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Title: A blighted life
A true story
Author: Lady Rosina Lytton
Release date: July 1, 2025 [eBook #76426]
Language: English
Original publication: London: The London Publishing Office, 1880
Credits: The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A BLIGHTED LIFE ***
A BLIGHTED LIFE.
A BLIGHTED LIFE.
BY THE
RIGHT HON. LADY LYTTON.
A True Story.
WITH THREE ILLUSTRATIONS.
London:
THE LONDON PUBLISHING OFFICE,
3, Falcon Court; 32, Fleet Street, E.C.
1880.
[ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.]
ILLUSTRATIONS.
EDWARD, LORD LYTTON.
ROSINA, LADY LYTTON.—(COPYRIGHT.)
ROBERT, LORD LYTTON.
PREFACE.
“THE BLIGHTED LIFE,” by the Rt. Hon. ROSINA, Lady LYTTON, with the
Supplemental Notes which seemed necessary to make it complete, is now
presented to the world in a perfect form; and the Editor hopes, that as
it is one of the most interesting, so it will prove likewise one of the
most useful of books. It details, in a highly graphic manner, a narrative
of persecution of the most base and unmanly kind, practised by a wicked
Man of great talent and resources, upon a Noble Lady, who had hardly
anything to defend her but a high spirit, a consciousness of innocence,
and a resolve not to be crushed. This man had all the help that Power,
and the Plots of guilty Associates could give him; he was himself false,
cruel, cunning, and unscrupulous; and yet he was foiled by Lady LYTTON,
alone and almost unaided, except by the Voice of Public Opinion, which
conquered the devices of both Court and Cabinet—for we believe that each
was implicated in this most foul transaction.
The Volume contains Three Portraits; one of Lady LYTTON, which is now
for the first time given to the world; but which hardly does justice
to her beauty, intellect, and grace: a Portrait of her husband, highly
flattered; for almost every low and evil passion was traced indelibly on
that odious countenance; and it was impossible to look upon him for any
time without feelings of disgust and even horror: the third is that of
her Son, the present Lord LYTTON, on whose conduct in this business we
forbear to comment; we leave the consideration of it entirely to the
public. As the handwriting of Nature developes in the features, the eyes,
the forehead, and the mouth, the true character of the soul and spirit
within, we recommend a careful contemplation of these Portraits to all
students in physiognomy, and think they will find, as they examine, a
confirmation of their own best experience in this most interesting branch
of science. Lord LYTTON the First hid his mouth with his moustache and
beard, because he was too conscious of its frightful expression to let it
be seen.
The most saddening thought that arises after the perusal of this Volume,
is, that no change has yet been made in the infamous Lunacy Laws, for
which, in the main, we have to thank our Whig Rulers. Never was a more
criminal or despotic Law passed than that which now enables a Husband to
lock up his Wife in a Madhouse on the certificate of two medical men,
who often in haste, frequently for a bribe, certify to madness where
none exists. We believe that under these Statutes thousands of persons,
perfectly sane, are now imprisoned in private asylums throughout the
Kingdom; while strangers are in possession of their property; and the
miserable prisoner is finally brought to a state of actual lunacy or
imbecility—however rational he may have been when first immured. The
Keepers of these Madhouse Dens, from long study in their diabolical art,
can reduce, by certain drugs, the clearest brain to a state of stupor;
and the Lunacy Commissioners take all for granted that they hear over the
luxurious lunch with which the Mad Doctor regales them.
Let us hope that this Volume may again call public attention to the
monstrous crimes that are perpetrated under this dreadful system; and
that it may help to unrivet only one of the brazen fetters which now bind
down our People in bondage.
The character of the main Figure in this Volume has been often drawn in
flattering colours—most usually, we fancy, by his own descriptive pen. He
has been called Poet, Novelist, Orator, Statesman, and we know not what;
but if his Wife’s Narrative, as contained in these pages, be correct,
he was assuredly about as complete a Scoundrel as ever walked in shoe
leather. And that the Narrative is strictly accurate and absolutely true,
we entertain no doubt whatever. And if so, how odious was his conduct to
that injured Lady. We believe that the man who would immure a perfectly
sane Wife in the prisons of a Madhouse would not hesitate at her murder,
if he thought himself safe. And it was in that horrible crime that Lord
LYTTON was detected, and fortunately was foiled. How well we recollect
the universal horror which the news of the deed occasioned. _The Daily
Telegraph_ was then on its last legs. It had hardly a circulation of
3,000 a day. As each new morning dawned we expected to hear of its death.
