The Life of Froude Part 7

An interesting account of Froude at this time has been given by Sir George Colley, the brilliant and accomplished soldier whose career was cut short six years afterwards at Majuba:

"I came home from the Cape, and almost lived on the way with Mr. Froude .... It was rather a sad mind, sometimes grand, sometimes pathetic and tender, usually cynical, but often relating with the highest appreciation, and with wonderful beauty of language, some gallant deed of some of his heroes of the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries. He seemed to have gone through every phase of thought, and come to the end 'All is vanity.' He himself used to say the interest of life to a thinking man was exhausted at thirty, or thirty-five. After that there remained nothing but disappointment of earlier visions and hopes. Sometimes there was something almost fearful in the gloom, and utter disbelief, and defiance of his mind."*

- * Butler's Life of Colley, p. 145. -

The picture is a sombre one. But it must be remembered that the death of his wife was still weighing heavily upon Froude.

A few days after his return to London Froude wrote a long and interesting Report to the Secretary of State, which was laid before Parliament in due course. Few doc.u.ments more thoroughly unofficial have ever appeared in a Blue Book. The excellence of the paper as a literary essay is conspicuous. But its chief value lies in the impression produced by South African politics upon a penetrating and observant mind trained under wholly different conditions. Froude would not have been a true disciple of Carlyle if he had felt or expressed much sympathy with the native race. He wanted them to be comfortable. For freedom he did not consider them fit. It was the Boers who really attracted him, and the man he admired the most in South Africa was President Brand. The sketch of the two Dutch Republics in his Report is drawn with a very friendly hand. He thought, not without reason, that they had been badly treated. Their independence, which they did not then desire, had been forced upon them by Lord Grey and the Duke of Newcastle. The Sand River Convention of 1852, and the Orange River Convention of 1854, resulted from British desire to avoid future responsibility outside Cape Colony and Natal. As for the Dutch treatment of the Kaffirs, it had never in Froude's opinion been half so bad as Pine's treatment of Langalibalele. By the second article of the Orange River Convention, renewed and ratified at Aliwal after the Basuto war in 1869, Her Majesty's Government promised not to make any agreement with native chiefs north of the Vaal River. Yet, when diamonds were discovered north of the Vaal in Griqualand West, the territory was purchased by Lord Kimberley from Nicholas Waterboer, without the consent, and notwithstanding the protests, of the Orange Free State. But although Lord Kimberley a.s.sented to the annexation of Griqualand West in 1871, he only did so on the distinct understanding that Cape Colony would undertake to administer the Diamond Fields, and this the Cape Ministers refused to do, lest they should offend their Dutch const.i.tuents.

It was not till 1878, when all differences with the Free State had been settled, and the Transvaal was a British possession, that Griqualand West became an integral part of Cape Colony. In January, 1876, Brand was still asking for arbitration, and Carnarvon was still refusing it.

When he explained the Colonial Secretary's policy to the Colonial Secretary himself Froude came very near explaining it away. The Conference, he said, was only intended to deal with the native question and the question of Griqualand. Was Confederation then a dream? Froude himself, in a private letter to Molteno, dated April 29th, 1875, wrote, "Lord Carnarvon's earnest desire since he came into office has been if possible to form South Africa into a confederate dominion, with complete internal self-government."* That was the whole object of the Conference, which but for that would never have been proposed. That, as Froude truly says in his Report, was one of Molteno's reasons for resisting it. The Cape Premier thought that South Africa was not ripe for Confederation. If Froude had had more practice in drawing up official doc.u.ments, he would probably have left out this deprecatory argument, which does not agree with the rest of his case. He attributes, for instance, to local politicians a dread that the supremacy of Cape Town would be endangered. But no possible treatment of the natives, or of Griqualand West, would have endangered the supremacy of Cape Town. The Confederation of which Froude and Carnarvon were champions would have avoided tremendous calamities if it could have been carried out. The chief difficulties in its way were Colonial jealousy of interference from Downing Street and Dutch exasperation at the seizure of the Diamond Fields. "You have trampled on those poor States, sir," said a member of the Cape Legislature to Froude, "till the country cries shame upon you, and you come now to us to a.s.sist you in your tyranny; we will not do it, sir. We are astonished that you should dare to ask us." Such language was singularly inappropriate to Froude himself, for the Boers never had a warmer advocate than they had in him. But the circ.u.mstances in which Griqualand West were annexed will excuse a good deal of strong language. At Port Elizabeth and Grahamstown Froude was welcomed as an advocate of their local independence, which was what they most desired. When, with unusual prudence, he declined to take part in a separatist campaign, their zeal for Confederation soon cooled. On the other hand, the Dutch papers all supported the Conference, although Brand refused to lay his case before it, or to treat with any authority except the British Government at home.

