Christmas meat: Vegetarian trigger warning

The Carlyles at Home by Thea Holme

published 1965

(also Parallel Lives by Phyllis Rose, published 1983)

 

 

[excerpt] Christmas in the 1840s was the occasion – as indeed it still is – for a great slaughtering of beasts and birds; and butchers’ shops in Chelsea were filled with gruesome works of art, decorated, as Jane [Carlyle] noted in horrified fascination, with holly, and ‘very coquettish bows’ of blue and red ribbon. ‘a number of persons,’ she said, were gazing at the arrangement of dead animals in one shop window, ‘with a grave admiration beyond anything I ever saw testified towards any picture in the National Gallery! The butcher himself was standing beside it, receiving their silent enthusiasm with a look of Artist-pride struggling to keep within the bounds of Christian humility.’

‘Last Christmas,’ she remembered, ‘another of our Chelsea butchers…regaled the public with the spectacle of a living prize-calf, on the breast of which (poor wretch) was branded – like writing on turf -  “6d per lb”. And the public gathered about this unfortunate with the greedy look of cannibals.’

 

comments: This charming book (lent to me by Chrissie Poulson) gives a fascinating picture of Victorian Britain, and also very specifically of Thomas and Jane Carlyle.

The couple moved into a house in Cheyne Walk, in Chelsea in London in 1834, and stayed there for the rest of their lives. Thomas was one of the leading historians and thinkers of the age, famous for his books on The French Revolution and Frederick the Great. His wife Jane was very intelligent and well-educated (partly by her husband) and an heiress is a small kind of way – Thomas didn’t make any money to speak of till late in his life. Phyllis Rose, in Parallel Lives, her marvellous book about some Victorian marriages, compares Jane with Emma, the heroine of Jane Austen’s 1815 book, and it’s a thought-provoking idea. Only this Emma has by no means married Mr Knightley.

The (roughly) contemporary writer Samuel Butler is the source of a famous quote about the pair: "It was very good of God to let Carlyle and Mrs. Carlyle marry one another and so make only two people miserable instead of four."

And it is a fascinating relationship, raising all kinds of questions about feminism, genius, and housework. There seems little doubt that they loved each other very much, and made the best of things, and worked together through various struggles. After she died, Thomas was horrified to read in her letters and diaries about much unhappiness (Phyllis Rose, interestingly, thinks some of this was performative by Jane, aimed at presenting herself as a victim.) Thea Holme doesn’t really go there in this book, but she does make it clear that life wasn’t easy for this Victorian housewife – the book is very much seen through her eyes.

One of their best friends said of them ‘No-one who visited the Carlyles at home could tell whether they were poor or rich’. They certainly had friends who were a lot better-off, and there is a sad element of Jane supporting and helping her husband in creating his great work, running the household. Then when he is being lionized she feels inadequate, dowdy, unsociable and ignored. In particular Thomas becomes very friendly with the wealthy and beautiful Lady Harriet Ashburton.

However the tone of the book, and of Jane’s letters which are a key source, is surprisingly cheerful, amusing and entertaining.

Other people’s relationships are always a mystery, and impossible to be certain about, but what I took from these two books:

1)  Thomas Carlyle was as completely thoughtless and selfish as, apparently, all respectable Victorian men, assuming the world would be run for their benefit. No-one can know whether Jane Carlyle could have achieved more as, say, a writer if she had had the opportunities…

We can only see them through 21^st century eyes.

2)  Bolshy me says that they treated the servants appallingly, but again no differently from every other Victorian household. ‘In her 32 years at Cheyne Row, 34 maids came and went, not counting charwomen, little girls and other temporary makeshifts.’ I think this speaks for itself. One of the most telling facts comes early on: the maid sleeps in the kitchen, but Thomas likes sitting in the kitchen, so she must wait, shivering and tired, elsewhere till she can go to bed. Presumably to get up at 5am to start the housework.

The Holme book is a delight. The author lived in the Carlyle house, which is a memorial to Thomas: her husband was the curator there for the National Trust. There are charming illustrations by Lynton Lamb – and the whole book would be worth it for the wonderful endpaper picture - at the top of the post:

In the spring of 1857, the painter and photographer Robert Tait, 'a Dumfriesshire man from near Moffat, living in London, and frequenting the Carlyles', 'took the bright idea that a Picture of our sitting room would be amazingly interesting to posterity a hundred years hence'. After completing the work, the artist himself opined that the picture would keep his name alive, when better painters were forgotten.

Copyright National Trust

A few years ago I embarked on reading Sartor Restartus, one of Thomas Carlyle’s most revered works. I had good reason to try it: it has been described thus:

The book is increasingly recognized as "the founding text for the emergence of the serious and organized study of clothing", otherwise termed "dress studies" or "fashion theory". How very CiB. You might think.

Well, we didn’t get on. I wrote in my notes: ‘Weird satirical classic: mind-numbingly dull to the point of unreadability.’

For this reason I have never embarked on his French Revolution book, despite my feverish interest in the topic in 2024: The French Revolution. One day.

Thomas Carlyle is much featured in the Lyttelton/Hart-Davis Letters, subject of two blogposts early in 2025. Unsurprisingly, the two men were fans.

Christmas butchers – can’t find a photo of one early enough, but did enjoy this selection of Xmas meats:

A butcher’s shop of the 1880s, actually in Shrewsbury, from The National Media Museum.

Christmas butcher’s interior – 1920 and Canada, from the Alberta Archives.

Two more pictures of a shop in Canada, Community Archives.