The Carlyles at Home by Thea Holme

Samuel Butler said that

‘It was very good of God to let Carlyle and Mrs. Carlyle marry one another, and so make only two people miserable and not four.’

The Carlyles may have been famous for their squabbling but there is little sign of it in Thea Holme’s ‘The Carlyles at Home’ - an entertaining look at their day-to-day routine in Victorian London. In fact, the author would have us believe that Thomas and Jane were a perfect match for each other: hypochondriacs who lived in their dressing gowns, dosing themselves with castor oil and mercury pills. Insomniacs who roamed the house all night, woken by the slightest rustle, a chink of light through improperly drawn curtains, the crowing of local cockerels, fireworks from the opposite side of the Thames.  Nor was it easier during the day. Driven to despair by any sign of life from the neighbors, the clamor of raised voices, the clink of piano keys, they were forced into an almost permanent round of remodeling in their efforts to soundproof their home.

Indeed, as the Carlyles lurch from one failed makeover to the next, this house on Cheyne Row in Chelsea, becomes a very real third character in the book and, for a number of years, was overrun with workmen, months behind in the latest series of repairs. Thomas, enraged by the sawing and banging, spent weeks away, leaving Jane to do the bulk of the cooking and cleaning herself.  Thanks to the state of the place and their obvious eccentricities, the Carlyles were unable to keep good help. They made do instead with maids who succumbed to theft, drunkenness and laziness, not to mention out-of-wedlock pregnancies. One young woman was sent back to Scotland after a ‘second misfortune’, another gave birth in the china closet while Thomas Carlyle took tea in the next room, a situation that caused Jane much ‘wry humor’, given that life at Cheyne Row revolved entirely around her husband’s needs and wants.

For the most part Jane seems to have accepted this arrangement, allowing her own considerable talents to be subsumed into creating a home. But is it possible that she did this with less grace than Holme credits her with, and that Samuel Butler’s picture of an unhappy marriage is closer to the truth? I hope not, because despite all their quirkiness, and all his selfishness, I really liked Jane and Thomas Carlyle and I really liked the marriage as it was presented in this wonderful book.