the world, he proceeded with his theme
of adulatory defamation. His mind was poisoned
against Carlyle by the conception he had formed of
his treatment of his wife, and do what he might,
amidst all the nectar and ambrosia, the subtle and
deadly venom would, from time to time, trickle out.
In Froude's somewhat rank imagination conceptions
grew apace. Once formed they were expanded
from within and never subjected to the pressure of
facts from without. And so his malign conception
of Carlyle gathered strength as he went on, and is
seen in full force in his posthumous paper. Let it
be granted that he wished to limn truly the portrait
in his mind's eye, yet that portrait was blotched and
discoloured, and in putting it on his canvas he
emphasised the blemishes and deepened the shadows.
He aimed at producing a popular book — what
biographer does not ? and he was not ignorant
that startling effects and controversial matter are
attractive in literature. His " Nemesis of Faith,"
which he himself described as " heterodoxy flavoured
with sentimentalism," did not attract much attention
until Sewell publicly burnt a copy of it in the Hall
of Exeter College. The sale then went up with a
bound, and there was a call for a second edition within
a year. And so the " Reminiscences," although
universally condemned, was a decided pecuniary
success. The "Reminiscences" was bad enough,
but the first two volumes of the Life were worse.
This is a book that to all who knew the truth,
i22 THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE
caused pain by the artful detraction that lurks
behind its professions of friendship, admiration,
and even reverence. It is a cynical betrayal of a
trust and serves to warrant the most sinister infer-
ences concerning Carlyle's character that were
drawn from the " Reminiscences." No unbiased
person can read it carefully without a conviction
that the original text — the Letters — does not sup-
port Froude's commentary, and that the Letters
themselves have been glossed, distorted from their
plain significance, and misinterpreted with perverse
ingenuity. The process is discoverable by all who
look beneath the surface, and in it Froude has
revealed his own nature. The wrong done to
Carlyle was a grievous one, but it is being re-
dressed ; his real character will yet shine out
through all Froude's obscurations.
" My Relations with Carlyle " is a kind of literary
garbage, and, like garbage, creates disgust, but like
garbage also it may not be without its use in
nature, if it promote the growth of a just estimate
of the spirit and methods of its author.
Intellectually fulfilling one's ideal of greatness,
a man made in the noblest human mould, in
originality, in range of historical knowledge, in
breadth of literary culture, in command of language,
in lustre of imagination, in grasp of judgment,
unsurpassed in his century, Carlyle will yet be
recognised, through the mists and miasms that
Froude has drawn around him, and through the
gloom of his own moodiness and melancholy, as
morally as well as intellectually great. He was,
THE NEMESIS OF FROUDE 123
o
verily, one of the kindliest, most generous, true-
hearted, humane, and upright of men, in whom,
under a rugged exterior, were great depths of tender-
ness and comprehensive sympathy, who with intense
earnestness combined quaint pleasantry and genial
humour. When his shallow and ribald critics are
forgotten, his memory will be cherished by the
world.
APPENDIXES
127
APPENDIX
I.
THE CARLYLE PAPERS
In a pamphlet which was printed for private circulation in 1886,
and which has been given to the public as an Appendix to " My
Relations with Carlyle," Sir James Stephen's view of Froude's
dealings with Carlyle's papers is very fully set forth. Sir James
was co-executor with Froude under the codicil to Carlyle's will,
was aware of everything that took place during the negotiations
after Carlyle's death, and was a man of high intellectual endow-
ments and of judicial training, so that great weight naturally
attaches to his opinion on the case. That opinion amounts to
a vindication of Froude's conduct, to which is added a warm
eulogium on the integrity and purity of his motives. At first
sight it seems to justify all that Froude did and to re-establish
his reputation, at least in as far as the use of the Carlyle papers
was concerned ; but a closer examination will, we believe, con-
vince the open-minded that as it was founded on evidence,
much of which has been proved to be erroneous, and is not
altogether free from partizan bias, it does not possess the authori-
tative character that Froude ascribes to it, and cannot be regarded
as a final award. It was, of course, not a judicial opinion, but
that of Froude's advocate in the case.
Sir James Stephen had somehow formed an exalted estimate
of Froude's ability and character and would not listen to anything
reflecting on either. He stood aloof from what Froude has
himself described as the storm of censure and indignation with
which the " Reminiscences " was received, and legitimately prided
himself on having defeated the attempt made to prevent him from
writing Carlyle's Life. He entertained towards him feelings of
128 APPENDIX
deep personal attachment, so that in reply to a conciliatory letter
from Mrs. Alexander Carlyle, asking advice in the interests of
peace, he wrote, declining to help her as she had consulted a
solicitor and said, " If you have occasion to communicate further
with me on the subject, please observe that Mr. Froude is my
intimate and valued friend."
Sir James Stephen accepted the version of his intimate and
valued friend's relations with Carlyle without question or demur,
and the version presented to him must have been very different
from that which is now given to us, for he is able to say that he
had never heard Froude utter " one ill-natured word " about
Carlyle or express anything but unqualified admiration of him
morally and intellectually. It was perhaps professions of unmixed
admiration and unvarying benignity that led Sir James Stephen to
accept simpliciter Froude's assurance that Carlyle had deputed
him to make atonement for him, by taking out probate, in solemn
form, of all his little faults. It is clear, however, that Sir James
Stephen did not know the measure of those faults according to
Froude's valuation of them. They were nothing and amounted to
nothing, Sir James thought, in the great balance of Carlyle's quali-
ties. He believed that, as there was no life that would bear a more
severe scrutiny, there could be no harm in exhibiting such small
flaws as freckled it and proved it human. Had Sir James Stephen
been aware that the time would come when Froude would hold
Carlyle up to public obloquy as being all flaws, with no sound part
in him, as selfish, cruel, arrogant, neglectful, hypocritical, as a man
who ought never to have married, a Lothario and a wife-beater,
the testimonial he gave him would probably have been couched in
language somewhat different from that in which it now appears.
Had he realised that he had been himself deceived by Froude,
that Carlyle's alleged ill-treatment of his wife was a fiction, and
his desire for expiation the figment of a distorted imagination, and
that some of the statements made to him about the papers were
inconsistent with fact, we may question whether there would have
been any testimonial at all. Sir James Stephen was a just man
and loved decorum, and that he would have disapproved of
Froude's later revelations, if true, and condemned them utterly
being false, there can be no doubt. Had he known what we now
do, he could not possibly have said, as he did in his letter to
Froude, that he believed his revelations about Carlyle up to that
APPENDIX 129
date to be " the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth ; "
he would not probably have taken upon himself the trouble
to prepare, although there were solicitors engaged on behalf of the
executors, the case which was submitted to counsel for them,
or to write long and very able letters to Dr. Benson in defence
of Froude, which seem to us, however, to be in parts somewhat
casuistical.
Sir James Stephen's strong advocacy of Froude's case in the
Carlyle controversy was undoubtedly due to his unlimited and
unique faith in him. Whatever Froude said must be true. He could
not entertain the claim to her uncle's papers of Mrs. Alexander
Carlyle, a woman of unimpeachable veracity — her uncle so styled
her in his will — because it depended on an oral communication,
but he saw no difficulty in adopting the statements of Froude —
a man whose inaccuracy was even then a bye-word — although
these were founded entirely on oral communications. Froude's
commission to write Carlyle's life rested on an oral com-
munication; he had no writing to show for it. The alleged
gift of the papers to him was by oral communication. The
alleged permission to publish the " Memoir of Jane Welsh
Carlyle," notwithstanding the prohibition on publication attached
to it, was by oral communication. The alleged permission to
burn the papers was by oral communication. The supposed
out-pourings of remorse and instructions for the post-
humous penitential parade were by oral communications.
Froude must have felt that he was making rather too heavy
demands on trust in his own memory, for he says in " My
Relations with Carlyle," " I see now — I saw it before, but I was
unwilling to worry him — that I ought to have insisted on receiving
from him in writing his own distinct directions."
Most of the points raised in Sir James Stephen's letter with
regard to the Carlyle papers have been answered in our reply to
Froude's " Apologia " in which they are also raised. The most
material point was the ownership of these papers, and as to this,
evidence has been adduced which we believe proves that they
became Mrs. Alexander Carlyle's property in 1875 by gift from
her uncle. It is desirable, however, to make some observations on
the memorandum which Sir James Stephen quotes at length and
which he thinks disposes of that claim — a claim which, evidently
in ignorance of Froude's letters to Mrs. Alexander Carlyle of
K
i 3 o APPENDIX
8th and ioth February, 1880, and to the Times of 2 5th. February,
1 881, Sir James Stephen says neither Froude nor he had any
notice of until they were informed of it by Mrs. Alexander
Carlyle's solicitors in June, 1881, and which he somewhat dis-
courteously, not to say questionably, insinuated was not present
to her mind at the time the memorandum was written, but only
occurred to her or was invented after she had talked over the
matter with her friends.
The following is the memorandum in full, as copied by Sir J.
Stephen, and sent to Mrs. A. Carlyle, with the covering letter :—
"32, De Vere Gardens, S.W.,
"z\st February , 1 88 1.
" My Dear Mrs. Carlyle,
" This is the copy of the memorandum I made this
afternoon ; I have shown it to Froude, and he will write to you on
the subject himself. He is perfectly satisfied.
" Yours sincerely,
" J. F. Stephen."
Memorandum of Mrs. A. Carlyle's understanding of the
FACTS RELATING TO Mr. CARLYLE'S PAPERS.
i. Papers relating to the late Mrs. 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 understands
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 subject. She,
however, says that Mr. Froude some time ago promised to
give 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
APPENDIX 131
that the property in them passed to him. She also under-
stands that Mr. Carlyle intended that any profit to be derived
from the book, for which they were 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.
We have here given the memorandum exactly as copied by
Sir James Stephen and sent by him to Mrs. Alexander Carlyle,
and it is well worth noting that the memorandum as printed in
" My Relations with Carlyle " differs from that copy in three
particulars. In the first line of the first paragraph Mr. has
been substituted for Mrs. Carlyle. In the fifth line of the
third paragraph " her uncle " has been substituted for Mr. Carlyle,
and in the sixth line of the same paragraph are has been
substituted for were. The substitution of Mr. for Mrs. Carlyle
and of are for were alter the meaning of the memorandum in a
manner adverse to Mrs. Alexander Carlyle's claim and are there-
fore not without significance.
But further, the note appended to the memorandum in " My
Relations with Carlyle " is very different from the note actually
sent with it to Mrs. Alexander Carlyle, and which in Sir James
Stephen's handwriting is now before us.
Note in " My Relations with Carlyle."
This was written in the presence of Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle and
Mr. Ouvry and was accepted by Mrs. Carlyle as a full statement
of her views. I sent her a copy of it this day, February 22, 188 1
—J. F. S.
