Carlyle began to complain of physical symptoms in 1818 at the age of twenty-two. He had abandoned his divinity studies the previous year, to his parents dismay; and it was about this time that he read Gibbon's Decline and Fall, which in later life he confessed had shaken his religious beliefs. At this time he met Margaret Gordon and became attached to her; she was to reject him decisively in 1820. He was living in poor lodgings in Edinburgh, learning German, taking some law classes which he soon abandoned, translating, and tutoring. He complained about his health for the rest of his life, but his symptoms are at their worst for the next seven years, and improve some months after his marriage in 1826.
Despite his copious complaints in both his journal and in his correspondence with family and friends, it is not easy to pin down his complaints; from the beginning he is dramatic about them, but vague as to details. Many diarists complain about ill-health in their journals, but not at all elsewhere, so that if their journals alone are consulted they give a false impression of hypochondriasis. Not Carlyle; he complains in his journal, in his letters to family and friends, and in conversation.
The following excerpts from the letters of these early years illustrate all this. I have quoted from his letters at some length to give a flavour of his symptoms' importance to him, and - as he made sure - to his circle of correspondents. The reader of Carlyle should be warned at once that in all his writing and conversation he was prone to exaggerate, and was well aware that he did so. This was especially the case with his health. This trait tests the patience, but those who persevere will have a true appreciation of the intensity of Carlyle's preoccupation with his health!
On 27 11 1818 he writes:
'...............for some days I have enjoyed very poor health, which two ounces of sulphate of magnesia, that I swallowed some hours ago, have not yet tended to diminish.'
On 7 12 1820 to his brother John, the future doctor, pictured
here:
Already we see that his complaints are abdominal, and that he believes laxatives are necessary for their relief. He relates his symptoms to life events. The editors of the collected letters speculate about causes, suggesting an inadequate and faulty diet, faulty self-medication, cold weather, and general poverty, preventing him living in any comfort while he was in Edinburgh. These conditions and his symptoms did not stop him from strenuous physical exercise. He took extensive walking tours with his friends, and in April 1820 walked from Muirkirk to Dumfries in one day, a distance of fifty-four miles, leaving at four in the morning and arriving at eight at night.
He writes to his father on 25 2 1821 from Fife:
'The sea breezes of Fife and the kind attention of the inhabitants produced the most salutary results in me; I grew better every day, and in the course of a few weeks I doubt not I should have been as strong as ever at any period of my life...... I felt in a state of decided convalescence which I am happy to say has since continued without interruption. The sickness has altogether left me, and I am well as heretofore; for though the stomach and bowels are still continuing lazy, a little attention aided by a little physic will suffice to keep them to their duty, and me from a state of weak discomfort............ One becomes so dim and overclouded, so wrapt up in sackcloth and ashes - so full of inquietude and chagrin, it is really quite pitiful to think of: and if exercise, regimen and every species of care can secure me, I have the best of all possible motives for applying them . You need be under no apprehension: for my letters (I speak in sincerity of heart) do always give the worst view of my condition, seeing I hold it advisable to conceal nothing in such cases............... I shall tell you at once if any alteration for worse occur...'
One can be certain that he will, and will continue to do so.
Another pattern that will recur starts here: writing to say he is somewhat better, but not quite, and hopes to be soon. Such letters are frequent in the years to come. Also emerging are accompanying complaints of depression, of anxiety and of weakness, the last construed by Carlyle as laziness, making him feel guilty.
Within a fortnight he is writing to his brother Alex on 6 3 21:
'First then, I tell you I am not sick, all that went away in Fife and has never returned; I feel as sound outwardly as any ploughman in Annandale. With regard to inwards......I have to take physic more or less every day, and still things won't go on comfortably; the stomach is rather (not by any means very) painful, and its disordered condition enfeebles me, and makes me stupid. It "found me lean at first and keeps me so"; [the quotation is from Dante] in fact I am grown leaner................. I have a sharp appetite, and eat all my victuals with considerable relish.'
