Letter from Jane Welsh Carlyle to John Forster, [April 26, 1849]

Letter from Jane Welsh Carlyle to John Forster, [April 26, 1849]

Cushman, Charlotte Saunders, 1816-1876

Macready, William Charles

Gossip--Private

Gossip--Published

Rumors

Jane Carlyle gossips about Charlotte Cushman about whom she heard Macready say that she is a liar. Carlyle writes to a dramatic critic of the Examiner, John Forster.

Credit

The Carlyle Letters Online/CLO

Carlyle, Jane Welsh, 1801-1866

JWC-JF, [26 April?]. MS: NLS 604.281. Hitherto unpbd. Tentatively dated by this date noted, in another hand, on the MS. TC later wrote at the top: “rumours abt Lewes in his play-acting (—whc were false)?“.

Carlyle, Thomas, and Jane Welsh Carlyle. The Carlyle Letters Online [CLO]. Ed. Brent E. Kinser. Duke UP, 2007-2016, www.carlyleletters.org.

1849-04-26

Reference

Dear Mr Forster

Here is the answer to my admonitory letter, which I now wish I had not written. For after all, what have we in evidence of this history except the authority of Miss Cushman, whom I have heard a man I implicitly believe—Macready—call "not only a woman who lied, but a woman who spoke no truth": Why should we now believe in Miss Cushman for the first time; when a fellow creatures good name is concerned? There has been no doubt something wrong—but how much or how little we don’t know—and we have our own wrongs to mind which we can measure the extent of— And so let us make ourselves easy for god’s sake—

Ever affectionately / Yours
Jane Carlyle

Added in the footnote section:
"Presumably, if TC’s note is correct, Charlotte Cushman had been spreading rumors about G. H. Lewes, probably about his deteriorating marriage."