In the first years in London, while writing his French Revolution, Carlyle was despondent. On one occasion he broke down in the park, saying that he could do no more, that he was sick and weak beyond measure. He had fears of financial ruin, thought of abandoning writing for some other occupation, and contemplated emigration to America.
On the 6th of March, 1835, the manuscript of the first volume of his French Revolution was burned by J S Mill's servant. Faced with this
tragedy, Carlyle showed astonishing reserves of courage and consideration. When
Mill came to Cheyne Walk to confess what had happened, Carlyle and Jane did not reproach him, and when he left, Carlyle's first words to Jane were:
'Well, Mill, poor fellow, is terribly cut up; we must endeavour to hide from him how very serious this business is to us.'
Within a few days he had started to rewrite the book. When contemplating the dreary letters that follow, and his petty complaints, this heroic reaction to a genuine catastrophe must be set against them.
Later in the year Carlyle reacted quite differently, and more typically, to a minor physical symptom. As usual, all ills that flesh is heir to could be blamed on liver and bile.
He developed, during his writing, a black speck or 'floater' in his left eye. He was reassured by physicians, who told him it was a
'musca volitans' - a fly on the wing - and of no moment, but many of his correspondents were informed of it.
He writes to brother John in November 1835 of a 'dark green cloud of bile hanging over me for long: in my left eye was occasionally a small speck or mote.' In January 1836 his 'friend, the black speck' is still with him, and he tells John that both Mill and Leigh Hunt have the same trouble, so must have raised the subject with them. He asks John not to mention the speck in his reply, or to do so in German, so that their mother, who will read the letter, may not be troubled. In March, Emerson is told of the complaint: 'part of the retina protesting against liver, and striking work. I cannot help it, it must flutter and dance there like a signal of distress, unanswered till I be done.' As usual he blames it on liver and bile, but also relates it to his intensive work on the French Revolution. Many years later, annotating his late wife's letters, he tells us that the speck persists, 'disregarded now, but never long absent.' It was almost certainly a posterior detachment of the vitreous, a common disorder of the ageing eye. In these notes he adds that: 'On the underlid of one eye, I also noticed, for long years coming, a certain tiny brown-yellow spot, which I nicknamed French Revolution; and there, I suppose, it might be noticed to this day, except that I have long ceased shaving and never look.'
Health continues to be the ever-interesting topic in the family correspondence. Letters were expensive before the penny post was introduced, and when the Carlyles sent newspapers, as they regularly did, they used a code of two strokes (//) to show that they were well. His health varies from week to week. In January 1836 he tells 'The Doctor,' as brother John was known in the family, that he has: 'sometimes almost like perfect (long-forgotten) health; and then suddenly tumble into the valley of the shadow of deepest Bile.'
The 'cold' and 'influenzas' that will trouble the couple throughout the rest of their lives in London are noted in the winter of 1836-37, and treated, as are most complaints, with 'blue pill and senna.' In December Carlyle doses himself twice with senna and makes himself sick. He complains of 'right-sided, thumping, headache', which he treats with a long walk followed by Madeira wine. This is one of the few indications that he may suffer from migraine, which plagued his wife for most of her life; headaches are rare among his many complaints.
In January 1837 he completed French Revolution, and Jane made him a bread pudding to celebrate. Colds continue in February and he reports to brother John that their mother has had a 'biliary complaint' for three days. He is not backwards in telling perfect strangers about his ill-health. To one, declining an invitation, he writes: 'How happy should I be to attend you, were my nerves like those of other men. But I am dyspeptic, bilious - a dinner after six at night ruins me....'
Next winter the colds return and he writes to his mother in November, 1838, that a cold has made him deaf in the left ear. He has cut his thumb and finds a piece of glass imbedded in it. In December he is complaining of wax coming out of his ear. Both his sister Jean and his mother are informed when his ear improves, but he tells his mother it was 'very confusing and annoying.'
On the 12th April he writes to Doctor John;
There is a shivering palpitancy in me, which makes emotion of any kind a thing to be shunned. It is my nerves, my nerves.....'
Jane begins to comment on her husband's behaviour. Carlyle ends a letter to his sister Jean with ' I have physic in me.' Jane adds a postscript saying that he 'quite promiscuously' took a dose of castor oil, mixed up himself, that morning - and should have said so at the start of his letter.'
He is now preparing one of his series of public lectures, and writes of 'trembling' before them, and of early waking on the day:
'My health, or rather I should say, my nerves and heart were not good: tremble, tremble, like an ague fever, now hot with hope, oftenest cold with fear......it was not so bad as last year......kept my tremblings down.'