Next month he writes to a friend:
'My health is the most precarious, capricious thing imaginable: I have not been well for one day since last Autumn - sometimes very sick.'
This last group of letters shows yet another pattern that will be repeated for the rest of his life, and makes assessment difficult. He presents his complaints differently, depending to whom he is writing. Is he minimising his symptoms to one, or magnifying them to another? When he tells his family of improvement, he makes sure that they know that he remains unwell. Even when his mother, to whom he is closest of all his family, has sent him camomile for his complaints, he is half-hearted in his thanks:
June,1821
'Many thanks, also, my good mother, for your bundles of camomile. I have laid it by in my trunk, and whether it helps the stomach or not it cannot fail to help the heart every time I look at it. My disorders are not, however, in general severe: and when they do appear (it is only from carelessness) they arise from bile and trash - over which herbs have no power. In fact though I work on with Doctors' stuff yet occasionally, I cannot complain, I am what you would call "no that ill ava"'.' [not very ill at all I tried the bathing three times with good effect. The sea will cure me doubtless.'
Already his 'regimen' is emerging and will last throughout life. He requires aperients, and regular exercise, in the form of sea bathing, walking, or horse-riding. And above all, work. Forty-five years later he will tell the students of Edinburgh University in his inaugural address that 'Work is the grandest cure of all the maladies and miseries that ever beset mankind.'
6 6 21 to Alex:
'I swallowed a huge dose of Epsom salt (horrible drug), which has freed me from some qualms, indeed; but has rendered me as weak for the time - it was yesterday when I did the deed - as any man need well be....... 'I tell you, my boy, all the evils of life are as the small dust of the balance to a diseased stomach..............It is not the pain of those capricious organs; that were little: but the irresistible depression, the gloomy overclouding of the soul, which they inevitably engender, is truly frightful - at least to a solitary it is frightful. Upon this dreadful property of bowel disorders it is, however, that I mainly ground my expectation of a final recovery. The external pain has not abated very decidedly; but my spirits have not been so good for many years, as during the last month or two. Therefore I do trust by bathing, and walking, and every kind of attention - once more to taste the feelings of a whole man ........... No doubt it is the salt which speaketh here .... Dr Brewster maintained that I had been in the country to recover so ruddy a cheek when I saw him a while ago.'
He is now consulting physicians about his symptoms; and he seems to be attributing his depression to his physical troubles, and maintaining that only if he believes his symptoms are physical can he expect them to recover with treatment.
In this month his friend Edward Irving took him to East Lothian where he met Jane Welsh, his future wife for the first time:
'.......and though that wretched stomach was full of gall - so that I could neither sleep nor eat to perfection - I was happy as a lark in May...'
And to a friend on 12 6 21:
'......biliousness and nervousness and sadness and dullness have brought me within a few degrees of absolute zero in the scale of men.....how sick I was, what work he [Irving] had to overcome my taciturnity........Dyspepsia.......it is a hard case, in fact, this distemper. A malady of soul one can embellish and dignify a little by enduring; but this carries with it the indellible(sic) stamp of nastiness and lowness; do what we may, it seems to pollute the very sanctuary of our being; it renders our suffering at once complete and contemptible.'
Here, and in the future, change and social events provoke symptoms. Insomnia is another symptom that will increase with the years, as will his need for solitude. He regards physical symptoms as harder to bear than 'soul maladies'; they are foul, nasty and polluting.
