Parte 48 - Letter from Thomas Carlyle to Edward FitzGerald

1 folded sheet.

Addiscombe Farm, Croydon. - Living very quietly, 'the strangest life of absolute Latrappism'; reading Voltaire and riding on a horse 'borrowed from my fat German friend [Joseph Neuberg] who is at seabathing in Sussex'. Can see a 'great circle of yellow light... from Shooter’s Hill to Primrose Hill'' every night as he smokes his pipe before bed, 'and this is all I have to do with London and its gases for a fortnight or more'. Comments on news from the Crimean war.

When FitzGerald gets his 'little Suffolk cottage' he 'must have in it a “chamber in the wall”' for Carlyle, 'plus a pony that can trot, and a cow that gives good milk: with these outfits we shall make a pretty rustication now and then...' Hopes sale of the property at Naseby and arrangements for the monument are going well.

Note in FitzGerald's hand at top of letter 'some Vols of wh. [Voltaire] C. had brought down to Suffolk, being then engaged with his Frederick II'.

Tipped into O.4.54.

Published in Ryals, et al. The Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle. Duke-Edinburgh ed., Duke University Press, 1970-. Transcriptions available online at Carlyle Letters Online (CLO): https://carlyleletters.dukeupress.edu/