THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 IN MEMORY OF 
 EDWIN CORLE 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 JEAN CORLE
 
 The Westminster Gazette Library. 
 
 HOMES AND HAUNTS 
 
 OF 
 
 CARLYLE.
 
 THOMAS CAELYLE. 
 (From a Mezzotint after the Portrait by J. McNeitt Whistler.)
 
 THE 
 
 HOMES AND HAUNTS 
 
 OF 
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 & o n b o n : 
 WESTMINSTER GAZETTE" 
 
 1895. 
 
 (Ah rights reserved)
 
 " We all love great men ; love, venerate, and bow down sub- 
 missive before great men : nay, can we honestly bmc down to any- 
 thing else?'' ON HKROES ASD HERO WORSHIP.
 
 PREFACE 
 
 "!N future years," wrote Carlyle's biographer, "in 
 future centuries, strangers will come from distant lands, 
 from America, from Australia, from New Zealand, from 
 every isle or continent where the English language 
 is spoken, to see the house where Carlyle was born, to 
 see the green turf under which his dust is lying." 
 
 Mr. Froude's prediction has been verified at an 
 earlier date than he assigned for it. It is only 14 
 years since Carlyle died, and already his birthplace 
 has become a place of pilgrimage for men and women 
 in all parts of the English-speaking world. The little 
 house in Ecclefechan where the author of " Sartor 
 Resartus " was born is visited by many hundreds of 
 tourists every year. The other homes and haunts of 
 
 2037949
 
 Vlll PREFACE 
 
 his early life the spots where he gazed on " those 
 hues of gold and azure," and looked " at the fair 
 illuminated letters with an eye for their gilding," are 
 eagerly sought out by readers of " Heroes and Hero- 
 Worship." The centenary of his birth has been the 
 occasion of the purchase and dedication to the public for 
 ever of the famous house in Chelsea, where the historian 
 of the French Kevolution, of Cromwell and of Friedrich 
 did his life's work and lived out his life's drama. 
 
 This occasion seemed suitable to an attempt to 
 collect together the scattered threads of interest thus 
 suggested. To recall some of the more salient memories 
 in the various Carlyle localities, to present some 
 pictorial souvenirs of these, to furnish some kind of 
 handbook to the Homes and Haunts of Thomas Carlyle : 
 such are the objects of this little book which is now 
 offered to the public as a contribution to the celebration 
 of the Carlyle Centenary. 
 
 The greater part of the contents of the following 
 pages is reprinted, though with large additions, from 
 the columns of The Westminster Gazette and The 
 Westminster Budget. But in the preparation of the
 
 PREFACE ix 
 
 present volume, we have been favoured with many 
 valuable contributions, which we desire very gratefully 
 to acknowledge. To Mr. G. G. Napier, M.A., we are 
 specially indebted for permission to use several of the 
 photographs which he prepared in connexion with his 
 lecture on " The Vicinities of Caiiyle." For permission 
 to include a small reproduction of the Mezzotint after 
 Mr. Whistler's beautiful and famous portrait, we have 
 to thank the artist himself and Messrs. Henry 
 Graves & Co., the fine art publishers, of Pall Mall. 
 The photographs of "Edinburgh Carlyle localities" were 
 specially done by Mr. Thomas Clark for a lecture 
 at the Edinburgh Literary Institute by Mr. James Sims, 
 of Craigmount, and are given by courteous permission 
 of Mr. Alexander Greig, Secretary of the Institute. 
 The portrait of Carlyle and his Niece, with an autograph 
 inscription attached, was kindly lent to us for repro- 
 duction by Mr. W. T. Stead. 
 
 " WESTMINSTER GAZETTE " OFFICE, 
 December 4th, 1895.
 
 THE DESK ON WHICH CAELTLE WROTE HIS BOOKS.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PREFACE vii 
 
 INTRODUCTION: an Address by the Right Hon. Leonard 
 
 Courtney. M.P xv 
 
 THE EARLY HOMES OF CARLYLB (By Henry 0. Shelley) : 
 
 Chapter I. Ecclefechan 3 
 
 II. The House in which Carlyle was born 11 
 
 III. Mainhill 21 
 
 IV. HoddamHill .... 25 
 V. Scotsbrig 33 
 
 CARLYLE LOCALITIES IN EDINBURGH : 
 
 Chapter VI. Carlyle's Student Residences . . 41 
 VII. Early Married Life at u Comely Bank." 52 
 
 VIII. A. Visit to Carlyle'a Niece . . 57 
 
 CARLYLE AT CRAIGENPUTTOCK : 
 
 Chapter IX. A General View of Craigenputtock . 71 
 
 X. Life at Craigenputtock ... 77 
 
 CARLYLE IN LONDON: 
 
 Chapter XI. Memorials of Cheyne Row ... 87 
 
 XII. The Story of a Desecrated Shrine . 108 
 XIII. The Carlyle House as it is . . .115 
 
 CONCLUSION : A Visit to Carlyle's Grave . . . 1 45
 
 Frontispiece Mr. Whistler's Portrait of Carlyle. 
 
 FAGK 
 
 CARLYLE'S DESK x 
 
 ECCLEFECHAN : 
 
 The Village Street . .... 4 
 
 The Arched House (Carlyle's birthplace) ... 5 
 
 The Old School 8 
 
 The Old Meeting House . 9 
 
 THE ROOM ix WHICH CARLYLE WAS BORN ... 15 
 CARLYLE " CURIOS : " 
 
 China and Tobacco Jar 12 
 
 Lady Ash burton's Tray t 13 
 
 Carlyle's Hats ; . 14, 17 
 
 His Tea Caddy and Coffee-pot 19 
 
 His Washing-stand 24 
 
 MAINHILL . 23
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS xiii 
 HODDAM HILL : 
 
 MM 
 
 Front View 27 
 
 Rear View 28 
 
 " Repentance Tower " 31 
 
 Hoddam Kirk 32 
 
 SCOTSBRIG ..... 35 
 
 CARLYLE'S CIGAR-CASE, PIPE, &c 38 
 
 CARLYLE'S FIRST EDINBURGH LODGINGS .... 47 
 
 CARLYLE'S HOUSE IN MORAY STREET, EDINBURGH . . 50 
 
 CARLYLE'S HOUSE, "COMELY BANK " .... 55 
 
 A. CARLYLE FAMILY GROUP ...... 59 
 
 CARLYLE AND His NIECE (Portraits, with autograph in- 
 scription) . . . . . . . . 63 
 
 CRAIGENPUTTOCK ........ 73 
 
 CARLYLE'S STUDY AT CRAIGENPUTTOCK .... 79 
 
 CARLYLE'S LODGINGS IN WOBURN BUILDINGS ... 89 
 
 No. 5, CHEYNE Row, CHELSEA (OUTSIDE) ... 93 
 CHELSEA INTERIORS : 
 
 The Front Door 119 
 
 Front Room, ground floor ...... 92 
 
 Back Room, ground floor ...... 95 
 
 Drawing Room 103 
 
 Entrance to Study .104 
 
 Sound-proof Study 136 
 
 The Kitchen 128 
 
 Staircase and Garden 01 
 
 A Glimpse of the Garden 101 
 
 In the Garden . . 129
 
 XIV ILLUSTRATION S 
 
 CARLYLE "CcRios AT CHELSEA :'' 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Carlyle's Bookcases ...... 127, 132 
 
 Carlyle's Bed . . . . . . . 141 
 
 Carlyle's Chest, of Drawers . . . . .114 
 
 Mrs. Carlyle's Fire-screen . . . . . .118 
 
 Portrait of Mrs. Carlyle .133 
 
 Portrait of Carlyle (about 1860) .... 137 
 
 The Dining Table 121 
 
 Carlyle's Sofa 126 
 
 Carlyle's Inkstand and Candlestick .... 125 
 
 Carlyle's Study Chair 139 
 
 Carlyle's Hat and Hat-box . . ... 139 
 
 Carlyle's Dinner-plate ...... 131 
 
 Drawing-room, Chair . . . . . . .139 
 
 Brass Fender . 139 . 
 
 "A DESECRATED SHRINE:" The Cats at Cheyne Row . 109 
 
 CARLYLE ON HIS HORSE " FRITZ " 123 
 
 CARLYLE'S GRAVE 146, 147
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 (An Address by the Right Hon. Leonard Courtney, M.P.) 
 
 AT the first meeting of the Committee for the purchase 
 of Carlyle's house at Chelsea, an address on the subject 
 was delivered by Mr. Courtney. A gentleman who 
 happened to be present, has been kind enough to send 
 liis notes to us, arid Mr. Courtney has, further, been at 
 the trouble of revising the report, which we now beg 
 to submit to all admirers of " the Sage of Chelsea." It 
 forms an admirable introduction to the records in the 
 following pages. 
 
 " The object of the meeting," said Mr. Courtney, " has 
 been advocated with the utmost force, because with the 
 most perfect sincerity, and I do not think there can
 
 xvi INTRODUCTION 
 
 be a single person present who has not been touched 
 by the confessions made by Lord Ripon of the influence 
 Carlyle had upon his mind, and by the tribute which 
 lias been brought from across the Atlantic of the far- 
 reaching influence of Mr. Carlyle wherever the English 
 language is spoken. I would express for myself, and, 
 I think, many more, the profound indebtedness we are 
 under to that great man who is gone, and the delight 
 we each take in associating ourselves in any way with 
 the means of preserving his memory. I am not one of 
 those who desire indiscriminately to preserve the 
 records of the past. I sometimes look forward to the 
 coming generations with a feeling of pity, when I think 
 how, day by day and almost hour by hour, we are 
 accumulating masses of rubbish under which their lives 
 threaten to be buried. At this very moment, since we 
 have begun to speak, edition after edition of the most 
 ephemeral newspapers have appeared. They will be 
 filed in the British Museum, if not elsewhere, and the 
 scholar of the future will not be able to avoid the duty 
 of submitting them to an examination. Not every 
 house would I preserve. There is some comfort 
 in thinking that there are jerry-builders about and 
 that some habitations will cease. But in Mr. Carlyle 
 I recognise one of the chosen few, one of the elect and 
 select, one to whom it is given not in every genera- 
 tion, for some pass without such precious possessions
 
 iNTRonrrnoN xvii 
 
 but one of those to whom it is given from time 
 to time to revive, as it were, the life of humanity, 
 and to bring forth anew the best thoughts, the deepest 
 feelings, the highest aspirations of their fellow-men. 
 Mr. Carlyle himself exhausted words in order to 
 describe the kind of man, the kind of visitor, the 
 angel of mankind, whose work has been realised by 
 men of sensibility, by men of gratitude, in every 
 generation. We sometimes speak of a new birth, 
 sometimes of a new creation, sometimes, as Mr. Carlyle 
 would say, of a man or a woman being a child of the 
 Infinite instead of a child of the Finite. All these 
 phrases point to a particular experience through which 
 every man and woman should go when the ordinary 
 lite seems to fail, and a new life springs up within 
 them, and they have their feet planted firmly in a larjre 
 room, and their vision and conception of the world's 
 history undergoes a change. This is what some of us 
 owed to Mr. Carlyle, and if society, literature, the 
 political world of the day, is more or less penetrated 
 with his ideas so that they have not the same quality 
 of newness for us that they had when they were first 
 put before the world, still I believe that the number of 
 renders of Carlyle increases year by year, that the circle 
 of his influence is extended, that new realms are being 
 brought under his sway, that the number of persons 
 who are indebted to him to-day far exceeds that at 
 
 b
 
 xviii INTRODUCTION 
 
 any previous time. It is because I regard Mr. Carlyle 
 in this way that I desire to associate myself with this 
 movement. And I am certainly not alone. At the 
 instance of the Committee who got up this meeting I 
 wrote and asked our friend Professor Huxley, who is 
 himself on the list of those who promote this enterprise, 
 to come and speak here. He gave two substantial 
 reasons for his inability to attend. He is not young ; 
 he is not strong, as he once was ; but he wound up with 
 these words : ' I myself deeply regret I cannot say a 
 word of gratitude to the grand old Diogenes-Socrates 
 who dragged me out of the mud of British Philisterei 
 fifty years ago.' Dragged him out of the mud, free 
 from the incumbrances which beset our feet. I do 
 not know whether I shall be thought to have too 
 much of the spirit of Old Mortality when I confess 
 that it is nearly forty years since I made a pedestrian 
 pilgrimage to Craigenputtock. I thought then, and I 
 think still, that the surroundings of Craigenputtock 
 were in complete harmony with ' Sartor liesartus.' I 
 can see now those barren moorlands, with rare stumps 
 of dark fir, and with black sullen tarns among the 
 hills. All corresponded to the fierce troubled spirit 
 out of which that great book came. I was also a 
 pilgrim, but more recently, to Haddington, and I 
 rejoiced there to find the house in which Mrs. Carlyle 
 was born and bred surviving with great dignity and in
 
 INTRODUCTION" xix 
 
 admirable condition ; the drawing-room much as it 
 was when she was the bright young lady who received 
 the young savage from the South. And the house 
 in Cheyne Eow, I believe, will be regarded by future 
 generations for I am quite sure we shall rescue it 
 from the degradation in which it is now not only as 
 the place Avhere, after that first volume of the ' French 
 Devolution' had been burnt, the husband and wife had 
 that terrible hour together before the whole job was 
 set to over again, and where the other great books of 
 which Lord liipon lias spoken were produced, but will 
 be regarded also as a place where one of the most 
 interesting, pathetic, tragical, and yet fascinating of 
 joint lives was lived. The record has its dark spots, 
 but the dark spots happily passed away before the end. 
 (iraleful as one is to Mr. Carlyle, profoundly as T 
 respect him, much as I am his man, 1 was never his 
 slave, any more than Lord liipon, and though I and 
 Lord Iiipon differ in many respects we nevertheless 
 acknowledge what we owe to him. As a husband he 
 showed something too much of the arrogance and 
 isolation of genius. In his want of sensibility to the 
 wife, and in the proud silences of the wife's life, you see 
 something more interesting, something more attractive, 
 than is to be found in any novel, lleality is about it, 
 which, as Carlyle himself would have said, is the first 
 of attributes ; reality is about it, reality and pathos,
 
 XX INTRODUCTION 
 
 sind the unavailing years of regret after her death 
 all these things are associated with this house in 
 Cheyne-row. The movement is in your hands, and in 
 those of English-speaking people all over the world. 
 Nay, not English-speaking people alone. The German 
 Kaiser has sent his contribution. Wherever manhood 
 is respected, wherever courage and worth are honoured, 
 wherever gratitude is felt towards one of those living- 
 spirits who, coining with a coal of fire to touch our 
 lips, bring us again within the world of spirits, there 
 this movement has a claim, and we shall all be proud 
 to assist in making Carlyle's house a temple of resort 
 for future generations."
 
 PART I. 
 THE EARLY HOMES 
 
 OF 
 
 CARLYLE. 
 BY HENRY C. SHELLEY.
 
 " On fine evenings I was wont to carry forth my supper (bread- 
 crumb boiled in milk), and eat it out-of-doors. On the coping of the 
 Orchard-wall, which I could reach by climbing, or still more easily 
 if Father Andrews would set up the pruning ladder, my porridge 
 was placed : there, many a sunset, have I, looking at the distant 
 Western Mountains, consumed, not without relish, my evening meal. 
 Those hues of gold and azure, that hush of World's expectation as 
 Day died, were still a Hebrew Speech for me ; nevertheless I was 
 looking at the fair illuminated Letters, and had an eye for their 
 gilding" SARTOR EESARTUS, Book II. Ch. 2, " Idyllic."
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ECCLEFECHAN. 
 
 A prophet without honour in his own country Carlyle's birth- 
 place Where he went to school The old meeting house. 
 
