The wonderful village; a further record of some famous folk and places by Chelsea reach . her, over-whelmingly real and terrible, or that she wouldhave felt in any way the better for being informedthat her physical troubles were the outcome ofcerebral neurasthenia, and her spiritual malaisewas a climacteric melancholia ! But it does help us, as we read, to discount andappraise more nearly at their proper value manythings in her letters which otherwise sound harsh,despairing, extravagant, or unfair ; many wild out-cries, exaggerated descriptions, unreasoning cynic-isms, disordered fancies, quer
The wonderful village; a further record of some famous folk and places by Chelsea reach . her, over-whelmingly real and terrible, or that she wouldhave felt in any way the better for being informedthat her physical troubles were the outcome ofcerebral neurasthenia, and her spiritual malaisewas a climacteric melancholia ! But it does help us, as we read, to discount andappraise more nearly at their proper value manythings in her letters which otherwise sound harsh,despairing, extravagant, or unfair ; many wild out-cries, exaggerated descriptions, unreasoning cynic-isms, disordered fancies, querulous reproaches. These things were not, any of them, part of herreal, her true self. They were symptoms of amalady which attacked, and even threatened tooverwhelm her, but from which, eventually, sheemerged victoriously. She was conscious that thebeing which, in her dark hours, possessed her,was alien to her natural self, a thing indeed offalsehood. It is not, she wrote, a natural viceof mine, that sort of egotistic babblement that hasbeen fastened in me by the patience and sympathy. JANE WELSH CARLYLE. MRS. CARLYLE AND HER CHARLOTTE 193 shown me in my late long illnesses. And again : Not only do I forget utterly particulars of quiterecent date, but I remember particulars of no dateat all ! That is to say, imagine to rememberminutely things that never happened—never I became aware of this freak of memory inme I have felt a toleration which I never feltbefore for— white liars. I might have known, she wrote ruefully, bymyself, that the excitability of nerves which makesamusing letters is very compatible with seriousailment, and again: Your journal, all aboutfeelings, aggravates whatever is factitious andmorbid in you ; that I have made experience of. In a letter written to her husband from Scotlandin 1857, she says, after telling him about herself— But oh my, what a shame, when you areleft alone there, with plenty of smoke of your ownto consume, to be puffing ou
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