The Love Letters of Thomas Carlyle and Jane Welsh

by Thomas Carlyle, Jane Welsh, Alexander Carlyle (Editor)

The book has no illustrations or index. It may have numerous typos or missing text. However, purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original rare book from the publisher's website (GeneralBooksClub.com). You can also preview excerpts of the book there. Purchasers are also entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge.
Original John Lane;
Publication 1909;
Authors, Scottish; Historians; Women intellectuals; Authors' spouses; Love-letters; Biography

2 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1953

About the author

Thomas Carlyle, Scottish historian, critic, and sociological writer. was born in the village of Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire, eldest child of James Carlyle, stonemason, and Margaret (Aitken) Carlyle. The father was stern, irascible, a puritan of the puritans, but withal a man of rigid probity and strength of character. The mother, too, was of the Scottish earth, and Thomas' education was begun at home by both the parents. From the age of five to nine he was at the village school; from nine to fourteen at Annan Grammar School. where he showed proficiency in mathematics and was well grounded in French and Latin. In November 1809 he walked to Edinburgh, and attended courses at the University till 1814, with the ultimate aim of becoming a minister. He left without a degree, became a mathematical tutor at Annan Academy in 1814, and three years later abandoned all thoughts of entering the Kirk, having reached a theological position incompatible with its teachings. He had begun to learn German in Edinburgh, and had done much independent reading outside the regular curriculum. Late in 1816 he moved to a school in Kirkcaldy, where he became the intimate associate of Edward Irving, an old boy of Annan School, and now also a schoolmaster. This contact was Carlyle's first experience of true intellectual companionship, and the two men became lifelong friends. He remained there two years, was attracted by Margaret Gordon, a lady of good family (whose friends vetoed an engagement), and in October 1818 gave up schoolmastering and went to Edinburgh, where he took mathematical pupils and made some show of reading law.

During this period in the Scottish capital he began to suffer agonies from a gastric complaint which continued to torment him all his life, and may well have played a large part in shaping the rugged, rude fabric of his philosophy. In literature he had at first little success, a series of articles for the Edinburgh Encyclopaedia bringing in little money and no special credit. In 1820 and 1821 he visited Irving in Glasgow and made long stays at his father's new farm, Mainhill; and in June 1821, in Leith Walk, Edinburgh, he experienced a striking spiritual rebirth which is related in Sartor Resartus. Put briefly and prosaically, it consisted in a sudden clearing away of doubts as to the beneficent organization of the universe; a semi-mystical conviction that he was free to think and work, and that honest effort and striving would not be thwarted by what he called the "Everlasting No."

For about a year, from the spring of 1823, Carlyle was tutor to Charles and Arthur Buller, young men of substance, first in Edinburgh and later at Dunkeld. Now likewise appeared the first fruits of his deep studies in German, the Life of Schiller, which was published serially in the London Magazine in 1823-24 and issued as a separate volume in 1825. A second garner from the same field was his version of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister which earned the praise of Blackwood's and was at once recognized as a very masterly rendering.

In 1821 Irving had gone to London, and in June 1821 Carlyle followed, in the train of his employers, the Bullers. But he soon resigned his tutorship, and, after a few weeks at Birmingham, trying a dyspepsia cure, he lived with Irving at Pentonville, London, and paid a short visit to Paris. March 1825 saw him back; in Scotland, on his brother's farm, Hoddam Hill, near the Solway. Here for a year he worked hard at German translations, perhaps more serenely than before or after and free from that noise which was always a curse to his sensitive ear and which later caused him to build a sound-proof room in his Chelsea home.

Before leaving for London Irving had introduced Carlyle to Jane Baillie Welsh daughter of the surgeon, John Welsh, and descended from John Knox. She was beautiful, precociously learned, talented, and a brilliant mistress of cynical satire. Among her numerous suitors, the rough, uncouth

Reviews

[David Todd]

I give this book 3 stars instead of higher only due to the editing. I read a text e-book generated from an optical scan. No attempt was made, but those who put it together, to correct the typical optical scan errors or to tie footnotes properly to the reference in the text. Reading at times was quite difficult, especially when the footnotes were not set off from the adjacent text, that text not being where the footnote was related to.

As for the letters themselves, they are a treasure. I won't go into their history, which is well defined by Alexander Carlyle (nephew of Thomas) in the preface. This volume covers the time from when Thomas and Jane met in 1821 to August 1824, still more than two years before the Carlyles married. It shows them when Carlyle became Jane's self-proclaimed tutor, wanting to help her improve her mind and enter a career in literature as a writer. Carlyle was struggling with his choice of this to be his career, supporting himself by being live-in tutor to the two sons of a wealthy couple. It was during this time Carlyle was writing articles for the Edinburgh Encyclopedia, translating Wilhelm Meister, and publishing the "Life of Schiller" serially in The London Magazine.

From the very start one can sense that Carlyle saw Jane as more than a young girl with a good mind. While he wrote about her studies, he began to slip in more and more endearments. Since Jane's mother read her letters, Jane had to scold Carlyle about this. In a couple of letters the scolding was severe. Jane also explained early on how she couldn't see herself ever marrying. Carlyle had sure picked a tough case as the object of his affections.

The book is well worth reading. It would probably be better to buy a print book, or download facsimile pages of the original 1909 book. The poor formatting of this e-book (which appears to have been made and distributed by "Internet Archives") preclude me from recommending this particular version. But the contents are good. The footnotes are sufficient to explain questionable references without being burdensome. On to find the next volumes!

I'm thinking of aggregating this text, along with the other volumes, into one combined e-book and format it nicely. I think that would be a good service to all Carlyle scholars.