Part 1
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Greybeards at Play.
Literature and Art for Old Gentlemen.
Rhymes and Sketches, with Cover Design in Nursery Colours.
By G. K. CHESTERTON.
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The Defendant.
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(1) THOMAS CARLYLE. (2) ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. (3) CHARLES DICKENS. (4) LEO TOLSTOY.
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THOMAS CARLYLE
BY
G. K. CHESTERTON
AND
J. E. HODDER WILLIAMS
WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS
London HODDER AND STOUGHTON 27, Paternoster Row 1902
PRINTED BY HAZELL, WATSON AND VINEY, LD., LONDON AND AYLESBURY.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
PORTRAIT OF THOMAS CARLYLE _Frontispiece_
THOMAS CARLYLE’S MOTHER 1
ARCH HOUSE, ECCLEFECHAN 2
THE ROOM AT ARCH HOUSE IN WHICH CARLYLE WAS BORN 2
ECCLEFECHAN, DUMFRIESSHIRE 3
MAINHILL FARM 4
HODDAM HILL 4
THOMAS CARLYLE (from a Portrait by Maclise) 5
A PORTRAIT OF CARLYLE ENGRAVED BY F. CROLL FROM A DAGUERREOTYPE BY BEARD 6
THOMAS CARLYLE (from a Sketch by Count D’Orsay) 7
CARLYLE’S FIRST EDINBURGH LODGING IN SIMON SQUARE 8
1, MORAY STREET (NOW SPEY STREET), LEITH WALK, EDINBURGH 9
THOMAS CARLYLE (from Photo) 10
MRS. CARLYLE’S BIRTHPLACE 11
THE HOUSE IN WHICH CARLYLE LIVED WHILE FIRST TEACHING AT KIRKCALDY SCHOOL 11
SCOTSBRIG 12
TEMPLAND, NEAR THORNHILL, DUMFRIESSHIRE 12
THOMAS CARLYLE (from Painting by Whistler) 13
21, COMELY BANK, EDINBURGH 14
THOMAS CARLYLE (from Sir J. E. Boehm’s Medallion) 15
THOMAS CARLYLE, ABOUT 1860 16
THOMAS CARLYLE, 1865 17
A PORTRAIT OF CARLYLE TAKEN IN 1879 18
FACSIMILES OF CARLYLE’S SIGNATURE 18
CRAIGENPUTTOCK 19
PORTRAIT GROUP TAKEN AT KIRKCALDY 19
THOMAS CARLYLE (from Sir J. E. Boehm’s Bust) 20
CARLYLE’S HOUSE AT 5 (NOW 24), CHEYNE ROW, CHELSEA 21
JANE WELSH CARLYLE 21
CORNER IN DRAWING-ROOM AT NO. 5, CHEYNE ROW 22
THE GARDEN AT NO. 5, CHEYNE ROW 23
THOMAS CARLYLE (from Drawing in “Sartor Resartus”) 24
MRS. CARLYLE ABOUT 1864 25
CARLYLE’S GRAVE AT ECCLEFECHAN 26
MRS. CARLYLE’S GRAVE IN HADDINGTON CHURCH 26
THOMAS CARLYLE (from Sir J. E. Millais’ Portrait) 27
THE GROUND-FLOOR ROOMS AT NO. 5, CHEYNE ROW (1900) 28
THE GARRET STUDY AT CHEYNE ROW (1857) 29
THOMAS CARLYLE, ÆT. 73 (from Painting by G. F. Watts, R.A.) 30
THE SOUND-PROOF STUDY AT CHEYNE ROW IN 1900, SHOWING THE DOUBLE WALLS 31
THE KITCHEN AT NO. 5, CHEYNE ROW (1900) 32
CARLYLE’S WRITING-DESK AND CHAIR 33
STATUE OF CARLYLE (by Sir J. E. Boehm) 35
THOMAS CARLYLE
There are few cultivated people who do not pretend to have read Mr. Lecky’s “History of Rationalism in Europe.” That very able work covers the whole of one very important side of modern development. But the picture of the real progress, the real mental and moral improvement of our species during the last few centuries, will not be complete until Mr. Lecky publishes a companion volume entitled “The History of Irrationalism in Europe.” The two tendencies, acting together, have been responsible for the whole advancement of the Western world. Rationalism is, of course, that power which makes people invent sewing machines, understand Euclid, reform vestries, pull out teeth, and number the fixed stars. Irrationalism is that other force, if possible more essential, which makes men look at sunsets, laugh at jokes, go on crusades, write poems, enter monasteries, and jump over hay-cocks. Rationalism is the beneficent attempt to make our institutions and theories fit the world we live in, as clothes fit the wearer. Irrationalism is the beneficent reminder that, at the best, they do not fit. Irrationalism exists to point out that that eccentric old gentleman, “The World,” is such a curiously shaped old gentleman that the most perfect coats and waistcoats have an extraordinary way of leaving parts of him out, sometimes whole legs and arms, the existence of which the tailor had not suspected. And as surely as there arises a consistent theory of life which seems to give a whole plan of it, there will appear within a score or two of years a great Irrationalist to tell the world of strange seas and forests which are nowhere down on the map. The great movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which rose to its height in the French Revolution and the Positivist philosophy, was the last great Rationalistic synthesis. The inevitable Irrationalist who followed it was Thomas Carlyle. This is the first and most essential view of his position.
