Dr. John Aitken Carlyle

Translating Dante (1843-48)

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Thomas Carlyle

Jane Welsh Carlyle

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In Chelsea: difficulties with Thomas and Jane

By 1843 John had virtually abandoned medicine, but had made his pile, especially in his last post as travelling companion to a very wealthy but highly neurotic young Irishman. Lord Jeffrey, who had found him rich patrons in the past, suggested that he might become physician to Lady Holland, but he declined the post, supported by his brother who considered her ‘ a wretched, unreasonable , tyrannous old creature.’

Relations within the triangle of John, Jane and Thomas fluctuated violently. At times John was welcome company for both: cheerful and sociable (virtues often in short supply at Cheyne Row); but at others he could be exasperating. At one point Jane claimed: ‘…he is, has been, and will ever be for me an insufferable bore.’ She enjoyed Geraldine Jewsbury’s attempts to charm and wheedle John by coming down in the forenoon with a bare neck in a black satin or coloured silk gown. She thought they were wasted on John, as indeed they were, John describing Geraldine as a ‘very unfortunate young woman’ who might be better in a nunnery to keep her out of trouble.

But in the Spring of ’43 he was a support to Thomas after the publication of Past and Present, one of these fallow periods when Thomas welcomed company; he missed John when he left for Scotland . Thomas went on holiday to Scotland in September, by which time John had returned to Chelsea, and Jane saw more of her brother-in-law than she wished:

’John arrived in due course, in a sort of sublimely, self-complacent state, enlarging much on his general usefulness wherever he had been! Since then I have had his company at all meals , and he reads in the same room with me in the evenings, a great many books simultaneously, which he rummages out one after another from all the different places where I had arranged them in the highest order. The rest of his time is spent as you can figure; going out and in, up and down, backwards and forwards; smoking, and playing with the cat in the garden; writing notes in his own room and your room alternately; and pottering about Brompton, looking at Robertson’s lodgings and Gambardella’s lodgings, over and over again, with how much of a practical view no mortal can tell. For just when he was deciding for Gambardella's he came in and told me that he thought he would have an offer from Lady Clare’s brother to go to Italy, and expressed astonishment on my saying that I had understood he did not want to go back to Italy. “Why not? He could not afford to set up as doctor here, and keep up a large house that would be suitable for the purpose.” That is always a subject of discussion which brings the image of my own noble father before me; making a contrast , under which I cannot argue without losing my temper, So I quitted it as fast as possible, and he has not told me anything more of his views. I should really be sorry for him, weltering “like a fly among treacle” as he is, if it were not for his self-conceit, which seems to be always saying to one, “Damn you, be wae for yoursel’!”…

After much inspection and dithering he found what Thomas considered to be ‘handsome, convenient lodgings.’ They were in Chelsea, close to Cheyne Row. As a result Thomas and Jane were to see much of him in the next few years. He visited every Sunday evening. He was for ever rushing about ‘like a blazing torch’ but had little to show for his efforts. Carlyle reported to their brother Alex in the Spring of 1844:

‘Of late he has lighted on some historical departments, neighbouring to mine (old Manuscripts at the British Museum, etc) and is making himself rather busy with those. He has no compulsion to work, poor fellow, but he also wants many of the fruits of working.’

He spent several months in Annandale with his mother and family in the summer, and the same pattern developed in subsequent years. By December Thomas is telling Alex:

‘I begin, however, to forsee (sic) for him a Future as it were nearly or altogether idle, - furnished with what he will call “work”, but what impartial onlookers cannot call such. But we must still hope.’

In 1845 he helped Thomas with the proofs of Cromwell. But Thomas was worried:

. He does not seem to have any plan for himself; and one of the worst features is, he is now wonderfully content with that form of affairs. In fact he is thoroughly idle; and is conscious rather of being too busy. I am often sorry for him , poor fellow.’

Jane shared her husband’s concern:

‘What in all the world will become of him? He seems to be more than ever without "fixed point", without will, without so much as a good wish unless it be to enjoy a tolerable share of material comfort, without “Amt”, and as much as possible without" Geld”.