- * Life of Molteno, vol. i. p. 337. -

Neither Froude nor Carnarvon made sufficient allowance for Colonial independence and the susceptibilities of Colonial Ministers. Many of Froude's expressions in public were imprudent, and he himself in his Report apologised for his unguarded language at Grahamstown, where he said that Molteno's reply to Carnarvon's despatch would have meant war if it had come from a foreign state. Yet in the main their policy was a wise one, and they saw farther ahead than the men who worked the political machine at Cape Town. Froude was too sanguine when he wrote, "A Confederate South African Dominion, embracing all the States, both English and Dutch, under a common flag, may be expected as likely to follow, and perhaps at no very distant period." But he added that it would have to come by the deliberate action of the South African communities themselves. That was not the only discovery he had made in South Africa. He had found that the Transavll, reputed then and long afterwards in England to be worthless, was rich in minerals, including gold. He warned the Colonial Office that Cetewayo, with forty thousand armed men, was a serious danger to Natal. He saw clearly, and said plainly that unless South Africa was to be despotically governed, it must be administered with the consent and approval of the Dutch. He dwelt strongly upon the danger of allowing and encouraging natives to procure arms in Griqualand West as an enticement to work for the diamond owners. The secret designs of Sir Theophilus Shepstone he did not penetrate, and therefore he was unprepared for the next development in the South African drama. The South African Conference in London, which he attended during August, 1876, led to no useful result because Molteno, though he had come to London, and was discussing the affairs of Griqualand with Lord Carnarvon, refused to attend it. This was the end of South African Confederation, and the permissive Act of 1877, pa.s.sed after the Transvaal had been annexed, remained a dead letter on the Statute Book.

Although the immediate purpose of Froude's visits to South Africa was not attained, it would be a mistake to infer that they had no results at all. Early in 1877 the annexation of the Transvaal, to which Froude was strongly opposed, changed the whole aspect of affairs, and from that time the strongest opponents of Federalism were the Dutch. But the credit of settling with the Orange Free State a dispute which might have led to infinite mischief is as much Froude's as Carnarvon's, and as a consequence of their wise conduct President Brand became for the rest of his life a steady friend to the British power in South Africa. Ninety thousand pounds was a small price to pay for the double achievement of reconciling a model State and wiping out a stain upon England's honour.

More than four years after his second return from South Africa, in January, 1880, Froude delivered two lectures to the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh, in which his view of South African policy is with perfect clearness set forth. He condemns the annexation of the Transvaal, and the Zulu war. He expresses a wish that Lord Carnarvon, who had resigned two years before, could be permanent Secretary for the Colonies. "I would give back the Transvaal to the Dutch," he said. Again, in even more emphatic language, "The Transvaal, in spite of prejudices about the British flag, I still hope that we shall return to its lawful owners."* What is more surprising, he recommended that Zululand should be restored to Cetewayo, or Cetewayo to Zululand. He had predicted in 1875 that Cetewayo would prove a troublesome person, and few men had less of the sentiment which used to be a.s.sociated with Exeter Hall. The restoration of Cetewayo, when it came was disastrous both to himself and to others. Frere understood the Zulus better than Froude or Colenso. The surrender of the Transvaal, which was a good deal nearer than Froude thought, was at least successful for a time, a longer time than Froude's own life. He did not share Gladstone's ignorance of its value; he knew it to be rich in minerals, especially in gold. But he knew also that Carnarvon had been deceived about the willingness of the inhabitants to become British subjects, and he sympathised with their independence. It ill.u.s.trates his own fairness and detachment of mind that he should have taken so strong and so unpopular a line when the Boers were generally supposed in England to have acquiesced in the loss of their liberties, and when his hero Sir Garnet Wolseley, to whom he dedicated his English in Ireland, had declared that the Vaal would run back to the Drakensberg before the British flag ceased to wave over Pretoria.