In a happy moment for the LEVY-LAWSON-LEVIS, Lady LYTTON was betrayed,
seized, and immured. The Editor saw his chance, and made the Metropolis
ring with the outrage. LEVI was saved; so also was Lady LYTTON. She was
released, as described in “THE BLIGHTED LIFE;” but to the horror and
indignation of all decent people, her betrayer and most brutal torturer
was nevertheless retained in office as Colonial Minister by the QUEEN,
who, soon after, in order to mark her high sense of his conduct, elevated
him, and his equally-infamous brother HENRY, to the peerage. A more
shameful insult, either to the People or to the House of Lords, was never
committed; but insult now seems to be the lot of us all, and so VIVAT
REGINA!
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
A BLIGHTED LIFE.
The following is a true Woman’s Record of sad suffering. Her
wrongs have driven her half mad, and we do not wonder that it
should be so, for she has sought redress in vain from almost
every source. Her trampler and her tyrant was always victorious
in every conflict. The QUEEN, as she most usually does with all
criminals, took him by the hand; petted, favoured and promoted
him; while his Victim was driven from Society into poverty and
exile, and was for years the unceasing object of abuse, slander
and libel. God pity her! May God protect and avenge her! Excuse
her language, O Reader, whenever it seems “strong,” for it is
the cry of an indignant and broken heart—it is the wild shriek
of Right, crushed under the heel of insolent and guilty Might.
SIR,—Time was, ere I grew too sick of fiction, or rather of the hollow
unprincipled _vaux rien_, who for the most part trade upon it, that your
and THACKERAY’S works were the only _novels_ that I read; because they
were the only ones independent of their indisputable talent[1] that
bore the Hall mark of sincerity, and of conveying the real feelings and
opinions of the writers; and not written up to the market standard,
whether the twaddle was to be about very little children, which costs
nothing—on paper—or underfed and overbirched boys; to say nothing of that
great charm, that intellectual aroma of their being written by educated
_gentlemen_. But your Novel I have not read, having a horror of all
things that emanate from or appear under the auspices of that patent
Humbug, Mr. CHARLES DICKENS, or any of his clique, and it is only the
having seen in the “Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine” for this month,
a review of your Novel, and an extract of your Notice, and requesting
all persons in various ranks of life, who by letter or _viva voce_,
during the last five years have told you of some persons incarcerated
in asylums, &c., &c., &c., and inviting fresh communications, &c., &c.,
&c., which induces me to furnish you with a few additional facts as
to the incarceration—villainy—so much in vogue. But don’t mistake my
motive in so doing. _I want you to do nothing for me_; for nothing can
_now_ be done, and if it could, _je connais mon Angleterre trop bien_
not to know that the English to a man are _the_ most sordid, selfish,
time-serving tuft-hunters in the whole world; Mammon being their only
god, and Self high priest: and moreover I am also too fully aware, after
25 years’ bitter experience, that wherever the literary element enters,
there _cameraderie_, expediency, clap-trap, treachery, moral cowardice
and concrete meanness are _sure_ to follow. There _is_ such a thing as
cheap chivalry, as well as cheap philanthropy, which are the only sorts
_à la porte de Messieurs les litterateurs Anglais_. And it makes all
the difference in the world to make a _cheval de bataille_ (and become
a hero upon it) of a poor man’s wrongs, who has _no_ powerful foes
to bring their masked batteries to bear upon his champion—aye, or in
the event of the victim’s being a chimney sweep’s wife—for the _same_
reason there is nothing easier than for chivalry to make a desperate
and victorious onslaught upon Soot, as psychologically as well as
horticulturally that pulverised darkness would only make the laurels
flourish the more luxuriantly. But change the venue and let the victim
only be in the upper sphere of life, without father, mother, or _money_,
while her infamous husband not only having with his brother done dirty
work for _every_ government for the last 30 years, and being moreover a
_litterateur_ whose grossly immoral plagiaries had been be-puffed by a
venal press as immortal works, for value received in government interest,
and invitations to their vulgar wives—shew me the man in England who
would move a finger that might make this Infernal Machine of occult power
_explode against himself_ to save any woman from being incarcerated in
fifty mad-houses and _bechameled_ afterwards in minced meat, as small as
that into which Puss in Boots threatened to cut the reapers, and to save
the lurch of your _true_ motto.