To brother Alex on 10 5 1838:
'....dreadful state of tremor and misery the first day; also a certain Doctor [presumably his brother] here had recommended a kind of hartshorn preparation which I was to take for "quieting my nerves" - a cure far worse than the disease.
He is now more ready to admit that he suffers from nerves rather than disease, but retains the hypochondriac's characteristic rejection of medical advice and treatment while
continuing to seek them.
In June he falls when hurrying to enter a boat, bruising his wrists and shins, and complains about them in letters for the next month.
On holiday after the lectures are over, he feels 'weakly languid', and as always in the summer months, complains of the heat and insomnia. But by mid-July there is some improvement:
'I have engaged myself with mercury and castor today; my poor liver once helped, my poor soul will be better off, freer to choose, abler to perform.'
Health now figures less in his correspondence. He writes to sister Jean on 27 3 1839:
'I myself have not ailed much........ On the whole I believe myself to be growing healthier, in spite of much detached sickliness and depression; simply by dint of being quiet! Providence, I feel sometimes, has been very gracious to me...'
In April he is again preparing and giving a course of public lectures. He writes to Doctor John:
'I do not feel altogether such a despicable shivering of cowardice (the most insupportable feeling I ever had) as attended me last year and in the former year.....I have to swallow pills occasionally, I am sick on that account even now. My life passes in continual, considerable pain, yet I do believe I am getting irresistibly into better health; my temper is far quieter, my view clearer...'
Always the optimist!!
Now confirmed in his habit of treating every ill, physical or psychological, with aperients, the consequences of dosing himself before a lecture seem to have given him an anxious time.
He writes to mother on 20 5 39:
'I lectured with much less pain this year.....The main evil of all evils, I believe, was my bodily condition, my want of right health, and composure of nerves.'
He goes on to compare his condition to that of Jim Macdonald, who when taking part in the Dalton footraces in Dumfriesshire in Carlyle's youth, had been racing ahead of the field until his bowels gave way, forcing him to retire, and to complain that greens were ' no feeding to run on.'
'The last lecture I gave I had a pill in me, poor wretch, - I thought it was the worst Lecture I had ever made, or among the worst; and was much vexed, and plagued Jane about it, till in self-defence she took a headache and I was forced to hold my peace.'
Here is the hint of another marital pattern; his wife faced with his constant
complaints retaliates with her own: migrainous headaches troubled her for most of her adult life.
But Carlyle learns nothing from the experience. Three months later, on holiday at Scotbrig, he writes home to Jane '....under the influence of fiends, fiends chemical and vegetable, [laxatives] to which I am given up for a season!'
Increasingly with the years and with increasing popularity, he is asked out to dinner and finds it trying. On 11 2 40 he tells his mother that ' a dinner with Victory and Albert even would hardly be worth having, at the cost of such a head as I have next day.' He declines invitations, telling Monckton Milnes that ' the demon of Dyspepsia sits heavy on me at present. On Friday I cannot come to breakfast.'
His correspondence varies with his mood. In late May he tells John:
'My health is certainly (one would think) better than it was last year; at least I have far more clearness, vigour of mind; but all secondary symptoms seem as bad as ever; - want of sleep, etc etc; and today, over and above, I have caught a troublesome cold...'
By July he is telling his good friend Sterling that 'I get so dyspeptical, melancholic, half-mad in the London summer.'
As usual his mother gets the lengthiest accounts of his indispositions, vaguely disguised, as is now habitual with him, as statements of improvement, and protestations that he should not complain while he does so. On 19 6 40 he writes:
'''Occasionally I have fits of bilious depression; but on the whole I almost think my general health is decidedly improving. Sometimes I feel as if I might yet be healthy again! ....One should not complain; I should not.'
Lecturing again, he writes to John in mid-July, really about his mood in relation to them, but couched in terms of 'health':
' My health sometimes very uncertain; my spirits fluctuating between restless flutter of a make-believe
satisfaction, and the stillness of avowed misery, - which latter I have grown by long practice to think almost the more supportable state! ...I take ten or twelve days to each; and get into violent extremes of indigestion, this way and that, by means of it.'
The rest of the year sees frequent references to 'the old story, bile.' And in October 'I had to attack the cold with ol. ricin [castor oil], my old friend.'
With the years the Carlyles correspondence grows - the collected letters begin to occupy a volume for each year. In contrast, the patient reader will be pleased to note, entries about his health now decline.
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