In Chapter 41 of Anne of Ingleside, Anne and Gilbert take the train home after attending a dinner party at Lowbridge. Christine Stuart was present among the guests, and paid noted attention to Gilbert.

“Had a nice evening?” asked Gilbert, more absently than ever as he helped her on the train.

“Oh, lovely,” said Anne . . . who felt that she had, in Jane Welsh Carlyle’s splendid phrase, “spent the evening under a harrow.”

Letter 56
“Vol. I (Sect. 2)”
From: Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1883) ed. James Anthony Froude

T. Carlyle, Esq., at Scotsbrig, Ecclefechan.

Chelsea: Sunday night, Aug. 27, 1843.

Dearest, - Another evening, in thought set apart for you, has been eaten up alive by ‘rebellious consonants.’ I had told Helen to go after dinner and take herself a long walk, assuring her nobody could possibly arrive, for the best of reasons, that ‘there was not a human being left in London.’ And just when I had fetched up my own tea, and was proceeding to ‘enjo-oy it’[1] quite in old-maid style, there arrived Darley,[2] the sight of whom gave me a horrible [Page 249] foretaste of fidgets and nameless woe, which was duly fulfilled to me in good time. However, it is to be hoped that he got a little good for having a mouthful of human (or rather, to speak accurately, inhuman) speech with someone; and in that case one’s care being ‘the welfare of others,’ &c. &c. For myself individually, I feel as if I had spent the evening under a harrow.

I hardly know where a letter now shall find you. But perhaps to-morrow will direct me before sending this away. It is very stupid of the Ferguses - a fact almost as absurd as speaking to Elizabeth of sending us potatoes last year, and never sending them. But if you want to see the battle ground at Dunbar, I am sure you need not miss it for lack of somewhere to go. The poor Donaldsons - nay, everybody in Haddington - would be so glad to have you. The Donaldsons, you know, formally invited you ‘for a month or two’ this spring. I cannot detect the association, but it comes in my head at this moment, and I may as well tell you, that the Rev. Candlish is in great raptures over ‘Past and Present;’ so Robertson told me the last time I saw him. Garnier also told me that the book had a success of an unusual and very desirable kind; it was not so much that people spoke about it, as that they spoke out of it; in these mysterious conventions of his, your phrases, [Page 250] he said, were become a part of the general dialect. The booksellers would not have Garnier’s translation: that was the reason of its being given up; not that he was too mad for it. It was I who told you about the Lord Dudley Stuart affair; Garnier gave me his own version of it that night, and it seemed quite of a piece with his usual conduct - good intentions, always unfortunate; a right thing wrongly set about.

Well, the Italian ‘Movement’ has begun; and also, I suppose, ended. Mazzini has been in a state of violent excitement all these weeks, really forcibly reminding one of Frank Dickson’s goose with the addle egg. Nothing hindered him from going off to head the movement, except that, unexpectedly enough, the movement did not invite him; nay, took pains to ‘keep him in a certain ignorance,’ and his favourite conspirator abroad. The movement went into Sicily ‘to act there alone,’ plainly indicating that it meditated some arrangement of Italy such as they two would not approve, ’something - what shall I say? - constitutional.’ He came one day, and told me quite seriously that a week more would determine him whether to go singly and try to enter the country in secret, or to persuade a frigate now here, which he deemed persuadable, to revolt openly and take him there by force. ‘And with one frigate,’ said I, ‘you mean to overthrow the Austrian Empire, amidst the general peace of Europe?’ ‘Why not? the [Page 251] beginning only is wanted.’ I could not help telling him that ‘a Harrow or Eton schoolboy who uttered such nonsense, and proceeded to give it a practical shape, would be whipt and expelled the community as a mischievous blockhead.’ He was made very angry, of course, but it was impossible to see anybody behaving so like ‘a mad,’ without telling him one’s mind. He a conspirator chief! I should make an infinitely better one myself. What, for instance, can be more out of the role of conspirator than his telling me all his secret operations, even to the names of places where conspiracy is breaking out, and the names of people who are organising it? Me, who do not even ever ask him a question on such matters; who on the contrary evade them as much as possible! A man has a right to put his own life and safety at the mercy of whom he will, but no amount of confidence in a friend can justify him for making such dangerous disclosures concerning others. What would there have been very unnatural, for example, in my sending a few words to the Austrian Government, warning them of the projected outbreaks, merely for the purpose of having them prevented, so as to save Mazzini’s head and the heads of the greater number, at the sacrifice of a few? If I had not believed that it would be, like the ‘Savoy’s Expedition,’ stopped by some providential toll-bar, I believe I should have felt it my duty as Mazzini’s friend to do this thing. [Page 252] Bologna was the place where they were first to raise their foolscap-standard. The ‘Examiner’ mentions carelessly some young men having collected in the streets, and ‘raised seditious cries, and even fired some shots at the police;’ cannon were planted, &c., ‘Austrians ready to march’ - not a doubt of it; and seditious cries will make a poor battle against cannon. Mazzini is confident, however, that the thing will not stop here; and, if it goes on, is resolute also in getting into the thick of it. ‘What do you say of my head? what are results? are there not things more important than one’s head?’ ‘Certainly, but I should say that the man who has not sense enough to keep his head on his shoulders till something is to be gained by parting with it, has not sense enough to manage, or dream of managing, any important matter whatever.’ Our dialogues became ‘warm,’ but you see how much I have written about this, which you will think six words too many for.

