Biographical Note
Arch House, Ecclefechan see page 2
Carlyle’s mother see page 1
In a house which his father, a mason, had built with his own hands, Thomas Carlyle was born on December 4th, 1795. His mother, Margaret Aitken, “a woman of the fairest descent, that of the pious, the just and wise,” was the second wife of James Carlyle, and Thomas was the eldest of their nine children.
Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire see page 3
The room in which Carlyle was born see page 2
In the Entepfuhl of Sartor Resartus Carlyle has pictured his native village. It consisted of a single street, down the side of which ran an open brook. “With amazement,” he writes, “I began to discover that Entepfuhl stood in the middle of a country, of a world.... It was then that, independently of Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell, I made this not quite insignificant reflection (so true also in spiritual things): ‘Any road, this simple Entepfuhl road, will lead you to the end of the world!’” The room at Arch House in which he was born now contains some interesting mementoes. On the mantelpiece are two turned wooden candlesticks, a gift of John Sterling, sent from Rome; the table provides a resting-place for his study-lamp and his tea-caddy. Most of the furniture came from Cheyne Row.
Carlyle’s first Edinburgh lodging in Simon Square see page 8
1, Moray Street (now Spey Street), Leith Walk, Edinburgh see page 9
Carlyle came up from Ecclefechan to attend Edinburgh University when he was scarcely fourteen years of age, and with a companion, Tom Smail, journeyed the entire distance on foot. They secured a clean-looking and cheap lodging in Simon Square, a poor neighbourhood on the south side of Edinburgh, off Nicholson Street. After residing in various parts of the old town, Carlyle removed in 1821 to better quarters, and the most interesting of his various abodes in Edinburgh was at 1, Moray Street (now Spey Street), Leith Walk. Here he commenced his literary work in earnest, and began to regard life from a brighter standpoint. Leith Walk is described in Sartor Resartus as the Rue Saint-Thomas de l’Enfer. “All at once,” he writes, “there rose a thought in me, and I asked myself, ‘What art thou afraid of?...’ It is from this hour that I incline to date my spiritual new birth or baphometic fire-baptism; perhaps I directly thereupon began to be a man.”
The house in which Carlyle lived whilst teaching at Kirkcaldy school see page 11
It was at Kirkcaldy that Carlyle first met Edward Irving, the master of a rival school in the town. They became intimate friends. “But for Irving,” he says, “I had never known what the communion of man with man means.” It was here, too, that he made the acquaintance of Miss Margaret Gordon, the “Blumine” of Sartor Resartus. Carlyle describes the town in the Reminiscences: “Kirkcaldy itself... was a solidly diligent, yet by no means a panting, puffing, or in any way gambling ‘Lang Toun.’ I, in particular, always rather liked the people—though from the distance, chiefly; chagrined and discouraged by the sad trade one had!”
Mainhill Farm see page 4
Hoddam Hill see page 4
In 1815 the Carlyles moved to Mainhill Farm, and here he “first learned German, studied Faust in a dry ditch, and completed his translation of Wilhelm Meister!” Ten years later Carlyle took possession of Hoddam Hill Farm, his mother going with him as housekeeper, and his brother Alick as practical farmer. Here they remained until 1826. “With all its manifold petty troubles,” says Carlyle, in the Reminiscences, “this year at Hoddam Hill has a rustic beauty and dignity to me; and lies now like a not ignoble russet-coated idyll in my memory.”
Scotsbrig see page 12
The abrupt termination of Carlyle’s tenancy of Hoddam Hill occurred simultaneously with the expiration of his father’s lease of Mainhill, and in 1826 the family removed to Scotsbrig, that excellent “‘shell of a house’ for farming purposes,” where Carlyle’s parents spent the remainder of their lives. In this unpretentious home Carlyle passed many restful holidays among his own people.