Note actually received by Mrs. Alexander Carlyle.
I made this memorandum this day in the presence of Mr. and
Mrs. A. Carlyle and Mr. Ouvry, and Mrs. A. Carlyle said that
it correctly expressed her views. I have also read it to Mr.
Froude. — J. F. Stephen.
K 2
i 3 2 APPENDIX
In view of subsequent events it is interesting to note that,
according to Sir James Stephen, Froude was " perfectly satisfied "
with the memorandum as sent to Mrs. Alexander Carlyle.
Mrs. Alexander Carlyle, however, was never perfectly satisfied
with it. It " correctly expressed her views " in so far as the
effect of it was, as she supposed, to give Froude "absolutely"
only the manuscript " Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh
Carlyle," to which his right was never in dispute, and to give
him also the possession and use of the materials for the
" Reminiscences " and Biography, until these works were published,
on the understanding that all the manuscripts and papers with
which he had been entrusted, except the manuscript " Letters
and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle," should then be returned
to her intact and none destroyed meantime ; and, lastly, to give
Mrs. Alexander Carlyle the whole proceeds of the " Reminiscences "
and Froude the whole proceeds of the Biography.
To Mrs. Alexander Carlyle, the phrase " given to Mr. Froude,"
twice used by Sir James Stephen, conveyed the same meaning
that " delivered to Mr. Froude," or " placed in Mr. Froude's
hands" would have done, and so was equally consistent with a
gift or loan ; but in the third paragraph of the memorandum, which
deals with the materials for the Biography, Sir James Stephen
distinguished these from the materials for the " Reminiscences "
by adding, " so that the property in them passed to him " [Froude].
Mrs. Alexander Carlyle did not fully understand this piece of legal
phraseology, which was not explained to her ; but supposed it to
mean that in the case of the materials for the Biography, unlike
those for the " Reminiscences," Froude was to have the profits of
their publication. As this was in accordance with the tenor of
the memorandum, she did not at the time, nor afterwards, until
the phrase in question was most unfairly used against her as
evidence that her claim to the papers was an afterthought, attribute
any importance to it, believing that the papers were to be restored
to her as soon as the Biography was finished. Why should she
split hairs about a phrase, which so distinguished a man as Sir
James Stephen, of whom she had no suspicion, employed as the
right one? When Sir James Stephen wrote, as he did at first,
" given by Mr. Carlyle," Mrs. Alexander Carlyle said " No, not
by Mr. Carlyle, but by me ; they were given by me." Thereupon
Sir James Stephen, at her instance, struck out the words "by
APPENDIX 133
Mr. Carlyle," but added the words " so that the property passed
to him." To this Mrs. Alexander Carlyle said nothing, because
she agreed that Froude was to have the profits of the Biography,
and only stipulated that the materials were to be returned to her
when the work was accomplished.
Possession, for the time being, of the papers, with the right
to use them and also to take the profits of publication, which, in
the case of the Biography, Mrs. Alexander Carlyle always con-
ceded to Froude, would naturally seem to her very much the
same thing as the right of property for the time being, and it
was but to be temporary whilst the Biography was in progress.
Indeed, as every jurist knows, property, according to the old
Roman definition of it, is jus titendi, fruendi, abatendi, and given,
as in this case, the right of use and the right to take the fruits,
only the right to destroy or part with remains, and this was
expressly denied to Froude.
The phrase, therefore, after all, although Mrs. Alexander
Carlyle was dissatisfied with it and complained of it when she
discovered the use to which it was put, is not, at all events to the
lay mind, very inappropriate to the transaction, which the memo-
randum sought to define and interpret, and, in view of the abun-
dant evidence now forthcoming that Mrs. Alexander Carlyle's
claim to the papers was not an afterthought, but a claim acknow-
ledged and enforced by Carlyle himself in his lifetime, and then
and afterwards admitted by Froude in public and private, orally
and in writing, it may seem superfluous to dwell further on the
circumstances under which the memorandum was written. Never-
theless, as the memorandum was Sir James Stephen's sheet-anchor
in his subsequent dealings with Mrs. Alexander Carlyle and her
solicitors, and a principal foundation of his estimate of FrouJe's
rectitude and generosity, and, as prominence is given to it in " My
Relations with Carlyle," it may be well to point out that Mrs.
Alexander Carlyle's responsibility for its terms is limited by the
following considerations : —
1. Carlyle died on the 5th February, 1881, Mrs. Alexander
Carlyle having been his constant companion from 1868, and
having nursed him during his infirmity and in his last illness.
He was buried at Ecclefechan on 10th February.
2. The memorandum, dated 21st February, 1881, was written
at a formal meeting for the reading of the will, and was therefore
i 3 4 APPENDIX
prepared at a time when Mrs. Alexander Carlyle was overcome
by grief and fatigue, and was not in a condition to transact
important business.
3. It is in the handwriting of Sir James Stephen, and the
phraseology is his, and it was written by Sir James Stephen at a
time when, as he says himself, he " was very superficially
acquainted with these matters," and was his summary in his
own language of what he calls " a diffuse statement " by Mrs.
Alexander Carlyle " as to the details."
4. It is not signed by Mrs. Alexander Carlyle.
5. Although it deals with matters of the utmost importance,
involving, besides even more serious issues, pecuniary interests to
the amount of thousands of pounds, about which differences had
already arisen, the memorandum was written on the spur of the
moment, no draft of it was submitted to Mrs. Alexander Carlyle,
and no opportunity was given to her of taking independent advice
or even of reflection, before her verbal assent was asked to its
terms.
6. At this time Mrs. Alexander Carlyle reposed entire con-
fidence in Sir James Stephen, and nothing had happened to
suggest to her his partiality for Froude which afterwards became
manifest. It was not until after the 9th May, 1881, when he
counselled Froude to repudiate his public offer of that date to
restore the materials for the Biography without writing it, and the
14th May, when he wrote to Mrs. Alexander Carlyle requesting
her to remember that Froude was his " intimate and valued
friend," that she realised that he was prejudiced against her.
It need scarcely be said that a memorandum drafted under these
circumstances, and merely read over to a lady, who was no lawyer
and was not asked to sign it, ought not to be pressed against her,
on technical grounds of construction, beyond her own statement
of what she understood by it when she accepted it, in conversation,
as correctly expressing her views.
The following statement was made in May, 1881, in support
of Mrs. Alexander Carlyle's claim to the ownership of her uncle's
papers.
APPENDIX 135
Mrs. Alexander Carlyle.
I am the niece of the late Mr. Thomas Carlyle, with whom I
resided at Cheyne Row from 1868 until his death, except for six
months in the year 1873. When I went to reside with my uncle
I had just left school, and as I grew older I became his constant
companion and amanuensis. From 1875, when a change of
housekeeper took place, I had the superintendence of my uncle's
house and the custody of most of its contents, but not the super-
intendence of his private affairs. As to his private affairs, my
uncle was assisted by his brother, Dr. John Carlyle, who used to
balance his private accounts, and by Mr. Forster, who used to
settle his publisher's accounts. After Mr. Forster's death in 1876-
Mr. Ouvry settled the publisher's accounts for 1878, and I did so
afterwards. My uncle always drew his own cheques.
As to the contents of the house, I divide them into four classes,,
which, for the reasons presently mentioned, I treated differently.
First, there were my uncle's private business papers,
such as his accounts with printers and publishers ; accounts
connected with his Scotch estate of Craigenputtock ; his
cheque books ; his banker's pass book ; the lease of the
house ; Dr. John Carlyle's will, made about 1853 ; old cheque
books ; old bargains with publishers ; and receipted accounts.
There were also my uncle's own will, his purse, and photo-
graphs of his wife and mother. I never had the custody or
charge of any of these documents and personal effects. They
were kept by my uncle, some in a large secretaire with
pigeon-holes which stood in the dining-room, and some in
a writing-desk and chest of drawers combined which stood
in his bedroom. When my uncle gave me the keys of the
house he retained the keys of these repositories. With this
class should also come my uncle's wardrobe.
Secondly, there were the usual contents of a house-
keeper's storeroom, of which I had the management and
superintendence, and in respect of which the housekeeper
was responsible to me. Of these of course I was steward
only.
Thirdly, there was the furniture, plate, linen, china,
books, prints, pictures, and other gifts, given by my uncle's
will, made in 1873, t0 m y uncle Dr. John Carlyle, and by
136 APPENDIX
the codicil to Dr. Carlyle for life, with remainder to me abso-
lutely. These, under the circumstances presently detailed, I
came to regard as to be mine on the death of my uncle
Thomas Carlyle, whether Dr. Carlyle should be then living
or not.
Fourthly, there were my uncle's letters, manuscripts,
and papers, and his wife's jewelry. These, under the circum-
stances presently detailed, became mine in 1875 by my
uncle's gift, although I was always anxious to observe any
wish he had respecting them, and was naturally backward to
speak of them as mine during his life, never anticipating
(except on the occasion which gave rise to the correspondence
of February, 1880) that there would be any difficulty after
my uncle's death respecting my ownership of them from 1875.
The origin of the gift was as follows : —
In June, 1875, my uncle Thomas Carlyle bought seven ^1000
1873 5% Russian Bonds from our next door neighbour, Mr. Laisne',
a stockbroker. On the 30th of June, 1875, these bonds were
delivered to him, and as I sat writing in the dining-room at
Cheyne Row after breakfast my uncle altogether unexpectedly
brought me one of these bonds and gave it to me as a present.
He said that he had in addition to this provision for me left me
by his Will ^500. He also told me that he had left to his
brother John (my uncle Dr. John Carlyle, who was then staying
with us at Cheyne Row) all the things in the house as they stood,
but that he now gave these same things to me instead, which
arrangement he had explained to his brother John who would also
speak of it to me. He also said specifically that he gave me also
his papers and his wife's jewelry. He said, " I give you the papers
and all the jewels of your aunt." He at the same time gave into
my possession the keys of these papers and of his wife's jewels,
which keys I had never up till that time used except on occasions
when they were lent to me by him for some specific purpose. My
uncle John A. Carlyle the same day spoke of this gift of a
thousand pounds. He spoke of it as being in his opinion a small
provision, but he added, " Your uncle has also given you all the
things in the house which he has bequeathed to me by his Will.
I quite approve of his doing so and I renounce all claim upon
them." He again in the evening spoke of the gift of these things
APPENDIX 137
in the house in the hearing of my uncle Thomas Carlyle. I
received no other keys from my uncle at this time. About three
months later, on the occasion of my return with my uncle Thomas
Carlyle to Cheyne Row after a visit into Kent, our old house-
keeper Mrs. Warren having left us, I received from my uncle I
think all the keys of the house with the exception of the keys of
the secretaire and writing desk mentioned above as containing his
private business papers and other personal property.
