Family Doctor

At times in 1849 John was back in Jane’s favour. When she was experiencing her frequent bouts of migrainous headache she found him ‘excessively kind,’ sitting at her bedside for hours, holding her down, and being sorry for her, the only remedy that gave her some relief. They both visited the Neubergs in July. Jane was enchanted with Miss Neuberg, and decided that John should marry her, telling John that Miss Neuberg was exceedingly fond of him. Jane told him that she would make an excellent wife, and that she would like to have her as a sister-in-law. John resisted this and other schemes of his sister-in-law.

When Jane was not matchmaking, she found his medical knowledge helpful. He was recruited to investigate cousin Helen’s illness when they visited Liverpool. Later that summer, when they were both at Scotsbrig, his mother tickled Jane under the arms. Jane became pale and collapsed ‘as if dead.’ John was summoned, and she recovered quickly, but John told her that she had had a heart attack. Both concealed the episode from Thomas: he must not be worried.

By 1850 Jack was increasingly gray-haired, but as hearty and restless as ever. He was now based for most of the year with his mother and family at Scotbrig, but made a foray to London in May where Thomas found him ‘brisk and well.’ He met up with friends, went to Epsom races with Anthony Sterling, and left after a few weeks to travel back to Scotland via Liverpool. Both Jane and Thomas had found his visit trying; his brother, who wrote in his journal after John’s departure later:

. ‘He has run about, looking at London persons and things; rather fussy in this quiet house, but most innocent and good. He will now do his Dante. Poor fellow, it is what he can save from the wreck of his life that had much more and better in it; but he takes his lot with a most childlike good humour. God go with him, my poor brother!’ (25.6.50)

John’s fault seems to have lain mainly in his footwear. John Welsh the meteorologist wrote to his mother on the 10^th July:

‘Dr Carlyle …is gone to live with his mother in Annandale. Mrs Carlyle seems glad he is away as he made so much noise walking up and down stairs with his creaking boots (and all his 3 pairs creaked) that he disturbed his brother while at his pamphlets.’

John left behind at Cheyne Row ‘bacco-box and about 2oz of weed in a paper.’ But as soon as he was gone, he was missed! Thomas wrote to her on the 27^th June and described the creaking boots, but added: ‘…and now the great increase of silence in the house makes one wae to notice it! We are very glad to have had the poor Doctor here once again.’ He was glad that John was returning to care for their mother, but his hopes that he would ‘set fiercely’ upon his Dante were not fulfilled. Despite exhortations from his brother to keep ‘toiling at his Purgatorio,’ progress was slow. John made another brief visit to London in August of 1850, and spent time in the British Museum studying Dante texts and manuscripts, but was also kept busy sending off proofs of his brother’s work, while Thomas was taking the waters and the cure at Great Malvern with little benefit.

Courting

His life continued in this desultory way for the next eighteen months. He always appeared to be active and busy, but without any results that his brother deemed worthwhile. He spent most of his time in Dumfriesshire with the family, where he was useful to Thomas in renegotiating the rent of Craigenputtoch. When Thomas came for a holiday to Scotbrig in the summer of 1852, he wrote to Jane in London venting his exasperation about John, but giving the first mention of what would be a major change in John’s life:

‘…a most locomotive man, and perhaps the idlest that now fancies himself full of business in this part of her Majesty’s dominions…..On the whole, tho’ he struggles to be goodnatured to me, and I can now and then get some words of really rational conversation with him (for he, at least, understands everything that is said), I find his continual close-rubbing on me in this narrow household a thing that requires management, and yields but a mixed return. …..Poor soul, I know no such wasted set of faculties in all this world; and wonder withal at the provision Nature has made for keeping him happy and, at little expense, quasi-victorious under that perversity of destiny. ….Business, forever business, a rattling as of vast floors of nuts continually getting stirred and shovelled, - all deaf. Not a kernel to be met with:- if there be not one perhaps in this of Mrs Watts; in whom Isabell pretends to read symptoms? I believe it might well be an improvement; but, as usual, there will in all probability nothing come of it at last. “Poor fellow, after all!” He has contended, cheery thoroughly unmalicious heart; and these are enviable virtues as the world goes.’ (TC to JWC 13 8 52)

The following week he reports progress:

'Jack appears to me to have some confused pluister of a marriage or settlement project on foot at Moffat, in which his Mrs Watt is to play a principal part; but I much fear it will come to nothing, as the others have done, poor Jack.’( TC to JWC fm Scotbrig 19 8 52)