His closest friend Irving seems not to have taken Carlyle's health seriously enough. Carlyle writes a long letter to him from Mainhill on 14 8 21. This letter is compared by the editors of the Collected Letters to the 'Wasteland imagery' in Sartor:
'.....the state of my health......You do not believe in any of these imaginations. My earnest prayer is that you may never believe in them. I was once as sceptical as yourself on that head, till a stern experience convinced me far too well. Such disorders I now, to my sorrow, feel convinced, are the heaviest calamity, the very heaviest, that the lot of life has in store for mortals. The bodily pain is nothing or next to nothing; but alas for the dignity of man! The evil does not stop there. No strength of soul can avail you; this malady will turn that very strength against itself; it banishes all thought from your head, all love from your heart - and it doubles your wretchedness by making you discern it. O! the long solitary sleepless nights that I have passed - with no employment but to count the pulses of my own sick heart - till the gloom of external things seemed to extend itself to the very centre of the mind, till I could remember nothing, observe nothing!........[much more in this vein]......you must convince yourself , if possible, that all this proceeded from physical causes: call me atrabiliar but not an ingrate.'
Again a refusal to accept that his symptoms may be psychological rather than physical, and the lengthy letter seems provoked by his friends suggestion that 'imagination' may be the cause.
The following year, 1822, the summer of which is the most likely date for Carlyle's mystical experience in Leith Walk, Edinburgh, brings no improvement. He writes to his brother John on 20 2 22 from 3 Moray Street, off Leith Walk, lecturing him at length about excessive labour causing ' cursed nervous disorders':
'I am dragging about a load of infirmities with me still, the fruit of former imprudences, and must continue perhaps for years (perhaps alas! for aye) in this condition........'
The following month he is 'gathering strength' and talking of 'hours when I can get immersed in thoughts that can make me forget that there is such a thing as digestion in the world.' To his mother, he writes:
' To begin with the most important topic, health.............much improved'......I could never have believed till last year that it was in the power of mere physical pain to render a man so thoroughly miserable and weak-minded.............this wicked stomach of mine is not yet reconciled to its destiny; it keeps up an almost constant supply of uneasiness less or more; and it will not work at all without drugs; but that horrible nervousness is about entirely gone; I can listen to little noises , and even want a night's sleep without much inconvenience............ last year the scratching of a mouse in my chamber would in sober truth have given more torture than smashing me with a cudgel would do now.'
He talks of his stomach as a thing apart, almost as a living wicked creature. In later years his state of mind will invariably gloomy and depressive; at this time he has more anxiety symptoms - 'uneasiness' and 'nervousness'. Later in the month he writes to a friend, thanking him for sending 'Dr Baillie's celebrated elixir for the use of my inner man.................I shall certainly drink three bottles before I despair..............I confess my faith is small, however I shall persevere, without faltering to the end of three bottles.' Once again someone is involved, trying to supply remedies, suggesting beefsteak and port wine, and both advice and medicine are more or less rejected. The following month he tells his father that 'there is nothing in all the world terrifies me to the heart, but the final ruin of my health; if that go I am sensible all is gone: so I take every precaution..........at present weakness is more my complaint than any disease.'
By November he is writing to brother Alex that he is 'better on the whole than during a like space any time in two years. No day passes without its share of pain, but....diminishing......the very drugs themselves are used sparingly.' At the same time he is writing to his future wife advising her not to spend too many hours in studying languages:
' I once thought like you that I had a frame of iron: I was mistaken there. No! Six hours are all that can possibly grant; four are all that I require; and I answer for the result.'
He spent a cold winter in Moray Street, sleeping badly, with the same complaints but with less recourse to medicines. Writing to Alex, he likens himself to a cat - 'quick, fierce tempered - and nine lives.' But in the same month of April he tells a friend:
'My health is nothing improved; indeed when all is reckoned up I ought rather to wonder that I am still alive.' A week later he tells his mother about his health: 'and tell you truly that it is wonderfuly good.' Insomnia is a growing problem and his sensitivity to noise: the wind and rain, and disorderly neighbours. He trains himself to sleep with a finger squeezed upon his ear, ' the most effective method of excluding sound, of any hitherto devised.'
