Part 6

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. CLARKE, “they’ll get the worst of it.” She told me after, that when she had told T—— and L——, in the dining-room, that a 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 EDWARD is at the top of the tree.” “Well, before you are much older, you will see whether she has friends or not, and whether this villainy will pass off with impunity,” she replied. At the advent of the policemen, I got into H——’s carriage, which was in waiting. He, the _two_ keepers, Mrs. CLARKE, 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 to see me. Ah! thought I, you little know _where_ they are dragging me to! Arrived at Mr. H——’s stronghold, a very fine house in fine grounds, which had formerly belonged to the Duke of CUMBERLAND (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. CLARKE 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 GOD 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, GOD 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 gathering 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 your 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 DANAUS,” 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 CHESTERFIELD! 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 MARY 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 my brain! I never _would_ go into the grounds with my keepers, only with my dear, gentle, affectionate little MARY. 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. CLARKE 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 LYNDHURST papers and SELLER’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 friends (?) 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. CLARKE 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. CLARKE, “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 commercial 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 sycophancy, 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. CLARKE, clenching his fist, and said, “Take my word for it, you will never see Lady L—— again, 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 LIAR’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_, turned round and said, “Ah! by-the-by, Mrs. CLARKE, Sir EDWARD 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 room with 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 prayers 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 one is; 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 this 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 SOPHIA” in CRUIKSHANK’S Ballad of “Lord BATEMAN,” 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 SPARROW, 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_” was so rural! “But SPARROW,” 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 believe 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 intensely 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 zoologicaly call themselves, and who moulted her h’s in reckless profusion, came and informed me that Mr. H—— was gone to _H_ascot, 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 phantasmagoria wagging of his head, and rolling of his eyes. After having _faits mes premières amies_ with madame, oh! joy, little MARY 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. OILY GAMMON ROBERTS 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 LIAR, 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. DICKENS’S chum, the literary scamp and _debauchee_, Mr. S——, is enrolled on its staff—_il fait volte face_, and began puffing him in the most barefaced and outrageous manner. The other Commissioner was Mr. PROCTOR—BARRY CORNWALL, 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 LIAR touching some of his infamies, for there is no vice that he has left unexhausted, and no virtue unassumed. But as I told Mr. PROCTOR, 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 PEMBROKE, 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 egg orbs fearfully, phantom-hunting, as he mumbled 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 very 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 Miss RYVES 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 EDWARD’S persecutions of me, and my maid was (and thank GOD _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 DERBY’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 RYVES, which from its absurd triviality I should have indubitably have forgotten, but for the infamous lie that unscrupulous ruffian, Sir EDWARD, 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 MASSEY, was godfather to Miss RYVES’S father! whereupon she and her brothers (now, poor young men, both dead) called themselves MASSEY RYVES; 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 GRATTANS, as the great GRATTAN was my mother’s godfather, and very fond of her. But England being the land of _cozening_, that King of Cozeners and Swindlers, Sir EDWARD ——, actually had the effrontery to forge a relationship between me and his tool, to suit his own ever nefarious purposes. What matter who detected and laughed at the cheat? Lord MELBOURNE used to say that “if a lie lived only _half an hour_, it would do its work,” and upon this plan has Sir LIAR 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, an oppressively hot day, the door was unlocked, and Mr. HYDE 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 EDWARD in 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 your insanity.”

[Illustration: ROSINA, LADY LYTTON.]

This precious piece of documentary rascality set forth that both my father and mother died mad—— Now 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 not 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 reticent _Times_ had been kept from me, that the public indignation must be astir, and making things rather unpleasant for my Lord DERBY’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 scarcely 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 ALBERT was then living (for our little selfish, sensuous, inane and carnal Queen would not care if all her subjects were equally distributed in Madhouses, or pounded in mortars), my Lord DERBY 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 TARTUFFE’S opinion _que pecher en secret n’est pas pecher, ce ne que l’eclat qui fait le crime_. 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. HYDE’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 EDWARD off on the beggarly pittance I would have accepted before it? and oblige him by vegetating upon it in the exile of some living tomb, 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 EDWARD has shown me his rental, and how he is tied up, and he really cannot”—“Pray Mr. HYDE,” said I, interrupting him; “_are_ you Sir EDWARD’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.