CARLYLE HOUSE, CHELSEA 



himself, but in 1863, when life " in the valley of the shadow of 

 Frederick the Great " had become for her too dreary and mono- 

 tonous, and she was haunted every day by the Prussian's ghost, 

 she went away to friends for a little change, and wrote, entreating 

 Carlyle " not to sit up till two, nor take a sixth cup of tea, nor 

 commit any indiscretion in the management of himself." And she 

 had previously concluded another letter with : " Oh ! please do 

 go to bed at a reasonable hour, and don't overwork yourself ; and 

 consider you are no longer a child." All of which is both touching 

 and amusing, for Carlyle at this time was sixty-eight. No wonder 

 she was weary, for " Frederick the Great " took six years in which 

 to get itself written as " Cromwell " had taken five. In 1864, 

 when the house would appear to have been redecorated, she writes 

 charging him to " tell the maids not to rub on the clean paper with 

 their abominably large crinolines, and not to put back the chairs 

 against it, as is their habit." 



Mrs. Carlyle was, indeed, a notable housekeeper. She usually 

 waited until she could get her husband away before she made an 

 " earthquake " in the house. She then set the girls " raging and 

 scrubbing," and ordered all the feather beds and pillows out on to 

 the grass to get aired. On one occasion after she had done so, it 

 rained pretty continuously, and the beds only went out to come 

 back again, " having," she wrote, "all to retreat into the lobby, 

 where they lie appealing to posterity." 



Nero, the little dog, bulks largely in the annals of No. 5, Cheyne 

 Row. "He is part and parcel of myself," Mrs. Carlyle wrote to 

 her husband. " When I say ' I am well,' it means also c Nero is 

 well ! ' Nero c'est moi, moi c'est Nero." Perhaps all Mrs. Car- 

 lyle's friends did not share the passion for dogs which made Nero's 

 successor the innocent cause of his mistress's death for when she 

 went from home on a visit, Nero had sometimes to be left behind 

 his dignity, like hers, must be kept up, and he should not go, she 

 said, " where he is de trop." So Mr. Carlyle took what care he could 

 of him in her absence ; he liked the little animal well enough, 

 but I think it was a case of " love me, love my dog," with him, for 

 he said he was " a real nuisance and absurdity in the house." 

 When she was seeking health in Scotland, Nero was wont to accom- 

 pany him in his nocturnal rambles, and returned home, wrote 

 Carlyle, " the joyfullest, dirtiest little dog we may wish to see." 



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