- * Two Lectures on South Africa, pp. 80, 81, 85. -

Froude's South African policy was to work with the Dutch, and keep the natives in their places. He had no personal interest in the question. It was through Lord Carnarvon that he came in contact with South Africa at all, and there were few statesmen with whom he more thoroughly agreed. When Disraeli came for the second time into office, and for the first time into power, Froude was well pleased.

In 1875, after his legal disqualification had been removed, he was again invited to become a candidate for Parliament. But he did not really know to which party he belonged.

"Four weeks ago," he wrote to Lady Derby on the 3rd of April, "the Liberal Whip (Mr. Adam) asked me to stand for the Glasgow and Aberdeen Universities on very easy terms to myself. I declined, because I should have had to commit myself to the Liberal party, which I did not choose to do. Lord Carnarvon afterwards spoke to me with regret at my resolution. He had a conversation with Mr. D'Israeli, and it was agreed that if possible I should be brought in by a compromise without a contest. But it appeared doubtful afterwards whether the Liberals would consent to this without fuller pledges than I could consent to give. I was asked if I would stand anyhow (contest or not), or whether I would allow myself to be nominated in their interest for any other place when a vacancy should occur. I said, No. (I would stand a contest on the Conservative side, if on any.) I was neither Conservative nor Liberal per se, but would not oppose Mr. D'Israeli. So there this matter lies, unless your people have as good an opinion of me as the others, and want a candidate of my lax description. But indeed I have no wish to go into Parliament. I am too old to begin a Parliamentary life, and infinitely prefer making myself of use to the Conservative side in some other way .... I am at Lord Carnarvon's service if he wishes me to go on with his Colonial affairs. I came home from the Cape to be of use to him."

The Colonial policy of the Liberals Froude had always regarded with suspicion. Even Lord Kimberley's grant of a const.i.tution to the Cape he interpreted as showing a centrifugal tendency, and Cardwell's withdrawal of troops from Canada was all of a piece. Disraeli, on the other hand, who never did anything for the Colonies, had been making a speech about them at Manchester, wherein all manner of Colonial possibilities were suggested. They did not go, if they were ever intended to go, beyond suggestion, and in 1876 the sudden crisis in Eastern affairs superseded all other topics of political interest.

When the Eastern Question was first raised, Froude had taken the side of the Government.

"I like Lord Derby's speech," he wrote to Lady Derby on the 19th of September, 1876, "to the Working Men's a.s.sociation. So I think the country will when it recovers from its present intoxication. Violent pa.s.sions which rise suddenly generally sink as fast if there is no real reason for them. It is impossible that the people can fail to recollect in a little while that the reticence of which they complain is under the circ.u.mstances inevitable.

"Gladstone and his satellites are using their opportunities, however, with thorough unscrupulousness. It is possible that they may force an Autumn Session, and even force the Ministry to resign- but woe to themselves if they do. They will promise what cannot be carried out, and will perhaps, in fine retribution for the Crimean War, bring the Russians to Constantinople. It will not be a bad thing in itself, but there will be an end of the English Minister who brings it about."

