Ecclefechan, Dumfriesshire
see page [3]
The room in which Carlyle was born
see page [2]
In the Entepfuhl of Sartor Resartus Carlyle has pictured his native village. It consisted of a single street, down the side of which ran an open brook. “With amazement,” he writes, “I began to discover that Entepfuhl stood in the middle of a country, of a world.... It was then that, independently of Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell, I made this not quite insignificant reflection (so true also in spiritual things): ‘Any road, this simple Entepfuhl road, will lead you to the end of the world!’” The room at Arch House in which he was born now contains some interesting mementoes. On the mantelpiece are two turned wooden candlesticks, a gift of John Sterling, sent from Rome; the table provides a resting-place for his study-lamp and his tea-caddy. Most of the furniture came from Cheyne Row.
Carlyle’s first Edinburgh lodging in Simon Square
see page [8]
1, Moray Street (now Spey Street), Leith Walk, Edinburgh
see page [9]
Carlyle came up from Ecclefechan to attend Edinburgh University when he was scarcely fourteen years of age, and with a companion, Tom Smail, journeyed the entire distance on foot. They secured a clean-looking and cheap lodging in Simon Square, a poor neighbourhood on the south side of Edinburgh, off Nicholson Street. After residing in various parts of the old town, Carlyle removed in 1821 to better quarters, and the most interesting of his various abodes in Edinburgh was at 1, Moray Street (now Spey Street), Leith Walk. Here he commenced his literary work in earnest, and began to regard life from a brighter standpoint. Leith Walk is described in Sartor Resartus as the Rue Saint-Thomas de l’Enfer. “All at once,” he writes, “there rose a thought in me, and I asked myself, ‘What art thou afraid of?...’ It is from this hour that I incline to date my spiritual new birth or baphometic fire-baptism; perhaps I directly thereupon began to be a man.”