_Dict sans faict,_
_A Dieu deplait._
The Chivalric Philanthropist in question would immediately and most
conveniently feel that “no man had a _right_ to interfere between
another man and his wife, as this, of course, came under the category of
strictly private and family affairs.” To say nothing of the _real_ gist
of the matter, to wit the Freemasonry which exists among “gentlemen,”
(?) that each gentleman’s vices should be held sacred by any other
gentleman, as there is no knowing when their _own_ turn may come. So
the non-intervention plan is by far the best, alias the safest, both
for Parliamentary and Philanthropic humbug. How well my meanest of all
villains, and most unlimited of all blackguards knew this, when years
ago, after one of his brutal outbursts of personal violence, the cowardly
reptile said to me: “_Remember, Madame, you have neither father nor
brother, and therefore you are completely in my power._” When, 23 years
ago, I and my then infant children were turned out of our home, to make
room for one of this loathsome brute’s then strumpets, Miss LAURA DEACON,
Serjeant TALFOURD had just cooked up _his_ sham popularity-catching
Custody of Infants’ Bill. A silly friend of mine persuaded me to send
my case to him, as one of the _strongest_ and _most flagrant_ that
could possibly be. I pointed out to her that he also wrote Plays and
Poems; and knowing what utter blackguards you “literary men” are in this
country—for as old LANDOR says, “there is a spice of the scoundrel in
them all”—and therefore _he_ was not likely to risk either the puffery
or the persecution of that literary political ruffian. And I was the
Cassandra as I always am, for the “learned Serjeant” kept my papers a
few days and then returned them to me, saying, “he was very sorry he
had not _time_ to look at them.” A pretty person to bring a Bill into
Parliament, who had not _time_ to look into the most flagrant abuses
that necessitated the change in the law. True, GOD’S judgment overtook
_this_ hypocrite at last; for he who _never_ went to bed sober, after
a most eloquent diatribe against drunkenness the Bacchanalian Judge
fell back stone dead, instead of _a son ordinaire_ dead drunk. But how
_could_ this country be anything but the Land of Cant and Crime it is,
when we see the irredeemably infamous men who occupy the highest places
in literature and politics in England at the present day? Men whose
triumphant vices and poisonous example are enough to breed rottenness in
the very marrow of the nation. And they _have_ done so; more especially
their impious hypocrisy. When GOD was on earth the _only_ sin he had _no_
mercy on was hypocrisy. And why? Because it is a rank and blasphemous
forgery on Heaven. When the late Sir ROBERT PEEL wanted to make Lord
LYNDHURST Lord Chancellor, he could not do so because of the £15,000
unpaid damages hanging on him about his crim.-con. with Lady SYKES,
whereupon Mr. BARING, the present Lord ASHBURTON said, “I’ll pay the
damages for COPLEY if you’ll give me a peerage,” and this _creditable_
guardian of the public morals (which, of _course_ are only preserved
by private debauchery) had not been six months Lord Chancellor before
he had another crim.-con. with Lady G., during the trial for which,
poor Lord G. cut his throat. But he, the moral cause of the tragedy,
lived to concoct at the instigation of one of _the_ most infamous of our
extensive aristocratic Traviataocracy, MESSALINA NORTON, our present
job Divorce Court, and to die, puffed by a venal press as if he had
been a saint or a demi-god. Faugh! how sick it all makes one. Then see
we not still living, to false-weight the scales of justice, that other
precious legal DON JUAN and doer of dirty work _dessous les cartes_, for
his old college chum, the Chief Justice Sir ALEXANDER COCKBURN, who, as
DENISON, the law reporter of the _Times_, said the other day, was “about
the most unprincipled scoundrel in England,” passing his whole time
in debauching the wife or daughter of every man who came in his way.
So with all this _Diabolus ex machina_ up the _backstairs_, like the
onions in SYDNEY SMITH’S salad, “unsuspected, animating the whole,” you
may imagine the fearful odds a poor legal Victim with “neither Father,
Brother, nor Money” has against her! But never mind, “wait for the end.”
