CARLYLE AND CHELSEA.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5460, 11 January 1896, Page 6

CARLYLE AND CHELSEA.

Now that Carlyle's house in CheyneEow, Chelsea, is being fitted up to be a perpetual memorial of the departed " sage," it is opportune that the rector of Chelsea, the Rev Reginald Blunt, should have written and published a pretentious book under the title of "The Carlyles' Chelsea Home ; being some account of No. 5, Cheyne Row." The book is said to be "unique," and is fully illustrated with drawings, maps, fac - similes and plans. A notable room in the historic house is fully described. " During the early years of their tenancy, the pleasant three-windowed room on the first floor was Carlylo's study.' Hero he wrote: 'I have got my little book-press set up, my table fixed finn in its place ; and sit here awaiting what Time and I in our questionable wrestle shall make out between us.' Here the ' French Revolution ' was written ; it was here that Mill, 'pale as. Hector's ghost/ begging Mrs Carlyle to go down and speak to some one in his carriage at the door, broke to her husband the destruction of the manuscript of the first volume, of which the story has been so often told. Here, when later on it became the drawing-x-oom, was the scene of those evening gatherings to which so many notable and interesting people came. And here, finally — for his bed had been moved into this warm and cheerier room in his last illness — with his wife's worktable and trinkets, which had been kept in their places since her death, close to his hand, on the morning of • Feb. 5, 1881 Thomas Carlyle died. It is a room, indeed, charged with' .tragic and distinguished memories." To that room, no doubt, the Chelsea pilgrims will turn with deep and reverent interest.

It was, we learn, Leigh Hunt's praises of Chelsea that drew Carlyle and his young wife from their retreat at Craigenputtock to what Carlyle himself described as " a genteel neighbourhood." The house itself, he said, was "eminent, antique, wainscoted to the very ceiling, and has been all new painted and repaired; broadish stair, with massive balustrade (in the old style) ; corniced and as thick as one's thigh ; floors thick as a rook, wood of them here and there worm-eaten, yet capable of cleanness, and still with thrice the strength of a modern floor. And then as to rooms, Goody ! Three stories besides the sunk story, in every one of them three apartments, in depth something like 40ft in all." As to the gentility of the surrounding, these may be inferred from the followings extract from a letter written lay Carlyle to his brother in 1840, which is quoted in Mr Blunf s book. Towards sunset the sage had gone out for a walk to explore the genteel neighbourhood. " Avoiding crowds and highways, I went along Battersea Bridge, and thence by a wondrous path across cowfields, mud ditches, river embankments, over a waste expanse of what attempted to pass for country, wondrous enough in the darkening dusk, especially as I had never been there before, and the very road was uncertain. Boat people sat drinking about the Eed House; steamers snorting about the river, each with a lantern at its nose. Old women sat in strange cottages trimming their evening fire. Bewildered-looking, mysterious cokefurnaces glowed at one place, I know not why. Windmills atood silent. Blackguards, improper females, and miscellanies sauntered, harmless all. Chelsea lights burnt many-hued, bright over the water in the distance — under the great sky of silver, under the great still twilight. So I wandered, full of thoughts, or of things I could not think." Those who know Battersea Park as it ia will be able to appreciate the changes that half a century has worked in that part of London.