The Carlyles and Their House at Chelsea, III

The Carlyles and their House at Chelsea. BY FLORENCE L. LANCASTER. III. Time remains for a brief glance only at the other rooms, as the sun hastens on his course, and the housekeeper is busy watering the plants in the walled plot of ground on which the diningroom and certain other windows look, called the garden. On the staircase we are reminded of the literary atmosphere that was about the place. Here, now intimated by diagrams, were hung portraits and sketches pertaining to English and German literary men, and to the scenes and personages relative to the subjects of Carlyle's books. It was evident that the author of the life of Cromwell, of Frederick the Great, and of a host of other biographies, believed that much could be learned from the face, for the walls of his studies abounded in portraits, some of which still remain. Up the first flight of stairs are the drawing-room and Mrs. Carlyle's bed-room. The first named is a good sized apartment with three windows and two doors, and was used for some years— until it became the drawing-room permanently — as Carlyle's sanctum. Here Cromwell was written and, no doubt, Hero Worship— first delivered as a course of lectures, thought out and prepared. Among the relics that it now contains are certain portraits, a case revealing manuscripts, and letters written by and to Carlyle, and a bookcase filled with some of the volumes that composed his library. A large engraving of the speaking face of Goethe is from a portrait painted during life. We note the high brow, beautiful with lines, the noble Roman nose, the tender gravity of

THE CARLYLES AND THEIR HOUSE AT CHELSEA, 609 expression, the genius a-gleam in the eagle-glance of the ardent eyes. Over the fireplace is an equally faithful portrait of Mrs. Carlyle, in oils. Among the manuscript, letters, etc., are three cards from Goethe, which at different times accompanied presents to Carlyle. Each contains some greeting in impromptu verse, one being signed in the immortal poet's hand, Goethe, the others simply G. Carlyle, on his death, bequeathed to Harvard University the bulk of the volumes used in the writing of The French Revolution and The Life of Frederick. Yet these remaining volumes in the case give an index to Carlyle's studies, strikingly consistent with his productions. Among them are divers dictionaries, French and German, and a book entitled The English Shakespeare. Written in their own tongues are lives of Schiller and Goethe, a set of Moliere's Works, and a Life of Melanchthon, in Italian. There is an edition of the Works of Plato, in English, a History of English Literature, in German, and among the English books are Smith's Wealth of Nations, Ruskin's Political Economy of Art, Bancroft's History of the Colonization of the United States, and Memoirs of an American Lady, by Mrs. Grant. By the way, the pleasant-faced Scottish widow who "shows you over," will tell you that of the visitors who come to visit her renowned countryman's dwelling, six percent are Americans, the German nation next predominating. From the room above described we step into Mrs. Carlyle's bed-room, a small apartment containing the skeleton of a fourposter, and two invitingly low cane chairs. The tiny dressing= room adjoining overlooks the walled enclosure, verdant with vine and creeper, and a pear tree whose rustling foliage curtains the window. In it a black-bird sings to his mate the same liquid notes sung by his ancestors in that bough to Mrs. Carlyle's sensitive ear. carlyle's bed-room and the guest-chamber. The house being built according to the plan of only one or two rooms on a story, to gain these rooms necessitates the climbing of another flight of stairs. The guest-chamber is of airy dimensions. In it Emerson slept when on a visit to Carlyle. It was interesting to recall some of the conversation between

610 Improvement era. these two men, whose originality consisted in feeling and thinking sincerely, and the expressed and tacit understanding of essentials as they said ''good night" at the door. Half the bed-room occupied by Carlyle is taken up by a huge four-poster. The accompanying marble-topped wash-stand and painted deal dressing-table are pieces of furniture of the plaines1-. In the adjoining dressing-room is a stout mahogany crook, worn by the hand that grasped it, and beside it a plaster cast of the hand. Browning says something about a beautiful feminine hand being "a woman of itself." We look at this hand with the long fingers, straight and strong, the vigorous knuckles and well-developed, square-cut nails, and feel that the hand of Thomas Carlyle is a man of itself — a hand to be trusted, a noble hand. THE GARRET STUDY. This sequestered apartment seems remote from the rest of the house, and almost from the world. It receives daylight from a skylight in the roof, and contains two doors, each of which opens into a closet-passage, convenient for coal scuttles and fitted with pegs. Here Carlyle was closeted during the writing of Frederick the Great, a work whose several volumes it took some thirteen years to complete. To obtain some of the neceesary information Carlyle twice visited Germany, and with such thoroughness are battle-grounds and plans of manoeuvre therein described that it is to this day used as a work of reference by students preparing for examinations in the German army. Among the engravings the walls contain are two curious portraits, in a double frame, of Voltaire, who, of course, figured in A Life of Frederick the Great. One of them depicts well-cut features, animated by a smile from scintillating eyes and writhing mouth, crowned with laurel. The other is of a crouching old man in a skull-cap. These represent, respectively, the French and English ideas in those days of Voltaire. Another most interesting engraving depicts the grim potentate, Frederick, himself. In the long, thin nose, the prominence above the beetling brows, the intensity in the starting eyes, are concentrated in hieroglyphics the history which the patient and just mind of Carlyle expounded for all men, circling around a being one might imagine to laugh, but never to smile.

THE CARLYLES AND THEIR HOUSE AT CHELSEA. 611 Before we leave the house, let us turn once more to the picture over the mantlepiece, in the last used room down stairs. An old man, with hair whitened by time, an Inverness cloak wrapped about him, gazes with a deeply inward-seeing eye, in which there is a touch of ineffable mournfulness, into the past. We translate that look of introspective mournfulness — the mournfulness of intense sympathy of a bereft old age, beset by a supersensitive touch of personal contrition, but sustained by the consciousness of great works accomplished to the best of a true mind s power, by Carlyle's own words — "Not happiness, but something higher." There is about Carlyle's style a solemn resonance and rhythm that reminds one of the music of the sea. And as the very manner of his expression suggests the sublime in nature; his thought reveals the spirit of the essential and fundamental in life. There is no other writer, perhaps, who makes us realize with so startling force the trivial unreality of convention, and of the mere outward phases of life that wrap us round. Judged from a somewhat superficial standpoint, however— which would apply more in the relation of daily companionship than in any other — Carlyle may be said to have had the limitation of his greatness. His moods were seldom attuned to a reception of the lyric in nature, and the contemplation of life as a mere pageant, or as an infinity of impressions for imagination to play upon, seldom lent diversion to his mind. Yet such were the essentials of the man, that, had circumstances called on him to prove them in objective ways, he would have played full well, according to the times, the role of a Mohammed, a Cromwell, a Washington, as he nobly fulfiled his part of The Hero asMan of Letters. London, England. (THE END.)