The last years- Living Miracle
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HEALTH:
‘In
fact I am now, what is pleasantly called “a Living Miracle!”'
- JWC,
March, 1866
Return to Chelsea – October 1864
Carlyle writes:
'Saturday, October 1, 1864, a mild, clear (not sunny)
day, John brought her home to me again to this door… A faint, kind,
timid smile was on her face, as if afraid to believe fully; but the
despair had vanished from her looks altogether, and she was brought back
to me, my own again as before.' He goes on to say how her return gave
him renewed strength to finish his book, and, writing in 1869 when editing
her letters, he went on:
‘My poor martyred darling continued to prosper here
beyond my hopes – far beyond her own; and in spite of utter weakness
(which I never rightly saw) and of many fits of trouble, her life to the
very end continued beautiful and hopeful to both of us – to me more
beautiful than I had ever seen it in her best days.’
The truth is more complex. But, when she first
returned, Carlyle and their friends, not having seen her for so long, were
astonished at her improvement. Immediately after her return, Jane wrote
gratefully and often to Mrs Russell at
Thornhill. On the 3rd October, three days after her
return, she tells her:
‘I am better aware now how much I have gained than
I was before this journey; how much stronger I am, both body and mind,
than I was on my journey to Scotland.’
She relates
how, because of her delayed arrival, Carlyle feared she was dead, and
rushed out to the street in his dressing gown to kiss her and weep over
her. The maids wept and embraced her, a series of visitors were also
overcome by emotion.
‘They were all astonished at the
improvement in my appearance. Mr Carlyle has said again and again that he
would not have believed anyone who had sworn it to him that I should
return so changed for the better.’
Her sleep
improved after her sleepless night on the train from Scotland. But her
‘interiors’ were upset, and she had to resort to pills.
Continuing
Progress
Three days
later, on the 6th, she could tell Mrs Russell:
‘I have
been wonderfull well since I came home; have slept pretty well …quite
tolerably for me.’ Until the previous night, when problems with a maid,
and wearying herself, ‘putting pictures to right, which were hung all
crooked,’ provoked a poorer
sleep.
By the 10th
she is telling her ‘my nerves are stronger than they have been for
years.’ She had had a busy and aggravating day, but ‘without having
the irritation increased, or my sleep worsened!’
She writes
to John Forster about the same time that she felt better for the first
week after her return, but the ‘almost miraculous improvement is now
wearing off. I have again miserable nights, and plenty of pain
intermittently. Still I am a stone heavier (!); and, in every way, an
improved woman..’
But opinions
varied, perhaps depending on when the person had last seen her. The day
before she wrote this letter, her carpenter told her: ‘I am very sorry
indeed, m’am, to see you fallen so suddenly into infirmity! There is a
sad change since I saw you last.’
On Oct 18th
she tells Mrs Austin, at The Gill, Annan, that her sleep varies and that
‘the irritation has much subsided. Yesterday afternoon and this afternoon
it is troubling me more than usual. Perhaps the damp in the air has
brought it on, or perhaps I have been overdone with people and things; I
must be more careful. I have always a terrible consciousness at the bottom
of my mind that at any moment, if God will, I may be thrown back into the
old agonies. I can never feel confident of life and of ease in life again,
and it is best so.’
She was
finding that her husband’s behaviour was transformed. He is ‘gentle
and good.’ He is ‘as busy as ever, but he studies my comfort and peace
as he never did before.’ New staff were engaged; he bought her a
brougham.
At the end
of the month she complained of poor appetite, and the irritation was again
‘more distressing.’
1865
1864 ended,
and her improvement continued. It must have pleased her when Carlyle,
after thirteen years work, took the last leaf of Frederick
to the post office on the 5th January, 1865. Carlyle says that
on her face, when he went out, there was ‘a silent, faint, and pathetic
smile.’ The end of his labours did not help Carlyle. As usual on the
completion of a book, he felt
little relief or satisfaction, and recorded in the Reminiscences
that for ‘long months after this I sank and sank into ever new depths
of stupefaction and dull misery of body and mind; nay, once or twice into
momentary spurts of impatience even with her, which now often burn me with
vain remorse.’
In February,
Jane wrote that she continued to improve, ’but a week of terrible pain
has given me a good shake…’
‘I have
been dangerously ill; about three weeks ago [
She
convalesced for a month in a cottage in Devon belonging to Lady Ashburton.
Carlyle accompanied her and found her ‘charming in her cheerful
weakness.’ She slept well there.
On the 10th
of March, upon her return, she wrote at length to Mrs Russell. They had
stayed in a house on top of a cliff overlooking ‘the bluest sea.’
‘I am glad to find the insane horror I conceived of the sea, all
in one night at St Leonards, has quite passed away. I love it again as I
had always done till then…’
In May 1865
her sickness and sleeplessness were rather better, but she was
‘weak and languid’, had little appetite, and was losing weight again.
In this month too, the neuralgia returned, but this time in her right arm.