Carlyle wrote that letter.
But there were times, she held, when Carlyle must have made his wife a glorious woman. 'As when?' I might inquire.
'When she keeked in at his study door and said to herself, "The whole world is ringing with his fame, and he is my man!"'
'And then,' I might point out, 'he would roar to her to shut the door.'
'Pooh!' said my mother, 'a man's roar is neither here nor there.' But her verdict as a whole was, 'I would rather have been his mother than his wife.'
So we have got her into her chair with the Carlyles, and all is well. Furthermore, 'to mak siccar,' my father has taken the opposite side of the fireplace and is deep in the latest five columns of Gladstone, who is his Carlyle. He is to see that she does not slip away fired by a conviction, which suddenly overrides her pages, that the kitchen is going to rack and ruin for want of her, and she is to recall him to himself should he put his foot in the fire and keep it there, forgetful of all save his hero's eloquence. (We were a family who needed a deal of watching.) She is not interested in what Mr. Gladstone has to say; indeed she could never be brought to look upon politics as of serious concern for grown folk (a class in which she scarcely included man), and she gratefully gave up reading 'leaders' the day I ceased to write them. But like want of reasonableness, a love for having the last word, want of humour and the like, politics were in her opinion a mannish attribute to be tolerated, and Gladstone was the name of the something which makes all our sex such queer characters. She had a profound faith in him as an aid to conversation, and if there were silent men in the company would give him to them to talk about, precisely as she divided a cake among children. And then, with a motherly smile, she would leave them to gorge on him. But in the idolising of Gladstone she recognised, nevertheless, a certain inevitability, and would no more have tried to contend with it than to sweep a shadow off the floor. Gladstone was, and there was an end of it in her practical philosophy. Nor did she accept him coldly; like a true woman she sympathised with those who suffered severely, and they knew it and took counsel of her in the hour of need. I remember one ardent Gladstonian who, as a general election drew near, was in sore straits indeed, for he disbelieved in Home Rule, and yet how could he vote against 'Gladstone's man'? His distress was so real that it gave him a hang-dog appearance. He put his case gloomily before her, and until the day of the election she riddled him with sarcasm; I think he only went to her because he found a mournful enjoyment in seeing a false Gladstonian tortured.
It was all such plain-sailing for him, she pointed out; he did not like this Home Rule, and therefore he must vote against it.
She put it pitiful clear, he replied with a groan.
But she was like another woman to him when he appeared before her on his way to the polling-booth.
'This is a watery Sabbath to you, I'm thinking,' she said sympathetically, but without dropping her wires - for Home Rule or no Home Rule that stocking-foot must be turned before twelve o'clock.
A watery Sabbath means a doleful day, and 'A watery Sabbath it is,' he replied with feeling. A silence followed, broken only by the click of the wires. Now and again he would mutter, 'Ay, well, I'll be going to vote - little did I think the day would come,' and so on, but if he rose it was only to sit down again, and at last she crossed over to him and said softly, (no sarcasm in her voice now), 'Away with you, and vote for Gladstone's man!' He jumped up and made off without a word, but from the east window we watched him strutting down the brae. I laughed, but she said, 'I'm no sure that it's a laughing matter,' and afterwards, 'I would have liked fine to be that Gladstone's mother.'
It is nine o'clock now, a quarter-past nine, half-past nine - all the same moment to me, for I am at a sentence that will not write. I know, though I can't hear, what my sister has gone upstairs to say to my mother:-
'I was in at him at nine, and he said, "In five minutes," so I put the steak on the brander, but I've been in thrice since then, and every time he says, "In five minutes," and when I try to take the table-cover off, he presses his elbows hard on it, and growls.