The Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle. Vol. 30: July-December 1855, and: The Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle. Vol. 31: January-September 1856 (review)

Writing to his brother John in April 1856, Thomas Carlyle (T.C.) commented in characteristic fashion on the inclusion in an edition of the works of Voltaire of 'some 7 or 8,000 Lettres ... almost twice as many as I ever saw in an edition before: useless, most of them, to gods or men!' (31:63). What, one wonders, would he have made of this even more voluminous collection of his own and his wife (J.W.C.)'s letters, now past its thirtieth volume, with close on 6,000 letters already in print and over 4,000 still to come?

The first thing to be said is that the two volumes reviewed here are the reverse of 'useless', and maintain the high level of interest and the all-but-faultless editorial care that distinguish the rest of the series. T.C. was unattractively preoccupied throughout 1855 and 1856 in researching and writing his History of Frederick the Great, still many years from completion. The 'unspeakable Fritz Operation'

(30:45) continued to generate the familiar breast-beatings: 'these Prussian Dust-Whirlpools' (31:56), 'endless Giant Mountains of Prussian Pedantry' (31:42), '[n]ever was my heart so near being broken with anything' (30:134). Most of the circle was drawn into the vortex. Lord Ashburton gave access to his private library; John Carlyle searched for books in Germany; Robert Tait photographed a portrait needed for an illustration; even Robert Browning checked references in Paris. The hero of the story is T.C.'s research assistant Joseph Neuberg, whose services extended to inspecting the new grate in T.C.'s soundproof study and bringing call-slips from the British Museum Library to Cheyne Row to save T.C. the trouble of collecting them himself.

Yet for all the trenchancy and verve of T.C.'s letters printed here – and not one is lacking a vivid phrase or some splendid outburst of rhetoric – they still give only glimpses of his full intellectual power. Most of his mental energy was clearly channelled into Frederick, and what was left for his letters was too often diluted into repetitive and occasionally absurd laments (30:34: 'Ah me, ah me! Mutton broth, I should think, wd not be unwelcome for dinner') and interminable haverings about travel arrangements and the like. But there are exceptions in both volumes where T.C. touches on larger themes, such as a letter to John Stuart Blackie on the shortcomings of Scottish and German universities (30:110–11), one to Sir George Sinclair declining the somewhat surprising suggestion that he stand as an M.P. (30:8–10), and another to Robert Browning in which he reflects on the perceived unintelligibility of his own prose style (31:75–76). And a long series of letters detailing T.C.'s patient and ultimately successful efforts to secure an annuity for the elderly Lowe sisters, and his regular and affectionate messages to his siblings, show what an unselfish and warm-hearted correspondent he could still be even at times of greatest pressure.

In private, though, T.C.'s absorption in a project which came near to crushing him brought inevitable hardship to his intimates, above all to his wife, who at one point had to endure nightly accounts of the Battle of Mollwitz while lying helpless on the sofa. Nor was this the only cause of friction between the two. Much of these volumes is given over to the other great shadow over...