Bedlam (35 page)

“Mr. Haslam,” someone else put in, “surely you’re not telling us there’s no appreciable difference between a healthy mind and one that’s not?”

“Have you ever examined a human brain, sir?”

“Pickled in a jar, yes I have. What of it?”

“Did you notice how convolved it was? How heterogeneous? If you did, I wonder you’re not as astonished as I am when a human being shows the faintest glimmer of rationality.”

“Aren’t you overstating your case, sir?” someone else ventured.

“Not in the least. Isn’t everybody always a little bit sick? I myself have not known any person completely healthy in body and certainly never one perfectly sound in mind. For I must agree with Dr. Johnson that to speak with exactness, no human mind is in its right state.”

Silence while they took this in. So did I, for it was the first time I knew I believed anything quite like it. Or was anywhere near saying it. There’s a line between what everybody knows and what can be said, and once you cross it, the articulation of things sounds very different from how they looked and felt in the quiet of your own thoughts. Also, it seems, you have no brake.

“There’s only one sound mind,” I continued, “and that’s God’s—at least so I’m assured by certain eminent divines. Which only goes to show what a marvel disembodiment is and how little surprised we should be to find Mystery still rules the affairs of flesh and blood.”

Another stunned silence, the kind people slip into as they witness a unique and absolute act. A Hindoo could set himself on fire in the street and they would not be more fascinated.

Still, though this one seemed to, no moment lasts forever, and we were some minutes into the lunch hour. Rose asking for a
motion of adjournment, it was swiftly provided and seconded, the committee scrabbling up their papers and scooting from the room as quick as any mob of students from a lecture hall. In the breeze of their exodus, The Schoolmaster’s trappings streamed and fluttered upon his person like the rags of a man who’d either just been flayed in his clothes or had a lunatic’s unfortunate habit of rending them himself, it was difficult to know which.

And yet, and yet. At the governors’ annual banquet on St. Matthew’s Day, held that year for the first time in the open air of St. George’s Fields, Monro greeted me as chattily as if he’d never betrayed me, would never dream of slipping a shiv into my back, telling me about his brain-clap to do a painting of the new building and make a gift of it to the governors.

“Better a likeness of the old,” I told him. “It’s the one disappearing.”

This had not occurred to him, but he didn’t like it. “I’d wager, Johnny,” he replied, speaking ventriloquist-style as he scanned the crowd, “this lot’s dead keen to put the old place behind them.”

“Then do it for the patients and staff of the new. Keep us in mind who we are and what we come from.”

“Now, now, man,” he muttered, still scanning. “Play the game.” I’d have said something bitter to this had he not immediately stretched out his arms and strode across me with a great false shout of delight at someone who when he saw who it was gave a start of unbridled contempt.

Not long after, a toast was offered to my health by an alderman named Atkins, who I never saw before, congratulating me on the
honest rigour I’d showed in my testimony. But this gesture failing to be followed by three cheers or calls for a speech, I could only raise my glass and return a tremulous smile. Fortunately, everybody immediately drank, as if to forget, and I sank down once more invisible. Still, for the record: The only note heard all afternoon from that crowd of clerks and businessmen was sober self-congratulation, with now and then a muffled dirty guffaw of triumph.

In October, a report issued by the Court of Governors of Bridewell and Bethlem roundly declared Monro and me innocent of any wrongdoing. Vindication, it would seem, and clear sailing once more—until this winter past, when the parliamentary committee published their own report, of which, on Wakefield’s instruction, a complimentary copy was posted to every Bethlem governor. Though this other report contained not a single item of information the governors didn’t already know, its authors were explicit in their advice it be read through with care before the April election of the medical officers. To further assist our employers in their deliberations, Wakefield kept up a barrage against us in the press, declaring in the
Examiner,
for example, that by our testimony Monro and I were bold-faced deceivers who must be toppled from our high perches and stripped of any honours we’d accrued by our inveterate scheming. And just to make sure, Rose himself is said to have wrote to the governors intimating he didn’t want us re-elected.

Needless to say, our governor champions cowardly backed down, voting to postpone our re-election until Monro and I could report to them on the testimony we’d already given. In this way they forced us, as in a nightmare, to become our own assassins, as we attempted to defend ourselves against the absence of any specific charge.

In our joint submission we repeated our justifications concerning Norris and Matthews and generally defended our behaviour and practices, with frequent reminders to our readers that they had already absolved us.