The papers of which my uncle gave me possession for myself
on the 30th of June, 1875, were tnen some of them in two cup-
boards in the room which had formerly been his study and some
of them in a pedestal chest of drawers in the drawing-room. The
jewelry, which he considered very valuable (in it were the brooch
bracelet and chain which had been sent to my aunt by Goethe),
was contained in two jewel boxes which were locked in an old
chest of drawers on the landing outside his bedroom door.
From this date (June 1875) my uncle never dealt with any of
these things without consulting me and I regarded them as mine
and dealt with them openly as such in the following instances : —
1. I wore the jewelry with my uncle's knowledge and
approval.
2. I gave away as mementoes of my aunt a gold compass
and a vinaigrette, without asking my uncle's permission.
3. In November, 1876, I sent to Mr. Allingham, then
editor of Fraser's Magazine, a translation from Goethe which
was amongst the papers given to me which Mr. Allingham
wished to publish, but, ultimately, I decided not to have it
published because I was unable to write any introduction
to it which appeared to me satisfactory. I consulted my
uncle about the introduction but not about whether the MS.
should be published or not. This my uncle treated as
entirely my affair.
4. About this time my uncle told me that Mr. Allingham
had spoken to him concerning certain unpublished articles
by my uncle which I had lent him to read. My uncle had
expressed to Mr. Allingham his willingness that one of these
— an account of a tour in the Netherlands — should be printed
in Fraser's Magazine; but my uncle said he had told
Mr. Allingham that the articles which I had lent him to
138 APPENDIX
read were mine and he must consult with me. Mr. Allingham
accordingly asked my consent to publish some of these
articles (amongst them the account of a tour in the
Netherlands) along with the materials for my uncle's
biography which are now in Mr. Froude's hands.
5. When my uncle complied with a request for his
autograph before 1875, when he gave his MSS. to me, he
often used a piece of an old MS. for the donee. After 1875
he never did so, but wrote his name instead. I, on the
other hand, when asked for an autograph sometimes used
his old MSS. without consulting my uncle, as I did (1) in the
autumn of 1876 for Mrs. Annabella Anstruther of Old
Ballikinrain, to whom I gave a paper written by my uncle on
a new mode of roughing horses which was amongst the
papers my uncle had given me. (2) In 1877 or 1878 for
Mrs. Hartpole Lecky a MS. which, if I remember rightly,
formed part of my uncle's MS. of " Frederick II." Mrs.
Lecky asked me on this occasion, " Ought I not to apply to
Mr. Carlyle for it?" and I replied, "No, his MSS. are all
mine." (3) In 1878 and 1879, without consulting my uncle,
I cut from the MSS. he had given me the names in his
handwriting of several personages (e.g., Frederick Wilhelm,
Marie Therese, Maupertuis), of whom we had portraits, and
affixed them to the portraits where my uncle frequently saw
them without objection.
6. I had two letters of Thackeray and also a poem of
Goethe framed separately and hung up in my own room,
and I put a paper of my uncle into my scrap-book. These
I took out of the cupboard referred to. My uncle often saw
them and treated the appropriation as proper.
7. In 1877, after some communications between my
uncle and Mr. Froude as to a biography of my uncle, my
uncle asked me to send Mr. Froude such of the papers as
I thought would be useful for that purpose, but told me
distinctly that he had taken care I should have them all back
again. I was then, as always, anxious to carry out every wish
of my uncle, and I accordingly sent almost all the papers I
had, but I might have retained all if I had desired. I left
the selection to Mr. Froude of my own free will and without
my uncle's knowledge.
APPENDIX 139
8. On the 17th April, 1880, I opened one of the drawers
in the pedestal chest in the drawing-room to look for a paper.
The drawer contained unpublished articles of my uncle on
various subjects (articles, there to this day, on Modern
Science, Fenianism, Trades Unions, Skirving, etc., etc.). It
was dark, and I took out the drawer and carried it to the
lamp beside which my uncle and my husband were reading.
On turning over these papers I came upon a letter from
Disraeli to my uncle and a copy of his answer to it. I said,
"There is Dizzy's letter offering to make you a Grand
Knight of the Bath. Shall we show it to Alick?" (my
husband, who was sitting by). He answered, glancing into
the drawer, " They are all your own, you may do what you
like with them." From this drawer I took out an article on
Wilson (Christopher North), sent it to Mr. Froude, and it is
now in Mr. Froude's hands amongst the papers claimed
by me.
The following is an instance of a gift made to me by my
uncle similar to the gift of the papers where I acted without
question as absolute owner in presenti. In February, 1876, my
uncle, Thomas Carlyle, gave me the watch, chain, and seals which
had belonged to Charles Dickens, and which were bequeathed to
my uncle by the late John Forster. I gave away the watch, the
chain, and the seals in my uncle's lifetime without asking his
permission.
I never in my uncle's lifetime had any misunderstanding with
Mr. Froude, who was at all times kind and courteous to me. I
was satisfied by my uncle's frequent assurance that Mr. Froude
understood the papers to be mine. I very seldom spoke of them
as mine simply out of delicacy, not wishing to seem greedy about
property which I knew my uncle had given to me as an immediate
and present gift, not postponed until his death but yet in prospect
of that event. My uncle during many years spoke of his death
as near at hand. I considered the papers referred to as very
precious, but I never thought of them as valuable in point of
money until, as presently mentioned, Mr. Froude arranged with me
to hold the proceeds of the " Reminiscences " for me. The only
occasions upon which Mr. Froude used words which led me to
think that he did not clearly understand all the papers were
i 4 o APPENDIX
mine were those referred to in the correspondence of February,
1880.
On February 16, 1879, Mr. Froude brought Mr. Bret Harte,
who was staying with him, to visit my uncle in Cheyne Row.
Before lunch, while Mr. Bret Harte was talking with my uncle,
Mr. Froude said to me (referring to my present husband's father),
" Your uncle Alick wrote the best letters in the family. They are
very interesting and I am going to give them to you." I replied,
" Oh ! you are going to send me all of them ; they are all mine."
After Mr. Froude and Mr. Bret Harte had left, it occurred to me
to make sure there should be no mistake about the return of the
papers to me. I therefore said to my uncle I was sorry I had sent
so many of the papers to Mr. Froude and wondered if Mr. Froude
understood they were to be all returned to me. My uncle replied,
" Froude perfectly understands that, for I have often said so to
him." I expressed a wish that my uncle would speak to Mr.
Froude again on the subject so as to prevent any misapprehension,
which he promised to do. Mr. Froude used to come to our
house twice a week, Tuesdays and Fridays, to walk and latterly to
drive out with my uncle. On the Tuesday following the Sunday
upon which the above mentioned conversation took place my
uncle drove out with Mr. Froude in a hansom cab. After the
drive and after Mr. Froude had left, my uncle said to me,
" Froude perfectly understands the papers are yours and will
return them all to you. He has promised to do so."
In February, 1880, Mr. Froude again spoke of returning
Mr. Alexander Carlyle's letters. This to me revived my fear
lest he might not return the others. I therefore again raised the
subject with my uncle in February, 1880. He said to me,
" Froude understands beyond any kind of doubt that they are
yours — it is no use bothering him again." But I persisted, and
he promised me to speak to Mr. Froude about it again for the
purpose of insuring that the papers should be returned to me as
soon as Mr. Froude had done with them.
Mr. Froude's letter to me of 10th February, 1880, which I
showed to my uncle, satisfied both my uncle and myself that no
further question would be raised on the subject. " That I was
to have," as Mr. Froude there said, " the entire collection when
he had done with it," appeared to me all I wanted.
The occasion upon which the monetary value of the papers
APPENDIX 141
was first discussed was shortly after Mr. Froude's letter to my
uncle of 23rd September, 1879.
On the 20th of November, 1879, my husband and I dined
with Mr. Froude at his residence, Mr. Froude's son, Mr. Ashley
Froude, and his daughter, Miss Margaret Froude, being present.
On this occasion Mr. Froude distinctly stated that he would hold
the whole proceeds of the " Reminiscences " for me. This
promise was frequently repeated by Mr. Froude, who, on one
occasion, a month before my uncle's death, in the presence of
my husband, added, " The book was written by your uncle, not
by me, and therefore there would be no propriety in my receiving
the money for it. But of course it will be different with the
Biography, which I shall write myself." My husband and I both
assented to this, and looked upon it as settled. My uncle was
informed of this arrangement on the 20th of November, 1879, by
myself and my husband, and subsequently by Mr. Froude, and
expressed his approval of it as natural and proper, so that we
regarded it as a settled thing.
After this arrangement had been made, and possibly to some
extent influenced by it, I sent Mr. Froude, for use and return to
me, further papers which my uncle had given me, especially the
letters of my uncle, Thomas Carlyle, to his brother, Dr. John
Carlyle, a very large collection of which, extending over sixty
years, were returned to my uncle, Thomas Carlyle, by Dr. Carlyle's
executor a few months after the death of Dr. Carlyle in September,
1879. These my uncle, Thomas Carlyle, gave me for my own
as soon as he received them, and I, at his wish, lent them to
Mr. Froude, relying on his promise to restore all the papers to
me when used for the purpose of the Biography.
On the 21st of February, 1881, the will and codicil of my
uncle were read by Mr. Ouvry in the presence of Sir J. F. Stephen
and myself and my husband, but Mr. Froude was not present.
Immediately after the will was read Sir J. Stephen said, " There
is too the question of the papers." I answered, " Yes ; Froude
has no right to say what he said in the Times, he has no right to
burn them ; the papers are mine." Sir James Stephen said, " Do
you mean to say that you want a share in the profits ? " I said,
" No ; but Froude is to return all the papers to me ; he has
promised to do so," and thereupon I showed Sir James Stephen
Mr. Froude's letter of 10th February, 1880. Mr. Ouvry then
i 4 2 APPENDIX
said, " There is too the question of the c Reminiscences ' ; I think
Mrs. Carlyle was to have the profits of that book." I said,
"Yes; Mr. Froude has promised them to me." Sir James
Stephen then said that what I had said was entirely satisfactory,
and proposed that it should be reduced by him to writing.
I was at the time extremely tired ; I had not thought the
matter over nor taken either professional advice or that of my
husband, and was in consequence not at all in a fit state to
transact business; but alarmed by what I had heard shortly
before, that the whole matter might have to be thrown into
Chancery, I consented to Sir James Stephen's suggestion. Sir
James Stephen then drew up a memorandum, which differed from
that which afterwards passed in this, that it was said that the
papers were given " by Mr. Carlyle " instead of simply given, and
that all the words after " the use to be made of these papers "
were wanting. I objected to this, saying the papers were sent
by me, not by my uncle, and I strongly protested that Mr. Froude
had no right to burn any of the papers. Thereupon Sir James
Stephen asked whether I thought that practically he would burn
any of them, and pressed me as to whether I had not sent the
MSS. by order of my uncle, but I persisted this was not so. Sir
James Stephen then tore up the first memorandum and wrote
another, leaving out after given the words " by Mr. Carlyle " and
adding the words at the end, " On the other hand Mrs. A. Carlyle,"
etc., as the paragraph now stands.
