Bedlam (17 page)

This had in it a note of tearful pleading that was something new from her and I confess disgusted me a little. While I hardly preferred her furious, this was a degree of instability I’d not seen from her before, and it put me in mind of the first law of magic: Like attracts like. For the glints of madness invariably visible in the behaviour of mad-doctors may also be discerned in the words and actions of the spouses of lunatics.

“I shall have a word with Mr. Poynder and Mr. Alavoine,” I said in a placatory tone.

At this she squinted at me close a moment, and then said something strange. “Mr. Haslam, you won’t ever destroy him, so don’t think you can. He’s stronger than you are.”

“Perhaps he is,” I replied lightly. “Perhaps that’s the problem. I won’t be strong enough to stop him from destroying himself.”

“Oh you twister,” she muttered, turning away.

“Mrs. Matthews,” I said, my words echoing hollow as I spoke them, though they were not in any sense a lie. “Believe me when I say, like you, I only want your husband well.”

She looked around. “Is this why you have locked him in the incurable wing?”

“Mrs. Matthews, how dangerous your husband is has not been determined—”

“What do you mean
dangerous?”
she asked in disgust yet with a hint of alarm. “How is he dangerous?”

“His condition changes.”

“What are you saying?”

“If anything, he’s saner. Only more…vicious.”

“My God, wouldn’t you be? So this
is
revenge—”

“By no means. The viciousness raises the possibility of harm to others, that’s all. As well as to himself—” and I thought,
Well, that was easy enough. Why didn’t I think of it this way before?

“I don’t believe you,” she said wearily and turned away once again.

“Mrs. Matthews, a little faith in us might afford you the peace of mind—if you’ll forgive me—you appear in need of just now.”

“No,” she said, half turning back, shaking her head, too vigorously. “It’s too late for faith in you. There must be another way, and I must find it—”

Saying this, she stepped away from me into Threadneedle Street under a shower of curses from a drayman forced to slow up his beast. Though evidently unaware of her surroundings, she somehow achieved the opposite kerb untrampled, and disappeared into the crowd on that side, just another drab on the wander down a London thoroughfare.

I watched until she was out of sight and then made my way through the human ocean home, reflecting how, while I would certainly speak to Poynder and Alavoine about this matter of the letters, nothing would come of it: neither owed anything to me.

But it was only as I placed my hand on my own door that the full solution of what to do about Matthews revealed itself, and when it did I could only think it was emotion and politics that prevented me from seeing it sooner. The key was, I was a man of medicine and this was a medical case, a uniquely challenging one. For if this was a lunatic who suffered not only delusional convictions but hallucinations affecting every sense, the question was, Was this
the gradual disintegration of personality usual in so extreme a case or was this the righteous wrath of a patient waxing more lucid under our care? Or put it another way: If you could more easily argue Matthews was dangerous than not a lunatic, then how to explain that most of the time whether hostile or not he communicated with me direct and clear? Never mind how I felt or what the politicians believed, Matthews was a medical question to be solved. Instead of stooping to a Tuke strategy of pretending a harmless lunatic will be perfectly sane if you treat him like a gentleman or a child, or to a Pinel strategy of telling myself his fate must depend on the international situation, as a man of medicine I must honour my
professional
interest in him. So perhaps Liverpool and Pinel were right for a reason they never thought of: It wouldn’t be the worst thing for the world were Matthews to stay on with us for the foreseeable future, as a valid case for ongoing study, and so contribute to the next edition of my book—what more dramatic illustration of madness than this?—and so truly do his part, as I would continue to do mine, to legitimate a profession too often a refuge for hypocrites and dreamers.

And it struck me how incumbent it is on one in my position not to let himself be tied in knots by a patient but to use his wit and resolve, and yes, if need be, even harden his heart a little, so he can abstract himself enough to do his work and by the simple strategy of that priority remain high and dry, for the sake of the larger enterprise. Then if sometimes the screams of the drowning draw him back down to the shore to help out if he can, he should by all means go, but he must watch that an arm of the sea or the overwhelming burden of so much misery don’t pull him down forever in the depths where they are.

