Mar 07, 2024 - Sale 2661

Sale 2661 - Lot 149

Price Realized: $ 1,188
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 700 - $ 1,000
REVEALING SECRET THAT MANUSCRIPT OF "FRENCH REVOLUTION" WAS USED AS KINDLING CARLYLE, THOMAS. Autograph Letter Signed, "T. Carlyle," to William Graham ("My dear friend"), encouraging him to endure his troubles, elegantly ridiculing literary critic Lord [Francis] Jeffrey and clergyman Edward [Irving], describing the anguish of learning that his manuscript of The French Revolution (1837) had been irrecoverably destroyed and having to begin again [it had been loaned to John Stuart Mill, whose servant used it for kindling], and describing encounters with poets [Robert] Southey and [William] Wordsworth. 4 pages, 4to, written on a folded sheet, with address panel on terminal page (signature and letter text written on same page in surrounding space); slight fading to signature, faint uneven toning to first page, moderate soiling to terminal page, folds. (SFC) [London], 22 April 1835

Additional Details

". . . News are precious; news of yourself and of what is round you: there are some six square miles there, of which Burnswark may stand at the centre, that are more to me than any other six hundred in the Solar System. . . .
"For yourself with 'dark clouds girdling your horizon,' . . . I can only again say that in this brave genial temper of your lies assurance of safety to you. It is (God be thanked for it) purely impossible for mere Fortune to beat down a man; he must always have proved untrue to himself first. Courage, my friend! . . . It is a dark grisly warfare this, but with bright blinks in it; and is not the Everlasting star-dome over all? Not without a Fatherly Eye that notes us, with pity: nay, mysteriously, with guidance! It shall one day all be well. . . .
"Since you last heard from me there has befallen the ugliest accident I ever underwent; of which I have spoken or speak to no man except to my own kindred, and now also to you, who I know also can hold your peace. The first volume of my poor book you heard a good while ago was written: well, it is now unwritten, annihilated, and even worse, for instead of it there is mere dispiritment and vexation! I lent it to a worthy friend here, who had great interest in it; who nevertheless, left it lying in his room unlocked where it went as wastepaper. The fruit of five months hard toil, evaporated as a false dream of the night! I was forced to be quiet too: for the poor culprit looked as if he would actually run mad. But I think it was the ugliest stroke I ever got . . . . So I had to begin again; and for these weary six weeks have I been sitting and toiling, at the unthankfullest task; which, nevertheless must and shall be done, for I will not give up that dirty whipper-snapper of a book . . . . So you will get no printed French Revolution this season, but must wait till the next. . . . Do not speak of it to any mortal . . . ."
With--Ernest Dressel North. Typescript Signed, twice, draft of his article, "An Unpublished Letter by Thomas Carlyle," concerning the present letter and the circumstances of its writing, including the burning of Carlyle's manuscript. 6 pages, 4to, written on rectos only. Np, nd.