 THERE are no Carlylean hero-worshippers in Eccle- 
 fechan, the birthplace of the prophet of that cultus. 
 While all the world knows only one Carlyle the natives 
 of the small Annandale town where he was born, a 
 hundred years ago (1795), have a provoking habit 
 of asking pilgrims thither the astounding question, 
 " Which Carlyle ? " There is a tradition in the district 
 that an old roadman, now dead, happening to be ad- 
 dressed by a party of Carlyle devotees, ran over the 
 names of the various members of the family, and dwelt 
 with special emphasis upon that of Sandy, " who was 
 a grand breeder o' soos." " But there was one called 
 
 A 2
 
 4 HOMES AND HAUNTS OF CABLYLE 
 
 Thomas, you know," rejoined the leader of the pilgrims. 
 " Ay," retorted the old roadman, " there was Tain ; he 
 gaed awa' up to London, but I dinna think he ever did 
 muckle guid." 
 
 Futile is the search of the man who goes to Eccle- 
 fechan on the look-out for worshippers of Carlyle. 
 And, seemingly, it all arises from the utilitarian way 
 
 ECCLEFECHAN : TILLAGE STREET. 
 
 the natives have of regarding the most famous member 
 of the Carlyle family. A mild remonstrance addressed 
 to the hotel-keeper on his lack of appreciation in not 
 at least hanging a portrait of the sage in his public 
 room only elicited the grumbling reply, " What did he 
 do for the village?" Annandale people are loth to 
 believe any generosity of Thomas Carlyle.
 
 ECCLEFECHAN 5 
 
 Although built a hundred years ago, the house in 
 which Carlyle was born called "Arch House," on 
 account of the wide archway running from front to 
 back shows no signs of decay. It was built by 
 Carlyle's father, an honest mason, who left off rearing 
 houses when the old taste for substantial buildings 
 
 AECH IIOUSK. 
 
 went out of fashion. " Nothing that he undertook to 
 do," witnessed Carlyle, " but he did it faithfully and 
 like a true man. I shall look on the houses he built 
 with a certain proud interest. They stand firm and 
 sound to the heart all over his little district. No one 
 that comes after him will say, ' Here was the finger of 
 a hollow eye-servant.' "
 
 6 HOMES AND HAUNTS OF CAKLYLE 
 
 In front of the Arched House runs a stream. This 
 is the brook which Carlyle refers to in " Sartor," when 
 he says, "The little Kuhbach gushing kindly by 
 through river after river into the Donaw (the Eiver 
 Annan), into the Black Sea (the Solway)." Carlyle's 
 father occupied the top flat on the right hand side, and 
 Carlyle was born in the top room, though his sister 
 used to say that he was not born in that room, but in 
 
 / 
 
 the small one near the arch. It is on one of the panes 
 of this smaller room that a Member of Parliament cut 
 with a diamond the following lines of poetry : 
 
 " While Scotland's sons in every clime are found 
 Bearing the banner of their country's fame, 
 So long will Sartor's laurel be renowned, 
 
 And honest Scots revere his deathless Name." 
 
 Changes take place so slowly in Scottish villages 
 that the Ecclefechan of to-day differs but little from 
 the Ecclefechan of Carlyle's boyhood. Buildings once 
 put to one purpose are now put to another, otherwise 
 they remain now as then. And so it happens that the 
 humble building in which Carlyle laid the founda- 
 tion of his education is still standing, though not 
 now used as a school. One end abuts against the 
 side of the United Presbyterian Church, the other 
 merges into the wall of the kirkyard where Carlyle is 
 buried. Utilised now as a dwelling-house, it is easy to 
 recall the days when it was the Academia of the district,
 
 ECCLEFECHAN 7 
 
 so close is its likeness to many a building in other 
 Scottish villages still devoted to educational purposes. 
 Little is remembered of Carlyle's earliest schooldays, 
 and, indeed, it is hardly to be expected that a boy of 
 five would furnish much pabulum for the biographer. 
 A year or two ago there died at Ecclefechan an aged 
 lady who claimed to have attended this school with 
 Carlyle, but her reminiscences did not go beyond that 
 bare fact. The purpose of Carlyle's father in sending 
 him to this school, and afterwards to Annan Academy 
 and Edinburgh University, is well known ; he had the 
 desire of every Scottish parent to see his son " wag his 
 pow in a pulpit." Of course the worthy man was 
 wofully disappointed when his son found that such an 
 occupation was impossible for him ; but in this, as in 
 so many other unpleasant matters, he consumed his 
 own smoke. " His tolerance for me," said Carlyle, 
 " his trust in me, was great. When I declined going 
 forward into the Church (though his heart was set 
 upon it), he respected my scruples, my volition, and 
 patiently let me have my way." This self-denial 
 becomes more noteworthy in the light of an anecdote 
 related to me in Ecclefechan. It had become known 
 in the village that " Tom Carlyle " was destined for the 
 kirk, and the village gossips were always pressing old 
 James Carlyle with the awkward question, "Why is 
 not Tarn coming out for the kirk ?" Now, the old man
 
 8 HOMES AND HAUNTS OF CARLYLE 
 
 was too proud to own his disappointment to the village 
 gossips, and so one day, when the question was more 
 pointedly put than usual, he rejoined : " Do you think 
 oor Tarn is going to stand up and be criticised by a 
 man like Matthie Latimer?" the said Matthie Latimer 
 being an argumentative theologian of the meeting- 
 house, who was always ready with his remarks upon 
 the pulpit performances gone through there. 
 
 The fate which has befallen the school-house has 
 also overtaken the old meeting-house, where, in the 
 
 THE OLD SCHOOL. 
 
 early years of this century, the young Carlyle heard 
 many an orthodox and long-winded discourse. He 
 never forget those childish experiences, or grew 
 ashamed to confess their influence 011 his character.
 
 ECCLEFECHAN 
 
 9 
 
 " Poor temple of my childhood," he wrote sixty years 
 after, " to me more sacred at this moment than perhaps 
 the biggest cathedral then extant could have been ; 
 rude, rustic, bare no temple in the worl'd more so 
 but^there were sacred lambencies, tongues of authentic 
 flame from heaven which kindled what was best in one, 
 what has not yet gone out." Strongly attached as old 
 
 THE OLD MEETING HOUSE. 
 
 James Carlyle was to the Seceders, a trivial incident in 
 the history of the congregation cut him adrift from 
 them for a time. It happened that a new manse was 
 to be built for the minister, and there arose a division 
 of opinion as to the number of rooms it should contain, 
 James Carlyle voting in favour of such a minimum
 
 10 HOMES AND HAUNTS OF CARLYLE 
 
 as seemed consistent with a creed which laid more 
 emphasis on the next world than this. His views, 
 however, were not those of the majority, and to mark 
 his disapproval of such a worldly policy as was implied 
 in the erection of too spacious a rnanse, he left the 
 communion for a time. With characteristic Scottish 
 forethought the old Seceders had several flues placed 
 in their meeting-house at the time of its erection, in 
 anticipation of the day when the congregation should 
 either dwindle away or by the erection of a new 
 biiilding should find it necessary to dispose of the old 
 one. It was the latter contingency that happened, and 
 the old meeting-house, by reason of its flues, was easily 
 transformed into a number of tenements.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE HOUSE IN WHICH CARLYLE WAS BORN. 
 
 Some Carlyle "curios" Carlyle's hats An immortal dia- 
 logue Portraits of Carlyle and his wife From birth-room 
 to kirkyard The story of a spire. 
 
 THE tiny room in which Carlyle was born it is at the 
 top of the house in the right-hand corner of our view 
 on p. 5 is devoted now to the housing of some in- 
 teresting mementoes of the infant who drew his first 
 breath there on December 4, 1795. In one corner an 
 unpretentious bookcase holds a copy of the familiar 
 brown-covered " People's Edition " of his writings ; a 
 recess near by is filled with bits of old china from the 
 house in Cheyne-row; on the mantelpiece are two turned 
 wooden candlesticks, a gift of John Sterling, sent from 
 liome ; a table in the corner provides a resting place for 
 the philosopher's reading-lamp and tea-caddy; and
 
 12 HOMES AND HAUNTS OF CAKLYLE 
 
 above a framed letter on the south wall two of his hats 
 are hung. More attention is paid to these hats than to 
 any of the other relics ; what higher happiness can the 
 hero-worshipper wish than the being able to say he has 
 had his head inside Carlyle's hat ? Inside it goes in a 
 quite literal sense. Up to the time of my visit, only 
 
 SOME OF THE CHEYNE-EOW CHINA. CARLYLE'S TOBACCO JAR IS 
 IN THE TOP EIGHT-HAND COENEE. 
 
 twenty-nine heads had been found to fit that hat ; I 
 regret to add that mine did not make the thirtieth. All 
 this applies specially to one hat a black, wide-brimmed, 
 soft felt ; perhaps the identical hat which called forth 
 the immortal dialogue between the passenger and the 
 'bus driver : " Queer 'at that old fellow 'ad who just got 
 in." " Queer 'at ! Ay, he may wear a queer 'at, but
 
 THE HOUSE IN WHICH CAKLYLE WAS BORN 13 
 
 what would you give for the 'ed-piece that's a inside of 
 it ? " The other hat, just as broad-brimmed, but of straw 
 instead of felt, is none too large for an ordinary 
 cranium a fact not without its consolatory side. Many 
 tempting offers, most emanating from audacious 
 
 MORE CHINA FBOM CHEYNE-HOW. THE HAND-PAINTED LUNCH 
 
 TEAT IN THE CENTBE WAS THE WOEK AND GIFT OP 
 
 LADY ASHBUBTOIT. 
 
 Americans, have been made for those hats, and once a 
 bid was couched in this subtle form : " Sell me that hat 
 for 5 and put another old one like it in its place ! " 
 
 Not far from the hats there is a frame of portraits of 
 Carlyle and his wife, somewhat roughly mounted, but 
 of exceptional interest. Of Carlyle there are six 
 portraits ; of his wife, four. One of the portraits of
 
 14 
 
 HOMES AND HAUNTS OF CARLYLE 
 
 Carlyle, that bearing the date 1845, ranks among the 
 earliest likenesses of him extant, and has a considerable 
 
 CAELYLE'S HAT. INSIDE MEASUEEMENT : 23 INCHES. 
 
 resemblance to that crayon drawing by Samuel Lawrence 
 of which Carlyle thought so highly that he commended 
 it to Emerson as the most suitable for a frontispiece to
 
 THE HOUSE IN WHICH CARLYLE WAS BORN 17 
 
 the American edition of his works. While all the 
 portraits of Carlyle have a strong resemblance to each 
 
 CAKLVLE'S HAT. INSIDE MEASUREMENT : _i INCHES. 
 
 other and harmonise with most of the portraits that have 
 been made of him, those of his wife which find a place 
 in this frame, while consistent with each other, have 
 
 i?
 
 18 HOMES AND HAUNTS OF CARLYLE 
 
 little or nothing in common with that graceful and 
 handsome young lady who figures in the second volume 
 of the " Early Letters of Thomas Carlyle." In these 
 portraits Mrs. Carlyle's face recalls that of George 
 Eliot. The brow is high and massive, the eyes deep- 
 sunk and sad, the mouth large and cynical. If Mrs. 
 Carlyle was ever like her Edinburgh portrait of 1826 
 she must have changed amazingly ; if these later por- 
 traits represent any physiognomic continuity, the artist 
 of the Edinburgh portrait must have lied amazingly. 
 
 In looking at the Arch House from the opposite side 
 of the street, the spire of the United Presbyterian 
 Churcli is a conspicuous object in the background to 
 the right hand. On the other side of that spire is the 
 Ecclefechan kirkyard, where Thomas Carlyle lies at 
 rest. So do the beginnings and ends of things meet ; 
 here the room memorable for its birth, there the kirk- 
 yard memorable for its death. That spire brings to 
 memory a Carlyle story told me in the district. Carlyle's 
 father, and the family in general, were adherents of a 
 dissenting congregation known as the Seceders or 
 Associate Congregation, but in 1847 these and other 
 dissenters were merged in the United Presbyterian 
 Church, and henceforward the Carlyle family were 
 reckoned among its members. By-and-by the newly- 
 named congregration addressed themselves to the 
 erection of a new church, and Carlyle's brother James
 
 THK HOUSE IN WHICH CAKLYLE WAS BORN 19 
 
 a contribution of 50 to the building. 
 Whether James Carlyle made his promise in good faith 
 none can tell, but it is affirmed that the erection of the 
 spire was made the pretext on his part for declining to 
 implement his promise. And so that spire cost 50 
 more than its contract price. Nor was that all; the 
 
 CARLYLE'S TEA-CADDY, TOBACCO-CUTTER, AND COFFEE-POT. 
 incident terminated by James Carlyle and his family 
 leaving the United Presbyterian Church and becoming 
 members of the Church of Scotland congregation at 
 Middlebie. 
 
 Mr. George G. Napier, whose photograph of Carlyle's 
 birth-room we are permitted to reproduce, furnishes the 
 following inventory and further particulars : " All the 
 furniture came from Cheyne-row except the fender. 
 
 B 2
 
 20 HOMES AND HAUNTS OF CARLYLE 
 
 The carpet is the old drawing-roorn one. The hats 
 on the wall I put there ; they usually hang on the 
 wall opposite. The one felt ; the other straw his 
 summer one. The clock was his kitchen clock at 
 Chelsea. The lamp was his study lamp. His tobacco- 
 cutter is on the mantelpiece. The portraits about the 
 mantelpiece are those of himself and his mother. The 
 tin box on the table is his tea-caddy. The visitors' 
 book was presented by an American namely, Mr. 
 Thomas Cook, of Boston. A traveller from Africa once 
 insisted on sleeping on the floor of this room all night, 
 and wrote after his name 
 
 " He taught me Truth, Reverence, Earnestness."
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 MA IN HILL. 
 
 From mason to farmer The farm at Mainhill The Carlyle 
 "family tongue" Mainhill as it is to-day. 
 
 WHEN the mason trade deteriorated to such an extent 
 that honest work went out of fashion, James Carlyle 
 turned to the occupation of farming, " that so he might 
 keep all his family about him." The first farm he took 
 was that, known as Mainhill, situated on the great 
 north road, about two miles from Ecclefechan. Here 
 the Carlyles lived from 1815 to 1820. It was not a 
 desirable farm at that time. "A wet, clayey spot," 
 Carlyle describes it, " a place of horrid drudgery ; " 
 and in 1825 he writes to his brother Alexander: 
 ' I hope my father will not think of burdening himself
 
 22 HOMES AND' HAUNTS OF CARLYLE 
 
 further with Mainhill and its plashy soil when the 
 lease has expired." Two anecdotes of the Mainhill days, 
 told me in the district, throw a little light upon the 
 domestic history of the family at that period. An old 
 man, Peter Scott by name, who served on the farm at 
 Mainhill as a lad, told my informant that when his 
 day's work was done he took a seat by the kitchen fire 
 and " held my head down for fear ane o' them wad 
 begin on me." All the Carlyles alike, with the possible 
 exception of the mother, were noted, and feared, and 
 hated in Ecclefechan for their caustic tongues, and this 
 incident of the serving lad holding his head down for 
 fear any one of the family would begin on him throws 
 that hatred into sharp relief. The other anecdote 
 concerns the father alone, and is valuable as indicating 
 the origin of Carlyle's apostrophising habit. A gang of 
 saw millers had put up at Mainhill, increasing to an 
 unusual size the company which gathered round the 
 old man when he conducted family worship. His 
 consecutive reading had brought him to that chapter 
 in Genesis where Potiphar's wife figures so infamously 
 with Joseph, and he read it through with his severest 
 enunciation, closing the book with emphatic action as 
 
 he shouted, " And thou wast a b ! " a coarse, 
 
 canine word which seems to have been often on his 
 lips. When his wife was in that unsettled mental state 
 which ultimately prompted her removal from home for
 
 MAINHILL 23 
 
 a short time, she did a deed that afterwards grieved 
 and appalled herself. 
 
