A Blighted Life/Section 4

Mrs. C_____ persuaded me to go to bed for a few hours, I was so ill; the doing so, and my bath, together, brought it to half-past eleven, too late to go to the Mayor to ask for the use of the Corn Exchange or Town Hall, or do anything but order a broughham to drive to the hustings, where the speechifying and public virtue had already begun. And another provoking delay was Mrs. C____ making the discovery that she had blue ribbons in her bonnet, and stopping at a milliner's to change them for white, saying: "Blue is that infamous man's colour, and I won't wear it." As we drove into the field where the humbug was going on, the postillions of Sir L IAR'S carriage, whom I did not know (as of course they were long since my time) stood up in their stirrups and took off their hats as I drove past. Around in front of the semi-circle of carriages before the hustings, I pulled the check and got out. For a moment I was in a perfect fever, for though I hope I shall never become that sponge of all iniquity, a human being without moral courage, I am fearfully afraid physically of a mob. But seeing their cowardly brute of a county member on the hustings before me, with that intensely, vulgar-looking personage, Lord and Lady P ALMERSTON'S bastard, the soi-disant$1$ Mr. W_____ C_____ for his bottle holder--so much for the political thimble-rig of the present day--I made one great effort over myself to do properly what I had come to do, and from a high fever that I was in the minute before, I became deadly cold and pale, and with it superhumanly calm and collected. So touching with my large green fan the arm of the first man near me, while Mrs. C_____ followed closely holding my dress, I said in a loud clear voice, "My good people, make way for your member's wife, and let me pass, for I have something to say to him," whereupon the mob began to cheer and cry, "Make way for Lady L_____; that we will, G OD bless her, poor lady." And instantly a clear passage was made for me up to the very scaffolding of the hustings. "Thank you, friends," said I. And then steadily fixing my eyes upon the cold, pale, fiendish, lack-lustre eyes of the electioneering baronet, I said, "Sir E DWARD E ARLE B ULWER L_____, after turning me and my children out of our house to run an unexampled career of vice, you have spent years in promulgating every lie of me, and hunting me through the world with every species of persecution and outrage, your last gentlemanlike and manly attempt having been to try and starve me out: therefore, in return for your lies, I have come here to-day to say the truths I have to say of you, to you, openly and publicly.  If you can deny one of the charges I shall bring against you, do so, but to disprove them I defy you."

Here, as the papers said, his jaw fell like that of a man suddenly struck with paralysis, and he made a rush from the hustings, valiantly trampling down the flower-beds of the house of Mr. S TEPHEN A USTIN, the editor of The Hertford Mercury, which was close at hand, by jumping over the pailings, and heroically locking himself into the dining-room. The moment the cowardly brute took to flight, the mob began to hiss and yell and vociferate, "Ah! he's guilty, he's guilty; he dare not face her. Three cheers for her ladyship." As soon a silence was restored, I turned to the crowd, who roared, "Silence, listen to what Lady L_____ has to say." Whereupon I said, "Men of Herts, if you have the hearts of men, hear me." "We will, we will--speak up." Here a voice cried, "Stop, where is the Times' reporter?" to which several voices from the hustings cried out, "Oh, oh, he's been bundled off fast enough." Cries of "Shame." I then went on to tell them that their member's last conspiracy was to make out--because I dared to resent, having no brother to horsewhip him for his dastardly persecutions, and sending his infamous street-walkers to insult me--that I was quite mad, in order to incarcerate me in a Madhouse. Cries of "Cowardly villain, but that won't do, after to-day, now that we have seen and heard you." I spoke for more than an hour. But I need not bore you with my speech, nor their plaudits, or the way in which they cheered and wanted to draw me back to the Hotel, which, thanking them cordially--I implored them not to do; as I had to go by the 3 o'clock train. Nor need I tell you how the roofs of the houses were covered with people, as well as the windows, waving handkerchiefs, and crying "G OD bless you," when I went.

