GARLYLE HOUSE, CHELSEA 



Chelsea, that he calls " a singular, heterogeneous kind of spot, 

 very dirty and confused in some places, quite beautiful in others," 

 with its memories of Sir Thomas More, Steele, and Smollett, was 

 even more fascinating in pre-embankment days than it is now. 

 Cheyne Walk was at that time a wide highway, with boats lying 

 moored, and a smell of shipping and tar. Up and down the broad 

 river darted myriads of canoes manned by " white-trousered, white- 

 shirted Cockneys," and beyond lay the peaceful villages, and 

 beautiful green undulations of Surrey, " a most artificial, green- 

 painted, and yet lively, fresh, almost opera-looking business," 

 wrote Carlyle ; for though he professed dislike of the avowedly 

 picturesque, he was not insensitive to it, and, fresh from the silence 

 and solitudes of Craigenputtoch, he was clearly attracted ; but 

 he left the decision to his practical wife. " Revolve all this in thy 

 fancy and judgment, my child," he wrote to her, " and see what 

 thou canst make of it." 



The removal to Number Five, " a right old, strong, roomy brick 

 house," took place in the summer of 1834, when the cherries were 

 ripening on the tree in the garden. Carlyle cheerily describes it : 

 " A hackney coach, loaded to the roof and beyond it with luggage 

 and the passengers, tumbled us all down at eleven in the morning. 

 Chico, the canary-bird, struck up his lilt in the very London streets 

 wherever he could see green leaves or feel the free air. There we 

 sat on three trunks. I, however, with a match-box, soon lit a 

 cigar, as Bessy (who pro tern, was acting as maid) did a fire, and 

 thus, with a kind of cheerful solemnity we took possession by 

 raising a reek, and even dined in extempore fashion on a box covered 

 with some accidental towel." 



In the strip of garden at the back of the house, which the drawing 

 shows as it is seen to-day, Carlyle now set to work. Slips of jessa- 

 mine and gooseberry bushes, brought from Scotland, were planted. 

 Mrs. Carlyle tended two tiny leaves plucked from her father's 

 grave, which, " after twelve months in the garden at Chelsea 

 declared itself a gooseberry bush ! " But the old gardener, when 

 asked if it could be got to bear, said, " A poor, wild thing ! No, 

 if you want to have gooseberries, ma'am, better get a proper goose- 

 berry bush in its place ! ' The old Goth ! ' Long, long after, in 

 1863, three little gooseberries appeared on the bush. Great was 

 the exultation. " But, alas ! " she wrote, " whether through too 



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