I agreed to the memorandum in this form, understanding by
it that I was to have the entire collection of the MSS. with the
profits of the " Reminiscences," Mr. Froude having the profits of
the Biography.
It was only in this sense that the memorandum expressed
what I understood.
The parol evidence which was collected in support of the gift
to Mrs. Alexander Carlyle of her uncle's papers is next given.
Alexander Carlyle.
I am a nephew of the late Mr. Thomas Carlyle, a son of his
brother Alexander. I married my cousin, then Miss Mary
Carlyle Aitken, on the 21st of August, 1879. After our marriage
we continued to live at Cheyne Row and to have the care of
APPENDIX 143
Mr. Carlyle, as my wife had before our marriage. We still live
at Cheyne Row. I came to England from Canada in July, 1879,
and therefore know nothing of the manuscripts of my late uncle
before that date. After coming to England I heard from my wife
that my uncle had given her his MSS. I was present at and
remember the following occasion upon which my uncle spoke of
the MSS. as the property of my wife : —
On the 17th of April, 1880, I was reading with my uncle in
the drawing-room at Cheyne Row, and my wife was searching
through one of the drawers of a pedestal chest of drawers in the
drawing-room full of his MSS. My wife brought the drawer to
the lamp, beside which my uncle and I were reading, and taking
out a letter from Disraeli to my uncle and a copy of his reply to
it, my wife said to my uncle, " There is Dizzy's letter offering to
make you a G.C.B. Shall we show it to Alick ? " — meaning me.
My uncle glanced into the drawer and replied to my wife : " They
are all your own; you may do what you like with them." I
confirm the account given by my wife (in her proof which I have
read) of the interview with Sir James Stephen and Mr. Ouvry on
the 21st of February, 1881, after the will was read.
Mrs. Jane Carlyle Aitken.
I was the sister of the late Thomas Carlyle and John Aitken
Carlyle, and am the mother of Mrs. A. Carlyle, who resided with
my brother Thomas. My brother Dr. John Carlyle has frequently
said to me that the things in the house at Cheyne Row were left
to him by the will of my brother Thomas, but were my daughter
Mary's. The last occasion upon which he did so was in the
spring of 1878 at our house, The Hill, Dumfries, after his return
home from Cheyne Row. We were speaking of our brother
Thomas's failing health. My brother John said to me, " Mary
has a heavy task and does it well ; her uncle has left her ^"500."
I remarked that " it was a limited provision in the circumstances
if one had been studying that." My brother replied, " Yes, but
Tom and I have arranged that all the things in the house which
have been left to me are Mary's."
Miss Ann Aitken.
I am the sister of Mrs. A. Carlyle. I resided for many years
in the same house with my uncle, Dr. John A. Carlyle. On one
i 4 4 APPENDIX
occasion, about May, 1878, my uncle John said to me, referring
to my uncle Thomas, " Your uncle has left all the things in his
house to me, but they are Mary's." By " Mary " he intended my
sister, now Mrs. A. Carlyle. I am quite sure he used the words
" are Mary's." He did not particularise the things in the house.
On the same occasion my uncle John told me it had been agreed
between him and my uncle Thomas that what my uncle Thomas
had by his will left to my uncle John should be my sister Mary's.
Mr. W. Allingham. Late Editor of Eraser's Magazine.
{Extract from a letter written by Witness.)
Towards the end of 1876 I had some talk with Mr. Carlyle
about publishing papers of his in Erasers Magazine, of which
I was then the Editor. He referred the matter to Miss Mary
Aitken, who sent me several MSS. to examine, part of which I
was very desirous to have for publication. But on going to
Cheyne Row some days afterwards I found that Miss Aitken had
changed her mind and would not allow the articles to be published
by Longman. I argued a little against this, but she persisted in
her opinion, and Carlyle left the matter in her hands, so I returned
all the MSS. to her and said no more about it.
Paul Frederick Friedmann, Esq., of The Boltons.
I was a friend of the late Mr. Thomas Carlyle, with whom I
frequently went out driving. On one of the last occasions that I
went out with Mr. Carlyle we spoke of Victor Hugo. I mentioned
Goethe's expression about Hugo's plays — "bloody marionettes."
Carlyle laughed and told me that Goethe had written to him,
saying of Hugo's works, " Von dieser Litteratur bitte ich sich fern
zu halten" (" of this literature I pray to keep aloof"), or very nearly
such words. I asked him if he had many letters of Goethe ; he
said, " Yes, a good many." I said they must be very interesting
and asked what he had done with them, if he had given them to
Lewes for Goethe's Life. He said, " Oh, no, Mary has them all,"
and either added, " I have given them all to her " or " They are all
hers," or words to that effect, from which I clearly understood
that they were actually her property. I said I hoped Miss Aitken
would publish them some day. He said, " Oh, yes, when I am
APPENDIX 145
gone," or nearly such words. We afterwards spoke of Lewes,
George Eliot, Thackeray.
I inferred from Carlyle's words that what I had heard of his
having given all his papers to Miss Aitken was true and forbore
asking him (as I had otherwise intended) for a book Goethe had
given him. I had been reminded of this book when he told me
of the letters and had therefore intentionally brought the conversa-
tion to the point where he told me that the letters were Miss
Aitken's. We did not speak of his books nor as far as I remember
of his manuscripts in general. I remember no other conversation
with Carlyle about his manuscripts. I have never seen the letters
of Goethe and do not know whether the passage really occurs in
them. I cannot swear to any exact words, but I have a distinct
recollection of the conversation and that I clearly understood
Thomas Carlyle to say that the letters of Goethe belonged to
Miss Aitken. I am quite certain that he did not say that they
would be hers.
Mrs. E. A. Venturi, Sister-in-law of Mr. Stansfeld, M.P.
I was a friend of the late Mr. Thomas Carlyle. I remember
talking with him shortly after Mazzini's death in 1872 upon the
question of one's responsibility with regard to private letters of
friends and telling him that it was Mazzini's habit to burn all
intimate letters as soon as possible after receipt of them. He
appeared to approve of this, in Mazzini's case, but to my surprise
not as a general rule. I distinctly remember that he told me that
he had not adopted this practice and added that it could lead to
no mischief as all his letters and papers would " ultimately " come
to Miss Aitken. On a later occasion, probably before 1877, Miss
Aitken, sitting beside her uncle Thomas Carlyle with her hand on
his knee, told me, in his presence and hearing, that he (Miss Aitken
called him "Bester") had given her all his letters and papers.
He appeared to me to entirely accept what Miss Aitken said, but
I do not remember that he made any remark.
Mrs. Annabella A. Anstruther, of Cassillis House, Ayr.
I was a friend of the late Mr. Thomas Carlyle. In the
summer or autumn of 1876 Miss Aitken made me a present from
herself of the following papers : —
L
i 4 6 APPENDIX
i. A MS. of Carlyle on a method of roughing horses.
2. Another MS. of Carlyle beginning " But how is the
artist to guard himself from the corruptions of his time ? "
3. Another small piece in blue pencil.
4. A separate autograph and several photographs of
Carlyle, his wife and his mother.
Afterwards, whilst Carlyle was staying on a visit with us at Old
Ballikinrain, I mentioned the gift to him. He appeared to me to
approve of the gift as a gift from his niece, not from himself.
One of his expressions was, " Mary has plenty more of that
rubbish," meaning his handwriting. The impression I received
from the conversation was that Miss Aitken had entire control of
her uncle's papers.
These statements, accompanied by a narrative of Mrs.
Alexander Carlyle's case and the whole of the correspondence to
date, including the communications with Sir James Stephen
which were entered upon for the express purpose of inter-
changing without reserve all that could be said on either side
for or against the respective claims of Mrs. Alexander Carlyle,
Froude and Carlyle's executors and also the Case presently
mentioned which was drafted by Sir James Stephen on behalf of
Carlyle's executors, and the opinion of Mr. Vaughan Hawkins
upon it, were submitted by Messrs. Benson in July, 1881, to
Mr. Cozens-Hardy, who was asked to advise in response to the
following questions : —
Questions submitted to Mr. Cozens-Hardy.
" What are the respective rights of Mrs. Alexander Carlyle,
Mr. Froude, Carlyle's executors, and others in relation to —
" First, the ownership of the MSS., letters, family papers
and materials generally ;
"Secondly, the right of publication, and the use of the
material for that purpose ;
"Thirdly, the copyright and profits, and generally what
course Mrs. Alexander Carlyle is entitled to take to secure
what she considers due to her uncle's memory and the
benefits he intended for her ? "
APPENDIX 147
Mr. Cozens-Hardy's Opinion : —
8/7; July, 1 88 1.
t. Prima facie the right to the manuscript letters and
family papers vests in the executors of the late Thomas
Carlyle. I think, however, that there is good ground for
contending that the ownership of these documents is not
vested in the executors, but is vested in Mrs. Alexander
Carlyle, to whom they were given by her uncle in June, 1875.
It appears from the accompanying Statements that what took
place amounted to an immediate present gift, as distinguished
from an intention to give, and moreover that the fact of such
a gift was repeatedly acknowledged by Mr. Carlyle in a
manner which will supply that corroboration which is
necessary to support Mrs. Alexander Carlyle's claim. This
being so, I think that Mrs. Carlyle is entitled to claim the
documents from Mr. Froude or from the executors. In
saying this, I do not of course intend to say that Mr. Froude
may not use for the purpose of the Biography the letters which
were lent to him by Mrs. Carlyle for that express purpose.
2. I think that the right of publication passes with the
ownership of the letters and other papers, except so far as the
writers of any letters addressed to Mr. Carlyle or their legal
personal representatives may interfere by injunction to
restrain the publication.
3. I think that the copyright and the profits to be derived
from the publication will also belong to Mrs. Carlyle, subject,
however, to this qualification. Mrs. Carlyle permitted Mr.
Froude to have the documents and to publish part of them
in the volumes of " Reminiscences " ; and I am not prepared
to say that she can as of right prevent the republication of
the " Reminiscences." It seems that in 1879, before the
publication was resolved upon or finally authorised, Mr.
Froude agreed that all the profits to be derived from that
publication should belong to Mrs. Carlyle. See his letters of
the 21st and 23rd February, 1881. But I understand that
Mrs. Carlyle has agreed to allow Mr. Froude to retain ^3 00
out of the profits arising from the sale of the " Reminiscences,"
and that Mr. Froude has assented to this and agrees to assign
the copyright to her.
Herbert H. Cozens-Hardv,
7, New Square, Lincoln's Inn.