But this I will tell you, that, calling at the Mayor's before I went (for the people had asked me to address them in the Town Hall in the evening), as I wanted him to explain to them that I was tied to time and could not go; his wife told me that as I drove past to go to the hustings an old woman of 85, who lived in the village of Knebworth, and was a tenant of Sir L IAR'S, and had been one of his grandfather's, and who came into Hertford occasionally to sell poultry, and who happened to be in the hall at the Mayor's house when I drove by, upon hearing it was I, and that I was going to the hustings, fell upon her knees and said, "Thank G OD ! thank G OD ! that I have lived to see this day, and that villain will be exposed at last, and poor dear Miss L_____'s death avenged." I can only say that if the horrible opinion that all classes in the town of Hertford have of him be any criterion of that of those in the country (except that they, to be sure, belong to our putrescently rotten and profligate Aristocracy), it is a miracle how any amount of political jobbery or party bribery can get him returned.

Well, the journey back from Herford being as hurried as the journey there, and I having been so ill when I set out, I was on my return, with all the painful excitement in addition, quite knocked up. And on the second day after my return, being in bed about 11 o'clock a.m., a card was brought to me with Mr. F_____ H_____ T_____, 4, C_____ Street, Piccadilly, on it, accompanied by a message that that gentleman wanted to see me particularly. "Why did you not say I was ill in bed, and could any one?" "H ENRY told him so, my lady." "Then go and tell him so again." "The gentleman says he must see your ladyship, as it is for your advantage," was the answer to my message. "If he has any business, he can write," said I. "He can be no gentleman to persist in attempting to see a lady who is ill in bed, and a total stranger to him." Shortly after this I heard several voices loud in altercation outside my bedroom door, and Mrs. C_____'s above them all, saying, "You shall not force your way in, unless you cut me down first." Whereupon I rang my bell, and Mrs. C_____ came round the other way, through the drawing room, in a very excited state, and I said, "What on earth is the matter?" "A pack of wretches," said she, "evidently some of that villain Sir E DWARD'S emissaries." "Let them in," said I, "and if they should attempt to carry me off bodily, send for the police. Now," added I, sitting up in bed, arranging the frills of my night things, and settling myself down to freezing point on the score of calmness and impassibility, as is my wont in every crisis that must be met, "unbolt the door, or rather unlock it" (for she had carried off the key that they should not force their way in during her absence), "and let them in." She did so; and in walked a little very dark man, with very black hair and eyes, of about 60, followed by a Patagonian woman of six feet high, who was a keeper from the Madhouse at Fairwater, near this, conducted by a Dr. W_____. The giantess he told to sit down at one side of my bed, while he came round to the other, but followed by Mrs. C_____. "Pray, Lady L_____," said he, pulling out an election skit on blue paper, purporting to be Sir L IAR'S address to his constituents, saying that one of the first measures he should propose in Parliament would be about "the social evil," to which he had always so largely contributed, and that as family ties and domestic duties had always been held so sacred by him, he regretted that his loved and honoured wife was not there to share his triumphs upon that occasion, as, although it might be considered a wakness in him, ambition had no charms for him but as it contributed to the happiness of his alter ego and those who blest his own fireside!!! and great deal of similar persiflage and more pungent satire. Before I could reply, Mrs. C_____ cried out, "No, I can answer for that, for I it was who, in great haste, got Lady L_____'s placards printed--those on white paper pasted on the walls."

"No," said I, very quietly, "upon my honour I never saw that effusion before; but G OD bless the honest man who wrote it, whoever he be." "Your word is quite sufficient" said T_____, who then, feeling my pulse the whole time--which he remakred was one of the most quiet and even he had ever felt--began divers florid panegyrics upon Sir L IAR'S brilliant talents, success in life, and everything else that was exasperating, with the evident intention of exasperating me, in which he did not succeed. After an hour spent in this work, he went out of the room to cosult with some one in another room, leaving the guant keeper in possession, and this round of going backwards and forwards he repeated till nine at night; for, of course, he had to earn the £100, which was his fee, for coming down here. Had I then known what Mrs. C_____ told me after, i.e., that the wretch L_____ was the person in the other room, with whom he went to consult, and that there was a carriage with the horses to wailing all day at the other (Castle) Hotel, ready to carry me off to W_____'s Madhouse, at Fairwater, I don't think I could have had sufficient control over myself to have retained my imperturbable calmness as I did.

