The Dreams of Cardinal Vittorini and other Strange Stories (9 page)

Eleven years later I wrote a play for Radio 4 which was accepted. After it had been broadcast and noticed favourably, the Head of Drama took me out to lunch. She wanted to commission another play from me: had I any ideas? I had not expected this offer and my mind was a blank until into it, unbidden, came the Broadmoor photograph, that vision of Hell. I began to tell the Head of Drama the story of Eleanor Marchant and why it obsessed me. She was intrigued: if I could give her a brief outline she would commission me. Before I was fully conscious of the fact that Miss Marchant and Grove House were entering my life again, I had agreed.

My synopsis was accepted and I began work. I was both elated and reluctant. I think that initially I went on with the project because I was afraid to turn down work. At a deeper level, though the subject was in some ways repugnant to me, I felt the need to purge myself of its subconscious vibrations. To do this I had to research the story more thoroughly.

I was relieved to find that the London Library had the books on the Marchant Case mentioned in the bibliography of
Victorian Scandals
, but when I looked on the shelves all of them were out. I was filled with indignation: somehow the Marchant affair had become my property; and I resented anyone who wanted to appropriate the subject for their own purposes. So it was partly out of vindictiveness that I put in an order for all the books I wanted to be returned and sent to me as soon as the borrower’s time was up.

Three weeks later a parcel arrived at my flat in Tufnell Park. In it were the books I had asked for and with them was a letter from the London Library saying that they were passing on a note from the previous borrower to whom naturally they had not given my address. The note was on a postcard headed: Monica Freede MA PhD, Department of Women’s Studies, Dorset University; together with a telephone number. It read:

I was a little concerned when I was asked for these books back. Are you also writing a book on the Marchant case? If not, what is your interest? Could you contact me on this number? Monica Freede.

It amused me to think that this Monica Freede was suffering from the same jealous, proprietorial feelings that I was, but I was happy to be able to put her mind at rest. A book and a play were not going to compete; they might even complement one another.

I called her number several times without getting a reply. Eventually the telephone was picked up by ‘Monica’s assistant’, as she described herself. She sounded suspicious and asked for my name and business. Giving her my name and number I said: ‘Tell Dr Freede that it’s about Eleanor Marchant.’

Within ten minutes the phone rang and I was speaking to Monica Freede. The voice, breathy and with no definable accent, sounded anxious, almost accusing.

‘You said it was about Eleanor.’ Anyone listening in might have thought she was talking about a close friend who had been involved in a road accident.

I explained about the books from the London Library and when she spoke again, I was conscious of increased tension.

‘I’m writing a book about her, you know. I’ve got a publisher. My work’s nearly finished.’

I reassured her that I was only writing a play on the subject not a book.

‘Ah.’ The tension slacked but did not disappear altogether. She asked how I had come to be interested in the case and I told her that I had been at school near Grove House, though not about my adventure there. She was intrigued.

‘My God! So you actually saw it! That’s absolutely incredible. You know it was destroyed in 1969. Some bloody developer bought the land and just flattened it. It’s a housing estate now. Planning permission granted just like that. Local council got a kickback, I shouldn’t wonder. Nobody made any effort to preserve the building; it was an absolute disgrace.’

‘It wasn’t exactly a thing of beauty.’

‘That’s a matter of opinion, but, my God, it was a historic building! I mean, Eleanor was a pioneer in the treatment of mental illness. Read her book
On the Care and Cure of the Insane
. It’s incredible. She was so far ahead of her time.’

‘Yes...’

‘Of course, you do realise that she was completely innocent of those deaths.’

‘Do you think so?’

‘Oh, yes. It’s so obvious. She was shielding Dr Bradley out of misplaced loyalty. He was a complete psychopath. And of course the male establishment had been out to get her for a long time, and they saw their chance. They were quite canny about it. They knew that if she was hanged there’d be an outcry, so they had her committed to Broadmoor. So ironic.’

‘Why were they out to get her?’

‘Because she was a pioneer. Because she had made them all look incredibly out of date. A woman too! My God!’

‘Is there evidence for her innocence?’

