HANDBOUND AT THE THE ARLYLE COUNTRY WITH A STUDY OF CARLYLE'S LIFE BY J. M. SLOAN LONDON CHAPMAN & HALL, LIMITED 1904 The autJior begs to acknowledge most gratefully iinicJi valuable aid received from descendants of the Carlyle family, and others, in collecting the portraits and views of places selected for illustrations, and tracing the footprints of Thomas Carlyle in the Carlyle Country. TO SIR EDWARD RUSSELL, KT. MOST TOLERANT OF SCHOLARS AND BEST OF FRIENDS. CONTENTS I. Introductory ...... II. Nature in Annandale .... III. The Chin Carlyle . IV. Carlyle's Ancestors . V. The Burgher Seceders of Ecclefechan . VI. Towards the Pulpit of the Associate Burghers VII. To Ecclefechan ..... VIII. The Carlylean Mecca . IX. Lingering in Ecclefechan ... X. Around Carlyle's Grave . XI. James Car/y/e's First Farm . XII. Shelter at Mainhill . XIII. The Crisis at Mainhill ... XIV. Mainhill after Reconcilement . " XV. MainhilFs Best of Boys" . XVI. Not London, but Annandale ... XVII. On Repentance Hill . XVIII. Removal to Scotsbrig . XIX. Scotsbrig Memories . XX. Carlyle in Annan . CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE XXI. Annan Incidents 190 XXII. On the Solway Coast ....... 200 XXIII. Marriage at Templand ....... 209 XXIV. The Carlyks in Nithsdale 221 XXV. The Retreat to Craigenputtock 230 XXVI. First Period at Craigenpiittockfrom Whitsunday, 1828, to August, 1831 . .241 XXVII. Second Period at Craigenputtock -from April, 1832, to May, 1834 . -253 XXVIII. Carlyle in Dumfries . .262 Epilogue . .272 Appendix . .275 . Chronology . .277 Index ... 281 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Thomas . Carlyk. By James McNeill Whistler Frontispiece Hoddom Bridge .......... 9 Cn the Kirtie Water . .12 " " Kirkconnell Churchyard, and Fair Helen's Grave . .13 On the Mein near Ecclefechati . .15 A Link between Past and Present . .22 Rev. Dr. Alexander Carlyle (Minister of Inveresk) . .23 Birrens . ... 25 The Dock Park, Dumfries . .34 The Carlyle Birth-House ........ 40' House in which Burns died in Dumfries . .42 " The New Road" Ecclefechan . -51 The River Annan at Bridekirk . -55 Annan Road, Ecclefechan . -57 Ecclefechan . .61 Bedroom in Birth-House ........ 63 Larger Room at Birth-House . .65 Ecclefechan. At the Birth- Houss . -67 Xll LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE The Old Meeting- House 7 l Shinnel Bridge 77 Around Margaret Carlyle's Grave. 79 Johnstone Monument . -83 at St. Helena . Tomb of Dr. Arnot, Physician to Napoleon 84 . 86 Carlyle's Grave 1 Mainhill . 9 Thomas Carlyle . .107 Mainhillfrom the Byre . 115 Mainhillfrom the ATorth Road 120 Drumlanrig Castle . .122 Hoddom Kirk 133 " Grave of Old Robert Brand" 134 . 1 Tomb of Rev. James Yorstoun . 3 5 . 1 Knockhill . .. 3 7 House on Repentance Hill . .139 Tower of Repentance . .143 "" Chas. Kirkpatrick Sharpe ...... 145 Hoddom Castle .......... 147 /n II . In Thorn . .154 Tomb 's . 1 of Carlyle Ancestors in Pennersaughs Graveyard 5 7 Scohbrig . .162 " " The Linn in Middlebie Burn 169 Middlebie . .171 Margaret Aitken Carlyle . -174 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xiii PAGE . Anna/i . .181 Edward Irving . 183 The Old Academy, Annan . .185 Annan Parish Church . .188 The Old Jetty, Annan . .194 On the So.way, near Neivby Cottage . .195 On the River Annan ...... .197 The Hitchell . .201 Mrs. Austin, the Gill . .204 Penfillan ........... 208 Jane Welsh Carlyle, sEt. 25. .210 Auldgirth Bridge . .213 Templand . -215 River Nith, near Templand . .217 Crichope Linn ....... .218 Dr. Russell, Thornhill -225 " " Carlyle's Seat at Holm Hill . .226 Mrs. Russell, Thornhill .... .227 Holm Hill .228 The Nith at Dumfries .... -232 Irongray Kirkyard ... -233 To Routen Bridge .... face page 234 Craigenputtock -239 Craigenputtock Hill . .242 " Room in which Sartor Resartus" was written . 245 XIV LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Lord Jeffrey . ' 247 To The Kitchen, Craigenputtock . face page 250 Glencapk Quay 2 5I Dr. John Carlyle . 254 Dnnscore Kirk . 258 Ralph Waldo Emerson 259 John McDiarmid, &t. 25 263 Carlyk's Sister, Jean 265 Thomas Aird . 267 . Railway Station, Dumfries . 269 The Hill .... 270 Railway Station, Ecclefechan 2 73 fe " o -s % s s g 1 1 H5 a Q THE CARLYLE COUNTRY CHAPTER I Introductory ~7 X THOMAS CARLYLE was born in the village of Ecclefechan, in Mid-Annandale, Dumfriesshire, on the fourth of December, 1795. " " He died in what is now the Carlyle House at Chelsea on the fifth of February, 1881 a weary Titan, in his 86th year, ripe for the rest of death. Throughout the second half of his life, that is to say, from 1834 to 1881, he resided at Chelsea, but the earlier period, which comprehends his apprenticeship to the craft of literature, certain brief intervals excepted, was spent in Annandale and Nithsdale, in the county of Dumfries. Until he was too frail under the burden of years to endure the journey, Carlyle visited his native dales summer by summer. As Antaeus was invincible so