MR THOMAS CARLYLE.

Southland Times, Issue 1249, 13 May 1870, Page 3

MR THOMAS CARLYLE.

The correspondent of an English provincial newspaper writes : " I ana sorry to inform you that the condition of Mr Thomas Carlyle is giving a great deal of uneasiness to his friends. He has long been known to be an unhappy man, although when in the mood he is the most delightful company imaginable. Still it ] is not often that he is in the mood, and i then with his bitterness and fierce sarcasm he makes it bad times for those who are beside him. Of late, too, his gloom, moodiness, desire for sequestration, and irritability when disturbed have much increased, Friend after friend who had borne with him long out of respect for his real nobility of soul, have been I gradually alienated by his capricious J temper, and now the grand old man may j be said to be almost alone in the world with his old Scotch servant from the hill country of Dumfriesshire. Mr Buskin was the longest-suffering, but he, too, knows no longer the way to Cheyne-row. { I heard the other day an amusing story of Carlyle. An American author of eminence came over bearing a letter of introduction from Emerson, one of Carlyle's special favorites and warmest admirers. Carlyle has a habit of answering his door himself, a practice rather disconcerting I should say to hawkers, beggars, &c, and indeed to applicants of another stamp. This particular Yankee knocked, and Carlyle opened unto him. The man, taken aback, for he new Carlyle well by his photographs (as who does not ?) asked hesitatingly, ' Is Mr Thomas Carlyle at home ?' The sage's reply was a loud and emphatic ' No,' followed by slamming the door with so much abruptness that the American's nose made a very narrow escape. He has a large room at the top of the house lighted from the roof, where all his favorite books are, and pasted on the wall are portraits — some fine, others very common — of those whom he regarded as his heroes — Frederickthe Great, Gustavus Adolphus, and a number more. This room

is his sanctum, aud few there be who are admitted into it : I have never known more than two — besides his secretaries, whom he was wont to change very often, and to whom he did not always behave, it was said, so considerately as he might. There is something peculiar in the tenure of Mr Carlyle's holding of his house in Cheyne-walk. He has not the remotest conception who is his landlord. He saw the advertisement of the house to let, with directions to communicate with Messrs Coutts and Co., wrote and received a reply accepting his offer, and directing that he should annually pay in his rent, if convenient, to Coutts and Co. , ' account Cheyne "Walk.' Further, the rent is fixed so low (£25) as to induce the idea that the arrangement sprung from a desire to accommodate the great author rather than to profit by him as a tenant. " ..