Part 4

After this LYNDHURST swindle of my papers, Miss R—— went to her brother, who was then in London: this was in the autumn of 1857. The part Mr. H—— had acted on that occasion first raised my suspicions against him: but alas, what is the use of a prophetic spirit, when one has nobody to help one? That is no visible earthly help; and no wonder if long before this time I had reversed the injunction to fear GOD and love my neighbour, for I love GOD more and more however much bitter wrong He may for some inscrutably wise purpose allow, but I fear my neighbour most “consumedly.” Sir LIAR had of course found out my new abode by the LYNDHURST conspiracy, so the creature lost no time in being at his dirty work again. Accordingly, towards the end of October I was brought up a card with “Mrs. S—LL—” upon it, accompanied by a message that the lady (!) wanted particularly to see me. I enquired where this lady came from, and was told she had just arrived from London by the train; had engaged a bed here, but had not a vestige of luggage, or any servant with her. I told them to say I was not well enough to see any one; and to repeat that answer while she remained; and that whatever business she wanted to see me upon she could state in writing. I then told them to send Mrs. C—— to me; and when she came I begged of her to watch this woman narrowly, as I strongly suspected she was some fresh Spy of that infamous wretch Sir L. The next morning Mrs. C—— came to report herself, and said she was sure she was some “infamous baggage,” by her theatrical manner; and saying that she would get a divorce from her husband, if she knew where he was; but she did not know whether he was dead or alive, or anything about him (_that_ there could be no doubt of), that she had come here to teach music and give theatrical readings, for which she wanted to hire Mrs. C——’s ball-room, which Mrs. C—— refused to let to her; she then asked all sorts of questions about me, and said, she _must_ see me. Mrs. C—— coolly told her that the word was rather inappropriate. She then, it appears first by bribery, and then by bullying, sought to make the chamber-maid tell her the number of my _bed_-room, and to give her a room next to it; upon which the chamber-maid very nearly insulted her, but thought it better to trick her instead, so took her to a room on the second floor, and quite in another wing of the house. The next morning she returned to the charge of trying to see me, and gave her a _written_ prospectus of all the great masters who had taught her singing and the _harp_, and all the great people whom she had taught; but in this list I did not fail to remark that both the teachers and the taught were all conveniently dead; this and the mention of the harp brought a sudden conviction into my mind _who_ the _soi-disant_ Mrs. S—LL— really was, especially when Mrs. C—— talked of her exceeding vanity about her personal appearance (though now an old woman), and above all about her hand, and when I asked for a personal description of her, and the inventory given was the pale hay-coloured hair, faded blue eyes, and aquiline nose, I felt sure that she was no other than the _soi-disant_ Mrs. BEAUMONT, _alias_ Miss LAURA DEACON, for whom I and my children had been turned out of a home: who had with some half-dozen predecessors been the mistress of Colonel KING when he lived at Craven Cottage, Fulham, and who, when he discovered the game she was carrying on with Sir LIAR, turned her off; however settling £200 a year upon his poor deformed eldest child by her, GEORGIANA—which £200 a year I was told was _all_ she had to live upon; as Sir LIAR with his usual generosity (!) _now_ gave her nothing; though when he kept her in his fine Pompeian house in Hill-street, and the wretch dared to take my name (as she did after at petty German courts, which was done by her monster Keeper, of course, not only to insult but to defame me), a bill of £300 for a grand piano came in to me from D’ALMAINE, that this wretch had had; for which blunder poor D’ALMAINE made me every possible apology. You will see precisely _why_ I bore you with all these details. When I told Mrs. C—— my suspicions, she said she would get her out of the town as soon as possible, but first warn the tradespeople about her, or she might run up bills in my name as part of her instructions. “Do,” said I, “for I understand she never pays any one.” Mrs. C—— did so—therefore she did not succeed in hiring the assembly or any other rooms for her _readings_, or getting any pupils. And Mrs. C—— insisted upon her leaving this hotel, which she did; going to Weston-super-Mare, but forgetting to pay her hotel bill here, which she has never done to this day. About three weeks after Mrs. C—— brought me word that she was still at Weston, teaching singing in the boarding school of a Miss R——, but that Miss R—— had said she knew this Mrs. S—LL— to be a woman of such character that she would not be seen in the street with her. No wonder English misses are what they are, when this is a specimen of English schoolmistresses. Upon hearing this I set off to Weston to call upon this Miss R——, and asked her if it was true that she had said so? She replied, “Yes—I certainly did say so.” “What,” cried I, starting up with indignation, “you dare place a woman about the young girls confided to your care whom you _know_ to be so infamous that you would not be seen in the street with her? Shame, shame upon you.” “Oh,” said the “genteel” Miss R——: “I only do it for their singing, she teaches in such a very superior manner to the provincial teachers, and can teach them so much more.” “Of _that_ I have no doubt,” I said, leaving Miss R——’s room, and house. I then went to ROGERS’S hotel to see if they knew anything about her, and Mrs. ROGERS said she had slept there one night, but that Mr. ROGERS had turned her out the next morning: and that there was a Mr. and Mrs. S—— staying in the hotel, Mr. S—— being a solicitor and a most dissipated man; and that one day he met the waiter on the stairs carrying up Mrs. S—LL—’S card to Mrs. S——, and that he (Mr. S——) took the card off the salver, and looking at it said, “Pooh! pooh! Mrs. S—LL— indeed, come, tell her that I know who she is, and not to presume to try it on by attempting to scrape acquaintance with my wife.” Having gained this additional information, I went to Whereat’s library, where seeing her programmes for a reading from the ‘Lady of Lyons,’ I wrote under her name, “_alias_ Mrs. BEAUMONT, _alias_ Miss LAURA DEACON, _maitresse en titre_ to Sir E—— B—— L—— and half a score more,” and I told ARTHUR KINGLAKE, the Weston magistrate, he had better warn the tradespeople about her, as she paid no one. He said she was already in debt all over the place. About a week after this I was favoured with a letter from a pettifogging solicitor in Bath, a Mr. P——, upon the part of Mrs. S—LL—, to say that if I did not instantly send her £50, she would bring an action against me for defamation. To which I replied she must be aware that no one having the misfortune to be dependant upon Sir E—— B—— L—— ever had £5, let alone £50, at their disposal; but as for the action, the sooner he brought it the better: only according to my knowledge of English law, the little _contretemps_ of Mr. S—LL— being lost or mislaid, might render it a difficult process. However, after several more applications for the £50, I was duly served with a summons to appear in the Queen’s Bench at the suit of Mrs. MARIA S—LL— “she having obtained the permission of Sir E—— B—— L—— and Mr. L—— to bring the said action.” But not a word about Mr. S—LL—. I wrote to Mr. HENRY H—— in London, Mr. C—— H——’s brother and partner, to put in an appearance for me; Mr. C—— H—— being conveniently ill at Longport. I was obliged to employ a little reptile of an attorney of this town of the _name_ of T—— (by the bye he has a niece, a young lady of 18, _qui chasse bien de race_, for she has just been distinguishing herself in divers cases of shoplifting, and stole a valuable casolette of Lady TAUNTON’S at the recent ball given to Captain SPEKE). I now saw that my best card would be to send him to London to that profligate attorney Mr. S——, who said he knew all about her, and ascertain beyond a doubt her _real_ name. But Mr. H——, ever alive to the interests of the Conservative party, telegraphed in hot haste for this Mr. T—— to go to him; and no doubt to give him his lesson in the particular trickery and chicanery required to foil me and protect the party. I can only hope that where he is now gone, his fidelity may be rewarded by meeting many distinguished members of “the party” who will there be able to thank him _warmly_! Well, the reptile T—— went to town, and his report was that Mr. S—— had said, “Well, I first knew her years ago, when I was articled to old BICKET. She used to come to our office about a deed of annuity for £200, that a Colonel somebody was settling upon her, and was a lovely young creature then.” “But her name, her name, Mr. T——,” I broke in. “Oh, her name,” said the wretch, biting his lips and his ears burning scarlet, “why I—a—that is—I ascertained _positively_ that she _is_ a married woman, but I quite failed in finding out her name”!!!!!

