CHAPTER XII 
CARLYLE HOUSE, CHELSEA 
people who, for the best part of half a century, were the 
tenants of No. 5—now 24—Cheyne Row, that there is little 
that is new and not generally known to record of them. 
It will serve some purpose, however, to collect the existing 
memoranda of the not inconsiderable part the little garden at the 
back of the house played in their lives. 
James Anthony Froude has been severely censured for the 
manner in which, as Carlyle’s literary executor and trusted friend, 
he fulfilled his task. 
Some think he betrayed the confidence reposed in him, but 
without entering far into that vexed question, we must in fairness 
remember that, as he tells us in his preface to the ‘‘ Life of Carlyle,” 
the philosopher himself, in reviewing Lockhart’s ‘‘ Life of Scott,” 
had defended Lockhart from a similar charge, insisting that every 
biographer should be honest, and candid; because, he says, ‘“‘ to 
produce not things, but the ghosts of things, can never be the 
duty of man . . . your true hero is not a white, stainless, imper- 
sonal ghost-hero,”’ by which he means, of course, that every hero 
is a man, with human failings as well as virtues, and that it rests 
’ with the biographer to give these their proper proportion. I 
scarcely think that Froude, though sometimes he may have been 
indiscreet and mistaken in his conclusions, failed, on the whole, 
to do this, because, speaking for myself, I must say I rose from 
the perusal of the “ Life,” and afterwards of ‘‘ The Letters and 
Memorials,’’ with a much greater enthusiasm.and admiration for 
255 
S” much has been written and read of the two remarkable 