L 2
148 APPENDIX
Whilst the case upon which this opinion was given was being
drafted, Mrs. Alexander Carlyle heard that Sir James Stephen in
consultation with Froude was also drafting a case on the part of
Carlyle's executors for the opinion of Mr. Vaughan Hawkins as
to the claims of the executors on behalf of the residuary legatees.
Mrs. Alexander Carlyle, therefore, desired Messrs. Benson to
send to Sir James Stephen the first draft of the case which they
were preparing on her behalf for the double purpose of helping
Sir James Stephen to state the facts correctly and of obtaining
from him, for Mr. Cozens-Hardy's consideration, all that either he
or Froude could urge against her claims.
Early in June, i88t, Messrs. Benson sent Mrs. Alexander
Carlyle's case, so far as it was then drafted, to Sir James Stephen
without the Statements above set out, which, not being then
complete, were reserved for later communication, and at his
request authorised him to communicate the draft case to Mr.
Ouvry and Froude, asking Sir James Stephen, however, to treat it
as " still imperfect and therefore susceptible without comment of
any corrections which further consideration or research might
render necessary."
Meantime, without waiting for the assistance which, in
stating the facts for Mr. Vaughan Hawkins' opinion, he might
have obtained by communication with Mrs. Alexander Carlyle's
solicitors, Sir James Stephen had, on the 13th of May, 1881,
obtained Mr. Vaughan Hawkins' opinion in favour of the execu-
tors' claims to the papers, upon a statement which is not merely
imperfect in many important particulars, but, in some, opposed
to the facts as we now know them.
Upon the statement submitted to him, Mr. Vaughan Hawkins'
advice could not have been other than it was, but his opinion
was without value, because he was not furnished with the State-
ments given above which were submitted to Mr. Cozens-Hardy
with the corroborative letters from which many quotations have
already been made.
Nevertheless, Mr. Vaughan Hawkins' opinion, as well as the
letters of Sir James Stephen, expressing his own views, were
submitted to and considered by Mr. Cozens-Hardy before he
wrote his opinion.
On the 28th of June, 1881, Messrs. Benson sent to Sir James
Stephen a copy of the above-mentioned Statements, in support of
the gift of the papers to Mrs. Alexander Carlyle in 1875, suggesting
APPENDIX 149
that they would influence the opinion he had expressed adverse
to this gift, and adding, " The case is not a party and party state-
ment but comprises all the materials we have been able to gather,
whichever way they tell."
On the 5th of July, 1881, Sir James Stephen replied that the
new matter had "not weakened, but confirmed" the opinion
expressed in his letter of the 10th of June, 1881, and, after giving
his reasons for doubting the accuracy of Mrs. Alexander Carlyle's
account of her uncle's gift to her and saying that he saw no reason
to disbelieve Froude's statement as to the authority given to him
to burn the letters and papers, he proceeded as follows : —
" No doubt the language of Mr. Froude's letters to the Times
favours Mrs. Carlyle's claim, but what he wrote in 1881 cannot
alter the legal effect of things said and done years before, and, it
must be remembered, that he has always admitted that Mr. Carlyle
desired him to return all the papers to Mrs. Carlyle when he had
done with them. On the other hand, he has the papers and
prima facie they are his.
" The claim of the executors on behalf of the estate is free
from the difficulty which always attends claims founded on
recollections of conversations to which there is only one living
witness and which took place (if at all) several years before the
claim is decided, but our claim is open to this remark, its
enforcement would do no good to anyone and would certainly
defeat Mr. Carlyle's intentions both by depriving Mrs. Carlyle of
the profits of the ' Reminiscences ' and by hampering Mr. Froude
(to an extent which depends on the determination of an entirely
new and doubtful point of law) in making use of the papers for
biographical purposes.
" The result is that in every view of the case a settlement appears
advisable, and I earnestly recommend the parties concerned to
adopt either the terms which I proposed in my last letter [i.e., the
letter of 10th June, 1881, above referred to] or some modifica-
tion of them. I should be much surprised if Mr. Cozens-Hardy,
or any independent person whose opinion may be taken on the
subject, did not recognise the force of these observations."
Messrs. Benson replied on the 20th of July, 1881, inclosing a
copy of Mr. Cozens-Hardy's opinion, and after dealing with the
reasons given by Sir James Stephen for doubting the accuracy of
Mrs. Alexander Carlyle's statement, they expressed as follows her
i 5 o APPENDIX
response to the suggestions made by Sir James Stephen in his
letter of the ioth of June : —
" We are desired to state at the outset that Mrs. Carlyle declines
to receive the proceeds of the ' Reminiscences ' as a gift from Mr.
Froude, but claims them in accordance with Mr. Cozens-Hardy's
opinion as a right for the origin of which she will be indebted to
her uncle and not to Mr. Froude, but we do not think a difference
of opinion on this point between Mrs. Carlyle and Mr. Froude
ought to affect any amicable arrangement which might otherwise
be made.
" Having made this statement, we are instructed that Mrs.
Carlyle is willing that a friendly settlement should be effected on
the following terms : —
" i. Mr. Froude at once to act upon his letter to the Times
of 9th May, 1 88 1, and deliver all the papers to Mrs. Carlyle.
" 2. The executors to sanction this delivery upon having
either the written consent of the residuary legatees or a sub-
stantial and approved indemnity (which we believe we are
in a position to offer) against any claim which may be
made by any residuary legatee, whose written consent is not
obtained, against the executors in respect of the papers so
delivered.
" 3. Mr. Froude to give up all claim to any further use
of or profit from the papers so delivered, which Mrs. Carlyle
will treat as given to her by her uncle in his lifetime.
" 4. On the other hand, Mrs. Carlyle to give up the whole
profits, present and future, as well as the copyright, of the
" Reminiscences," so that as far as Mrs. Carlyle is concerned,
Mr. Froude will at once receive for his own benefit ^1,500
now in hand from this source."
Further correspondence took place, in the course of which
there was a practical recognition of the justice of Mrs. Alexander
Carlyle's claim by Sir James Stephen, for on the 19th of August,
1 88 1, Messrs. Farrer, Ouvry & Co. wrote to Messrs. Benson in
these terms : " We send you a copy of a letter that has been
addressed to Mr. Froude, and Sir Fitz- James Stephen, who has
sent it to us, points out that Mrs, A. Carlyle, by giving the papers
to Mr. Froude tinder the circumstances as stated by herself, has
APPENDIX 151
induced him to bestow several years of great labour upon
them, and thus has practically contracted with him that he
should write the life of the late Mr. Carlyle, using the papers as
his materials."
To this Messrs. Benson replied that " Mrs. Alexander Carlyle,
without entirely concurring with Sir James Stephen as to the
extent of Mr. Froude's labours, has so far recognised the justice
of the view expressed by him as to provide for the payment of
a very considerable sum [the whole profits of the ' Remini-
scences,' in respect of which ^1,500 was in hand] to Mr. Froude
as part of the proposed compromise."
In September, 1881, a long conference took place between
Sir James Stephen and Dr. Benson at the office of Messrs. Farrer,
Ouvry & Co. with a view to an amicable arrangement, but imme-
diately after that conference Sir James Stephen addressed a letter
to Mr. Farrer, to be forwarded to Dr. Benson, in which the
following passages occurred : —
" I am not quite sure whether in the course of my conversation
with Mr. Benson I made one point clear, namely, that if matters
came to an extremity, Mr. Froude will not admit his liability,
either legal or moral, to give Mrs. Carlyle any part of the
proceeds of the ' Reminiscences.' He is, and always has been,
willing to make over the amount, less ^300, to her, if she will
accept it as a present from him. For the sake of peace he is
willing that the amount, less ^300, shall be accepted by her
without any statement being made as to her title to it, but if she
rejects the money as a present and sues him for the papers and
the ^1,500, he will stand on his rights and refuse to give her
anything at all, except what the law compels him to give, and he
would take up this position whether the tribunal chosen was a
court of law or an arbitrator. . . . Will you kindly send Mr. Benson
a copy of this ? I hope he will allow me to congratulate him on
the good feeling and gentlemanlike manner which he showed in a
matter which required much delicacy and also on his firmness and
acuteness in respect of his client's interests. I may just add that
I am quite convinced that Mr. Froude will not give way on the
subject of writing Mr. Carlyle's Life. He feels that it would be
injurious and humiliating to him to do so, and I entirely agree
with him."
152 APPENDIX
Strange doctrine to fall from the pen of a nineteenth-century
jurist ! True, says Sir James Stephen in effect, in his letter to
Messrs. Benson, of ioth June, 1881, Carlyle intended his manu-
scripts for his niece. True, he added in his letter of the 5th July
following, a claim to them by his executors would defeat his
intentions and do no good to anyone. True, going back to his
letter of the ioth June, Carlyle died in the faith of Froude's
engagement, that his niece who solaced his declining years should
have the profits of the " Reminiscences," and but for this faith
would probably have made better provision for her ; and yet !
Unless Mrs. Alexander Carlyle will humble herself to accept as
a present from Froude, on whom she had no claim, what she
owed to her uncle ; unless she will deny Froude's own statement
that the " Reminiscences " were written by her uncle, and that
there would be no propriety in his receiving the profits of
them, and confess that on the contrary the profits are his, and
that only his generosity and not his engagement with her uncle
and herself can make them hers ; unless she will do all this,
then Froude will take advantage, and will be morally entitled to
take advantage, and Carlyle's executors will help him to take
advantage and will be morally entitled to do so, of the flaw in her
legal title which Mr. Cozens-Hardy denied, but upon which Sir
James Stephen insisted, to defeat Carlyle's intentions, and to
deprive his niece of part of the provision made for her.
According to Sir James Stephen's letters of ioth June and
5th July, Carlyle's intentions and Froude's undertakings to give
effect to them are beyond question, and only the claims of the
executors and residuary legatees stand in the way. In September
the claims of the executors and residuary legatees, which were
never serious, have disappeared, and it is Froude who is to keep
both papers and profits, unless Mrs. Alexander Carlyle will solicit
his bounty. Froude's liability to fulfil his admitted engagement
with Carlyle and his niece is acknowledged, only so long as Mrs.
Alexander Carlyle refrains from asserting it. A moral debt is
wiped out when the creditor insists on its payment !
Messrs. Benson replied to Sir James Stephen's letter by a
letter to Messrs. Farrer, Ouvry & Co., which we give in full, as
it is a clear and comprehensive statement of Mrs. Alexander
Carlyle's case : —
APPENDIX 153
1, Clement's Inn,
2>th October, 1881.
Dear Sirs, —
We have your letter of the 20th of September, enclosing a
copy of Sir James Stephen's letter to you which he wished us
to see.