When this T_____ returned from a two hour's conference with the vile Unknown in the other room (during which time I had been very civil to the giantess, offering her luncheon), he again began feeling my pulse, and touching upon every irritating topic he could devise, and then upon European politics and other topics of the day; and then as a charming little variation he made me put out my tongue, looked at my teeth, and raised up my eyelids, in short, investigated me as minutely as if I had been a 500 guinea horse he was going to buy; after which, turnign himself to the guant keeper, he said, "Well, I don't know. I think I never saw any one in sounder mind or body.  What do you think?" "Why, really, sir," and the giantess, wiping her eyes, for which touch of human feeling I felt very grateful to her, "I do think this is one of the cruellest outrages I ever witnessed or heard of." "Humph," said T_____, going out for another season of two hours' duration, which brought it to 5 o'clock before he returned, and when he did so, he ws accompanied by Dr. W_____ who pursued his plan of irritating topics, but with more provincial coarseness and vulgarity, culminating it all by saying in a sort of jibing way, "I must really say, Lady L_____, that I think you are unreasonable to Sir E DWARD, for £400 a year is a very good allowance." "It might be for a mad Doctor or attorney's wife," I replied. "Ah! true--yes--a--certainly, that makes a difference." "And even then," added I, "they might be so very unreasonable as to want it paid in coin instead of promissory notes." Here ensued a series of telegrams of nods and winks between the two M.D.'s. so he again left the room, and I heard T_____ mutter, "It won't do." When he returned again (without W_____), it was 8 at night, so you may suppose what a day of rest I had after the horrid journey.

"Now, Lady L_____," said T_____, "I want you to oblige me by writing me a note, stating what terms you will accept from Sir E DWARD, to never again expose him as you did at Hertford on Wednesdy." "It's no use," said I, "it has been urged upon him for years to give me a decent and punctual allowance; he would rather part with his life than his money, and, moreover, neither honour, nor oaths can bind him." "Well, but what would you accept?" "Why, as one might as well expect to get blood out of a stone as money out of him, if I asked for an adequeate income, I know he would never even promise it; so if he wil really give, that is, pay me £500 a-year for my life; instead of amythological £400 for his;--I'll not again publicly expose him"--(were you here, I would tell you how I came to be put off upon the original swindle of this disgraceful £400 a-year; but it is too long to write). "Well, do write me a note to that effect, and I'll go into your drawing-room while you're writing it." "And what guarantee have I, pray Mr. T_____, that the grose outrage of to-day, so long hatching, shall not be repeated?" "My word of honour as a gentleman (??) Lady L_____," said he, laying his hand upon his left side as he walked into the drawing-room. "Do write the note," whispered Mrs. C_____ hurriedly,--"that man's your friend;--I'll tell you all by-and-by." I shook my head and said, "I don't believe in any man's friendship; more especially in a mad Doctor's, employed by Sir E DWARD ," When the note was finished, it was 9 o'clock! I asked him when I should hear from him in reply to that note? "In four days, at furthest," said he, as at length he rid me of his presence. When he was gone, poor Mrs. C_____ sank down exhausted (as well she might be) into a chair. She then told me the reason she had said he was my friend was, that L_____ had stormed, foamed, and stamped to make him and W_____ sign a certificate of insanity. T_____ said he could not; and W_____ he dare not. The latter moreover said, down in the Bar--as he went away, "Mad! Lady L_____ is no more mad than I am; I'm afraid Sir E DWARD will find her only too sane."