But in August of 1852 this bachelor, now fifty-one years old, told Jane he was about to marry – he had not required her efforts. She was pleased, though anxious about his carrying the matter through. She had been matchmaking on his behalf for years, but like her husband had seen situations like this before that had come to naught. Unable to assist the affair from London, she urged him on by letter:

‘I wonder now if you will break down in that enterprise? – please don’t, I want very much to see you comfortably settled in life – and with a woman of that age – whom you have known for 15 years. I should not feel any apprehension about your doing well together. But you put so little emphasis into your love making – that it wont surprise me if this one too get out of patience and slip away from you.’ (JWC to JAC 30/8/52)

Marriage to Phoebe

But he did not let her down, and on the 2^nd November, 1852, he married Mrs Phoebe Elizabeth Hough Fowler Watts, daughter of the late John Fowler of Horton Hall, North Staffordshire. She was a wealthy widow, aged thirty-eight, with four sons. His brother told Neuberg: ‘Jack is suddenly a paterfamilias and rich man in his generation.’

At the beginning of 1853 the newly-weds were in lodgings in Chelsea, and Phoebe was inspected by her new in-laws. Thomas was impressed:

‘I…. liked his Missus very much after a sort. A tall ladylike person enough, not beautiful but handsome enough and healthfully agreeable; has sense enough, and I think is of cheerful temper and honest heart, which are great qualities. She seems very fond of her new husband: and in short I concluded they may fairly hope to be a real and considerable addition to each other’s comfort. Jack has got a home and other advantages; she a guardian to her four boys and ditto. She is said to have “plenty of money” (whether £1000 a year or twice that sum) I never know, -they are living now and till midsummer next, at Moffat (as you doubtless are aware) in a House of Hope Johnstones opposite the Star Hotel, - an uppish-looking stout old mansion with court etc., which I daresay you remember.’ He is down at Scotsbrig every 7-8 days to see mother. '

Moffat House Hotel 2004

The house the newly-weds had taken reflected their wealth. It is now the Moffat House Hotel, but was built as a private house by John Adam in 1762-7. It is Moffat’s finest building, a simple three storey, five bay design, linked to two double storey pavilions on each side. The Assembly Rooms (now the town hall) are close at hand, and the Star Hotel, claimed to be the narrowest hotel in Britain, still functions. At this time the nearest railway station was Beattock, some two miles distant on the main line south, and used by John on his regular visits to his mother at Scotbrig. She was failing, and this must have been one of the reasons why the couple chose Moffat.

Jane visits Phoebe

Jane had not taken to Phoebe, and had more reservations than her husband. She went to visit the newly-weds at Moffat in July 1853, with some misgivings, wondering if she would begin to like Phoebe, or whether she would be able to keep from strangling her. On her arrival she wrote to Thomas:

‘There is a cook, housemaid and lady’s-maid, and everything goes on very nicely. The three boys are as clever, well-behaved boys as I ever saw, and seem excessively fond of “the Doctor”. John is as kind as can be, and seems to have an excellent gift of making his guests comfortable. Phoebe’s manner is so different from me, so formal and cold, that I don’t feel at ease with her yet. She looks to me like a woman who had been all her life made the first person with those she lived beside, and to feel herself in a false position when she doubts her superiority being recognised. She seems very content with John, however, and to suit him entirely.’

Jane cut short her stay, leaving abruptly, mainly because she fell out with John. She was not impressed with his doctoring at Scotbrig, where there had been disagreements about their mother’s management between John and his brother James. Jane took James’ side and spoke her mind to John, who thought she would be better away.

She wrote to her husband on 15^th July, incensed:

‘I am sure neither John nor his wife have an idea how little satisfaction my visit has yielded me, or how little purpose I have of ever taxing their hospitality again.’

And she was scathing about John’s treatment of his mother:

‘You need not attach the slightest importance to anything John writes about his mother. It is clear as day to me that he knows no more about her than any intelligent person beside her does, and can do no more for her than any intelligent person can do. And he talks about his own insight and his unheard of exertions in her behalf, in a way to confuse ones senses – His Wife is always talking to him of his making himself a perfect Martyr to filial affection, and he accepts the merit with fatuity.’ (JWC to TC 15 7 53)

Mother's Death

In the following months Margaret Carlyle’s health deteriorated steadily and she died in late December. Towards the end John moved into Scotbrig, and two of his short notes to Phoebe in Moffat have survived. Thomas arrived just time to see her before she died, and only after much procrastinating; John found his presence no help. He told his wife that Thomas was useless as a nurse, even to himself. Phoebe was worried about John’s comfort and even his safety, as he assures her that he has his own room ‘with lock and bar, so you must not trouble yourself about these matters if you can help it.’

