JANE WELSH CARLYLE

WRITER

Alcoholism has long cast a shadow over Scotland and in this letter to her motherin-law in 1840, one of Victorian Scotland’s finest writers – and wife of historian Thomas Carlyle – Jane Welsh Carlyle, describes her feelings after discovering her help had a serious drink problem. “On the Sunday night I called her up to pay her wages and to inquire into her future prospects. Her future prospects! It was enough to break anybody’s heart to hear how she talked of them. “It was all over for her on this earth, plainly, if I drove her away from me who alone have any influence with her. Beside me she would struggle – away from me she saw no possibility of resisting what she had come to regard as her Fate. “You may guess the sequel – I forgave her a third time, and a last time…”