Throughout 1823 his health varies, or his description of it to different correspondents. To his brother John he says that ' there is next to no disease about me, only vexed nerves', and says he has abandoned drugs; to a friend that he is gathering strength, but with frequent relapses. His health remains 'capricious' for the rest of the year, but he continues to complain at length while maintaining that he is improving. On 18 September he tells his mother:
'Oh! it is a sad thing for a great lubber like me, at an age when I should be sweetening the declining years of my parents, to plague them with pitying and caring for me.'
Nor is his wife-to-be spared:
12 10 23 'You are very good to feel so anxious about my sickness....Do not vex yourself , my beloved Jane, with fears about my dying. Of this there is not the slightest danger. Noone ever dies of such disorders; the real object of dread is that of dwindling by degrees into a whining valetudinarian, which is far worse than death. there is not in nature so poor a class of persons as the valetudinarians: they cannot live without continual annoyance to themselves and others; and have no heart enough to take a dose of arsenic.'......[and much more in this vein] No-one could deny that Jane had not been warned. He is prepared to make sure that his parents continue to worry about him, and must have complained enough to Jane at this time to make her suspect that he was mortally ill!
A month later he learns that she is sick. he writes to sympathise: 'Oh I know it, for six long miserable years I have known it.' - meaning that he has suffered from ill-health for six years, and knows how she feels. A competition has begun.
In November, too, he arranges to consult the Surgeon, George Bell, 'who is maturely to investigate my unfortunate carcass, and see if nothing can be done to aid me. I seem as if I were dying by inches; if I have one good day, it is sure to be followed by three or four ill ones.... we must all consult together, after I have heard the opinion of the "Cunning Leech", who I suppose will put me upon mercury, and see what is to be done...............no danger of dying, but suffering daily as much pain as I can suffer without going Wud [mad]'
The very next day he writes to Jane: 'Heaven bless you for your kind solicitude about my health and happiness.........do no vex yourself about my illness............I am quite recovered; indeed there was little at all the matter with me.'
Bell suggested mercury, and stopping smoking, and he was advised by Dr Fyffe to eat nothing but beef. Carlyle reports that he is ' half drowning himself in cold water every morning and walking two hours before dinner daily.....' In December he writes to John saying that his sleep has improved. 'But on Sunday night I swallowed some more of that delightful mercury, and with the usual effect................I have not tasted the smallest morsel of tobacco...............I shall try for five or six weeks more......................there is more pleasure in poor nicotium than in all the wines and sumptuous liquours that grace the boards of the rich.'
Mercury was widely used by Georgian physicians and up to this period for constipation or syphilis. It was given enthusiastically, and salivation and gingivitis were regarded as signs of proper dosing; they are signs of toxicity. Carlyle used the drug at intervals for the rest of his days, as did his wife. He took much larger doses than her, and on one occasion collected his prescription in error for hers. She took his doses and was ill for several days. Irritability, nervousness, shyness, low self-esteem and insomnia are among the symptoms of mercury poisoning, but the other classical symptoms of erethism - salivation, gingivitis, and coarse tremor - Carlyle does not seem to have had at any time in his life. In any case, his psychological symptoms and insomnia, as is clear from his letters above, predate his regular use of mercury.
. In 1824 he stayed with a friend Badams near Birmingham for a course of treatment suggested by the latter. On 10 August he writes, after a fortnights treatment:
'....he has been dosing me considerably with drugs vegetable and saline.......by this means I am weak, but not very wretched in my carcass.'
On the 29th he tells his mother that there is some improvement. He is taking drugs every second day, and the irritability, pain, and confusion in the head are less. His sleep has improved. His dietary regime includes two eggs, five cups of tea and two glasses of wine daily.
He is still with Badams a fortnight later and telling his brother John that scarcely a week passes without a relapse: 'I have been bephysicked and bedrugged; I have swallowed two stump-fulls of castor oil since I came hither..........unless I dose myself with that oil of sorrow every fourth day, I cannot get along at all. On the third day I feel almost well.......................Abstinence and exercise are my recipes.'