Again, three days later, to the same correspondent:

"I admire the Premier's speech. It is what I expected of him. The Liberal leaders are behaving scandalously, with the exception perhaps of Lord Hartington. The Cabinet I trust will now decide on an Autumn Session to remove so critical a matter out of the hands of irresponsible mobs. I was surprised to hear the war in Servia attributed to the secret societies. Cluseret I know has intended to ask for service with Turkey, with a view to a war, against Russia, and has been withheld only by some differences with General Klapha, the Turco-Hungarian, from doing so. I had a long letter from him to- day, in which he expresses his restlessness characteristically, J'ai la nostalgic de la poudre."

Afterwards Froude followed Carlyle, and went with Russia against Turkey. The "unspeakable Turk" was to be "struck out of the question and Bismarck invited to arbitrate. Such was the oracular deliverance from Cheyne Row, and Froude obeyed the oracle. He attended the Conference at St. James's Hall in December at which Gladstone spoke, and Carlyle's letter was read, sitting for the only time in his life on the same platform with Freeman. Next May, when war between Russia and Turkey had actually begun, when Gladstone was about to move his famous resolutions in the House of Commons, there appeared in The Times* another remarkable letter from the same hand. This time, however, it was no mere question of style, though "our miraculous Premier" was a phrase which stuck. Carlyle evidently had information of some design for giving Turkey the support of the British fleet in the neighbourhood of Constantinople, and was not very discreet in the use he made of it. The Cabinet were supposed to be divided on the question of helping Turkey by material means, which of course meant war with Russia, and the Foreign Secretary, Lord Derby, was known to be in favour of peace. A year later Lord Carnarvon and Lord Derby had both left the Cabinet rather than be responsible for a vote of credit which meant preparation for war, and for calling out the Reserves.

- * May 5, 1877. -

Froude was in complete sympathy with the retiring ministers, and he regarded it as a profound mistake for England to quarrel with Russia on behalf of a Power which had no business in Europe at all. From his point of view the presence at the Colonial Office of so sympathetic a Minister as Carnarvon was far more important than the difference between the Treaty of San Stefano and the Treaty of Berlin. Of the Afghan War in 1878 he strongly disapproved.

The following extracts from letters to Lady Derby show the phases of thought on the Eastern Question through which Froude pa.s.sed, and are interesting also because they represent him in an unfamiliar light as the champion of parliamentary Government against the secret diplomacy of Lord Beaconsfield. Arbitrary rule might be very good for Irishmen. As applied to Englishmen Froude disliked it no less than Gladstone or Bright.

"February 16th, 1877.-The Opposition have no hope of making a successful attack on the present Parliament-but they are resolute. They know their own minds, and Gladstone (I know) has said that he has but to hold up his finger to force a dissolution and return as Prime Minister. I too think you are deceived by the London Press. Another ma.s.sacre and all would be over. The Golden Bridge you speak of I conclude is for Russia; but if it was possible for the Cabinet, without changing its att.i.tude, to make such a bridge, there would be no need of one. England has been, and I fear still is, the one obstacle to measures which would have long ago brought the Turk to his senses. I cannot but feel a.s.sured that you have thrown away an opportunity for securing to the Conservative party the grat.i.tude of Europe and the possession of office for a generation. If more mischief happens in Turkey it will be on you that public displeasure will fall, and you may need a bridge for yourselves and not find one. I croak like a raven. Perhaps you may set it down to an almost totally sleepless night."

"April 30th, 1877.-You destroy the last hope to which I had clung, that Lord Derby, though opposed to Russian policy, would not consent to go to war with her. I remain of my old opinion that England (foolishly excited as it always when fighting is going on) will in the long run resent the absurdity and punish the criminality of taking arms in a worthless cause. I am sick of heart at the thought of what is coming, here as well as on the Continent. I have begged Carlyle to write a last appeal to The Times. We must agitate in the great towns, we must protest against what we may be unable to prevent. The Crimean War was innocent compared to what is now threatened, yet three years ago there was scarcely a person in England who did not admit that it was a mistake. I do not know what may be the verdict of the public about a repet.i.tion of it at the present moment. I know but too well what will be the verdict five years hence, and the fate which will overtake those who, with however good a motive, are courting the ruin of their party."