In order to explain the matter more clearly, it is necessary to recur to our image of the old gentleman whom no tailor could fit. Not only do the tailors tend to think that clothes can be made to fit the old gentleman, but they tend very often to think that the whole question is a question of clothes. Thus, for instance, the Popes and Bolingbrokes of the earlier eighteenth century tried to make man a purer symbol of civilisation. They tried to pluck from him altogether his love of the savage and primeval, as they might have plucked off a shaggy wig from the old gentleman in order to put on a powdered one. A bystander of the name of Byron, who was indeed none other than the inevitable Irrationalist, startled them by pointing out that the shaggy object was not a wig at all, but the poor old gentleman’s own hair; that, in other words, the love of the savage, the primeval, the lonely and unsociable, was a part of man, and it was their business to recognise it. Then arose the new fashion in cosmic clothes, which did recognise this natural element. Rousseau and Shelley took the old gentleman in hand, and provided him with spring-like garments, coloured like the clouds of morning. But one of their principles was the absolute principle of equality. Finding, therefore, that the old gentleman was wearing a curiously shaped hat, compounded of crown, coronet, and mitre, the great hat of Godhood, kinghood, and superiority, they proceeded, in order to make him more natural, to knock it off; and to them suddenly appeared the inevitable Irrationalist, a Scotch gentleman from Dumfriesshire, who, addressing them politely, said, “You believe that that regal object you are knocking off is his hat: believe me, gentlemen, it is his head. Such mistakes will occur after a hasty inspection, but that kingship is really a part of the old gentleman, and it is your business to recognise it.” As Byron had come, just as the classic edifice of polite deism had been completed, to point out that the fact remained that he, Byron, did prefer walking by the seashore to taking tea in the garden, so Carlyle appeared, just as the austere temple of political equality was erected, to point out that the fact remained that he did think many people a great deal better than himself, and very many people a great deal worse. Thus, then, as the asserter of the natural character of kingship against the natural character of equality, it is that Thomas Carlyle primarily stands twenty-one years after his death.
Now I do not think, as I shall show later, that Carlyle ever really understood the true doctrine of equality; but it is certainly at least equally true that the egalitarians and the ordinary opponents of Carlyle have never done the least justice to Carlyle’s doctrine of hero-worship. The usual theory is that he believed in a race of arrogant strong men, brutally self-sufficient and brazenly indifferent to ethical limits, and that he wanted these men to frighten and dominate the populace as a keeper or a doctor frightens and dominates the lunatic in a cell. It is not too much to say that there is scarcely a trace in Carlyle’s works of this barbarous and ridiculous idea. If there be a trace of it here and there, it is mere explosion of personal ill-temper, and has nothing whatever in common with Carlyle’s deliberate theory of the hero. His theory of the hero was that he was a man whom men followed, not because they could not help fearing, but because they could not help loving him. His theory, right or wrong, was that when a man was your superior you were acting naturally in looking up to him, and were therefore happy; that you were acting unnaturally in equalising yourself with him, and were therefore unhappy. Most people, except those solemn persons who are called with some humour free-thinkers, would agree, for instance, that the worship of God was a human function, and therefore gave pleasure to the performer of it, like eating or taking exercise. Now Carlyle held, rightly or wrongly, that the worship of man, of the great man, was also a human function, and therefore gave pleasure to the performer of it. It all depends upon whether we do take an egalitarian or an aristocratic view of the spiritual world. If the spiritual world is based upon equality, then, no doubt, to keep a man in an inferior position must spiritually depress and degrade him; but if beings in the spiritual world have higher and lower functions, it is obvious that it is equally depressing and degrading to a man to take him out of his position and make him either a citizen or an emperor.
Moreover, the real practical truth that underlay Carlyle’s gospel of the hero has in other ways been misunderstood. The general idea is that Carlyle thought that, if a man were only able, everything was to be excused to him. If Carlyle, even at any moment, thought this, it can only be said that for that moment Carlyle was a fool, as many able men may happen to be. But, as a matter of fact, what Carlyle meant was something much sounder. To say that any man may tyrannise so long as he is able, is as ridiculous as saying that any man may knock people down so long as he is six feet high. But in urging this very obvious fact the opponents of Carlyle too often forget a simpler truth at the back of the Carlyle gospel. It is that, while in one sense the same moral test is to be applied to all men, there does remain in ordinary charitable practice a very great difference between the people who consider it necessary to see some definite thing done before they die, and the people who cheerfully admit that two hundred years will scarcely bring what they require, and that meanwhile they desire to do nothing. A Tolstoian anarchist who thinks that men should be morally persuaded for the next two or three centuries to give up every kind of physical compulsion may, it is quite conceivable, be more right than the English Home Secretary who finds himself responsible for the suppression of a riot in Manchester; but surely it is patently ridiculous to say that it is just as much to the anarchist’s credit that he avoids shooting Manchester workmen as it would be to the Home Secretary’s credit if he avoided shooting them. It would be equally ridiculous to say that, if the Home Secretary conceived it necessary to shoot them, from a sense of responsibility, that his action, even if wrong, was really as wrong as the conduct of a Tolstoian who should shoot them without any reason at all. In this sense, therefore, there is really a different test, and a perfectly fair one, for men of action and for men of abstract theories and remote hopes.
