Jane Welsh Carlyle

The Lady Harriet years-3

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HEALTH:

1 The Lady Harriet Years

1848- 1852

During 1848 little changed. She continued to visit Lady Harriet in her various houses, with or without her husband, and she continued in poor health.

Visiting Addiscombe in April, her head felt ‘as usual to be full of melted lead, swaying this way and that. There is no walking off the heaviness if walkable off, for the pain is incessant.’ (to TC, 4/48)

But she was out and about -‘very gay’ in May, and heard Chopin play in London. In September she went again to the Grange and stayed all of six weeks, her health and her relations with Lady Harriet improving.

Gossip

At a dinner party in 1849 she was confronted by the gossipy Mr Rogers: ’Is your husband as much infatuated as ever with Lady Ashburton? He spends all his evenings with her I am told ….it is very good of you to like her when she takes away all your husband’s company from you.’ She parried his questions well, but it may be that Jane responded to all this and other gossip by deliberately accepting all Lady Harriet’s invitations.

Froude, Carlyle’s biographer, met her for the first time in 1849:
‘Her features were not regular, but I thought I had never seen a more interesting looking woman. Her hair was raven black, her eyes dark, soft, sad, with dangerous light in them.’ He found her conversation ‘delicately mocking’ and noted that she told ‘stories at her husband’s expense.’ He was to write later that even at this time he heard much gossip in the Carlyles’ circle about their marital problems, and even rumours of sexual difficulties.

One of Jane’s trips during the year took her to a Dr Macleod to submit herself to his water cure. She was packed in a wet sheet, blankets and a feather bed, and left for an hour. She does not record what effect this had.

She made a trip to her home town of Haddington, her first visit for sixteen years, travelling anonymously, visiting her father’s grave, and recognised by only a few old friends there.

She also visited Carlyle’ s mother at Scotsbrig. Mrs Carlyle came up behind her and tickled under the arms. She laughed, then paled and fell down. Brother John, the doctor, was summoned and brought her round. She was told it was a ‘heart attack’ , but the whole incident was kept from her husband.

She was in a highly nervous state. When she travelled from Edinburgh to Ecclefechan on the new railway, she did not know whether or not the train passed through Thornhill, where her mother had died , and where she refused to return. She sat in the train through Dumfriesshire with her eyes closed, in a state of ‘extreme nervousness –which I could not control.’ (32/12/49 to Mary Russell).

When she returned to London in September she wrote to her husband:
‘It has become more and more clear to me that something is gone deadly wrong in my interior.’ She was taking ‘a large consumption of morphia’ but sleeping poorly. The house was overrun with mice, her winter colds started, and her letters are gloomy. In December she wrote to Forster of a novel and its author:
‘…all about love and nothing else whatever. I t quite reminds me of ones own love’s young dreams. I like it, and like the poor girl who can still believe – or even “believe that she believes” all that. God help her! She will sing to another tune if she go on living and writing for twenty years.’

One of the highlights of this gloomy year was the arrival of a little dog, Nero, who improved her health and spirits, and even managed to charm her husband , who was ‘flattered and surprised’ when Nero danced around him on his hind legs ‘when he comes down gloomy in the morning.’

1850

The routine of these years is now established. Jane continues to make visits to the Grange and other Ashburton residencies. This year she was at Addiscombe in the Spring for two short visits. Jane had a cold and was distressed to be seen there with a pimple on her nose. Lady Ashburton was ‘beautiful and in tearing spirits’. Jane again was taking morphia for her insomnia.

She developed an odd preoccupation with crime. A Maria Manning, a murderess, had been hanged. Jane thought that Lady Ashburton resembled her. She cut out pictures of Manning and other criminals from the papers and sent them to her cousin.

When Sir Robert Peel died, Lady Harriet insisted that Jane should come to stay at Addiscombe to console her.

Carlyle, to his wife’s astonishment, wished to go to the Bath House Ball. Jane protested, but went. He enjoyed it and wrote to Lady Harriet:
‘You gave us a glorious Ball; and were, and are, a glorious Queen…..Thank you always.’

Jane’s mood remained angry, but she was distressed when his letters were delayed, and confessed:
‘It is sad and wrong to be so dependent for the life of my life on any human being as I am on you; but I cannot by any force of logic cure myself of the habit at this date, when it has become second nature – if I have to lead another life in any of the planets I shall take precious good care not to hang myself round any man’s neck either as a locket or a millstone.’ (20/8/50)

‘My company I know is generally worse than none – and you cannot suffer more from the fact than I do from the consciousness of it. God knows how gladly I would be sweet-tempered and cheerful-hearted and all that sort of thing for your single sake if my temper were not soured and my heart saddened beyond my own power to mend them.’ (23/9/50)

These, surely, are the words of a sad, unhappy, but intelligent, insightful and sane woman – not of one mentally ill, as Crichton-Browne alleged for this period of her life.

When she was staying at the Grange in October, Carlyle – who had been elsewhere – returned home early to London. Jane was teased by the company about his absence, and responded with anger and tears. He had written to his ‘bonnie little artistikin’ with his usual lack of tact, and she replied:
‘I am not consoled but “ aggravated” by reflecting that in point of fact you will prefer finding “perfect solitude” in your own home.’

Nevertheless she cut short her visit and returned to be with him at Cheyne Row.

1851- more quarrels

She had fewer colds and chest infections in the mild winter of 1850-51. Her bitterness and self criticism persists.

Cousin Jeannie was about to be married. Jane told her:
‘…certainly I am not the best authorized person to tell people how they should manage their lives under that head of Method [marriage] – having made such a mess of my own life – God help me!’

She and Carlyle subjected themselves to Dr Gully’s water cure in the summer of ’51, with little benefit to either of them.

She dreamed she was at home in Haddington again to see her mother – she didn’t come – ‘waiting, waiting‘- and gradually realised that she was dead.

Another major quarrel spoiled the Autumn. Lady Harriet had knitted scarves for both Jane and Carlyle – ‘a thousand thanks, O noble woman..’ Carlyle then accompanied the Ashburtons on a short trip to Paris On her return Lady Harriet invited Jane to the Grange. She declined but offered to visit her at Bath House, during the three days she was in London. The noble lady told her, via Carlyle, that she would have no free time. Jane was enraged: she knew that her husband had made at least three visits during this time.

On the 15^th October she confides in Jeannie :
‘It is not of course any caprice she can show to me that annoys me – I have long given up the generous attempts at loving her – but it is to see him always starting up to defend everything she does and says no matter whether it be capricious behaviour towards his wife – so long as she flatter himself with delicate attentions.’ She reports that Carlyle had told her he ‘could not see what the devil business I had to find anything strange in that or to suppose that any slight was put on me.’

The quarrel dragged on for the rest of the year. At the end of November Carlyle tells Lady Harriet (‘the only one glow of radiancy that still looks of Heaven to me’) that ‘we are in a very dark state here; nearly altogether silent.’ But again Jane accepted an invitation, and stayed at the Grange in December, where she caught another cold immediately. But her mood improved. Lady Ashburton seems to have mollified her, and Carlyle reported on her return that ‘she has looked much happier ever since.’

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