TO THE REV, R. H. Story,
Thank you for giving me something to talk to you about this Sunday evening, which is of all times the one I like best for letter-writing. I was extremely glad to get your MS....I have of course some small criticisms to make, but none of importance....Is it quite necessary to mention distinctly Maurice and F. W. Robertson as leaders of the “Advance of Christian Thought”? We have all a prejudiced unreasonable world to deal with, and you may possibly have enough to do to answer for your own thoughts without taking the burden of other people’s. This is mere female cowardice, you understand, and you will take it for what it is worth. To rush into premature collision with prejudice and the old world is not any way desirable. Pardon me! I am aware I am speaking dreadful poltroonery, not to speak of the outrageous presumption of counselling on such a subject my spiritual guide of recent days; but notwithstanding that inferior feminine and lay position, I am, you must admit, your senior by some of the hardest years of life, and I so entirely wish you the best and brightest of fortunes that you will forgive me whether you relish my advice or not. I have done nothing more to Irving, but have been busy upon the ‘Doctor’s Family,’ the end of the stupid story in Mrs. Hall’s magazine, and a paper on Pugin, the architect. That is all I have accomplished since I came here: very poor work, but interrupted by perpetual consultations about carpets, chintzes, bookcases, &c., and how to put the doll’s house becomingly tidy. It does not look so bad now it is done, but, oh me! the society! Fancy a man calling those two wonderful angels of the San Sisto Madonna cupids! I did not faint — a fact which ought to be recorded to the honour of female nerves and fortitude.
To Miss Blackwood.
I was plunged into dismay by your last letter. What kind of a dissipated life you mean to lead me into with your “charming little luncheon” in Jermyn Street and journeys to Brighton is more than I can make out. What is to become of my small family if you demoralise their mother? Since J. left I have got more entire possession of my chicks, and they are not at all bad company. Maggie is improving, and makes a nice little companion, and on the whole I find life very endurable in their society....I don’t yet know exactly when the book of the season, as you so flatteringly call it, is to be out; but I have been half killed with proofs, and am just about finishing. I don’t expect you to like it. However, there is no use anticipating evil. I do believe I have done my best, and the issue will most likely be more critical and important to me and my bairnies than anything I have ever done. For their sakes I regard with a little awe and trembling this new step into the world. When by any chance I look gravely forward, which happily for me is a thing my temperament does not much oblige me to, the prospect sometimes appals me more than is quite consistent with all these absurd letters, laughters, &c. But I don’t suppose I could have existed, much less made progress, but for the buoyancy with which I have been mercifully endowed beforehand. But in every way this Irving publication is an important one for me. I am obliged to write in haste, and as Checchino is with me and hammering with all his might, I trust you will put down any little incoherencies in this epistle to his small score.
The weather already begins to brighten delightfully, and I have made my own room, which is very sunny and cheerful, my study. I begin to like this little place: it is intensely tame, of course, but has a kind of village aspect and a wealth of those green lanes which do not seem practicable out of England, when one has any time to walk....What preposterous thing do you imagine I am doing in the midst of my serious labours? Writing a little drawing-room play, founded upon a most ludicrous real incident, and called “The Three Miss Smiths.”
Thank you very much for liking the Pugin paper. I am not badly pleased with it myself. I begin to think biography is my forte! It is very pleasant work, at least....I am just about to launch into the life of Turner the painter — old beast — in which I hope I shall give you equal satisfaction....I have just finished the ‘Doctor’s Family,’ and don’t at all like the termination. Sometimes one’s fancies will not do what one requires of them, and when that happens it is excessively disheartening and unpleasant.
A very affectionate young lady friend is distressing. I get alarmed when I throw myself back in my chair and take a moment’s rest, lest I should have sudden arms thrown round me, and be kissed and embraced without any warning. All very well, you know, when there is any occasion, but to have a caress always impending over you is highly alarming and not comfortable.
I have been in the most dreadful pressure of work finishing my Irving book, and now I am snowed up with proofs. I must say in confidence that I should be much disappointed if this book does not make some little commotion. There never was such a hero — such a princely, magnanimous, simple heart.
