Armadale (124 page)

6
.
the Trial of the famous Mrs Waldron
. As Altick points out, Collins is conflating two sensational cases in the history of Lydia Gwilt, alias Mrs Waldron. In 1857, Madeleine Smith, the daughter of a Glasgow architect, was tried for killing her lover with arsenic-laced hot chocolate. She got off, on the Scottish legal technicality of ‘Not Proven' (see Book the Fourth, Chapter
V
, note
1
). The other case was that of Thomas Smethurst, tried for poisoning his wife the next year. As Altick records:

The doctor was convicted but the evidence against him was so flimsy and the trial had been conducted with such palpable bias that there was a great outcry in the medical and legal professions and the press. The Home Secretary, with the reluctant acquiescence of the judge, was forced to turn the case over to Sir Benjamin Brodie, a highly respected surgeon – but not a forensic scientist, let alone a lawyer – who proceeded to adjudicate, not the controversial medical evidence alone but the jury's verdict itself… The upshot was that Smethurst was granted a pardon, but since the proverbial pound of flesh had somehow to be extracted, he was rearrested and tried and convicted on a charge of bigamy.

Collins has Lydia convicted of poisoning her husband, pardoned by the Home Secretary, rearrested and convicted of the lesser charge of theft. As Altick points
out, ‘it is evident that Collins, bucking the tide of public opinion, thought Smethurst had been fairly convicted' of poisoning (Altick, pp.
526
–7).

7
.
the medical witnesses
. One concern arising from the sensational poison trials of the 1850s was the inadequacy of the forensic science and expert witnesses. The question was discussed in ‘The Medical Evidence of Grime',
Cornhill Magazine
, March 1863. The article notes that recent poisoners had shown themselves ‘alarmingly familiar with some of the most recondite secrets of toxicology'.

8
.
the Scotch marriage
. Collins deliberately confuses the issue as to whether Lydia is bigamously married, or whether her marriage to Manuel is invalid (doubly suspect since he may be previously married, and his ‘marriage' to Lydia is an irregular Scotch union).

1
.
the cloud first rose between us
. The manuscript version of this section reads:

I only know that the cloud came; that he felt it, and kept the feeling a secret; that I felt it and kept the feeling a secret; that it has grown and darkened ever since that time; and that it is growing and darkening still, with every day that passes over our heads.

I could bear it…

2
.
circular notes
: Instruments for raising cash in foreign banks (early versions of travellers' cheques). Collins had much trouble with currency on his spring 1864 visit to Italy (Robinson, p.
186
).

3
.
It is the vessel from Gibraltar
. The manuscript continues:

Armadale has kept his engagement to join us at Naples. Half an hour since, he walked into the room – having contrived to miss Midwinter in his usual blundering way. The first two questions he asked me, after we had shaken hands, were whether I had heard from Thorpe-Ambrose, and whether I could tell him any news of Miss Milroy.

Collins evidently did not at first intend an instalment break here.

4
.
When you find… drop your pen
. Collins had been warned off writing in early 1863. He was continously worried during the writing of
Armadale
that ‘gout' was attacking his brain; ‘the nervous misery is indescribable', he wrote in a letter of September 1864 (Clarke p.
102
). Writing was particularly prone to bring on one of his nervous attacks. During his eighteen-month sabbatical from writing (1863–4) he went to various resorts on the Continent, including Naples, which he did not much like (Robinson, p.
184
). The Irish doctor here is, apparently, a version of Collins's physician Frank Carr Beard.

1
.
Bellini's lovely melodies
. They are apparently watching Vincenzo Bellini's
Norma
.

2
.
tell me of it
. The manuscript continues:

‘No words can say what a relief it would be to my mind, if you could satisfy me that I have deluded myself, in any important respect, as to what took place in the other room an hour since.'

3
.
never mind what
! Lydia has presumably put a small amount of arsenic in Allan's drink, with the aim of poisoning him with a cumulative dose over a long period. This was a favoured method of domestic poisoners of the period.

