frey, with his wife and daughter, lived in Jermyn Street
in lodgings, 'in melancholy contrast to the beautiful tenements and
perfect equipments they had left in the north.' 'If,' says Carlyle, 'I
called in the morning, in quest perhaps of Letters (though I don't
recollect much troubling _him_ in that way), I would find the family
still at breakfast, ten A.M. or later; and have seen poor Jeffrey
emerge in flowered dressing-gown, with a most boiled and suffering
expression of face, like one who had slept miserably, and now awoke
mainly to paltry misery and bother; poor Official man! "I am made a mere
Post-Office of!" I heard him once grumble, after tearing open several
Packets, not one of which was internally for himself.'[11]

Mrs Carlyle joined her husband on the 1st of October 1831, and they took
lodgings at 4 Ampton Street, Gray's Inn Lane, with a family of the name
of Miles, belonging to Irving's congregation. Jeffrey was a frequent
visitor there, and sometimes the Carlyles called at Jermyn Street.
Carlyle says that they were at first rather surprised that Jeffrey did
not introduce him to some of his 'grand literary figures,' or try in
some way to be of help to one for whom he evidently had a value. The
explanation, Carlyle thinks, was that he himself 'expressed no trace of
aspiration that way'; that Jeffrey's 'grand literary or other figures'
were clearly by no means 'so adorable to the rustic hopelessly
Germanised soul as an introducer of one might have wished.' Besides,
Jeffrey was so 'heartily miserable,' as to think Carlyle and his other
fellow-creatures happy in comparison, and to have no care left to bestow
upon them.

Here is a characteristic outburst in the 'Reminiscences': 'The beggarly
history of poor "Sartor" _among the blockheadisms_ is not worth my
recording or remembering--least of all here! In short, finding that
whereas I had got L100 (if memory serve) for "Schiller" six or seven
years before, and for "Sartor," at least _thrice_ as good, I could not
only _not_ get L200, but even get no Murray, or the like, to publish it
on half-profits (Murray, a most stupendous object to me; tumbling about,
eyeless, with the evidently strong wish to say "yes and no"; my first
signal experience of that sad human predicament); I said, "We will make
it No, then; wrap up our MS.; wait till this Reform Bill uproar
abate."'[12]

On Tuesday, January 26th, 1832, Carlyle received tidings of the death of
his father. He dep