Worried about your child or pupil not talking until quite old?
There is a joke about a German child who said nothing until he was about eleven, when one day he did speak, to complain about something. When asked why he had not spoken sooner he said: "Because until today everything was satisfactory."
Take heart from the fact that apparently something similar really did happen in the case of Thomas Carlyle, later the author of many learned books and writings. Young Thomas said nothing for year after year. His first spoken words, as recounted by pinko thesp Corin Redgrave on Quote Unquote last Sunday came when Carlyle was, if I remember it rightly, seven. Then, an aunt (or someone) poured boiling water on him, and apologised profusedly to young Thomas. Who then said:
"Thank you madam, the agony has abated."
Relax. He's just hasn't yet had anything important to say.
I can find no Internet reference to these words. But more about Carlyle is to be found here:
Thomas Carlyle was born in Ecclefechan, Dumfries and Galloway, as the son of a stonemason and small farmer. He was brought up in a strict Calvinist household. At the age of 15 he went to [the] University of Edinburgh, receiving his B.A. in 1813. From 1813 to 1818 he studied for the ministry of the Church of Scotland, but abandoned this course and studied law for a while.Carlyle taught at Annan Academy (1814-16), at Kircaldy Grammar School (1816-18), and privately in Edinburgh (1818-22). …
It's off message, but I also like how Tennyson defended Carlyle's marriage, to someone equally strange, against various critics of it:
"By any other arrangement, four people would have been unhappy instead of two."
UPDATE: I tried again, and this time I did find a reference to this literary late talker tale. And apparently it was Macaulay, not Carlyle at all.
Macaulay also wrote many books and writings.