We are unwilling to prolong controversy on minor issues
which may tend rather to obscure and complicate than clear the
main issue, but we cannot leave Mr. Froude's view of his moral
obligations as now expressed by Sir James Stephen on record in
writing without similarly recording Mrs. Carlyle's reply.
We are dealing for the moment only with the moral aspect of
a mixed question of law and morals.
We say that from this point of view the mode of settlement
proposed by Mr. Froude involves no concession whatever on his
part.
We understand Sir James Stephen to suggest that a voluntary
gift is revocable on breach of an implied condition that its
recipient shall expressly admit its voluntary character, and that
Mr. Froude's obligations in respect both of the profits of the
" Reminiscences " and of the disposition of the materials for the
"Biography" were in their origin voluntary gifts.
We venture to doubt the major premiss.
Mr. Froude has emphatically denied the minor.
We purposely refrain from discussing the legal aspect of the
question involved in the minor premiss, but we ask Sir James
Stephen to consider what view Mr. Froude was morally bound to
take of that question and the view he actually took.
First as regards the profits of the " Reminiscences." This
part of the question has been simplified by the arrangement that
Mr. Froude shall retain ^300 in respect of his editorial labour
and the extra profit consequent upon the addition of " Jane
Welsh Carlyle " to the book.
In speaking of the profits of the " Reminiscences " therefore,
we mean the profits less ,£300, and we omit to take further
account of the matters in respect of which this deduction was
arranged. What remains is to inquire whether Mr. Froude as a
man of strict and sensitive honour might have retained for his
own use the profits derived from the publication for Mr. Carlyle
of a work written by Mr. Carlyle. Mr. Froude thought not and
i 5 4 APPENDIX
said so. Here are his own words to Mr. and Mrs. A. Carlyle a
month before the death of Mr. Thomas Carlyle : " The book
was written by your uncle, not by me, and there would be no
propriety in my receiving the money for it." But this is not all.
Whether Mr. Froude might have retained the profits of the
" Reminiscences " with propriety or not, he arranged with Mr.
Thomas Carlyle in his lifetime that he would not do so, but
would treat them in accordance with Mr. Carlyle's wishes on the
subject as belonging to Mrs. A. Carlyle, and Mr. Thomas Carlyle
died in the belief that these profits were part of the provision he
had made for his niece. See the published correspondence
between Messrs. Scribner and Messrs. Harper of New York.
See also Mr. Froude's letters to Mrs. A. Carlyle dated 2 1 February,
1 88 1, and 23 February, 1881.
In the former Mr. Froude says, " Of course you shall have
every farthing that comes from the ' Reminiscences,' and I
appeal to your good sense to acquit me of having attempted to
go back from an engagement."
In the latter Mr. Froude warmly apologises for a confused
memory having " led me to believe that I was free to arrange the
details over again."
See also the Agreement on the subject between Mrs. A.
Carlyle and Mr. Froude effected by Sir James Stephen and
contained in Mrs. Carlyle's letter to him dated 27 February, 1881,
and his reply of the same date. This would seem to include the
assent of the Executors independently of their present willingness
not to interfere with any arrangement which Mr. Froude may
agree to on the subject. And finally we would refer in confir-
mation of our statements to the fact that in pursuance of this
Agreement ^1,500 has been actually placed in trust for Mrs.
Carlyle and the interest of this sum paid by the Trustee to her.
Secondly, as regards the ultimate disposition of the materials
of the " Biography " after having been used by Mr. Froude for
the purpose of the " Biography," it is even plainer if possible than
in the case of the profits of the " Reminiscences " that Mr. Froude
is under an obligation (whether legal or moral is not to the
present purpose) to deliver them to Mrs. Carlyle, and has not now,
whatever may have been the case originally, any right to destroy
them.
Here is Mr. Froude's language on the subject written to
APPENDIX 155
Mrs. A. Carlyle on the 10th February, 1880, and shown to
Mr. Thomas Carlyle a year before his death. " It has, however,
long been settled that you were to have the entire collection when
I had done with it. Even if nothing had been arranged about it,
I should of course have replaced it in your hands."
Again, after Mr. Thomas Carlyle's death, Mr. Froude writes
to Mrs. A. Carlyle under date 18th February, 1881 : " His
directions to me about the papers were originally emphatic — ' Do
not spare the flame ; the more you burn the better.' It was not
until the year before last that he desired me to return them to
you when I had done with them," clearly implying that the
directions to burn were cancelled by the subsequent instructions
named.
Again, in the Times of 25 th February, 1881, Mr. Froude
wrote, "The papers belong to his niece, Mrs. A. Carlyle, to
whom he directed me to return them."
We venture to think that with these considerations before him,
Sir James Stephen will admit that Mr. Froude, as a man of
sensitive honour, cannot now, and whatever course his dispute
with Mrs. Carlyle may take, never could refuse to recognise
his pledges in respect of the profits of the " Reminiscences "
and the ultimate disposition of the materials for the Biography ;
least of all on the ground that Mrs. Carlyle concurs in
Mr. Froude's own estimate of the character of those pledges.
If a friendly settlement should be come to involving the
receipt by Mrs. Carlyle of the profits of the " Reminiscences "
and the materials for the Biography without the withdrawal of the
present contention on the part of Mr. Froude that such receipt
is by his voluntary gift, the result would be a concession on the
part, not of Mr. Froude, but of Mrs. Carlyle, and one which at
present Mrs. Carlyle is unwilling to make.
The only other concession which Sir James Stephen refers to
does not proceed from Mr. Froude, but from the executors. We
do not attach much weight to the suggestion that the literary
remains of Mr. Thomas Carlyle may be held to belong to the
executors personally, especially if it is grounded upon the
supposition of their having no intrinsic value, for we cannot
doubt that if they were offered to the public as they stand there
would be considerable competition for them. We presume the
executors are taking, and will take, a reasonable view of their
156 APPENDIX
duty, having regard to the improbability of any claim on the part
of the residuary legatees being made, and if made, sustained, and
the indemnity against any such claim which the executors can
have if they desire.
On the whole therefore we shall be surprised if, on further
consideration, Sir James Stephen does not agree with Mrs. Carlyle
that she has good reason to expect the four advantages enumerated
by him even in the event of an adverse decision upon any legal
title which she may set up.
Having thus recorded Mrs. Carlyle's reply to Mr. Froude's
views, as expressed by Sir James Stephen on minor issues, we
desire to impress upon Mr. Froude that on the main issue,
namely, whether he is to act upon the offer publicly made in his
own letter in the Times of 9th May, 1881, Mr. Froude has not
as yet given any reason for not doing so which a man of sensitive
honour could appreciate as adequate.
Three reasons have been suggested : —
1. That Mr. Froude, though willing if not anxious to
carry out this offer, was unable to do so because of a possible
claim on the part of the Executors. This reason is no
longer existent, as the Executors make no claim if
Mr. Froude and Mrs. Carlyle agree. This was the only
reason suggested during the period which elapsed between
Mr. Froude's letter to the Times of the 9th of May and your
letter to us of the 19th August.
2. The second reason suggested is that if Mr. Froude
were to act upon his public offer he would remain unre-
munerated for considerable labour in respect of which he is
entitled to expect remuneration. The answer is, Mrs. Carlyle
will meet this objection by relinquishing in favour of
Mr. Froude her right to the profits of the " Reminiscences,"
which at the present moment amount to upwards of ^1,500
with more to come.
3. The third reason suggested is that if Mr. Froude were
to act upon his public offer it would place him in the
humiliating position of bowing to an adverse public verdict
(which however Mr. Froude does not admit to have been
adverse) upon his literary taste as evinced by the publication
of the " Reminiscences."
APPENDIX 157
The answer is, first, that so far as the abandonment of the
Biography is humiliating that humiliation has already been
incurred by Mr. Froude's letter in the Times of 9th May,
secondly, that it is much more humiliating to a man of
sensitive honour to recede from a pledge to which, by
publishing it in the Times, he has called upon the civilised
world to bear witness.
In conclusion we are desired to say that Mrs. Carlyle holds
Mr. Froude to this pledge, recognising, however, his moral claim
to compensation for literary labour lost, by relinquishing in his
favour her right to the profits of the " Reminiscences."
Mrs. Carlyle will be glad to hear that Mr. Froude has been
made personally acquainted with this expression of her views.
We are,
Yours faithfully,
S. M. & J. B. Benson.
Messrs. Farrer, Ouvry & Co.
Further correspondence ensued, from which it appeared that
Froude, supported by Sir James Stephen, was determined to go
on with his " Life of Carlyle," and declined even to discuss the
matter with mutual friends of his and Mrs. Alexander Carlyle, such
as Mr. Stansfeld or Professor Masson. It was to prevent him from
writing the " Life " that Mrs. Alexander Carlyle had striven, but
she was advised that, having lent him the papers for that specific
purpose, she could not insist on their return until that purpose
was accomplished, and that Froude was not legally bound by his
unconditional offer to return them at once, if he chose to stand
confessed a promise-breaker in the sight of all men. She was
therefore obliged helplessly.to wait and watch with grief and indigna-
tion what she regarded as the profanation of her uncle's memory.
Mrs. Alexander Carlyle claimed and received the profits of
the " Reminiscences," less ^300 which went to Froude, not as a
gift from Froude, but as a part of the provision her uncle had
made for her, and ultimately, when the mischief of the " Life "
was done, all the papers which Froude had claimed as his own
and had maintained his right to burn were returned to her.
These papers are preserved, and amongst them are many, still un-
published, of profound interest, which, when they appear, will help
further to disclose the great injustice done to Carlyle by Froude.
158 APPENDIX
II.
Professor Charles Eliot Norton on Froude.
In recent discussions on the Carlyle controversy nothing has
been more remarkable than the entire ignorance of its origins and
merits betrayed by some of those who have written about it,
especially by those who have done so most dogmatically. This
is no doubt owing to the fact that the Press is now largely manned
by young men who knew not Thomas, or James Anthony, and
who have not access to the crushing criticisms with which the
writings of the latter about the former were received at the time
of their appearance. Of these criticisms there were none more
crushing, albeit gently and even gingerly applied, than those of
Professor Charles Eliot Norton in his Edition of the " Remini-
scences " and of the " Early Letters " of Carlyle. These must
have been peine forte et dare to Froude, but he endured them
silently and no compurgators appeared. It is only now when
the books containing them are only to be met with in some
secondhand booksellers' shop, that an attempt is made in " My
Relations with Carlyle " — a feeble and futile attempt — to answer
one or two of the least damaging of them. As Professor Norton
is an eminent authority amongst literary men, both in this country
and in America, we think it well to recall one or two of his
strictures on Froude's biographical methods in addition to those
referred to in the text.
