Cheyenne transporter. [volume] (Darlington, Indian Terr.) 1879-1886, 1883-05-10
JANE WELSH CARLYLE.
The wife OF Thomas Publishes n Strange
Book of Memorials.

Melancholy rs in many of its opening
and its concluding portions was John
Forster's "Life of Dickens" it is sur
passed in sadness by work just pub
lished, the ''Letters and Memoirs OF
Jane Welsh Carlyle" The light which
this book throws on the inner life of
the Philosopher of Chelsea and his de-
voted and urappreciated wife is SO
many of the distinguished persons
whose sayings and doings are criticised
in the letters, and in the running COM
mentary prefixed to them by Thomas
Carlyle himself are still alive, that the
whole English reading public in both
hemispheres,. besides thousands of
Carlyle's admirers in Germany and
elsewhere on the continent, will be
eager to learn how the author of
"Sartor Resartus" dealt with his wife,
and how she dealt with him. In the
biography, as in the subsequently pub
lished correspondence of Dickens, n
large task of omission was sensibly and
gracefully performed. Vulgar curios-
ity was not grati6ed with regard to
number of painful passages in the life
of the illustrious novelist--passages in
which the public at large had no pos
sible concern. Mr.. j. A. Froude has
shown no such discreet reticence in
introducing to the reading world the
minute relation of n matrimonial 'tete-
a-tete" which occupies the greater part
of three hundred pages. We have, in
the first place, vast number of letters,
extending over long term of years,
addressed by Jane Welsh Carlyle to
her husband, her mother, and her most
intimate male and female friends, in
which epistles she lays bare, with mi
crosbopic fidelity, all the secrets of the
narrow and cheerless prison-house at
Chelsea; and next we have ex-
tracts from Mrs. Carlyle's dairy
extracts of which, Mr.. Froude can
didly tells his readers, only part
were selected by Carlyle himself,
''and apart sufficient merely to leave
a painful expression without explaining
the origin of his wife's discomiit." 1t
is Mr.. Froude's conviction that "there
ought to be no mystery about Carlyle" )"
and that there is no occasion for mys-
terry; and consequently the veil is lifted
which has hitherto hidden the inner
despairing repinings over the domestic
misery which for two score years she
endured. Finally, most of the letters
are preceded by notes from Carlyle
himself-notes now elucidatory, now
anecdotical, now cynically depreciative
OF by-gone friends and acquaintances,
now pathetically eulogistic of his de-
ceased wife, and now expressive of bit
ter remorse at his imperfect apprecia-
tion OF her worth. At times the dead
commentator of his dead wife recalls
the chorus in some grim Greek tragedy
OF necessity and fate. AT other times
the grotesque is so interviewer with
the ludicrous that readers of the "Pic-
lures from Italy may be led to remem-
Der Dickens description of the marion
nette show at Genoa, representing the
death OF Napoleon, in which perform
ance the figure that did duty for the
physician Antommarchi, sin conse-
quence of some arrangement of his
wires, lowered about the couch like a
vultere, and gave medical opinions in
the air."
1t may be expedient to contrast the
time when the philosopher and his
wife, in the seventh year of their mar
ried life, very poor but very hopeful,
first took up their permanent abode at
Chelsea, and the period, twenty-one
years afterward, when they were still
the occupants of the same house, but
when Thomas Carlyle, rs Mr.. Froude
tells us was cleared, admired, rev.
erenced, the acknowledged sovereign,
at least in many eyes, Of English liter
ature." The first state of the future
sovereign's consort was certainly to be
preferred to that when he had attained