Thomas Carlyle's House

A bitterly cold Sunday afternoon, with odd flurries of snow; the sort of afternoon when it is best to be indoors, and so a good opportunity to make a visit to Thomas Carlyle's house in Chelsea, now a National Trust property.

There is nothing remarkable about the house from the street; it is just one of a terrace of
similar houses of, I think, four floors and a basement.   But once inside, it is almost certainly very different to the rest of the houses, as it remains almost exactly as it was when Thomas Caryle lived there with his wife Jane and wrote all his books, from the kitchen in the basement to the specially constructed study at the top, with its skylight in the room.

Thomas Carlyle rented the house at 24 Cheyne Row because, prior to becoming a successful writer, it was all he could afford; later, he stayed there because it was all that he and his wife, who had no children, needed.

But although the Carlyles had no children, the house was often full of people; they were visited by numerous writers and artists and politicians; everyone who was anyone seems to have visited them at one time or another, even though Thomas Carlyle had a biting tongue, and was highly critical of some of his fellow writers' works, including those of people like Charles Dickens.   They, however, have the last laugh; although he was a prolific write, Carlyle's highly convoluted prose is now rarely read, whilst writers like Dickens are still very much in favour.

The house is very well laid out for visitors; everywhere there are sheets with information on the various rooms, and one needs at least a couple of hours to read everything, in additional to looking at all the items there, which include Carlyle's desk, on loan from the London Library which he founded in 1841, and whose current president is the playwright Tom Stoppard, a letter from Disraeli offering him the Grand Cross of the Bath in 1874 (he refused it), his passport (rather different to the small passports issued today) and various photographs, including one taken by Julia Margaret Cameron in 1867 at Little Holland House.

A statue of Thomas Carlyle, sculpted by Sir Joseph Edgar Boehm and partly paid for by Charles Darwin, Robert Browining and William Morris, and unveilled in 1882, stands in nearby Embankment Gardens.