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Early Letters of Jane Welsh Carlyle
Letters from Jane Welsh Carlyle, almost all to Eliza Stodard, later married to the Rev David Aitken. Also a few from Thomas Carlyle to Stodard or Aitken. The period starts with her at about age 17 or 18, runs through her courtship by several young men, her marriage to Carlyle and their years in Scotland, and the first few years in London.
165 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1889
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About the author
Jane Welsh Carlyle
45 books3 followersJane Welsh Carlyle was a Scottish writer and the wife of Thomas Carlyle. She did not publish any work in her lifetime, but she was widely seen as an extraordinary letter writer. Virginia Woolf called her one of the "great letter writers," and Elizabeth Hardwick described her work as a "private writing career."
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September 2, 2013
These are wonderful, fresh, funny, insightful letters from Jane Welsh Carlyle to a girlhood friend. The tone and spelling start off a little girlish, but soon ripen into humorous digs at herself and life at her mother's house. There are guests welcome and unwelcome, and suitors, mostly foolish. Eventually Carlyle wins the day, although there is nothing about his wooing here.
Then there is a dry patch of letters from their first remote home in Scotland to her friend in Edinburgh, mostly asking for dispatches of barley sugar, tea and coffee. The letters, initially happy at her new domesticity in the rustic spot, hint at the growing burden of isolation and hard weather.
Once the Carlyles move to London her pen regains its acerbic wit and delight in the world around her. She thoroughly enjoys city life. And one sees the growing irritibility between the two, although not too harsh yet. A few inclusions of letters or postscripts from Thomas Carlyle to Eliza and David fall like lead into her knowing froth and insights.
It is important to note Jane's wide interests and reading before she meets Carlyle; he certainly encouraged her to go even farther in her intellectual explorations, but she was no slouch to begin with. This is evidenced by the very wide range of quotations and allusions in her letters, to classics (e.g.Milton and Shakespeare, and relatively modern writers like Sterne and Byron) to Scots lore and Burns. She cites an early invitation to contribute to a proposed literary magazine like Blackwoods.
On first visits from Carlyle, in a letter in which she also extols La Novelle Heloise:
'No lover will Jane Welsh ever find like St. Preux, no husband like Wolmar; and to no man will she ever give her heart and pretty hand who bears to these no resemblance...[she gives a list of rejected suitors, including one George Craig] o Lord, o Lord, where is the St. Preux? Where is the Wolmar?...I have just had a letter from Thomas Carlyle: he too speaks of coming. He is something liker to St. Preux than George Craig is to Wolmar. He has his talents, his vast and cultivated mind, his vivid imagination, his independnce of soul, and his high-souled principle of honour. But then--ah, these buts!--St. Preux never kicked the fire-irons, nor made puddings in his teacup. Want of Elegance! Want of Elegane, Rousseau says, is a defect which no woman can overlook. It is hte decree of fate..'
'and our-self was in the act of toasting a clean, cold handkerchief before the fire--in preparation for the last scene of Schiller's Wallenstein, the most tragical of tragedies...'
[on an episode of illness that plagued her whole life] 'But "it will not be permanent," as Carlyle tells me; as if I could fancy it would be permanent without instantly cutting my throat.'
on her new environment in London: 'Is it not strange that I should have an everlasting sound in my ears, of men, women, children, omnibuses, carriages, glass coaches, street coaches, waggons, carts, dogcarts, steeple bells, door bells, gentlemen-raps, twopenny-post raps, footmen-showers-of-raps, of the whole devil to pay, as if plague, pestilence, famine, battle, murder, sudden death, and wee Eppie Daidle [from Scott's Midlothian] were broken loose to make me diversion.'
'The words "for ever," "eternal." "constant," "faithful," and such like, applied to the friendships and loves that one begins at the years of discretion, never fall on my ears except accompanied by something like the distant laugh of malicious fiends. Melancholy effects of age!!'
'In fact, if there is any one thing to be learnt more than another by living in London, it is a due Catholicism of taste. One sees so many things which one has been used to consider antagonist and irreconciilable existing alongside of one another in peace and harmony; and still more one learns to lassen gelten (ask your Husband-happy that you have one who knows German), by the fair appreciation you find from people as different as possible from yourself and from one another. Never has it happened to me to hear in London that phrase which in small towns, and even in Edinburgh, one is constantly hearing: such and such people "are not in my way."'
Then there is a dry patch of letters from their first remote home in Scotland to her friend in Edinburgh, mostly asking for dispatches of barley sugar, tea and coffee. The letters, initially happy at her new domesticity in the rustic spot, hint at the growing burden of isolation and hard weather.
Once the Carlyles move to London her pen regains its acerbic wit and delight in the world around her. She thoroughly enjoys city life. And one sees the growing irritibility between the two, although not too harsh yet. A few inclusions of letters or postscripts from Thomas Carlyle to Eliza and David fall like lead into her knowing froth and insights.
It is important to note Jane's wide interests and reading before she meets Carlyle; he certainly encouraged her to go even farther in her intellectual explorations, but she was no slouch to begin with. This is evidenced by the very wide range of quotations and allusions in her letters, to classics (e.g.Milton and Shakespeare, and relatively modern writers like Sterne and Byron) to Scots lore and Burns. She cites an early invitation to contribute to a proposed literary magazine like Blackwoods.
On first visits from Carlyle, in a letter in which she also extols La Novelle Heloise:
'No lover will Jane Welsh ever find like St. Preux, no husband like Wolmar; and to no man will she ever give her heart and pretty hand who bears to these no resemblance...[she gives a list of rejected suitors, including one George Craig] o Lord, o Lord, where is the St. Preux? Where is the Wolmar?...I have just had a letter from Thomas Carlyle: he too speaks of coming. He is something liker to St. Preux than George Craig is to Wolmar. He has his talents, his vast and cultivated mind, his vivid imagination, his independnce of soul, and his high-souled principle of honour. But then--ah, these buts!--St. Preux never kicked the fire-irons, nor made puddings in his teacup. Want of Elegance! Want of Elegane, Rousseau says, is a defect which no woman can overlook. It is hte decree of fate..'
'and our-self was in the act of toasting a clean, cold handkerchief before the fire--in preparation for the last scene of Schiller's Wallenstein, the most tragical of tragedies...'
[on an episode of illness that plagued her whole life] 'But "it will not be permanent," as Carlyle tells me; as if I could fancy it would be permanent without instantly cutting my throat.'
on her new environment in London: 'Is it not strange that I should have an everlasting sound in my ears, of men, women, children, omnibuses, carriages, glass coaches, street coaches, waggons, carts, dogcarts, steeple bells, door bells, gentlemen-raps, twopenny-post raps, footmen-showers-of-raps, of the whole devil to pay, as if plague, pestilence, famine, battle, murder, sudden death, and wee Eppie Daidle [from Scott's Midlothian] were broken loose to make me diversion.'
'The words "for ever," "eternal." "constant," "faithful," and such like, applied to the friendships and loves that one begins at the years of discretion, never fall on my ears except accompanied by something like the distant laugh of malicious fiends. Melancholy effects of age!!'
'In fact, if there is any one thing to be learnt more than another by living in London, it is a due Catholicism of taste. One sees so many things which one has been used to consider antagonist and irreconciilable existing alongside of one another in peace and harmony; and still more one learns to lassen gelten (ask your Husband-happy that you have one who knows German), by the fair appreciation you find from people as different as possible from yourself and from one another. Never has it happened to me to hear in London that phrase which in small towns, and even in Edinburgh, one is constantly hearing: such and such people "are not in my way."'
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