The Roman Way
Froude, his first and best biographer, was now seeing Carlyle regularly, and of his health in the winter of 1865-66 commented:
'He was, for him, in good spirits, lighter-hearted than I had ever known him. He would even admit occasionally that he was moderately well in Health.' (Froude's Carlyle In London). But Jane was unwell, unable to write with her right arm because of neuralgia, and Carlyle's right hand had become shaky, later to become a serious impediment.
Frederick was finished in 1865 after thirteen long years, and doubtless accounts for most of his improved spirits and health. He gladly accepted the Rectorship of Edinburgh University, pleased by this long delayed recognition in his native land. His Inaugural Address to the students was given on the 2nd of April, 1866. His return from Scotland was delayed, and his wife died suddenly on the 21st April.
Carlyle was filled with remorse, and remained so for the rest of his life. A few weeks after the death he wrote:
'Tears I think I have done with; never, except for moments together, have I wept for that catastrophe of April 21, to which whole days of weeping would have been in other times a blessed relief.'
He holidayed in Mentone, and there were attempts in the first year to have his brother John live with him as a companion. They did not get on well. From Mentone in March 1867 he wrote to him saying : 'I am often truly grieved to think how unreasonable and unmanageable I was with you last time.' He asks him to meet him on his return, and to stay a month and try again - again it was a failure. 'That is the nature of the two beasts,' was his comment.
In the early stages of his bereavement he coped by writing his Reminiscences, and by editing and annotating his wife's correspondence. A year after her death he notes his grieving is beginning to lighten at times, but adds:
'I feel oftenest crushed down into contemptibility as well as sorrow.'
In the fourteen years that remained for him, he often longed for death. As early as 1867 he writes in his journal:
'Strength quite a stranger to me; digestion, etc., totally ruined, tho' nothing specific to complain of as dangerous or the like - and am probably too old ever to recover. Life is verily a weariness on these terms. Oftenest I feel willing to go, were my time come. Sweet to rejoin, were it only in Eternal Sleep, those that are far away.'
In April 1867 he reproaches himself:
'Idle, idle! My employments were trifles of business, and that of dwelling on the days that culminated on the 21st of last year.....Perhaps my health is slightly mending; don't certainly know, but my spirits don't mend apparently at all.'
Things are no better by October:
'Infirmities of age crowd upon me. I am grown and grown very weak, as is natural at these years. Natural but not joyful - life without the power of living - what a misery!'
He continued to exercise, riding regularly, but the next year, now 73, he and his horse fell and he had to give it up.
His niece, Mary Aitken, had come to keep house for him. She believed that much of his indigestion was due to failure to eat an adequate or reasonable diet, and maintained that both his health and mood improved when he could be persuaded to do so.
In the next year or two he continued work on Jane's letters, but his tremor was worsening. By 1871 he felt his hand was useless. He was forced to dictate to his niece, but disliked doing so. Froude observed all this, and describes twitching of the muscles, and an involuntary lateral jerk whenever he tried to use his arm. For some time he struggled to write his journal in pencil , but the entries cease in December 1873. In his last entry after his 78th birthday he describes feelings of 'disgrace and blame', calls himself 'pitifully idle'. and ends: 'Shame, shame! I say to myself, but cannot help it.'
The years passed with such constant self reproach about his idleness, but in fair health for his age. In a letter of 30 1 75:
I have been no worse in health since you last heard; in fact, usually rather better; and at times there come glimpses or bright reminiscences of what I might, in the language of flattery, call health - very singular to me now, wearing out my eightieth year,'
He read much and dictated letters, but talked daily of the 'Roman way', and approved of a friend's suicide after his wife's death. In his latter days, despite honours from Germany, a meeting with Queen Victoria, a Gold Medal from Edinburgh, and an offer of high honours and a pension from Disraeli, which he rejected, he took a gloomy view of his life's work and of the state of the nation:
'They say I am a great man now, but not one of them believes my report; not one of them will do what I have bidden them do.'
On his death bed he told his Scottish doctor:
'For me you can do nothing. the only thing you could do, you must not do - that is, help me make an end of this.'
He died of old age, slowly weakening over the preceding months, while remaining mentally alert to the end.
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