Bedlam Read online

  “Upon whose judgment?” I said.

  This interruption was ignored, unless you counted Mr. Poynder’s patiently repeating, Mr. Matthews continuing to be insane the committee had reconsidered my application with great attention and unanimously concluded they could not, consistent with their duty, discharge my husband, unless so directed by a higher authority.

  “And who would that be, Almighty God?” was my next question, also ignored. A possible twitch about the lips of one or two was assurance of nothing more than a little surreptitious amusement.

  The members were, however (Mr. Poynder continued), desirous to acquaint me that I might easily apply for a writ of habeas corpus to bring my husband before a judge, who would determine on the propriety of his detention. It’s long been the right of every British citizen, I was reminded, to live free of arbitrary imprisonment.

  At this information I nodded and said nothing, wondering if this was their way to signal that some among them had sympathy for my case or only to shift the responsibility elsewhere while easily increasing the difficulty and expense for me. Probably all three at once, as well as others invisible, in undiscoverable proportions.

  Next, Lean and Fat were asked if they approved the answer of the committee. Craning round, I spotted them at last, seated along the back wall. They bleated out their approval. A further statement read out by Mr. Poynder informed them they’d be apprised should the committee receive any further application from Mrs. Matthews—who was me, standing right there, by every appearance voice-deprived, and rights- too, if these stranglers had their way.

  “On whose judgment,” I said again, louder, “is my husband insane?”

  The time for this question must have arrived, for all eyes now went to a certain member of the committee, a man perhaps forty, with a head in the shape of an egg, the smaller, top end adorned with cornsilk hair indented in a ring just above the ears, and with a long nose and keyhole mouth high up under its drooping tip. This individual, who for some reason had been making a great show of being engrossed in sketching with pencil on an overlarge sheet of paper in front of him, next to his hat, now glanced up and, seeing all eyes on him, though I think he knew the whole time what was going on and only feigning this ridiculous insouciance, tilted his head toward the man beside him—more play-acting, because the man only looked at him blankly—and then, as if he’d just had something crucial cleared up, rose to his feet to address me as from a considerable height.

  “Madam, I am Dr. Monro, physician here. I know we’ll have met upon the day or thereabouts of your husband’s admission—”

  “No, I never saw you before. My husband is not here by my consent, and I was not informed of his admission until a week after it was effected.”

  This information seemed a source of shock to several on the committee. A murmur went round it.

  Monro, meanwhile, at my ungrateful behaviour, glanced pointedly about the room with a look that said, Do you see what I mean? Do you see? before he turned smiling hard-eyed to me. “However that may be, Mrs. Matthews, it is my unhappy duty to assure you your husband is completely mad. But this don’t mean his condition won’t change with isolation, rest, and care of the sort we’ve long known how to provide here at Bethlem Hospital. Madam, I know what great temptation it must be to believe a loved one well when he’s not—”

  “Well or not,” I said, “my husband’s not dangerous. I want him home with me, as the law requires, and if I can’t have him, I want to know who wants him in here. If it’s you or Mr. Haslam, then tell me. If it’s not, I want to know what higher power of government this committee is awaiting direction from. If it’s the Privy Council then tell me, so I know the charge and what I can do about it.”

  “Madam-”

  “You might also while you’re at it tell me how you can assure me my husband’s mad when after four weeks in here he never saw you.”

  “Why, that’s entirely—”

  “What colour’s his hair?”

  “I attend this hospital—”

  “What colour is my husband’s hair?”

  “Madam, you can’t expect—”

  “Admit, sir, you’re just pronouncing on him what the apothecary’s told you to pronounce.”

  “I’m doing nothing of the kind! I have been here, regularly, and yes, I have conferred, as usual, with Mr. Haslam—”

  “If Haslam’s a member of this committee, where is he? And where was he last week?”

  “—and I’ve seen your husband too, as a matter of fact, and do pronounce him totally mad, and that’s all I have to say!” Monro sat down.