 Seeing the old man stooping with a pail for water at 
 the well, she stole forward and pushed him bodily in ! 
 Then in a state of mortal terror she rushed into the 
 I muse, expecting him to well-nigh slay her m an 
 ungovernable passion. To her amazement, however, 
 when she was singing at the pitch of her voice in the 
 
 MAINHILL. 
 
 pretence of fearing him not, he entered quite calmly 
 and saluted her with, "Well, thou art a merry 
 
 b P 
 
 The wife of the present tenant of Mainhill was kind 
 enough to show me over the house, pointing out the 
 rooms which were in existence when the Carlyles lived 
 there and the additions that have been made since. 
 Mr. J. A. Froude informed me that in my photograph 
 Mainhill is twice the size it used to be, and he added 
 that Carlyle always had unpleasant remembrances of
 
 24 HOMES AND HAUNTS OF CARLYLE 
 
 that farm. The chief addition to the house is that two- 
 storeyed wing which occupies the foreground of the 
 picture, other alterations in the rear not affecting the 
 size of the building so much as its convenience. 
 
 CARLTLE S WASHING-STAND AT CHEYXE ROW.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 HODDAM HILL. 
 
 < 'ariyle's removal to Hod dam Hill "A house in the country, 
 and a horse to ride on "- Carlyle and his landlord A 
 quarrel and a notice to quit "Repentance Tower." 
 
 Ax one period in the early life of Carlyle, when the 
 Church, law, and tutoring had each failed to provide 
 him with an occupation, it occurred to him that he 
 mi^ht solve the problem of life hy taking a small farm 
 in his native district, where he could study and write 
 in peace, while one of his brothers attended to the 
 necessary practical work of the holding. "A house in 
 the country, and a horse to ride on, I must and will 
 have if it be possible." This was the message which 
 set the Mainhill people on the look-out, and sunn they
 
 26 HOMES AND HAUNTS OF CARLYLE 
 
 were able to report that in the small farm of Hoddam 
 Hill the) 7 had secured the place he needed. Accord- 
 ingly, Carlyle took possession of Hoddam Hill Farm 
 at the Whitsun Day term, 1825, his mother going with 
 him as housekeeper, and brother Alick as practical 
 fanner. For a wonder, considering the nature of the 
 man, Carlyle was perfectly satisfied with the place. 
 " I have been to see the place," he wrote Miss Welsh, 
 "and I like it well so far as I am interested in it. 
 There is a good house, where I may establish myself 
 in comfortable quarters. The views from it are superb. 
 There are hard, smooth roads to gallop on towards any 
 point of the compass, and ample space to dig and prune 
 under the pure canopy of a wholesome sky. The ancient 
 Tower of Repentance stands on a corner of the farm, a 
 fit memorial for reflecting sinners." This was Carlyle's 
 first impression of the farm, nor did occupancy prove 
 that distance had lent enchantment to the view. " We 
 live here on our hill-top enjoying a degree of solitude 
 that might content the great Zimmermami himself. 
 Few mortals come to visit us, I go to visit none." 
 Long years after he could recall the spot with feelings 
 of unmixed pleasure. " Hoddam Hill," he wrote in his 
 " Reminiscences," " was a neat, compact little farm, rent 
 100, which my father had leased for me, on which 
 was a prettyish little cottage for dwelling-house, and 
 from the window such a view (fifty miles in radius
 
 IIODDAM HILL 
 
 27 
 
 from beyond Tyndale to beyond St. Bees, Sol way Firth, 
 and all the Fells to Ingleborough inclusive) as Britain 
 or the world could hardly have matched." At the 
 present time the Carlyle pilgrim has considerable dif- 
 ficulty in finding Hoddam Hill, the fact of the philoso- 
 pher's tenancy of that spot having faded from the local 
 
 IIODDAM HILL: FRONT VIEW. 
 
 memory. All my questions were answered with stolid 
 negatives; I must mean Mainhill. Even a man who 
 had lived on the estate all his life was ignorant that 
 Carlyle once rented one of its farms. A twofold 
 explanation offers of this somewhat surprising fact : 
 Carlyle only occupied the farm for a year, and the 
 local name for the house appears to be "The Hill,"
 
 28 HOMES AND HAUNTS OF CAKLYLE 
 
 rather than " Hoddam Hill." If additional proof were 
 wanted of the indifference with which Carlyle is re- 
 garded in Annandale, it might be adduced from the 
 deplorable condition of the house in which he lived at 
 Hoddam Hill. The front door has been blocked up, 
 and the building so divided internally that it now 
 
 HODDAM HILL : REAR VIEW. 
 
 provides shelter for two labourers' families. When I 
 saw the place in the spring of 1893 it was in a condition 
 that would have been disgraceful had it been used as a 
 pig-sty ; mud and dirt were plentiful in all directions ; 
 heaps of rubbish made walking a gymnastic exercise ; 
 fences were broken down and gates lay prostrate ; and
 
 HODDAM HILL 29 
 
 unwashed and unkempt children looked out from the 
 doorways. 
 
 ( 'aiiyle may have had some idea of settling down at 
 Hoddam Hill. It was a delightful spot, and admirably 
 ;ul;t])ted to the case of a man who needed perfect quiet 
 and unlimited fresh air. But it was not to be. He 
 himself, however, was, I believe, to blame for starting 
 the sequence of events which led to his removal. It 
 happened in this way. Carlyle rode a great deal at 
 Hoddam, and one day the laird's wife, Mrs. Sharpe, 
 was walking gently down the hill near Repentance 
 Tower, when he passed her on his horse. As soon as 
 he got in front of her, he put his horse to the gallop 
 with such violence that the lady was soundly besplashed 
 with mud from head to foot. It was after this ungal- 
 lant incident, as I was informed, that the laird, General 
 Sharpe, called at Hoddam Hill, and Carlyle went to 
 him at the door, declining to ask him in. They had a 
 kittle royal of words, and the General brought matters 
 to a crisis by asking with a sneer, " You, what do YOU 
 know about farming?" After this thunder came the 
 Carlylean lightning. "One thing I can do," he shouted. 
 " I can pay the rent. That's all you have to do with 
 the land, and I'll feed laverocks on it if I like." 
 Then he slammed the door in the irate General's face. 
 Carlyle had often wished for a door of his own, which 
 he might " slam in the face of all nauseous intrusions,"
 
 30 HOMES AND HAUNTS OF CARLYLE 
 
 and he had got it now, and used it ! But he was not 
 to have it for long. No laird would endure such treat- 
 ment from a tenant ; at any rate, General Sharpe was 
 not the man to endure it. And so Carlyle had to quit 
 Hoddam Hill, and look about for a new home. 
 
 During his year at Hoddam Hill, a year which abode 
 as " a russet-coated idyll " in his memory because of 
 the visit Miss Welsh paid him there, Carlyle had two 
 objects in his landscape in which he took a deep interest, 
 and they are of interest to us because his eyes rested 
 upon them so often, and also because there are so many 
 allusions to them in his letters. Chief of these was 
 Eepentance Tower, a solemn-looking building which 
 stood near the house, but a little higher up on the 
 hill. It is surrounded by a graveyard, and hangs there 
 so spectral amid its memorials of the dead that it might 
 furnish food for thought to sinners of a less reflecting 
 turn of mind than Carlyle. The cause of its erection 
 and the origin of its name are thus related. A certain 
 Lord Herries identified as the champion of Mary 
 Queen of Scots was famous among those who, three 
 or four centuries ago, made forays into the English 
 border. On one occasion, when returning with many 
 prisoners, he was overtaken by a storm while crossing 
 the Solway, and in order to lighten his boat, cut all 
 their throats and cast them into the sea. Some time 
 after, feeling great qualms of conscience, he built this
 
 HODDAM HILL 
 
 31 
 
 sturdy tower, carving over the door the figures of a 
 dove and serpent, emblems of remorse and grace, with 
 the word " Eepentance " between them. The other 
 prominent object in Carlyle's landscape was Hoddam 
 
 KKl'ENTAXCE TOWKK. 
 
 Kirk, a low-lying and rather picturesque little building 
 with a curious little tower. In that tower hung the 
 bell to which he makes a pathetic allusion in his 
 reminiscences of life at Hoddam Hill. "My thoughts
 
 32 
 
 HOMES AND HAUNTS OF CARLYLK 
 
 were very peaceable, full of pity and humanity as 
 they had never been before. Nowhere can I recollect 
 of myself such pious musings, communiiigs silent and 
 spontaneous with fact and nature, as in those poor 
 Annandale localities. The sound of the kirk-bell once 
 
 HODDAM KIEK. 
 
 or twice on Sunday mornings (from Hoddam Kirk, 
 about a mile on the plains below me) was strangely 
 touching, like the departing voice of eighteen hundred 
 years."
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 SCOTSBRIG. 
 
 THE abrupt termination of Carlyle's tenancy of Hodclam 
 Hill coincided with the expiry of his father's lease of 
 Main! i ill, and there had to be a double flitting. Once, 
 more there was diligent searching through the country- 
 side for a desirable farm, rewarded at length by the 
 discovery of Scotsbrig,* which was to remain the family 
 home for the rest of Carlyle's life. Scotsbrig is so 
 closely interwoven with the history of his books that 
 his word-pictures of the place, both in anticipation and 
 realisation, deserve to be added to those provided by 
 the camera. In anticipation, he wrote to his brother 
 
 * " The farm," says Mr. Napier, "is very nicely situated above 
 a little brook which runs through a sort of glen. Over this 
 brook was once a sort of natural bridge hence the name God'w- 
 brig, corrupted into Scotsbrig." 
 
 C
 
 34 HOMES AND HAUNTS OF CARLYLE 
 
 John : " By dint of unbounded higgling, and the most 
 consummate diplomacy, the point was achieved to com- 
 plete satisfaction of the two husbandmen [Carlyle's 
 father and Alick] ; and Scotsbrig, free of various ' clags 
 and claims/ which they had argued away, obtained for 
 a rent of 190 (cheap, as they reckon it), in the face of 
 many competitors. . . . The people also are to repair 
 the house effectually ; to floor it anew, put bun-doors on 
 it, new windows, and so forth; and it seems it is an 
 excellent shell of a house already. . . . Our mother 
 declares that there is ' plenty of both peats and water ; ' 
 others think ' the farm is the best in Middlebie 
 parishm'; our father seems to have renewed his youth, 
 even as the eagle's age." Two months later Carlyle 
 wrote to John again, this time in realisation : " We 
 are all got over with whole bones to this new country ; 
 and every soul of us, our mother to begin with, much 
 in love with it. The house is in bad order ; but we 
 hope to have it soon repaired, and for farming purposes 
 it is an excellent ' shell of a house.' Then we have a 
 linn with crags and bushes and a ' fairy knowe,' though 
 no fairies that I have seen yet ; and, cries our mother, 
 abundance of grand thready peats, and water from the 
 brook, and no reek, and no Honour (i.e., General 
 Sharpe) to pester us ! To say nothing, cries our father, 
 of the eighteen yeacre of the best barley in the county ; 
 and bog-hay, adds Alick, to fatten scores of young
 
 I 
 
 QJ 
 
 1 
 
 > 
 
 I 
 
 "5, 
 e 
 
 c 2
 
 SCOTSBRIG 37 
 
 beasts ! In fact, making all allowance for new fangled- 
 ness, it is a much better place, so far as I can judge, 
 than any our people have yet been in ; and among a far 
 better and kindlier sort of people." 
 
 Such was Scotsbrig in 1826, and such it remains to 
 the present day. Here Carlyle's father and mother 
 lived for the remainder of their days, and here his 
 brother James kept the old home together until within 
 a few years of his own death. Here, too, Carlyle spent 
 the most of his holidays ; for even after he became 
 famous, and could have passed those holidays in the 
 homes of the greatest of the land, he generally elected 
 to spend his days of rest among his own kindred in this 
 unpretentious but peaceful home. It is well known 
 that Carlyle suffered severely in writing his books. 
 Most authors do. No book that is worth writing is 
 written without a great expenditure of nervous and 
 mental force. At any rate it was so with Carlyle. 
 \Vhen he had finished a book he felt completely 
 prostrate, and to recover strength and spirit again he 
 generally fled to Scotsbrig. What Virgil did for Dante 
 ut the foot of Purgatory, Scotsbrig did for Carlyle when 
 he emerged from the Inferno into which his books 
 plunged him.
 
 SOME CAKLYLE IIELICS.
 
 PART II. 
 
 CARLYLE LOCALITIES 
 
 IN 
 
 EDINBURGH.
 
 " ' There is a country accent,' says La Rochefoucault, ' not in 
 speech only, but in thought, conduct, character and manner of 
 existing, which never forsakes a man ' . . . A country whence the, 
 entire people is, or even once has been, laid hold of, filled to the 
 heart with an infinite religious idea, has ' made a step from which 
 it cannot retrograde.' Thought, conscience, the sense that man is 
 denizen of a Universe, creature of an Eternity, has penetrated to 
 the remotest cottage, to the simplest heart. Beautiful and awful, 
 the feeling of a Heavenly Behest, of Duty God-commanded, over- 
 canopies all life." ESSAY ON SIR WALTER SCOTT (Miscellanies, 
 vol. vi.).
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 CAKLYLE'S STUDENT KESIDENCES. 
 
 Carlyle as an Edinburgh man His student lodgings Life at 
 the Universities Oarlyle's inscription on a window pane. 
 
 AT the first conference in Edinburgh for the celebra- 
 tion of the hundredth birthday of Thomas Carlyle, on 
 4th December, 1895, Emritus-Proteasor Masson alluded 
 to the purchase of Carlyle's house in Cheyne Row, and 
 how people from all parts of the world were going to 
 see the house in which he lived and worked. There 
 ought, he thought, to be commemoration of Carlyle also 
 in Scotland, and particularly in Edinburgh. The 
 earlier part of Carlyle's life, and a very critical time of 
 his life, intellectually, was spent in Edinburgh ; he was 
 an Edinburgh man for a part of his life; he was 
 educated at Edinburgh University ; he was a citizen of
 
 42 HOMES AND HAUNTS OF CARLYLE 
 
 Edinburgh ; the houses in which he lived successively 
 were still shown. In his old age. when laden with 
 honour, he came back to Edinburgh, to receive, what 
 Professor Masson believed Carlyle regarded as the 
 crowning honour of his life, the Lord Rectorship of the 
 University. Carlyle afterwards showed his affection for 
 Edinburgh University by bequeathing to it the estate 
 of Craigenputtock. 
 
 The localities directly associated with the Carlyles 
 are his various student lodgings, both in the old and the 
 new town, and No. 21, Comely Bank, in the northern 
 or Stockbridge suburb of Edinburgh, and the scene of 
 his early married life for eighteen months. According 
 to Alison Hay Dunlop, Carlyle previously rented the 
 first flat of the corner tenement of Carlton Street and 
 St. Bernard's Crescent, Mr. Irving, of the Advocate's 
 Library, acting for the proprietor, who was then abroad. 
 He entered into possession, but having conceived, not 
 without reason, some dislike to a neighbouring tenant 
 of questionable reputation, he overwhelmed Mr. Irving 
 with a whirlwind of speech, and cancelled the 
 agreement. 
 
