A Blighted Life/Section 5

Meanwhile I, who was again sitting in T_____'s hall--said, "Nothing shall get me out of this." Whereupon the hall door was opened, and two policemen were brought in, at which I started to my feet, and said, "Don't presume to touch me, I'll go with these vile men, but the very stones of London shall rise up against them, and their infamous employers." "That shall they," said Mrs. C LARKE, "they'll get the worst of it." She told me after, that when she had told T_____ and L_____, in the dining room, that stirring investigation would be made which would be their ruin, instructed by their infamous employer, they had quite laughed in her face, and said, "Pooh! nonsense, Lady L_____ has lived out of the world so long, she has no friends, and there can be no investigation made, and Sir E DWARD is at the top of the tree." "Well, before you are much older, you will see whether she has friends or not, you are much older, and whether this villainy will pass off with impunity," she replied. At the advent of the policemen, I got into H_____'s carriange, which was in waiting. He, the two keepers, Mrs. C LARKE, and myself inside, and the impudent-looking, snub-nosed assistant on the box. The wretches took me all through the Park, and as there had been a breakfast at Chiswick that day, it was crowded; many whom I knew kissed their hands in great surprise at me. Ah! thought I, you little know where they are draggin me to! Arrived at Mr. H_____'s stronghold, a very fine house in fine grounds, which had formerly belonged to the Duke of C UMBERLAND (and which since my incarceration H_____ has been obliged to leave, and transfer himself to London, public indignation having made it too hot for him), as Mrs. C LARKE knew nothing of London, fortunately I had the presence of mind to ask the name and locale of my prison, and write it down upon one of my cards for her, that she might bring me my things from the hotel. I was then shown upstairs, after she left me, into a large bedroom, with the two keepers, and the windows duly nailed down, and only opening about three inches from the top. After kneeling down and praying to G OD in a perfect agony, I bathed my face in cold water, and the little keeper was very kind and feeling, and said to me, "Oh pray, my lady, try and keep calm under this severe trial; it does seem to me to be something very monstrous, and depend upon it, G OD will never let it go on." "I know He will not," said I, and then looking out at the window, or rather through it, I saw between 30 and 40 women walking in the grounds. "Are all these unfortunates incarcerated here?" I asked of the little keeper. "Those," said she, rather evasively, "are our ladies; they are out gatheringg strawberries." I then rang the bell, and when it was answered, I said, "I want to see Mr. H_____." He came, and before I could speak, said, "It's a lovely evening. You had better come out and take a walk, Lady L_____." "Mr. H_____," said I, "I sent for you to order you to remove those two keepers from my room, for I am not mad as you very well know, and I won't be driven mad by being treated as a maniac, and as for walking out, or associating with those poor creatures out there, if they really are insane, I'll not do it, if I am kept in you Mad-house for 10 years." "Mad-house, mad-house, nonsense! Lady L_____, this is no mad-house, and those are my children." "Then you must be a perfect D ANAUS ," said I, "for there are about 50 of them. But if you had a hundred, I again order you to remove these women from my room, and at your peril disobey me." He then told them to leave the room, and went himself soon after. In about half-an-hour I heard my door unlocked on the outside, and a gentle knock at the door; I said, "Come in," and a charming little girl of about 14, with a pretty gentle expression of face, soft chestnut hair, and the prettiest and almost dove-like dark hazel eyes I ever saw, came in with some tea and some strawberries. This was H_____'s eldest daughter, and how he and his odious vulgar wife came by such a child, I can't imagine, unless the fairies stole theirs, and left this one in exchange. This dear little girl, my only consolation while there, conceived a most violent affection for me, which I heartily returned, for she was a perfect star in the desert, and with a big fat magnificent tortoiseshell cat, with the most fascinating manners, a perfect feline C HESTERFIELD ! and the poor cow, which that brute H_____ used to leave in an arid field, under a vertical sun, without water (the pump being deranged, like his patients), were my only comforts; and as I and poor little M ARY H_____ used to pump for hours at this crazy pump, till we filled the stone trough for the poor cow, which used to bound and caper like a dog, when it saw us coming to the rescue; this was no doubt considered as a strong proof of my insanity; or at least of my having water on the brain! I never would go into the grounds with my keepers, only with my dear, gentle, affectionate little M ARY. And moreover Mr. H_____ sent all his "children" to his other Madhouse farther on the road, so that I had the Palladian Villa all to myself, without even the three kings. The first evening poor Mrs. C LARKE returned about 10 o'clock with my scanty wardrobe. I implored her not, by way of consulting a lawyer, to go to Mr. H_____, who after the L YNDHURST papers and S ELLER'S affair, I believed to be the thorough rascal he eventually proved himself to be. But unfortunately, at Miss R_____'s instigation, she did; for your frineds (?) always know your affairs better than you do yourself. It appeared that two days after I was incarcerated in Mr. H_____'s stronghold, and Mrs. C LARKE had returned to Taunton to rouse up the people, which she did to good purpose! that ruffian L_____ came down here, and brought with him a solicitor, a Mr. E_____ B_____, saying he had come for my tin boxes and all my papers! "Then," said Mrs. C LARKE, "you won't have one of them." Of course, the provincial attorney thought the great man, and that sacred Mumbo Jumbo of a husband! (no matter how infamous) ought to be omnipotent, and that she should give them up. But she would not; and some commerical traveller in the hotel, hearing the altercation between them, very kindly called her out of the room, and said, "Ask him to show you his warrant, or authority for making such a demand. And if the fellow won't or can't, then I'll know how to deal with him." She did so, and the wretch said he had his order in his pocket. "Well then, produce it," said the traveller, coming in, "and if you won't I'll send for a constable to turn you out of this." At which the attorney said, in all humble sychophancy, to L_____, "My dear sir, you had better produce your authority." But as the wretch, of course, could not produce what he had not got, he was bundled out neck and crop by the commercial traveller. But as he went, he turned to Mrs. C LARKE, clenching his fist, and said, "Take my word for it, you will never see Lady L_____, nor will anyone else." "And take my word for it, Mr. L_____, that this threat of yours will turn out as great a falsehood as everything else you have ever said," was her answer. This it was, I suppose, made my friend feel I should be made away with in the Madhouse; in which, though no doubt Sir L IAR'S intention, like most utterly unscrupulous villains, he had overreached himself, for as Mr. H_____ was to get £1,000 a year for keeping me there, it is not likely to oblige his patron he'd have jeopardized his neck by poisoning me. L_____ when going, as a pis aller$1$, turned round and said, "Ah! by-the-by, Mrs. C LARKE, Sir E DWARD wants to see you, to pay you your bill." She said, "I'd rather forfeit every shilling of my bill, than stay one instant in the roomwith such a villain. He need not fear, I'll take care to have my bill paid, and no thanks to him."