My oral version of an answer the committee greeted with considerable applause, which might have promised a prosperous issue. But since I was in the present humiliating situation subsequent to being toasted by these self-same bastards, I was not deluded. This was all rope-jumping to satisfy no one. Even Monro, by his doleful looks, understood we were dead. Being a half-wit, he was half right. At a special meeting on the 15th of May, the Court of Governors cravenly reversed their verdict by voting overwhelmingly not to re-elect us. For Monro this is no great financial setback, since he never made more than a hundred pounds per year from his Bethlem post and still has his thriving Hackney madhouse, plus a few others, to keep him in paintbrushes. Even so, to soften the blow for him at the same time as ensure the dynasty that spawned him sleeps on, last week the governors elected his idiot son Edward co-physician of Bethlem.

Her apothecary has received harsher treatment. Though Poynder (who in his detached way nimbly escaped prosecution) did, as treasurer of the Court of Governors, the decent thing of moving I be granted a pension of two hundred pounds
per annum,
his motion, after it found a reluctant seconder, was grimly defeated. Upon a begging application from me, a subscription list was undertook for the relief of me and my aged father, but to date no fist-fights have broke out to be first in line to sign. A keeper like the idle, skulking scoundrel Rodbird, a casualty of gin and paralysis, basks in the sunshine of a valetudinary pension, while the apothecary, who served the place in a manner that bolstered its
reputation worldwide, gets nothing. Finally, to crown my humiliation most exemplarily, at the same time as they awarded Edward Monro the sinecure of co-physician, the man we hired only last year as our new steward, the insufferable Mr. Wallet, was appointed apothecary of Bethlem.

So here I sit in the solitude of my Islington study and write everything down. This house is come into the market, and at the price the agent’s asking (for a rapid sale) I won’t be sitting here long. Neither will the books on these shelves. First thing Monday fortnight, my entire library goes on the block. The Leigh and Sotheby’s buyer tells me catalogues containing more than a thousand items can take three days to get through. And then there’s my mahogany bookcase, with drawers and wardrobe and mahogany ladder. A lucrative week? We shall see. “Works of exceptional taste and learning” they’re calling them. I don’t know why, they’re only what any educated man of medicine should have, with here and there something bizarre and unaccountable,
viz., A Parliamentary Inquiry into Mad-houses 1815,
or
A Curious Collection of Books Handprinted in Black Letter, undated.

So what now for John Haslam? Rented rooms closer to town, where the opportunities reside. A package to be made up of my books, with a cover letter and résumé of my achievements in the field, for posting to Marischall College, Aberdeen, whence in due course should arrive a medical degree. That way I can practise in London. It’s unlikely the College of Physicians will embrace me, but I could scrape by on a dozen patients of modest means if they’re sufficiently chronic or hypochondriacal, and for so few there’s no need to lick arseholes in Warwick Lane. At the Medical
Society, at least, I have a few friends. If I ever have fifty pounds to rub together, I can stand for the board of St. Bart’s, or even St. Luke’s. I can always do duty as an expert witness, which I’m told I have a flair for, and the pay, though sporadic, is good. I have more than one book left in me. Somebody needs to clarify the issue of restraint of lunatics, and while they’re at it say something on behalf of the keepers. And of course I’ll champion public mad-doctors, who are the ones with medical training. After that, if time still weighs heavy on my hands, perhaps I shall take up Jerdan’s offer and scribble for his
London Gazette.

Who says a man can’t start over at fifty-two? One door closes, another opens. Isn’t that how it works, out in the world? The harder part will be knowing who John Haslam is, now he’s been stripped of The Schoolmaster. It’s an end James Matthews devoutly wished, but I think he preferred I do it by choice. Perhaps I’d have got around to it, given time enough—wasn’t I beginning to feel the pricks? Mad Bess piles on rags as she goes, but Mad Tom strips down till he’s begging naked. She knows who she don’t want to be; he needs to remember who he is. When he wasn’t raving, Matthews knew who Matthews was, and he was in Bethlem. So then will Haslam know Haslam now Haslam’s out. Why else go down with the champion of that weird brotherhood?

Mr. Matt Lewis had not long returned to England for his first visit when I began to think it was time Jim and I went home too. Though in early adolescence Jim had found it sometimes difficult to conceal his impatience with me and my fears, as he grew in maturity, so he did in compassion. During those months of Mr. Lewis’s absence, he behaved as loving with me almost as he used to when a child. Sometimes we’d eat a meal just the two of us, and when clearing the table he’d make a gentle claw of his free hand and scritch my cropt head as he passed. From a slight, fair youth at fourteen and fifteen, by eighteen he was sun-darkened and strapping: the handsomest, kindest, most thoughtful young man I ever knew. But now he was done with what schooling Jamaica could offer and was chafing to see the world. I resolved that as soon as Mr. Lewis got back we would leave.