 Thomas Carlyle came up from Ecclefechan, Dumfries- 
 shire, to attend Edinburgh University for the November 
 term in 1809, when scarcely fourteen years of age. 
 His companion was Tom Smail, two or three years 
 older than himself : they walked all the way, and took
 
 CARLYLE'S STUDENT RESIDENCES 43 
 
 three days to do the journey of 60 miles, which can now 
 be accomplished by Caledonian Railway in a couple of 
 hours. According to the recollections jotted down at 
 Mentone in January, 1867, he had a view of the 
 " Outer House " in Parliament Square, on that very 
 evening of his arrival on November 9th. Everything 
 must have been full of wonder to him as he had never 
 been out of Dumfries-shire before. On the way thither 
 lie pictures Tom Smail (afterwards a Burgher minister 
 in Galloway) stalking on in front, whistling an Irish 
 tune, the " Belfast Shoemaker," " most melancholy to 
 poor me, given up to my bits of reflections in the 
 silence of the moors and hills." Carlyle and his com- 
 panion had secured a clean-looking, and cheap lodging, 
 in a poorer part of the south side of the town off 
 Nicholson Street, called Simon Square. Carlyle's signa- 
 ture may be seen still in the Matriculation Album of 
 the University. It is a clear, firm boyish hand, the 
 sixth signature in the letter C, the previous signature 
 being that of a Dumfries boy, named Irvin Carlyle, 
 who turns up in juxtaposition more than once again. 
 According to Masson the quadrangle was not as it now 
 appears in the University, but a " chaotic jumble of 
 inconvenient old class-rooms," with only parts of the 
 present buildings furnished and occupied. Carlyle 
 attended Professor Alexander Christian for Latin, 
 during his first session, and Professor George Dunbar
 
 44 HOMES AND HAUNTS OF CAELYLE 
 
 for Greek. We do not know what kind of scholar he 
 was at this date, but it is certain he had paid his 
 guinea in December entitling him to the use of books 
 in the University Library; and in January, 1810, the 
 Library record shows that he had borrowed and doubt- 
 less read " Robertson's History of Scotland, Vol. II ;" 
 ' Cook's Voyages ;" ' Byron's Narrative on the Coast of 
 Patagonia;" the first volume of "Gibbon" (after- 
 wards completed at Kirkcaldy) ; two volumes of 
 "Shakespeare;" a volume of the "Arabian Nights;" 
 " Congreve's Works;" then another volume of the 
 " Arabian Nights ;" two volumes of " Hume's England ;" 
 " Gil Bias ;" a third volume of " Shakespeare," and a 
 volume of the " Spectator." Carlyle was home at 
 Ecclefechan in April, 1810, and was met by his father, 
 on the road, " with a red plaid about him." In his 
 second session 1810-11 he attended the first mathe- 
 matical class under Professor John Leslie, and the 
 logic class under Professor David Ritchie. His reading 
 from the University Library between December, 1810, 
 and March, 1811, included, were " Voyages and Travels," 
 Fielding, Smollett, Reid's " Inquiry into the Human 
 Mind," " Scotland Described," " Locke's Essays," " Don 
 Quixote," &c. In his third session he attended the 
 second Greek class, the second mathematical, and the 
 moral philosophy under Dr. Thomas Brown ; in his last 
 and fourth session when he became a virtual M.A., he
 
 CARLYLE'S STUDENT RESIDENCES 45 
 
 was under Leslie again and Playfair for moral philo- 
 sophy. " Carlyle " says Masson, " when he left our 
 University in 1813, a virtual M.A., aged seventeen years 
 and four months, was already potentially the very 
 Carlyle we now revere, in consequence of his subse- 
 quent life, as one of the greatest and noblest spirits of 
 his generation. Not yet at his full stature, and of thin, 
 lean rather gaunt frame, he was a youth of as great 
 faculty, as noble a promise, as Scotland had produced 
 since her Burns, born in 1753, and her Scott, born in 
 1771." Even then he had a settled literary ambition, 
 but it is hardly the place here to see how this was 
 worked out. We must say something of his Edinburgh 
 homes. 
 
 There is a mine of interesting material regarding 
 the formative period of Carlyle's life, and also his 
 Edinburgh life, in the four volumes of Early Letters, 
 edited by Professor Norton. When student and teacher 
 he seems to have flitted from lodging to lodging, both 
 in the old town and new town of Edinburgh, with 
 many a grumble in the process, and we are not sure 
 that we have detected all his residences as the heading 
 of his letters is frequently " Edinburgh " only. In 
 November to January, 1818-19, he seems to have lived 
 with a certain Mrs. Davies, in South Richmond Street, 
 and many are the complaints of his landlady's sluttish 
 ways, as also of dirt and vermin. His bill of 15s. 2d.
 
 46 HOMES AND HAUNTS OF CARLYLE 
 
 for one week, he says, is too much for the slender 
 accommodation and his paltry ill-cooked morsel. 
 " There is a schoolmaster above, thrown in, who has a 
 Vocal evening each week, and many noisy brats." By 
 February, 1819, he is away from this lodging and dates 
 from Mrs. Scott's, 15, Carnegie Street, and is careful to 
 tell his mother that he is as anxious as she can possibly 
 be about his own health, walking out before breakfast, 
 and having a stroll in the suburbs after his German 
 lessons, at 11 A.M. In November he is residing with 
 the wife of a tailor named Thomson, paying 6,s. a week 
 for his room, fire included. He cannot have remained 
 long here, as he dates in December, from Duff's lodg- 
 ings, 35, Bristo Street. All these places are in the 
 poorer portion of the old town, and in the south side. 
 In November, 1821, he has taken a jump to the new 
 town, and dates from 9, Jamaica Street. Next month 
 (L9th Dec.) he is in Cuisine's lodgings, 5, College 
 Street, a street in the old town, close by, and running 
 parallel to the University. His address during 1822, 
 and part of 1823, was most frequently 3, Moray Street 
 (now Spey Street), off Leith Walk ; and 1, Moray 
 Street after the Buller tutorship, in February, 1824. 
 In January, 1826, we find an address from 21, Salisbury 
 Street, a steep street running into the Queen's Park, 
 under the shadow of Salisbury Crags, Arthur's Seat. 
 Like Burns at Ellisland, and elsewhere, Carlyle left
 
 CABLYLE S FII13T EDINBURGH LODGING.
 
 CAKLYI.K'S STUDENT RESIDENCES 49 
 
 a record of his presence and moods sometimes on the 
 window panes. In his lodging at 3, Moray Street, 
 there was a pane of glass, coveted by Mr. Fronde for 
 some public institution, and which would be invaluable 
 for the Carlyle Museum, Chelsea, in which he had 
 inscribed the verse of a ballad : 
 
 " O little did my mother think, 
 
 The day she cradled me, 
 The lands that I should travel in, 
 The death I was to die." 
 
 It appears that on the sale of the house, some years 
 ago, this scratched pane of glass was sold to Mr. A. 
 Brown, bookseller, Bristo Place, in September, 1888. 
 This Moray Street residence is one of the most interest- 
 ing of his Edinburgh abodes, for after abandoning the 
 Church, law, and school-mastering, in turn, he took 
 up his literary work in earnest here, writing articles 
 for Brewster's " Edinburgh Encyclopaedia," translating 
 Legendre's "Geometry," and beginning his German trans- 
 lations. It was in this neighbourhood, too, consciously 
 while on Leith "Walk, that Carlyle began to take a 
 brighter, braver outlook on life. This was in June, 
 1821, and is described in " Sartor Resartus " under the 
 guise of Teufelsdrockh traversing Hue St. Thomas de 
 l'Enfcr (Leith Walk). From this hour he dates his 
 spark of new birth, "perhaps I directly thereupon began 
 t.o be a man." 
 
 D
 
 50 
 
 HOMES AND HAUNTS OF CAKLYLE 
 
 S. T. Coleridge, in a letter to Southey in 1803, after 
 a visit to Edinburgh, exclaimed, " What a wonderful 
 city Edinburgh is! What alternation of height and 
 depth." He enjoyed a sunset from Arthur's Seat im- 
 mensely. Scott, in his " Heart of Midlothian," has 
 
 CABIYLE'S HoutE, 1, MOHAY STBEKT (NOW SPEY STKEET), 
 
 LUTH WALK. 
 
 eulogised Salisbury Crags as the best place from which 
 to witness a sunset ; and there Campbell composed 
 some of his finest poetry. This is what Carlyle makes 
 of it, in a letter to his brother in March, 1821 ; he was
 
 CAKLYLES STUDENT RESIDENCES 51 
 
 hungering for the work of his life, living hazily ahead, 
 and he felt with all its drawbacks Edinburgh was the 
 place for him. ' I am considerably clearer than I was, 
 and 1 should have been still more so had not this after- 
 noon been wet, and so prevented me from breathing the 
 air of Arthur's Seat, a mountain close beside us, where 
 the atmosphere is pure as a diamond, and the prospect 
 ui.uuler than any you ever saw. The blue majestic 
 everlasting ocean, with the Fife hills swelling gradually 
 into the Grampians behind ; rough crags and rude 
 precipices at our feet (where not a hillock rears its 
 head unsung), with Edinburgh at their base clustering 
 proudly over her rugged foundations, and covering with 
 a vapoury mantle the jagged black venerable masses of 
 stonework that stretch far and wide, and show like a 
 
 city of Fairyland I saw it all last evening when 
 
 the sun was going down, and the moon's fine crescent, 
 like a pretty silver creature as it is, was riding quietly 
 above me." 
 
 D 2
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 EARLY MARRIED LIFE AT COMELY BANK. 
 
 Literary and artistic associations Married life Visits from 
 Jeffrey. 
 
 THE late Sir James T. Simpson was never tired of eulo- 
 gising the healthy nature of the Stockbridge district, in 
 which lies 21, Comely Bank, the residence for eighteen 
 months of Thomas Carlyle after his marriage, 182628. 
 Simpson's theory was that the prevailing west and 
 north winds cleared the district of smoke. Now, that 
 the Water of Leith purification scheme is completed, 
 this may be even more the case. Neither is the district 
 without its literary associations. Sir Henry Raeburn 
 and David Roberts were both born there. If we 
 approach Comely Bank from the high road, over one
 
 EARLY MARRIED LIFE AT COMELY BANK 53 
 
 of Telf orcl's last bridges, the Dean, spanning the Water 
 of Leith, a noble prospect broadens to the north-west 
 towards the Firth of Forth, Fife, and westwards the 
 finely wooded Corstorphine Hill, in a nook of which, at 
 Craigbrook, stands the last residence of Lord Jeffrey. 
 Dr. John Brown relates how when walking along here 
 one Sunday evening with Thackeray, a building crane 
 on Corstorphine Hill, the image of a cross, drew from 
 the novelist the single expression, " Calvary." The 
 entrance to the Dean Cemetery is opposite Comely 
 Bank, and here, amongst others of the mighty dead, are 
 buried Lords Jeffrey and Cockburn, Professors John 
 Wilson and Aytoun, and Alexander Russel, of the 
 Scotsinan. Professor Wilson lived for many a day, 
 and wrote many " Blackwood " articles in Ann Street, 
 near by. Stewart's Hospital, this palatial building to 
 the left, is now one of the Merchants' Company's 
 Schools. That fine building at Comely Bank is Fettes 
 College, an endowed school, and that other beyond is 
 St. Cuthbert's Poor-house. Descending this way to the 
 right from the Queensferry Eoad, we pass what was in 
 Carlyle's day the fields and steading of the Dean Farm. 
 The town has crept westwards a good deal since then. 
 But 21, Comely Bank, now occupied by Mr. Ehind, 
 sculptor, is still in the country, and there are still no 
 houses opposite. Comely Bank is built of white, hard 
 Craigleith stone, from the quarry close by. The cable
 
 54 HOMES AND HAUNTS OF CAULYLK 
 
 cars start every few minutes for the city end of Comely 
 Bank to climb one of the steepest inclines in the New 
 Town, towards Princes Street. 
 
 In May, 1826, Carlyle recorded, " House in Comely 
 Bank suitable as possible has been chosen ; was being 
 furnished from Haddington, beautifully, perfectly, and 
 even richly, by Mrs. Welsh's great skill in such matters, 
 aided by her daughter's, which was also great, and by 
 the frank, ivordless generosity of both, which surely was 
 very great." For immediate expenses of living Carlyle 
 had 200 ; his health and prospects improved during 
 the eighteen months here. He wrote two articles on 
 Jean Paul and on German literature : a paper on 
 Werner, on Goethe's " Helena," and one on Goethe 
 himself, which is reprinted in the " Miscellanies." A 
 novel " Wotton Keinfred " was begun here, which 
 Froude says was burned : but this seems surely not 
 the case, for it seems that this if the same book which 
 appeared in the "New Keview" not so long ago. 
 Plenty of visitors called, Jeffrey found them here, and 
 became a true friend to Carlyle and his wife. Jane 
 Carlyle wrote to her mother-in-law, " I should be very 
 stupid or very thankless if I did not congratulate 
 myself, every hour of the day, on the lot which it has 
 pleased Providence to assign me : my husband is so 
 kind ! so, in all respects after my own heart. I was 
 sick one day, and he nursed me as well as my own
 
 KARLY MARRIED LIFE AT COMELY BANK 
 
 OO 
 
 mother could have done." The weekly household ex- 
 penditure was reckoned at two pounds, which Carlyle 
 believed he could save for them. This seems to have 
 heen a happy period in the lives of both. " Directly 
 
 CAKLYLE'S HOUSE, COMELY BANK. 
 
 after breakfast," wrote Carlyle, " the good wife and the 
 doctor (his brother, John Cartyle, now staying with 
 them) retire upstairs to the drawing room, a little place 
 all fitted up like a lady's work-box, where a spunk of 
 five is lit for the forenoon ; and I, meanwhile, sit scrib- 
 and meditating and wrestling with the powers of
 
 56 HOMES AND HAUNTS OF CAKLYLK 
 
 dullness till one or two o'clock, when I sally forth into 
 the city or towards the seashore, taking care only to 
 be home for the important purpose of consuming my 
 mutton chop at four. After dinner we all read learned 
 languages till coffee (which we now often take at night 
 instead of tea), and so on till bed-time ; only that Jane 
 often sews ; and the doctor goes up to the celestial 
 globe, studying the fixed stars through an up-shoved 
 window." Wednesday night was their evening at home, 
 and Brewster, De Quincey, Sir William Hamilton, and 
 Professor Wilson, were amongst the callers. By Jane's 
 request he was to read a sermon and a chapter with 
 commentary, at least every Sabbath Day, and sittings 
 were even taken, although we have no record of how 
 often they were occupied, in the Established Church of 
 St. George's, at the west end. A memorable letter 
 arrived from Goethe, " extremely graceful, affectionate, 
 and patriarchal." Old Mrs. Carlyle paid them a visit 
 and was dragged round the sights of the city, and was 
 not denied " her smoke " in the evening. All this came 
 to an end in May, 1827, when the home was broken up 
 and the household gods were packed to the moorland 
 estate of Craigenputtock. Jeffrey, with his usual kind- 
 ness, kept the Carlyles for a week in Moray Place, 
 until their furniture should have arrived and matters 
 smoothed for them.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 A VISIT TO CARLYLE'S NIECE. 
 
 C'arlyle's niece and companion Carlyle "curios" A visit to 
 her house. 
 
 MARY CARLYLE AITKEN died at 30, Newbattle Terrace, 
 Edinburgh, on May 30, 1895, of pneumonia, following 
 influenza. She was the daughter of Jean Carlyle, 
 youngest sister of Thomas Carlyle, and was born in 
 Dumfries in 1848. She came into notice as the house- 
 keeper, companion, and amanuensis of her uncle in his 
 later life, She was married in September, 1879, to one 
 of her Canadian cousins, Mr. Alexander Carlyle, B.A., 
 of the Bield, Ontario. The marriage was solemnized 
 by the llev. James A. Campbell, parish minister of 
 Traquair. Her uncle was able to be present, and
 
 58 HOMES AND HAUNTS OF CAKLYLE 
 
 entered into conversation with the minister, expressing 
 his gratitude to Almighty God for being spared so long, 
 and speaking also of the work of John Knox. There 
 are two boys of this marriage. 
 
