CARLYLE HOUSE, CHELSEA 



brother before her departure, he says : " Meanwhile she is very 

 busy ornamenting the garden, poor little soul ; has two china seats, 

 and speculates even upon an awning or quasi -tent against the 

 blazes of July that are coming." One of the seats here mentioned, 

 made of blue glazed earthenware, may be seen in the drawing on 

 page 260, and was probably the identical stool upon which Carlyle, 

 in his wife's absence, sat watching the coming of the dawn on that 

 early summer morning nearly sixty years ago. 



Mrs. Carlyle was fond of pets, the most extraordinary of these 

 being a leech. " Chico," the canary that had accompanied her to 

 Cheyne Row, took unto himself a wife, and " his two bright yellow 

 young ones, as soon as they were fledged," so we learn from the 

 " Reminiscences," " got out into the trees of the garden and vanished 

 to swift destruction." The successors to Chico, if not his posterity, 

 together with her little dog " Nero," were confided to Carlyle's 

 care in his wife's absence in 1857, with strict injunctions to look 

 after them. Several references to birds and dogs in his letters at 

 this time show how scrupulously he fulfilled his trust. He made 

 Nero more than ever his companion in his evening strolls, gave 

 chickweed to the canaries, for which they said, ' Thank you 

 kindly, as plain as could be sung. . . . Nero came into the 

 garden, stationed himself on the warm flags to inquire about 

 dinner." When Jeannie returned after two months' absence, 

 " there was joy in Nero, and the canaries, and in creatures more 

 important." 



The stone flags mentioned here are still much in evidence at 

 Cheyne Row, and give a certain old-fashioned touch to the garden, 

 redeeming it from the commonplace. One must cross them to 

 pass from the lobby door to the bit of turf doing duty for a lawn. 

 Their presence there in lieu of gravel or flower-bed, explains why 

 Carlyle sometimes referred to the plot of ground as the " back 

 area," or "back yard," and occasionally apologetically, as "the 

 garden so-called." They help to give the " old black house," as 

 he termed it, though the bricks are rather grey than brown or black, 

 that pleasant air of Georgian or Queen Anne distinction, which 

 clings to it, and an interest even independent of the claim of 

 Carlylian associations. 



Carlyle liked to see them spotless. One December day he him- 

 self turned to and scrubbed them. " I decided," he wrote to his 



263 