At H_____'s the rule of the house was about two inches of candle to go to bed with, for fear of some mad incendiary, and then the door double locked upon you outside, but as I was not either mad or an incendiary, and am in the habit of making my ablutions, and reading, and saying my preayers before I go to bed, I could not do with the two inches, and so effectually resisted the candle rule, but could do nothing against the locked door, and therefore was greatly frightened the next morning, for the first time one awakens in a strange place one cannot for a few seconds remember where on eis; so I was frightened at seeing the great Flanders mare keeper standing over me, who said, "I came to call you, but your ladyship seemed in such a happy sleep. I did not like to wake you." I told H_____ that his must not happen again, but she must wait till I rang. He then said he meant to get me a maid the next day, which was a delicate way of putting it, considering that the Flanders mare's successor was even more strapping, only dark, and the image, or rather the facsimile, of "The Fair S OPHIA " in C RUIKSHANK'S  Ballad of "Lord B ATEMAN ," if she had only worn a turban instead of a cap, and had had a gold warming-pan of a watch at her side. Her name was S PARROW, but she never was in the way when I wanted her, her excuse being, the house had a flat Italian roof, and she used to sit out there to work, the "prospec"$2$ was so rural! "But S PARROW ," said I, "you were got to attend upon me, and so should not like the rest of your species, sit alone upon the house-top." Everything was so atrociously bad in this fine house that I really could not eat, and I beleive H_____ began to fear that I should die upon his hands, so at the end of four or five days he said to me, "What can I get you? What do you have for breakfast at Taunton?" "What I am not likely to get here, Mr. H_____, an appetite." But what I really suffered most from in that intesely hot summer, being a water-drinker, and the water here being the finest I ever tasted in any part of the world, was the horrible tepid ditchwater at H_____'s; and when I tried the soda water, that was equally bad. I was also thoroughly wretched without my clothes and books or a single thing I was accustomed to. H_____, it is true, was very anxious to send for all my goods and chattels to Taunton, which you may be quite sure I would not let him do; as I told him it was not worth while for the very short time I was sure public indignation would allow me to remain incarcerated in his stronghold. One day Mrs. H_____, a thoroughly vulgar, selfish, inane "British female," as they very properly and zoologically call themselves, and who moulted her h's in reckless profusion, came and informed me that Mr. H_____ was gone to Hascot, and would I like to take a drive with her? I said, "Yes, I should be very glad indeed to breathe a little fresh air," for, like herself, Mr. H_____ had made me Ill, too, by that eternal phatasmagoria wagging of his head, and rolling of his eyes. After having faits mes premières amies$3$ with madame, oh! joy, little M ARY and I were sent out to drive alone, so that I really might have made my escape with ease, only I had given my word I would not. When I had been there about ten days, those patent humbugs the Commissioners made their visit. They were Dr. H_____ and that vile old Dr. C_____, who as Dr. said, would sell his own mother, or do anything else for money; but there to be sure comes in the literary elements again, for has he not published some rubbish about 'Hamlet'? and so it is throughout, even the cheap and nasty Daily Telegraph, or Court plaister, as it is now called, which began not only by lapidating and crucifying Sir L IAR but also by spatchcocking him, on the top of a column, like saint somebody, one of the early martyrs before martyrdom became a civilized institution. The moment Mr. D ICKEN'S chum, the literary scamp and debauchee, Mr. S_____, is enrolled on its staff--il fait volte face$4$, and began puffing him in the most barefaced and outrageous manner. The other Commissioner was Mr. P ROCTOR --B ARRY C ORNWALL, by far the best, and most gentlemanlike of them--and who listened to my statement with marked attention, saying with a shrug of the shoulders, "Those letters I confess startled me." THe letters he alluded to were two I had written to Sir L IAR touching some of his infamies, for there is no vice that he has left unexhausted, and no virtue unassumed. BUt as I told Mr. P ROCTOR, the charges in those letters were no inventions of mine, and I gave him my authority, which was that when I was at Geneva, my old friend, the Comtesse Marie de Warenzon, came to me one morning and said she had got a letter from her niece, Lady P EMBROKE , and she must read me one paragraph--"That disgusting wretch Sir E_____ B_____ L_____ has just been drummed out of Nice--not Vice--for his infamy with women." Before these Commissioners I turned to that great walrus H_____, who stood like a footman at a respectful distance in their presence, and I said, "Now Mr. H_____, I have been nearly a fortnight in your house, can you say from your conscience--if you have one?--that I have said, done, or looked any one thing that could in any way make you think I was not in the full and clear, and very analytic possession of my intellect?" H_____ wagged his head, twirled his thumbs, and rolled his poached egge orbs fearfully, phatom-hunting, as he mubled in a low voice "I'd rather not give an opinion." "Of course not," said I, "having taken the ghost's word for a thousand pounds yearly! But pray, if you believe me in any even the slightest degree insane, how can you reconcile it to your conventionality towards these gentlemen the Commissioners, to leave your ery charming little daughter unguarded with me all day long, and worse still, allow her to drive with me alone! when from one minute to another, I might do her some grievous bodily harm, or make my escape with ease." At this, without wasting a reply on me, Mr. H_____, began sonorously clearing some imaginary obstruction in his throat, and reminded the Commissioners that they would be late for the train. I may as well tell you here, what of course i only heard from her and others after, i.e., that Mis R YVES it was, after rushing out of T_____'s house, and nearly stumbling over Mr. L_____, who drew up, and sent to the papers a true and circumstantial account of my most iniquitous kidnapping and incarcerations, which the infamous time-serving Times, of course, did not insert; she also wrote to the Hertford papers, to say she had been for years witness to, and cognisant of Sir E DWARD'S persecutions of me, and my maid was (and thank G OD is) still living, who had been witness to his personal brutalities in former times, and in short, that out of Hell there was not such an iniquitous pair as my Lord D ERBY'S Colonial Secretary, and his Attorney L_____. Now pray bear these facts well in mind. I may also as well here mention a circumstance touching Miss R YVES, which from its absurd triviality I should have indubitably have forgotten, but for the infamous lie that unscrupulous ruffian, Sir E DWARD , founded upon it, in converting this parasite into a relation!!!! of mine with whom I had gone abroad by my own choice!!--The circumstance to which I allude, is this. My father's maternal grandfather, Lord M ASSEY, was godfather to Miss R YVES'S father! whereupon she and her brothers (now, poor young men, both dead) called themselves M ASSEY R YVES ; but I really don't think that even in Ireland, that land of cousins, the most distant relationship could be fabricated out of that! otherwise, I am related to the G RATTANS as the great G RATTAN was my mother's godfather, and very fond of her. But England being the land of cozening, that King of Cozeners and Swindlers, Sir E DWARD _____, actually ahd the effrontery to forge a relationship between me and his too, to suit his own ever nefarious purposes. What matter who detected and laughed at the cheat? Lord M ELBOURNE used to say that "if a lie lived only half an hour, it would do its work," and upon this plan has Sir L IAR acted all his life, which, I suppose, is what he would call "Half hours with the best Authors," to wit, the Devil and himself. The Sunday after the humbug visit of the Commissioners, and oppressively hot day, the door was unlocked, and Mr. H YDE tottered into my room, for he was then suffering from softening of the brain (but certainly not of the heart), the complaint of which he afterwards died. His hands were full of papers, and he said, in his bluff, bull-dog way, "Well! I've seen Sir E DWARD at Downing-street." "Dear me," said I, "you seem quite overpowered with the honour!" "I saw him yesterday," said he, "and though it's almost too bad to show you, yet you must see it; I mean the statement he and L_____ drew up for the Commissioners respecting you insanity."