Jane Welsh Carlyle see page 21
“In the ancient county-town of Haddington,” he writes, “on July 14th, 1801, there was born to a lately wedded pair a little daughter, whom they named Jane Baillie Welsh, and whose subsequent and final name (her own common signature for many years) was Jane Welsh Carlyle.... Oh, she was noble, very noble, in that early as in all other periods, and made the ugliest and dullest into something beautiful! I look back on it as if through rainbows—the bit of sunshine hers, the tears my own.”
Mrs. Carlyle’s Birthplace, Haddington see page 11
Mrs. Carlyle, in her Early Letters, mentions her father’s home at Haddington where she was born. “It is my native place still! and after all, there is much in it that I love. I love the bleaching green, where I used to caper, and roll, and tumble, and make gowan necklaces and chains of dandelion stalks, in the days of my ‘wee existence.’”
Templand, near Thornhill, Dumfriesshire see page 12
Carlyle’s marriage with Jane Baillie Welsh took place on October 17th, 1826, at Templand, where Mrs. Welsh then resided. The ceremony was of the quietest description, his brother John Carlyle being the only person present besides Miss Welsh’s family.
21, Comely Bank Edinburgh see page 14
Craigenputtock see page 19
Carlyle’s house at 5 (now 24), Cheyne Row, Chelsea see page 21
For eighteen months after their marriage the Carlyles lived at 21, Comely Bank, the “trim little cottage, far from all the uproar and putrescence (material and spiritual) of the reeky town, the sound of which we hear not, and only see over the knowe the reflection of its gaslights against the dusky sky.” It was during this time that Carlyle contributed essays to the Edinburgh and Foreign Quarterly Reviews. In 1828 a removal was made to Mr. Welsh’s manor at Craigenputtock, where in the solitude “almost druidical” Sartor Resartus was written. “Poor Puttock!” he exclaims in one of his letters, “Castle of many chagrins; peatbog castle, where the devil never slumbers nor sleeps! very touching art thou to me when I look on thy image here.” In this lonely spot, cut off from all social intercourse, the Carlyles remained until 1834, when, after “six years’ imprisonment on the Dumfriesshire moor,” they moved to Chelsea and took up their residence at No. 5, Cheyne Row, in the house which was to be their home until death.
After a week’s wearisome house-hunting in London under the guidance of Leigh Hunt, Carlyle sent a long description of the proposed new residence to his wife, of which the following is an extract:—“We are called ‘Cheyne Row’ proper (pronounced Chainie Row) and are a ‘genteel neighbourhood,’ two old ladies on the one side, unknown character on the other, but with ‘pianos’ as Hunt said. The street is flag-pathed, sunk-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.... 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.”
Corner in Drawing-room at 5, Cheyne Row see page 22
The brightest and happiest part of Carlyle’s day was the early evening. “Home between five and six, with mud mackintoshes off, and the nightmares locked up for a while, I tried for an hour’s sleep before my (solitary, dietetic, altogether simple) bit of dinner; but first always came up for half an hour to the drawing-room and her; where a bright, kindly fire was sure to be burning (candles hardly lit, all in trustful chiaroscuro).... This was the one bright portion of my black day. Oh, those evening half-hours, how beautiful and blessed they were!”
The Garden at 5, Cheyne Row see page 23
The garden at Cheyne Row was much appreciated by the Carlyles, who turned to the best advantage this “poor sooty patch.” Mrs. Carlyle writes: “Behind we have a garden (so called in the language of flattery) in the worst of order, but boasting of two vines which produced two bunches of grapes in the season, which ‘might be eaten,’ and a walnut tree, from which I gathered almost sixpence-worth of walnuts.” Here stood the quaint china barrels she often referred to as “noblemen’s seats,” but Carlyle generally used one of the kitchen chairs by preference. He found the garden “of admirable comfort in the smoking way,” and sometimes in summer would have his writing-table placed under an awning stretched for that purpose, and with a tray full of books at his side would work there when the heat drove him from his garret study.
