Thomas Carlyle--Edward Fitzgerald | 14 autograph letters signed, to Mary Carlyle Aitken, 1878-83

Thomas Carlyle--Edward Fitzgerald

14 autograph letters signed (mostly “E. Fitzgerald”), to Elizabeth Carlyle Aitken ("Dear Miss Aitken", later "Dear Mrs Carlyle")

asking for news of her uncle Thomas Carlyle (“le Senor Tio”), discussing Readings in Crabbe and other works, congratulating her on the publication of a book, thanking her for a bequest and praising the way she handled Carlyle's estate (“…I think you feel yourself strangely surrounded by those things which have lost their own owner…”), later letters referring to her dispute with Froude over posthumous publications and explaining to whom he has lent Carlyle's letters to him, written with shaky handwriting as a result of Fitzgerald's infirmities, in purple, red, and black ink, 58 pages, 8vo, Little Grange, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 9 January 1878 to 7 February 1883, nicks and tears, some dust staining

“…At any rate, please to make my kindest remembrance to your Uncle – dating from close on 40 years ago. I need not say that I hope he does not think I forget him, in spite of all these intervals of enquiry – I think he must know that I do not. I have nothing to tell of myself – only the same old story, which need not be re-told, and which never was worth the telling at all…” (3 June 1880)

Edward Fitzgerald (1809-83), best known as the translator of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, was a longstanding friend of Thomas Carlyle. They had met in 1842 and remained in regular contact for the remainder of their lives. By the time of these letters Fitzgerald was living in retirement in Suffolk and Carlyle's ill-health and especially his tremor made writing difficult, so Fitzgerald was writing to his niece and live-in helper Mary Aitken (later Carlyle, following her marriage to her cousin Alexander Carlyle). The final letters in this series touch on the Froude Controversy over Carlyle's legacy. 

PROVENANCE:

Alexander Carlyle (1843-1931) and Mary Carlyle Aitken (1848-95); thence by direct descent