  Now I was in a fury. “Who admitted my husband if not you as physician of this hospital?”

  Once more all eyes went to Monro, who, without rising from his chair, and not looking at me, for he was well aware he was not answering the question, in a trembling voice said, “Madam, I assure you Mr. Haslam’s in perfect agreement with me when I say your husband’s a most insane and deranged lunatic, and this court don’t need to call in a mere apothecary to announce the same thing all over again.”

  At this I flew into a tirade but was not so beside myself I didn’t see Monro tip Alavoine the wink, and the next thing I knew strong fingers were gripping my arm and that clown accent was in my ear. “Come along, Mrs. Nuisance—”

  And so, still crying, “Who admitted my husband?” “Why can’t I see him?” “What higher authority of government?” and “Where’s Haslam?” I was carried squirming from the room.

  Thus ended my second interview with the governors’ subcommittee of Bethlem Hospital.

  Later, walking home, my mind running the event over and over, as it will do, never quite sure whether for tips to better conduct next time or for proof the course of action it came up with was a model for future behaviour, I remembered a glimpse I had when being led out, of Mr. Lean and Mr. Fat, sitting in chairs along the back wall, both with eyes closed and heads bowed, though whether seeking divine assistance for my husband or in the ostrich way of more modern mortals, my escort allowed me no leisure to determine.

  Next, to the continuing detriment of the shop, I turned my energies to making my case in writing before the full Court of Governors of Bridewell and Bethlem, the two institutions—house of correction and hospital—at that level being jointly administered (which tells you something). This fact I discovered from my conversation with Lean and Fat, the Bethlem subcommittee comprising a small group of these governors serving in rotation, whereas the Court of Governors of both institutions meets not even monthly.

  And so, while I waited for an answer to my petition from the larger, slower-moving assembly, I spent another six weeks being stopped at the gate by my Cerberus, Bulteel.

  One warm spring morning, after being turned away as usual, meaning that in the more than three months of Jamie’s incarceration I had seen him only once, and with as yet no answer or even acknowledgment to my petition to the Court of Governors, I was walking back home down Broker Row, at the east perimeter of Bethlem, when it struck me the commotion issuing from inside was louder and more anguished than I ever heard it. First I tried to convince myself it must be my own imagination, but I didn’t think so. And it wasn’t my being downwind, for there was no breeze and the din had been no less loud at the front gate. Some dire celestial alignment? The only kind I ever knew to affect them was the moon—they’re not called lunatics for nothing—but the full was weeks away. And yet this morning the noise was extraordinary, the wailing and howling of Banshees, for just as infants before language has harnessed their brain utter sounds they never will again, so lunatics make noises unavailable to sanity.

  Reaching London Wall, I looked along there, and seeing the door to Haslam’s house that Jamie had showed me the morning he brought me to Bethlem, I climbed the steps and hammered away until a maid, a blithe little thing with a pretty face, opened the door a crack to tell me Mr. Haslam was where he usually was, in the Dead House.

  Pressing a coin into her hand, I said,
“Sixpence to take me there. I have urgent business with him.”

  As she peered at the money I asked her why the patients were so noisy today.

  “First week of May it’s warm enough,” she murmured.

  “For what?”

  “Why,” she said, extricating her gaze from the coin to look at me as if I might be a lunatic myself not to know, “to be bled.”

  “Who? Not all of them- ?”

  She nodded. “All strong enough, who ain’t incurable. It’s policy. Next, vomits once a week for four weeks. Then purges, to the end of September.” She smiled. “After that, the cold weather is medicine enough.”

  Looking cunning, or pretending to, she told me to wait.

  “If it’s not while you bring me Mr. Haslam,” I said, “you owe me sixpence.”

  Laughing, she pushed the coin back at me and was gone.

  Now I peered into the hallway, which was not the one Haslam had led me down from his office but the one to his own residence. But there was more light on the stoop than inside, and all I could see was rattan carpeting and bare walls, which seemed fresh-painted, in a cheerful plum.

