Characteristics by Thomas CarlyleIntroductory Note Thomas Carlyle was born at Ecclefechan in the south of Scotland, December 4, 1795. His father, a rigorous Calvinist belonging to the seceding "Burgher Kirk," was a stone-mason, a man of stern and upright character with a gift of fiery speech. Thomas began his education at home, went next to the village school, thence to the grammar school at Annan, and in 1809 walked to Edinburgh, a hundred miles away, and entered the University with a view to preparing for the ministry. On finishing his arts course, he was appointed mathematical usher at Annan and two years later at Kirkcaldy, where he formed an intimate friendship with Edward Irving. But he hated teaching, and, as he had abandoned his orthodox views and could no longer think of preaching, he returned to Edinburgh to study for the bar, supporting himself by private tutoring and writing for encyclopedias. These years, 1819-1822, he regarded as the most miserable of his life. Tormented with dyspepsia, torn with religious perplexity, with no prospects and no profession, he found comfort only in the affection of his family. It was about this time that the study of German led him to Goethe, who proved his chief aid in his struggles to gain spiritual peace.
Through Irving Carlyle obtained a position as tutor to Charles and Arthur Buller at a salary that enabled him to help his family in substantial ways. This engagement lasted for two years, during which he translated Legendre's "Geometry" and Goethe's "Wilhelm Meister," and wrote a "Life of Schiller."His relation with the Bullers led him to London, and for a short time to Paris;and in his "Reminiscences" we have a graphic picture of the unfavorable impression made on him by fashionable and literary society.
He now retired to a farm near his father's house, and spent a peaceful year, chiefly in translating. In 1826 he married Jane Baillie Welsh, the brilliant and beautiful daughter of a doctor in Haddington, whom he had met through Irving. Miss Welsh was descended on one side from John Knox, on the other from the gypsies, and, it was claimed, William Wallace; and her temperament did not belie her ancestry. She had been much courted, and her wooing by Carlyle was as ominous as it was extraordinary. Over their subsequent domestic relations there has been a vast amount of unseemly controversy, no one condemning Carlyle more severely than he did himself. Yet it may be argued that they found in their marriage as much satisfaction as either of them was capable of finding in wedded life. Carlyle's absorption in his work and his career undoubtedly led to much neglect and suffering on the part of his wife, but it is clear that the expressions of remorse in his writings after her death are not fairly to be taken as judicial evidence against him.
For the first eighteen months after marriage, the Carlyles lived in Edinburgh, where they shared in the most distinguished intellectual society of the city, and where Carlyle formed with Francis Jeffrey a pleasant and useful relation.
Jeffrey accepted articles for the "Edinburgh Review," and their success there opened to Carlyle the pages of other periodicals. The first two reviews were on Richter and on German Literature, which, with his translations and later writings in the same field, gained him recognition as a pioneer of German literature in England, and brought him generous personal acknowledgments from Goethe.
In spite of these successes, the financial affairs of the Carlyles were still far from satisfactory, and to reduce expenses they retreated to the farm of Craigenputtock, which belonged to Mrs. Carlyle. Here they lived for more than six years, in an isolation broken only by occasional visits from guests, notable among whom were the Jeffreys and Emerson. It was here that the quasi-autobiographical "Sartor Resartus" was written, and more German articles, the market for which, however, grew duller and duller. Avisit to London in 1831, for which he had to borrow money from Jeffrey, led to new relations with publishers and editors; and four months in Edinburgh broadened his range of subjects. But, finally, solitude and the need of money drove them to London, where they settled in 1834 in the house in Cheyne Row, Chelsea, where they lived for the rest of their lives.
The most important event of the earlier years of the London period was the ripening of Carlyle's friendship with J. S. Mill. To this intercourse was due his undertaking his "History of the French Revolution," published in 1837.