This precious piece of documentary rascality set forth that both my father and mother died madNow my father had had one of the most absurdly splendid public funerals for a Commoner that ever was seen, being Grand Master of some Masonic Lodge--and ostentatious burials are nog generally bestowed on lunatics; and my poor mother having been only ten years dead, anyone could have refuted that lie. But like all the villainous lies, they were only fabricated for the few, and for the dark, and never allowed to appear in the honest searching light of publicity. This tissue of lies went on to say that I had attempted to commit suicide!! and that the family insanity in me had developed itself in delirium tremens!!!! from my intemperate habits!!!!!! "The dastardly fiend!" I exclaimed, "so the sacrilegious monster would even desecrate my poor mother's and father's graves! for what? to bury his life-long victim alive in a Madhouse. It is true, but worse, far worse than that, this unscrupulous demon would, without one touch of remorse, brand with a triple hereditary taint of insanity his only son! at least his only legitimate son, who will have the quite sufficient misfortune of inheriting the name of so infamous a father." "Yes--'pon my soul it's too bad," said the Attorney, "but I'm happy to tell you that I have now got you the £500 a-year for your life." I knew by this, though all papers but the conveniently reticentTimes had been kept from me, that the public indignation must be astir, and making things rather unpleasant for my Lord D ERBY'S creditable Colonial Secretary, in which I was right, for I afterwards heard that not only the people here were holding committees and meetings every day on the outrage of which I had been the victim; and the Somersetshire Yeomanry were determined upon going mounted to London, and pulling his house about his ears if I were not released; but that his Butler could literally scacely stand under the loads of letters he had to bring in every morning of imprecations and threats, by no means anonymous, and as poor Prince A LBERT was then living (for our little selfish, sensous, inane and carnal Queen would not care if all her subjects were equally distributed in Madhouses, or pounded in mortars), my Lord D ERBY was sent for in hot haste by her Majesty, and told, either I must be instantly set at liberty or his Colonial Secretary must resign; for the outrage, or rather the scandal, was too great; for that's the only thing they dread, being quite of T ARTUFFE'S  opinion que pecher en secret n'est pas pecher, ce ne que l'eclat qui fait le crime$5$. Now, my woman's intuition and common sense told me that something of this sort must be going on, or I should never have heard a syllable of the £500 for my life. So in reply to Mr. H YDE'S obliging communication, I said; "What! are they trying to make me out an idiot as well as a maniac, that they, or you, should suppose after such an irreparable culminating outrage as he has inflicted upon me by this incarceration, I will let that scoundrel Sir E DWARD off on the beggarly pittance I would have accepted before it? and oblige him by vegetating upon it in the exile of some living tombe, for the rest of the life he has so poisoned at every source. No thank you." "Well." said the Attorney, who had at that time received his bribe, to say nothing of breathing the air of Downing-street, and being brought into personal contact with the Magnates of THE PARTY, which would do to brag among the snobocracy of Ely-place, Highgate, and Langport for the rest of his life. "Well," said he, "Sir E DWARD has shown me his rental, and how he is tied up, and he really cannot"--"Pray Mr. H YDE ," said I, interrupting him; "are you Sir E DWARD'S solicitor or mine?" Whereupon, not finding it convenient or agreeable to endure any probing, he scrambled up all his papers, and said, taking out his watch--"Bless me, I shall lose the train," and darted off out of the room.