John made a trip to Leamington in August, and wrote to say that he was looking for a medical position, telling Thomas not to answer with ‘any of the old scorn for I sincerely want some wholesome work.’ But nothing came of it and he was never to do any regular medical work again.

Translating Dante's Inferno

He was always around: entertaining Tennyson at Cheyne Row with Jane in Thomas’s absence, or taking her to a play put on by Dickens and his friends. Despite his irritating ways he was a companion when Thomas was absent. But towards the end of 1845 he had begun work on translating Dante’s Inferno, even working on it in Cheyne Row, to Jane’s irritation. She discouraged him by disturbing his peace with cleaning and the smell of new paint.

John had first read the Divine Comedy in Italy. He had a gift for languages, and during his years there, took lessons and pursued Italian studies. Espinase, noting that John had seen much of Italy and the Italians, mentions his claim to have a ‘thorough mastery’ of the language.

There are conflicting reports about his brother’s attitude to this new venture. Espinase claims that Thomas ‘poh-poohed his zeal as expended on an “obsolete theme,”’ while Symington reports that Carlyle told him ‘he had long…unsuccessfully urged his brother to set about the translation, until he had artfully assured his brother that he was too old and should give it up. Forthwith, said Carlyle, he set to work.’ Symington also said that Carlyle had told him that apart from the English Bible he knew of no translation so good as his brother’s.

The truth about Thomas’s attitude to John’s new project was more complicated and laid bare in his letters of the time. Thomas, and to a lesser extent Jane, had now had years of John’s indecision, and had been constantly disappointed by his inability to settle to regular medical work. That he had made a great deal of money while behaving in this way must have made the pill more bitter.

As early as November, 1845, with the first definite news of the project, Thomas writes to his mother: ‘..at the lowest computation, much better than nothing at all…..I think he will persist; he is obstinate enough when once he begins.’ Obstinate perhaps, but his slow progress was to prove irritating. And in 1846 John began to enlist the family’s help in finding a publisher. In September he wrote to Jane asking her to speak to some of the booksellers she knew, and ‘ascertain from them whether they would venture to publish a literal prose translation of Dante with the Italian text and a short life prefixed…..and to give anything for it. I should like to have done with the business in one way or another. If I had some clear task I should soon get out of the sensitive inflammatory mood in which I have been for some time past and ought to be as you justly remarked.’

Jane replied the next day saying that she would ‘attend to your commissions straightway at Chelsea,’ and told him in a fortnight that she had gone to Moxton, who declined, and to Hall – of Chapman and Hall – who didn’t think it a brilliant speculation but agreed to discuss it with his partner. This bore fruit, when at the end of the month Chapman visited Cheyne Row, discussed it with Thomas, and agreed to publish it. John was to send a sample of the work. John sent the first three cantos to his brother and said that he would be satisfied with £150, but Thomas had to inform him that the booksellers were offering no money at all.

Thomas wrote to Jane a week or two later, unimpressed with what he had seen: ‘terribly abstruse, perplexed, obscure, and indeed unintelligible to a modern English reader.’ This is as much a condemnation of Dante as it is of John, for he concludes that ‘Dante must remain the property of the Travelling Dilettante mainly.’ An odd phrase; presumably he had John in mind!

By 1847, after some two years work, the project was far advanced. By June Thomas is mentioning the projected printing and describes John as ‘up to his chin in Dante papers, which he is at last getting ready for a bookseller, in hope to be partially rid of it.’ Thomas was no more impressed at this stage: ‘A small piece of work, that same;’, he writes to Jane, ‘and the fruit of terrible circuitous efforts.’ In September John and Mazzini were discussing Dante at Cheyne Row, with Jane and Thomas perhaps bored with the subject; and in October John was still working hard – too hard, his brother believed. The next month he wrote to their mother that ‘he takes a terrible hold of his work and will not slight it on any account; it is surely a laudable feature of him.’

