These pages contain a detailed biography of Dr John Carlyle (1801-1879), the younger brother of Thomas. This page gives an introduction, and there is a chronology of the main events of his life. The following sections are arrange by date, and begin with his early days and his medical education. He spent nearly a decade as a Travelling Physician, first with the Countess of Clare for seven years, then for a year with the Duke of Buccleuch, and lastly with a rich Irish gentleman. The years from 1843 to 1848 cover his translation of Dante, followed by the tragedy of his marriage.. His later years from 1855 to 1879 complete his life story. There is a short account of a Criminal conversation case in which he was involved in 1844, and links and references.

NEW: John Carlyle-Travelling Physician (pdf): paper given to Carlyle Society, Auitumn, 2005.

Introduction:

In the shadow of Thomas

Dr Carlyle flits in and out of the Collected Letters, an attendant Lord to Thomas Carlyle’s Hamlet: sharing student digs with him in Edinburgh, delivering a Goethe letter to Craigenputtock, acting as medical adviser to Thomas and Jane; escorting him back to London after Jane’s sudden death (in the total silence his brother requested). When they were apart they corresponded regularly. He lived with Thomas in their childhood family homes, in Edinburgh and London lodgings, at Hoddam, with Carlyle and Jane at their first Edinburgh home, and in the years at Craigenputtock and Chelsea, all for long periods. When Jane died, he and Thomas tried setting up setting up home together but soon thought better of it.

From Thomas and Jane’s copious letters, and the Reminiscences, we can piece together most of John’s life, but are made to view it through their eyes. They saw him as able but lazy; talented but not fulfilling his promise; loathe to take advice; and a persistent ‘logic-chopper’, disputatious and argumentative. In the early years he and Jane were close, but later she was irritated by him, especially when he blamed her chronic ill-health on lack of useful activity, perhaps his revenge for the criticism he had to contend with from her husband.

The Thomas and Jane version has been accepted by most of their biographers; inevitably, since their works and correspondence have long been available, and are now being expanded and set, if not in tablets of stone, in the electronic equivalent: the Collected Letters. John’s copious correspondence rests unpublished and little read, although well documented, in the National Library of Scotland. And yet he achieved much, and his friend Froude, the devoted biographer of Thomas, believed that John ‘would have been remembered as a distinguished man if he had not been overshadowed by his greater brother.’

John did much for his greater brother, especially in caring for the Carlyle family’s medical needs. He spent years tending their mother, while Thomas wrote impassioned letters to her, declaring his undying affection, but contributing little practical help. John wrote to his wife Phoebe, in the last days of his mother’s life, when Thomas had arrived from London at the last possible moment, that his brother was a ‘useless nurse, even to himself.’

John would not have had his schooling or university education had it not been for Thomas’s financial help, given freely when he could ill afford it, and continuing while John insisted on travelling to Munich and Vienna to gain post-graduate medical experience. On his return, John seemed more interested in writing than pursuing his medical career. Unsurprisingly, Thomas discouraged his literary efforts and made him stick to his profession, but, when John was quickly financially successful, was slow to accept repayment from his younger brother. In subsequent years Thomas and Jane constantly criticised him for laziness, despite John making a handsome capital sum in a short time, sufficient to keep himself in comfort, producing a successful translation of part of Dante’s Inferno, and going on to marry a rich widow. She died in childbirth, as did the child, and he never remarried.

This curious, ambivalent relationship continued throughout their long lives. The Carlyles were a close-knit family, and in his adult years Thomas was indisputably its head. He made it difficult for his brother to achieve independence, and continued to proffer advice to him well into late middle age. Eventually he and Jane resigned themselves, decided that John would not change his habits, and let him go his own way.

These pages are necessarily dependent on the letters of Thomas and Jane, but attempt to balance them with John’s own voice, from his largely unpublished papers in the National Library of Scotland. Looking at the Carlyle family from a different perspective sheds a new light on all of them.

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