Writing of Thomas Carlyle's 'Oliver Cromwell's Letters and speeches'

Abstract

Talk often flows freely and inaccurately about Carlyle the literary critic, Carlyle the social critic and even Carlyle the husband. Studies treating various aspects of Sartor Resartus, Past and Present, and On Heroes appear with some frequency. But mention Carlyle the historian and uneasy silence ensues. Literary scholars do not claim this Carlyle; modern historians will not claim him. All in all the less said about this Carlyle the better, because most people are convinced there is little to be said. Yet Carlyle considered himself, an historian. He spent the better part of four years on the French Revolution, parts of seven on Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, and twelve years on Frederick the Great. He also wrote numerous historical and biographical essays. Yet the notice taken of these writings has been slight. G. B. Tennyson's critical review of the corpus of Carlyle scholarship notes that none of Carlyle's full-length histories have received thorough scholarly attention.

The chestnuts regarding Carlyle the historian have been roasting since his work appeared. His prose can be abstruse and contrived. His approach to history is anti-modern. He is occasionally inaccurate. While these objections have some validity, that is all that can be said for them. The likes of Mill, Thackeray, Emerson, Froude and many others have voiced objections to Carlyle's histories, but have still found the merits to vastly outweigh the defects. These people were sensible, however disparate their views and outlooks. Yet they all found surpassing worth in Carlyle's histories, while modern readers are thought sensible for avoiding them.

The purpose here is not to inquire why this is so, except insofar as to echo MorsePeckham's contention that heroic texts require heroic readers, that, in short, our own defects as readers are certainly more glaring than any defects in Carlyle as a writer. MY Purpose, rather, is to contribute a modest addition to the small body of scholarship dealing with Carlyle the historian.

The work to be studied is Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches: with Elucidations. Included in this study will be a chronology of the period of reading and research for Cromwell and its actual writing. Carlyle's method in his research and writing, his use of sources, and the thought on history he brought to his treatment of Cromwell will also be examined. An attempt to view Cromwell in the climate in which it was written and to assess its effect on its own and subsequent times will also be made, and the book's enduring scholarly, literary, and historic value will be estimated. Manuscript sources for such a study abound. Carlyle's letters, the manuscript of the historical and biographical writings later published as the Historical Sketches, and a large mass of reading notes and rough drafts will all be examined.

At the outset, however, a preliminary account of the writing of Cromwell is needed, both in order to more clearly understand the work itself, and because no accurate one exists. In looking at previous accounts of this period in Carlyle's life found in the full-length biographies of James Anthony Froude and David Alec Wilson and Fred Kaplan we find they are often wrong, occasionally evasive, and always incomplete. There is a need for a new account of what happened simply as a biographical study. Aside from setting the record straight this account will also offer the chance to see how Carlyle actually made his attempts to write on Cromwell, which knowledge is necessary for a critical understanding of the book.