Jane Welsh Carlyle

On Tuesday, 22nd September, 1863 Jane drove to the general Post Office to see her cousin, Mrs Godby, who was ‘matron’ there. When Carlyle returned from his daily ride in the evening she had not returned, After an hour he heard the wheels of her carriage, but she did not emerge, and he found her in it, and helped by a neighbour had to carry her into the house.

She had had a street accident in St Martins, where there was some excavations going on, which did not permit the omnibus to come close to the kerb. Jane had stepped off the kerb to board it, when she was forced to stop abruptly by a cab racing through the gap. She tried to avoid falling on her left arm, and was unable to use it to protect herself because it was disabled by ‘neuralgia’, and so fell badly on her left side. She had ‘torn the sinews of the thigh-bone, and was powerless to move or stand, and in pain unspeakable.’ (Carlyle, Reminiscences).

Carlyle goes on to say that in a few days ‘she seemed to be almost happy, contented with immunity from pain, and proud to have made (as she soon did) her little bedroom into a boudoir all in her own likeness.’ She summoned a carpenter to arrange cords and appliances to raise herself with her one good arm, and had a device made to help her pour her champagne (a gift from Miss Bromley) in tiny doses.

Jane's Description

By October 20^th, Jane was able to give an account of recent events to Grace Welsh:
‘…I need not go into the how of the fall; I will tell you all ‘particulars’ when I gain more facility in writing; enough to say that I was plashed down on the pavement of St Martin-le-Grand (five miles from home) on my left side, (the arm of which couldn’t break the fall), and hurt all down from the hip-joint so fearfully, and on the already lamed shoulder besides, that I couldn’t stir; but had to be lifted up by people who gathered round me (a policeman among them) and put into a cab. Elizabeth can fancy my drive home (five miles) and getting me out of the cab and upstairs to bed!’

‘My doctor came immediately , and found neither breakage of the leg nor dislocation; but the agony of pain, he said, would have been less had the bone broken….Still, for three days and three sleepless nights it was such agony as I had never known before; after that the pain went gradually out of the leg, unless when I moved it, for some bed operations, &c,&c. But the arm, with its complication of sprain and neuralgia, has given me a sad time, till these last two days that it has returned almost to the state it was in before the fall. A week ago Mr Barnes made me get out of bed for fear of ‘a bad back’ and sit on end on a sofa in my bedroom…and two days ago he compelled me to walk a few steps, supported with his arms, and to do the same thing at least twice a day. . It has been a case of ‘lacerated sinews;’ and he said the tendency of the muscles was to contract themselves after such a thing, and if I did not force myself to put down my foot now and then, I should never be able to walk at all! Such a threat, and his determined manner, enable me to make the effort, which costs, I can tell you. But, at whatever cost of pain and nervousness, I have today passed through the door of my bedroom….so you see I am already a good way towards recovery, for which I feel, every moment, deep thankfulness to God.’

In short the worst effects of the accident seems to be over; she is making steady progress although the left arm remains disabled by ‘neuralgia' which predated the injury. Although she is writing to a very pious woman, it is most unusual for her to express religious sentiments in her correspondence.

Letters written on 2^nd and 3^rd November find her saying: 'I am very convalescent’. She reports that she can walk with a stick, and that she has had less pain in her arm in recent days. She attributes the improvement to Iodide of Potash, which she is taking with Valeriate and Quinine. ‘But I am certain it is more than rheumatism that hinders me from lifting my arm.’ Searching for reasons, she recalls that in the summer she took to using dumb-bells for two or three days in an effort to strengthen herself, but left off when she found her arms aching and too weak to continue. She says it would be a comfort to believe that was the cause: ‘..and I might give up vague terrors about angina pectoris, paralysis, disease of the spine, &c, &c.’

Her husband was less than helpful. Froude, who visited the Carlyles at the time, describes a ‘small incident’ that occurred in the first few days after the accident:
‘The nerves and muscles were completely disabled on the side on which she had fallen, and one effect was that the under jaw had dropped, and that she could not close it. Carlyle always disliked an open mouth; he thought it a sign of foolishness. One morning, when the pain was at its worst, he came into her room, and stood looking at her, leaning on the mantel-piece. “Jane,” he said presently, ”ye had better shut your mouth.” She tried to tell him that she could not. "Jane,” he began again, “ye’ll find yourself in a more compact and pious frame of mind, if ye shut your mouth.”…”

For good measure, he added that she should be thankful that the accident was no worse. "Thankful!” she said to him; “thankful for what? for having been thrown down in the street when I had gone on an errand of charity? for being disabled, crushed, made to suffer in this way? I am not thankful, and I will not say that I am.” He left her, saying that he was sorry to see her so rebellious.