“Do you take me for an idiot,” said I, “that you _dare_ trump up such a clumsy, bare-faced lie? Your instructions have been to _sell_ me, in order to screen that unprincipled blackguard Sir E—— L—— and the ‘party,’ and therefore not to divulge his infamous mistress’s name to me, forgetting in your shallow craft, that of all things marriage requires identity, and that you _could_ not have positively ascertained that this creature was a married woman, which you know she is _not_, and yet have failed to find out in what name she was married”!! After muttering something about my being so sharp upon him, the wretch pretended to be highly offended, and rushed out of the room. For truly says ALFONSO KARR, _On ne peut avoir de plus grand tort, que d’avoir raison contre tout le monde. Et moi, j’ai ce grand tort là, et on ne me le pardonne pas._

This contemptible fellow did not again make his appearance till three days before the sham action was to come on. “Let me advise you, Lady L——,” said the wretch, “to try to stop it by buying off Mrs. S—LL—’S solicitor. I’ll manage it for you for a £5 note.” “In the first place,” said I, gulping down my rage, and trying to be calm, “I think £5 more than all the attorneys in England body and soul are worth. In the next place you and Mr. H—— must really think my folly quite commensurate to your and his knavery and to Sir E—— L——’s infamy. But tell him, or tell both of them for me, that were this room piled with gold up to the ceiling, and I was suffocating under it, I would not give a single coin of it to play that ruffian’s game, and write myself an ass, to have it said _I_ had bribed them to stop a sham action that they can never bring.”