I should not have waited. Six weeks before Mr. Lewis’s return, Jim received a nick on his ankle while overseeing a crew of our Negroes burning cane trash. By next morning the infection was virulent and by the morning after that he didn’t know me or where he was. Sometimes the fever abated, and he’d grow calm and seeming lucid and tell me how much he loved me and I must find his father
and he’d join us as soon as he was feeling more himself. Holding the compress to his brow, I assured him I would never leave him, while silently I cursed I had ever brought my precious child to a place where a light scratch could reduce hale youth to this. This and worse. In the tropics it’s a short step from the sick-chamber to the grave. Three days after Jim received the scratch he died.

With my beloved young man gone, my Jamaica world fell apart. I was now unfamilied in Hell, and but for the kindness of my friends, I might have taken my own life, out of despair for Jamie and to be with Jim. It was Christabelle who prepared the body in the Negro way, the best in those latitudes. By the day of the funeral—which owing to the heat was inside twenty-four hours—I hadn’t slept for so long I was in an automaton state, but at the sight of my boy’s coffin descending into the dry earth, were it not for black hands restraining me, I would have thrown myself after it. Those same hands guided me to bed, where I was made to drink a potion that put me to sleep for two days. I awoke knowing I must either find my husband or discover what his fate had been.

When Mr. Lewis returned from England, he was devastated to hear of Jim’s death. After we wept together, he insisted we pray, in the middle of the floor, side by side, which we did, and when our knees were bruised from praying, we wept some more. I don’t know if Jim’s death put a pall on the place for him as it did for me, one that wouldn’t lift, but before two months passed, he announced his intention of returning to England.

This time I begged him to take me with him. At first he said he couldn’t possibly. With himself not there he needed me on the place to ensure the new book-keeper didn’t revert to the cart-whip. He vowed he’d personally locate my husband and write me the same day. But seeing my unhappy expression, he immediately
reversed himself, adding, but if I truly felt I must speak to my husband in person, then I could come with him, but I must promise to return to Jamaica the next time he did. And bring Jamie with me, if I wanted; he would enter him on the payroll. And if it happened while in Jamaica my husband required time in an asylum, since the island had no madhouses, either because everybody was so sedate or so crazy, then he would build one at Cornwall.

Yet though before Jim’s death I by no means hated our Jamaica life and loved, I think, the Negroes as much as he and Mr. Lewis did, I realized I could promise my employer nothing until I had either laid eyes on my poor dear husband or knew for certain I never would again. The fact, I assured him, I’d had no answers to my letters did not mean he’d not received them or not written. And since Jim’s death I had not written him, for fear of the desolating effect of the news. But now I knew I must tell him soon and in person, before my very silence—assuming, that is, he’d been receiving my letters—had a desolating effect.

“In that case, my dear,” Mr. Lewis said, sighing but smiling too, “and seeing you’re already hard at work growing out your hair, I absolutely insist you come with me.”

And so on the first of May—all Cornwall lining the driveway to wave bandannas and kerchiefs, my three friends joking and weeping and godspeeding us half the way—following twelve oxen straining at a train of four baggage carts accompanied by six Negroes walking two on each side and two behind, and after it Tita in a covered gig to keep his gimlet-eye on things, we rode together in Mr. Lewis’s curricle the five miles to Savannah la Mar. On the way, he said he only hoped his future dealings with white people would bring him half so much gratitude, affection, and good will as he’d experienced from his Cornwall Negroes. Their
kindness had operated on him, he said, like sunshine. Later that same afternoon we boarded the cutter for Black River Bay, a choppy ride of several hours east along that dreary mangrove coast. Two days after, on board the
Sir Godfrey Webster,
a vessel already six hundred tons before it took on Mr. Lewis’s baggage, we weighed anchor for England.

