The Carlyles and Their House at Chelsea. II

The Carlyles and their House at Chelsea. BY FLORENCE L. LANCASTER.

II.

Craigenputtock was a remote district where was a manor house adjacent to a farm, the property of Mrs. Carlyle's ancestors. Here the young couple began their domestic life on the slender resources Carlylehad managed to save from another German work, and here they dwelt for the next six years. These were the years of Carlyle's literary apprenticeship. At this period he wrote a Life of Goethe, and a History of German Literature —which was ' 'cut up into articles, " and, the financial side of things becoming critical, he "worked desperately at Sartor Resartus." It may be interesting also to record that during this epoch he wrote a novel "which had to be burned." Within these years, also, when he was between thirty and forty, he took his first lessons in Greek. Meanwhile these years at the secluded manor are recorded by Mrs. Carlyle as the six most miserable years of her life. Much of her feelings may be gauged in and "between the lines" of the poem written at this time, a few verses of which are as follows:

TO A SWALLOW BUILDING UNDER OUR EAVES.

Thou, too, hast traveled, little, fluttering thing, Hast seen the world, and now thy weary wing Thou too must rest. But much, my little bird, couldst thou but tell, I'd give to know why here thou lik'st so well To build thy nest.

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Did fortune try thee? was thy little purse Perchance run low, and thou afraid of worse Felt here secure? Ah, no! thou needst not gold, thou happy one! Thou know'st it not. Of all God's creatures, man Alone is poor.

What was it, then? some mystic turn of thought, Caught under German eaves, and hither brought, Marring thine eye For the world's loveliness, till thou art grown A sober thing that does but mope and moan Not knowing why?

God speed thee, pretty bird; may thy small nest With little ones in all good time be blest. I love thee much;

For well thou managest that life of thine, While I! oh, ask not what I do with mine! Would I were such

The above poem, with its tacit plaint, was enclosed in a letter to a man of affairs of the time, Francis Jeffries. As many of the essential conditions continued while the environment was more desirable, it may be well to consider them, as affecting the tenor of the life at the isolated manor, and of the subsequent years in London. Literary composition meant to Carlyle "a solitary process of mental agony," so that it followed his wife had to be much alone. As, with their limited income, only one servant was kept, domestic details must have fallen upon her to perform to no slight extent. Carlyle, from his outside masculine standpoint, spoke of these duties as "the saving grace of her life." But there must have been many times when a woman of her capacities would feel it far otherwise. She was not of a character to look back with longing eyes on the trivial gayeties of "the Belle of Haddington.'' As Carlyle's wife she had the acquaintanceship of many distinguished people. But an active mental career of her own, perhaps, would have been the one thing to compensate her for the lack of another fulfilment. She was childless. Also, during their London life,

THE CARLYLES AND THEIR HOUSE AT CHELSEA. '415

there was an unhappy misunderstanding through a Lady Ashburton, which lasted for years, until the latter 's death. The well-known example of a somewhat petty exactingness on the one hand, and on the other the provocation of "the husband's friend," who had none of the strain of repetition or strife with details of the wife, but who could inspire his ready confidence. Yet, with all these regretable phases, Mrs. Carry le was pre- eminently the companion of the man she had married. Soul- steeped in essentials, with his mind's constant absorption in

exacting labor, together with some concealment on her part, he was often oblivious of causes of dissatisfaction and pain to her, which were apparent to others. When he did realize these, he atoned in word and in deed. Carlyle was not a man to have made pretense, or uttered empty speech, for any cause whatsoever. The words penned on his wife's death reveal a subtle appreciation, a recognition of her as helpmeet, and contain a note of inner under- standing of causes for suffering that is something like contrition, most touching. She was "the true and loving helpmeet" of her husband, and, knowing his greatness, if she aided his achievement by insuring daily peace and order, even in dusting, or darning his socks, I do not think she should have regarded her marriage as a failure. With this brief retrospect, let us take a stroll through the silent rooms.

THE DINING ROOM AND ROOM ADJOINING (WHICH WAS SOMETIMES CALLED THE BACK DINING ROOM). One is impressed on first entering here with the sense of pro- portion, substantialness and orderly repose tinctured with an undercurrent of melancholy, qualities which pervade the whole house. Two square-paneled rooms, divided by a partial wall and folding-doors, panels and doors painted drab. In each room is a marble mantlepiece and a grate with horizontal bars, the same as when an introspective eye gathered a moment's casual inspiration from the flames which glowed there. Carlyle used every room in the house at different times, except the bedrooms, as his study. In the foremost of these rooms a part of The French Revolution — the first work completed on the author's settlement in London —was

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written. Afterwards, during the still earlier period of its history, Carlyle and his papers having disappeared to an upper apartment, itwas used as the drawing room. Therein are certain relics of those times. The round, old-fashioned table, consisting, in fact, of two semi-circular ones clamped together, to be used separately if required. Beside it, certain horse-hair covered chairs of strong but elegant workmanship. These were exported from the home at Craigenputtock. Asked by inquisitive visitors, "Who made these chairs?" Carlyle was wont to reply, "In Cockneydom, nobody in our day: unexampled prosperity makes another kind." During its drawing room days, Edward Irving said to Mrs. Carlyle, on enter- ing this room, "You are like Eve, and make a bit of paradise wherever you go." In part proof of this pretty compliment from her old admirer, is a bracket which Mrs. Carlyle made. It is a three-cornered bracket, with two shelves, painted chocolate, orna- mented with Grecian figures cut out and pasted on, and varnished light oak, which merges with the hue of the paneling. The inner apartment was used for a lengthy period as tne dining-room, and a cozy dining-room it must have made, though somewhat small, when the clamped table was called into requisition for such a select gathering of friends as John Forster, Macready, Dickens and Thackeray, or was spread for the entertainment of Emerson, or that Harriet Martineau who wrote the fine poem "Onward!" and forwarded the success of Carlyle 's lectures by canvassing for subscriptions. But I must not omit to mention the two interesting pictures over the respective fire-grates. One shows the front room as it used to be in the drawing-ro^m days, the two rooms covered with a gaily-patterned carpet, Mrs. Carlyle, seated, wears the matronly muslin cap and quaint "cross-over," of the period; a dog — a faith- ful friend whose remains are buried in the garden — gazes with mute intentness into her face. Carlyle, apparently just about to "say something," is comfortably attired in a plaid dressing-gown, and handles a churchwarden pipe. — The other picture over the mantle of the back dining- — room is a portrait arresting in its pathos. It is fittingly placed in the room. Just before Mrs. Carlyle's sudden death, which hap- pened while she was taking a drive in a brougham, the last of a