4
.
that he wished me to read
. Crossed out in the manuscript there follows:

‘Read that', he said, ‘and you will believe that my one anxiety in coming here was to test my recollection of the circumstances by yours. You will understand that the last desperate hope I had to cling to, was the hope that your memory of the night's events might yet prove to be wrong. Read that – and you will want no explanation of the direction that I gave you when I entered this room [illeg]'

I read these…

5
.
the Mole
. i.e. breakwater.

6
.
a political refugee
. Cuba in 1850–68 was seething with political opposition and uprising against the Spanish colonial regime.

1
.
On the third of November
. The manuscript has ‘On the second of November'.

2
.
On the ninth… On the thirteenth
. The manuscript has ‘On the eighth… On the fourteenth'.

3
.
the Royal Yacht Squadron
. Formed in 1812 and based at Cowes it served as a general news service for amateur sailors.

4
.
to inform me
? The manuscript continues:

I can't go to the lawyer whom I consulted when I was last in London, after such a reception as he then gave me; and it would be little less than madness to try a man whom I don't know. What is to be done? I must shut up my diary and think, [white line]

5
.
Oh Lydia! Lydia! why are you not at church
?: This was originally the end of the eighteenth monthly number.

6
.
Doctor Downward
! Collins reshaped his manuscript to create a new instalment break here.

7
.
Fairweather Vale… new neighbourhood
. Catherine Peters points out that this
description ‘corresponds closely to the Vale of Health, Hampstead Heath, originally a small hamlet, where a number of new villas were built from 1862 onwards'. Altick (p.
413
) also notes the topicality of this description.

8
.
my galvanic apparatus
. Designed to give therapeutic electrical shocks. As Catherine Peters notes, Collins was treated at this period with ‘electro-magnetic baths' for his gout.

9
.
This is no madhouse, my dear lady
. Jenny Bourne Taylor notes the similarity of Downward's regime to that outlined in the (respectable) physician John Conolly's
Treatment of the Insane without Medical Restraints
, (1856). Conolly had an asylum for ladies from 1845 to 1866. There is also another more sinister aspect hinted at in Dr Le Doux's regimen. The ‘nervous derangement (parent of insanity)' which he refers to may well be female masturbation, about which there was a panic in the 1860s. Extreme measures – such as clitoridectomy – were practised, as well as various kinds of laceration, scarification and mutilation (see Hartman,
Victorian Murderesses
, Chapter Three). The favoured, and less brutal, method was physical prevention via ingenious ‘preservative belts', vigilant inspection, and institutionalized ‘rest' (i.e. confinement) of the kind Downward specializes in (it is clear that his rooms have means by which occupants can be spied on). (See Alex Comfort,
The Anxiety Makers
, London, 1968.) This section of Collins's novel is also clearly influenced by Charles Reade's campaign against private asylums in
Hard Cash
(which invited anyone wrongfully incarcerated in an asylum in the last five years to get in touch with the author). In his sliminess, the character Dr Downward owes a lot to the crooked physician and confidence trickster, Dr Firmin, in Thackeray's
Philip
(1862).

10
.
Harvey… Jenner
. William Harvey (1578–1657) made pioneering discoveries about the circulation of the blood; Edward Jenner (1749–1823) pioneered vaccination for smallpox. Collins is here echoing the Scottish physician Dr Sampson in Reade's
Hard Cash
, who boasts about his discovery of the principle of' ‘remittency' (a doctrine similar to Downward's ‘rest' cure): ‘And I discovered this, and the new paths to the cure of all diseases that it opens. Alone I did it; and what my reward? hooted, insulted, belied, and called a quack by the banded school of professional assassins who in their day hooted Harvey and Jenner'.

11
.
no such person present
. The absence of witnesses to confirm the marriage ceremony had taken place was one of the problematic features of the Yelverton case. (See Book the Fourth, Chapter
X
, note
11
.)