We may doubt Froude’s ability to recall a conversation in such detail, especially when on the previous page he has located her neuralgia in the wrong arm. But it is little wonder that Carlyle had to report to his brother: “She speaks little to me, and does not accept me as a sick nurse, which, truly, I had never any talent to be.’

False Dawn

About the end of the month she appeared in the drawing room in the evening, dressed, and able to walk leaning on a cane.

Carlyle thought she was recovering, but Froude believes Carlyle was blind to reality when he wrote, seven weeks after the accident:
‘She actually sleeps better, eats better, and is cheerfuller than formerly. For perhaps three weeks past she has been hitching about with a stick. She can walk too, but slowly with a stick. In short she is doing well enough – as indeed am I, and have need to be.’

He had need to be, because he had just realised that the volume of Frederick he was completing would not be the last. Froude believes that Jane, knowing this, made every effort to conceal her disability from him. During this time she received some visitors, including Froude and his wife, so he writes from first-hand observation.

It did not last. By the end of November she had returned to bed in severe pain, was not sleeping at all, and was profoundly miserable. She continued in this state for ten months.

She retired to bed again in November, complaining of severe neuralgic pain, now generalised, with no sleep at all. The doctors could give no explanation. Only one further letter seems to have been written in the remainder of the year: a short note sending a gift to a new baby. In it she says merely: ‘I am not at all well.’

Carlyle describes it in a letter of 29^th December, 1863:
‘We are in great trouble, trouble anxiety and confusion. Poor Jane’s state is such as to fill us with the saddest thoughts. She does not gather strength – how can she! She is quieter in regard to pain. The neuralgia and other torments have sensibly abated, not ceased. She also eats daily a little – that is one clearly good symptom. But her state is one of weakness, utter restlessness, depression, and misery, such a scene as I never was in before. If she could only get a little sleep, but she cannot hitherto. Tonight, by Barnes’ advice and her own reluctant consent, she is to try morphine again. God of His mercy grant that it may prosper! There has been for ten days a complete cessation of all druggings and opiate abominations. They did her a great deal of mischief instead of any good…I still try to hope and believe that my poor little woman is a little thought better, but it is miserable to see how low and wretched she is, and under what wearing pain she passes her sleepless nights and days.’

There is now a distinct change in the symptoms. The pain seems to have become generalised and she is restless and depressed to a degree that prevents her writing much and causes concern to all.

Recalling this time in the Reminiscences, Carlyle notes first that she was treated by a variety of physicians and that ‘Animal Magnetism’ was tried on two occasions. He believed that all the treatment offered made her worse describing the
‘pernicious effect of all their “remedies” and appliances, opiates, etc, etc …always with the like inverse effect.’

She feared insanity. 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.” Another time she punctually directed me about her burial; how her poor bits of possessions were to be distributed.’

Carlyle, in his Reminiscences, written shortly after her death, was in no doubt that she had never been more ill:
‘…such a deluge of intolerable pain, indescribable, unaidable pain, as I had never seen or dreamt of, and which drowned six or eight months of my poor darling’s life in the blackness of very death; her recovery at last, and the manner of it, an unexpected miracle to me. There seemed to be pain in every muscle, misery in every nerve, no sleep by day or night, no rest from struggle and desperate suffering. Nobody ever known to me could more nobly and silently endure pain; but here for the first time I saw her vanquished, driven hopeless, as it were looking into a wild chaotic universe of boundless woe – on the horizon only death or worse. Oh, I have seen such expressions in those dear and beautiful eyes as exceeded all tragedy! (one night in particular, when she rushed desperately out to me, without speech; got laid and wrapped by me on the sofa, and gazed silently on all the old familiar objects and me). Her pain she would seldom speak of, but when she did, it was in terms as if there were no language for it; “any honest pain, mere pain, if it were cutting my flesh with knives, or sawing my bones, I could hail as a luxury in comparison!” ‘

Many doctors attended her, Carlyle says, all prescribing opiates and narcotics of some sort. He thought she would have been half as miserable without the doctors and their treatments, and Barnes, the family doctor, admitted that they had been able to do nothing.

1863 ended with Mrs Carlyle more ill than she had ever been in her life, and with no sign of betterment. She had all the symptoms of a severe depressive illness

* Carlyle gives 1^st or 2^nd October in the Reminiscences, but on forwarding a letter of 23^rd September, he added:’My poor wife had an ugly accident yesterday.’

The last years- 1863-1866

The Accident and After

The Fall

Jane's Description

False Dawn