Froude’s Biography of Thomas Carlyle:
Does it allow The French Revolution to Reach its Philosophical Purpose?
In order to understand the author Thomas Carlyle, one must first gain understanding of the world in which he lived. During the course of Carlyle’s life,
England had “changed radically under the twin pressures of two revolutions, the French and the Industrial” (Carlyle xv). For the first time in history, the 1 st
Reform Bill gave power to the middle class. In 1832 during England’s French Revolution, this Bill allowed white Anglican men with at least ten pounds of property to vote. The French
Revolution was also the first time that enlightenment and reason were allowed to thrive.
Throughout the world, changes were being made and society was evolving. However,
Carlyle was not.
Since Carlyle had not evolved with society, he lived the final years of his life in solitude (Carlyle xv). During 1828, Carlyle and Jane Baillie Welsh, wife of two years, moved to the desolate farm in the Scottish moors of Craigenputtock (Carlyle xvi).
Carlyle was often described as being “difficult, dyspeptic, possibly impotent, and selfabsorbed” (Carlyle xvi). But it was the death of Jane Baillie Welsh in 1866 that may have caused Carlyle to acknowledge his life-long selfishness (Gilbert 299). Following the death of Jane Welsh, Carlyle decided that permitting Froude to write a biography would be his final attempt at conviction about the “resurrectionary powers of history”
(Gilbert 297). “When a man has exercised a large influence on the minds of his contemporaries, the world requires to know whether his own actions have corresponded”
(Froude 1: 5) with his works. In three visits to James Froude, the author of Carlyle’s biography which is entitled Thomas Carlyle , Carlyle’s latter life appears to define a moral trajectory.

Cox-Walters 2
Through a biography, Carlyle’s long awaited prophetic vision for a new Jerusalem would be believed and even implemented (Gilbert 297). Carlyle chose as the biographer a long-time admirer, James Froude. The relationship between Froude and Carlyle was so much of a joint effort in which the subject was deeply implicated in the project that
Froude’s four volumes can be seen as Carlyle’s own work (Gilbert 297). Regardless, it was Froude’s biography of Carlyle that allowed Carlyle’s separate works to achieve their metaphysical intentions (Gilbert 297). Froude’s biography allowed Carlyle’s works to reach their philosophical purposes(Gilbert 297).
During the year of 1860, Froude moved to London, where he “hoped to keep up”
(Froude, My Relations with Carlyle 4), but “did not expect . . . that is should be any closer” (Froude, My Relations with Carlyle 4) than previous relations with Carlyle.
Within three motnhs, Carlyle called upon Froude to meet with him. On the first visit,
Froude recounted the incident as such:
Late one afternoon in the middle of the winter [of 1860-
61], Carlyle called on me, and said that he wished to see more of me-wished me in fact to be his companion in his daily rides and walks . . . From that date, for twenty years, up to his own death, I never ceased to see him twice or three times a week, and to have two or three hours of conversation with him. (qtd. in Gilbert 298)
Around the time when Froude moved closer to Carlyle, The French Revolution had been recently published, 1837, and Carlyle was considered to be one of England’s “foremost men of letters” (Gilbert 298). Within this first visit, Carlyle and Froude were to be

