Volume 19, Number 10 · December 14, 1972
Amateurs: Jane Carlyle
By Elizabeth Hardwick
Jane Carlyle died suddenly one day, in her carriage. She was sixty-five years old and had been married to Thomas Carlyle for forty years. It seems, as we look back on it, that at the moment of her death the idea was born that she had somehow been the victim of Carlyle's neglect. He thought as much and set out upon a large remorse, something like the 'penance' of Dr. Johnson, although without the consolations of religion. The domestic torment the Carlyles endured in their long marriage is of a particular opacity because of the naturalness of so much of it, its origin in the mere strains of living. The conflicts were not of a remarkable kind, and domestic discontent was always complicated by other problems of temperament and by the unnerving immensity of Carlyle's literary undertakings.
Feature, 5634 words
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