I may a well tell you here before you have the pleasure of meeting him again at his own house in Clarges-street, this H_____ T_____'s antecedents, which of course I did not learn until long after. To begin with, he was a friend of L_____'s, which conprises very other infamy,--and to show himself worthy of so being, he had been dismissed from some Hospital, to which he was surgeon. Not only the stipulated four days, but nine, had elapsed, without my hearing from Mr. T_____ the result of the note he had made me write. I then wrote to him to enquire the reason of this? His reply did not even allude to the subject, but was a rigmarole about the weather; as if he had been writing to an idiot, who did not require a rational answer to any question they had asked. So I again wrote to say--that having been so grossly outraged I was not going to be insulted and fooled by hi, and that if he did not send me a definite and explicit reply to the note I had written at his urgent request before the following Tuesday, or the following Wednesday, I should call at his house, and according to the answer I then received, should know how to act. Now my plan was, that in case of again being fooled by these wretches, to take two of Sir L IAR'S infamous letters with me, which he has denied upon oath; the one, a threat before the publication of my first book, saying, "he would ruin me if I published that, or any other book"--the other a letter he had written me after one of his tigerish onslaughts, in whcih he had frightfully bitten my cheek, in which he says, "You have been to my perfection as a wife, I have eternally disgraced myself, I shall go abroad, change a name which is odious to me,--take £200 a year, and leave you all the rest." Fancy that selfish, pompous Sybarite, profligate brute, on £200 a year! But saying is one thing and doing another, as his friend D IZZY and my Lord D ERBY know. By these letters I was determined toseek the only redress left to me that could not in the onset be tampered with, that of a common woman; by going to a London Police office, letting the Magistrate read them, and stating my Lord D ERBY's creditable Colonial Secretary's recent persecutions, which statement he could not preven being taken down by the reporters, and appearing in all the next day's papers. This was my plan, in case that loathsome ruffian, Sir L_____, was insane enough not to accede to the ridiculously moderate and lenient terms I had offered him, after his life-long, dastardly, and fiendish rascality. Well, on the Tuesday evening, having heard nothing further from T_____, Mrs. C LARKE and I set off for London. With my usual good fortune, the Great Western, and the neighbouring Hotels, were full, and we could only get rooms at a horrid dirty hole, opposite the Marble-arch, where we arrived at 8 in the morning. After washing, dressing, and breakfasting, we set off for C_____ street, getting out at the corner of Piccadilly, and telling the brougham to wait there; and as St. James's clock was striking 12 on Wednesday, 22nd of June, 1858--for G OD knows I never can forget the day!--I knocked at Mr. H_____ T_____'s door. We were shown up into the drawing-room. Presently the fellow came to us--holding out both his hands (which, of course, I did not see, but retained mine to hold my parasol;) saying he was delighted to see me (no doubt), and hoped I was come to dine with him!!! "Mr. T_____," said I, "I have neither come to dine with you nor to be fooled by you. I come to know what you have done with that note, which you so entreated me to write, proposing terms to Sir E DWARD L_____." "That note! that note!--let me see," said he, tapping his forehead, as if he had to go back into the night of ages to find out what note I alluded to. And after this piece of by-play--he said, suddenly, "Oh! oh! that note you wrote at Taunton. I gave it to L_____." I now knew what to expect. "But you had better, in his interest, communicate with Sir E DWARD L_____, and tell him I must have a definite answer one way or the other, for which I shall call at six o'clock this evening. Good morning." I then went to call upon Miss R_____, and she asked to come with me, to be present when I returned to T_____'s; and fortunately I gave her Sir L IAR'S two infamous letters to take care of, lest I, in my agitation, should drop or mislay them. At six, she, Mrs. C LARKE, and I, again drove to the corner of C_____ street, and there got out. As we did so, I observed an impudent-looking, snub-nosed man, who was walking up and down, and stared at me in the most impudent and determined manner, as if he had been watching for us, as afterwards turned out to be the