‘Oh, yes! My God. I mean it’s obvious!’ But she offered no proof more concrete than that. I was in no position to argue with her, and I felt that even the mildest scepticism would be taken as an affront. So, with exchanged wishes of good luck, we ended our telephone conversation on amicable terms.

As I continued with my research, which, admittedly, consisted simply in reading the books from the London Library, I could find nothing to support Dr Freede’s belief in Eleanor Marchant’s innocence. On the contrary, a clear pattern of events emerged: the increase in petty regulations, outbursts of temper with patients and staff, followed in the early stages by abject remorse; then the occasional assault on a patient—nothing serious to begin with, just a ‘box on the ear’; then the institution of severe punishments for the recalcitrant, the appearance of mysterious injuries on the inmates, and finally the unexpected deaths. Everything pointed to a slow loss of internal control in Miss Marchant which manifested itself in a growing obsession with imposing external control on those around her.

Perhaps the most valuable book as far as I was concerned was one produced in the 1920s as part of the
Notable British Trials
series. There, without the adornment of external interpretation, the words and actions of the principal characters were laid bare. In particular, I read and re-read the cross-examination of Miss Marchant herself. It seemed to me that she was in the grip of a profound moral disease. The words ‘mad’ or ‘insane’ were somehow inappropriate. The intellectual faculties were in good order: she was reasonable and restrained, and she showed considerable adroitness in her replies to Sir Stanford Rivers Q.C., who led for the crown; but there was something unsettling about the way she appeared to be unaware of the gravity of the charges. She had no sense of how ordinary people might react to what had gone on. A short extract from the cross-examination illustrates:

RIVERS: Miss Marchant, do you remember a female patient named Powell?

MARCHANT: I do. Yes. An elderly woman.

RIVERS: Was she subject to fits?

MARCHANT: She had all kinds of abnormal behaviour, yes.

RIVERS: Including fits?

MARCHANT: Seizures, fits, tantrums . . .

RIVERS: Call them what you will, Miss Marchant. For the convenience of this court we will call them fits. And did she, in the course of these fits, lose control of her limbs and roll about on the floor, muttering and foaming at the mouth?

MARCHANT: That may have been something she did.

RIVERS: Did she or did she not, Miss Marchant?

MARCHANT: Yes.

RIVERS: And were not these fits the very reason why Powell was placed in your care?

MARCHANT: The fits were but one outward sign of her mind sickness.

JUDGE: Miss Marchant, will you please answer counsel’s questions directly.

MARCHANT: She was sent to me because of the fits, yes.

RIVERS: And did you, in the presence of witnesses, say to Dr Bradley on one occasion, ‘we must beat the fits out of her’?

MARCHANT: What I meant was—

RIVERS: Never mind what you meant, Miss Marchant, did you say those words?

MARCHANT: I may have done. I really cannot recall.

RIVERS: And did you, or did you not, personally administer a beating to Powell when she next had a fit?

MARCHANT: That was a different matter.

RIVERS: Will you answer the question, Miss Marchant?

MARCHANT: At that time her mind sickness was cured and it was my conviction that the fits were not involuntary. Any physical act on my part was done to make her aware that she was no longer helpless and sick. The patient who has recovered from mind sickness must be made aware of the moral responsibility which that recovery bestows. Powell had failed to show that responsibility as her deliberate falling into the fits demonstrated . . .

There was much more of this casuistry, through which one could see that Miss Marchant was convinced of her own rightness on all occasions. The consequence of this was that everything she did must be correct; and all those who opposed her must be crushed or eliminated. ‘Powell’ was the one who was burned to death in the summerhouse.

The phrase ‘mind sickness’ recurred often in her testimony and in her book
On the Care and Cure of the Insane
. The fact that she used it in preference to a more common word, like insanity, showed a desire to carve out an individual approach to mental illness. I could not say what exactly she meant by the words, but I recognised the egoism with which she insisted on them. She was claiming mind sickness as her territory, just as Dr Freede and I were claiming Miss Marchant as ours.

