The Nemesis of Froude; a rejoinder to James Anthony Froude's "My relations with Carlyle"

Front matter

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Preface

IN the Prefatory note to "My Relations with Carlyle," by James Anthony Froude, it is stated by the Editors, Mr. Ashley A. Froude and Miss Margaret Froude, that it would never have been given to the world had not the production of the " New Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle," with the serious charges contained in the Introduction and Foot-notes, appeared to demand its publication. But the serious charges referred to, although no doubt rendered more serious by the fresh evidence in their support brought to light in the " New Letters and Memorials" — evidence which Mr, Froude had suppressed — Avere not in any case new charges, but the mere repetition of charges which were first made twenty years ago, and which are not really traversed by " My Relations with Carlyle." Mr. Froude attempts to explain his superabundant verbal inaccuracies, but has not a word to say in answer to the grave charges brought against him, of giving garbled extracts of documents and omitting of set purpose such portions of them as did not fit in with his own views, of contravening again and again the solemn injunctions imposed on him by Carlyle, of making claims to advantages to which he was not entitled, of refusing to implement an unconditional promise, and generally of producing a Biography elaborated

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with the art of the practised romancer in which the true features of the subject can scarcely be recognised, but in which assertion and inference, unsupported by evidence, are palmed off for correct statement. On all these points he has allowed judgment to go by default. His defence consists in the accentuation of what he had already said derogatory of Carlyle, with the addition of fresh charges against him of a very odious description, which, had they been true, should in decency have been kept concealed, but which, being groundless, as we hope to prove, reflect discredit on those who have rashly, or in the spirit of retaliation, thrust them prominently forward. That Mr. Froude ever decided to keep silence on these charges we take leave to doubt.

As early as 1881 Mr. Froude, in a letter which appeared in the Times of May 6th, alluded to reasons which he could not give "without entering on a subject on which it is better to be silent," and added that he would be sorry if the difficulty of his task was " increased by a demand for further explanations which I shall be very reluctant to give." He was at once challenged by Mrs. Alexander Carlyle in the Times, to satisfy the curiosity he had awakened by his reference to "hidden reasons and explanations." To this challenge he made no reply; but on the 20th of April, 1886, when he heard that Professor Charles Eliot Norton was about to publish the " Early Letters of Carlyle," he wrote to Mrs. Alexander Carlyle, drawing attention to the passage in Mrs. Carlyle's Journal relating to "two blue marks on the wrist," and hinting that this secret might have to

FACSIMILE OF CARLYLe's HANDWRITING IN 1832, AT THE AGE OF 37.

See <* Reminiscences,'* Norton's Edition, i,, p. 5; Froude's Edition, i., p. 8. See also Frontispiece.

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be revealed. Again, in 1896, there was a threat to publish " My Relations with Carlyle," merely because Mr. Alexander Carlyle had requested that a private letter by Mr. Froude to Mr. McPherson, which was published in his short Life of Carlyle, should not be allowed to appear in a second edition, lest it should involve a renewal of the old controversy about the papers. On this occasion Mr. Leman, Mr. Ashley Froude 's solicitor, wrote as follows: "Mr. Froude 's representatives have no desire to re-open any controversial questions in relation to Mr. Thomas Carlyle, but I know that there is in existence a Memorandum by the late Mr. Froude written in anticipation of any further controversy on the lines of the former one (the main point in which is however known to me and I believe to a few other people), which, if published, would throw perhaps an unexpected light upon the whole business, and materially justify what he has written and printed."

It is clear that this Memorandum, which was found in a despatch-box after Mr. Froude's death, but which, it is said, he had shown to no one, has not been kept altogether private by his representatives, but had been held in readiness for a convenient moment for that publication which Mr. Froude, notwithstanding his alleged decision to remain silent, had obviously all along contemplated and intended. Towards the end of the Memorandum he writes, " If I have now told all it is because I see that nothing short of it will secure me the fair judgment to which I am entitled. . . . The whole facts are now made known. ... I have nothing more to reveal."

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It is to be regretted that "My Relations with Carlyle " was not published at an earlier period, for many persons, who could have refuted statements contained in it, have passed away; still, even now, Carlyle's friends rejoice that it is brought forth, so that they are enabled to grapple with allegations against him, for which Mr. Froude has made himself responsible, but which so long as they remained impalpable rumours it was impossible for them to deal with. The rumours reflecting on Carlyle, which can be now traced to their source, at first mere gaseous gossip, have become gradually congealed and glued to his name with many offensive accretions, and there are certainly multitudes of persons amongst us who believe that he was, as represented in Mr. Froude's posthumous Fragment, a man of transcendant ability, but selfish, overbearing, cruel, and contemptible. To show, as we hope to be able to do, even at this late hour, that Mr. Froude was wrong — that he believed a myth, betrayed his trust, and must himself take the place of the man he has so unmercifully pilloried, will supply as striking an example as modern literary history affords of what the Greeks called " Nemesis " and Carlyle the " Justice of God."

MR. FROUDE'S account of his relations with Carlyle, found written in pencil in a notebook after his death, was prepared while he was in Cuba in 1887, and he had not therefore, while writing it, access to the correspondence and documents bearing on the matters with which he dealt. One would have thought that in composing a vindication of himself in connexion with his discharge of a trust which he was accused of having betrayed — a vindication which he bequeathed to his chUdren that they might have something to rely on should his honour or good faith be assailed — he would have desired to consult authorities and to verify every statement he made ; but that was not Froude's way of going to work. In its obituary notice of him the Times said : " He was not a student, in the real sense of the term ; he had neither the desire to probe his authorities to the bottom nor the patience to do so. . . . It is said that at the time when Froude was busy on the part of his history where Burleigh plays a leading part he was invited to stay at Hatfield and make an examination of the masses of Cecil papers there preserved— at a time, it must be remembered, before the Historical Manuscripts Commission had published any of them

— and that Froude went, and stayed one day. . . .