Bedlam Read online

  “And the war, O Vates?” Incledon wants to know. “When’s it over?”

  “Soon,” Braham announces.

  But the one everybody looks to is Jerdan, who grimly shakes his head. “In an age of banks, credit, and the mechanized production of weaponry, in an age when, as Mr. Paine has said, there are men who get their living by armed conflict and make it their business to keep up the quarrels of nations, war will be simply the normal state of things.”

  “I wouldn’t speak that name aloud, William,” Incledon mutters, “unless you want us all disembowelled and hanged.”

  “You don’t need to be a republican,” Jerdan calmly replies, “to know Paine’s right about that much.”

  In his more playful moods, Jerdan likes to have fun with my hopes of Philippe Pinel.

  “So, Haslam,” he says. “Could you tell us once again, slowly, how you reckon Pinel’s visit is going to help you free this raving lunatic Matthews, whom word has it you enjoy a natural affinity with?”

  In reply—silently cursing I ever confided my inchoate plans to my good friend and now knowing I only did so out of a guilty fear it was more selfish pride than concern for my patient that would have me working against the wisdom of Liverpool and the British Government—I say I hope to alert Pinel to the dubious circumstances of Matthews’ incarceration.

  “Tell me, sir, if I have got this straight,” Jerdan says, with the same amused detachment he showed as when I first told him. “You’re looking to a Frenchman on a tour to help you extract a mad Welshman from an English madhouse run by yourself.”

  “That’s it!”

  “Sir, on behalf of those who love you, let me wish you every success in this remarkable international-flavoured endeavour.”

  A favourite topic with Jerdan was how the administration of Bethlem actually worked, when Monro had all the power while I had all the responsibility and when the steward and matron, who were in charge of the keepers and gallery maids, answered to Monro, who was never there, and when the clerk was a sphinx who answered to who-knew-who and the surgeon a drunk who took his orders solely from Mr. Chivas and Mr. Haig. “No wonder they call it Bedlam!”

  “Only in the street,” I reply. “Inside, everybody knows the administration is John Haslam and John Haslam is the administration. For inside those walls Haslam is God and produces law and order from his own mouth.”

  “Pen, don’t you mean!” Braham exclaims.

  “Ha ha!” cries Incledon. “God Himself now lays hold of His own instrument to ejaculate how passing fine His world is!”

  “On paper tablets,” rejoins Braham, “that reveal neither prescription nor proscription but cock-and-bull inscription. The Ten Com-mendments!”

  “I don’t know how this can be so,” trills Kitchiner in his sweet sing-song, “for I see it all so clearly: Apothecary Haslam seated at a table with Surgeon Crowther, Steward Alavoine, and Matron White, the four of them gathered together to discuss treatment of cases and argue intricacies of physic, while Physician Monro sits over by the fire, for the light, introjecting sage counsel as he sketches away—”

  “The truth is,” I glumly confess, “we all labour despairing and alone in dire circumstances, and it’s the patients who pay.”

  “But if Bethlem don’t work, John,” Jerdan puts to me, “why are you so dead against private madhouses?”

  The mock solicitude of this is a call for one of my speeches, which goes like this:

  “I hate private madhouses because they’re advertised to suffering families by drapes flung open to show a docile lunatic in the window, chatting with his keeper over tea. I hate them as harbingers of the smiling future that’s coming, when the nasty parts will be hid away. I hate them because as soon as that lunatic shows himself unable to take his tea without first whipping out his cock and pissing in the cup, it’s a crust and water belowstairs for him. Out of mind, out of sight. Better he were on the street. At least when he’s there we know our true condition. Better any day honest grey uncertainty everywhere than this merchandising checkerboard of dazzling public proof and private darkness.”

  “Hear! hear!”

  I’m just getting started.

