Carlyle entered the Edinburgh University in November where his parents expected him to train to enter the ministry. The university was eighty miles from Ecclefechan and Carlyle said goodbye to his parents on the edge of his home town then walked the eighty miles during the following three days. Arriving at Edinburgh University he matriculated and began the four year course leading to an M.
As all students did, he studied a general course not specialising in any particular topic although he showed particular promise in mathematics. In his first year he was somewhat withdrawn as he had been at school but by his second year he had become more confident, and was making friends with his fellow students. He was described by a fellow student while in his second year as He was, however, inspired by the mathematics teaching of Leslie but one would have to say that his opinions of most of his other lecturers was poor to say the least.
In November he completed his M. He enrolled in Divinity Hall of the Church of Scotland in Edinburgh for his divinity training, but as his parents could not afford to have him study full time for three years, he chose the option of one year of full time study followed by six years part-time study during which he had to return to Edinburgh and preach a trial sermon once a year for each of the six years.
Carlyle completed the one year of full time study but did not enjoy it. During this year he maintained his mathematics interest by publishing articles in newspapers and greatly enjoyed entering into controversial intellectual discussions. He left Edinburgh in June and returned to Annandale. With a strong recommendation from Leslie , he was appointed as a mathematics teacher at Annan Academy [ 3 ] :- From the start Carlyle anticipated that he would dislike teaching. Moreover, he had to face the irony that Annan Academy was where he had been unhappy for most of his schooldays.
In he moved to another school, again as a mathematics teacher, this time in Kirkcaldy. At least this had the advantage he could get easily to Edinburgh by taking a ferry ride across the Forth. His life was made harder since around this time his mother had a severe mental illness. He continued his part-time divinity training and returned to Edinburgh to give a trial sermon on the text "Before I was afflicted I went astray". In he tried to understand the Continental approach to the calculus by reading Wallace 's article Fluxions which was published in the Edinburgh Encyclopaedia in and used Leibniz 's differential notation.
Again he found it difficult and, discovering his mathematical limitations, he began to lose his enthusiasm for the subject. He wrote to a friend in November [ 11 ] :- [ Geometrical problem solving ] depends very much upon a certain slight of hand, that can be acquired without great difficulty by frequent practice - I am not so sure as I used to be that it is the best way of employing one's self - without doubt it concentrates our mathematical ideas and exercises the head; but little knowledge is gained in the process.
Unhappy with teaching, Carlyle resigned from his post in Kirkcaldy in , and returned to Edinburgh University. Leslie , seeing that despite being a very competent mathematician, he would never excel at research, advised him to use his mathematical skills by studying engineering and then suggested that he should go to the United States. Carlyle chose not to follow Leslie 's advice but, despite making a little money as a mathematics tutor, he was in severe financial difficulties.
He made an attempt to study law taking some classes in but soon discovered that this was not to his liking. He spent three unhappy years in Edinburgh, eventually deciding that he would change direction again. He began a serious study of German and he turned to history and literature for which he is famed. This translation, which first appeared in , ran to 33 editions. Carlyle held a number of posts as a tutor after leaving Edinburgh University, having no fixed base.
In he met Jane Baillie Welsh whose father John Welsh had been a respected Haddington doctor but had just died of typhoid. Jane was nineteen years old at the time and her mother Grace Welsh was finding things very difficult.
Carlyle was soon sending Jane letters showing his affection, but she found it hard to imagine that she might ever marry. However she wrote to Carlyle, going against her mother's wishes in doing so [ 3 ] :- Despite Jane's warning that he would repent of it, Carlyle went to Haddington the first weekend in February The visit was a painful disaster: both mother and daughter resented the brash appearance of a young man who did not qualify as a suitor and who was too assertive to be welcomed as a friend.
Despite little encouragement, Carlyle persisted in his attempts to win Jane over. For about a year, from the spring of , Carlyle was tutor to Charles and Arthur Buller, young men of substance, first in Edinburgh and later at Dunkeld.