"December 22nd, 1877.--The pa.s.sion for interference in defence of the Turks seems limited (as I was always convinced that it was) to the idle educated cla.s.ses. The public meetings which have been, or are to be, go the other way, or at least are against our taking a part on the Turkish side. The demonstrations which Lord B. expected to follow on the first Russian success have not followed. The Telegraph and Morning Post have used their whips on the dead Crimean horse, but it will not stir for them. It will not stir even for the third volume of the Prince Consort's Life. But I am very sorry about it all, for the damage to the Conservative party from the lost opportunity of playing a great and honourable part is, I fear, irretrievable."

"December 27th, 1877.-The accounts from Bulgaria and Armenia turn me sick. These sheep, what have they done? Diplomalists quarrel, and the people suffer. The management of human affairs will be much improved when the people tell their respective Cabinets that if there is fighting to be done the Cabinets must fight themselves, and that the result shall be accepted as final. Nine out of ten great wars might have been settled that way with equal advantage so far as the consequences were concerned, and to the infinite relief of poor humanity."

"March 10th, 1878.-I met Lord D. at the club the other night. He looked As Prometheus might have looked when he was 'Unbound.' He was in excellent spirits and talked brilliantly. Not one allusion to the East, but I guessed that he had a mind at ease."

"April 8th, 1878.-I wish I knew whether the Cabinet has determined on forcing war upon Russia at all events, or if Russia consents to go into the Conference on the English terms; the Cabinet will then bona fide endeavour after an equitable and honourable settlement. Lord B.'s antecedents all point to a determination to make any settlement impossible. He has succeeded so far without provoking the other Powers, but such a game is surely dangerous, backed though he by every fool and knave in England."

"July 15th, 1878.-I gather that the Opposition is too disorganised to resist; and if Parliament endure to be set aside, and allow the destinies of their country to be affected so enormously by the sole action of the Crown and the Cabinet, a change is pa.s.sing over us the results of which it is impossible to estimate. We do, in fact, take charge of the Turkish Empire as completely as we took the Empire of the Moguls. In a little while we shall have to administer on the Continent as well as in Cyprus, and then will arise a new Asiatic army. This will bring wars with it before long, and a proportionate increase of the power of the Executive Government. If Parliament abdicates its authority now, what may we not antic.i.p.ate? I have long felt that the House of Commons could not long continue to govern the great concerns of the British Empire as it has done. I certainly did not expect that it would yield without a struggle-nor will it. Sooner or later we shall see a fight against the tendency which is giving so startling an evidence of its existence-and what is to happen then?"

"July 21st, 1878.-Lord Derby's speech was as good as it could possibly be. What he says now all the world will say two years hence. How deeply it cut appeared plainly enough in the scenes which followed. It must be peculiarly distressing to you-distressing in many ways, for I feel as certain as ever that the end of it all will be irreparable damage to the Conservative party. One would like to know Prince Bismarck's private opinion of the Premier and private opinion also of the nation which has taken him for their chosen leader. Of course he will dissolve while the glamour is fresh; and before the effects of the bad champagne with which he has dosed the country begin to appear-first headache and penitence, and then exasperation at the provider of the entertainment."

"November 24th, 1878.-The evil shadow of the Premier extends over the most innocent of our pleasures. I had been looking forward to a few days at Knowsley as the most enjoyable which I should have had during the whole year. Yet I knew how it would be. Daring as he is, he could not venture on an entire defiance of public opinion. Parliament of course would have to meet, and equally of course you and Lord D. would have to come up. I conclude the object to be to get up a Russian war after all. The stress laid by Lord Cranbrook on the reception of the Russian Emba.s.sy as the point of the injury will make it very difficult for the Russians to be neutral. If this is what the Ministry really intend, they may have their majority in Parliament docile, but I doubt whether they will have the country with them. I am sure they will not if Hartington and Granville support Lord Lawrence.

"I interpret it all as meaning that the Premier knows that his policy has thoroughly broken down in Europe, and at all risks he means to have another try in the East."

