Inconvenient People (54 page)

At two o’clock that afternoon, a real old acquaintance was announced. Lieutenant-General Sir Henry de Bathe had known Mrs Weldon for sixteen years and had reason to be grateful to her. De Bathe was a magistrate, had been decorated for bravery at Sebastopol, and was a governor and the treasurer of St Luke’s insane asylum at Old Street, central East London. But as a notorious old roué, running three separate ménages and with at least one illegitimate child, the general had been widely shunned when he attempted to present his new, adolescent, wife to Society; the couple had eloped when she was sixteen years old and had a child before marrying. Broad-minded and open-hearted, Mrs Weldon had taken no notice of the ostracism and had invited the new Lady de Bathe to visit her to show that she cared nothing for the snobbish, hypocritical scorn of others. However, since Mrs Weldon’s separation from her husband three years earlier, in 1875, the general himself had been more aloof. She would once have considered him one of her most trusted advisers, but over the past three years they had seen each other, briefly, just once. She saw nothing odd, though, in him turning up on this Sunday afternoon, without notice; what was a little peculiar, she thought, was that he stayed for just ten minutes and didn’t seem interested in hearing about her recent domestic problems, which were making her anxious and unhappy.

After the general left, Mrs Weldon carried on cleaning up the library. Rummaging around in the books, music scores and piles of disordered paperwork, she wondered whether she was likely to find any more letters like those she had come across when she had unlocked the library bureau; reading through them had deeply unsettled her.

Then at 8.30 p.m., while she was talking in the library with her elderly servant Tibby, Bell announced that Messrs Shell and Stewart had returned and wished to see her. She told Bell it was too late to receive anyone, but while Mrs Weldon and her servants had their backs to the library door, the two men entered and announced themselves. ‘You are not Shell and Stewart,’ said Mrs Weldon. The two men replied that they had come from her visitors of this morning and that they too were spiritualists wishing to hear her views on children, education and spiritualism. More flattered than annoyed by the intrusion, Mrs Weldon sat for an hour with the strangers, repeating for them her various psychic experiences and her child-rearing methodology. The younger man was in early middle age and he sat silent and immobile, with his arms folded across his body, staring at her so hard she wondered if he were trying to mesmerise her. The older man sat at the library table and wrote down everything she said.

She told them that she tried to channel her pupils’ natural childish destructiveness by encouraging them to rip up rags into tiny pieces, which could then be used to stuff pillows and so on. The men asked her if any of the children were mediums, and she said no, only an adult could be a medium, but that one of the boys and one of the girls had told her they had seen Dan Tucker, the dead dog, walking near his grave in the garden; and Mrs Weldon said she had wished she’d seen him too. The older man said, ‘I suppose you think he had a soul.’ ‘Oh I have no doubt of it!’ she replied.

Mrs Weldon continued to talk passionately on these and similar themes but wondered if the older man was slightly deaf, as he would read back to her what he thought she had said and as often as not she had to correct him. Eventually, each man asked to leave the room for a moment, leaving her alone with the other. The older man walked to the large bay window and beckoned Mrs Weldon. Together they looked out at the beautiful moonlit garden, which stretched out southwards from Tavistock House, Tavistock Square, Bloomsbury. ‘What a nice house you have,’ he said, and then commented on how lovely
the grounds were; and, she later remembered, ‘as he turned around, he looked at me with a sort of glittering stare, which perfectly terrified me’.

When the younger man was alone with her, he asked if she sang at the piano all day, and she said, ‘No, I only ever sing and play when I am teaching.’ He told her she was young and had a very beautiful voice and she replied that he was extremely impertinent. ‘I thought his questions silly and I thought him very rude,’ Mrs Weldon later stated.

She mentioned to the pair her separation from her husband and informed them that he gave her an allowance to help with the running costs of her music school. But she couldn’t help referring also to one of her current worries: pointing to the bureau she told them, ‘I found in that drawer, letters proving that a most diabolical conspiracy exists against me, and I will read them to you.
That
is a providential cabinet, with providential drawers, and the key was left behind providentially.’ But the men were not interested; in fact they rose immediately to leave.

