Thomas Carlyle and Juniper Green
www.junipergreen300.com Thomas Carlyle and Juniper Green Thomas Carlyle by Walter Greaves about 1879. Thomas Carlyle, 1795 - 1881. Historian and essayist A giant of nineteenth-century thought, Thomas Carlyle was the son of a stone- mason and was born in Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire. After graduating from Edinburgh University, he began to produce the articles, translations, essays and histories which were to make him world-famous. Carlyle and his gifted wife Jane lived in London, and their home in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, became a place of pilgrimage for intellectuals from all over Europe. Greaves was a neighbour and made the studies for this portrait while Carlyle was sitting for James McNeil Whistler. National Portrait Gallery of Scotland. There has long been a tradition in Juniper Green that Thomas Carlyle, that eminent Victorian, spent some time in the village not long after his marriage to Jane Welsh. Thomas Carlyle was born on the 4th December, 1795, at Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire the second son of James Carlyle, and the eldest child of his second marriage. Thomas and Jane Carlyle married on October 17th, 1826 at Templand, Thornhill, in Dumfriesshire and moved to Comely Page 1 Bank, Edinburgh, their first home, on the same day. It follows that any sojourn by Carlyle in Juniper Green must have been in the late 1820s. The earliest mention of this tradition so far found is in ‘Old and New Edinburgh’ by James Grant Vol. III Chapter XXXVIII p. 323 where it states: “Near Woodhall in the parish of Colinton, is the little modern village of Juniper Green, chiefly celebrated as being the temporary residence of Thomas Carlyle some time after his marriage at Comely Bank, Stockbridge where, as he tells us in his “Reminiscences” (edited by Mr Froude), “his first experience in the difficult task of housekeeping began”.
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