GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 
the bereavements and difficulties, the successes and losses, of forty 
years, each marking, as with a milestone, that difficult road of life 
down which, for the most part, they walked together, hand in 
hand. 
Of bereavements and passionate grief, the old house at Chelsea 
has seen much. When she lost her mother, and he his. And what 
an episode was that, what a shock, what a stunning blow, what 
an irretrievable calamity, must have appeared to them, the acci- 
dental destruction of the precious manuscript of the first volume 
of the “French Revolution”! A work of art, be it picture, 
sculpture, or book, once destroyed, cannot be recreated exactly 
in the same form. The germ of the idea for the book, or the 
statue; the design and motive for the painting, may still exist, but 
its evolution in each case will inevitably be different; for when 
once the effort is spent, not all the industry in the world can recall 
just the mood in which it was begun, or the enthusiasm for 
creation—like unto the enthusiasm of early youth, that, sur- 
mounting all obstacles, carried us forward to achievement. “ It 
is gone,” wrote Carlyle in his journal; ‘the whole world, and 
myself backed by it, could not bring it back; nay, the old spirit, 
too, is fled.”’ é 
Carlyle’s own description in a letter to his wife of Chelsea and 
Cheyne Row eighty years ago, is interesting reading now: “ We 
are called Cheyne Row (pronounced Chainé Row) and are a genteel 
neighbourhood ; two old ladies on one side, unknown character 
on the other, but with ‘ pianos.’ The street is flag-pathed, sunk- 
storied, iron-railed, all old-fashioned and tightly done up; looks 
out on a rank of sturdy old pollarded (that is beheaded) lime trees, 
standing there like giants. . . . Beyond this a high brick wall; 
backwards a garden, the size of our back one at Comely Bank, 
with trees, etc., in bad culture ; beyond this green hay-fields and 
tree avenues, once a bishop’s pleasure grounds; an unpicturesque 
yet rather cheerful outlook.” He describes the house in detail, 
ending up with: “‘ On the whole a most massive, roomy, sufficient 
old house, with places, for example, to hang, say, three dozen 
hats and cloaks on, and as many crevices and queer old presses 
and shelved closets (all tight, new painted in their way) as would 
gratify the most covetous Goody—rent, thirty-five pounds—I 
confess I am strongly tempted.” 
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