The Travelling Physician (2)

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The Lady Clare Years

The young doctor set off in early October, 1831, met the Countess at Dover and crossed the channel, heading first for Paris. He left a large family Bible as a goodbye present for Jane. Thomas, writing home to the family in Scotland, gave what information he had gleaned about the Countess:

‘… all give her a good character’…‘The Countess is young (perhaps 33), courteous, and has behaved in this transaction with great liberality. Jack also is much more prudent and manly in his ways than he was; so that I think there is a fair prospect of his even doing the poor lady some good…’

‘Something mysterious there is in the condition of this high personage, She was married some years ago and shortly after that event she parted from her husband (they say by her own determination), the nearest friends know not for what reason; and now she lives in a sort of widow hood (her husband is Governor of Bombay, and said to be a “very good sort of man”), so that being farther in ill-health she is probably unhappy enough,  and has need of good counsel every way.’

Mountshannon mansion in the Castleconnell area was the Clare’s family seat. Huge and handsome, with 365 windows and able to accommodate 100 guests in the summer. Lady Clare's’ father-in-law was a famous figure in Irish history: John (Black Jack) Fitzgibbon. A lawyer and politician , he became Attorney General, and in 1789, Lord High Chancellor. He was knighted in 1795 and became the first Earl of Clare. He was reviled for his strong opposition to Catholic emancipation; his Dublin house was besieged and he received head injuries when his carriage was attacked. He boasted that he would make the Irish ‘as tame as a mutilated cat’, and when he died in 1802 dead cats were flung on his grave. When Disraeli heard him speak in the House of Lords, he exclaimed: ‘Good God, did you ever in all you life hear such a rascal?’

The second Earl (1792-1851), Lady Clare’s husband spent much of his time in foreign parts, and was Governor of Bombay. He was about six years older than his wife. If he inherited any of his father’s personality traits he may well have been a difficult husband, but the reasons for their separation remain mysterious. They had no children and when he died his younger brother became the third Earl. (Carroll J and Touhy, Pat: Village on the Shannon, 1991 – from internet site:  Limerick County Library)

In addition to her travelling physician Lady Clare took with her a companion (a Miss Morris), a courier (Doria, a Veronese), and a footman who had served with Lady Clare and her family for twenty years, and who was John’s immediate travelling companion on their journeyings. John had his own ‘neat, commodious chariot.’

The first report from John came from the Hotel de Bristol in the Place Vendome on the 13^th October. Adjusting to this new social milieu was difficult: ‘…the anxiety I felt about being able to conduct myself properly in my new situation made me awkward at the outset, and sometimes I was in a very explodible humour, but things have kept brightening from day to day.’ Although John had quite extensive experience of mixing with nobility – he had stayed with a Baron in Munich for many months after all – he must have had problems in establishing his exact place in the hierarchy of such an entourage.

He received constant admonitions in Tom’s letters. One written on the 20^th of December by which time John had reached Italy, ends: ‘I have never despaired, and now I feel more and more certain, of one day seeing you a man…In brief, Jack, defy the Devil in all his figures, and spit upon him; he cannot hurt you.’ Thomas also relayed a message from their mother. She thought of him first thing each morning, and urged him to read his bible carefully, ‘and not to forget that God sees him in whatever land he may be.’

John travelled with his companions via Fountainebleu, Burgundy, Jura, Geneva, Lake Lemain, the Rhone, Chamberey, then crossed the Iser and reached Turin by way of Mount Cenis, the standard route for those on the Grand Tour throughout the 18^th century. In late November Thomas heard that they had left Turin and might now be in Florence, where they planned to stay for some time. All was going well and the Patient was ‘tractable and amiable, own health and spirits good; every way a fair outlook.’

In January of 1832 their father died. Thomas , before his death, had persuaded his father that he should leave out John and himself from his will; they had had their share in their education. The two brothers corresponded, although Jack was always more dilatory about writing, and became even more so as the years passed. But in February Thomas was pleased with his brother’s epistles, which, he told the family, showed much ‘heartiness and earnestness.’ He wrote ‘more and more like a sensible man.’

John was to spend most of the next seven years in Italy, mainly in Rome, with occasional periods of leave in England and Scotland, depending on the whim of Lady Clare. We are dependent for information about this period on his not very regular letters home – and their survival – and on a journal and commonplace book he kept for some 12 months during 1834 and 1835, when in Rome and Naples.

There is surprisingly little about Lady Clare, whose health does not seem to have been a great concern while abroad. Physical illness is never mentioned, not does she seem to have had any obvious psychiatric symptoms. For the well-to-do, travel abroad had become in the last century a useful and acceptable escape from problems at home, and Lady Clare may have been in this category of tourism. Dr John attended some of her friends and her friends’ servants, presumably at her behest, and was free to do some private practice, but found little, although he worked hard when cholera struck Rome.

