Thomas Carlyle and Jane Welsh (part 2)

Very evidently from the first there was friction and disagreement which required length of time to disappear. There need be little doubt that this important little matter of the wife's signature was easily the most objectionable feature from Carlyle's point of view, and on every ground is indefensible. Froude apparently drew his own conclusions, but however honestly and firmly believed by himself, these can scarcely be accepted. It would be grossly unfair to Carlyle to admit them. One is bound to say this strange action of Mrs Carlyle is better explained by the overweening “social mesalliance” theory, which she stoutly believed. Had Froude's deduction been the correct one, there would surely have been at least more or less public knowledge of it at the time, and apparently there was no such thing.

The point is of importance if only as proof that from the first Mrs Carlyle possessed little consideration for anyone's feelings, and literally none for those of the man she had married. Whatever excuses were available for her act, she had none for thus inviting the attention of her correspondents to the fact that she had passed with marriage under no husband domination, and had forfeited no whit of status. She, at least, was no Carlyle, marriage or no.

But if Jane Welsh had been reluctant to engage in the matrimonial adventure, she was ready and eager to do her part in the struggle. Home was made attractive for Carlyle. Circumstances soon revealed to the newly-made wife - not to her liking either – what life with a literary man was to mean. Her husband required solitude, as do all highly-strung individuals who have never passed under the stern discipline of necessity. In his mother's house solitude was not an easy thing to obtain, but everyone had been eager to assist him to attain it. His wife recognised a certain necessity, but had not bargained for Carlyle withdrawing himself from her society for the entire day, or well into the evening. She, too, for the first time, was passing under discipline – she who had been encouraged in every childish whim. Both husband and and wife had been in abnormal situations all their lives, subject to no wholesome, imperative control, acknowledging none as master or employer, or even as guardian.


(To be continued)