Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography | Page 9

gie that night"; and I have no
doubt that he did.
Most of his extraordinary harangue was like an eruption of Vesuvius,
but the laugh he occasionally gave showed that he was talking about as
much for his own amusement as for ours. He was terribly severe on
Parliament, which he described as "endless babblement and windy
talk--the same hurdy-gurdies grinding out lies and inanities." The only
man he had ever heard in Parliament that at all satisfied him was the
Old Iron Duke. "He gat up and stammered away for fifteen minutes;
but I tell ye, he was the only mon in Parliament who gie us any credible
portraiture of the facts." He looked up at the portrait of Oliver
Cromwell behind him, and exclaimed with great vehemence: "I ha'
gone doon to the verra bottom of Oliver's speeches, and naething in

Demosthenes or in any other mon will compare wi' Cromwell in
penetrating into the veritable core of the fact. Noo, Parliament, as they
ca' it, is joost everlasting babblement and lies." We led him to discuss
the labor question and the condition of the working classes. He said
that the turmoil about labor is only "a lazy trick of master and man to
do just as little honest work and to get just as much for it as they
possibly can--that is the labor question." It did my soul good, as a
teetotaler, to hear his scathing denunciation of the liquor traffic. He was
fierce in his wrath against "the horrible and detestable damnation of
whuskie and every kind of strong drink." In this strain the thin and
weird looking old Iconoclast went on for an hour until he wound up
with declaring, "England has joost gane clear doon into an abominable
cesspool of lies, shoddies and shams--down to a bottomless damnation.
Ye may gie whatever meaning to that word that ye like." He could not
refrain from laughing heartily himself at the conclusion of this eulogy
on his countrymen. If we had not known that Mr. Carlyle had a habit of
exercising himself in this kind of talk, we should have felt a sort of
consternation. As it was we enjoyed it as a postscript to "Sartor
Resartus" or the "Latter Day" pamphlets, and listened and laughed
accordingly. As we were about parting from him with a cordial and
tender farewell, my friend, Newman Hall, handed him a copy of his
celebrated little book, "Come to Jesus," Mr. Carlyle, leaning over his
table, fixed his eye upon the inscription on the outside of the booklet,
and as we left the room, we heard him repeating to himself the title
"Coom to Jesus--Coom to Jesus."
About Carlyle's voluminous works, his glorious eulogies of Luther,
Knox and Cromwell, his vivid histories, his pessimistic utterances, his
hatred of falsehood and his true, pure and laborious life, I have no time
or space to write. He was the last of the giants in one department of
British literature. He will outlive many an author who slumbers in the
great Abbey. I owe him grateful thanks for many quickening,
stimulating thoughts, and shall always be thankful that I grasped the
strong hand of Thomas Carlyle.
One of the literary celebrities to whom I had credentials was the
venerable Mrs. Joanna Baillie, not now much read, but then well

known from her writings and her intimacy with Sir Walter Scott, and to
whom Lockhart devotes a considerable space in the biography. Her
residence was in Hampstead, and I was obliged, after leaving the
omnibus, to walk nearly a mile across open fields which are now
completely built over by mighty London. The walk proved a highly
profitable one from the society of an intelligent stranger who, like
every true English gentleman, when properly approached, was led to
give all the information in his power. When I reached the suburban
village of Hampstead, after passing over stiles and through fields, I at
last succeeded in finding her residence, a quiet little cottage, with a
little parlor which had been honored by some of the first characters of
our age. "The female Shakespeare," as she was sometimes called in
those days, was at home and tripped into the room with the elastic step
of a girl, although she was considerably over three score years and ten.
She was very petite and fair, with a sweet benignant countenance that
inspired at once admiration and affection. Almost her first words to me
were: "What a pity you did not come ten minutes sooner; for if you had
you would have seen Mr. Thomas Campbell, who has just gone away."
I was exceedingly sorry to have missed a sight of the author of
"Hohenlinden" and the incomparable "Battle of the Baltic," but was
quite surprised that he was still