 Under her uncle's will she received the manuscript 
 and letters which formed the basis of the Jane Welsh 
 Carlyle " Letters and Memorials," " to whom also, dear 
 little soul, I bequeath 500 for the loving care and 
 unwearied patience and helpfulness she has shown to 
 me in these last solitary and infirm years. To her also 
 I give at her choice whatever memorials of my dear 
 departed one she has seen me silently preserving here, 
 especially the table in the drawing-room, at which 1 
 now write, and the little child's chair (in the china 
 closet), which latter to my eyes has always a brightness 
 as of morning, and a sadness as of death and eternity 
 when I look on it, and which, with the other dear 
 article, I have the weak wish to preserve yet awhile 
 when I am gone." On the death of her uncle, John 
 Aitken Carlyle, she was to get all the belongings at 
 Cheyne Row, with few exceptions ; but John Carlyle 
 pre-deceased his eminent brother by several years. 
 
 Her home at 30, Newbattle Terrace, Edinburgh, was 
 stored with many precious relics of the Carlyle house- 
 hold ; and an account of Carlyle localities in Edinburgh 
 would therefore hardly be complete without some 
 reference to the home of Mrs. Alexander Carlyle. A
 
 Provost Swan. John Carlyle. Thomas Carlyle. 
 
 Mary Carlyle Aitkon. 
 
 TAKEN AT KIBKCAI/DY. 
 Photo, by Patrick, 52, Comiston Road, Edinburgh.
 
 A VISIT TO GAIILYLE'S NIECE 61 
 
 representative of the " Westminster Gazette," who paid 
 a visit in 1894 to Mrs. Carlyle, wrote the following 
 accoimt of what he saw. 
 
 Mrs. Alexander Carlyle (Mary Carlyle Aitken) had 
 much to do, it should be stated, in stocking the birth- 
 place of Carlyle at Ecclefechan with relics, and took 
 much interest in the purchase of the house at Cheyne 
 Row for a Carlyle Museum. Unfortunately she did not 
 live to see the completion of the scheme, but her 
 husband, Mr. Alexander Carlyle, is doing his utmost to 
 carry out her wishes in the matter. 
 
 The proposal to buy the Carlyle house in Cheyne 
 Row was the occasion of the visit described in the 
 following pages : 
 
 Few people, as it appears to me, can be better 
 entitled to express an authoritative opinion as to the 
 desirability of preserving the house at Chelsea in which 
 Carlyle and his gifted wife lived so long, in which he 
 worked, and in which he died, than the niece who was, 
 as he expressed it to Emerson, "useful here as a 
 cheerful rushlight in this now sombre element ... in 
 which she bears me company." Accordingly I used 
 the kindness of a friend to procure an introduction 
 to Mrs. Alexander Carlyle, and paid a long and de- 
 lightful visit to her home in Edinburgh. 
 
 The house in which she has taken up her temporary 
 abode seemed to me far more redolent of Carlyle than
 
 62 HOMES AND HAUNTS OF CAKLYLE 
 
 the dismantled dwelling at Cheyne Row can at present 
 possibly be. The furniture which fills it simple 
 \> ithout lack of comfort, and handsome without osten- 
 tationis the same that began its service before the 
 birth of little Jane in Dr. Welsh's home at Haddington, 
 that served Carlyle and his wife from the time of their 
 marriage onwards until the end of their days, succes- 
 sively at Comely Bank in Edinburgh, at lonely 
 Craigenputtock, and at Chelsea, and is still carefully 
 preserved as a precious heirloom. The walls are 
 covered with the portraits of the Carlyle family and 
 their friends. There are Carlyle himself and his wife 
 in more than one rendering; there is, in a place of 
 honour, the fine life-size portrait of Carry le's mother in 
 her '' mutch " that used to hang over the mantelshelf at 
 Cheyne Row ; portraits of John Sterling and his 
 mother, of Walter Savage Landor and David Hume, 
 endless prints and other portraits of Frederick the 
 Great and his whole "generation, of Cromwell and 
 Shakespeare, Milton and Dante, and many another of 
 Carlyle's heroes. Nor mayj I forget to mention a 
 beautiful drawing of the dining-room at Cheyne Row 
 by Mrs. Allingham. The books, too, would demand an 
 interview to themselves to do them justice such books 
 they are ! One case in particular is rich with materials 
 for the historian of literature, and with suggestion for 
 the imaginative student. In it are placed almost
 
 7.<
 
 A VISIT TO GARLYLE'S NIECE 65 
 
 entirely the books with inscriptions, and I spent a half- 
 hour, whose fascination only the confirmed bookman 
 can guess, in examining some of its treasures under the 
 guidance of Mrs. Carlyle. There is, for instance, an old 
 quarto Bible containing a childish scrawl that may be 
 safely presumed to be the very earliest autograph of 
 Thomas Carlyle now in existence. A daintily bound 
 set of the complete works in early editions contained 
 in almost every volume some tender and touching 
 dedication to his wife, which, with many another 
 inscription, I would gladly have copied. But although 
 I saw the names of Browning, Tennyson, Ruskin, Leigh 
 Hunt, Thackeray, Emerson, and George Eliot, not to 
 speak of Gcethe, written on rare books, I had to consent 
 with regret to leave them in obscurity. For though 
 Mrs. Carlvle was generous in showing her treasures, 
 she was miserly in her determination that no further 
 description of them should at present go abroad. She 
 consented to be " interviewed," but only on the scheme 
 for purchasing the house in Cheyne Row ; " for that," 
 she said, " is a matter which both I and my husband 
 arc greatly interested in, and desire to further : " 
 
 " Really, being interviewed isn't so very formidable," 
 I protested. "It's a little like amateur photography, 
 you know you press a button and I do the rest." 
 " Alas," she replied, " I know well enough what it's 
 like, and that sometimes the little brown pictures are 
 
 E
 
 66 HOMES AND HAUNTS OF CAULYLE 
 
 by no means to one's mind after the button has been 
 pressed. However, if you will ask questions, I will 
 answer them." 
 
 " Very well," I said. " In the first place, what do 
 you think generally of the proposed plan for buying 
 the Cheyne Row house, and keeping it as a memorial 
 of Mr. Carlyle ? " " I think it will be delightful, if it 
 can be carried out. I am sure that a great many 
 people would like to look over the house, and it is 
 disgusting to think of it in its present condition." 
 
 " You think there would be a good many visitors, if 
 the scheme were carried out ? " " Undoubtedly I think 
 there would. For even to the house at Ecclefechan in 
 which my uncle was born, which is comparatively very 
 inaccessible, there must have been more than 600 
 visitors in the course of the present year, and I fancy 
 it would be far less interesting to most people than 
 Cheyne Eow." 
 
 "Are there many portraits of Mr. Carlyle in 
 existence ? " I asked. " Oh, a good many. There are, 
 for instance, the portraits by Lawrence, by Maclise, by 
 Watts, by Millais (I do not know what has become of 
 it), and by Whistler, not to mention many of less note. 
 Then there are early daguerreotypes and photographs 
 also, and the bust by Woolner, and, in addition to the 
 big statue, several things by Boehm. I feel sure that 
 if the house were secured, there would be no difficulty
 
 A VISIT TO CARLYLE'S NIECE 67 
 
 in making it interesting and attractive to visitors. As 
 to that, I am not one of those who think that my uncle 
 will soon be forgotten, or that the books he wrote will 
 soon cease to interest people in all that belonged to 
 him." 
 
 Before I left, Mrs. Carlyle took me to see the auto- 
 graphs. These were in another room, where we dis- 
 turbed from " lessons " a couple of sturdy boys whose 
 rosy cheeks promise long endurance to the Carlyle race 
 in the land. There, framed and hanging behind the 
 door, were the signatures of almost " everybody as was 
 anybody" in the world of letters in 1875, attached to 
 the address of congratulation on the sage's eightieth 
 birthday. "Only twenty years ago!" said Mrs. Carlyle 
 to me, meditatively. " Yet you see how many of them 
 are dead. Tennyson and Browning, Owen and Darwin, 
 Sir Henry Maine and J. R Green, are all gone." And 
 so I left the house, musing partly on the uncertainty of 
 life, but rather with a wistful eye upon the eternity of 
 well-earned fame. 
 
 K 2
 
 PART III. 
 
 CARLYLE 
 
 CRAIGENPUTTOCK.
 
 " What is Hope ?a smiling rainbow 
 
 Children follow through the wet; 
 'Tis not here, still yonder, yonder ! 
 Never urchin found it yet. 
 
 What is Life ?a thawing ice-board 
 
 On a sea with sunny shore. 
 Gay we sail it melts beneath us ! 
 
 We are sunk, and seen no more. 
 
 What is Man ? a foolish baby ; 
 
 Vainly strives, and fights and frets ; 
 Demanding all deserving nothing ! 
 
 One small grave is what he gets." 
 
 Verses by Carlyle, written at Craigenputtock.
 
 CHAPTEE IX. 
 
 A GENERAL VIEW OF CRAIGENPUTTOCK. 
 
 A visit to Craigenputtock The silence of the moors Carlyle 
 at Burns's cottage. 
 
 CRAIGENPUTTOCK is the lonely farm-house on the borders 
 of Galloway, and in the south-west of Dumfries-shire, 
 where Thomas Carlyle spent seven of the earlier years 
 (.1 his married life (182S-34). This farm, of 1,000 
 acres or so, he left, as already mentioned, to Edinburgh 
 University. James Carlyle, a nephew, was in occupa- 
 tion, before the death of his uncle in 1881, and now 
 the place is farmed by his widow. There are six young 
 Carlyles at least, and it was a grand-niece, with 
 prominent dark eyes and dark hair, who, in the absence 
 of her mother, showed us over the house.
 
 72 HOMES AND HAUNTS OF CARLYLE 
 
 When Ealph Waldo Emerson came, armed with a 
 letter of introduction, to visit Carlyle, in August, 18H3, 
 he landed in the coach at Dumfries from Glasgow. 
 He had to hire for the remaining sixteen miles, and 
 " found the house among desolate heathery moors, where 
 the lonely scholar nourished his mighty heart." Auld- 
 girth Station, on the Glasgow and South Western 
 Railway, is within eight miles of this lonely farm. We 
 took a more interesting but circuitous route to reach 
 the place. One fine Saturday morning, we started 
 from our country quarters just where the brawling 
 Euterkin joins the Nith, and made our way past 
 Drumlanrig, a seat of the Duke of Buccleuch, passed 
 through the villages of Penpont and Moniaive, and 
 following the moorland road to Dairy in Galloway for 
 a few miles, struck southward over an even wilder and 
 lonelier road amongst the hills, with Loch ITrr to the 
 left and making a great circuit, reached Craigenputtock. 
 The return journey was by Dunscore Valley and Pen- 
 pont. Our cycle flew down hill over the shin-stone 
 strewed road. But, as might be expected, the rough cross 
 moorland roads round Craigenputtock are unridable. It 
 is worth remembering in passing Penpont that an 
 enthusiastic Dumfriesian has proved to a demonstration 
 that Macmillan, a blacksmith there, was the pioneer 
 maker of the safety cycle. The story of his doings is 
 as entertaining as a romance. But we leave that to
 
 A GENERAL VIEW OF CKAIGENPUTTOCK 75 
 
 Mr. Jolmstone, of Glasgow. Moniaive lies in tine 
 pastoral scenery in the valley of the Cairn. Maxwell- 
 town, three miles below, is the scene of the song of 
 " Annie Laurie " beginning 
 
 " Maxwelltown's braes are bonuie." 
 
 Moniaive, a village of low slated houses, was the birth- 
 place of James Eenwick, the last Scottish martyr. 
 There is a very plain monument to him in the outskirts 
 of the village. 
 
 As we skirted lonely Loch Urr with its remains of 
 an ancient Caledonian town, the silence on the moor 
 was almost oppressive. Could we have crossed the 
 moor direct, two miles would have brought us to 
 Craigenputtock. By road it was four miles at least. 
 But we did not regret this, for we crossed Drumwhinn 
 Bridge over the Orr, built in 1832, and celebrated by 
 Carlyle in a poem in Leigh Hunt's journal. It is quite 
 characteristic of the man who said that the builder of a 
 good bridge was greater than the writer of a book. 
 
 Meek autumn midnight glancing, 
 
 The stars above hold sway, 
 I bend, in muse advancing 
 
 To lonesome Orr my way. 
 
 Its rush in drowsy even 
 
 Can make the waste less dead ; 
 Short pause beneath void heaven, 
 
 Then back again to bed.
 
 76 HOMES AND HAUNTS OF CAJiLYLE 
 
 The shiiistoue bridge is builded, 
 
 Will hang a hundred year ; 
 When bridge to time has yielded, 
 
 The brook will still be here. 
 
 Farewell, poor moorland river, 
 
 We parted and we met ; 
 Thy journeyings are for ever, 
 
 Mine are not ended yet. 
 
 His journeyings ended about half a century later, for 
 this was written in 18H2. This square, two-storey 
 farm-house is protected by a belt of trees, oak, plane, 
 and a few firs. The farmer's wife over at Ellisland 
 remembers a visit made by Carlyle, along with his 
 niece (Mary Carlyle Aitkeii), about three years before 
 his death. The sage as he looked at the tiny farm- 
 house where Burns wrote "Tarn O'Shanter," and " To 
 Mary in Heaven," remarked, " No, there are no relics of 
 Burns here, but perhaps his hand touched this wall."
 
 CHAPTEK X. 
 
 LIFE AT CRA.IGENPUTTOCK. 
 
 Carlyle memorials Some interesting books Mi's. Carlyle on 
 her banishment. 
 
 THKIIK is the impression of both the head, heart and 
 hand of Thomtis Carlyle and Jane Welsh Carlyle about 
 Craigenputtock. The house was built by them and the 
 famous essay on Burns and "Sartor" took shape in this 
 solitude, ere Carlyle exchanged these moorland solitudes 
 for the roar of London. In this pleasant parlour are 
 the Carlyle portrait of 1863; the Hyde Park equestrian 
 photograph, with F. Chapman, the publisher, near the 
 horse's head ; the morning room at Chelsea; two excel- 
 lent portraits of Jane Welsh Carlyle. Here also an-
 
 78 HOMES AND HAUNTS OF CAKLYLE 
 
 portraits of Cromwell (1648), of Frederick the Great's 
 Grandfather in his 27th and 63rd year. Two portraits 
 in the dining-room of Dr. John Carlyle, translator of 
 Dante, remind one strongly of Thackeray. But this 
 snug little room, with its window looking into the back 
 regions of the farm-house is the most interesting place 
 at Craigenputtock. Here, round a good fire, Carlyle 
 defied the elements and the loneliness ; " buried himself 
 in his books, and the Devil might pipe to his own," and 
 here he did some of the best and greatest literary work 
 done in the early part of the century. In the book-case 
 here are first editions of most of Carlyle's books. Here 
 is the copy of the "French Ee volution" in full calf, 
 which Carlyle sent with a kind inscription to his 
 mother. Another inscription at her death gifted it to 
 his nephew, James Carlyle, of Craigenputtock. It was a 
 kindly touch on the part of Carlyle to insert a little 
 fly-leaf, with a translation, in his own hand, of the 
 motto from Goethe, for the benefit of his mother. 
 Then there is Theobald's "Shakespeare" in eight volumes, 
 also a gift to nephew James for the dark nights at 
 Craigenputtock. There is the usual visitors' book (we 
 found one even at Ellisland, with the names of many 
 Americans inscribed), and some contemporary literature, 
 including " Great Thinkers and Workers " with Carlyle's 
 head emblazoned on the cover. 
 