It was Froude's opinion, right or wrong, that Lord Beaconsfield might have settled the Irish question if he had left the Eastern question alone. He understood it, as some of his early speeches show, and he might have "established a just Land Court with the support of all the best land-owners in Ireland."* Why the Land Court established by Gladstone in 1881 was unjust Froude did not explain. Some of the best landlords, if not all, supported it, and it relieved an intolerable situation.

- * Table Talk of s.h.i.+rley, p. 180. -

CHAPTER VIII

FROUDE AND CARLYLE

When James Spedding introduced Froude to Carlyle he made unconsciously an epoch in English literature. For though Froude was incapable of merging himself in another man, as Spedding merged himself in Bacon, he did more for the author of Sartor Resartus than Spedding did for the author of the Novum Organum. Spedding's Bacon is an impossible hero of unhistorical perfection. Froude's Carlyle, like Boswell's Johnson, is a great man painted as he was. When the original head master of Uppingham described his school as Eton without its faults, there were those who felt for the first time that there was something to be said for the faults of Eton. Carlyle without his paradoxes and prejudices, his impetuous temper and his unbridled tongue would be only half himself. If he were known only through his books, the world would have missed acquaintance with letters of singular beauty, and with the most humourous talker of his age. He was one of two men, Newman being the other, whose influence Froude felt through life, and the influence of Newman was chiefly upon his style. Of Newman indeed he saw very little after he left Oxford, though his admiration and reverence for him never abated. It was not until he came to live in London after the death of his first wife that he grew really intimate with Carlyle. Up to that time he was no more than an occasional visitor in Cheyne Row with a profound belief in the philosophy of that incomparable poem in prose, The French Revolution. Carlyle helped him with his own history, the earlier volumes of which show clear traces of the master, and encouraged him in his literary work.

Mrs. Carlyle was scarcely less remarkable than her husband. Although she never wrote a line for publication, her private letters are among the best in the language, and all who knew her agree that she talked as well as she wrote. Froude thought her the most brilliant and interesting woman he had ever met. The attraction was purely intellectual. Mrs. Carlyle was no longer young, and Froude's temperament was not inflammable. But she liked clever men, and clever men liked her. She was an unhappy woman, without children, without religion, without any regular occupation except keeping house. Her husband she regarded as the greatest genius of his time, and his affection for her was the deepest feeling of his heart. He was at bottom a sincerely kind man, and his servants were devoted to him. But he was troublesome in small matters; irritable, nervous, and dyspeptic. His books hara.s.sed him like illnesses, and he groaned under the infliction. If he were disturbed when he was working, he lost all self-control, and his wife felt, she said, as if she were keeping a private mad-house. It was not quite so private as it might have been, for Mrs. Carlyle found in her grievances abundant food for her sarcastic tongue. Whatever she talked about she made interesting, and her relations with her husband became a common subject of gossip. It was said that the marriage had never been a real one, that they were only companions, and so forth. Froude was content to enjoy the society of the most gifted couple in London without troubling himself to solve mysteries which did not concern him.

Thrifty as she was, Mrs. Carlyle was not fitted by physical strength and early training to be the wife of a poor man. She was too anxious a housekeeper, and worried herself nervously about trifles. Her father had been a country doctor, not rich, but able to keep the necessary servants. In Carlyle's home there were no servants at all. His father was a mason, and the work of the house was done by the family. Why should his wife be in a different position from his mother's? There was no reason, in the nature of things. But custom is very strong, and the early years of Mrs. Carlyle's married life were a hard struggle against grinding poverty. Carlyle was grandly indifferent to material things. He wanted no luxuries, except tobacco and a horse. He would not have altered his message to mankind, or his mode of delivering it, for the wealth of the Indies. What he had to say he said, and men might take it or leave it as they thought proper. He never swerved from the path of integrity. He did not know his way to the house of Rimmon. The mere practical ability required to produce such a book as Frederick the Great might have realised a fortune in business. Carlyle just made enough money to live in decent and wholesome comfort.

