THOMAS CARLYLE AT HOME.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IX, Issue 443, 7 October 1881, Page 13

THOMAS CARLYLE AT HOME.

An article in the current number of the British Quarterly Review on Thomas Carlyle makes several ugly revelations regarding the hoinelife of that over- praised person. It is the production of Mr. Henry Larkin who had been in the employment of Carlyla for many years. Mr. Larkin writes : —

It 'was not, as I said, merely Carlyle's absorption in his work which weighed on her spirit ; she knew this was inevitable, and would have cheerfully faced it, if only for the vantage ground it gave her with the world. The misery was to be shut up alone with him, when he himself was struggling under his burdens in utter wretchedness and gloomyness of heart. When his daik labour- pains were strong upon him I suppose he was the most absolutely wretched man I ever saw. Even to stand firmly on one's own feet in the presence of such misary and consequent irritability was well-nigh impossible. But what she felt moat keenly of all was that he never seemed to realise that misary is the most contagious of all diseases. He saw hep always invincibly devoted to him ; and he thought her lot peaceful and happy in comparision with his own. He never saw the misery his own misery was inflicting upon her, and gradually sapping the very life out of her. I have heard her, many times, speak of their life at Craiggenputtock with absolute shuddering. Some of Mrs. Carlyle's letters to Mr. Larkin will illustrate thig state of things. Writing from Fife, to which Carlyle and his wifa had gone down for recreation, she says :—: — Oh, Mr. Larkin ! catch me ever again taking my holiday in tha country along with a man of genius J I saw from the first that, instead of a holiday it was going to be the hardest workday I had had for some time ; I saw from the first, what all that walking as in sevenleague boots, and galloping like the wild huntsman, and bathing in season and out of soason like a merman, and all that consumption of •' soft food," was working together towards — a billious crisis bad enough to make a poor wife's hair stand on end, and to make her ask herself, twenty times a day, if it wouldn't be better to tie herself up to her bedpost and be done with it 1 We might have been bo comfortable here if ho had not already overdone himself at Humbio 1 A beautiful airy bouse, with kind little cousins close by to help us and cheer us. But one's life has been made b.ack and bitter by this — '■ accumulation of Bile 1" And, as a sick man pleases himself in turning from one side to the other in his bed, so bhall I please myself in turning from the country to London.

Carlyle at the same time was " entirely unconscious of the suffering and haggard wrestling with herself which she so heroically chut down from his sight." Again, Mr. Larkin writes :— Carlyle has told us of a serious accident which happened to his wife on her returning home one evening in 1863. I recollect that evening perfectly, and also the scene of helpless misery which in a few words he so distinctly photographs. But " the eye only sees what it brings the means of seeing"; and he little thought it was his own presence which had suddenly produced the collapse which struck him so painfully. . . . Few men have been constitutionally less able to cope with unexpected difficulties than he was. In any case of confusion or embarrassment it was sheer misery to have him even standing by and looking on ; his own irritable impatience was at once so contagious and so depressing, ... On the evening in question I was sitting quietly at home, when I heard a gentle rap at the door, and was informed that Mrs. Carlyle's servant wished to speak to me. She told me that Mrs. Carlyle had just been brought home in a cab, seriously hurt by a fall, and begged I would come in at once. I went instantly, and found her on a chair in the back room of the ground floor, evidently in great pain. As soon as she saw me she said, " Oh, Mr. Larkin, do get me up into my own room before Mr. Carlyle knows anything about it. He'll drive me mad if he comes in now I" Carlyle did come in, however, " looking terribly shocked and even angry."