Victorian Worthies: Sixteen Biographies. George Henry Blore
But with these spurts of volcanic energy alternate moods of the deepest depression. His journal for 1850 says, 'This seems really the Nadir of my fortunes; and in hope, desire, or outlook, so far as common mortals reckon such, I never was more bankrupt. Lonely, shut up within my contemptible and yet not deliberately ignoble self, perhaps there never was, in modern literary or other history, a more solitary soul, capable of any friendship or honest relation to others.' By this time he was feeling the need of another task, and in 1851 he chose Frederick the Great of Prussia for the subject of his next book.
To this generation apology seems to be needed for an English author who lavishes so much admiration on Prussian men and institutions. But Carlyle, whose chief heroes had been men of intense religious convictions, like Luther, Knox, and Cromwell, could find no hero after his heart in English history subsequent to the Civil War. Eloquent Pitts and Burkes, jobbing Walpoles and Pelhams, were to him types of politicians who had brought England to her present plight. German literature had always kept its influence over him and had directed his attention to German history; Frederick, without religion as he was, seemed at any rate sincere, recognized facts, and showed practical capacity for ruling (essential elements in the Carlylean hero), and the subject would be new to his readers. The labour involved was stupendous; it was to fill his life and the lives of his helpers for thirteen years. Of these helpers the chief credit is due to Joseph Neuberg, who piloted him over German railways, libraries, and battle-fields in the search for picturesque detail, and to Henry Larkin, who toiled in London to trace references in scores of authors, and who finally crowned the work by laborious indexing, which made Carlyle's labyrinth accessible to his readers. There were masses of material hidden away and unsifted; and, as in the case of Cromwell, only a man of original genius could penetrate this inert mass with shafts of light and make the past live again. The task grew as he continued his researches. He groped his way back to the beginning of the Hohenzollerns, and sketched the portraits of the old Electors in a style unequalled for vividness and humour. He drew a full-length portrait of Frederick William, most famous of drill-sergeants, and he studied the campaigns of his son with a thoroughness which has been a model to soldiers and civilians ever since. We have the record of two tours which he made in Germany to view the scene of operations;[5] and it is amazing how exact a picture he could bring away from a short visit to each separate battle-field. His diligence, accuracy, and wide grasp of the subject satisfied the severest judges; and the book won him a success as complete and enduring in Germany as in England and America.
When this was finished, Carlyle was on the verge of seventy and his work was done; though the evening of his life was long, his strength was exhausted. His wife lived just long enough to see the seal set upon his fame, and to hear of his election to be Lord Rector of Edinburgh University. But in April 1866, while he was in Scotland for his installation, which she was too weak to attend, he heard the news of her sudden death from heart failure in London; and after this he was a broken man. By reading her journal he learnt, too late, how much his own inconsiderate temper had added to her trials, and his remorse was bitter and lasting. He shut himself off from all his friends except Froude, who was to be his literary executor, and gave himself to collecting and annotating the memorials which she had left. Each letter is followed by some words of tender recollection or some cry of self-reproach. He has erected to her the most singular of literary monuments, morbid perhaps, but inspired by a feeling which was in his case natural and sincere.
About 1870 he began to lose the use of his right hand and he found it impossible to compose by dictation. Of the last years of his life there is little to narrate. The offer of a baronetcy or the G.C.B. from Mr. Disraeli in 1874 pleased him for the moment, but he resolutely refused external honours. He took daily walks with Froude, daily drives when he became too weak to go on foot. Towards the end the Bible and Shakespeare were his most habitual reading. He had long ceased to be a member of any church, but his belief in God and in God's working in history was the very foundation of his being, and the lessons of the Bible were to him inexhaustible and ever new. Death came to him peacefully in February, 1881; and as he had expressed a definite wish, he was buried at Ecclefechan, though a public funeral in the Abbey was offered and its acceptance would have met with the approval of his countrymen.
The very wealth of records makes it difficult to judge his character fairly. Few men have so laid bare the thoughts and feelings of their hearts. It is easy to blame the unmanly laments which he utters over his health, his solitude, and his sufferings, real or imaginary; few imaginative writers have the every-day virtues. His egotism, too, is difficult to defend. If, as he himself admits, he invariably took an undue share of talk, often in fact monopolizing it, wherever he was, we must remember that the brilliance of his gifts was admitted by all; less pardonable is his habit of disparaging other men, and especially other men of letters. His pen-pictures of Mill, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and others, are wonderfully vivid but too often sour in flavour; his sketch of Charles Lamb is an outrage on that generous and kindly soul. Too often he was unconscious of the pain given by such random words. When he was brought to book, he was honourable enough to recant. Fearing on one occasion to have offended even the serene loyalty of Emerson, he cries out protestingly, 'Has not the man Emerson, from old years, been a Human Friend to me? Can I ever forget, or think otherwise than lovingly of the man Emerson?'
But whatever offence Carlyle committed with his ungovernable tongue or pen, he had rare virtues in conduct. His generosity was as unassuming as it was persistent; and it began at home. Long before he was free from anxieties about money for himself, he was helping two of his brothers to make a career, one in agriculture, and the other in medicine. In his latter days he regularly gave away large sums in such a way that no one knew the source from which they came. His letters show a deep tenderness of affection for his mother, his wife, and others of the family; and the humble Annandale home was always in his thoughts. His charity embraced even those whose claim on him was but indirect. When his wife was dead, he could remember to celebrate her birthday by sending a present to her old nurse. He was scrupulous in money-dealing and frugal in all matters of personal comfort; in his innermost thoughts he was always pure-hearted and sincere; for nothing on earth would he traffic in his independence or in adherence to the truth.
His style has not largely influenced other historians; and this is as well, since imitations of it easily fall into mere obscurity and extravagance. But his historical method has been of great value, the patient study of original authorities, the copious references quoted, the careful indexing, all being proof how anxious he was that the subject should be presented clearly and veraciously, rather than that the books should shine as literary performances. How far the principles which he valued and taught have spread it is difficult to say. Party politicians still appeal to the sacred name of liberty without inquiring what true liberty means; publicists still speak as if the material gains of modern life, cheap food and machine-made products, meant nothing but advance in the history of the human race; but there are others who look to the spiritual factors and wish to enlarge the bounds of political economy.
The writings of Carlyle, and of Ruskin, on whom fell the prophet's mantle, certainly made their influence felt in later books devoted to that once 'dismal' science. Few can be quite indifferent to the man or to his message. Those who demand moderation, clearness, and Attic simplicity, will be repelled by his extravagances or by his mysticism. Others will be attracted by his glowing imagination and by his fiery eloquence, and will reserve for him a foremost place in their affections. These will echo the words which Emerson was heard to say on his death-bed, when his eyes fell on a portrait of the familiar rugged features, 'That is the man, my man'.
SIR ROBERT PEEL
1788–1850
| 1788. | Born near Bury, Lancashire, July 5. |
| 1801–4. | Harrow School. |