With reference to Froude's " Life of Carlyle," Professor Norton
writes : —
" ' Express biography of me I had really rather that there
should be none,' said Carlyle in his Will, and a biography of him,
correct at least if meagre, might perhaps have been gathered from
his letters, his Reminiscences and the Memorials of Jane Welsh
Carlyle. Mr. Froude, however, thought otherwise, and has
given to the public an 'express biography of him.' The view
of Mr. Carlyle's character presented in this biography has not
approved itself to many of those who knew Carlyle best. It may
be a striking picture, but it is not a good portrait.
" For the present, at least, it appears impracticable to prepare
APPENDIX 159
another formal biography. The peculiar style of Mr. Froude's
performance, already in possession of the field, might perhaps put
a portrait of Carlyle drawn by a hand more faithful to nature, and
less skilled in fine artifices than his own, at a temporary dis-
advantage with the bulk of readers. But it has seemed right to
print some of Carlyle's letters in such wise that with his
Reminiscences they might serve as a partial autobiography, and
illustrate his character by unquestionable evidence. They do
not indeed afford a complete portrait ; but so far as they go the
lines will be correct."
With regard to the love letters, Professor Norton writes : —
" As to what use I might be justified in making of another
series of letters at my disposal, those from Carlyle to Miss Welsh
from their first acquaintance in 182 1 until their marriage in 1826,
I have felt grave doubts. The letters of lovers are sacred con-
fidences, whose sanctity none ought to violate. Mr. Froude's use
of these letters seems to me, on general grounds, unjustifiable,
and the motives he alleges for it inadequate. But Carlyle himself
had strictly forbidden their printing. When he was editing the
Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle, of her letters to
him, and of his to her, which were written before their marriage,
only one short note from Miss Welsh, dated 3rd September, 1825,
printed by Mr. Froude {Life, I., 308, 309), could be found ; the
rest were missing. To the copy of this short note Carlyle appends
the words, ' In pencil all but the address. Original strangely
saved ; and found accidentally in one of the presses to-day. Her
note, when put down by the coach, on that visit to us at Hoddam
Hill in September, 1825 ! How mournful now, how beautiful and
strange! A relic to me priceless (T. C, 12th March, 1868).'
As to the then missing Letters written before their marriage, his
and Miss Welsh's, Carlyle, in the original manuscript from which
the copy given to Mr. Froude was made, says, ' My strict
command now is, " burn them, if ever found. Let no third party
read them ; let no printing of them, or of any part of them, be
ever thought of by those who love me!"'
" I decided not to open the parcels containing these letters.
But I was gradually led by many facts to the conviction that
Mr. Froude had distorted their significance, and had given a
view of the relations between Carlyle and his future wife, in
i6o APPENDIX
essential respects incorrect and injurious to their memory. I
therefore felt obliged to read these letters, which I have done
with extreme reluctance, and with reverential respect for the
sacredness of their contents. The conviction which determined
me to read them was confirmed by the perusal. The question
then arose whether further publication of them was justifiable
for the sake of correcting the view presented by Mr. Froude.
The answer seemed plain, that only such of these letters, or such
portions of them, as had not any specifically private character,
could rightly be printed. I have, therefore, printed comparatively
few of Carlyle's letters to Miss Welsh, while, in an Appendix to
Volume II., I have tried to set right some of the facts misrepre-
sented by Mr. Froude, and to show his method of dealing with
his materials."
" The nineteenth chapter of the first volume of Mr. Froude's
Life is in great part occupied with an account of various pro-
jects considered by Carlyle and Miss Welsh, after their engage-
ment, in regard to a place of residence and other necessary
arrangements preliminary to marriage. Mr. Froude paints
Carlyle as throughout selfish and inconsiderate of the interests
of Miss Welsh and her Mother. But the letters which he prints
complete or in part, as well as those which he does not print, do
not seem to support this view. ' However deeply,' he says, ' she
honoured her chosen husband, she could not hide from herself
that he was selfish — extremely selfish ' (page 337). This charge
Miss Welsh may be allowed to deny for herself. ' I think you
nothing but what is noble and wise.' 'At the bottom of my
heart, far from censuring, I approve of your whole conduct '
(4th March, 1826). ' It is now five years since we first met — five
blessed years ! During that period my opinion of you has never
wavered, but gone on deliberately rising to a higher and higher
degree of regard' (28th June, 1826).
" The apparent disposition to represent in an unpleasant light
the character and conduct of Carlyle, as well as of Miss Welsh
and her Mother, which marks Mr. Froude's narrative, is displayed
in many minor disparaging statements, so made as to avoid
arousing suspicion of their having little or no foundation, and
arranged so as to contribute artfully to the general effect of depre-
ciation. A single instance will suffice for illustration. On
APPENDIX 161
page 337 Mr. Froude says, ' For her daughter's sake she [Mrs.
Welsh] was willing to make an effort to like him, and, since the
marriage was to be, either to live with him or to accept him as
her son-in-law in her own house and in her own circle. . . .
Mrs. Welsh had a large acquaintance. He liked none of
them, and "her visitors would neither be diminished in
numbers, nor bettered in quality." No ! he must have the
small house in Edinburgh; and "the moment he was master
•of a house the first use he would turn it to would be to slam
the door against nauseous intruders." ' The fact is that no
such plan as would appear from Mr. Froude's statement was in
question. The plan was, as Miss Welsh sets it forth in a letter
■of i st February, 1826, that Carlyle was to hire a little house in
Edinburgh, ' and next November we are to — hire one within some
dozen yards of it, so that we may all live together like one family
until such time as we are married, and after. I had infinite
trouble in bringing my mother to give ear to this magnificent
project. She was clear for giving up fortune, house-gear, every-
thing to you and I [sic] and going to live with my poor old
grandfather at Templand. . . . But how do you relish my plan ?
Should you not like to have such agreeable neighbours? We
would walk together every day, and you would come and take
tea with us at night. To me it seems as if the Kingdom of
Heaven were at hand.' To this Carlyle replied, 9th February,
' What a bright project you have formed ! Matured in a single
night, like Jack's Bean in the Nursery Tale, and with houses in it
too. Ah, Jane, Jane, I fear it will never answer half so well in
practice as [it] does on paper. It is impossible for two households
to live as if they were one ; doubly impossible (if there were
-degrees of impossibility) in the present circumstances. I shall
never get any enjoyment of your company till you are all
my own. How often have you seen me with pleasure in the
presence of others? How often with positive dissatisfaction?
For your own sake I should rejoice to learn that you were settled
in Edinburgh ; a scene much fitter for you than your present one :
(but I had rather that it were with me than with any other. Are
you sure that the number of parties and formal visitors would be
diminished in number or bettered in quality, according to the
present scheme ? ' [This refers to Miss Welsh's frequent com-
plaint on this score. In one of her last letters, 8th December, 1825,
M
i62 APPENDIX
she had spoken of recent visitors at Haddington, and declared,.
' This has been a more terrible infliction than anything that befell
our friend Job.' Carlyle goes on] ' My very heart also sickens-
at these things : the moment I am master of a house the first use
I turn it to will be to slam the door of it on the face of nauseous,
intrusions [not ' intruders,' as Mr. Froude prints], of all sorts,
which it can exclude.'
" On page 342 Mr. Froude says, ' When it had been proposed
that he should live with Mrs. Welsh at Haddington, he would by
consenting have spared the separation of a mother from an only
child, and would not perhaps have hurt his own intellect by an
effort of self-denial.'
" No proposal to live with Mrs. Welsh at Haddington was ever
made. In a letter of 16th March, 1826, a part of which, including
the following sentences, is printed by Mr. Froude himself (page 343),,
Miss Welsh says, ' My mother, like myself, has ceased to feel any
contentment in this pitiful [not ' hateful ' as printed] Haddington,,
and is bent on disposing of our house here as soon as may be,
and hiring one elsewhere. Why should it not be in the vicinity
of Edinburgh after all ? and why should not you live with your
wife in her [not ' your,' as printed] mother's house ? '
" There is no foundation whatever for the statements (page 336)'
that ' all difficulties might be got over ... if the family could
be kept together,' and that ' this arrangement occurred to every
one who was interested in the Welshes' welfare as the most,
obviously desirable.' Mrs. Welsh's ' consent to take Carlyle
into the family .... made Miss Welsh perfectly happy.'
Mrs. Welsh's consent does not appear to have ever been asked,,
much less to have been given to any such arrangement. In a
part of Miss Welsh's letter of 16th March, not quoted by
Mr. Froude, she says : ' I will propose the thing to my mother,'
that is, the project that they should all live together, in case-
Carlyle should approve it. He wisely did not approve it-
Mr. Froude's account of the whole matter is a tissue of confusion
and misrepresentation.
" One more example of Mr. Froude's method, and I have done.
The following passage is from page 358, it refers to arrangements
for the journey to Edinburgh after the wedding. ' Carlyle,.
thrifty always, considered it might be expedient to " take seats in
the coach from Dumfries." The coach would be safer than a
APPENDIX 163
•carriage, more certain of arriving, etc. So nervous was he, too,
that he wished his brother John to accompany them on their
journey — at least part of the way.'
" What foundation this insinuation of mean and tasteless thrift
on Carlyle's part, and of silly nervousness, possesses, may be seen
from the following extracts from a letter of Carlyle's of 19th
September. ' One other most humble care is whether we can
calculate on getting post horses and chaises all the way to
Edinburgh without danger of let, or [if] it would not be better to
take seats in the coach for some part of it? In this matter I
suppose you can give me no light : perhaps your mother might.
At all events tell me your taste in the business, for the coach is
sure, if the other is not. . . . John and I will come to Glendin-
ning's Inn the night before ; he may ride with us the first stage
if you like ; then come back with the chaise, and return home
on the back of Larry, richer by one sister (in relations) than he
ever was. Poor Jack ! '
" Such is the treatment that the most sacred parts of the lives
of Carlyle and his wife receive at the hands of his trusted
biographer ! There is no need, I believe, to speak of it in the
terms it deserves.
" The lives of Carlyle and his wife are not represented as they
were in this book of Mr. Froude's. There was much that was
sorrowful in their experience ; much that was sad in their relations
to each other. Their mutual love did not make them happy, did
not supply them with the self-control required for happiness.
Their faults often prevailed against their love, and yet ' with a
thousand faults they were both,' as Carlyle said to Miss Welsh
(25th May, 1823), 'true-hearted people.' And through all the
dark vicissitudes of life love did not desert them. Blame each of
them as one may for carelessness, hardness, bitterness, in the
course of the years, one reads their lives wholly wrong unless he
read in them that the love that had united them was beyond the
power of fate and fault to ruin utterly, that more permanent than
aught else it abided in the heart of each, and that in what they
were to each other it remained the unalterable element."
1 64 APPENDIX
III.
Mrs. Oliphant on Mrs. Carlyle and Froude.
Mrs. Oliphant was united by ties of the closest friendship to
Mrs. Carlyle in her later years, and had special qualifications for
understanding her highly complex, sensitive, and mobile nature.
