GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 



wife, " not to walk, but to take water and a scrub-brush and swash 

 down into some degree of tolerability those greasy, clammy flags 

 in the back area. I did it without rebuke of Anne. I said she 

 couldn't do it in her present state of illness, and on the whole 

 proceeded, and found it decidedly hard work, for three-quarters 

 of an hour. Some ten or twelve pails of water with vigorous 

 scrubbing did, however, reduce the affair to order, whereupon I 

 washed myself and sat down to breakfast in virtuous peace. ' Dirt 

 shall not be around me, ' said Cobbett, 'so long as I can handle a 

 broom.' : 



It is a pity that Carlyle did not always turn to violent exercise 

 of this sort, instead of losing his temper and making his unselfish, 

 clever, but fiery little wife uncomfortable, when things went 

 wrong; and when cocks and hens, street organs, and neighbours' 

 pianos, interrupted his work and his rest. 



But he did not ; and therefore it is tragi- comic to read the com- 

 ments of both husband and wife in their letters, on the painful 

 subject of the " demon fowls." Tragic that a man of genius should 

 be so disturbed and no redress be obtainable, comic as to the cause, 

 which was a " two-and-sixpenny worth of bantams." Comic, too, 

 in the theatrical deduction that " The cocks must either withdraw 

 or die ! 5: He would, indeed, have cheerfully shot them, but he had 

 no gun, and could not have hit them if he had had one the more so, 

 as he says, he " seldom saw the wretched animals," because they 

 were just on the other side of the garden wall, and the pear tree 

 intervened. If the reader will look at the picture of the garden 

 and back of the house, he will realize the absurdities of the position 

 proposed. The author of " Sartor," with a blunderbuss, taking 

 aim from his bedroom window at a moving quarry ! But the 

 matter was serious enough, in all conscience, for the birds were so 

 very close, and they " screeched," and they " crowed " from 

 midnight to morn. " What is to be done ? " wrote Mrs. Carlyle 

 to her mother. " God knows, if this goes on he will soon be in 

 Bedlam, and I too. ..." She wrote piteous appeals to the next- 

 door neighbours, but they were returned unopened. She sent 

 for the maid, but she would not come. In the law there was no 

 help. ; ' People," she wrote, " may keep wild beasts in their back 

 yard if they care to do so." This was in 1842, and the annoyance 

 seems to have gone on with intervals for twenty years, alternating 



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