  Eventually a handsome woman, though pale and frightening thin, came to the door with a girl perhaps five years old clutching her skirts. She wore her straight black hair cut short and was sombrely dressed in a plain charcoal gown. Her left hand, when not covering her mouth as she coughed, she kept lightly at the back of the girl’s head. The girl was sturdy and fair-haired: what her mother was not. She gazed at me saucily, but when I smiled at her, she grew abashed and hid her face in her mother’s skirts.

  Though Jamie had told me this was Haslam’s house, it never occurred to me he’d have a family, but why wouldn’t he? Wasn’t this the better part of him I didn’t want to know, so my enmity could remain unalloyed?

  Mrs. Haslam’s impatience to be brought to the door by a stranger was communicated by a glance at my basket, as if I had something to hawk. But her maid must have told her what I wanted, for without inquiring anything of me she said her husband would be somewhere in the main building, she didn’t know where.

  “The Dead House,” I said. “I was to meet him there.”

  “Then I’m afraid you’ve come to the wrong door. This is his residence.”

  “Yes, but the porter had no—”

  “I’m sorry, you must make another appointment—” She was already stepping back to close the door. Before it reached the eyes of the little girl I cast her a glum look, which she answered with a grin as her foot shot out to help the door along, so it slammed in my face. Immediately it opened again upon the sight of her mother extricating her from her skirts, so she could apologize to me, which, once she was facing me and knew she must, she readily did. As she lisped the formula, her mother looked at me apologetic, and I liked them both. Then her mother bowed her head and stepped back. Once more the door closed, and that time it stayed that way.

  A week later I received a letter from Mr. Poynder informing me of two developments. First, by a legal process he failed to specify, on May 2nd, 1797, my husband had been brought before Lord Kenyon, as Lord Chief Justice of the Court of the King’s Bench, in his house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. After conversing with him, Lord Kenyon was satisfied my husband was a maniac. Second, on May 6th the Bethlem subcommittee passed a motion ordering that until their further instruction, the wife of Mr. Matthews not be permitted any visit to Bethlem Hospital, the patient’s disorder being manifestly exacerbated in consequence of her company.

  This letter I could only stare at, saying Haslam.

  JOHN HASLAM

  1798

  MONRO

  “So, Haslam,” Monro said to me two months after my book went on sale, “you never told me you’re a scribbler. Let’s see this great work of yours that’s set the medical world a-buzz.”

  “A trifle, Dr. Monro, I assure you. My book has been held in greater esteem than its intrinsic merits could justify.”

  “No, no! Don’t play humble, man. Fetch us a copy!”

  His muddy boots were up on his desk, a magazine open in his lap. This was in March, one of Monro’s rare days in from Hackney. For two or three hours I’d taken him round to those patients most in need of him. Excluded from their number were the several who’d died in need of him since he was last here, in January. Now he’d summoned me for a nominal consultation, or so I thought. For once I was grateful he had, because sometimes he was gone before I knew it, and I wanted to ask him why he’d given instructions for the removal to the incurable wing of so harmless a lunatic as James Matthews, for on the face of it this would mean we were keeping him forever. But upon entering Monro’s office and being called a scribbler by a man whose father had written a good book but who himself, having no mind, never would and so hated all writers, I suddenly regretted my recent good luck in becoming a celebrated English author.

  Still breathing hard from my dash, I handed him his copy.

  “You’re going to have to inscribe this, you know,” he warned me.

  “Yes, I was intending—”

  “‘Observations on Insanity.’ Now there’s a title. “‘By John Haslam. Late of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge.’ Why, I never knew you were at Cambridge, John. But no degree, eh? Too bad—‘Member of the Corporation of Surgeons.’ A surgeon as well? A man of many talents, evidently. ‘And Apothecary to Bethlem Hospital.’ Now, that I did know.”

