"DEAREST GOODY"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 28, Issue 724, 29 May 1953, Page 12

"DEAREST GOODY"

TROMAS CARLYLE: LETTERS TO HIS WIFE, edited by Trudy Bliss; Victor GolJancz. English price, 25/-.

(Reviewed by

M.H.

H.

thousands of words by Carlyle can still be printed for the’ first time. These letters have been taken from the full collectionmore than, 700-in the National Library of Scotland. Some were used by Froude, and others have appeared elsewhere; but they have not previously been published as a sequence. The gaps have been filled by editorial notes which explain how the different groups of letters came to*be written. And the result is a vivid portrayal of Carlyle’s married life. = True, it is one-sided, not to be understood unless read: in conjunction with Jane Carlyle’s letters, which have been ‘available for many years., But Carlyle was better able to express his true feelings for his wife when -he was away from her: he could- not easily speak the soft word in Cheyne Row. And the let‘ters prove beyond doubt that, whatever | his behaviour may have been (and we know that Jane was sorely-tried, though | she also was difficult), this man loved | his wife. He was always full of complaints; he was critical to the point of | meanness when he spoke of people who | were kind to him; and he could not be shaken from his platonic devotion~ to | Lady Ashburton. But he spoke to his | "dearest goody" with unwavering ten- [ is strange to find that many | derness. Even when he was getting to be an old man he could behave like a young and anxious lover if her letters were delayed, or if he knew her to be angry. Carlyle did himself some harm in his — Reminiscences. The remorseful tone of | that book, and the morbid preoccupation | with his own shortcomings, have filled _out too easily the impression given by biographers, and especially by Froude. The man who preached Silence could never be silent, but must always be _ pouring out words; and he had a fatal } habit of inflation. He exaggerated everything, so that even the state of his bowels provoked tragic or cosmic reflection. With such a man, the minor difficulties of marriage could scarcely fail to be magnified. This does not mean that life at 5 Cheyne Row was more pleasant than either he or Jane could make it appear; though even after generations of visitors

the house has quiet and friendly ghosts -or seemed to have, when I came down from the soundproof room into an autumn dusk a few years ago. But these letters will influence future appraisals. They are much more revealing than the biographies; and if they were not valuable for what they tell us of Carlyle’s marriage they would be worth reading for their vivid descriptions of people and places. This will undoubtedly become one of the great collections of letters in English literature.