  “You’d think if unmedical practitioners set out to do the work of doctors, they’d learn from them something more than mystery, silence, and mumbo-jumbo. But how can a lunatic-trade expert-for-hire make a fine living if he advertises what he actually does? Spins lunatics in chairs until they pass out with blood gushing from their noses, plunges them in surprise baths of icewater or electric eels, or does nothing at all, only immerses them in a treacle of loving-kindness. The first law of advertising is you don’t sell them what it is, you sell them what it can do for them. And since here the buyer is not the lunatic but his family, what your magical nit-comb of publicly kind incarceration can do for them is comb a troublesome nit out of their hair without by the same act depositing him on their conscience. All they must do in exchange for this deceptively simple (for a reason) service is give you enough money so you can grow rich enough to open another house, and another, and that way build your empire, until all the spare lunatic nits in the kingdom have been combed out of the hair of every family genteel enough to afford their removal. That way you can retire to your estate and never have your peace disturbed by another madman until age, conscience, and isolation from the common run of mankind have worked their chemistry and made one of you.”

  Now in comes Jerdan, as Devil’s Advocate. “Nobody’s getting rich off The Retreat, that William Tuke’s opened at York.”

  “The Retreat’s just getting started. Give Tuke time. Quakers always end up wealthy, one way or another.”

  “But this is where Tuke’s money’s going.”

  “Tuke’s no better than the next self-praising pedlar. The only difference about Tuke is he’s had no medical training at all. He uncovers appalling conditions at the York hospital and so founds his Retreat on the ruined reputation of a public asylum.”

  “And didn’t the York hospital deserve it?” wonders Braham.

  “John, believe me. Tuke’s another Willis, a reverend fraud. Unless Quaking now qualifies a man to treat the insane. Unless what we’re really talking about here is that easy-as-kiss-my-arse alternative to sanity, religious conversion.”

  “From what I hear,” Jerdan puts in, “when the patient first arrives, Tuke tells him, ‘If you want the peace and benefits of a Christian household, then you’ll behave like a gentleman. If you don’t behave, you’ll miss out.’ His method, you see, is to make the patient want to be good—”

  “The moral pharmacopia might work with children. If Tuke says it works in one single case of genuine insanity, I assure you, gentlemen, he’s a liar, idiot, madman, or all three!”

  “Hear! hear!” they all cry again. “To your great good health, Mr. Haslam! May things go as well for you as things can go in living Hell-holes!”

  Now there’s no stopping me.

  “You see, Gentlemen, even when they have the best intentions, Tuke and his followers are no less charlatans than those thousand and one hucksters out hawking nerve tonics, dancing lessons, and water cures. What are these myriad purveyors of what-you-want doing but wrapping people’s wishes and anxieties in decorous packages and selling them back to them? ‘I sum up half mankind,’ observes our poet Mr. Cowper (who did the mental suffering to authorize his tally),

  And add two-thirds of the remaining half

  And find the total of their hopes and fears

  Dreams, empty dreams.

  Empty yet not unprofitable. But to retire rich, private mad-doctors must work fast and sell hard, because one day it will come to the attention of some ambitious M.P. that not only are there more mad than ever, but also those secret treatments are getting out of hand, and the worst cases of neglect and torture coming to light are far worse than they used to be. That’s when those still in the business will sell up and go into something more honest, like pimping.”

  This to three cheers for
Haslam and Bethlem, with a toast of consternation, damnation, and plague upon Tuke and all other private mad-doctors and their houses.

  But mostly we tried not to talk business. It was food and fun we had come for. We all got enough of the rest of life on the other six days. And too soon it was eleven, then midnight, and Kitchiner, who’d worked hard all day in the kitchen, would be seen biting down on yawns, and we’d nudge each other and give a sign to the servant who’d been standing by since a quarter to eleven, and he’d go for our coats. And so we’d stand up and congratulate dear good Kitchiner on his having done it once again and shake hands all round and bundle out into the night and hail carriages to take us back to our respective grindstones.

  PINEL

  On June 28th, Pinel wrote to say he was staying at The George and Blue Boar in Holborn and would arrive two days hence, at ten o’clock. Not knowing his route, I posted a keeper at Moorgate and Jenny at my London Wall door. When she ran in all flushed, I sent Rodbird to signal Bulteel to open the gates. I then took up my position outside the penny entrance, turning the latest version of my mouth-key in my pocket.