Now likewise appeared the first fruits of his deep studies in German, the Life of Schiller , which was published serially in the London Magazine in and issued as a separate volume in A second garner from the same field was his version of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister which earned the praise of Blackwood's and was at once recognized as a very masterly rendering.
In Irving had gone to London, and in June Carlyle followed, in the train of his employers, the Bullers. But he soon resigned his tutorship, and, after a few weeks at Birmingham, trying a dyspepsia cure, he lived with Irving at Pentonville, London, and paid a short visit to Paris.
March saw him back; in Scotland, on his brother's farm, Hoddam Hill, near the Solway. Here for a year he worked hard at German translations, perhaps more serenely than before or after and free from that noise which was always a curse to his sensitive ear and which later caused him to build a sound-proof room in his Chelsea home.
She was beautiful, precociously learned, talented, and a brilliant mistress of cynical satire. Francis Jeffrey, editor of the Edinburgh Review, was a cousin of the Welshes. He accepted Carlyle as a contributor, and during printed two important articles — on "Richter" and "The State of German Literature. The Foreign Review published two penetrating essays on Goethe; and in a cordial correspondence was begun with the great German writer, who backed Carlyle unsuccessfully for the vacant Chair of Moral Philosophy at St.
Another application for a university chair, this time at the new University of London, failed equally. An attempt at a novel was destroyed. In May the Carlyles moved to Craigenputtock, an isolated farm belonging to the Welsh family, which was their permanent home until Carlyle lived the life of a recluse and scholar, and his clever wife, immersed in household duties and immured in solitude, led a dull and empty existence.
Jeffrey, who paid visits in and , said: "Bring your blooming Eve out of your blasted Paradise, and seek shelter in the lower world," but Carlyle was lacking in consideration for his partner, and would not. Jeffrey even thought of Carlyle as his successor in the editorship of the Edinburgh, when he gave it up in , but the matter could not be arranged.
A memorable visit, in August , was that of the young Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was kindly received and became a fast friend. At Craigenputtock was written the first of Carlyle's great commentaries on life in general, Sartor Resartus, which appeared in Fraser's Magazine between November and August The idea of a philosophy of clothes was not new; there are debts to Swift, Jean Paul Richter, and others; but what were new were the amazing, humorous energy, the moral force, the resourceful if eccentric command over English.
It was damned by the press, and was not issued in book-form until ; but it is now numbered among his most significant works.
Other notable writings of this time were essays on Voltaire, Novalis, and Richter a new paper in the Foreign Review. After visits to Edinburgh and London, and an unsuccessful application for a professorship of astronomy at Edinburgh in January , Carlyle decided to set up house in London, settling at 5, Cheyne Row, Chelsea. His struggle to live was made more severe by his refusal to engage in journalism: even an offer of work on The Times was rejected; and instead a grandiose history of the French Revolution was begun.
In the spring of occurred one of the great heroisms of literature. The manuscript of the first volume of the new work had been lent to the philosopher, J. Mill, who in his turn had lent it to a Mrs. An illiterate housekeeper took it for waste paper, and it was burnt. Despite this, it is closer to the language of our political discourse than we might think. This Chelsea home of Victorian writer Thomas Carlyle and his wife Jane has interiors typical of a19th-century townhouse, including a cosy parlour, drawing-room with its original upholstered furniture and the attic study with his manuscripts and personal possessions.
This small scrap is believed to be the only remaining fragment of the first volume of Carlyle's famous text, accidentally burnt by J. Mill's maid. The collection is mainly of Carlyle memorabilia, including photographs, paintings and furniture belonging to Thomas and Jane Carlyle who lived in the house from until their deaths.
There is a substantial remnant of the working library of Thomas Carlyle titles in total. Celebrity couples are nothing new. Victorian literary luminaries clustered at the home of writer Thomas Carlyle and his wife, but there was more to the woman known as Mrs Carlyle than her husband.
Some of the houses, gardens and landscapes we look after have inspired famous writers, playwrights and poets. Here's our pick of the best. On 3 May , Thomas Carlyle was finally able to realise his vision for a new lending library for London. Read more about the library's history on their website.
Ceri Hunter University of Oxford.
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