Cox-Walters 3 congenial on ethical questions and contemporary issues (Gilbert 299). However, Froude still had his reservations about working so closely with Carlyle. Despite his reservations,
Froude decided to take the opportunity of having increasing numbers “of quiet conversation[s] with [Carlyle]” (Froude, My Relations with Carlyle 5). Nevertheless, one must wonder whether Carlyle had strong private reasons for so quickly calling upon the disciple Froude. Could the reason possibly have been because Carlyle was coming close to old age and just needed a dedicated disciple whose opinions appeared formed by his own (Gilbert 299)?
Approximately six years after Carlyle first met with Froude, Jane Welsh died
“without a word or struggle” (Froude, My Relations with Carlyle 11). Carlyle had “shut himself up in the house with her diaries and papers” (Froude, My Relations with Carlyle
11) and began to see “that he had made her entirely miserable” (Froude, My Relations with Carlyle 11). Soon after, Froude received a second visit from Carlyle. Occurring about ten years after the first, the second encounter marked the beginning of the biography project (Gilbert 299). However, the biography was to only be a publication of the memoirs of Jane Welsh, which Carlyle had put together himself (Froude, My
Relations with Carlyle 11).
The third visitation followed the second merely by two years (Gilbert 300). In this final visitation, Carlyle himself made no personal appearance, but instead made contact by a paper proxy (Gilbert 300). Up until 1873, Carlyle insisted that the only biography of him be published through Jane Welsh’s letters. But Carlyle discovered that several people were busy on his history and he decided that if his biography were to be written, it should portray him accurately (Gilbert 300). Carlyle sent Froude his own and

Cox-Walters 4 his wife’s private papers, journals, and correspondence, telling Froude they were his to publish or not to publish (Froude, My Relations with Carlyle 13).
To be evaluated properly, the three visitations must each be seen in light of the other two (Gilbert 300). The first visit can be seen as Carlyle’s attempt to no longer be solitary and to acknowledge that there is another (Gilbert 307). Carlyle sought a relationship that his wife could not provide, but that the young Froude could (Gilbert
307). Froude filled the void of the son Carlyle never had (Gilbert 307). This first visit was a stage in the process of which Carlyle passes from his Old Testament assertiveness to his New Testament acquiescence (Gilbert 307). However, it is not until the second visit that these qualities were exhibited. The final visit, when seen in light of the first two, help to define the moral trajectory in Carlyle’s latter years of life (Gilbert 300).
Through Froude’s honest biography, were Carlyle’s critics finally able to see him as a
“deposed king” (Gilbert 309); and were Carlyle’s readers able to read and interpret
The
French Revolution through a biographical lens, allowing the true philosophical purposes to emerge.
When The French Revolution was first received by the public, the “people were perplexed and dazzled by such an extraordinary creation” (Clubbe 92). The people, during Carlyle’s time were “overcome by its power, resentful and indignant at its philosophical radicalism” (Clubbe 92). The people had never encountered a book which reproduced the French Revolution rather than simply retelling it. Although the people knew The French Revolution was significantly different from other histories, it was not until Carlyle’s biography was put into context of the novel that its philosophical purposes were understood. “ The French Revolution is a strange history,” according to a more

Cox-Walters 5 recent biographer (Le Quesne 37). The novel is a “work of Romantic art” (Le Quesne
37), where “it cannot be detached from its author” (Le Quesne 37).
As The French Revolution opens, “ominous parallels between the condition of the
French working-class in the eighteenth century as described by Carlyle, and the condition of the English working-class of the 1830s” (Le Quesne 42). There is a “sympathy with the suffering and neglected poor that runs through the early books of The French
Revolution [which] is, unmistakably, the result of Carlyle’s observations in London” (Le
Quesne 42). Carlyle described, in The French Revolution , the working class as being
“not so well” (Carlyle 29) and:
Unlucky! For there are from twenty to twenty-five millions of them. Whom, however, we lump together into a kind of dm compendious unity, monstrous but dim, far off, as the canaille; or more humanely, as “the masses.” (Carlyle 29)
The reality of the social distress “was driven home to him by the difficulties of his own family” (Le Quesne 42). This distress is recounted in
Thomas Carlyle: Letters to His
Wife :
In spite of this encouragement and of work for London editors as well, it was difficult to make ends meet in
Edinburgh, and it seemed prudent, therefore, to give up
Comley Bank and go to live in the house at Craigenputtock.
(Bliss 27).