On his previous trip home the year before, Mr. Lewis had made inquiries after Jamie but got only far enough to understand that the whereabouts, or fate, of my husband would take time to determine. Old Bethlem was gone, razed, vanished; level ground, camped in by Gipsies. No one he spoke to at New Bethlem had heard of my husband. None of the old staff I’d told him of—Haslam, Alavoine, Crowther, Bulteel, White, Rodbird—still held their positions. Haslam had been dismissed in disgrace. (While dismissal was something like what he deserved, I don’t know about
disgrace
and must say I felt for him.) Crowther, Alavoine, Bulteel, and White were all dead, Rodbird reportedly a living corpse. There was a Monro but not the same one. A son, by the sound of it: He was expected at any moment but never appeared. To Mr. Lewis’s annoyance, the apothecary, a beggar-on-horseback named Wallet, refused him access to the incurable wing, though just about any of the older, lucid residents there would have known if Jamie was among them, and if he wasn’t, where he had gone.

“Did you speak to the clerk, Mr. Poynder?” I had asked Mr. Lewis one morning at Cornwall when he kindly invited me to join him for coffee on the piazza.

“No. He was another one Mr. Wallet didn’t want disturbed. I never got past the servants’ hall, where a divine service was underway—on a Friday, if you can believe it. The experience was too bizarre: conferring in whispers with the insufferable Wallet in the
corner of a room full of lunatic-custodians on their knees in prayer. It told me I’ve been away from London too much. A new age has dawned in my absence and needs me there to disorganize it.”

“As clerk of the place, Poynder would know if Jamie was at New Bethlem or what happened to him. I’m surprised Mr. Wallet didn’t-”

“Next time I’ll have Tita strangle Mr. Wallet and we’ll proceed from there.”

Mr. Lewis left New Bethlem in a fury. But his father had worked under the 1st Earl of Liverpool when his Lordship was secretary of war and had been a friend of his, and Mr. Lewis himself had served six years as M.P. for Hindon, so he was well positioned to make inquiries in government. But the only person who seemed to recognize Jamie’s name was Liverpool’s son, the 2nd Earl, already (and still, for that matter) Prime Minister, and he assured him he had no distinct knowledge of the case. But then, strangely, his Lordship added, “These republican lunatics were thick on the ground—”

“Oh—” Mr. Lewis said, acting the innocent. “Was he a republican? I didn’t know that.”

It seemed Liverpool knew something he wasn’t admitting to.

As he sipped at his coffee, Mr. Lewis regretted having told me all this only to aggravate my fears. To console me, he offered a paean of praise of the glorious modern hospital Jamie was probably ensconced in, adding it must be the extraordinary increase of madness in recent years that would preclude so vast a place keeping track of every last resident.

But I knew that if the apothecary didn’t recognize the name, then Jamie was gone before that one’s tenure began (whenever that was). And I knew that if the Prime Minister had something to
hide about Jamie, then his life had not ceased to be in danger. So the question was, If not dead then gone where?

How dearly I longed to see my dear husband. Acquaintance with the mind of Mr. Lewis had me pining afresh for that quality in Jamie that I constantly missed in missing him, a quality that before Mr. Lewis burst on our Jamaica life, I’d been watching in wonder shine brighter and brighter in Jim as he grew to be a man. I mean the lucid sympathy of intelligence that emanated from these people like rays from the sun. But with the unbearable loss of Jim combining so soon with renewed sight of a comparable intelligence in Matt Lewis, I all of a sudden missed Jamie so much that when my employer said he was returning once more to England, I absolutely must go with him.

Like Jamie’s, Matt Lewis’s intelligence was prone to eclipses, for he was apt to grow tedious on the subject of himself, and though a true-hearted man and genuinely brilliant, he could be as alarming a bore sane as Jamie was raving. Perhaps there was madness in Matt Lewis too. Perhaps in an imperfect world you don’t find intelligence at its keenest pitch without some touch of it. Perhaps there needs a certain pressure, heating the thoughts until they glow, and glowing ignite yours and by that sympathy show you more than you could ever see on your own, but then the brilliance grows too hot, fever sets in, all
common
sense is lost, and that connexion is betrayed.

It might indeed be thought a taste for intelligence so pure and fierce as to resemble mindsight has itself something foolhardy if not mad in it, and when you mix madness with that intelligence, then an ordinary mortal might seem an Icarus, venturing too near the burning brightness. But for myself, I’ve too often seen to the bottom of the vessel to answer to such pride. But I flatter myself I
possess imagination, for I have talent for putting myself in others’ shoes. And I do have an eye for intelligence. Jamie, Jim, and Matt Lewis: those (with my dear mother’s) are the best faces humanity has ever showed me, and theirs the best eyes I ever looked at humanity through.