Jane Welsh Carlyle

On Insanity

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HEALTH:

1 The Lady Harriet Years

First published here 11/00

Reading through Mrs Carlyle’s letters, it is striking how often and regularly, throughout her adult life, she uses madness as a simile and metaphor. Usually this is done in a jocular fashion. For example, when her husband grows a beard, later in life, at the time of the Crimean War, and for a wager, she describes him as striding the streets ‘like an escaped maniac.’

She showed some interest in the subject of madness when she became friendly with a young psychiatrist, Matthew Allen, who had opened a lunatic asylum – ‘a model madhouse’ – at High Beecham Epping Forest. Allen had served time in a debtor’s prison, had been an apothecary at York Asylum, had a shop in Edinburgh, an MD degree from Aberdeen, and later opened a machine woodcarving business funded by Tennyson, which foundered. (Barnett, 1965)

Jane visited Epping and was impressed:
‘A lunatic establishment in the midst of the Forest.’
‘…And the poor creatures are all so happy and there (sic) Dr such a good humane Man – that it does not at all produce the painful impression that Asylums of that sort usually do – I am going back to stay some days …’
‘…a place where any sane person might be delighted to get admission.’
(26/10/31 JWC to Helen Welsh)

Despite all this she harboured a strong fear of losing her own reason throughout her life, and never more so than after the accident of 1863, when she was beginning the first and only severe attack of depression in her life.

Carlyle writes:
‘”Dear,” she said to me, on two occasions, with such a look and tone as I shall never forget, “promise me that you will not put me into a mad-house, however this go?” I solemnly did. “Not if I do quite lose my wits?” “Never, my Darling, oh compose thy poor, terrified heart.”

Mrs Sterlings madness

Several of her friends became seriously mentally ill, and she was tolerant of them and their behaviour. But not always. Her matter-of-fact approach to psychiatric illness in others, combined with a distinct lack of sympathy, is evident in the relish with which she recounts a friend’s breakdown:
‘-I really do think sometimes that a sort of things occur to ME which occur to no-one else, at least they occur with a frequency which has no parallel. There is another of my intimate acquaintance gone mad! – madder than twenty March hares- and as if I must needs be mixed up with all the madness that occurs in my sphere – the idea of her Monomania is, that her husband is my Lover!! – The poor creature (Mrs Anthony Sterling) has done nothing – absolutely nothing – these many years but read novels – and now I suppose we are witnessing the consummation of her futile existence! ’

Jane had heard of her indisposition and called to enquire. The servants looked strangely at her, and she was taken aside by Anthony who told her that his wife was ‘out of her wits simply and shortly.’ Told she had monomania, she enquired what was ‘her particular idea’, and was horrified that Mrs Sterling was convinced that her husband had fallen in love with Jane, and that he was ruining himself by giving her presents. She had accused him of giving Jane a new dining room carpet and a new piano. In fact all he had given Jane was a small crockery jug. Jane retired in confusion.

Unfortunately, one of the family told Mrs Sterling of Jane’s call, which sent Mrs Sterling into a ‘Phrenzy’, shrieking and attacking her husband with a poker. She had to be shut up with three trained attendants, a strait waistcoat was necessary at times, and her rooms were boarded off from the rest of the house and padded to diminish the noise.

Jane, obviously flattered by the symptoms, was less than sympathetic:
‘Meanwhile it is slightly annoying to have one's name uttered in shrieks, before assembled Drs and servants – and coupled with most ignominious epithets. Happily I never liked her much, so that I can bear her misfortune like a christian – and her madness is of such a very repulsive sort that one cannot feel any tender sympathy with it.’
Letter to Helen Welsh, 12/11/1844