The Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle

The Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle. Edited by Ian Campbell, Aileen Christianson, David R. Sorensen, et al.Volume 41: September 1864-April 1865. Durham: Duke University Press, 2013. xxxi + 258 pp. $70 [institutions] $30 [individuals].Volume 42: May 1865-September 1865. Durham: Duke University Press, 2014. xxix + 263 pp. $70 [institutions]; $30 [individuals].Volumes 41 and 42 of The Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle cover the period from September 1864 to September 1865. The 215 letters in volume 41 document Jane Welsh Carlyle's return from Scotland and Thomas Carlyle's completion of Frederick the Great. With the couple reunited in Cheyne Row, the bulk of the correspondence reconfirms the Carlyles' intimate circle of Louisa Lady Ashburton, Mary Russell, and the extended Carlyle family. The 189 letters of volume 42, meanwhile, provide something of a mirror image. With Thomas in Scotland between late May and the end of August 1865, the bulk of the volume's letters are exchanges between the Carlyles. These latest publications represent an entry into the final chapters of two lengthy epistolary lives: only a handful of volumes remain. Both as a series and as individual volumes, the Collected Letters represent a major editorial achievement. Thomas and Jane are sparky, lively correspondents: though I have chosen to discuss illness, work, and a domestic scandal here, I could have picked many more themes.Dominating the correspondence during this time is Jane's patchy recuperation from her serious illness. It is difficult to forget that she would die just six months after September 1865. As Jonathan Wild notes in the introduction to volume 42, the Carlyles' "often melancholic tone . . . appears to foreshadow this coming event" (xi). Indeed, the first line of volume 41 sets the tone for what is to come, with Jane writing to Thomas: "Dearest-I am in the valley of the shadow of Blue pill!" (41: 1). Illness real and imagined is omnipresent and inevitably there are moments of black comedy, if one chooses to read with that in mind. Jane's reference to herself as "not like the same woman who trembled from head to foot and panted like a duck in a thunder-storm at St Leonards" is fantastically evocative (41: 65). Elsewhere, Thomas's fretting over a lack of "ripe potatoes" and his attempts to appease his digestion with brown bread raises a smile (41: 3). Both Carlyles exude a keen sense of dark humor. A decision about wallpaper elicits the comically gloomy "Also tell the paper hanger to leave all the odd pieces-they are needed for repairing in case of accidents. It may not be I that will ever need them-but some one will" (41: 19). Liz Sutherland notes in the introduction to volume 41 that "it is when the Carlyles were apart that we are allowed to witness their true affection for one another" (xvii), and this affection is conveyed in coterie speech, slang, and asides that are simply wonderful to read.Any light-heartedness, however, must be seen in the context of constant references that underscore just how ill Jane had been. John M. Ulrich in his review of volume 40 notes a significant increase in letters between Jane and Thomas, and this trend continues here. Exactly 50 letters are sent in total between the beginning of volume 41 and Jane's return to Cheyne Row in early October 1864; of these, 42 are exchanged between the couple. Jane's letters have the peevish, fretful tone of the invalid. One begins with a plaintive "you will be wondering how the blank days have passed with me-much like the previous week-not better-but not worse; except Saturday evening, when the pain was worse than any time since I have been here. My nights continue painfully restless, tho' not xuholly without sleep" (41: 18). The stalking presence of "the pain' robs Jane of sleep, magnifying twinges and aches into significant fears. She frets that she will lose the use of her limbs and as Sutherland points out, the return railway journey to Chelsea is a longed-for terror. …