long as he remained in contact with his mother earth, so Carlyle derived physical recupera- tion and emotional stimulus from continuous contact with Annandale, " " which was his cave of Trophonius the seat of the oracle he never consulted in vain. Three members, in the main, of the Lowland Scottish clan Carlyle " have come to fame, more or less, in modern literature. Thomas Carlyle of the Scottish Bar," whose renown is confined within the narrow limits of the British Museum Catalogue, was Carlyle's con- " temporary, called by him his double-walker," and a prolific writer " " on matters of ancient ecclesiastical history. The double-walker apparently was not related, either by kinship or any other affinity, to Carlyle. Alexander Carlyle, minister of Inveresk for fifty years, " " known by the sobriquet of Jupiter Carlyle, was a descendant of B 2 THE CARLYLE COUNTRY to the the Carlyles of Annandale. He belonged eighteenth century, " although his Autobiography," by which he is known, is a nine- teenth century product, its publication having been deferred until it Hill in 1860. was edited by Dr. J. Burton "Jupiter" Carlyle was derived from the stock of the Lords Carlyle of Torthorwald in Dum- friesshire, and was related to some of the Carlyles who were lairds, or gentlemen farmers, in Annandale in the eighteenth century. "Jupiter" and Thomas Carlyle have certain qualities in common. " Indeed, if we may judge by the opening sentence of the Autobio- graphy," it is evident that the mantle of the Inveresk minister, who was a scholar and an excellent word-painter, fell upon the shoulders of the son of the Annandale stonemason. He there remarks x " how carelessly, and consequently how falsely, history is written," and " declares his intention to note down certain facts within my own knowledge . that may be subservient to a future historian, if not to embellish his page, yet to keep him within the bounds of truth and certainty." Other parts of Scotland had to do with Carlyle's apprenticeship. He walked for nearly seventy miles across the moors from Eccle- fechan to Edinburgh, in order to matriculate at the University there, as a student in arts, at the early age of fourteen. For nearly four years he attended classes there, during the winter half of tne year, but took no degree. He was tutor and hack writer there also for the three years between his resignation of the school at Kirkcaldy and his appointment to the Buller tutorship. The storied streets of Edinburgh are associated in Carlylean lore with the mental conflict " covered in Sartor Resartus by the successive chapters on The Everlasting No," "The Centre of Indifference," and "The Everlasting " Yea and in the house at the first ; Comly Bank there, eighteen months of his married life were spent. Kirkcaldy, too, has its memories and traditions of Carlyle, for he was schoolmaster there for nearly two years, and it was on the shores of Fife that he met " " " Margaret Gordon, the Blumine of Sartor, when Teufelsdrockh was made immortal by a kiss." But the dales watered respectively 1 Autobiography of Dr. Alexander Carlyle, p. i. INTRODUCTORY 3 by the Annan and the Nith give us the Carlyle country proper, just as the Lake District is the of Wordsworth as country ; just Ayrshire " from the Boon to the sources of the Nith is the Land of Burns." reared at Ecclefechan schooled in Born and ; Annan, where he acted as assistant-master in mathematics for two subsequently years ; tenant for one of a farm on Hill occupying year Repentance ; Carlyle's life had made deep roots in the soil of Annandale. The residence of six years at Craigenputtock gives Nithsdale also no unimportant share in his renown. And so the picturesque district, inexhaustible in respect of its historical associations, watered by the rivers Annan and Nith, extending in pleasant groupings of bosky undulations from the shining belt of the Solway Firth into the rugged hill-country of Dumfriesshire and Galloway, is entitled to be " ear-marked in literary history as specifically the Carlyle country." It was not until Carlyle returned to Scotsbrig in 1853, summoned " to the deathbed of the kind mother," that he could travel all the way by rail, the great trunk lines into Scotland having by that period superseded both the old stage-coach on the high roads, and the voyage by sea to the port of Annan. The tourist from the south nowadays has only to get himself seated in one of the Midland trains, and he will be conveyed through the heart of rural and industrial England, surrounded in his carriage by the fullest club comforts, across the Border into Annandale, at a frugal expenditure of time, and with a degree of personal comfort, which would have been simply inconceivable to Carlyle in the twenties or thirties of the last century. Although the London and North-Western trains run past Ecclefechan on the Caledonian line, there are numerous advantages to be gained by approaching the Carlyle country from the side of Annan.