I wrote my play easily, but without the ecstatic satisfaction that usually comes over me when a piece of writing goes well. The trouble was, there was no redeeming feature: the story of Miss Marchant was a relentless downward slide into murder, madness and oblivion. It was the pure tragedy of someone with a great capacity for goodness brought down by the flaw of hubris. I experimented with altering the chronology of the scenes so that the play ended with an image of Miss Marchant at her best, but it did not work. There was no honest way of deviating from the descent; that was the power and the truth of the work.

While I was working on the final draft, I received an invitation through the post to a lecture in London at the Fawcett Society. Dr Freede was speaking on ‘Eleanor Marchant, Villainess or Victim?’ On the back of the card Dr Freede had written: ‘Do come. Important new information will revise your idea of Eleanor.’ The word ‘Do’ was underlined several times.

Three questions occurred to me. How had she got hold of my address? Not through the London Library, I was sure of that. She must have traced it painstakingly from the knowledge of my name and telephone number. But then, why hadn’t she simply rung me? Secondly, how did she know what my ‘idea of Eleanor’ was? Thirdly, why was she so anxious for me to attend the lecture?

The Fawcett Society is named after Millicent Fawcett, the pioneer suffragist and is dedicated to the promotion of feminist studies. It has premises in Beech Street EC2 which house a library and other facilities including a lecture room, where I found myself at the appointed time. As I had expected, I was one of very few men present, and, curiously enough, just about the only one (of the men) without a beard. Perhaps the men who moved in these circles felt the need to establish their gender difference by this decisive but unthreatening means. I myself did not feel awkward or particularly embarrassed because everyone seemed so cheerful and friendly. An elderly lady sitting next to the gangway on my immediate right asked my interest in the lecture and I explained.

‘Ah,’ she said. ‘So you’ve fallen under the spell too, have you?’

I wanted to ask her what she meant, but just then two women walked onto the platform. One of them, the elder of the two, announced herself as the Secretary of the Fawcett Society. The other, who was carrying a neat leather folder, I took to be Dr Freede.

Of course, I had previously constructed a mental picture in my head of Dr Monica Freede, and, of course, it was quite wrong. I had expected someone with glasses, small, dumpy and intense with cropped black hair: only the glasses were correct. She was in her early thirties, six foot tall and willowy with an unselfconscious grace in her movements. She had long auburn hair and her slightly freckled, unmade-up face was beautiful. I was reminded of pictures of Janey Morris or some other Pre-Raphaelite ‘stunner’.

At the time I was unattached and I did feel a frisson of sexual interest, but it was muted. Something told me that I would be out of my depth with her; though intimations of that kind had not stopped me from drowning on previous occasions. Besides, I knew that she had other things on her mind.

Dr Freede’s lecture began with an efficient and concise summary of Miss Marchant’s career up to the mid 1880s. She naturally put the best construction on the facts, but I found her use of ‘Eleanor’ in referring to Miss Marchant unsettling. It suggested to me a lack of objectivity, and a familiarity of which I doubt Miss Marchant would have approved. But she spoke well, with vitality and plenty of mordant wit directed at ‘the male establishment’.

When Dr Freede began to tackle what she called the ‘difficult phase’ in Miss Marchant’s life, I found her less satisfactory. It must have been plain to all present that she was offering an ingenious case for the defence rather than a dispassionate assessment. Inconvenient evidence was ignored or dismissed as hearsay. Her theory, which had some plausibility, was that Miss Marchant became infatuated with Dr Bradley and that this blinded her to the fact that he was a psychopath. He committed the murders and she refused to believe that he was doing anything wrong until it was too late. At the trial, she adopted ‘what she believed to be the Victorian male code of honour’ and refused to say anything that would incriminate her lover. As to the acts of brutality that members of staff alleged they saw her commit on patients, these were the fabrications of employees who resented her ‘admittedly authoritarian management style’.

Finally, Dr Freede dealt with the question of insanity, and here she was more convincing, contending that Miss Marchant had not suffered from mental illness in the accepted sense, merely from the stress to which her relationship with Dr Bradley had put her. She pointed to Miss Marchant’s impressive conduct during the trial. She claimed that because the idea of a totally sane woman committing such atrocities was unthinkable, the ‘establishment’ had decided that she must be mad and had committed her to Broadmoor.