Jane Welsh Carlyle

The Lady Harriet years-5

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HEALTH:

1 The Lady Harriet Years

Summary and Conclusions

Jane had to live with this triangular relationship for some seventeen years, and meet Lady Harriet socially for fourteen of them. She was 38 when Carlyle first met the Lady, and almost 56 when she died. We can be confident that her menopause occurred during this time, and her physical health demonstrably worsened. The evidence of portraits and photographs alone suffice to illustrate this dramatically. By the end of this period her face is aged and sunken, and friends constantly remarked on her pallor. She was thin, and had lost weight.

Almost every winter she was confined to the house for long periods with colds and chest infections; insomnia was a constant problem; and she complained of increasing fatigue and weakness as the years passed. Headaches, severe enough to prostrate her for days, occurred throughout this time, but these she had endured since adolescence. She took morphia regularly in the latter part of this period, which probably worsened her general health.

She was not as hypochondriacal as her husband, but like him was preoccupied with her health and consulted doctors frequently. She probably exaggerated some of her complaints; quite often something or somebody pleasing would result in an instant betterment in symptoms she had at the time.

Concentrating on the correspondence relating to her health and to Lady Harriet means that much of her busy social life has been neglected. During these years she saw many friends, who would have been surprised to learn that she was unhappy, and regarded her as charming and witty. Only latterly did the strains show in public. For the most part she shone, especially in her own home, despite the constant gossip that she knew went on about her marriage and her husband’s conduct. But latterly she sometimes lost her temper in public, and asserted herself in company so much that others found her tediously long-winded.

At no time does she seem unreasonably jealous or suspicious. She never thought for a moment that her husband’s feelings for Lady Harriet were carnal, but the evidence of Carlyle’s letters to the lady show how extraordinarily infatuated he was. And he was prepared to correspond with her repeatedly behind Jane’s back.

Jane was certainly more sinned against than sinning. What of Carlyle? By our standards he was very much at fault as a husband, but by the mores of the time he had every right to socialise as he pleased, independently of his wife. She did the same, and had many close male friends, but was more in advance of her time in this respect. But his behaviour was remarked upon, and thought indiscreet, by those inside and outside his circle.

The truth is that he was both amazingly naïve man, and an extremely selfish individual, ruthlessly self-interested. As his wife knew, he had no interest in women as women. He saw Lady Harriet as a very intelligent woman, wanted her friendship, and initially wanted to improve her – by guiding her reading and teaching her German. Less understandably, he was dazzled by her position, influence and wealth, and fell into the role of a courtier to his Queen.

It has been said of Carlyle that throughout his life he was more devoted to his mother than to his wife. More than that: he was devoted to women, not as sexual objects, but as mother figures. Lady Harriet provided him with yet another mother figure, one dazzling in her power and status. He had an insatiable thirst for mother love, especially combined with high intelligence, and here was another variety: a Queen, a Madonna. He was blind to the fact that the generality of men and women, and his wife, would not see a male-female relationship in this way. And blind to the effect produced on his wife by displaying Lady Harriet’s portrait on the domestic mantelshelf opposite his own.

Lady Harriet liked to capture political and literary celebrities. She had a reputation for picking them up and as quickly dropping them. She set out to charm the famous writer for her circle and succeeded. He managed to survive in it longer than other famous names.

She does not seem to have been more attached to Carlyle than to some of her other guests – the hyperbole was all on his side. Her husband was a good friend of both the Carlyles.

Lady Harriet went out of her way to cultivate Jane, and over the years repeatedly entertained her, with and without Carlyle. Jane felt ill at ease in these aristocratic circles, and was more irritated by the tedium of their social life than by Lady Harriet herself. But Lady Harriet had what Scott Fitzgerald called the ‘vast carelessness’ of the very rich, and this led to slights, real or imagined.

At no time during these fourteen years is there any evidence of real mental illness. Unhappiness, yes; physical illness, yes; bitterness and resentment, indeed; but she had no illusions or delusions, as Crichton-Browne was to allege, and her abuse of morphia was insufficient to cause psychological symptoms.