  Next he read the dedication, frowning, for it makes no mention of the physician. After determining it didn’t continue overleaf, he directed a bleak look at me and then fell to skimming. “‘Gentleness of manner and kindness of treatment…’ Yes, that’s our policy here all right. ‘Knowledge of the recesses of a lunatic’s mind is beyond the limits of our attainment…’ Hear, hear…What’s this?” His eyes came up from the page. “‘Lunatics should never be deceived’?”

  “Your father John believed the same,” I assured him, too quickly. “Not if we’d obtain their confidence and esteem—”

  “What happened to obedience?” He was back reading. “Hmm. I didn’t know we were wrapping bare feet now. In flannel, no less. What next? Night-caps?”

  “Only the worst cases. They—”

  “We’ll take it out of your salary.” This was humour with dead eyes. “You know, Haslam, it’s a queer thing to be sitting here gleaning, from a book I didn’t even know was being written, information I never knew about a hospital I happen to be physician of—”

  “Yes, I can appreciate—but the opportunity so rarely befalls men busy as ourselves to sit down and—”

  He was tapping the cover with a paint-stained fingernail. “So what exactly’s your god-damn point? What’s your conclusion from your year ‘observing insanity’ around here? Jesus Christ. I never knew we had somebody knocking about the place so mad for attention. I suppose the King’s madness has everybody ready to listen to mad-doctors, whoever they might be. You know what Dad used to say, and his dad before him? ‘Madness is a distemper there’s no use to say anything of to anybody.’”

  “It’s been two and a half.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve been here two and a half years.”

  “Two and a half, eh? Do you know how many years Monros have been ‘observing insanity’ at Bethlem?”

  “Seventy.”

  “Is it that long? I guess you know people call us ‘the other Georges,’ eh? Like the kings? Only, none of us is named George, and ours ever was the Kingdom of the Mad. Ha! ha! It’s been forty years since Dad answered William Battie’s mistaken optimism when the bastard attacked us in his Treatise on Madness—”

  “ ‘Like a man whose every word communicates resentment of its instigation.’”

  “What?”

  “Someone said that of your father’s answer, which was a brilliant one.” It was a relief to be able to say this without dissemblance. Old Monro’s Remarks on Dr. Battie’s Treatise was bloody good. Old Monro might have been a quacking madman (as someone once called him), but he h
ad a nice sense of the refractoriness of the condition.

  “It’s always been a mystery to me,” Monro was saying, “how a man like Battie ever got himself taken seriously. Oh, I suppose he helped found St. Luke’s Hospital, but to hear him ramble on about curing madness you’d think he was taking a piss on the wrong side of the hedge when the brains was passed out—”

  “‘From Punch’s forehead wrings the dirty bays.’”

  “What?”

  “From a poem on him.”

  “Ah. He deserved poetry all right, the cunt.” He was fumbling for my book. He held it up. “So what’s your stand, Haslam? What’s your theory?”

  I shrugged. “You’ll get no metaphysics from me, Dr. Monro. In my view, theories about madness are another form of it, parasites dining on a tumour. I disentangle myself as quick from their theories of madness as I do from theories of the mad. Most books on the subject are romances, hooks baited for the emolument of the author. Grinning advertisements for private madhouses, mumbo-jumbo catalogues for their hotbed nurseries that never produce a human crop fit to be transplanted into society.”

  “That’s my boy! Ho ho ho!” But this outburst came across less hearty than intended. While the eyes lingered on me with ostensible approval, the face registered a slow succession of thoughts that grew by turns more gloomy and tormented until the little mouth burst out with, “But what d’you actually say, man? There must be thousands of words between these bloody boards! God-damn! Excellent things about us, by the Jesus!”

  “Oh yes,” I said quickly. “That’s why it’s dedicated to the governors—”

  “Yes, yes, very politic. You’re referring, of course—” he went flipping back to the dedication—”to those ‘vigilant and humane Guardians of an Institution which performs much good to Society, by diminishing the severest among human calamities.’ Hear! hear! I say again.” Now the disappointment in his eyes was pathetic to see.