The Next day. Dr. O ILY G AMMON R OBERTS, whom I had known a long time, called upon me. He had just had the supreme felicity of becoming Lord P ALMERSTON'S medical attendant, and is just the smooth, mellifluous, double-dealing, Jesuitical| personage, who would be happy to accept a reversionary emetic from any of the peers or peresses whom he attends, (or) through an infidel, to do any amount of canting with Lord S HAFTESBURY in Exeter Hall in the morning, or any amount of pimping for Lady S HAFTESBURY all the evening. The dear Conservatives having fallen upon evil days, via their Colonial Secretary, was of course nuts to the dear Whigs, though as far as any amount of dirty work, back-stair climbing, and athletic, indefatigable, political, and every other sort of jobbery, the two parties are in reality "one concern;" and having the same "bonnets," during their alternate ins and outs, always know the exact thimble the pea lurks under. Well, Dr. O ILY G AMMON came, and his manner was perfect emulsion of almonds when I told him of Mr. H YDE'S audacious proposition about the £500 a year. He urged me to be firm and not take a doit less than a thousand a year; which, as he truly said, was little enough after such an outrage. "For which," said I, "no money could compensate." "Very true," said he, and after assuring me of the universal indignation and sympathy my case had excited; he took his departure, promising soon to call again. The plot was now evidently thickening, for the next morning the fair S OPHIA, alias S PARROW came twittering into my room, and said a groom had ridden out in such haste that the horse was covered with foam to tell Mr. H. he must go to London without a moment's delay; and "I cannot but think and hope," said she, "that it means some good to your ladyship." About five o'clock H. returned from town, more fat, frowsy, head-wagging, and eye-rolling, than ever; but desperately civil! and aux petits soins$6$, and asked me if I would like a drive as far as Richmond? I said, "Yes, amazingly, provided Miss H. went with us." "Oh yes, certainly," said he, with a smile, or rather a dyspeptic leer, which he meant to be half prevenant, half paternal, but which only made him look as

