GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 



the bereavements and difficulties, the successes and losses, of forty 

 years, each marking, as with a milestone, that difficult road of life 

 down which, for the most part, they walked together, hand in 

 hand. 



Of bereavements and passionate grief, the old house at Chelsea 

 has seen much. When she lost her mother, and he his. And what 

 an episode was that, what a shock, what a stunning blow, what 

 an irretrievable calamity, must have appeared to them, the acci- 

 dental destruction of the precious manuscript of the first volume 

 of the " French Revolution " ! A work of art, be it picture, 

 sculpture, or book, once destroyed, cannot be recreated exactly 

 in the same form. The germ of the idea for the book, or the 

 statue ; the design and motive for the painting, may still exist, but 

 its evolution in each case will inevitably be different ; for when 

 once the effort is spent, not all the industry in the world can recall 

 just the mood in which it was begun, or the enthusiasm for 

 creation like unto the enthusiasm of early youth, that, sur- 

 mounting all obstacles, carried us forward to achievement. " It 

 is gone," wrote Carlyle in his journal ; " the whole world, and 

 myself backed by it, could not bring it back ; nay, the old spirit, 

 too, is fled." 



Carlyle's own description in a letter to his wife of Chelsea and 

 Cheyne Row eighty years ago, is interesting reading now : " We 

 are called Cheyne Row (pronounced Chaine Row) and are a genteel 

 neighbourhood ; two old ladies on one side, unknown character 

 on the other, but with ' pianos.' The street is flag-pathed, sunk- 

 storied, iron-railed, all old-fashioned and tightly done up ; looks 

 out on a rank of sturdy old pollarded (that is beheaded) lime trees, 

 standing there like giants. . . . Beyond this a high brick wall ; 

 backwards a garden, the size of our back one at Comely Bank, 

 with trees, etc., in bad culture ; beyond this green hay-fields and 

 tree avenues, once a bishop's pleasure grounds ; an unpicturesque 

 yet rather cheerful outlook." He describes the house in detail, 

 ending up with : '" On the whole a most massive, roomy, sufficient 

 old house, with places, for example, to hang, say, three dozen 

 hats and cloaks on, and as many crevices and queer old presses 

 and shelved closets (all tight, new painted in their way) as would 

 gratify the most covetous Goody rent, thirty-five pounds I 

 confess I am strongly tempted." 



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