GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 



and the walk on the opposite side, which may once have been yellow 

 gravel, is now an ambiguous, purply-grey of nondescript composi- 

 tion. It would be well if " the Trust " could stand the expense of a 

 few gay flowers to enliven a spot that fifty or sixty years ago must 

 have been bright and pretty enough. For here Carlyle sat and 

 dreamed in the early summer dawn, and worked beneath his awning 

 in the July " blazes." Here " Jeannie " directed her maids, or 

 weeded or watered, while Nero frisked about her, the happiest of 

 little dogs. It is, or should be, hallowed ground ; how many great 

 thoughts germinated here, we shall never know. Although Carlyle 

 professed to dislike art the art of the days of Maclise and Creswick 

 for he knew nothing of his great contemporary and neighbour, 

 Turner, who breathed his last, a stone's throw from No. 5 nor of 

 Millais, in Millais' greatest days and though a tour in search of the 

 picturesque had no charms for him, he was yet unusually sensitive 

 to the appeal of nature in all her moods. That this was so, is 

 obvious to any reader of the " Journal," and particularly of the 

 earlier letters, written from Scotland ; but it was the blossoming 

 tree in his London garden that inspired the words written in April, 

 1851. " Birth of a cherry in the spring of the year, birth of a 

 planet in the spring of the aeons. The All producing them alike, 

 builds them together out of its floating atoms, out of its infinite 

 opulence. The germ of an idea lies behind that." 



Little Nero is buried at the end of the garden, immediately behind 

 the point from which I took my drawing. It was the month of 

 the outbreak of War in 1914 that I began it, and troops of lively 

 Americans as yet unable to secure a passage back to their country 

 came, drawn by legitimate interest, to visit the house and garden, 

 and to look at the little stone raised by Mrs. Caflyle's loving hands. 

 '* Ah, poor little Nero's grave ! '' exclaimed one and all then, 

 finding the ground occupied by a lady and a camp-seat, they stared 

 at me instead ; and all but the bravest beat a hasty retreat. 



' Tell Sir George," wrote Mrs. Carlyle, in a very wet summer, 

 under date August 20th, 1860 " I planted the cowslips with my 

 own hand, and have not needed to water them ; the heavenly 

 watering-can . . . having saved me the trouble. I gave them the 

 place of highest honour (round poor little Nero's stone)." 



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