Twelve years it’s been since The Schoolmaster determined me a specimen for medical study and twelve too since I saw my last outside visitor, my beloved Margaret. Unless, that is, you count Haslam’s daughter, Henrietta, who six and seven years ago used to visit me daily to offer chatty reports on her life and more soberly confide her fears for her mother’s. I don’t think she had anyone else to talk to about those. Henrietta was a fine young girl, in appearance a bonny version of her father, in mind and manner an interesting blend of his dogged immediacy and what I guess is her mother’s righteous passion. To my surprise—though I suppose it shouldn’t have been, for wasn’t I on my first arrival here similarly dazzled?—she was a fanatic of her father, thinking him an exemplarily good and brilliant man and interested in all he claimed to be attempting on behalf of lunatics everywhere. Before I could disabuse her, he set in motion that process himself when, discovering her visits to me, he abruptly put an end to our friendship—or thought he did. After that, her visits, being secret, were rarer. Though she never openly criticized him, you could sense the diminishment of her esteem, until by the day six years ago I last saw her, I would say she hated him, except more likely she only
resented his possessive attachment to the little girl she no longer felt herself to be. That same week, owing to the deterioration of the fabric of the family residence along with most of the east wing, the Haslams moved to a house in Islington. In those days there was confident talk of a new hospital up there. The talk has since—

No sooner had my lettering proceeded as far as the above than, befitting the mind-toying agent he is a puppet of, the keeper Davies astonishingly brought in my first outside visitor in twelve years. This was my doughty childhood companion, Robert Dunbar, who has just now assured me that he and assorted others of my former acquaintance are doing everything they can to get me out.

“And Margaret?” I asked. “Is she somewhere in this, I hope?”

Dunbar looked at me dumbfounded. He’s no longer the youth on Camberwell Green with tears streaming down his face as he thrashed me for reasons often mysterious to us both. The flesh has settled heavily upon the bones of the face, the emotion showing when it shows at all in compulsive adjustments of his long legs, which are always being crossed and recrossed or braided round themselves. I wonder why. “So it’s true,” he said in dismay. “You don’t receive her letters—”

“Cheer up, Robert. It’s not like I ever feared she don’t write. What do they say?”

“I don’t know, Jimmy! How much she misses you, I guess, and something of how she directs all we do.”

“Directs because eleven years ago she herself was banned from entering this place?”

“That’s right.”

We were sitting side-by-side on my bed. Davies was not far
away, leaning against the wall eating an apple when he wasn’t lumbering off to sow menace in the gallery on the principle that if you want frightened birds you keep the air frightened.

I should explain my cell in the uncurable wing disappeared four years ago when the governors ordered the east wing demolition. I now reside in a sort of recess off a larger room in what remains of the second floor east of the central hall. The room contains six of us. All except Jack Baker and me are chained to the walls. In exchange for a pittance of light and privacy, my alcove offers chilling drafts from a broken casement located so high it can be seen out of only if I place my chair on my table and climb up. The view is of rooftops and southwest to the river and its bridges and shipping traffic. St. Paul’s would be visible were it not for a jag of the exterior wall caused by the straw-burning flue.

Something had occurred to Dunbar. “Does no letters from Margaret, Jimmy, mean you don’t know you have a son?”

At this last word the floor under me gave a lurch.
“What?”
I cried. “A father—!?”

“Since nearly twelve years—”

“My God, Robert!” I cried, tears flowing. “What kind of news is this? Is he a fine boy? Tell me! What’s his name?”

“The finest there ever lived, Jimmy. His name’s Jim.”

“Jim. Now, there’s a name—!”

Dunbar was looking at his watch. When he saw I noticed he cast his eyes significantly at Davies to say we had little time. Though I was bursting to hear everything about Jim, I said, dropping my voice (though it happened at that moment Davies was trundling off), “My informants, Robert, tell me several years ago two letters arrived, one for Monro and one for the governors, both requesting my discharge and both signed by Margaret. Of course, on the
advice of the medical officers, the subcommittee said no. Still, it’s good of you all to be trying.”

“They would never allow a visit by any of us,” he said, with a bitter look, “until mine, today.”

“But why now?”

By his answer I was brought up to date.

