Life of John Sterling [118]
bedtime for invalids being come: he escorted me down certain carpeted backstairs, and would not be forbidden: we took leave under the dim skies;--and alas, little as I then dreamt of it, this, so far as I can calculate, must have been the last time I ever saw him in the world. Softly as a common evening, the last of the evenings had passed away, and no other would come for me forevermore.
Through the summer he was occupied with fitting up his new residence, selecting governesses, servants; earnestly endeavoring to set his house in order, on the new footing it had now assumed. Extensive improvements in his garden and grounds, in which he took due interest to the last, were also going on. His Brother, and Mr. Maurice his brother-in-law,--especially Mrs. Maurice the kind sister, faithfully endeavoring to be as a mother to her poor little nieces,--were occasionally with him. All hours available for labor on his literary tasks, he employed, almost exclusively I believe, on _Coeur-de-Lion_; with what energy, the progress he had made in that Work, and in the art of Poetic composition generally, amid so many sore impediments, best testifies. I perceive, his life in general lay heavier on him than it had done before; his mood of mind is grown more sombre;--indeed the very solitude of this Ventnor as a place, not to speak of other solitudes, must have been new and depressing. But he admits no hypochondria, now or ever; occasionally, though rarely, even flashes of a kind of wild gayety break through. He works steadily at his task, with all the strength left him; endures the past as he may, and makes gallant front against the world. "I am going on quietly here, rather than happily," writes he to his friend Newman; "sometimes quite helpless, not from distinct illness, but from sad thoughts and a ghastly dreaminess. The heart is gone out of my life. My children, however, are doing well; and the place is cheerful and mild."
From Letters of this period I might select some melancholy enough; but will prefer to give the following one (nearly the last I can give), as indicative of a less usual temper:--
"_To Thomas Carlyle, Esq., Chelsea, London_. "VENTNOR, 7th December, 1843.
"MY DEAR CARLYLE,--My Irish Newspaper was _not_ meant as a hint that I wanted a Letter. It contained an absurd long Advertisement,--some project for regenerating human knowledge, &c. &c.; to which I prefixed my private mark (a blot), thinking that you might be pleased to know of a fellow-laborer somewhere in Tipperary.
"Your Letter, like the Scriptural oil,--(they had no patent lamps then, and used the best oil, 7s. per gallon),--has made my face to shine. There is but one person in the world, I shall not tell you who, from whom a Letter would give me so much pleasure. It would be nearly as good at Pekin, in the centre of the most enlightened Mandarins; but here at Ventnor, where there are few Mandarins and no enlightenment,--fountains in the wilderness, even were they miraculous, are nothing compared with your handwriting. Yet it is sad that you should be so melancholy. I often think that though Mercury was the pleasanter fellow, and probably the happier, Saturn was the greater god;--rather cannibal or so, but one excuses it in him, as in some other heroes one knows of.
"It is, as you say, your destiny to write about Cromwell: and you will make a book of him, at which the ears of our grandchildren will tingle;--and as one may hope that the ears of human nature will be growing longer and longer, the tingling will be proportionately greater than we are accustomed to. Do what you can, I fear there will be little gain from the Royalists. There is something very small about the biggest of them that I have ever fallen in with, unless you count old Hobbes a Royalist.
"Curious to see that you have them exactly preserved in the Country Gentlemen of our day; while of the Puritans not a trace remains except in History. Squirism had already, in that day, become the _caput mortuum_ that
Through the summer he was occupied with fitting up his new residence, selecting governesses, servants; earnestly endeavoring to set his house in order, on the new footing it had now assumed. Extensive improvements in his garden and grounds, in which he took due interest to the last, were also going on. His Brother, and Mr. Maurice his brother-in-law,--especially Mrs. Maurice the kind sister, faithfully endeavoring to be as a mother to her poor little nieces,--were occasionally with him. All hours available for labor on his literary tasks, he employed, almost exclusively I believe, on _Coeur-de-Lion_; with what energy, the progress he had made in that Work, and in the art of Poetic composition generally, amid so many sore impediments, best testifies. I perceive, his life in general lay heavier on him than it had done before; his mood of mind is grown more sombre;--indeed the very solitude of this Ventnor as a place, not to speak of other solitudes, must have been new and depressing. But he admits no hypochondria, now or ever; occasionally, though rarely, even flashes of a kind of wild gayety break through. He works steadily at his task, with all the strength left him; endures the past as he may, and makes gallant front against the world. "I am going on quietly here, rather than happily," writes he to his friend Newman; "sometimes quite helpless, not from distinct illness, but from sad thoughts and a ghastly dreaminess. The heart is gone out of my life. My children, however, are doing well; and the place is cheerful and mild."
From Letters of this period I might select some melancholy enough; but will prefer to give the following one (nearly the last I can give), as indicative of a less usual temper:--
"_To Thomas Carlyle, Esq., Chelsea, London_. "VENTNOR, 7th December, 1843.
"MY DEAR CARLYLE,--My Irish Newspaper was _not_ meant as a hint that I wanted a Letter. It contained an absurd long Advertisement,--some project for regenerating human knowledge, &c. &c.; to which I prefixed my private mark (a blot), thinking that you might be pleased to know of a fellow-laborer somewhere in Tipperary.
"Your Letter, like the Scriptural oil,--(they had no patent lamps then, and used the best oil, 7s. per gallon),--has made my face to shine. There is but one person in the world, I shall not tell you who, from whom a Letter would give me so much pleasure. It would be nearly as good at Pekin, in the centre of the most enlightened Mandarins; but here at Ventnor, where there are few Mandarins and no enlightenment,--fountains in the wilderness, even were they miraculous, are nothing compared with your handwriting. Yet it is sad that you should be so melancholy. I often think that though Mercury was the pleasanter fellow, and probably the happier, Saturn was the greater god;--rather cannibal or so, but one excuses it in him, as in some other heroes one knows of.
"It is, as you say, your destiny to write about Cromwell: and you will make a book of him, at which the ears of our grandchildren will tingle;--and as one may hope that the ears of human nature will be growing longer and longer, the tingling will be proportionately greater than we are accustomed to. Do what you can, I fear there will be little gain from the Royalists. There is something very small about the biggest of them that I have ever fallen in with, unless you count old Hobbes a Royalist.
"Curious to see that you have them exactly preserved in the Country Gentlemen of our day; while of the Puritans not a trace remains except in History. Squirism had already, in that day, become the _caput mortuum_ that