“Oh well, if you _won’t_ be advised by your solicitor”——“I never asked your advice, I employed you to do my work, and like most of your tribe, you have done the Devil’s instead, and sold me—but I won’t sell myself to please you.” No sooner did the special pleader in London see the citation to the Queen’s Bench, when I sent it up, than he said, “Lady L—— is quite right; this bears farce and fraud upon the face of it”; and accordingly the day _before_ S—LL— _v._ L—— was to come on, the suit was withdrawn. What a pity I did not oblige them by buying it off; and what could that charming injured man Sir E—— L—— do, but incarcerate such a wretch in a madhouse, which is the only safe place for wives not wanted, and who _won’t_ and _can’t_ be fooled?

Remarkably true as far as that loathsome brute Sir E—— is concerned, is JEAN PAUL’S assertion, that the past and the future are written in every face, for what a fiendish past and what a hellish future are written in that worst bad man’s face. HOTTEN wrote to me the other day saying that in the memoir of THACKERAY he is bringing out, THACKERAY’S feud with Sir L—— is alluded to, but it is stated it was subsequently arranged; but it is not all clearly told _how_, and could I give him any particulars on the subject? I said I could not, and that I had always respected THACKERAY’S loathing of and utter contempt for the charlatan and arch hypocrite, as he had never personally injured or offended THACKERAY, who only honestly detested him for his unredeemedly infamous life, and the intense meanness of his nature. I had never heard of any intercourse being effected between them, but if there had been any such jobbed up, no doubt the _vaurien_ venal literary clique to which he belonged had concocted it (most likely that blackguard DICKENS). Well, after the S—LL— affair, the ruffian tried his old plan of starving me out by not paying the beggarly pittance he professed to give me, though he had been warned by friends (if he has any, for though plenty of _cameraderie_, there is and _can_ be no friendship among the wicked) and foes, not to drive me to extremities. “Truly,” says RICHTER, “the devil invented seeking and his grandmother waiting,” and I was nearly worn out with both. The month of June, 1858, had arrived, and the Hertford election was to take place on the 8th, a Wednesday, I think. The Sunday before I was in bed with one of my splitting headaches, from ceaseless worry of mind and want of rest. I got up, and in a perfect agony prayed to GOD to direct me, to send me some help in my cruel, cruel position. I went back to bed exhausted, and the sudden thought struck me, I would go to the Hertford election, and publicly expose the ruffian. Aye; but how? I was penniless, and three quarters in Mrs. C——’s debt. Never mind; she was a good woman, and I did put her goodness to the test. I rang for her and said, “Mrs. C——, I am deeply in your debt; but I want to get more into it. I want to go to Hertford, and publicly expose that monster; you must lend me the money to do so, and come with me, for I cannot go alone; it is your only chance of being paid. I know the dastardly, cowardly villain well; public exposure is the only thing his rottenness fears. For as long as I can beggar myself in rascally lawyers, whom he can always ‘manage,’ or trust to the timid, and imbecile milk and waterings of _soi-disant_ friends, who are in reality my worst enemies, and rivet the wrong their pusillanimity succumbs to, the Fiend only laughs at me and them.” “Very well,” said she, “I’ll do it.” “Then, like a good soul, you must do more. I want some giant posters printed, to placard all over the town of Hertford, with simply these words:

“‘Lady B—— L—— requests the Electors of Herts to meet her at the Corn Exchange this day, Wednesday, June 8, 1858, before going to the Hustings.’”

But I told her not to get them done at a common printing office, so as to have it talked of all over _this_ town. She said she’d have them done at the private printing-office of my chemist, whom she could trust. On the Tuesday, by the 3.20 p.m. train, we started, but instead of going the direct way by London—for fear of meeting Sir LIAR or any of his gang—we went a round which, with the usual delays of the trains, made it 11 at night before we got to Bedford; so that the _last_ train for Hertford had started half-an-hour before, and it was three mortal hours before post horses could be got for love or money; which threw us out dreadfully, and oh those mortal hours of slow crawling with jaded horses, the remaining miles; and when at last we arrived my head was burning and I had cold shivers in every limb; while there was the pale summer moon setting on the one side, and the red summer sun rising on the other; so that as usual I was between two fires, as I entered the little dirty mean town of Hertford and drove up to the ‘Dimsdale Arms.’ Mrs. C—— I told to give the boots of the inn a sovereign, to instantly (it was then 5 o’clock a.m.), paste up my posters all over the town; and he worked so zealously that before seven they _were_ all over the town.

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 brougham 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 LIAR’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 PALMERSTON’S bastard, the _soi-disant_ 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, GOD 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 EDWARD EARLE BULWER 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. STEPHEN AUSTIN, 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 as 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, “GOD bless you,” when I went.