  I was flanked by Mr. Poynder, to help me with the French language, and by my father. In order to make the first impression, I had told Monro a later hour. The plan was, he—late for everything, and always amazed things had started without him—would arrive, find things had started without him, be amazed, and suspect nothing. With luck he’d arrive so late Pinel would never see him. My father was with us because at dinner on Easter Sunday (which he’s joined us for since the struggle to keep a house and home together on what his grandiose schemes provided drove my mother to an early grave), Sarah happened to mention Pinel’s visit. He practically begged to be invited along, swearing how much as a physician (as he long ago took to calling himself, though he lacks all credentials) he’s always wanted to meet him. Closer to the day he asked me who he was. When it comes to greatness my father has never scrupled. No man learns from rabble, he bitterly pronounces, meaning his patients, but I’ve never seen him bow and scrape without inspecting for flaws.

  The carriage that swung through the gate was a coach-and-six. For a man of the people, Pinel travels in style. He disembarked with a secretary, a cool, sleek individual resembling a bewigged ferret; a translator, who might have been the secretary’s sallower brother; and a ravishing consort: a specimen of the female sex so resplendent that with her coal-black hair and long narrow face she towered amongst us like a thoroughbred detained by a herd of Shetlands. The name of this tremendous beauty was Sylvie Jouval, a former lunatic, though I noticed the word Pinel used was guérie, meaning healed.

  “Ah, the perquisite of cure!” I cried like an idiot, kissing her hand, which to my surprise was thick and coarse as a scullion’s. The translator neglecting to translate, I could have kissed him too.

  As for Pinel—has a more charming rascal ever journeyed out of France? As soon as you met him you understood how a man could speed from rustic obscurity to director of the Salpêtrière Hospital. The Revolution had thrown into prominence all sorts of Frenchmen of a sweetness otherwise wasted on the desert air, but surely few with the wit and intelligence of this one. By his coarse complexion, sunk cheeks, and careless dress, he was evidently of low, rural birth, yet who better equipped than a cunning peasant to negotiate the Terror?

  Introductions completed, my father’s prostrations bemusedly received, Pinel announced the first thing he must do was kiss the hand of Peg Nicholson, the would-be assassin of the King. The second was shake that of our resident friend to the Revolution, James Tilly Matthews.

  Shall we talk on the way?

  Delighted, monsieur.

  We stopped only to pick up Alavoine, whom I’d instructed to wait for us in his quarters on the pretense he is always so available. With obsequious ceremony, the old devil went ahead unlocking doors while Pinel, his eyes darting everywhere, flowed with compliments and questions concerning this portrait, that coat of arms, that cornice. Our visitor acted enchanted by everything he saw, yet how could eyes so attentive miss the flaws and decay? How could he not wonder what it meant that our physician should be detained on business and might not appear at all? (As for our surgeon, that for the day was me, Crowther being the epitome of unpresentable.) How could Pinel not ask himself if we always scattered the chloride of lime with so heavy a hand, or was it only on visitor days, so strangers might imagine we no longer subscribe to the necessary conjunction of madness and stinking? How could he not hear the groans and cries and constant jingling of chains? Of course he heard them, but however close you watched him, you’d never know. A better indicator of the effect the place was having on our visitors was the eyes of Mlle. Jouval. The look in those glorious peepers was unmitigated dread.

  For fear the anticipation would excite her to extreme behaviour, I’d not forewarned Peg Nicholson a great man sought an introduction. A good thing, for the woman we came upon was a paragon of domestic contentment, sitting on her bed genteelly sipping tea, with a little plate of gingerbread by her. I couldn’t have arranged the tableau better myself—though I did have a hand in it. Not wanting her seen eating nothing, I’d given her a packet of gingerbread in light of her aversion, ever since she learned the King prefers brown bread, to the brown bread we serve. Her conviction seemed to be that she should not affirm his preference in bread as long as he persisted in refusing her the Crown.