The course was not a success. In January 1825 he writes to Jane: '.....a man who has spent seven long years in incessant torture, till his heart and head are alike darkened and blasted, and who sees no outlook for this state....'
And in the same month to John he appeals: '....be a Doctor and cure me!' To his mother on 31 1 25 he reports: 'I believe with Badams that there is in fact no particular organ about me diseased; that my ailment is purely a feeble state of nerves........Could I live without taking drugs for three months, I should even now be perfectly well. But drenching oneself with castor oil and other abominations how can one be otherwise than weak and feckless?'
He had become particular about his diet, and was to continue so. Before going home to stay with his mother in the Spring of 1825, he writes to his brother Alex that she will have to be taught to give him less to eat, and that he calculates on a week or two of extra pain before he convinces her that the less he eats the better. Nonetheless he is able to tell Jane in late May that at Mainhill he is 'wonderfully better'. For most of 1825 and 1826 his health and happiness improved considerably. On 20 June 1826 he was able to write to a friend: 'My last year, ungainly and isolated as it was, has been the happiest of my last half-score. I am getting healthier, nay more careless of my health, more conscious that if the Devil do still please to torment me, I shall have nous enough in me to get the weather-gage of him, and snap my fingers in his face.'
Plans are being made for their marriage, which will take place on the 17th October. In late July Jane writes to confess that she had once been in love with their friend Irving. Carlyle replies, complaining about his poverty and of being:
'...sick and helpless - I lie upon the thorny couch of pain......I can never make you happy. Leave me, then!....' Here is but one example, but a very obvious one, of the way in which he uses his symptoms for attention and sympathy. He is unwell as the wedding approaches, and tells her only a fortnight before:
....'I have been much sicker than usual; I am drowned in drugs, and one of the dreariest personages in this side of the County'. Words hardly calculated to inspire confidence in a bride-to-be!
But the wedding went ahead, on 17th October, 1826, with Carlyle insistent that he should be allowed to smoke cigars as they travelled from the wedding to their new home in Edinburgh.
What happened on the wedding night has been the subject of much paper and ink. Two days later he reports to his mother:
'You yourself (and that is saying much) could not have nursed and watched over me with kinder affection, wretched as I am, by my movements and counter-movements; all my despondency cannot make her despond, she seems happy enough if she can but see me, and minister to me. I was very sullen yesterday, sick with sleeplessness, quite nervous, billus, splenetic, and all the rest of it. Good Jane! I feel she will be all to me that my heart could wish.' He tells his mother that Jane has helped to solve the insomnia: 'Besides, she herself (the good soul!) has ordered another bed to be made for me in the adjoining room, to which I may retire whenever I shall see good.' For good measure, he tells his mother that the marital bed itself 'is, I should think, about seven feet wide'. He promises he will write again 'when I have recovered my senses'.
Exactly a week after the wedding he appeals to brother John:
'I wanted to speak with you about many things, ut cum frater, ut cum medico ........about my matrimonial views.....I am yet all in a maze........To complete the matter I am still billus and imperfectly supplied with sleep; no wonder then that my sky should be so tinged with gloom. I cannot explain matters yet........I have to swallow salts and oil....' He vows to give up tobacco for three weeks.
This is an important letter. He appeals to John - as a brother and a doctor- about his 'matrimonial views'. It strongly suggests sexual difficulties: most bridegrooms do not complain about insomnia on a honeymoon, far less write to their mother about the width of the bed and the need to move out of it. In addition his symptoms are plentiful, and immediately after mentioning them to his mother he adds praise for Jane's sympathy, and is casting her in a maternal, caring role.
Whatever the truth, a modus vivendi must have been established, for his health improved greatly in the next year or two in Edinburgh. By the end of 1826 he can report to mother:
'...considerably improved. I am getting more and more habituated to my new condition of life.....................My health....seems no to be restored to something like its former state.' He adds that he sleeps better and that he has almost discontinued drugs.
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