Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 09.djvu/127

 wall in 1843; and in 1842 he took a five days' run across the Channel with Stephen Spring Rice in an admiralty yacht. His vivid description is partly given in Froude (iii. 259–273). Mrs. Carlyle sometimes went with him to Scotland and visited her relations, or stayed at home to superintend house-cleanings, periods during which his absence was clearly desirable. In London his appearances in society were fitful, and during his absorption in his chief works Mrs. Carlyle was left to a very solitary life, though she read and criticised his performances as they were completed. She gradually formed a circle of friends of her own. Miss Geraldine Jewsbury, attracted by Carlyle's fame, made their acquaintance in 1841 (ib. p. 208), and became Mrs. Carlyle's most intimate friend. Refugees, including Mazzini and Cavaignac (brother of the general), came to the house. Lord Tennyson, much loved by both, and Arthur Helps, who got on better with Mrs. Carlyle than with her husband, were other friends. John Forster, Macready, Dickens, and Thackeray are also occasionally mentioned. She was less terrible than her husband to shy visitors, though on occasion she could aim equally effective blows. Death was thinning the old circle. John Sterling died after a pathetic farewell, 18 Sept. 1844. Mrs. Welsh, Mrs. Carlyle's mother, died suddenly at the end of February 1842. Mrs. Carlyle, already in delicate health, was prostrated by the blow, and lay unable to be moved at the house of her uncle (John Welsh) in Liverpool. Carlyle went to Templand, where Mrs. Welsh had lived, and had to spend two months there and at Scotsbrig arranging business. His letters were most tender, though a reference to a possibility of a new residence at Craigenputtock appears to have shaken his wife's nerves. On her next birthday (14 July) he sent her a present, and never afterwards forgot to do so. She was deeply touched, and remarked that in great matters he had always been kind and considerate, and was now becoming equally attentive on little matters, to which his education and temper had made him indifferent. She went for a rest to Troston, a living belonging to Reginald Buller, son of their old friends the Charles Bullers, where Mrs. Charles Buller was now staying with her son. Charles the younger died in 1848, when Carlyle wrote an elegy to his memory, published in the ‘Examiner.’ Mrs. Buller read it just before she too died of grief.

In December 1845 the Carlyles visited the Barings at Bay House, near Alverstoke. Mrs. Carlyle became jealous of Lady Harriet's influence over Carlyle; and Lady Harriet, though courteous, was not sufficiently cordial to remove the feeling. Each apparently misjudged the other. Mrs. Carlyle was weakly and irritable, and a painful misunderstanding followed with Carlyle.

In July 1846 she left him to stay with her friends the Paulets at Seaforth. She confided in Mazzini, who gave her wise and honourable advice. Carlyle himself wrote most tenderly, though without the desired effect. He saw that her feeling was unreasonable, but unfortunately inferred that it might be disregarded. He therefore persisted in keeping up his relations with the Barings, while she took refuge in reticence, and wrote to him in terms which persuaded him too easily that the difficulty was over. She visited the Barings with and without her husband, accepted the use of their house at Addiscombe, and preserved external good relations, while recording her feelings in a most painful journal, published in the ‘Memorials.’ This suppressed alienation lasted till the death of Lady Ashburton.

The publication of ‘Cromwell’ had left Carlyle without occupation, except that the discovery of new letters which had to be embodied in the second edition gave him some work in 1846. He had read Preuss's work upon Frederick in 1844, and was thinking of an expedition to Berlin after finishing ‘Cromwell’ ({sc|Froude}}, iii. 369). In February 1848 he notes that he has been for above two years composedly lying fallow. He mentions schemes for future work. The ‘exodus from Houndsditch’ meant a discourse upon the liberation of the spirit of religion from ‘Hebrew Old Clothes.’ This he felt to be an impossible task; the external shell could not as yet be attacked without injury to the spirit, and he therefore remained silent to the last. A book upon Ireland, one upon the ‘Scavenger Age,’ and a life of Sterling also occurred to him. In 1846 he paid a flying visit to Ireland in the first days of September, and saw O'Connell in Conciliation Hall. The outbreaks of 1848 affected him deeply. He sympathised with the destruction of ‘shams,’ but felt that the only alternative was too probably anarchy. He again visited Ireland in 1849, spending July there, and again meeting Gavan Duffy and others. His ‘Journal’ was published in 1882 (ib. iv. 3). He came home convinced that he could say nothing to the purpose upon the chaotic state of things, where he could discover no elements of order. His general views of the political and social state found utterance, however, in an ‘Occasional Discourse on the Nigger Question,’ first published in ‘Fraser's Magazine’ in February 1849. It was a vehement denunciation of the philanthropic sentimentalism