To the Rev. R. H. Story.
After Irving is well out of hands I mean (but this in the profoundest confidence) to disclose the tribulations of a historian in search of information to the sympathetic world....I fear I don’t follow you in your benevolent aspirations for the benefit of his Satanic Majesty. I don’t see my way to the reformation of a vast intellectual impersonation of wickedness. So far as we have any light upon the character of that great spirit, it is all mind and no heart; and how can you convert an intellect? Perhaps that after-act of the great drama is reserved for another dispensation, but I confess that to me the annihilation of evil is a mystery still greater than its origin. The idea of puzzling one’s female brains over anything of the kind! That is luckily your business, my dear young friend, and not mine: mine is to tell mild stories of which the superior intelligence is indulgently critical, and which have some attractions for minds only partially accessible to reason.
To Miss Blackwood.
Now about your literary questions, scoffer! Know that I read everything (except the politics, — I am a Radical, you know) which has the honour of appearing in ‘Maga.’ And I like some of David Wingate’s poems very much, other some I don’t particularly care for; “My Little Wife” is delightful....The previous portion of this note up to the above mark was written at two o’clock A.M. this Sunday morning, at which period it was interrupted by the sudden waking up and vigorous summons of my Cecchino, who shares my room with me. He is getting the funniest little passionate fellow imaginable — but this by way of parenthesis. I am rather curious to know whether Mr. John will do me that friendly office which he has done to almost all his contributors except myself, I mean get me a review. I shall enjoy a little leisure when you come.
To Mr. Blackwood.
Much exhilarated by your favourable judgment. I had almost written you yesterday a note at which you would have laughed, being a protestation called forth by an article in the ‘Saturday Review.’ That discriminating critic, as you will most likely have seen, announces that the ‘Chronicles of Carlingford’ can be written by nobody but George Eliot — a high compliment to me, no doubt; but women, you know, according to the best authorities, never admire each other, and I mean to protest that the faintest idea of imitating or attempting to rival the author of ‘Adam Bede’ never entered my mind. I hope you don’t think so. This protest is made for my private satisfaction, and because I should not like you to think me guilty of imitation or of any intention that way. Critics as a race are donkeys, and may say what they please.
I must say I think the ‘Woman in White’ a marvel of workmanship. I found it bear a second reading very well, and indeed it was having it thrown in my way for a second time which attracted so strongly my technical admiration....Dickens is not a favourite of mine; I think it would go against the grain to applaud him highly in his present phase.5 I had the pleasure of dining at Mr. Warren’s the other day in humble attendance upon your sister. He came out famously, showed me the manuscript of ‘Ten Thousand a-Year,’ and was as amusing as possible. Such simple-minded and effusive vanity is charming at first sight. We are going to look up old David Roberts, whom I know a little, after Miss Blackwood returns from Brighton.
From Mrs. Carlyle to Mrs. Oliphant.
5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea.
Darling Woman, — Already the Exhibition has borne me the fruit of one Scotch cousin, who will be coming and going all this week, and I have other things laid on my arms, like the baby in the omnibus! And on the whole I fear I must put off my visit to you till the week following. But if you will name any day of that, I shall take care that no pigs run through it, D.V.
I do long to see you to tell you, not what I think of your book but what Mr. C. thinks, which is much more to the purpose! I never heard him praise a woman’s book, hardly any man’s, as cordially as he praises this of yours! You are “worth whole cartloads of Mulocks, and Brontes, and THINGS of that sort.” “You are full of geniality and genius even”! “Nothing has so taken him by the heart for years as this biography”! You are really “a fine, clear, loyal, sympathetic female being.” The only fault he finds in you is a certain dimness about dates and arrangements of time! — in short, I never heard so much praise out of his head at one rush! and I am so glad!