 Craigenputtock (the craig or shinstone hill of the
 
 I
 
 LIFE AT CRAIGENPUTTOCK 81 
 
 "puttocks" or small hawks) had been in the Welsh 
 family for many generations. Through Jane Baillie 
 Welsh, only daughter of Dr. Welsh of Haddington, the 
 small estate came to Carlyle, and by him was left to 
 Edinburgh University. Mrs. Welsh had her life-rent 
 of it. As practical man on the spot Alexander Carlyle 
 with his sister went into occupation in 1827. Thomas 
 Carlyle and his wife came thither from Edinburgh in 
 June, 1828, when Jane Carlyle watched the joiners and 
 plumbers, the fowls hatching in the wood, and was up 
 most of the night once, making experiments with the 
 kitchen oven in bread-making, in order to produce 
 bread that would suit Carlyle's stomach. We thought 
 of all this, as we surveyed the kitchen fire-place. Lord 
 Jeffrey, who was patronising Carlyle at this time, broke 
 the quiet of Craigenputtock twice, by a visit. He 
 thought the sage a fool of the first water to settle 
 here. Carlyle noted that he had finished Burns at 
 this "Devil's Den," September 16, 1828. In 1830 he 
 told his brother John (whom he had educated for 
 medicine) that he was writing " a very singular piece. 
 It glances from heaven to earth and back again, in a 
 strange satirical frenz}', whether fine or not remains to 
 be seen." This was " Sartor Itesartus." 
 
 Mrs. Carlyle wrote that Craigenputtock was not such 
 a frightful place as some folks believed. If cut off from 
 good society she was also delivered from bad. They 
 
 F
 
 82 HOMES AND HAUNTS OF CAKLYLE 
 
 had horses to ride, and instead of shopping and morning 
 calls, she had bread to bake and chickens to hatch. 
 Carlyle, in a letter to Goethe, which Froude ought to 
 have printed in his "Life," described the place as 
 "among granite hills and the black morasses which 
 stretch through Galloway almost to the Irish Sea. In 
 this wilderness of heath and rock our estate stands 
 forth a green oasis, a tract of ploughed, partly enclosed 
 and planted ground, where corn ripens and trees afford 
 a shade, although surrounded by sea-mews and rough- 
 woolled sheep. Here, with no small effort, have we 
 built and furnished a neat substantial dwelling, where 
 in absence of a professional or other office, we live to 
 cultivate literature according to our strength, and in 
 our own peculiar way This nook of ours, the lone- 
 liest in Britain, is six miles from anyone likely to 
 visit us." 
 
 Our pictures of Craigenputtock and of Carlyle's 
 study are again from Mr. Napier's photographs. The 
 room has only one window, which looks out into the 
 farm-yard. The grate is the same as in Carlyle's time. 
 Over the mantel, in the frame, is an engraving of 
 Craigenputtock, which Carlyle had done to send to 
 Goethe. Carlyle wrote his essay on Burns in this 
 room; then his essay on Voltaire, and also "Sartor 
 Kesartus." 
 
 With regard to the general view of Craigenputtock,
 
 LIFE AT CKAIGENPUTTOGK 83 
 
 Mr. Xapier says that the house is very difficult to 
 photograph on account of the trees. Carlyle planted 
 most of these trees himself. The farm buildings are at 
 the back of the house. Carlyle's study, as stated above, 
 was to the back. He built the porch in front. The 
 window on the right of the porch, next to the gate was 
 that of his dining-room. The window on the left of 
 the porch, that of his drawing-room. A door opened 
 off the drawing-room into his study.
 
 THOMflSCflRLYLE 
 
 LIVED T 2.4-CHEYNE ROW I8M-I88I 
 
 THI5TflBLETWSERCTEO-BYTHECflRLYlt SOCIETY
 
 PART IV. 
 CARLYLE IN LONDON.
 
 " Here eyes do regard you 
 In Eternity 's stillness ; 
 Here is all fulness, 
 Ye brave, to reward you. 
 (Tor/-, and despair not !" 
 
 GOKTHE (translated by Carlyle).
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 MEMORIALS OF CHEYNE KOW, CHELSEA. 
 
 From Craigenputtock to Chelsea Carlyle's word-picture of 
 Cheyne Row A famous literary workshop An evening 
 with Tennyson Some distinguished foreigners Froude 
 and Ruskin A glimpse of Mrs. Oarlyle A talk in Carlyle's 
 study The tragedy of the Carlyle House Closing scenes. 
 
 IN 1834, ' the six years' imprisonment," as Froude calls 
 it, "on the Dumfriesshire moor" came to an end, ami 
 the Carlyles moved from Craigenputtock to Chelsea, 
 into the house which was to be their home till death. 
 Carlyle had been up in London alone, diligently house- 
 hunting staying sometimes in rooms previously 
 occupied by Edward Irving, in Woburn Buildings, close 
 to Dickens' home at Tavistock House. At last he 
 pitched on Cheyne How, attracted thither by the
 
 88 HOMES AND HAUNTS OF CA11LYLE 
 
 glowing reports of his friend, Leigh Hunt. " The 
 street," wrote Carlyle to his wife, "is flag pathed, 
 small storied, iron railed, all old-fashioned and tightly 
 done up ... The house itself is eminent, antique, 
 wainscoted to the very ceiling, and has been all new 
 painted and repaired ; broadish stair with massive 
 balustrade ; floor thick as a rock, wood of them here 
 and there worm-eaten, yet capable of cleanness, and 
 still with thrice the strength of a modern floor. And 
 then, as to rooms, Goody ! Three stories beside the 
 sunk story, in every one of them three apartments a 
 front dining-room (marble chimney-piece, &c.), then a 
 back dining-room or breakfast-room ; then out of this 
 a china-room or pantry, or I know not what, all shelved, 
 and fit to hold crockery for the whole street. Such is 
 the ground area, which of course continues to the top, 
 and furnishes every bedroom with a dressing-room and 
 second bedroom ; on the whole a most massive, roomy, 
 sufficient old house, with places, for example, to hang, 
 say, three dozen hats or cloaks on, and as many crevices 
 and queer old presses and shelved closets as would 
 gratify the most covetous goody rent 35 ! I confess 
 I am strongly tempted." And so the house was taken. 
 " Her arrival here I best of all remember. Ah me ! 
 She was clear for this poor house (which she gradually, 
 as poverty a little withdrew after long years' pushing, 
 has made so beautiful and comfortable) in preference
 
 CAKLYLE'S LONDON LODGINGS, 5, WOBURN BUILDINGS.
 
 OARLYLE'S HOUSE, GHEYNE ROW 
 
 91 
 
 to all my other samples ; and here we spent our two- 
 and-thirty years of hard battle against fate ; hard, but 
 not quite unvictorious, when she left me in her car of 
 
 THE STAIKOA8E AND QAltUEN. 
 
 heaven's fire." Thus wrote Carlyle, in his remorseful 
 and most pathetic reminiscences of his deceased Jeannie, 
 of the house No. 5 (now 24), Cheyne How, to which lie
 
 92 
 
 HOMES AND HAUNTS OF CAULYLK 
 
 and his wife moved in the summer of 1834, from which 
 he sent forth from time to time some of the greatest 
 masterpieces which have enriched English literature in 
 the nineteenth century, and in which he died on 
 February 5, 1881. 
 
 THE FEONT BOOM, GROUND FLOOB. 
 
 To tell the story of Carlyle's life in Chelsea would 
 be altogether beyond the scope of this book. It is the 
 story of " Carlyle's Life in London (1834-1881)" which 
 Mr. Froude made into two volumes, always of absorbing 
 and often of painful interest. It was here in No. 5,
 
 CARLYLB 8 HOUSE, CHEVNK WOW.
 
 MEMORIALS OF CHEYNE ROW, CHELSEA. 
 
 95 
 
 Cheyne Row the house which is now a permanent 
 memorial of the stormy genius* which once inhabited 
 it that nearly all the chief works which have made him 
 
 BACK BOOM, GROUND FLOOE. 
 
 famous were written. At this front door it was that 
 John Stuart Mill knocked one evening in the early 
 spring of 1835, and half staggering up the stairs 
 announced that a careless housemaid had destroyed the 
 
 * "What can you say of Carlyle," said Mr. Rusk in l<> 
 Mr. Froude, "but that he was born in the clouds and struck by 
 the lightning 1 "
 
 96 HOMES AND HAUNTS OF CARLYLE 
 
 MS. of " The French Revolution." It was from this 
 house that Carlyle trudged forth in search of a publisher 
 for " Sarto Eesartus," and from here that he set out to 
 deliver his lectures on "Heroes and Hero Worship." 
 The same house was the workshop in which "Cromwell" 
 and " Frederick " were beaten so laboriously into shape. 
 " It nearly killed me," wrote Carlyle of the latter work. 
 " On Sunday evening in the end of January (1865) I 
 walked out, with the multiplex feeling joy not very 
 prominent in it, but a kind of solemn thankfulness 
 traceable, that I had written the last sentence of that 
 unutterable book, and, contrary to many forebodings 
 in bad hours, had actually got done with it for ever." 
 An "unutterable book" to Carlyle ; and on the face of 
 his wife, who also had endured much during the thirteen 
 years which went to its completion, " there was a silent, 
 faint, and pathetic smile," when the last leaf was at 
 last despatched to the printers. There are not many 
 houses in which so much enduring work has been done 
 as in this literary workshop in Cheyne Row ; and the 
 vast amount of biographical matter which has recently 
 been given to the world enables us to enjoy the privilege 
 (if such be the right words for it), in a degree 
 unparalleled in literary history, of feeling the very 
 pulse of the machine and hearing the grinding of the 
 wheels. " I know not," said Carlyle, when he handed 
 to his wife the MS. of the "French Revolution,"
 
 MEMORIALS OF CHEYNE 150 \V, CHELSEA 97 
 
 ''whether this book is worth anything, nor what the 
 world will do with it, or inisdo, or entirely forl>ear to 
 do, as is likeliest; but this I could tell the world: 
 you have not had for 100 years any book that comes 
 more direct and flamingly from the heart of a living 
 man." 
 
 Here it was, in these same rooms now open to the 
 public, that the Titanic strife of that flaming heart was 
 waged here that Carlyle (in Mr. Morley's well-known 
 phrase) " compressed the golden ' Gospel of Silence,' in 
 thirty-five volumes," with such dogged tenacity and 
 single-minded devotion, but also at so unutterable an 
 expenditure of fume and fret. 
 
 As a literary workshop alone the Carlyle House in 
 Cheyne How would be of unique interest. But it was 
 here also that the growing fame of its master gathered 
 from time to time all who were most famous in the 
 literature of the Victorian age. Who does not 
 remember Carlyle's description of Tennyson ? One 
 evening when he came home from his usual walk, he 
 found the poet sitting in the garden with Mrs. Carlyle, 
 smoking comfortably. "A fine large-featured, dim- 
 eyed, bronze-coloured, shaggy-headed man is Alfred," 
 wrote Carlyle; "dusty, smoky, free and easy, who 
 swims outwardly and inwardly Avith great composure 
 in an inarticulate element of tranquil chaos and tobacco 
 smoke, great now and then when he does emerge a 
 
 G
 
 98 HOMES AND HAUNTS OF CARLYLE 
 
 most restful, brotherly, solid-hearted man." Another 
 visitor* to Cheyne Kow has recorded one such smoking 
 Parliament as Carlyle describes. The Poet Laureate 
 was the other guest. " In the course of conversation 
 they spoke about the difficulty of making speeches ; 
 when Tennyson said if allowed to sit he might manage 
 it, but it was severe upon the nerves to stand up when 
 everyone else was sitting. The question was discussed 
 as to whether they would accept titles if offered. 
 Tennyson was disposed to decline such honour for 
 himself, and said no title could excel the simple name 
 of Thomas Carlyle. After dinner long clay pipes were 
 laid on the table, and a smoking Parliament com- 
 menced." Nor were Carlyle's distinguished visitors 
 confined to his own countrymen. Mazzini (to name one 
 only of his famous foreign visitors) " came much about 
 us " (Carlyle writes), " for many years patronized by 
 my wife to me very wearisome, with his incoherent 
 Jacobinisms, George Sandism, in spite of all my love 
 and regard for him; a beautiful little man, full of 
 sensibilities, of melodies, of clear intelligence, and noble 
 virtues." Of a very different character was another 
 distinguished foreigner who once crossed Carlyle's 
 threshold, whirling thither " in a chariot that struck all 
 Chelsea into mute amazement with splendour." This 
 
 * " Memories of a Long Life," By Lieut-Col. David Davidson, 
 C.B. (1890).
 
 MEMORIALS OF CHEYNE ROW, CHELSEA 99 
 
 was none other than " the Phoebus Apollo of Dandy- 
 ism," Count D'Orsay "a tall fellow of six feet three, 
 Imilt like a tower, with floods of dark auburn hair, 
 with a beauty, with an adornment unsurpassable on 
 this planet ; withal a rather substantial fellow at 
 bottom, by no means without insight, without fun, and 
 a sort of rough sarcasm rather striking out of such a 
 porcelain figure." 
 
 Not less interesting is the succession of men who 
 came to this door as disciples to sit at the feet of the 
 Sage of Chelsea. Most famous of these are two great 
 men of letters one (J. A. Fronde) himself recently 
 deceased, the other (.John Ruskin) still happily with 
 us. It was in 1849 that Froude made his first pilgrim- 
 age to the house in Cheyne Row, where for so many 
 years he was received as a friend, and of whose secrets 
 he was to be made the repository. "James Spedding t< >< >k 
 jut- down to Cheyne Row," says Froude, in describing 
 tliis, his first introduction to Carlyle, "one evening in 
 the middle of June. We found him sitting after dinner, 
 with his pipe, in the small flagged court between the house 
 and the garden. He was then 54 years old ; tall (about 
 five feet eleven), thin, but at that time upright, with no 
 signs of the later stoop. . . . The face was altogether 
 most striking, most impressive every way. And I did 
 not admire him the less because he treated me I 
 cannot say unkindly, but shortly and sternly. I saw 
 
 G 2
 
 100 HOMES AND HAUNTS OF CAKLYLE 
 
 then what I saw ever after that no one need look for 
 conventional politeness from Carlyle he would hear 
 the exact truth from him, and nothing else. We went 
 afterwards into the dining-room, where Mrs. Carlyle 
 gave us tea. Her features were not regular, but 1 
 thought I had never seen a more interesting-looking 
 woman. Her hair was raven black, her eyes dark, soft, 
 sad, with dangerous light in them. Carlyle's talk was 
 rich, full, and scornful, even delicately mocking." It 
 was some years later that Carlyle made the acquaint- 
 ance of another young man, whose friendship was 
 very dear to him, and whose discipleship was never to 
 be interrupted. This was Mr. Euskin, who became a 
 frequent visitor at Cheyne Eow, and who, when the 
 little back garden was too hot for Carlyle, was delighted 
 to welcome him at Denmark Hill. " Xo one," said 
 Mrs. Carlyle, once to a friend,* " managed Carlyle so well 
 as Euskin ; it was beautiful to see him. Carlyle would 
 say outrageous things, running counter to all Euskin 
 valued and cared for. Euskin would treat Mr. Carlyle 
 like a naughty child, lay his arms round him, and say: 
 'Now, this is too bad!'" Carlyle himself has described 
 an occasion on which in this house " I had Euskin for 
 some hours, really interesting and entertaining. . . . 
 There is, in singular environment, a ray of real heaven 
 in Euskin. Passages of his last book, ' Queen of the Air,' 
 * "Aline Gilchrist : her Life and Writings." (1887) p. 82.
 
 A VIEW OF TIIK GARDEN AT CHEYNB ROW.
 