Cox-Walters 6
Carlyle attempts, early in The French Revolution , to tell his readers, through recollections of personal experiences, that the “Revolution was the great standing demonstration” (Le
Quesne 43) that is to be read as a proclamation of truth (Le Quesne 43).
Throughout The French Revolution
, “vivid scenes of present action [are] separated by great gulfs of darkness, periods which [Carlyle] passes over rapidly with the merest summary of events” (Le Quesne 38). This effect of “extreme discontinuity reflects his own conviction that large areas of history are best forgotten (Le Quesne 38).
Within Carlyle’s personal life, it is said that he often forgot other people’s interests
(Froude, My Relations with Carlyle 11). According to Froude, Carlyle treated individuality as it suited his wishes (Froude, My Relations with Carlyle 12). By using this method of summarizing certain events, Carlyle was able highlight what he felt was imperative to the history. Thus, causing the reader to also believe it is important and ultimately reaching Carlyle’s goal of belief through historic literature. This connection made between The French Revolution and Carlyle’s life, however, was only possible through the biography written by Froude.
Although Carlyle was said to brush over what he felt unimportant, those aspects that he valued were described vividly. “The vividness of the descriptions is extraordinary” (Le Quesne 39), as seen in the following passage from
The French
Revolution :
Duchess Polignac, with a party, is in the Bois de Boulogne, waiting; though it is drizzily winter, the 1 st
of December,
1783. The whole chivalry of France, Duke de Chartres foremost, gallops to receive him. Beautiful invention;

Cox-Walters 7 mounting heavenward, so beautifully,-so unguidably!
(Carlyle 44)
This descriptive language was also characteristic of Carlyle’s conversation” (Le Quesne
39) and can be seen in his letters to his wife:
Here I am once more seated on the sofa, by this old rickety table, where you so often sat looking over on me . . . if I were to write all the loving things I have thought of thee, whole quires would not hold it. (Bliss 90-91)
“When more than one person was present he spoke in monologue, pouring out cataracts” (Froude, My Relations with Carlyle 5) of information. Froude describes
Carlyle as being “delightful, brilliantly entertaining, [and] sympathetic” (Froude, My
Relations with Carlyle 5) when in the company of one other person. No matter what the setting though, Carlyle was always “full of the widest information about all things and subjects” (Froude, My Relations with Carlyle 5). During Carlyle’s time, this style was subjected to strong criticism (Le Quesne 38). Later, however, it was said that Carlyle never made better use of his ability to “dash off a face, a character, [or] a scene” (Le
Quesne 39), as he did in The French Revolution .
It should not be concluded that The French Revolution did not have a major impact on society during Carlyle’s time. In fact, The French Revolution was the primary work that made Carlyle an “eminent and honoured figure in the world of Victorian literature” (Bliss 13). It should, however, be concluded that in order for readers of
Carlyle to understand his writing style and motives, his biography is to be examined.
Froude’s biography and previous visitations with Carlyle show Carlyle’s last attempt at

Cox-Walters 8 making his audience believe. Through a moral trajectory reached by Carlyle in his latter years of life are his readers able to consider the biography of Carlyle as truth and as an accomplice to The French Revolution . It is even possible for one to suggest that a reader of Carlyle should read Froude’s biography of Carlyle prior to, or in conjunction with, reading The French Revolution . The biography will cause the reader to consider that there is a possibility of rendering experience into language accurately (Gilbert 295); and thus reaching Carlyle’s philosophical purpose of writing The French Revolution .

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WORKS CITED
Bliss, R=Trudy, ed. Thomas Carlyle: Letters to His Wife. Cambridge, Massachusetts:
Harvard University Press, 1953.
Carlyle, Thomas. The French Revolution: A History. New York: Random House Inc.,
2002.
Clubbe, John, ed. Two Reminiscences of Thomas Carlyle. Durham, N.C.: Durham
Univeristy Press, 1974.
Froude, James Anthony. My Relations with Carlyle. London: Longmans, Green and
Co., 1903.
---. Thomas Carlyle. 4 vols. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1882.
Gilbert, Elliot L. “Rescuing Reality: Carlyle, Froude and Biographical Truth-Telling.”
A Journal of the Humanities, Arts and Sciences 34 (1991): 295-314.
Le Quesne, A.L. Carlyle. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.