For me, I am not in a state to express an opinion yet, having read only here a little and there a little, in whichever volume Mr. C. was not occupied with, and admit “a pressure of things”! — all the worse for being trivial things. But to-morrow I shall begin at the beginning. Mr. C. got to the end last night, and the last part was the best of all, he says; and that he is “very glad — very glad indeed that such a biography of Edward Irving exists.” Now tell me a day next week, if you are to be at home and leisure, and believe that I love you very much, and try to love me a little.
J. W. Carlyle.
To Mr. Blackwood.
Ealing.
My dear Mr. Blackwood, — I am perfectly charmed to hear that you continue to like ‘Salem.’ I am afraid the machinery I have set in motion is rather extensive for the short limits I had intended. The second part should have reached you before now but for my baby’s illness, but I hope the little fellow is mending, and that I shall be able to send it off in a day or two....
I am delighted with your approbation. I mean to make what one of the poor London painters despised by the Academy calls an ‘it if I can with this story. Did you go to Osborne? The Prince Consort paper is beautifully got up, and a credit to us all who have the honour of being included under the mantle of ‘Maga.’ I am proud of having my own verses appended to anything so graceful and fine.6
I am the most mild and placable of women and authors, but at the same time your report of Lewes’s criticism on my paper strikes me, now I think of it, as mighty impertinent. I don’t take offence, but I think I have as much right to the due consideration of my standing and age in literature as if I were asserting myself in society, or even had done something equivocal to pique the curiosity of the world. I have never taken much credit to myself nor cared overmuch for it, but I know I have done as much honest work in my day as most people of my years; and patronising approbation of the kind you told me of does not quite suit me.
I am, as you may imagine, delighted with your letter and verdict upon ‘Salem.’ After all you have kindly said on the subject I get so nervous, and am haunted with such a conviction that this luck is much too good to last, that I bewilder myself and fall into panics over every chapter. I suspect some kind fairy has thrown glamour in your eyes.
I have just been expressing my congratulations to Mr. William. I hope to do so, if I live so long, on the still more auspicious occasion when the “little Editor,” who, I have a conviction, was specially born for the Magazine, takes up the old ensign, till which time all glory and prosperity to the flag which has braved for how many? years the battle and the breeze. I hope by that time I shall have a cadet too, able to do better work than his mother.7
I spent last evening with Thomas Carlyle, whom I am sorry you don’t like, but whom I do like heartily and more than ever. He has added to all his great qualities a crowning touch of genius — he likes my book! and has spoken of it in terms so entirely gratifying that for the space of a night and day I was uplifted, and lost my head. He was at home and alone, with his clever and original wife, and I never was more delighted with any man. I am ready henceforth to stand up for all those peculiarities which other people think defects, and to do battle for him whenever I hear him assailed.
You have given me too much money for my little paper. I am very glad it pleases you, but you have been too liberal, and I feel uncomfortable with overpay.
How delightful are Sir Edward’s [Lytton’s] Essays. One seems to see his own special creation, the accomplished man of the world, not entirely worldly, a quintessence of social wisdom and experience, sweetened by imagination. I don’t know whether he is actually such a man himself. I suspect not by a long way so good as Alban Morley and the others, of whom the Essays seem to me a kind of embodiment over again.
To Mr. William Blackwood.
Let me congratulate you on the pleasant news Mr. John sends me, that you have become one of the actual pillars of the house. I trust it may go on prospering to the highest height of the good wishes of “our connection,” which I am sure have no bounds but possibility, and that the young generation may be as kind, genial, and strong as their predecessors — like a woman I put the softer qualities first.
To Mr. Blackwood.
December 12.
The only possible objection I can have to make to your proposal about ‘Salem’ is that it is too favourable to me. I have, however, to ask you, if it is not disagreeable to you, to divide the five hundred pounds which you are going to pay me into two halves, to let me have one of the said halves at Christmas — that is, now — and to make the payment of the other contingent on the success of ‘Salem.’ I have had rather a hard fight, and without having the faculty of economics much in me, which of course makes it all the harder and diminishes any little complacency one might have in one’s work. I cannot thank you for the way in which you have stood by me through my troubles. But for that I must have given in at sundry times when the sky was darkest; but that debt is one which I am glad to bear and proud to acknowledge.