Good-night; I must go and sleep.

Monday.

Dearest, - Thanks for your letter, and, oh, a thousand thanks for all this you have done for me! I am glad that you have seen these poor people,[1] that they have had the gladness of seeing you. Poor old Mary! it will be something to talk and think over for a year to come. Your letter has made me cry, to be [Page 253] sure, but has made me very contented nevertheless. I am very grateful to you. Did Mrs. Russell say anything about not having answered my letter? I sent a little shawl, on my last birthday, to Margaret, to Mrs. R.’s care, and a pound of tea (that is money for it) to old Mary, in a letter to Mrs. Russell, and, as I have never heard a word from Thornhill since, I have sometimes feared the things had been taken by the way; it is very stupid in people not to give one the satisfaction of writing on these little occasions.

I am afraid you will think London dreadfully solitary when you return from the country. Actually there never was so quiet a house except Craigenputtock as this has been for the last fortnight. Darwin finally is off this morning to Shrewsbury for three weeks. He gave me a drive to Parson’s Green yesterday; ‘wondered if Carlyle would give admiration enough for all my needlework, &c., &c., feared not; but he would have a vague sense of comfort from it,’ and uttered many other sarcastic things, by way of going off in good Darwin style. Just when I seemed to be got pretty well through my sewing, I have rushed wildly into a new mess of it. I have realised an ideal, have actually acquired a small sofa, which needs to be covered, of course. I think I see your questioning look at this piece of news: ‘A sofa? Just now, above all, when there had been so much else done and to pay for! This little woman is [Page 254] falling away from her hitherto thrifty character, and become downright extravagant.’ Never fear! this little woman knows what she is about; the sofa costs you simply nothing at all! Neither have I sillily paid four or five pounds away for it out of my own private purse. It is a sofa which I have known about for the last year and half. The man who had it asked 4l. 10s. for it; was willing to sell it without mattress or cushions for 2l. 10s. I had a spare mattress which I could make to fit it, and also pillows lying by of no use. But still, 2l. 10s. was more than I cared to lay out of my own money on the article, so I did a stroke of trade with him. The old green curtains of downstairs were become filthy; and, what was better, superfluous. No use could be made of them, unless first dyed at the rate of 7d. per yard; it was good to be rid of them, that they might not fill the house with moths, as those sort of woollen things lying by always do; so I sold them to the broker for thirty shillings; I do honestly think more than their value; but I higgled a full hour with him, and the sofa had lain on his hands. So you perceive there remained only one pound to pay; and that I paid with Kitty Kirkpatrick’s sovereign, which I had laid aside not to be appropriated to my own absolutely individual use. So there is a sofa created in a manner by the mere wish to have it. [Page 255]

Oh, what nonsense clatter I do write to thee! Bless you, dearest, anyhow.

Affectionately your own,

JANE CARLYLE.

[I did go to Dunbar battle-field, remember vividly my survey there, my wild windy walk from Haddington thither and back; bright Sunday, but gradually the windiest I was ever out in; head wind (west), on my return, would actually hold my hat against my breast for minutes together. It was days before I got the sand out of my hair again. Saw East Lothian, all become a treeless ‘Corn Manchester’ - a little more money in its pocket - and of piety, to God or man, or mother-earth, how much left? At Linton in the forenoon, I noticed lying on the green, many of them with Bibles, some 150 decent Highlanders; last remnant of the old ‘Highland reapers’ here; and round them, in every quarter, such a herd of miserable, weak, restless ‘wild Irish,’ their conquerors and successors here, as filled me with a kind of rage and sorrow at once; all in ragged grey frieze, 3,000 or 4,000 of them, aimless, restless, hungry, senseless, more like apes than men; swarming about, leaping into bean-fields, turnip-fields, and out again, asking you ‘the toime, sir.’ - I almost wondered the Sabbatarian country did not rise on them, fling the whole lot into the Frith. Sabbatarian country never dreamt of such a thing, and I could not do it myself; I merely told them ‘the toime, sir.’

The excellent old Misses Donaldson, how kind, how good, and sad; I never saw one of them again. Vacant, sad, was Haddington to me: sternly sad the grave which has now become hers as well! I have seen it twice since. - T. C.