case. We were again showsn up into the drawing-room at T_____'s, but this time the folding-doors were closed between the two rooms, and we heard the murmuring of low voices in the back room. After being kept waiting more than half an hour, I rang the bell, and otld the servant to say, "That if I could not see Mr. T_____, I must go." The wretch then soon after made his appearance, saying he had been detained by patients; and soon after him stalked into the room a tall, raw-boned, hay-coloured-hair Scotchman, who I subsequently leanred was an apothecary of the name of R_____, keeping a druggist's shop in Fenchurch-street (another friend of L_____'s, of course, and the second with T_____, who signed the certificate of my insanity!--he never having seen me, or I him before, and I never having once spoken to him!) This fellow, like all the other employees, began talking of--quite a propos de bottes$2$--Sir L IAR'S extraordidanry cleverness! Whereupon, Miss R_____, in a passion, took his cheek-biting letter out of her pocket, and read it to him, adding, "Perhaps you think this brutality another proof of his cleverness?" "Evidently a man of great sensibility!!" said the lean apothecary when she had finished. I could not stand this, and finding I was to get no answer about the letter from T_____, I said to Miss R_____ and Mrs. C LARKE, "Come, don't let us waste any more time in being fooled and insulted here, we'll go." Easier said than done, for upon reaching the hall we found it literally filled with two mad Doctors, that fellow, his assistant, the impudent snub-nosed man who had stared so when I got out of the brougham--two women keepers, one a great Flanders mare of six feet hight, the other a moderate-sized, and nice-looking woman, and a very idiotic-looking footman of T_____'s, with his head against the hall door, to bar egress, and who seemed to have acquired as an amateur that horrible Mad Doctor's trick of rolling his head and never looking at any one, but over their heads, as if he saw some strange phantasmagoria in the air above them; and which that fellow had to such a degree, that I am certain any nervous or weak-minded person would, from sheer physical irritation, have been driven mad really in a very short time; and no doubt that is what it is done for. Seeing this blockade, I exclaimed, "What a set of blackguards;" to which Mr. H_____, waggin his head, and phantom-hunting over mine, with his pale, poached egg-unspeculative eyes--said, "I beg you'll speak like a lady--Lady L_____." "I am treated so like one, that I certainly ought," I replied. Hearing aloud talking in the dining-room, into which Mrs. C_____ had been summoned by T_____, I walked into it, in time to hear her very energetically saying, "I won't," to some proposition they were making to her, and seeing a side door that led into a back room again, I looked in, and there saw that precious brace of scoundrels, Sir L IAR, C OWARD , S WINDLER himself, and "that sublime of rascals, his Attorney--listening! for the dastardly brute always fights shy," with his vizor down, from behind an ambush; but from the stabs in the back, and the force of the blows, there is no mistaking one's antagonists. So, boldy advancing towards him, "You cowardly villain," said I, "this is the second time I have confronted you this month; why do you always do your dirty work by deputy, except when you used to leave the mark ofyou horse teeth in my flesh; and boldy strike a defeceless woman." At this, the reptile rushed, as he had done at the Hertford hustings, but this time not into Mr. A USTIN'S flower garden, but down Mr. H_____ T_____'s kitchen stairs! and up his area steps! into the open street. I turned to Miss R_____, who had followed me, and said, "See the contemptible wretch has taken to his heels." Whereupon, going into the hall, she pushed the idiotic footman aside and said, "Whatever villainy you are paid to practise towards Lady L_____, you have no right to detain me." T_____ ordered the hall door to be unchained and unlocked, and she rushed out into the street. Talk of novels! She told me after, that at the corner of Piccadilly, she stumbled up against a young man, and said--"Oh sir, for G OD'S sake, get me a cab, they are taking in the most iniquitous manner a friend of mine to an asylum, the best friend I ever had, to whom I owe everything, Lady L_____, and she is no more mad than you are." The young man turned deadly pale, staggered against the wall, and said in a voice scarcely audible, "I am very sorry I can't interfere."--The young man was my own wretched son!

Endnote

 * 1) soi-dissant: so-called
 * 2) a propos de bottes: suddenly; out of the blue