In that first year abroad they travelled a good deal within Italy, but afterwards were based for long periods in Rome. They visited Naples in June, 1832 when Vesuvius was smoking and erupting with streams of fiery stones thrown out on the side of the mountain, lighting up the frigates in the bay at night. John ascended it  on the Festa della Madonna dellArco. He was greatly distressed by the heat there in the summer months. It made him headachy, stupid and lazy, he confessed. He was trying but failing to read Pilgrims Progress.

By July, John’s finances, and those of the Carlyle family, were transformed. John had sent instructions to Thomas: £45 was sent to Alec, to settle a debt and a tailors account; and Jeffrey was paid £43-10s to settle John’s debt. Jeffrey was pleased by John’s punctuality, and told Thomas that John had justified what Thomas had thought unjustifiable: accepting a loan. Thomas told John: ‘You are already free of debt, and in that the miserablest of all millstones is rolled from off you.’ At the same time Thomas was able to pay off £60 he had borrowed from Jeffrey.

At the end of the year there was word from Jack (NLS MS 2883.63-64) that Lady Clare planned to return home in July or October, depending on whether friends would be at home or not. They were now staying in the London Hotel in Rome, next door to where they had stayed the previous year. In the event they set off in mid-April of 1833, Lady Clare in the best health she had enjoyed since John knew her. They travelled via the Falls at Terni, mentioned by Tacitus, John remembered, to Spoleto, and on to Faligno, where they saw signs of the previous year’s earthquake. Then on to Assissi and Perugia, where they were pulled up a mountain by ‘large white oxen with black eyes, the quietist and finest of their kind.’ They passed Lake Trasimene, the site of a famous battle in 217 BC when Hannibal slaughtered 16000 of the Roman army.From there they went on to Arezza and Florence. At time the travelling was unpleasant  - Joh had to put up with rain and wind in an open carriage. The long journey home, of which this was only the beginning, took over two months, and they arrived in London in June. John spent his leave at Craigenputtoch. He saw much of Jane during his leave, reading Italian with her, telling her of his travels, and prescribing for her complaints. Then and in the future they had a curious relationship. They were both very critical of the each other; she thought he was dull and lacked easy manners, although he was good company by Craigenputtock standards. He thought her flighty and an unsuitable wife for his brother, and even told her, as he would again, that she would enjoy good health if she found some ‘agreeable occupation.’

He travelled back to Rome via Milan in August,1833, having committed himself to a further two years in Lady Clare’s service. It was during the next two years that he kept a journal and commonplace book. His salary increased with the years, and most of it was saved because of his free board and lodging abroad. He had repaid all his debts, and was now infinitely wealthier than the rest of the family, able to save and still be generous to them, although he was careful with his money. In 1834 Thomas told him that he was nearly moved to tears by his letter and his offers.

At this time John and his party visited Naples when Vesuvius was erupting. John went up to view the scene accompanied by one of the ladies in their party, and saw the fresh lava, forty feet deep. But, in a much more perilous event, the house where they were staying was struck by  thunderbolt, but ‘miraculously’ no-one was harmed.

But most of 1834 and 1835 was spent in Rome. As a salaried physician John thought it was wrong to accept fees offered by others for his services.  ‘The English are too proud to have attendance gratis, and so I am cut off from all practice except among Lady Clare’s intimate friends.’ But this were enough, he thought, to keep his hand in, although it was a quiet life. He read much: his bibles in several languages; Dante’s Inferno (‘one pregnant book’),  and often returned to his copy of Sartor, finding he got more good from it on every reading. He remained more religious, and more orthodox,  than Thomas. He wrote to brother Alex that he was submitting to ‘God’s good Providence,’ avoiding parties, believing it impossible to ‘make a sweet mixture of Christianity and worldliness.’ He urged Alex to avoid drunkenness, ‘the strongest agent of the Devil that I know of.’ (Marrs, 1968)

In these years he wrote to Thomas, to Alec and to his mother; corresponded with John Sterling and other friends at home; and in French and German with continental acquaintances. When he heard that the first draft of French Revolution had been destroyed, in April of 1835, his letters cheered Tom and Jane. Jane wrote: ‘Your letter not only raised our spirits at the time, but has kept them raised since…….Bless you for it and for the kind feeling which make you a brother well worth having – a man well worth loving.’ She goes on to say that surely they won’t quarrel again, or at least as little as possible, and hopes that  they will read Ariosto again, as they did at Craigenputtoch.

John had expected to come home in the Autumn, and had planned to take Tom and Jane on an expensive trip back to Scotland, but the capricious Lady Clare changed her mind at the last minute, to the irritation of the Carlyle family, and John did not return until  the Spring of the following year..