Davies in the meantime was back from the gallery. As he’d passed through the other part of the room, however, little Jack Baker had clambered up on his back and was now perched there naked and howling. Instead of removing the clamorous carrot-pate, Davies was amusing himself by leaning against the wall as casual as before, only now crushing his passenger, who, long convinced he’s experienced an unnatural connexion with his father, fell to moaning and gasping, “Oh my God! I’m broken! A taste of the Grinder of Hell awaiting me! The life squeezed out of me just so on the rack of my own nastiness!” etc., which noise happily prevented Davies from hearing Dunbar’s account.

With one eye on the Grinder of Hell game, Dunbar explained that for three years Margaret, despite her rejection by Lord Erskine’s secretary when I was first put in here, had been writing to him, who was now Lord Chancellor, in his capacity as Secretary of Lunatics (a fitting station, I here insert, for one so imbecilitated by the gang he’s practically Monroish). Finally, a year ago, his Lordship was moved to inquire, by a letter sent to Monro, as to my state of mind and the reason I was detained. Erskine’s letter inspired the Bethlem subcommittee (owing to arguments, it’s been said, by John Haslam, who sometimes attends) at two meetings in autumn of last year to conclude me mad as ever but to observe they’d have no objection to the Parish of Camberwell applying for my release, provided the Lord Chancellor sanctioned their handing me over.

In early December, that sanction being slow to arrive, Margaret sent a third letter, this one requesting on my behalf a six-month leave of absence. And so my case—not me, never me—was yet again examined by the subcommittee, who after they unanimously affirmed I was insane, regretted that since the Lord Chancellor had returned no answer to their official letter, there was nothing they could do, the matter being entirely out of their hands.

I hate to think how many hands the misery of this world is out of.

At last, on Christmas Eve, a letter arrived from the Lord Chancellor’s secretary informing the subcommittee that his Lordship could intervene only by a writ of habeas corpus.

A letter from the committee duly informed Margaret of his Lordship’s advice.

This was not the first time she had been counselled to launch a plea of habeas corpus. The Bethlem subcommittee itself put the idea to her twelve years earlier. She, however, continued to fear a habeas corpus writ would only antagonize the Bethlem governors and officers and, after it was crushed, prejudice my treatment in here, effectively ending my chances of liberty if not my survival. Instead, this past spring, under Dunbar’s name and those of my nephew Richard Staveley and my old friend George Lambeth, she applied once more for my discharge, assuring the committee that if I was released, my friends would confine me until such time as they received favourable medical opinion concerning the actual state of my mind. Further, they would exonerate the Parish of Camberwell of any continuing obligation to maintain me.

“A generous offer,” I remarked to Dunbar.

He was watching Davies and Baker and failed to hear. In his
distress, Jack Baker had begun to beshit himself. Now Davies, with the mutter, “Had I a monkey like you, I’d hang him,” in one swift movement swung him round by the forearms and carried him—writhing, squealing, shitting—back to his bed.

“So now what?” I said as Baker’s shrieks rent the air.

“At a meeting of the subcommittee next month, August,” Dunbar resumed, Davies and Baker being out of sight, “we present in person our application to receive you, and they examine you, in our presence.”

“And that of the medical officers.”

“Yes. Haslam and Monro.”

“And what do you think they’ll conclude?”

“Who can say, Jimmy, but I don’t think it’s hopeless. They were willing to abide by the Lord Chancellor—”

“Who said he couldn’t intervene.”

“And this time they’re examining you in person.”

“The last time I was examined in person was twelve years ago, by Lord Kenyon. I’ve been in ever since.”

“All you need to do is show yourself sane.”

“This was never about insanity, Robert.”

“Still. If you do, Margaret believes they’re now ready to be rid of you.”

“Of her, more likely. What they’re ready for is a quiet life.”

He nodded, thinking of something else. Then he told a story.

In January of this year he happened to run into Jack the Schoolmaster (Haslam to him), celebrating with a bookseller named Callow, at The Sow and Sausage in St. Mary Axe. The Schoolmaster had just published the second edition of his book, its title now
Observations on Madness, “Madness”
replacing the earlier
“Insanity,”
the former term more in fashion these days, the condition having
grown so stylish as to be widely assumed curable—though he don’t believe it. The dedication is a fawning one to Monro’s “superior judgment,” his “skill and liberality,” and the “subsisting friendship” he has with him. That’s all a lie too. On the night in question, he was in his cups, and instead of his own book—which he had a copy of in his pocket but wouldn’t let anybody look inside, saying they must buy their own—was passing around the table a page of my lettering, showing everybody how it’s so neat it can’t be distinguished from type. He kept insisting they should see my engravings, which are as good as plates in a proper book.