The months dragged by, and Thomas seemed more content with John’s work by February, 1848, confiding to his diary that John ‘here, translating Dante, this long while grows calmer, more manful in his ways by this ballast of employment.’ By April he could tell mother that John is ‘drawing to the end of his Dante; which however continues a driegh heavy job for him to the last.’ In July he wrote to their sister Jean: ‘Poor fellow, he is grown really thin over it….it has composed and quietened him, and given him a kind of internal comfort such as I have seen nothing do this long while.’

But as months dragged on, he grew exasperated with John, who was ‘very nearly done now, yet never quite done…(most men would finish his work out in two days!).’

Jane wrote to her husband in September:

’He reminds me of the grey chicken at Craigenputtock, that went about for six weeks cackling over its first egg…… If everybody held such a racket over his nook as he, over this Dante of his, the world would be perfectly uninhabitable. But he comes seldom and has always “to take the road again” in a few minutes, so I manage to endure the cackling with a certain stoicism,’

By the Autumn Thomas was lecturing John: ‘Get your Preface done; and be thankful you do not need ever to mind about “sales” and remunerations.’ He must have been relieved when in December he was able to tell brother Alex in America that ‘Jack’s book is just coming out at last; a terrible peghing job with it he has had, poor fellow!’

Dante finally appeared on the 23^rd December, 1848, ‘a bit of genuinely honest labour,’ his brother announced, adding in his journal on the 29^th :

‘Poor Jack, he is somewhat pathetic to me, tho’ occasionally very fretting in my impatient conditions. Basta.’

He admired the effort and the diligence, but may have thought it was hardly worth it.

The translation of Dante’s Inferno has 422 pages with an index of proper names. It is subtitled: A Literal prose Translation with the Text of the Original collated from the best editions, and explanatory notes.’ In his preface John says that his object has been ‘to give the real meaning of Dante as literally and briefly as possible.’ He goes on:

‘In the year 1831, being called to Italy by other duties, I first studied the Divine Comedy, under guidance of the most noted literary Dilettanti of Rome and other places…. But, as a whole, it took little hold of me at that time…. During the seven years that followed, I often studied it again at leisure hours, along with the other works of Dante.’

He tells how he got to know various Italians who recited long passages. He thought it had become a kind of Bible to them , and was more impressed by them than the dilettanti. When started the project he had been told it would ‘make a piebald, monstrous Book, such as has not been seen in this country.’ He does not say so, but this sounds very like a quotation from his brother! He decided to go ahead, ‘not without reluctance and misgiving,’ and to send out the first volume ‘complete in itself – by way of experiment.’ He also acknowledges a ‘highly accomplished friend, whose name I am not allowed to mention; he read over the proofs of the first eight Cantos, and suggested some useful additions and amendments.’ Surely a coy reference to his brother. He ends by describing the manuscripts and editions he has used, several of them in the British Museum. The translation begins with the famous lines rendered as:

‘In the middle of the journey of our life, I found myself in a dark wood; for the straight way was lost.’

The New Year came. 1849 brought good reviews of the book. The Athenaeum in March said that ‘no attempt has yet been made which can rival the present by Dr Carlyle.’ John sent a copy to Sir Robert Peel. Twelve copies were dispatched to Emerson in the America, to distribute to Thoreau and others. A H Clough read it, and found it good and useful. When Thomas’s friends, like Twistleton, praised it, he passed on their remarks to John.

John’s ‘literal prose translation’ stood the test of the years. After his death it remained in print in one form or another until the 1930’s. When C E Norton published his translation he wrote:

‘In English there is an excellent prose translation of the Inferno, by Dr. John Carlyle, a man well known to the reader of his brother's Correspondence. It was published forty years ago, but it is still contemporaneous enough in style to answer every need, and had Dr. Carlyle made a version of the whole poem I should hardly have cared to attempt a new one. In my translation of the Inferno I am often Dr. Carlyle's debtor. His conception of what a translation should be is very much the same as my own.’

The Dictionary of National Biography called it ‘ a volume that leaves little to be desired.’ But with it, John had shot his bolt. There was a second edition in 1867, which John prefaced with the hope that he would complete the Purgatorio and the Paradiso, but although he did much of it it was never finished. A third edition of the Inferno was published in 1882.

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