 MEMORIALS OF CHEYNE ROW, CHELSEA 1(X> 
 
 went into my heart like arrows." What talks they 
 must have had ! Sometimes Carlyle would sit out alone 
 in the starry night. At other times what conversation, 
 what stores of learning, of eloquence, of wit, and 
 pathos have been poured out when friends such as 
 
 THE DKAW1NG JIOOM. 
 
 Euskin, Tennyson, and .Fronde have sat out among the 
 alder trees, with Herr Teufelsdrockh in the midst of 
 them ! And here, too, after the worshipper of Silence 
 had held forth unchecked for two hours or more by the 
 clock, Mrs. Carlyle would pour out some of her brilliant 
 mockery on Mr. Carlyle's " purely platonic love " of 
 that golden divinity! One friend and neighbour
 
 104 
 
 HOMES AN 7 D HAUNTS OF CAKLYLE 
 
 Alexander Gilchrist, the biographer of William Blake, 
 has given interesting accounts of evenings with "the 
 Sage." Here is one of them : 
 
 " After tea Mrs. Carlyle left, and for the rest of the 
 evening till twelve I sat with him alone, he pouring 
 himself out as is his wont ; sitting the latter part of the 
 time on a footstool by the fire, smoking and looking, in 
 his old long brown kind of great coat, as he was 
 
 bewailing the pass 
 men and things had 
 come to, and as he 
 thought of it, hardly 
 caring to live, looking 
 like a veritable Pro- 
 phet, mourning in 
 sackcloth and ashes, 
 the sins of the 
 world .... Carlyle 
 took me up into his 
 study, showed his 
 daguerreotype from Cooper's ' Cromwell,' for which 
 he has a great fondness; his screen covered with 
 small portraits relative to Frederick ; * a framed 
 
 "It was his habit to paste on a screen in his work-room 
 engraved portraits, when no better could be had, of the people 
 he was then writing about. It kept the image of the man 
 steadily in view." "Conversations with Carlyle. By Sir 
 Charles Gavan Duffy." 
 
 BXTBAXCK TO THE STUDY.
 
 MEMORIALS OF CIIEYXE HOW, CHELSEA 105 
 
 Albert Du'rer, that had once belonged to the Elector 
 of Saxony, who saved Dante." But to mention all 
 the friends, acquaintances, and disciples who have 
 trod those stairs would require a volume to itself. Leigh 
 Hunt, John Stuart Mill, Erasmus Darwin, Owen, 
 Sterling, Emerson, Harriet Martineau, Frederick 
 Maurice, Thirlwell, Edward Fitzgerald, Kingsley, 
 Speckling, John Bright, Tyndall these are but a few of 
 the famous men and women, in addition to those 
 referred to already, whose voices these walls have 
 heard. And besides all these, there is the great army 
 of less distinguished pilgrims who came to the home of 
 the Sage of Chelsea for light and leading, for counsel 
 and inspiration, and who, if they came sincerely and 
 modestly, were never sent empty away. 
 
 But in these latter days, Carlyle's home in Cheyne 
 How has been invested with yet another interest the 
 interest of domestic tragedy. Indeed there are many 
 persons who are well versed in " the Carlyle question," 
 but who have never read a line of Carlyle's books. Nor 
 is this wonderful. The " daily jar and fret " of the 
 Carlyle household has its counterpart, no doubt, in many 
 another house. But in this case both Carlyle and his 
 wife had the gift of literary expression developed to the 
 utmost degree. In Mr. Froude, moreover, they found a 
 biographer who, having convinced himself that his duty 
 was to tell the whole truth, devoted all the resources of
 
 106 HOMES AND HAUNTS OF CAELYLE 
 
 his art to making his story interesting and eventh rilling. 
 Carlyle's life in London which is known to us as 
 intimately as Johnson in the pages of Boswell may be 
 said to pass, in Mr. Fronde's pages, through three phases 
 penury, jealousy, remorse. That, as was said by a 
 reviewer at the time,* was " the grim tragedy of 
 Carlyle's life." Recollections of that tragedy will 
 necessary haunt every visitor to the house which was 
 the scene of so much self-inflicted misery. Perhaps, as 
 a recent critic has observed, the shrewdest, if not the 
 most sympathetic, thing ever said on the subject was 
 Tennyson's remark, that it was well the Carlyles 
 married each other ; for had they married differently, 
 there would have been four unhappy persons instead of 
 two. 
 
 It would be beyond the scope of this little volume to 
 enlarge on the topics thus suggested. Are they not 
 written in volume after volume of " Carlyleana " ? It 
 will be more fitting here, and more in consonance with 
 the impressions one would fain derive from a visit to 
 Carlyle's home, to end our present chapter with the 
 recollection of one of the proudest and then of the sad- 
 dest moments in its history. From Cheyne Eow it was 
 that Carlyle, elected Lord Rector, fared forth in March, 
 1866, to Edinburgh to deliver his address. It was his 
 
 * Pall Nail G'azette, October 16, 1884.
 
 MEM01MALS OF CHEYNE KOW, CHELSEA 107 
 
 last adieu to his Jeannie. " The last I saw of her was 
 as she stood with her back to the parlour door to bid 
 me good-bye. She kissed me twice, she me once, I her 
 a second time." The address was delivered. 1'rofessor 
 Tyndall telegraphed to the anxious wife that it was " a 
 perfect triumph." The proud woman read the message 
 exultingly : " the maids of Cheyne Row clapped their 
 hands, and Maggie "Welsh danced for delight." Dickens 
 and Wilkie Collins joined Mrs. Carlyle at Forster's 
 house that same evening, and " made good joy " with 
 her over her husband's success. Alas ! in a few days 
 (Saturday), April 21, the brave, devoted woman, the 
 loyal-hearted wife of so many years, who had recognised 
 his genius when none else had done so, lay stricken in 
 death, and the Rector of Edinburgh University, whom 
 all the world was now proclaiming "a great man," 
 returned to find her "lying in her coffin, lovely in 
 death."
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 A DESECRATED SHRINE. 
 
 From sad to mad - The reign of the cats in the Carlyle House 
 At play with " the darlings " in the garden An ejectment 
 and the close of this chapter 
 
 AFTER the saddest days of the Carlyle House were 
 over, the maddest began. For a time the rooms were 
 empty. Then a maiden lady, as fond of cats and dogs 
 as the Countess de la Torre herself, and almost as much 
 " persecuted " by unkind neighbours and magistrates 
 more unkind, took the house and brought into it a 
 family of some thirty spaniels and cats. This company 
 held the house, and had it all their own way in the 
 garden. The creatures had long learned to live together 
 in peace and unity ; also, they were mostly so weary 
 with overfeeding and with great ease and sloth generally,
 
 CAT AND DOG LIFE AT CHKYNE HOW.
 
 A DESECKATED SHRINK 111 
 
 that they did not find it in their hearts to quarrel with 
 each other, so long as they each had a sofa, an easy 
 chair, or a soft cushion to repose upon. Only when 
 the horde was sent out into the garden, for hygienic 
 purposes, did they show any spirit. They did not like 
 the open air, and they said so in unmistakable howls 
 and yelps, and caterwaulings. Also, their presence in 
 the garden became otherwise objectionable to the 
 neighbours' senses. And then the occupier of the 
 Carlyle House was summoned to appear before Her 
 Majesty's magistrates. Whenever she did this, she 
 appeared in no wise overawed by the representatives of 
 the law. In fact she represented injured innocence 
 from first to last. Who were those people that thus 
 unwarrantably interfered with the good old British 
 maxim that a man's (or a woman's) house is his castle ? 
 Did she interfere with her neighbours' pets ? Then let 
 them leave her in peace. Having thus delivered her 
 soul, she paid her fines, and went home to her spaniel- 
 scented domain till another revolting occupant of 
 Cheyne Row had the law on her. 
 
 This game went on for some time, and during this 
 period should hero worship or any other motive take 
 you to the Carlyle House, it was difficult indeed to 
 obtain admittance. For money it could not be done, 
 for the lady of the dogs and cats eared not for filthy 
 lucre ; but for love you might, if you were very lucky,
 
 112 HOMES AND HAUNTS OF CARLYLE 
 
 enter the old sacred portals. Not for the love of man or 
 woman ; far from it, for misanthropy goes often hand 
 in hand with the great devotion to unlimited cats and 
 dogs. But if you could make it clear that, " honour 
 bright," you also were addicted to the keeping of pets, 
 and that cats and dogs were your favourite study, you 
 might come in, provided always you were ready with a 
 good deal of sympathy. 
 
 Standing on the stone steps in front of the house, 
 and parleying through a mysterious hole in the door, 
 it was easy enough to remain brilliantly eloquent on 
 the beauty of toms, tabbies, and spaniels. But, ye 
 gods ! how difficult it was after once you got inside ! 
 Even in the narrow hall the air was such that it 
 required heroic stoicism not to fly for dear life. You 
 dared not sit down to recover, for the seats and the 
 carpets were not of the kind on which any ordinary 
 mortal could venture to repose even for a moment. 
 And while you gasped, and hypocritically praised such 
 of the fat, nasty-eyed dogs and "moulting" cats as 
 trundled about, the guardian of these quarters talked 
 to you on the cruelty of magistrates, and the general 
 degeneracy of the public. Max Nordau himself could 
 not have beaten her. 
 
 Then you were led into the dining-room, to see more 
 cats and dogs and birds in dirty cages. The air thick 
 with with what ? " Ye winds and waters, say ! " The
 
 A -DESECRATED SIIRINE 113 
 
 windows coated with dust ; the curtains and covers 
 what the sickly monsters had made them ; the carpet 
 alive ; the " altogether" awful. You dared not, for one 
 moment, think of the serious side of the case ; of the 
 temple thus desecrated, or you would have sat down in 
 despair. And sit down you simply dared not. A sick 
 dog growled, and a mangy cat stood on her toes to arch 
 her back the better ; otherwise the poor creatures said 
 nothing. Faint, yet pursuing, you mounted the stairs ; 
 (lit- drawing-room, bedroom, passages, it was all the 
 same. Words cannot adequately describe it. At last 
 the famous sound-proof room was reached. It was 
 empty, bare, and forgotten, save for some rubbish in a 
 corner. A felt-covered door between the outer and 
 inner wall was opened, arid out of the recess came yet 
 another cat, a long thin fellow, blear-eyed, with a coat 
 that may once have been black and smooth, but was all 
 in tatters now, and showed bits of a brownish tint, like 
 worn out furs. The ghastliness of this last scene in 
 the drama was almost too much to stand. " Let us go 
 and look at the garden where the darlings play," you 
 suggested, gathering up the last shreds of hypocrisy at 
 your disposal in the very room where such utter 
 damnation had been pronounced against all shams and 
 humbugs. Into the garden you were shown, for your 
 punishment It does not do to go into the details of 
 that establishment of damp decay. You soon went 
 
 H
 
 114 
 
 HOMES AND HAUNTS OF CARLYLE 
 
 back, took in one more whiff of the pestilential air 
 inside, and departed from the Carlye House, a sadder 
 and not a much wiser hero-worshipper. 
 
 After a while the horrors of the house became such 
 that the dogs and cats were actually " ordered out," by 
 the authorities. They went to Yarmouth, in detach- 
 ments, aid so this chapter in the history of 5, Cheyne 
 Kow, was closed. 
 
 CAKLYLE S CHKST OF DRAWEE*.
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE CAKLYLK HOUSE AS IT is. 
 
 Honour to the great dead American worshippers to the shrine 
 A walk round the house " If the furniture had tongue :> 
 Carlyle's books and book-plate The Carlyle relics. 
 
 IT seemed wortli while to describe the episode in the 
 history of Carlyle's house, dealt with in the last chapter, 
 if only to make the reader appreciate the more tin- 
 rescue which has now been achieved. The house in 
 which Carlyle lived for fifty years is now out of danger ; 
 and at last London will have a shrine to which literary 
 pilgrims may repair for a little hero worship. Hitherto 
 we have left the work of commemorating the houses of 
 famous Londoners to a small society, the result of 
 
 ii -J
 
 116 HOMES AND HAUNTS OF CARLYLE 
 
 whose efforts may be seen in a few smoky tablets, 
 which are dotted about here and there. So to have 
 actually secured a whole house ; to have bought it 
 outright ; to have acquired the beginnings of a 
 museum ; to have paid a caretaker to show us round 
 is indeed an unheard of advance in our desire to do 
 honour to the great dead. Some day we may even find 
 time and money to do the same for a Hogarth or Turner, 
 an Addison, a Thackeray, a Dickens, a Charles Lamb, 
 a Goldsmith, a Johnson, a Tennyson, or even a Walpole 
 or a Gladstone. But we dare only whisper this, for 
 the controversy which has raged round this modest 
 Chelsea scheme bids us be very careful in assuming 
 any such fantastic suggestions for the present. Some 
 very excellent judges, for instance, objected to any 
 memorial to Carlyle because of his abominable style ; 
 others, because of numerous apostrophes to Sun, and 
 Moon and Stars ; others, because no one can read 
 Carlyle ; but the great objection, and the one that 
 nearly proved fatal, was because he quarrelled with 
 his wife, and all the world knew it ! Yet, if those 
 revelations had only been withheld by that wicked 
 Mr. Froude, it would have been a different matter ; 
 and they might have done what they liked. But a 
 man who quarrelled with his wife and made no secret 
 of it was no fellow to make a fuss about. He was a 
 man of genius (and she a woman not without brains)
 
 THK CAKLYLE HOUSE AS IT IS 117 
 
 who .should have known better. How these objections 
 were met will never he known ; somehow or other they 
 were overcome, and No. 24 is swept and furnished from 
 cellar to garret, and for the modest sum of one shilling 
 every admirer of Carlyle has the right of entry. 
 
 No less than sixteen hundred visitors paid their 
 shillings during the first three months that the house 
 was thrown open to the public. Of thsse about a third 
 are Americans ; the others being Britons. These ladies 
 and gentlemen have taken the keenest interest in 
 every room in the house ; so much, indeed, that the 
 caretaker, Mrs. Strong, has often had the greatest 
 difficulty in persuading them to' move on. There are 
 stories of American ladies who have sat down in 
 Carlyle's study chair for an hour at a time, seeking 
 inspiration, we may suppose. Many of the visitors 
 especially those ardent Americans have indited letters 
 to their bosom friends proudly dated : " Carlyle House." 
 Indeed, so greatly did Mr. Blunt (the honorary secretary 
 to whom we are indebted for much of the informa- 
 tion that appears in this chapter) fear that no chairs 
 would be left at all if some preventive measures were 
 not taken, that he has placed stout pieces of string 
 across every chair now, so that sentimental pilgrims 
 must fain stand. Then again, many of the visitors, 
 especially those from across the Atlantic, begged for a 
 leaf from the shrubs in the garden, a brick from the
 
 118 
 
 HOMES AND HAUNTS OF CAULYLE 
 
 three hundred-year-old wall, and some of them it is 
 believed, took away a pocketful of earth. 
 
 But we will now turn showmen and escort you round 
 the house, which was built by Lord Cheyne in 1701. 
 
 It is none of your modern 
 jerry-built dwellings, but 
 a stout, solid, John Bull 
 sort of a house, which 
 will be as good in another 
 century as it is to-day. 
 Carlyle himself used this 
 fact to point more than 
 one moral; and the bricks 
 of his garden wall are 
 mentioned in one of the 
 pamphlets - - " Shooting 
 Niagara," is it not ? They 
 are three hundred years 
 of age, and still in admir- 
 able preservation, though 
 a little going. The very 
 door, with its sombre 
 black iron knocker, has a 
 defiant look about it, its 
 
 back being especially noteworthy. So don't forget 
 to look at it ; and lift the great chain if you can 
 the end of which drops into an iron spiral. No burglar 
 
 MBS. CAULYLE'S
 
 TUB I'KOVl DOOB.
 