From the first Carlyle's conversation attracted Froude, and dazzled him. But he felt, as others felt, that submission rather than intimacy was the att.i.tude which it suggested or compelled. There was no republic of letters in Carlyle's house. It was a dictators.h.i.+p, pure and simple. What the dictator condemned was heresy. What he did not know was not knowledge. Mill was a poor f.e.c.kless driveller. Darwin was a pretentious sciolist. Newman had the intellect of a rabbit. Herbert Spencer was "the most unending a.s.s in Christendom." "Scribbling Sands and Eliots" were unfit to tie Mrs. Carlyle's shoe-strings. Editing Keats was "currying dead dog." Ruskin could only point out the correggiosity of Correggio. Political economy was the dismal science, or the gospel according to McCrowdie.* Carlyle's eloquent and humourous diatribes were wonderful, laughter-moving, awe-compelling. They did not put his hearers at their ease, and Froude felt more admiration than sympathy.

- * McCulloch, the editor of Adam Smith, was meant -

In 1861, when Froude had been settled in London about a year, he received a visit from the great author himself. Carlyle did not take to many people, but he took to Froude. Perhaps he was touched by the younger man's devotion. Perhaps he saw that Froude was no ordinary disciple, and would be able to carry on the torch when he relinquished it himself. At all events he expressed a wish to see him oftener in his walks, in his rides, in his home. Nothing could be more flattering than such an invitation from such a man. Froude responded cordially, and became an habitual visitor. Like all really good talkers, Carlyle was at his best with a single companion, and there could be no more sympathetic companion than Froude. But there was another object of interest at Cheyne Row, and Froude felt for Mrs. Carlyle sincere compa.s.sion. She was often left to herself while her husband wrote upstairs, and she suffered tortures from neuralgia. It seemed to Froude that Carlyle, who never had a day's serious illness, felt more for his own dyspepsia and hypochondria than for his wife's far graver ailments. In this he was very likely unjust, for Carlyle was tenderly attached to his "Jeanie," and would have done anything for her if he had thought of it. But he was absorbed in Friederich, whose battles he would fight over again with the tired invalid on sofa. If woman be the name of frailty, the name of vanity is man. Carlyle was fond of his wife, but he was thinking of himself. His "Niagaras of scorn and vituperation" were a vent for his own feelings, a sort of moral gout. The apostle of silence recked not his own rede, nor did he think of the impression which his purely destructive preaching might make upon other people. He himself found in the eternities and immensities some kind of subst.i.tute for the Calvinistic Presbyterianism of his childhood. To her it was idle rhetoric and verbiage. He had taken away her dogmatic beliefs, and had nothing to put in their place. Her "pale, drawn, suffering face" haunted Froude in his dreams. In 1862 Mrs. Carlyle's health broke down, and for a year her case seemed desperate. Her doctor sent her away to St. Leonard's, and in no long time she apparently recovered. After that her husband took more care of her, and provided her with a carriage. But her const.i.tution had been shattered, and she died suddenly as she drove through Hyde Park on the 21st of April, 1866, while Carlyle was at Dumfries, resting after the delivery of his Rectorial Address to the University of Edinburgh.

Carlyle's bereavement drove him into more complete dependence upon Froude's sympathy and support. The lonely old man brooded over his loss, and over his own short-comings. He shut himself up in the house to read his wife's diaries and papers. He found that without meaning it he had often made her miserable. In her journal for the 21st of June, 1856, he read, "The chief interest of to-day expressed in blue marks on my wrists!"* He realised that he had almost driven her to suicide, he the great preacher of duty and self-abnegation. "For the next few years," says Froude, "I never walked with him without his recurring to a subject which was never absent from his mind." Doubtless his remorse was exaggerated. His letters, and his wife's, show that he was a most affectionate husband when nothing had occurred to deprive him of his self-command. But he had at times been cruelly inconsiderate, and he wished to do penance for his misdeeds. A practical Christian would have asked G.o.d to pardon him, and made amends by active kindness to his surviving fellow- creatures. Carlyle took another course. In 1871, five years after his wife's death, he suddenly brought Froude a large bundle of papers, containing a memoir of Mrs. Carlyle by himself, a number of her letters, and some other biographical fragments. Froude was to read them, to keep them, and to publish them or not, as he pleased, after Carlyle was dead.+

