Carlyle’s habit of smoking had begun in his boyhood, probably at
Ecclefechan before he came to Edinburgh University. His father, he
told me, was a moderate smoker, confining himself to about an ounce
of tobacco a week, and so thoughtfully as always to have a pipe ready
for a friend out of that allowance. Carlyle’s allowance, in his
mature life, though he was very regular in his times and seasons,
must have been at least six times as much. Once, when the canister
of “free-smoking York River” on his mantelpiece was nearly empty,
he told me not to mind that, as he had “about _half-a-stone_
more of the same upstairs.”——Another tobacco anecdote of Carlyle,
which I had from the late G. H. Lewes, may be worth a place here.
One afternoon, when his own stock of “free-smoking York River” had
come to an end, and when he had set out to walk with a friend (Lewes
himself, if I recollect rightly), he stopped at a small tobacco-shop
in Chelsea, facing the Thames, and went in to procure some temporary
supply. The friend went in with him, and heard his dialogue with the
shopkeeper. York River, having been asked for, was duly produced;
but, as it was not of the right sort, Carlyle, while making a small
purchase, informed the shopkeeper most particularly what the right
sort was, what was its name, and at what wholesale place in the city
it might be ordered. “O, we find that this suits our customers very
well,” said the man. “That may be, Sir,” said Carlyle; “but you will
find it best in the long run always to deal in the veracities.” The
man’s impression must have been that _the veracities_ were some
peculiar curly species of tobacco, hitherto unknown to him.
Footnote 43:
There does not seem to have been much direct intercourse between
Wilson and Carlyle after the meeting mentioned, though there were
cordial exchanges of regards between them, and some incidental
compliments to Carlyle in _Blackwood_.
Footnote 44:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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