“There’s a poor engraving of his mouth-key in that edition,” I told Dunbar. “He wanted me to do it, but I refused.”

“Mouth-key?”

“A key to open mouths.”

Dunbar looked blank a moment before continuing. Just because you’re on a madman’s side does not mean you need to hear what he says.

The Schoolmaster, having never met him before, had no idea who Dunbar was, but when Dunbar said he knew me and inquired after my health, The Schoolmaster assured him he saw me twice a week and I’m very well. He said, though he once thought I’d be the cornerstone of his new edition, over the years he’d come to consider me as good as sane. Except for a few delusional convictions (which likely as not are the effect of my incarceration), I no longer touch on political subjects, am as lucid as himself, far saner (making a jest) than his friend Callow, and it was a thousand pities I can’t be restored to my family, as I’m a most honest, clever, and ingenious fellow.

It was, Dunbar said, this chance encounter that’s inspired them to renewed vigour in the fight for my release. From it they’ve
concluded that if Jack the Schoolmaster would say such things in public to one who admitted he knows me, he’s softening if not square on our side.

“He was drunk,” I pointed out.

“Still—”

“You don’t know The Schoolmaster as I do.”

“Haslam? No. But remember, Jimmy, it looks like he was instrumental at the meeting when they said they’d let you go if the Lord Chancellor approved it.”

Davies was now back. The wall and floor where he’d stood with Baker being liberally befouled, he’d unchained old Joseph Panter. Joseph believes himself a child of Apollo, engendered by the sun shining near his father’s door on a dunghill. For the first two hours of life he was a flea, then a fine boy of nine years. Davies was gripping the back of Joseph’s neck to point out Jack Baker’s shit to him by pressing his nose in it, telling him, “Go on, kiss your dear old Mum.” Joseph was gagging. In his hand, I noticed, he was clutching a rag.

“Here’s the thing to understand about our apothecary,” I told Dunbar. “His sense of rank is acute. With his soul in consignment to those above, he won’t take counsel from the side or below. That’s why he resents his betters so much. He suspects but can’t acknowledge to himself he’s too slavish not to obey their every glance. Also, having on all available occasions declared me mad, as his own wonderful exemplum of that condition, he’ll fight to the death anybody who tries to get me out by saying I’m not. He has his principles, you see—”

Dunbar heard this—if he heard it at all—in silence. He was watching Davies and Panter. When his attention returned to me he said, “Jimmy, I can swear out an affidavit Haslam said what he said.”

“Yes, you can, and assuming anybody ever sees your affidavit and having seen it does anything about it, The Schoolmaster can always say he was in a festive mood that night and only pulling your leg, and Callow will back him up.”

Dunbar sighed. “We have to try.”

“Yes, we do. Will Margaret be at the hearing?”

“No. She’s still barred.”

“The bastards.”

Dunbar nodded, glancing uneasily toward the doorway. “Right royal fuckers, the lot of them.”

Davies heard this and looked close at Dunbar, whose eyes returned quick to me. Evidently Davies had detoured by the beer tap after chaining Baker, but such grateful draughts only make him meaner. The keepers, of course, are three-quarters drunk most of the time, the women as inveterately as the men, but Davies’ attitude is singularly disturbing. His watchword—
A drunkard is mad for the present, but a madman is drunk always—
affords him the conviction that drunk he can be as wayward and dangerous as he imagines we are. In this spirit he makes patients his accomplices, as when he compels one to restrain another so he can force-feed him. Sometimes it’s the mouth-key, sometimes the food jammed in so hard the spoon comes out dripping blood. He also implicates patients by making them watch abuses. I don’t know how many he’s taken to the cellar to watch him fuck poor Mr. Carstairs. All the keepers are wayward and dangerous, but only this one on principle. He especially enjoys placing his thumbs inside a lunatic’s cheeks and vigorously shaking them, particularly if he can arrange it so their head’s struck repeatedly against the wall.