12
.
in the post
. Crossed out in the manuscript a passage follows describing ‘…that other letter which I addressed privately to old Bashwood and I myself privately posted at an earlier period of the day. An appointment has been made for the Doctor to call here tomorrow, with a view to making further arrangements, and there the matter rests so far.'

13
.
the great mourning shop in Regent Street
. As Catherine Peters points out, Jays', the London General Mourning Warehouse, 247–51 Regent Street.

14
.
Some false report… England
. An apparent reference to the Tichborne case (see Book the Third, Chapter
XI
, note
2
).

15
.
the immortal Bacon
. Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam (1561–1626).

1
.
afraid of now
. Crossed out in the manuscript there follows:

…[illeg] No', said the Doctor, ‘we have his own word for it that he is returning in a hurry, and he may therefore be trusted to come back by Dover, or by Boulogne and Folkestone. In other words, by the South Eastern route.'

‘Then what are you afraid of?' asked Miss Gwilt.

2
.
the Commissioners in Lunacy
. Inspectors charged to look after the welfare of mental patients in care. John Forster, dedicatee of
Armadale
, was a commissioner from 1861.

3
.
leave the room
. The manuscript has ‘leave the house'.

4
.
and hard to please
. Scott, Marmion, 6. 30.

1
.
Chapter II
. Collins initially intended this to be the beginning of the twentieth monthly number. ‘In the House' is marked in the manuscript as ‘first portion of the 20th monthly number, W C'. In the event, in
Cornhill Magazine
, ‘The Purple Flask' (p.
630
) opened the twentieth number. Collins was evidently only a few weeks ahead of the printer at this stage of his composition.

1
.
The English novelist
. A polemic against the ‘domestic novel'. Collins is defending his own genre of sensation fiction from critics such as the Reverend Henry Mansel in the
Quarterly Review
(April 1863) and Mrs Oliphant. Collins here echoes the sarcasm of a piece he had written with Dickens called ‘Doctor Dulcamara MP' for
Household Words
, 18 December 1858. Dr Dulcamara is an itinerant physician and charlatan (based on a character in Donizetti's
The Elixir of Love
) who advocates the sedative virtues of the domestic novel for his patients.

2
.
Our Stout Friend
. Catherine Peters notes the deliberate vagueness, but assumes Collins is referring to ‘the production of carbonic acid gas by dissolving limestone'. She cites a book which Collins is known to have consulted, Alfred Taylor's
Medical Jurisprudence
(1849). Collins evidently had difficulty with the machinery of this section of his plot. He may have been influenced by two articles in
Cornhill Magazine
. In October 1862, there was a piece on ‘Carbonic
Acid as an Anaesthetic' which described experiments undertaken by a French scientist on animals in 1858. Two years earlier, Thackeray had drawn on another article in
Cornhill
(‘Under Chloroform') for
Philip
, where the villain, Dr Firmin, is rendered unconscious at the climax of the narrative. See
Appendix
, note
1
, for more on the carbonic acid problem.

3
.
Mr Armadale's mental health
. The manuscript reads ‘health'.

4
.
the assistant-physician's key
. The manuscript reads ‘the duplicate key'.

5
.
whenever she pleases
. Crossed out in manuscript there follows:

I really don't mind (bless my soul, how late it is!) if you like to take refuge in one of the bedrooms on the top floor tonight, you are heartily welcome. The cab is dismissed – and how you are to get all the way back to London Bridge at past twelve – Well I'm sure I don't know. Once more, Mrs Armadale, what do
you
desire?'

‘I advise Mr Bashwood to stay here for the night,' she said.

‘A lady's advice, Mr Bashwood, to men of your breeding and mine, is equivalent to a command. Good night, my dear sir! Good night in case I don't see you again!' With those words, the doctor retired; forgetting to take away with him the duplicate key of the staircase door.