"Hyenas in love are supposed for to look, or A something between A BELARD and old B LUCHER ."$7$

"Oh, certainly, for your ladyship has quite bewitched my little M ARY, and she cries every time a servant is ent up to you with anything instead of her." Never was anything so beautiful! as that always lovely view from Richmond Hill upon that glorious July evening, with the golden sun steeping it in light and turning the "Silver Thames" into a perfect Pactolus, while the fresh breeze from the river was real luxury after may neary three week's incarceration in that large, but low-ceilinged stuffy room, with its nailed won windows. And as caged birds are always wild when they do get out, M ARY H ILL and I took to running races, and not the least part of the pleasure of which to me was seeing old fat H_____ "Like panting Time, toiling after us in vain,"$8$ and puffing and blowing like a steam engine; till he made almost as much noise as all his ten children with their hoops and skipping ropes under my windows of a morning, when, groaning in my cage, I used to say, "Why skip ye so ye little H ILLS ?"

By the time we got back to T_____ L_____ the evening was fast closing in, and though as always I had an invitation to sit below in a really magnificent groined lofty roofed banquetting room, some 50 feet long, that they had there, I always preferred my own society, even with my own ills, to Mrs. H_____ and all her Ills,--which with greatest Ill of all--her husband--made a party of thirteen of them, which yet did not compirse all the ills that flesh is heir to.

Endnotes

 * 1) pis aller: last resort
 * 2) prospec: ????
 * 3) faits mes premières amies: made best friends
 * 4) il fait volte face: he about-faced, changed loyalties, changed sides
 * 5) que pecher . . . fait le crime: that to sin in secret is not to sin, it is the revelation that makes it a crime
 * 6) aux petits soins: with delicate care
 * 7) The Fudge Family in Paris: Letter V (Thomas Moore)
 * 8) Prologue on the Opening of Drury Lane Theatre (Samuel Johnson): "And panting Time toil'd after him in vain."