What a lot of visitors in one day. It was unusual. A feeling of foreboding suddenly came upon her as she saw the pair out – was Dan Tucker trying to warn her of something? She confided to Tibby and Bell that she wondered if the visitors intended to do her harm and were in some way connected to those terrible letters. She told Bell to put the chain on the front door that night – a rare precaution.

Tibby wasn’t resident at Tavistock House and left to go home; Villiers had not yet returned from her evening off. In order to feel safe, Mrs Weldon went down into the servants’ quarters to be with Bell. At 9.45 p.m. they heard the iron gates that separated the driveway from Tavistock Square being opened and a carriage approach. When the doorbell rang Mrs Weldon told Bell not to admit anyone, ‘as something I call my guardian angels had given me a sign, warning me I was in very immediate and grave danger. Death, I felt it meant . . .’ Bell went upstairs and opened the door on the chain. On the steps stood a man and two women, all strangers; they had no card to present when asked, and so Bell would not allow them in. The knocking and ringing continued for some time. Mrs Weldon told Bell to extinguish all gaslight, so that it would appear the household had gone to bed. At last, the assault of the knocker and bell stopped and the carriage left – Villiers saw it leaving the square as she turned the corner from Euston Road, as she headed back to Tavistock House.

The household slept badly and rose early on the Monday morning. Mrs Weldon was now certain what had been going on and sent out several messages. She sent a note to the police station at Hunter Street (a few streets to the east) to arrange for an officer to visit her; a telegram was sent to Sir Henry de Bathe, stating, ‘Come at once, it is a matter of life and death’ (he never responded); and she wrote to Mr Gladstone, who replied two weeks later that she ought to tell the Lunacy Commissioners about the matter. Finally, she sent a note to Louisa Lowe, knowing her to be the founder of the Lunacy Law Reform Association; she told Mrs Lowe that she felt ‘these mysterious visits and visitors are something to do with the vile system you have denounced’. Mrs Weldon had never met the campaigner but had admired her writings in
The Spiritualist
and
The Medium and Daybreak
. She had hoped to deliver this message in person to Mrs Lowe’s home in Keppel Street, just a quarter of a mile away, but when she emerged through the iron gateway into the north-east corner of Tavistock Square she became alarmed by the number of stationary cabs parked in the vicinity, and feared that one of them might be the equipage that had called so abruptly last night.

The Hunter Street police inspector turned up at 11.30 a.m. and agreed to have officers stationed in Tavistock House from six o’clock, in order to arrest anyone who attempted to trespass. But Mrs Weldon’s husband’s solicitor, James Neal, visited unexpectedly shortly afterwards, and on his way out instructed Bell to admit any man who came to call. When Bell refused, saying this was contrary to Mrs Weldon’s wishes, Neal pointed out that it was an order from Mr Weldon himself, which overrode his mistress’s demands. Bell silently resolved to do Mrs Weldon’s wishes, not those of her husband.

Two hours later, one of the two women who had called the night before rang the bell. She was sent away and told to come back at 6.30 p.m. (when the police would be waiting). Then, five minutes later, Mrs Lowe arrived and sent up her card. ‘I joyfully welcomed her,’ Mrs Weldon later recalled. The women were conferring urgently in the library when Bell knocked; he was pale and shaking and said that the trio of the night before had forced their way into the hallway. Mrs Weldon dispatched Mrs Lowe to fetch the police and then locked herself in the library.

Her half-formed suspicions now came into horribly sharp focus. The man who had thrust himself into her hallway was Wallace A. Jones, keeper of Dr Lyttleton Stewart Forbes Winslow’s two madhouses in Hammersmith, seven miles away in West London. The women with him were nurses Sarah Southey and Mary Anne Tomkins. Jones was brandishing what appeared to be a lunacy order for her apprehension, which had, he claimed, been signed by her husband. Mrs Weldon refused to believe this: their separation had been amicable, and although a coolness had subsequently arisen between husband and wife, she felt that Mr Weldon didn’t have it in him to behave in this dastardly way. She pushed out from under the library door two messages – one to be delivered to her husband, asking him to come to her assistance; the other to one of her closest friends, Lise Gray, who arrived promptly at Tavistock House.

