Morning journal and courier., 1892-11-26

passed the choicest blsckgusrd quips and
quirks that roll from London drivers
ready tongues.
The incident left smile on nearly every
face in the omnibus. A pleasant-fsced
man sitting beside me, noticing my look of
inquiry and rightly judging my nstionaH-
ty, kindly solved the mystery. "My dear
sir" he said with almost an air of pride,
'he's brave literary man, that. He
wasn't born in England, but he's the big
gest man in it When you get back to
America you can tell the Yankees you've
seen old Thomas Carlylel"
/ never ssw him again. But the Lon
don incident of long ago made me q stu
dent of Csrlyle-one of the most difficult
tasks of my life; and, from much reading
| after the sturdy old barrstor in philosophy
and religion, many pilgrimsges to his
birth and burial place. up there in dreary
which his strange personality and genius
made something like shrines, 1 have come
| to love his memory, and especially TO have
an affection for the place where for half q
lifetime he struggled, contended, rallied,
assaulted, defended, suffered aud rspented
in his humble and imperial, niggArdly and
noble career.
That place is Chelsea. 1t Is London
| now. You cannot find break in all the
great masses of solid structures from the
densest part of the borough out to old
Chelsea and for many miles beyond. Yet
the Chelsea region is still most charmingly
distinct. You know insensibiy when you
come to 1t. You feel, without being told,
that you have crossed its boundaries on
leaving it. Without participating in its
memories, knowing none of its history, IL
you were set down within it. its lovely
leafy, somnolsnt air has the very spirit and
hush of lingering noble presences. You
daily and idle upon its streets as If wooed
by the unconscious spell of memory, ss IL
lsggsrd from pleasant compAnionship, as
If held by the gentle hand of "Reminiscences.
In the very heart of this pleasRntest of
all London outer districts, Thomas and
james Welsh Carlyle literally battled along
together. from the 10th day of October,
1884, until Mrs. Carlyle's sad and strange
aesth in her broughAm in Hyde Park, In
April, 1866 The lonely old soul that was
left remained, rather than lived, in the
same house to the ead, in 1881. And i
somehow believe that the forty seven years.
staying of the sage of EcclefechAn in No.
5. Great Cheyne Row has thrown more of
a poetic glsmor over old Chelsea than all
the other famous and great who have come
and tsrried and gone.
Materially, Sir Thomas More originally
made Chelsea. Carlyle rounds ont Its
fame. Vast fields of history and romance
lie between. This "pore house In Chel-
chith, as the ancient records speak OF the
home of Sir Thomas More, was not SO
humble an hsbitation after all. 1t had q
great porch, many fine windows, dozens of
gables, pretty tower, splendid gardens
for the time, and besides housing the hap
piest family living in England in the SIX
teesth century, was so attractive a place.
though then far away from London, that
Queen Mary was ''moved to purchase it,"
the gsrrulous Erasmus found 1t hospita-
BILE retreat; and King Henry VIII. often
came up the Thames in his royal barge to
debark and stroll to this first old Chelsea
mansion with his arm lovingly around the
neck of More, which his hesdsman's axe
severed one July morning a little later on
Lying along the northern bank of the
Thames, to the west of the city, Chelsea
proper may be said to begin on the east at
the famous Chelsea hospital for British
pensioners The magnificent Thames en-
bankment forms the shore ledge here, and
near the Botanic gardens becomes Cheyne
walk, which continues a mile or so TO Bat
terses bridge. In this two or three miles
distance, about the center of which is the
Carlyle neighborhood, and extending back
from the river to the depth of a mile OF
more, there are wondrously quaint old
structures, clumps of ancient cottages
covered with vines and embedded in green
cry, Elizabethsn mansions by the score
with monstrous chimneys and gray old
gables, winding lanes leading from the
Thames, where once were fine water stairs
and picturesque fisher huts. bits of vene-
rable park and moldy gardens overshad-
owed by prim modern rows, where the ar
istocracy have crowded in upon the older
hsunts of literature and art, and cob
webbed inns innumerable.
Chelsea hospital itself is a world of
memories not oFly If British history
s6eld, but of the time of Charles IL, of
old King James college, of Sir Stephen
Fox, and of waywsrd though kind hearted
Nell Gwynne. And as TO the pensioners
themselves Chelsss would hardly be Chel-
sea without them. Struggling along it's
shady thoroughfarss, sitting bent and 81
lent on sunny benches, leaning against
whipping fountains or vases and statues
resting as composedly as house owners on
steps and in vestibules, or stumping grave
ly along with orders to this or that ser
want, as if long habit had given them su-
pervisory rights over the daily affairs of
residents, they irresistibly suggest bevies
of croaking cockstoos tnrned loose in park
and garden, each one querulously harping
upon some fancied grievance or delight
At the western side of the hospital still
stands Sir Robert Wslpole's house, almost
precisely as it stood when he all but ruled
England through the two Georges, First
and Second. 1t is now a portion of the
hospital infrmary. 1t was to this old red
brick mansion that Wslpole's rival Boiling
broke came to dine and half choked for
his choler; where Swift and Gay came to
get material for satire; and where Pope
| came with scandal of his past amours and,
rNrnhahlv 10 harr f1r aaoicsa-,a -, otha
Not far from the hospital, over in the
northeast corner of Chelsea, is a little
green oval like q pretty emeral lozsnge,
around which crowd some very ancient
| two-story brick houses. The windows are
little, the psnes are little, the steps, scrs-
| pers and knockers are little, but always
| bright and clean, and 1t seems that every
| face you see at the tiny panes is little and
| snappy and old, like all else in this vene-
habitations, precisely like all the rest, was
born the poetess, L E. L. But two doors
| away, in another box of house, she went
| to school. Her school fellows were the
| East Indian writer, Miss Roberts, and
| Lady Caroline Lamb. Years after here
were also educated other famous women:
| Lady Bulwer, Miss Milford, aud that best
and tenoerest of all writers upon Ireland,
Mrs. s G. Hall.
1 1Q6 OuS STGmOrl6 gardens
at the western edge of Chelsea has special
interest to Americans. A grand daughter
/ of William Penn, named Philadelphis
from the city of her birth, became the
second wife of Viscount CIemorne. Out
living her husband she inherited the beau
| tiful grounds once known as "Chelsea
| Farm" Granville Penn, once lord of the
Stoke Poges manor, where Gray lived and
wrote the "Elegy," fell heir TO the proper
| ty and sold 1t to the Cremorne Garden
corporation. Wicked enough il grew in
time. Decorous associations retrieved 1t,
and an innocent nursery garden now wells
its unhallowed site and memories. .
At least three ancient tayerns in the
neighborhood have peculiar old-time in
terest. Two, one at the western and the
other at the eastern edge of the parish, are
directly associated with Nell Gwynne.
That to the west, in which found a noble
sort of publican, and, oddly enough, q
cousin of that rampant little pugilist
whose skill of tongue has never been de-
feated, Charley Mitchell, was built BY
Charles II. as a home for his favorite. 1t
was from the windows of this house, now
resort of Chelsea pensioners, that Nelrs
eyes looked in upon the then fine meadows
of King James college. in her dream,
when she saw the beautiful palace rise
with its Thousand chambers out of which
"divers many old and worn ont soldier
men" came and cried, 'sGod bless King
Charles!" which led to the merciful found
ing of the splendid hospital.
The other associated with the fame of