Herself characteristically Scotch, and with an intimate knowledge
of her countrywomen, she could enter with sympathetic insight
into those feelings and habits of thought of her friend, having
their origin in inheritance and early nurture, which to the
Southerner must often have remained obscure and unintelligible.
Practised in the analysis of that puzzling and subtle compound —
the female heart — her Miss Majoribanks, her Phoebe Beecham,
and her Julia Herbert, show to what mastery in its chemistry she
had attained — she was able to distinguish with delicate precision
the true metal in Mrs. Carlyle's nature from the alloys fused into
it by sickness and chagrin. An expert in biography — her " Life
of Edward Irving " is an admirable performance — she knew
how far in this species of literature revelations could properly go,
and how necessary to it, is not only enthusiasm, but sober judg-
ment, a sense of proportion and fidelity to truth. She was, there-
fore, singularly well entitled to judge of Froude's representation
of her friend, and we should like to be able to reproduce the
whole of her withering denunciation of him and his methods con-
tained in an article which appeared in the " Contemporary
Review " for May, 1883, and which was allowed to pass unanswered,
although it was as unsparing in its criticism as the Introduction
and Notes to the " New Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh
Carlyle," which are said to have provoked the publication of
" My Relations with Carlyle." We must, however, content our-
selves with one or two extracts bearing in an illuminative way on
points which have been dealt with in the text.
With regard to " The Letters and Memorials," as issued by
Froude, Mrs. Oliphant says : —
" Mrs. Carlyle, the writer of the letters now given to the world
in three large volumes, following in the wake of four other large
volumes — all given to the elucidation of a portion of the life of
a great writer, to whom very few things ever happened — has had
APPENDIX 165
a cruel fate since the death of her husband deprived her of her
last bulwark against that Nemesis known amongst men by the
name of Froude. Her fate is all the harder that she really has
done nothing to deserve it. She narrated freely all the events of
her life as they occurred, according to the humour of the moment,
and the gift that was in her : which was a very rare and fine gift,
but one that naturally led to an instinctive seizing of all possible
dramatic effects, and much humorous heightening of colour and
deepening of interest. Her power of story-telling was extra-
ordinary, as well as the whimsical humour that took hold of every
ludicrous incident, and made out of a walk in the streets a whole
amusing Odyssey of adventure ; and it was one of the chief
amusements of her house and her friends. What she thus did in
speech she did also in her letters, with a vivacity and humour which
lend something interesting even to the hundredth headache, domestic
squabble, or house cleaning recorded. But all this was for her
friends ; there is not the slightest evidence that she, at least, ever
intended these narratives for the world. She was the proudest
woman — as proud and tenacious of her dignity as a savage chief.
And of all things in the world, to be placed on a pedestal before
men as a domestic martyr, an unhappy wife, the victim of a harsh
husband, is the last which she would have tolerated. As a matter
of fact, her whole existence has been violated, every scrap of
decent drapery torn from her, and herself exhibited as perhaps
never modest and proud matron was before to the comments of
the world. Carlyle himself rushed upon his fate by his will and
choice, by foolish belief in the flattering suggestion that everything
that concerned him must be interesting to the world, and by a
misplaced and too boundless trust in the friends of his later life.
But Mrs. Carlyle did nothing to lay herself open to this fate. She
did not confide her reputation to Mr. Froude, or give him leave
to unveil her inmost life according to his own interpretation of it :
and it is thus doubly hard upon her that she should have been
made to play the part of heroine in the tragedy, which his pictorial
and artistic instincts have made out of his master's life.
" It would be in vain to attempt to set this injured and outraged
woman right with the world in respect of the earlier portion of
her life, to which the biographer of her husband has given the
turn that pleased him, under the almost, if not altogether, unanimous
protest of all who knew her, but quite to the satisfaction of the
1 66 APPENDIX
crowd who did not, and to whom, indeed, such a fine conventiona
example of the hard fate of the wife of a man of genius was,
perhaps, never afforded before. We may, perhaps, be permitted,
however, to say, though with little hope of convincing any reader
unacquainted with the class to which Mrs. Carlyle belonged, or
either traditionally or personally with the Scotland of her time,
that the assumption upon which Mr. Froude goes, of her im-
measurable social superiority, and the tremendous descent she
made in becoming the housekeeper and almost the domestic
servant of her husband, is a mistake and misconception of the
most fundamental kind. It has indeed the justification of
Carlyle's own magniloquent description : — ' From birth upwards
she had lived in opulence ' repeated in these volumes ; but then
Carlyle described his little house in Chelsea as made into
a sort of palace by her exertions, which Mr. Froude and all
her friends are aware was a good deal more than the fact.
The ' opulence ' of the country doctor's daughter was something
of the same kind. Modest comfort, even luxury in a sober way,
the highest estimation, and all the petting and pleasures that an
only beloved child could be surrounded with, she no doubt had.
But life in Haddington in the first quarter of this century was not
like life in South Kensington in the present day. The woman's
share of the world's work was very distinct, and was despised by
no one. There is no evidence that Dr. Welsh was ever rich — so
far, indeed, is the evidence against this, that his daughter had to
make over the little property of Craigenputtock, in order to
secure her mother's independence, leaving herself penniless. But
even had she been left with a dot, proportioned to her position,
and had she married one of her father's assistants, or a neigh-
bouring minister — her natural fate — there is no reason to suppose
that she would have been much more elevated above the cares of
common life that she was as the wife of Thomas Carlyle. . . .
The present writer, though of a later generation than Mrs. Carlyle,
was trained to believe that a woman should be able to ' turn her
hand ' to any domestic duty that might be necessary. And the
pathetic picture of an elegant young lady descending from her
elevated sphere to make the bread, and even to mend the
trousers of her husband, which has touched the sympathetic
public to such indignation, is ludicrous to those to whom the fact
of both positions is known."
APPENDIX 167
With reference to the conjugal relations of the Carlyles, Mrs.
Oliphant writes : —
" We confess for our own part that the manner of mind which
can deduce from this long autobiography an idea injurious to the
perfect union of these two kindred souls, is to us incompre-
hensible. They tormented each other, but not half as much as
each tormented him and herself; they were too like each other,
suffering in the same way from nerves disordered and digestion
impaired, and excessive self-consciousness, and the absence of all
other objects in their life. They were, in the fullest sense of the
word, everything to each other — for good and evil, sole com-
forters, chief tormenters. ' 111 to hae but waur to want,' says
the proverb, which must have been framed in view of some such
exaggerated pair ; perhaps, since the proverb is Scotch, the
conditions of mind may be a national one. Sometimes Carlyle
was ' ill to have,' but it is abundantly evident that he was ' waur
to want,' — i.e., to be without — to his wife. To him, though he
wounded her in a hundred small matters, there is no evidence
that she was ever anything else than the most desirable of women,,
understood and acknowledged as the setter-right of all things, the
providence and first authority of life.
" If these two remarkable people had been, like others,
allowed without any theory to tell their own story, and express
their own sentiments, what we should now do would be to give
our readers a glimpse, tranquilly, of the domestic economy of that
little house, of which its mistress was justly proud, as a triumph of
her own exertions, and its master somewhat grandiloquent upon,
as something in itself more beautiful and remarkable than any
house in Cheyne Row could ever be. We would tell them of her
tea-parties, her evening visitors, of the little Peasweep of a maid
who insisted on bringing up four teacups every evening, while
Mrs. Carlyle and her mother were alone in the house, with a con-
viction, never disappointed, that ' the gentlemen ' would drop in.
to use them ; of how she bought her sofa, and adapted an old
mattress to it, and made a cover for it, and so procured this
comfort, at the small cost of one pound, out of her own private
pocket ; of how the cocks and hens next door, and the dog that
would bark, and even the piano on the other side of the party-wall,
were ' written down ' by appeals to the magnanimity of the owners,,
on behalf of the unfortunate man of genius who could not get
168 APPENDIX
his books written, or even by bribes cleverly administered when
persuasion and reason both failed. The pages teem with domestic
incidents in every kind of ornamental setting, all told with such an
unfailing life and grace, that, had the facts themselves been of the
first importance, they could not have charmed us more ; and we
do not grudge the three big volumes so filled, in which there is not
from beginning to end an event more important than new painting
and papering, new maid-servants, an illness or an expedition.
But as circumstances stand, the reader is not sufficiently easy in
his mind to be content with these, but has been so fretted and
troubled by Mr. Froude and his theories, and the determination
which moulds all that gentleman's thoughts to make out that
Carlyle was a sort of ploughman-despot, and his wife an unwilling
and resentful slave, that we must proceed first to find foundations
for the house, of which we know more in all its details than
perhaps of any house that has been built and furnished in this
century. Was it founded on the rock of love and true union, or
was it a mere four walls, no home at all, in which the rude master
made his thrall labour for him, and crushed her delicate nature
in return ? "
Mrs. Oliphant supplies the answer to that question out of
Mrs. Carlyle's own mouth, and shows from her letters how cruelly
and egregiously Froude has erred in dealing with her relations
with her husband. Touching on the submission of Mrs. Carlyle's
private Journal to Miss Jewsbury by Froude, for the elucidation
of its dark passages, Mrs. Oliphant says : — •
" So Geraldine, in a piece of fine writing — words as untrue as
ever words were, as every unprejudiced reader of this book will see
for himself, and entirely contrary to that kind soul's ordinary testi-
mony. Not a critic, so far as we are aware, has ever suggested that
this proceeding was unjustifiable or outside of the limits of honour.
Is it then permissible to outrage the memory of a wife, and betray
her secrets because one has received as a gift her husband's
papers? She gave no permission, left no authority for such a
proceeding. Does the disability of women go so far as this?
or is there no need for honour in respect to the dead ? ' There
ought to be no mystery about Carlyle,' says Mr. Froude. No,
poor foolish, fond old man ! there is no mystery about him hence-
forward, thanks to his own distracted babble of genius, first of all.
But how about his wife? Did she authorise Mr. Froude to
APPENDIX 169
unveil her most secret thoughts, her darkest hours of weakness,
which even her husband passed reverently over ? No woman of
this generation, or of any other we are acquainted with, has had
such desperate occasion to be saved from her friends : and public
feeling and sense of honour must be at a low ebb indeed when
no one ventures to stand up and to stigmatize as it deserves this
betrayal and exposure of the secret of a woman's weakness, a
secret which throws no light upon anything, which does not add
to our knowledge either of her character or her husband's, and
with which the public had nothing whatever to do ! "
Would that Mrs. Oliphant were with us again — to write as she
once did a whole number of Maga, and to stigmatize as they
deserve the betrayals — far deeper than those which she has so
vigorously condemned, which Froude, being dead, yet speaking,
has perpetuated in " My Relations with Carlyle " !
N
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