One of John’s letters after mother’s death hints at his feelings. Writing on Christmas day, immediately after her death, to inform his brother Alex in Canada, he says: ‘I daresay the loss of her forms as great a void to me as to any of the rest, for I had been more with her in the last years of her life,’ There is a hint here that the very extravagant grieving of Thomas, and the attention he demanded, despite his tardy arrival and previous absence, had tested his patience.

But life went on. John and his wife spent the first six months of 1854 in Moffat, but searching for a permanent home, for Phoebe was pregnant. They looked without success in Dumfriesshire, and in June moved to Chelsea lodgings within a mile of Thomas and Jane, and began to travel widely, viewing the sights and seeking houses in the south-east, taking advantage of the widening railway network. They often visited Cheyne Row in the evenings. Thomas would write later:

‘…. for she was of a travelling roaming turn like her husband, and they did not seem in any haste to fix upon a house, - tho’, as she was five or six months gone with child, we always silently thought it altogether desirable they should be fixed. However she was uncommonly strong; had been used to easy confinements; cared for no fatigue; and ran about, he and she, as if there had been nothing ahead.’

Birth and Death

It was to prove her undoing. In early August, on one of their excursions to view houses, the train was involved in an incident on the N.W.Railway, near Harrow, some 20 miles from London, in which a serious accident was averted by the skill of the engineer. Their train had been in danger of colliding with a luggage-train, and some of its door handles were knocked off. No-one was injured but the shock affected Phoebe, now eight months pregnant. She was upset at the time, pale and trembling for some hours, seemed perfectly well for two days, but then had a series of ‘fits, hysteria fits,’ presumably eclampsia, which went on for nearly two days. The baby had died. She was exhausted, but bore her dead child rapidly and without difficulty a week later, and appeared clear and cheerful, although very weak. But suddenly, a few hours after the delivery, she had a massive haemorrhage. A doctor was there, and the bleeding seemed to have been stopped, but some kind of seizure followed and she died. The attending doctor, who gave this report in a letter said it was ‘one of the saddest scenes, or perhaps the saddest I ever was concerned with.’ When the obstetrician returned for his fourth visit of the day and heard the news, he almost fainted.

Thomas recorded all these events in his journal; ‘I have not in my time been near such a tragedy before.’ He brought his brother to Cheyne Row that night. John was stunned, as they all were, but seemed after the initial shock to take his wife’s death stoically. He had lost his mother, his wife and his child within the space of nine months, and had been married for only eighteen months. After the funeral, when his wife and still-born son, said to resemble him, were buried together, he went to Leamington, a quiet spa town, at the beginning of September, with a doctor friend and two of his three stepsons, seemingly bearing up well.

His brother and Jane’s reactions were a strong contrast. Tom was grateful to him for caring for their mother so loyally, and, believing that work conquered all, encouraged him in the following months to continue his Dante translation, but confided to his diary:

‘Poor Brother Jack, will he do his Dante now? For him also I am sad; & surely he has deserved gratitude in these last years from us all.’

Jane wrote to her old friend Mrs Russell in Thornhill:

‘I think I have not written to you since Mrs John Carlyles’s death? That was a horrid business. It looked such a waste of a woman and child. Of course she was to die; yet humanly viewed, one could not help believing tha if she had staid at home and taken the ordinary care of herself that her situation required, she might have borne a living child and done well. But her constant excursions on railways, and sight-seeing and house-hunting, seemed to us often, even before the accident which brought her mortal illness, a sheer tempting of Providence.’

As for John:

‘….he had not seemed to know what he was doing – and is now in an apathetic state that I do not feel much interest in. My Husband positively looks more heart-sore than he does.’

John and Thomas had long discussions about gravestones in the following months. Thomas was concerned about the placing of a comma on their mother’s gravestone which was now in position, and was arranging to have a correction made. There was much discussion about Phoebe’s inscription, and Thomas made several excursions to her grave and reported back to John.

His life had changed utterly. He was single again and would remain so. His marriage must have seemed like a brief and dreamlike interlude in his long life. But he devoted much time from now on to the management of the stepsons he had acquired.

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