  As soon as he knew who it was, Pinel rushed in and fell to one knee. This being homage befitting the queen she is in her mind, Peg extended her hand. But the timing proved unfortunate, for with the fingers Pinel feverishly pressed devoted lips against, she had just taken up a sizeable pinch of snuff, which he in his impetuosity accidentally inhaling, sent him into violent gales of sneezing. Needing both hands to contain the flying snot, he let go hers. This afforded her an opportunity to finish taking her tobacco and to sit snuffling softly as he, still down on one knee, mopped at himself with a handkerchief slipped him by his secretary. No sooner was he dried off than she once more extended the hand, which he eyed the way a hemophiliac might a rabid weasel. But this time the kiss went off without incident. Peeling away his lips and speaking through his translator, he informed her what a formidable heroine of the French people she is and will live forever in their hearts as a fearless fighter against tyranny. Her imprisonment, he added, is a call to action for those dedicated to the overthrow of oppression in all its disguises.

  As the translator spoke, Peg smiled upon him with sanguine hauteur, liking what she heard. When he finished, she said simply, addressing him, “I am Queen of England, and you and your raving, grippish friend—” nodding toward Pinel—“are my faithful subjects.”

  This statement put Pinel at a loss what to say.

  Still addressing the translator, Peg spoke into the silence. “You and your friend must now explain who I am to your fellow subjects, so they might understand, as so far they have failed to. And while you have their attention, prithee ask what’s holding up my crown.”

  “Holding up…your crown, madam?” Pinel himself asked, in a daze.

  “You heard me well enough,” she replied composedly. “Be sure to tell ‘em that if her Majesty don’t have it by sunset Friday, it’s off with the heads of every member of the male sex inside ten leagues—What is the matter with you? Are you French?”

  Pinel confessed that he was.

  “Then perhaps you can tell me. When Mrs. Carter, the English songbird, says she’s determined if she ever keeps a lap-dog or monkey, it shall be a fish, what d’you think she means?”

  Now Pinel turned to me with brimming tears and murmured, “Prendue foue par son emprisonnement. Ah, quelle dommage, monsieur. Quelle dommage tragique.”

  “Indeed, monsieur,” I confirmed. “Mad as a March hare.”

  On our way along the east gallery toward the incurable wing, our next stop being James Tilly Matthews, Pinel’s eyes continued drinking everything in, though there wasn’t much more to see than occasional sets of
eyes looking back at him through the peepholes of cell doors. This was because when I instructed Alavoine to lock up any he considered likely to cause a nuisance, he took this to mean everybody. So we walked along unannoyed by lunatics except for groans, bellows, and curses from behind cell doors—none of which was acknowledged by any of us except Mlle. Jouval, who was a perfect Aeolian harp, vibrating sympathetic to every anguished cry.

  Meanwhile, as I struggled against that silliest of expressions that comes over a man’s face while he is being praised, Pinel addressed himself to what he approved so much in my work. Principally, my reluctance to theorize. The way I eschewed empty abstractions in favour of direct engagement with the patient. As he correctly reminded me, my book was the very first on the subject of mental alienation to benefit from extensive observation and experience. Where other British practioners—Arnold, Harper, Crichton, and more egregiously negligible dunderheads (my words)—were mere scholastics, metaphysic maze-spinners, stealing from the Germans what they hadn’t pillaged from the Ancients (his words), I was active at the front, eyes and ears open, wits about me, discharging my duties with integrity, dignity, and humanity. In the personal treatment of patients, he insisted, I am far superior to the mad-doctors Cox, Perfect, and Pargeter together. Also, in a profession where most, like “King-healer” Willis, jealous of their incomes, kept their methods secret, I freely unburdened my mind on the page, unafraid to tell the world what I knew and didn’t, either way contributing to the steady advance of medical science. In a nutshell, Pinel declared me the foremost English mad-doctor, and he intended to say as much in his next book.

  Ah, the wonderful power of words, to whisk the soul to a froth of giddy embarrassment, and more wonderful still when you consider that this unutterably moving estimation of your worth is based entirely on your own written account of yourself.