When the Hunter Street officers finally turned up, Mrs Weldon was persuaded by Police Sergeant James Banger to come out of the library so that the situation could be resolved. When she stepped out into the hall, Jones shouted, ‘Grab her!’ and the nurses lunged, but Mrs Lowe and Miss Gray tussled and struggled with them, extricating Mrs Weldon, who dashed back into the library and barricaded herself in, Mrs Lowe shouting after her, ‘They are assaulting you! Have them arrested!’ Mrs
Lowe appealed to the police, who found themselves perplexed: should they be helping to apprehend a dangerous lunatic for whom an official order had been presented, or should they be arresting three trespassers on private property who appeared to be committing an assault? Banger and his colleagues later admitted that the Metropolitan Police rule book had failed to prepare them for such an occurrence. So another stand-off began, during which Mrs Lowe read the lunacy order for herself. She saw that it had indeed been signed not only by Harry Weldon but by Sir Henry de Bathe and informed Mrs Weldon through the library door that the treachery she had intuited was a lot more sinister than her wildest imaginings. ‘You do not know how bad husbands are,’ Mrs Lowe hissed through the keyhole.

Mrs Lowe then woman-handled the three burly madhouse staff out of Tavistock House. She was physically robust, but nevertheless this was quite a feat – particularly as she had done it in full view of Sergeant Banger and used as little force as necessary to avoid the risk of being charged with assault. The madhouse brigade, getting no help from the officers, drove off to obtain further instructions.

Mrs Weldon opened up the library door, and once inside, Mrs Lowe persuaded her that flight was now her only option. Villiers came in too, and stroked the hand of her stricken mistress, confirming that Harry’s signature had indeed been on the lunacy order, as well as that of Sir Henry de Bathe. Mrs Weldon was distraught, but all present advised her to flee Tavistock House. ‘I’d go, Ma’am,’ said Bell, and the police could only echo this – ‘Yes, do go, Ma’am.’ In her slippers, with a cloak and bonnet pulled on, she rushed out into the square, Mrs Lowe puffing along behind her. A police officer hailed a hansom cab for them, and away they were trotted, to Keppel Street.

Close to midnight, another carriage rolled into the Tavistock House driveway. A policeman in the square, who had been briefed about the furore in the house that afternoon, watched as two of the three passengers went up the steps and rang the bell; there was no reply. The three were Dr Winslow, who had inherited the Hammersmith madhouses on his father’s death in 1874; his brother-in-law, the lawyer, journalist and playwright Arthur à Beckett, and Harry Weldon himself. Dr Winslow approached the police officer and said he had been told at the station house that the constable would assist him; but the policeman told them he had received no such instructions. The men
offered him money for his compliance, but the officer declined the bribe and watched as one of them went back to the house, pulled the bell again, clapped his hands together and declaimed, in stage melodrama fashion: ‘If it costs a thousand tonight, I must have Mrs Weldon!’ But again there was no response, and the men returned to their vehicle and left the square.

On Tuesday morning news reached Mrs Lowe and Mrs Weldon that the carriage had travelled on to the LLRA offices in Berners Street, just half a mile west; it would surely, then, not be very long before it called at Keppel Street. Sympathetic friends offered their house as refuge to Mrs Weldon for the next seven days – at the end of which time the documentation permitting her seizure would expire. But with a coincidence found usually in the more tawdry literature of the day, their home overlooked Dr Winslow’s asylums, Sussex House and Brandenburgh House, so another escape was required. Disguised as a Sister of Mercy Mrs Weldon made off, first to a lodging in Whitechapel and then to another in Bayswater, where we’ll leave her for a while, no doubt contemplating how a life that had been so full of promise had taken such a vile turn.