Now, it must definitely be set to the credit of men like Cromwell and Mirabeau, that they were undoubtedly opposed to and embarrassed by men whose projects, even in their own eyes, were scarcely a part of practical politics. These men exist in every country and in every age. They are wilfully and eternally in opposition. They do not agree sufficiently with the active powers even to argue with them with any profit. Their ideal is so far away that they do not even desire it with any immediate hunger. They count it a pleasant and natural thing to live and die in revolt. They are ready to be critics, they are ready to be martyrs, they are emphatically not ready to be rulers. In this way Cromwell, considering how he might make some English polity out of a chaos of English parties, had to argue for hours together with Fifth Monarchy men, to whom the vital question was whether the children of malignants should not be slain, and whether a man who was caught swearing should not be stoned to death. In this way Mirabeau, striving to keep the tradition of French civilisation intact amid a hundred essential reforms, found his way blocked by men who insisted on discussing whether in the ideal commonwealth men would believe in immortality, or go through a rite of marriage. Now, while fully granting that both types have an eternal value, it is certainly not just that precisely the same ethical test should be applied to Cromwell and the Fifth Monarchy men, to Mirabeau and the worshipper of pure reason. It is not just that we should judge in precisely the same way the pace of a butcher’s cart which is obliged to get to Pimlico, and the pace of a butcher’s cart which is designed at some time or other to reach the site of the Garden of Eden. It is not just that we should judge in the same way the man who is simply anxious to erect a parish pump, and the opponent of the pump, who looks forward to a day when there shall not only be no pump, but no parish. The man of action, then, really has in this sane and limited sense a claim to a peculiar kind of allowance, in that it is of vital necessity to him that a certain limited grievance should be removed. It is easy enough to be the man who lives in a contented impotence; the man who luxuriates in an endless and satisfied defeat. He does not desire to be effective; he only desires to be right. He does not desire passionately that something should be done; he only desires that it should be triumphantly proved to be necessary.
This is the real contribution of Carlyle to the philosophy of the man of action. He revealed, entirely justly, and entirely to the profit of us all, the pathos of the practical man. He made us feel, what is profoundly true, that the tragedy of the death of Mary, Queen of Scots, is nothing to the tragedy of the death of Elizabeth; that the tragedy of the death of Charles I. is nothing to the tragedy of the death of Cromwell. A man like Charles I. died triumphantly; he did not indeed die as a martyr, but he died as something which is much more awful and exceptional—a consistent man. He was worse than a tyrant, he was a logician. But a man like Cromwell is in a much harder case, for he does not wish to die and be a spectacle, but to live and be a force. He has to break altogether with the splendid logic of martyrdom. He has to eat his own words for breakfast, dinner, and supper. He has to outlive a hundred incarnations, and always reject the last; his progress is like that unnerving initiation in the wild tale of Tom Moore’s, in which the disciple had to climb up a stone stairway into the sky, every step of which fell away the moment his foot had left it. This is the only genuine truth that Carlyle brought from his study of strong men. If ever he said that we must blindly obey the strong man, he was merely angry and personal, and untrue to his essentially generous and humane spirit. When he said that we must reverence the strong man he sometimes expressed himself with a certain heated confusion, and left it doubtful whether he meant that we should reverence the strong man as we respect Christ, or merely as we respect Sandow. But we should all agree with him in his essential and eternal contribution—that we should pity the strong man more than an idiot or a cripple.
It may be said that there is a certain inconsistency between these two justifications of Carlyle’s hero-worship: that we cannot at the same time respect a man because he is above us in a definite spiritual order, and because he is in what is popularly called a hole; that we cannot at once reverence Mirabeau because he was strong and because he was weak. This kind of inconsistency does exist in Carlyle; it is, I may say with all reverence and with all certainty, the eternal and inevitable inconsistency which characterises those who receive divine revelations. The larger world, which our systems attempt to explain and chiefly succeed in hiding, must, when it breaks through upon us, take forms which appear to be conflicting. The spiritual world is so rich that it is varied; so varied that it is inconsistent. That is why so many saints and great doctors of religion have pinned their faith to paradoxes like the “Credo Quia Impossibile,” the great theological paradoxes which are so much more dazzling and daring than the paradoxes of the modern _flâneur_. The supreme glory of Carlyle was that he heard the veritable voices of the Cosmos. He left it to others to attune them into an orchestra. Sometimes the truth he heard was this truth, that some men are to be commanded and some obeyed; sometimes that deeper and more democratic truth that all men are above all things to be pitied.