Jane Welsh Carlyle

Personality

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Biography

What Jane Thought

What They Thought

HEALTH:

1 The Lady Harriet Years

Compared with her husband’s, Jane’s personality is less consistent, and thus more difficult to pin down. The comments of her friends show that she elicited startlingly varied opinions. Her brother–in-law, Dr John Carlyle, thought she was hypochondriacal, and told her, early in her marriage, that she needed only useful activity and employment to restore her health – a remark for which she never forgave him. Carlyle himself often seemed oblivious to her mood and health, apart from her disabling headaches; partly because of his self-absorption, but mainly because she made every effort not to upset him in any way, concealed her indispositions from him, and always tried to be cheerful and agreeable in the few hours of the day that he spent in her company.

But she was hypochondriacal, and even shared Carlyle’s preoccupation with digestion and bowel action. Winter after winter, she suffered from mysterious and lengthy illnesses, attributed to ‘influenza’. It is likely that there was a strong element of invalidism in many of these attacks.

She had many features of the obsessional personality. She was tidy, house proud, and conscientious, careful with money, all features of this type of personality, also associated with migraine. She was mildly phobic at times, with an especial fear of insanity.

Yet she was outgoing, sociable, able to charm both sexes with her conversation and wit. Some though she was too clever by half, and self-consciously brilliant. Others were deterred by her Scottish accent; more seemed to have complained about her speech than her husband’s, although he had the broader accent. But the vast majority were instantly won over by her.

She could be flirtatious with men, and had many admirers, before and after marriage, although she did not have her mother’s beauty. Despite this she was vain at times, and knew it. Her paintings and photographs show her as plain, and in her later years haggard and ill. Many remarked on it – even her admirers.

Her letters – her chief ornament – reveal most of this. She writes quickly, showing none of her husband’s respect for punctuation and spelling. Almost always, even in difficult times, she writes amusingly. She is adept at taking the smallest domestic incident and making it into an amusing anecdote, often at her own expense. To do this, one suspects that she often embroiders events a little.

She writes about her husband in a kindly but mocking tone, reflecting her behaviour toward him in company. Her attitude is that he is a great man, and must be indulged, but that he can be foolish in the practical minutiae of life. In this as in other comments about people her wit often borders on the malicious, and as the years passed, sometimes slipped over the edge. In company in later life, there are reports that she became tediously long-winded in recounting her stories.

She also had a ruthless streak. This is well illustrated in her attitude to mental illness in others. Warm to her friends, patient with her servants, she could be less forgiving to those who crossed her, although she was adept at getting her way by tactful means.

She was not religious, except for a brief period in late life when she became very depressed. She refused to go to church in Penpont when visiting, even when her cousin was preaching:

‘My abstinence from public worship gives great scandal, but I would rather be scandalized than wearied to death.'
Letter to TC, 9/41

She was no proto-feminist. Had she been, she would not have tolerated her husband’s behaviour with such patience over the years. But she lived in a more Bohemian way than was usual at the time. She did not hesitate to entertain men on her own at Cheyne Row, she smoked cigarettes, and she was impatient of the dictates of etiquette, especially in aristocratic circles.

Of her high intelligence there is no doubt, and she was well-educated and well-read to an infinitely higher standard than most women of her time. Her letters lay bare a great literary talent, yet despite the urging of family and friends, she wrote little. Many thought she would have made an excellent novelist. How much this was due to lack of opportunity, and how much to something in her that held her back from competing with her husband is difficult to say.