SD1237. Jane Welsh Carlyle to Thomas Carlyle
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 11, 334 (in part).
[London]
Friday night [10 October 1845]
I wish Dear you had got the letter which was lying at the point of my pen for you last evening, when Mr Browning came and sent it all to “the Back of Beyond.” …
“That minds me” (as Helen says) of something Browning told me last night– An old gentleman of Eighty-four, a Unitarian, had been disputing a whole evening with an old gentleman of ninety-two, a something-else—let us call him a Carlyleist; Of course they could come to no agreement on their respective creeds– “Well” said Eighty-four in conclusion “at least we are both in pursuit of Truth!”– “Pursuit of Truth”! repeated Ninety-two with an intensely Middlebie accent! “By the Lord we would need to have got it by this time!”– Yes indeed! one should try if possible to get it—to “lay salt on its tail” a good way on this side of ninety-two—or if one “cannot get it” to “do without” A shoemaker at Haddington once took to selling ale as well—and had inscribed under his sign of a last “You have sought good ale all day, and found it at the last”! One seeks many things all day which are only to be found at some such questionable “last” as that was! …
Address: Scottsbrig / Ecclefechan / N.B.
Publication: Carlyle, 20, 20–24.
Manuscript: National Library of Scotland.
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