Why Thomas Carlyle? Wasn't he some kind of dyspeptic Fascist - a racist, strong against democracy? Wasn't Hitler reading him in the bunker just before his death? Carlyle's reputation suffered for many years after his death, but now, more than two hundred years after his birth, there is a renaissance of interest in the man and his work, led by academics, but gradually spreading to the general public.
Turn to any book on any aspect of nineteenth century Britain, consult the index, and you will almost invariably find references to him. His beliefs were strongly held, and powerfully expressed in a prophetic style. When he became famous and successful, from about 1840, he had a huge influence on the next generation of Victorians: Dickens, Matthew Arnold, Emerson, and many others. He primed the revolt against materialist values while promoting the work ethic, and he encouraged a sense of the religious, and a belief in heroes and the heroic. He introduced the English speaking world to contemporary German literature and philosophy. He was one of the greatest conversationalists since Samuel Johnson, and an innovator in language and style, contributing words and phrases to the language which are in use today. By the mid-1850's George Eliot - although not a Carlyle enthusiast - would write:
'There is hardly a superior or active mind of this generation that has not been modified by Carlyle's writings; there has hardly been an English book written for the last ten or twelve years that would not have been different if Carlyle had not lived.........The extent of his influence may be seen by the fact that ideas which were startling novelties when he first wrote them are now become common-places.'
For the psychiatrist, Carlyle has additional interest. He is one of the most celebrated hypochondriacs in history, a lifelong dyspeptic, with a famously gloomy personality, a difficult marriage, and a controversial sex life, about which public argument continued for many years after his death. There is the lure of a huge hoard of information about him, especially the correspondence of husband and wife in a new edition which has now reached volume 25, with perhaps another fifteen to follow. This great work has unearthed many letters previously unpublished. So extensive is the material available, that I believe it is possible to trace with clarity and conviction the genesis of his neurotic behaviour, and of his adult work and beliefs, in his early life and family background.
Personal reasons have drawn me to Carlyle. My mother was born into a similar world to his in 1899, at a remote farm some eight miles from the Carlyle family farm of Scotbrig, Dumfriesshire, and in my childhood held him up to me as an example of how a poor young Scot could better himself. As a young doctor I worked for three years at Crichton Royal, Dumfries, the psychiatric hospital whose first superintendent was a Dr Browne. His son, Sir James Crichton-Browne, became a prominent psychiatrist and a vigorous critic of Carlyle's first biographer, Froude. Later, when I was a lecturer in psychiatry at Glasgow University in the 1960's, I met Dr James Halliday who had written 'Mr Carlyle, My Patient'. His influence fostered a lifelong interest in psychiatric aspects of authors and musicians.
If you can't see a frames menu on the left of your screen, click here.