He arrived in mid-April, 1836, via Munich and Boulogne, crossing the channel by steamer. In one of his rare references to doing anything at all for Lady Clare, he reports: ‘I sheltered Lady Clare by means of a large carriage umbrella from the wind produced by the motion of the vessel.’ He believed her to be as well on returning as when she left England, and his engagement was concluded after over four years with her. He stayed at Cheyne Row for two months before going home to Scotsbrig. Thomas enjoyed having his brother to talk to about his travels , but Jane had her brother in law’s future in mind. Writing to Helen Welsh, she reported that the currently fashionable complaints in London were the vapours and ‘checked perspiration.’ John , she considered, ‘is not the man for grappling in a cunning manner with “checked perspiration,” and accordingly there is small hope of his getting into profitable employment here as a Doctor.’ (1 4 36)

Jack kept flying about, Thomas noted, talked of ‘doing all things under the Moon and above it,’ and never did anything. Within a short time he wrote to Lady Clare, asking if he could return to her service in Rome ‘on the old footing,’ which seemed to involve living in his own quarters. He may also have made an agreement that would allow him to undertake private practice there, as one of his many notions at this time was to make a career in private practice in Rome. Lady Clare agreed to his return for six months, and he left  for Italy again at the beginning of September 1836.

At the beginning of the 1837 had made little progress with his attempts to gain private patients in Rome, but was busy nevertheless. Cholera had broken out, and raged in the city for the next six months. John gave his services gratis to the poor, and was horrified by the general panic and selfishness that prevailed.  In his letters he accuses the Pope and his staff of exceptional cowardice, but praises the poor priests and the Jesuits. Later in the epidemic he changed his mind about the conduct of the poor priests: they were ‘worse than the pestilence itself.’ In November he said he intended to practise in Rome during the winter but was not optimistic about his chances.

The brothers exchanged books and newspapers, still using strokes on the latter to send short messages that all was well. Many letters and parcels went missing, some for long periods, some never to reach their destination. As John was never the most regular of correspondents,  this often led to  confusion between them. John only received the first volume of French Revolution; the others were lost in the post. Because of John’s steadily increasing prosperity, he sent money home, and in hopes of returning home the following year, there was talk of meeting Thomas in Paris, or even of Thomas visiting Italy. But they came to nothing.

John seemed to be setting off for home with Lady Clare in May of 1838, having sent a newspaper with three strokes, but a letter followed. The doctor was in good health, but Thomas ws enraged with his news:

 ‘I grieve to say his fickle Dame has changed her plans again, and his coming home is delayed….It is a provoking thing to depend on such people, but what can one do when one’s bread lies among their feet?’

In fact, Lady Clare’s brother, who was with them , had become ill, and she would not start for home until his health improved, and he could travel with them.

At this time John was reading Goethe’s Wanderjahre and Dante, and still diligently reading his bibles in four languages. When he was studying in Vienna he claimed to speak German so well that he could pass as a native, but now after all these years in Italy, and much tuition, he confessed that he would never be really good at Italian although he was fluent enough. He tried reading to Lady Clare, but their tastes must have differed: ‘Lady Clare will never understand anything about the wants of such a mind as Goethe.’

But the journey home soon commenced, and John and Lady Clare had reached Milan and Como by June, and were expected to reach home by September. A letter received  in August found them still in Italy, but hoping to be over the Alps and in Paris by the time it was read in London. By this time Thomas was on holiday in Scotland, and it was Jane who welcomed John back to Cheyne Row. He quickly went north, but with a letter in his pocket from Jane for Tom. John had been talking to her of travelling with his brother back to Italy, despite his contract with Lady Clare being at last at a definite end. She warned Thomas not to encourage ‘iffing’ -  discussion of this possibility with John, and was gloomy about his future:

‘..I send you our Doctor very grey, very thin, but healthy, and locomotive as ever. I wish I could send him with one certainty in his pocket, in which case he would be a help more meet for you - but the man is born to ifs as the sparks fly upwards, living and has his being in a grand peut-etre, and the only thing one can do alongside him is to be as positive as twenty mules……Rome may be the best place for him……I should not like to have any hand in deciding him one way or the other – this only is clear to me; better to be a peripatetic Doctor than no doctor at all – and it is to be thoroughly doubted if he will ever screw himself up to practising his profession with the necessary energy and endurance in London.’(JA/TC 9.38).

Within a month Lady Clare was missing him, and her servants  appeared with messages at Cheyne Row daily, saying that the countess was ill and ‘none but her doctor could give help.’ Thomas went to her hotel, sent in his card, but only met her courier, who, on being told that the doctor was at Scotsbrig, asked how they could get there, and was surprised when told that the rail journey would take 24 hours and that they had better write. Thomas thought her Ladyship should have kept John on her payroll rather than turn him out to grass, expecting that he would return any time she whistled! John turned her down. He told the family that he had ‘tried to do all in his power for Lady Clare,’ and – he adds –‘ at length ascertained that I could not help her in these circumstances’. On the same day he discovered that the Duke of Buccleuch was in search of a physician and went at once to Sir James Clark, the Queen’s physician, obtained a reference from him, which he took to Dr Hume, the Duke of Wellington’s physician, and from him obtained a letter to Dr Arnott, a Dumfriesshire man, who  had connections with Buccleuch. Dr Arnott had served as Napoleon’s physician and attended at his death in St Helena. John evidently now had some useful contacts, thanks to his long service with the nobility.