 THE CAULYLE HOUSE AS IT IS 
 
 121 
 
 could ever saw it through. The hall itself is narrow, 
 dark, and covered with some deep mahogany paper, which 
 is carried up the staircases to the very top of the house. 
 On the left is the dining-room in which you will ulti- 
 mately pause for a few minutes. There is no carpet 
 on the floor at present, though when funds are more 
 plentiful they will doubtless weave a special carpet, 
 which shall be as near a match to the real article as 
 loom, wool, and dyer are able to produce. But that 
 modest round table there, in the centre, is the veritable 
 dining table, a rather 
 frail thing of mahog- 
 any, which divides 
 into two by some in- 
 genious contrivance. 
 You will look at this 
 piece of furniture with 
 respect, not unmixed 
 with a certain awe, for 
 it has doubtless wit- 
 nessed some stormy scenes. You can imagine Carlyle 
 coming down to breakfast in a mighty ill-humour; 
 those breakfasts at No. 24 must have been awful meals. 
 Tin- cocks have kept- him awake all night, or the 
 porridge is not to his liking, or it is too hot. or too 
 cold the whole world is against him. Mrs. Carlyle's 
 slumbers, perhaps, have not been too restful. She, too,
 
 122 HOMES AND HAUNTS OF CAELYLE 
 
 has heard those cocks crowing ; they began at midnight, 
 the industrious birds ; then, maybe, there was a little 
 bill to pay, and she daren't ask Carlyle for money. So, 
 doubtless, she was not in too good a humour. And 
 such was the beginning of a pleasant day ! Or, if it 
 was not the cook, the egg which the great man took 
 after his porridge was not quite above suspicion. It 
 was from the little shop round the corner, and Mrs. 
 Carlyle looks slyly to see if her lord and master will 
 find it out. Happily, his thoughts are far away in 
 red fool-fury, fighting with Frederick or Cromwell, or 
 elsewhere. So the egg passes muster, and off he marches 
 upstairs for the rest of the day. But you can talk to 
 the table yourself ; write a letter on it if you like ; or 
 at least inscribe your name in the big visitors' book 
 which now rests upon it. The first thing you had best 
 do when you enter is to look for a moment at Mrs. 
 Allingham's little pencil sketches which hang over the 
 mantelpiece. A day or two after Carlyle died, this 
 delightful artist, who was an intimate friend, called 
 and made sketches, of each of the rooms, and of the 
 staircases, and the garden. Thus, happily, we can form 
 a very accurate picture of each of the rooms as it was 
 when the Carlyles were alive. In those days the 
 folding-doors were closed, and a large bookcase hid 
 them. At present 'this table is the chief object of 
 interest, but in time there is little doubt that most of
 
 CAMLYLE ON FUJI/.
 
 THE CAKLYLE HOUSE AS IT IS 
 
 125 
 
 the furniture will be replaced. In one corner is the 
 plaster mask of Carlyle taken by the late Mr. Boehm 
 two or three days after his death. The flesh is much 
 shrunken, and the nose is as aquiline as the Iron 
 Duke's. This has been lent by the Rector of Chelsea. 
 On the mantelpiece are a 
 pair of silvergilt candle- 
 -t irks; and on the wall 
 above hangs an excellent 
 picture of Carlyle on his 
 famous horse Fritz a _ c/(Iuru 7; 
 short, cobby, good-look- 
 ing animal. It is an en- 
 largement of a photo- 
 graph taken by Mr. G. G. Napier, who has kindly 
 allowed it to be reproduced in these pages. Do not 
 forget to look at the fireplace, which was recovered 
 from beneath a heap of iron scrap in the north of 
 London ; a fender and fire-irons are the original articles. 
 Now let us into the dark little back dining-room 
 with a small window looking into the garden. Here 
 you will see one of the bookcases a very humble 
 affair of painted deal; but full of Carlyle's books. 
 And a very shabby lot they are very dusty, leaving 
 signs of hard usage, and intrinsically worth about 
 twopence each ; old-fashioned dictionaries, geographies, 
 peerages, odd volumes of Goethe, Schiller, Grunn,
 
 126 
 
 HOMES AND HAUNTS OF CAELYLE 
 
 Schlegel, Bolm's translations, and so on. Many o 
 them contain marginal notes in Carlyle's writing, and 
 in most of them you will iind the Carlyle book plate, 
 with its motto : " Humiliate." Against the wall is his 
 old red sofa, rather hard, but room enough, which used 
 to be kept at the foot of his bed upstairs. At the end 
 
 of the room in a tiny 
 closet, in the corner 
 of which is a little 
 wooden bracket, one 
 of Mrs. Carlyle's 
 household treasures. 
 
 Each of these bits of 
 furniture which we 
 have mentioned bears 
 signs of most careful usage. That household was, 
 as we all know, administered with an attention to 
 minut'ice which is most pathetic. But money was 
 very scarce at No. 24 for many a bitter year, and the 
 tragedy is writ large on each of these bits of china and 
 sticks of furniture. 
 
 And now to the garden, in which you must certainly 
 remain for a few minutes. It is not at all a bad garden 
 for a London house which was rented at 35 a year. 
 Here Carlyle, when he wanted a little exercise, or was 
 a little more bilious and irritable than usual, worked 
 off the travelling acids and evil humours, " delved to 
 
 '--,5 OF*
 
 THE CAULYLE HOUSE AS IT IS 
 
 127 
 
 compose himself," or "stayed smoking in the back 
 court" through the June night, "till the great dawn 
 streamed up" before his eyes. Many of those fine 
 apostrophes to sun and moon must have been inspired 
 by sucli glimpses of those bodies as he got from this 
 sooty little garden, with its patch of grass or gravel 
 path. Under the ash tree he and Tennyson smoked 
 
 ONE OF CARLYLK S BOOK-CASES. 
 
 many a pipe together ; and other famous men, no doubt. 
 And that is the famous wall at the end there. In the 
 curly days it was not quite so overlooked as it is now 
 by laundries and schools. That sea-green bit of china 
 how to describe it we know not was Carlyle's ; and 
 in the summer he had an awning stretched over him, 
 liiMieath which he sat and worked, or thought and smoked. 
 Do not despise the kitchen, which is down below.
 
 128 
 
 HOMES AND HAUNTS OF. CAHLYLE 
 
 It is like most kitchens, though the fittings are old- 
 fashioned. There is a pump in the corner, for instance, 
 and the great fire-place is made smaller or larger by a 
 lever; and from the chimney swings a great hook on which 
 
 THK KITCUliN. 
 
 the pots were placed. Many a time has Mrs. Carlyle 
 leant over it. Here she made the famous marmalade, 
 " pure as liquid amber, in taste and in look almost 
 poetically delicate ;" and here Leigh Hunt's " endlessly 
 admirable morsel of Scotch porridge " was stirred at
 
 C.VHLYI.E S GARDEN.
 
 THE CARLYLE HOUSE AS IT IS 131 
 
 tin: evening's close. Oil that mantel stood, .in early 
 years, the tinder-box to which Carlyle had often groped 
 his way, when the sleepless night became insufferable, 
 to find flint and steel for his pipe. We give on page 
 128 a little sketch which is a faithful representation 
 of it. The table and dresser are the original articles 
 
 and on the shelf there you will see three or four pieces 
 of the Carlyle dinner service. Here is the pattern. 
 
 Now mount the steps again, and, having climbed up 
 tin: staircase note the spiral balusters of dark pitch- 
 pine enter the drawing-room, which is so often 
 described in the letters, " the room she gradually 
 
 i 2
 
 132 
 
 HOMES AND HAUNTS OF CAltLYLE 
 
 made so beautiful and comfortable" the " warm little 
 parlour/' where Carlyle and his wife " sat snug most 
 evenings in stuffed chairs." It is a very pleasant room, 
 well lighted by three windows. Again you will just 
 glance at Mrs. Allingham's sketches ; then look at the 
 
 ANOTHER OF CAlf J.VLE :j BOOK-CASKS. 
 
 book-case, of the same pattern as the one downstairs, 
 and full of books. One-half is nearly filled by an ancient 
 set of " Annual Registers ;" the other is a shabby and 
 miscellaneous collection. It would never do to allow 
 visitors to turn them over this is protected by glass
 
 THE CAULYLE HOUSE AS IT IS 135 
 
 doors, and the one below has been wired over but 
 Mr. Blunt kindly opens a few of them for us. One we 
 noticed a copy of " The Earthly Paradise " was a 
 gift from Mr. Ruskin to Carlyle "from his scholar, 
 with love." The lower half is made into cupboards, 
 which are full of Voltaire's works ninety-seven 
 volumes, we believe ! There is little else to be seen 
 but pictures: a fragile table, and a faded Oriental 
 screen. But this was the best known room in the 
 house ; in which some of the most famous men and 
 women of the day had taken tea with the Carlyles, 
 and discussed every subject under the sun. And there, 
 by the fireplace, is the spot where Carlyle used to sit 
 on the rug, " his back against the mantel-jamb, his wife 
 reclining on the sofa, a bright, kindly fire, candles hardly 
 lit, all in trustful chiaroscuro, with a pipe of tobacco, 
 and door never so little open, so that all the smoke went 
 up the chimney." 
 
 So regard it with veneration. In the corner there 
 by the window Carlyle died ; through the folding-door 
 is Mrs. Carlyle's bedroom empty it is now whither 
 she was borne on that memorable day when she was 
 found lifeless in her carriage, and Carlyle was away 
 giving his rectorial address to the Edinburgh students. 
 Now, upstairs to see the most famous room in the 
 house, namely, that sound-proof study which Carlyle 
 built on the roof-tops, at a cost of 200, in 1853. It is
 
 136 
 
 HOMES AND HAUNTS OF CARLYLE 
 
 like a studio to all intents and purposes ; lighted by a 
 big window above. " The sublime garret, double- 
 doored, double-windowed, impervious to snow." It 
 is, indeed, an uncomfortable-looking room, but here 
 
 THE SOUND-PROOF BOOM. 
 
 Carlyle wrote that terrible "Frederic." Portraits of 
 that famous warrior and statesman still hang on the 
 wall, next to one of his friend Voltaire. Very shaky
 
 THOMAS rAKI.YI.i:, AllOI'T I Sf!0. 
 
 n )iti<tt<i;irnjili I, if Ihr London Sterfotcopic Coin t >an ;.)
 
 THE CARLYLE HOUSE AS IT IS 
 
 139 
 
 very grimy they look now, as do those two maps of 
 Ireland and Scotland. The only article of furniture 
 here at present is the chair which Carlyle used when at 
 work an affair of black horse-hair, with arms which 
 
 looks easy enough, and in very good preservation. 
 The desk on which he wrote each one of his thirty 
 or fifty volumes is now in the possession of Lady 
 Fitzjames Stephen. We need not repeat the well- 
 known story of the room "most entirely detestable and
 
 140 HOMES AND HAUNTS OF CAItLYLK 
 
 despicable piece of workmanship," which Carlyle soon 
 found was anything but sound-proof. He must have 
 conquered his dislike to it for some years, though after 
 "Frederic" was written he generally worked in the 
 drawing-room. In the winter it was too cold ; in the 
 summer it was too hot ; and in the windy weather th.- 
 soot covered the floor. The legend runs that one day 
 he was found sousing the deposit with a watering-pot ! 
 His fondness for fresh air could be guessed by the 
 remarkable number of ventilators which are to be seen 
 above the home : in the garret alone the number was 
 ten! 
 
 Xow step downstairs again, and look at Carlyle's bed 
 a four-poster, hung with red curtains. There is his 
 chest of drawers ; and in the little closet his hip bath, 
 his washing stand, a beaver hat of enormous dimensions 
 (which now stands under a glass-case to prevent the 
 visitors from trying it 011), his hat-box, and his stick. 
 
 And that is all for the present, but it is hoped that 
 some of the remarkable relics which were lent for 
 exhibition on the occasion of the centenary of his birth . 
 will be allowed to remain at No. 24.
 
 CiP.r.YLK .-. liEU.
 
 CONCLUSION.
 
 " It is an old belief 
 
 1 hat on some solemn shore, 
 Beyond the sphere of grief, 
 Dear friends shall meet once more : 
 
 Jieyond the sphere of time, 
 
 And ain and fate's control, 
 Serene in changeless prime 
 
 Of body and of soul. 
 
 Th'it creed I fain would keep, 
 
 This hope I'll not forego : 
 Eternal be the sleep, 
 
 If not to waken so." 
 
 Verses of Lockhart's " often on Carlyle's lips " (Fronde's 
 Carlyle's Life in London," i. 250j.
 
 A VISIT TO CARLYLE'S GRAVE. 
 
 As is too common with us, a poor minimum of care 
 seems to be bestowed upon the God's acre win-re ( 'urlyle 
 ;ui(l his kindred lie quiet in death. Surrounded by a 
 rude and bare stone wall, entered through an unlovely 
 iron gate, the graves in general speak eloquently of the 
 forgetfalness of human sorrow. 
 
 The Carlyle grave is an exception to this rule : inside 
 the high iron railing that surrounds it, perpetuating the 
 Oarlyle aloofness even in death, the grass is closely 
 cut, and daisies are the only weeds allowed to grow 
 there. There are three graves within the enclosure, 
 ( 'arlyle being buried in the centre. In the grave to 
 the left sleep his father and mother and two of his 
 sisters ; also his father's wife by his first marriage. 
 Carlyle's reminiscences of his father and the reflections 
 which he entered in his journal on his mother's death, 
 prove what a wealth of affection he bore towards his 
 parents, 
 
 K
 
 HG 
 
 HOMES AND HAUNTS OF f'AKLYLE 
 
 Tlie grave to the right is that of Carlyle's brother 
 James, of whom many characteristic and even Carlylean 
 stories were told us. To a certain extent he appears 
 to have shared the old roadman's opinions of his famous 
 brother's work, or, at the least, to have been indifferent 
 to immortal achievements in the realm of literature. 
 
 THE CAEI.TLK LAIR : ECCI.EFECHAX. 
 
 He was met one day in the village by a party of American 
 pilgrims, who, ignorant of his identity, asked of him 
 the whereabouts of Carlyle's grave. "Which (,'arlyle?" 
 " Oh, the great Carlyle, Thomas Carlyle." With 
 unmoved face he gave the information asked, and was 
 rewarded with a fine outburst of hero-worship. "We 
 have come all the way from America," said the spokes-
 
 147 
 
 A VISIT TO CARLYLES fJKAVE 
 
 111:111 of the pilgrims, "to lay this wreath on our 
 leather's grave." "Hah!" rejoined he, still unmoved. 
 
 VKI.YI.K S UKAVE. 
 
 "it's a gey harmless occupation." Again, at stun 
 meeting of the farmers in the district tin- rent-day.
 
 148 HOMES AND HAUXTS OF CARLYLE 
 
 probably a dinner was given, and some long- winded 
 yeoman said grace before the meal. ."Jamie listened 
 throughout it patiently; then saluted his over-devout 
 neighbour with the remark : "A verra guid blessing. 
 "VVullie, but ye've spoilt the soup." 
 
 No lies are told on Carlyle's tombstone. Thn 
 inscription is simple and laconic. The family crest : 
 two wyverns, the family motto : Humiiitatc, and then 
 these few words : 
 
 HERE RESTS THOMAS CARLYLE, WHO WAS BORX 
 AT ECCLEFECH^N. 4TH DECEMBER, 1795, AND 
 DIED AT 24, CHEYNE ROW, CHELSEA, LONDON, 
 ON SATURDAY, 5TH FEBRUARY, 1881. 
 
 That is all. And yet it is enough. There are two 
 .significant, pregnant words Humiiitatc, " Rests,"
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 Los Angeles 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 JUl 2 1 1966 
 
 Form L9-Series 444
 
 A 000 028 640 1