- * This pa.s.sage was suppressed by Froude when he published Mrs. Carlyle's Diary and Letters. But he kept the copy made by Carlyle's niece under his superintendence, which still exists; and as an incorrect version has appeared since his death, I give the correct one now. + "I long much, with a tremulous, deep, and almost painful feeling, about that other Ma.n.u.script which you were kind enough to read at the very first. Be prepared to tell me, with all your candour, the pros and contras there."-Carlyle to Froude, 26th of September, 1871. From The Hill, Dumfries. -

Well would it have been for Froude's peace of mind if he had handed the parcel back again, and refused to look at it. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil scarcely yielded more fatal fruit. He read the papers, however, and "for the first time realised what a tragedy the life in Cheyne Row had been." That he exaggerated the purport of what he read is likely enough. When there are quarrels between husband and wife, a man naturally inclines to take the woman's side. Froude, as he says himself, was haunted by Mrs. Carlyle's look of suffering, physical rather than mental, and it would necessarily colour his judgment of the facts. At all events his conclusion was that Carlyle had just ground for remorse, and that in collecting the letters he had partially expiated his offence. When Mrs. Carlyle's Correspondence came to be published it was seen that there were two sides to the question, and that, if he had leisure to think of what he was doing, Carlyle could be the most considerate of husbands. Irritable and selfish he might be. Deliberately cruel he never was. Froude, with his accustomed frankness, told Carlyle at once what he thought. Mrs. Carlyle's letters should be published, not alone, but with the memoir composed by himself.

Carlyle had originally intended that this memoir, or sketch, as it rather is, should be preserved, but not printed. Afterwards, however, he gave it to Froude, and added an express permission to do as he liked with it. Froude was not content with his own opinion. He consulted John Forster, the biographer of Goldsmith and of d.i.c.kens, a common friend of Carlyle and himself. Forster read the doc.u.ments, and promised that he would speak to Carlyle about them, giving no opinion to Froude, but intimating that he should impress upon Carlyle the need for making things clear in his will. This most sensible advice was duly taken, and Carlyle's will, signed on the 6th of February, 1873, which nominated Forster and his own brother John as executors, contained the following pa.s.sage:

"My ma.n.u.script ent.i.tled 'Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle' is to me in my now bereaved state, of endless value, though of what value to others I cannot in the least clearly judge; and indeed for the last four years am imperatively forbidden to write farther on it, or even to look farther into it. Of that ma.n.u.script my kind, considerate, and ever faithful friend, James Anthony Froude (as he has lovingly promised me) takes precious charge in my stead. To him therefore I give it with whatever other fartherances and elucidations may be possible, and I solemnly request of him to do his best and wisest in the matter, as I feel a.s.sured he will. There is incidentally a quant.i.ty of autobiographic record in my notes to this ma.n.u.script; but except as subsidiary and elucidative of the text I put no value on such. Express biography of me I had really rather that there should be none. James Anthony Froude, John Forster, and my brother John, will make earnest survey of the ma.n.u.script and its subsidiaries there or elsewhere in respect to this as well as to its other bearings; their united utmost candour and impartiality, taking always James Anthony Froude's practicality along with it, will evidently furnish a better judgment than mine can be. The ma.n.u.script is by no means ready for publication; nay, the questions how, when (after what delay, seven, ten years) it, or any portion of it, should be published are still dark to me; but on all such points James Anthony Froude's practical summing up and decision is to be taken as mine." No expression of confidence could well be stronger, no discretion could well be more absolute. So far as one man can subst.i.tute another for himself, Carlyle subst.i.tuted Froude.