Jane Welsh Carlyle

The Lady Harriet years-2

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HEALTH:

1 The Lady Harriet Years

1846-47

The Carlyles Quarrel

Jane spent much of the winter of 1845-46 indoors, confined to her bedroom and the library. As usual she had frequent colds, and felt weak, but she was able to visit Bay House with Carlyle in January.

Matters came to a head in the summer of 1846. They had spent a month at Addiscombe in the Spring, and afterwards Jane wrote that ‘for my part I love her now as much as I admired her in the beginning,’ but added that she could not really understand her. Jane was in poor physical health, troubled by fears of insanity, and unable to sleep. She was now treating her insomnia with morphia, not as heinous an offence as it would seem today. The drug was freely available, and widely used by all classes. Her husband, busy writing, had little time for her, and spent what free time he had with Lady Harriet.

Her friends were deceived by her in company – one told her that she did not think she knew what it was to be sad for a minute. Jane wrote:
‘For days and weeks a cheerful feeling had not been in my mind – but of course one does not make calls to show oneself as a spectacle of wae [woe]. I talked, talked….they laughed, till their tears ran down. I could not laugh.’ (19/5/46)

Carlyle always procrastinated about his holiday plans, and did so more than usual this summer, as he waited until Lady Harriet expressed her wishes and intentions. By June, Jane ws so exasperated that she went off alone to stay with friends at Seaforth House. She wrote to Mazzini that her life was empty. Soon after arriving she ws immensely distressed when a letter from her husband did not arrive on her forty-fifth birthday. She had a cough, spent much time in her room retching and blinded by her headaches, yet managed to talk brilliantly at dinner.

As Jane and Thomas were apart, and corresponded almost daily, we can piece the quarrel together from their letters. On the 14th July Carlyle writes:
‘To the Lady I have, of course, told nothing, except that you are very unwell. But she seems to have discerned pretty clearly for herself that our intercourse is to be carried on under different conditions henceforth, or probably cease altogether before long : to which arrangement she gives signs of being ready to conform, with fully more indifference than I expected, - with no unkindness at all, but with no discernible regret either…’

Evidently Jane had insisted that the relationship must alter or cease. But he goes on to say that he and the Barings might meet in Scotland but with ‘little expectation on either side’.

A week later (22/7/46) he writes to his wife again:
‘I took leave of the Barings last night: all is handsome and clear there; and nothing is wrong, except your and my ill-genius may still force it to be so a little! To the Lady I “said” simply nothing; and her altered manner, I suppose, might proceed altogether from the evident chagrin and depression of mine. Was that unnatural in me? ……my relation to her is but a very small element in her position but a very just and laudable one; and I wish to retain that if I can, and give it up if I cannot, voila tout! Oh Goody dear, be wise and all is well. Ever yours.’

He wrote a letter to Lady Harriet, burned it, but wrote the next week (28/7/46) telling her this and that his wife’s ‘health’ was improving:
‘We have talked of you; do not suppose that she does other, or ever did other, than respect and even love you – tho’ with some degree of terror. Baseless, I do believe!…..Adieu, dear Lady mine, mine yes, and yet forever no!’

There was another row in August. Carlyle had gone to his mother’s house at Scotbrig, and admitted that he was planning to meet up with Lady Baring in Moffat when she travelled to Scotland. Jane did not write to him, and he wrote plaintively to her:
‘My mother asks: No word from, Jane yet? And, in spite of her astonishment, I am obliged to answer:”None”’’

It is altogether typical of Carlyle to show more concern about his mother’s distress than about Jane’s. He went to Moffat and stayed with the Barings . The weather and accommodation were disappointing, and the visit was not a success. He persuaded Lady Harriet to write a friendly letter to Jane. Jane did not reply.

But the quarrel was gradually patched up and by October Jane was again staying with her husband at the Grange. The visit lasted ten days.

Winter Illnesses and a Parrot

As in most winters from now on, Jane was in poor health throughout that of 1846-47. At the end of the year she writes (29/12/46), when yet another unsatisfactory maid was giving trouble:
‘…I was laid up in bed with one of my serious colds ….and there I lay with a Doctor attending me daily – and dozing me with tartar-emetic and opium till I had hardly my sense left, and was too weak to cough, while Carlyle and my cousin had to shift for themselves, and me too.’

But during 1847 she had an active social life and the visits to the Barings continued. During a stay with them, Jane was delighted to find that Lady Harriet had acquired a new pet, a conversational rival for her husband:
‘…the Parrot does not mind interrupting him when he is speaking – does not fear to speak thro’ him (as the phrase is) and her Ladyship listens to the parrot – even when Carlyle is saying the most sensible things.’

In the summer of the year she spent her birthday in tears over her husband’s gifts. Even in the summer she was taking opium for her cough, Insomnia persisted and when she did sleep she dreamed – once of lying on her mother’s tomb. On holiday in September at Barnsley she took one of her ‘very worst fainting headaches’ and had to be carried to bed ‘where I lay in what they took for a last agony.’

When Jane visited Addiscombe again in the Autumn of 1847, she felt that Lady Harriet ‘made a point of ignoring the fact that anything ailed me. I fancy it must be one of her notions about me that I am hypochondriacal and to be made well by being treated as tho’ there was not a doubt of it… When I look at my white face in the glass I wonder how anyone can believe I am fancying.’

The passage is interesting for the modern use of ‘hypochondriacal’

At the end of the year Carlyle was writing behind her back to Lady Harriet:
‘My Queen! Do not write – or rather do (when you have spirits for it) but not to me – and ignoring this, never having received this! Heaven help us!’ (22/12/47)

A Neck Swelling

In June 1847 Jane wrote to Helen Walsh:
‘I must be quiet for some weeks to come for I am required to give some heed to a large tumour on my throat – a result John Carlyle says of “extreme physical irritation” – nobody know of it but John – as I can cover it with the black lace I wear round my neck – but tho’ there is no pain connected with it as yet – it is too ugly for being allowed to stay peaceably there – and besides as it is rapidly increasing it may come to choke me unless a stop be put to it – John bade me rub it nightly with Iodine ointment – but the nastiness of the process – the ointment being the colour of blood and giving my throat the appearance of having been cut, put me into such a state of nervousness that I could not go to sleep – so now I am taking tincture of iodine – which will answer the same purpose John expects – I have said nothing about it even to Carlyle – speculating about it will not help to absorb it – and a tumour is not an interesting phase of human ailment – Besides as I have been able to hold my peace on the Physical Suffering which has produced this beautiful dumpling on my throat – I may surely hold my peace on a symptom which is not painful - I tell you – because should it turn to anything serious you would think it unnatural that I should have made a secret of it.’

It has been suggested (Anderson, 1969) that thyroid disease may have been responsible for this swelling, but after this detailed description it disappears from the Carlyle correspondence, and whatever it was seems to have resolved spontaneously, which would not have been the case with a thyroid tumour. Nor are there convincing symptoms of thyrotoxicosis – no sudden weight loss, some anxiety and palpitations perhaps, but no exophthalmia ( bulging eyes).

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