Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)

Today's the day ....................... to discover a writer

Anyone who drives up and down the M74 through the Scottish Borders as often as we do, can't fail to notice a big sign at Junction 19 directing you to 'Ecclefechan - the birthplace of Carlyle'.  Well today, we didn't drive on as we usually do, we decided to go and find out who exactly was this Thomas Carlyle.

We made it into the small cottage where he was born, now a museum, by the skin of our teeth, ten minutes before they closed.  But we had the full attention of the two guides and it's amazing how much you can learn in half an hour! 

Of course, it would take too long to write it all here - but basically Thomas Carlyle was a Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher - a highly complex character who probably isn't fully understood even in the present day.  He had a reputation as a crotchety, argumentative and somewhat disagreeable personality but nevertheless he commanded respect from many of the intellectual thinkers of the day like Charles Dickens, John Ruskin and the poet Alfred Lord Tennyson.  He married fellow intellectual, Jane Baillie Welsh, but the marriage was not a happy one.  As the writer Samuel Butler wrote, 'it was very good of God to let Carlyle and Mrs Carlyle marry one another, and so make only two people miserable and not four'.

We learnt enough to make us want to go and find out more about him.  Next time we are in London with time to spare we will go and visit Carlyle's House in Chelsea where he spent a large part of his life .........................