The Portland daily press., 1882-04-19
Carlyle's Life.
The Story of Jane Welsh's Life.
Boston Herald.

| lDOstOH I1etdlu.l
Nothing looms up in Mr. Froudes "Life OF
Thomas Carlyle" more sad, more strange,
more under the control of the inevitable des-
| tiny, than his marriage. Carlyle would have
won his way to eminence simply by the law
| of preponderating force had not Jane Baillie
Welsh been his wife, but it is now known that
a woman as self-willed, as hot-tempered, as
ambitious, as tempestuous as ever the author of
| 'Sartor' was, had the courage and power to
| put herself aside that her own thirst for a
| career might be absorbed in her husbands 8
success. "If he ever tagged" says Mr..
Froude, '.it was his wife who spurred him on,
nor would she ever allow him to do less than
his very best She never fattered any one,
least of all her husband. and, when she saw
cause for it, the sarcasms flashed ont from her
as thesparks flyfrom lacerated STEEL" Carlyle's
best work was done when his whole mind was
like furnace at white heat, Mr.. Froude adds
with emphasis and truth SIT would not have
been done as well, perhaps it would never have
been done at all, if he had not had a woman at
his side who would bear, without resenting it,
the outbreaks Of his dyspeptic humor, and
would shield him from the petty troubles OF
poor mans life-from vexations which would
have irritated him to madness-by her own in
cessant toll" All her life, until she became
Carlyle's wife, she was accustomed to rule.
Carlyle would not be ruled, but in this event
it was woman who ruled him She never
loved Carlyle as women commonly love men.
Irving was her choice, and she used to say of
that dazed man. whom she loved passionately:
"Had been Irving's wife there would have
been no tongues: but there was no romance
in her relations to Carlyle. He did not win
her heart, but she believed that he had genius
aud that she could fan that genius into flame,
and on that ground she became the most loyal,
the most untiring, the most unluved of wives,
until Carlyle, looking over her papers after her
death awoke to the fact that she had given up
everything for him, and became in his pathetic
affection for her memory all that he ought to
have been when she silently struggled at his
side that he might be all that she believed that
he could be. Never marry man OF genius"
she used to say to her young friends; but,
almost alone of wives Of men of genius, she
successfully accomplished the diffiult task of
guiding one who, more than most men, felt
that he must do his work III us own way.
Carlyle, after long and parleying courtship,
during which Miss Welsh found that, though
she did not love him, she could not live with
out him, told her ''she had better wed her wild
man of the woods at once, and come and live
with him in his cavern. in the hope OF better
days" SIT was chance" Carlyle said, ''if
any WOMAN COulu Do udpDV WIN ulluy anu
Mrs Carlyle found in an isolated life, in which
''the brute" as she is said to have called him
TO familiar friends at their London home, usu-
ally preferring his pipe in solitariness to her
company, that his words were literally true.
They anticipated a hard time, and Carlyle
braced himself for marriage by reading Kant
and Scott; but, though 1t was the life or one
will where there were two strong wills, Mrs.
Carlyle in resignation, in service and in the
line of duty, must be confessed to stand forth
IL Tw4xr AaJc Ia
man. Here the problem of happy marriage
was as difficult and hopeless of solution as, per-
haps, it has ever been in this sad world. Here
neither party never had the roseate sense OF
happiness. Here man and woman Of excep-
tional originality and genius, the one too much
like the other to ever be the complement of
the other sat down to task in which the one
went bravely through all, though she never
had even ordinary gratitude, and the other was
SO absorbed in his conceptions that he was
grandly unconscious even of his selfishness.
The conditions existed here for any amount of
trouble, certainly for the upsetting of a great
career and yet, by the tact and heroism OF a
little woman whom strong man could have
carried like an infant in his arms, Carlyle had
his head kept foursquare to the world, and
was made to do what God created him to do.
Nothing in this tragic biography, fascinating
as are the glimpses of the growth of man OF
genius up to his grasp of conscious power, is so
abs sorbing the picture of his rarest OF sef-de-
nying women. No sainted heroine ever did her
work more silently or more truly as unto God
or man, and nothing that Mr.. Froude has writ
ten about this sad, passonately sorrowful mar
ried life (and he has written with mary ellous
truthfalness and freedom) takes anything away
from the true personality of one whose heart
was as tender as his speech was vigorous,
and whose terrible ambition to win power
through solitary and hersonal force consumed
the very life and strength of his home befors
the wretched man was conscious of the fact.
There is lesson in the history of Carlyles
married life which is worth ten thousand ser
mons on divorce.