The Sound-proof study at Cheyne Row see page 31
The construction of this sound-proof study was proposed as far back as 1843, but not until ten years later was the enterprise put into practical execution. On August 11th, 1853, Carlyle wrote to his sister: “At length, after deep deliberation, I have fairly decided to have a top story put upon the house, one big apartment, twenty feet square, with thin double walls, light from the top, etc., and artfully ventilated, into which no sound can come; and all the cocks in nature may crow round it without my hearing a whisper of them!”
The garret study in 1857 see page 29
The scheme looked promising on paper, but the result was “irremediably somewhat of a failure.” Although the noises in the immediate neighbourhood were excluded, sounds in the distance, “evils that he knew not of” in the lower rooms, became painfully audible; nevertheless he occupied the room as his study until 1865, and here, “whirled aloft by angry elements,” he completed what Dr. Garnett named well “His Thirteen Years’ War with Frederick.” His writing-table and arm-chair stood near the centre, and within easy reach was the little mahogany table for the books he happened to be using—or such of them as were not on the floor.
Carlyle’s writing-table and chair see page 33
Carlyle bequeathed his writing-table to Sir James Stephen. “I know,” he wrote in his will, “he will accept it as a distinguished mark of my esteem. He knows that it belonged to my father-in-law and his daughter, and that I have written all my books upon it, except only Schiller, and that for fifty years and upwards that are now passed I have considered it among the most precious of my possessions.”
The ground floor rooms at 5, Cheyne Row see page 28
It was into the ground-floor room—at that time spoken of as the “parlour”—that Edward Irving was ushered when he paid his one visit to Cheyne Row, in autumn 1834. “I recollect,” writes Carlyle in the Reminiscences, “how he complimented her (as well he might) on the pretty little room she had made for her husband and self; and, running his eye over her dainty bits of arrangement, ornamentations (all so frugal, simple, full of grace, propriety, and ingenuity as they ever were), said, smiling: ‘You are like an Eve, and make a little Paradise wherever you are.’”
The kitchen at 5, Cheyne Row see page 32
No description of Carlyle’s Chelsea home would be complete without mention of the kitchen where Mrs. Carlyle made marmalade “pure as liquid amber, in taste and look almost poetically delicate”; and where, too, she stirred Leigh Hunt’s endlessly admirable morsel of Scotch porridge. Readers of the Letters and Memorials will obtain many glimpses of this apartment and its occupants. The fittings were very old-fashioned, especially the open kitchen-range with its “kettle-crane” and “movable niggards.” The dresser which stood there in 1834 remains against the south wall; the table still stands in the centre, and there is a sink in the corner beside the disconnected pump.
When Carlyle was resting at Dumfries, after the exhaustion of his triumphant Inaugural Address upon his installation as Lord Rector of Edinburgh University, he received the announcement of his wife’s sudden death whilst driving in her carriage in Hyde Park on April 21st, 1866. The effect of the calamity upon him was terrible. “There is no spirit in me to write,” he said, “though I try it sometimes.”
Mrs. Carlyle’s grave see page 26
Mrs. Carlyle was buried in Haddington Church. “I laid her in the grave of her father,” writes Carlyle in the Reminiscences, “according to covenant of forty years back, and all was ended. In the nave of old Abbey Kirk, long a ruin, now being saved from further decay, with the skies looking down on her, there sleeps my little Jeannie, and the light of her face will never shine on me more.”
Carlyle’s grave see page 26
The inscription on Carlyle’s tombstone is very simple: the family crest (two wyverns), the family motto (Humilitate), and then these few words:—
“Here rests Thomas Carlyle, who was born at Ecclefechan, 4th December, 1795, and died at 24, Cheyne Row, Chelsea, London, on Saturday, 5th February, 1881.
“No monument,” writes Froude, “is needed for one who has made an eternal memorial for himself in the hearts of all to whom truth is the dearest of possessions.”
THOMAS CARLYLE