_Dieu et mon droit_, and the indomitable hatred and colossal contempt of
them _all_ with which I am nerved makes me feel that, single-handed and
alone as I have before partially been, I shall yet effectually be more
than a match for these immund reptiles. This is a long Proem, but it
was almost necessary to make you comprehend this of necessity condensed
and therefore not over-clear because not categorical _résumé_ of such a
tissue of complex and chronic iniquity before coming to the culminating
atrocity of Sir ——’s mad-house conspiracy; which, beyond the details
you have _asked_ to be supplied with from all quarters, of course can
have no earthly interest for you, who once truly remarked in a note I
received from you, that “for the most part the fine feelings or rather
fine sentiments of Authors were all fused in their inkstands for general
circulation, which left them none for their own personal use.” And yet
verily, I think LAMARTINE is right, when he says, “_Si l’on savait tout
on ne serait indifferent a rien._”
To begin at the beginning of the Mad-house Conspiracy episode, for the
Ruffian long ago began his lies in Paris, having put an infamous libel
in his lick-dust _ame damnée_, the _Court Journal_, about my having
insulted his brother at a ball at Lady AYLMER’S, to which Lord AYLMER had
forbidden the brother to be asked, and to which, therefore, he was _not_
asked. For this gross lie and libel, my solicitor, a Mr. —— ——, _then_
and ever a red-hot Tory, instantly brought an action against Sir ——’s
tools, as Sir L. _then_ called himself a Whig, and got me for my counsel
Sir F. POLLOCK, the present Chief Baron. The defence the dastardly
wretches set up in court was that _I_ had fabricated this gross libel
against myself, to bring myself before the public!!! Whereupon my counsel
remarked that even in a Court of Justice I was not free from the base
calumnies of my unscrupulous enemies. _Bref_, I gained this action,
costs and damages against them, but pray bear in mind the name of my (as
I thought) devoted attorney, Mr. —— ——, who, as the sequel will show,
was only a devoted and unscrupulous jobber to the Tory faction. Well,
as I said before, to begin at the beginning of the Mad-house Conspiracy
episode, I had taken a cottage in the Fulham-road in 1852, but being very
poor I was obliged to furnish it by degrees, and after the drawing-rooms
and library, had only furnished my own bed-room and dressing-room, when,
with my usual good luck, a most—to me—loathsomely disgusting person,
from her extreme personal dirt, hideousness, and inanity, came down to
me crying one cold wet November day, saying her relation, Mrs. LOUDON
(Mrs. CORN-LAW LOUDON, who says COBDEN stole all her fame from her), had
literally turned her into the streets, that she had not a _sou_, knew no
one in London but me, who she thought would have compassion on her, and
both her brothers were away. What could I do? Had I had ready money to
pay for a lodging I would have done so; but I had not a farthing till
a publisher’s (of the name of SHOBERL) bills for between £400 and £500
became due. Then my poor pretty furniture, among which I would rather
have let loose a whole litter of pigs! Oh! it was a horrible dilemma;
but not being made of stone cemented with mud, as I ought to be, with
the infamous name I had the irreparable misfortune to be branded with
at the matrimonial galleys, I gulped all my difficulties and disgusts,
and sent for an upholsterer in hot haste to furnish at a year’s credit a
bedroom (which should have been a sty for this biped swine), and as my
intention was to let my cottage whenever I left town, there was no use
in furnishing it less well than the rest of my little gem of a house,
which I had done cheaply enough, picking up the things by degrees for
ready money. Alas, in one week the housemaid came to me with tears in
her eyes to come and see the wreck; and truly the Augean stable must
have been the _beau ideal_ of neatness and cleanliness to it. The honest
creature stayed with me a year in my poor cottage, I finding her not
only in evening dresses, but in clothes from head to foot, as I did for
three years after in other places, being, of course, therefrom obliged to
do without essentials for myself. At the end of that year, my swindling
publisher, SHOBERL, went smash, and I did not get a penny; but the
obliging upholsterer came down upon me with an exorbitant fancy bill for
the furnishing Miss R——’s room, more in amount than any three other rooms
in the house. I really felt stunned, or rather crushed, as if an elephant
had trodden down my heart. I was for four months ineffectually trying
to let my cottage, and as ineffectually (tied up as I was on a beggarly
pittance of £400 a year for that monster’s life, irregularly paid) trying
to borrow money. At length a good Samaritan at the Stock Exchange, a
stranger of course, and his good, excellent unattorney-like lawyer, poor
Mr. HODGSON, now also dead, said he had heard such a good character of
my honesty from the best judges, or at least the most impartial ones,
the creditors, that he most humanely and generously lent me £1000 at £5
per cent. for 10 years, and paying £100 a year off the principal, and
insuring both Sir ——’s and my own life. With this fearful drain upon
my already disgraceful pittance, as you may suppose, I could not stay
in London. My friends, by way of economising, asked me to go on visits
to them; so I went first to Lady HOTHAM at Brighton, and then to other
friends there, but soon found out that there is nothing _so_ expensive as
visiting in great houses, and dressing and going out, &c., &c., &c. So
after a short trip to Paris with Lady HOTHAM, I went to bury myself in a
little village in Wales (Llangollen), where the people about the country
were good enough to come and see me, but I honestly told them I could
not afford to go and see them, as I was even obliged to give up my maid,
which to me was indeed a bitter, bitter privation. Then it was, being at
a village _inn alone_, that that cowardly brute Sir —— thought he had
_beau jeu_; and sent down first a vulgar old woman calling herself Mrs.
P—— with her “darter” and one of Sir ——’s bastards (of whom I could give
you an incident quite fit for a novel, but too long to insert here), the
said P—— scraping an acquaintance with me upon the plea of her being an
American, which she acted to the life by obtruding herself upon me at
all hours, breakfast and dinner, and in my bedroom before I was up of a
morning, and of course she had as good a right to be in the _hotel_ as I
had. One day, before I came into the dining-room, she had helped me to
soup. I found her with her bonnet on, and before I had time to eat the
soup, she pretended she had had a sudden summons to London and was off.
I had no sooner eaten the soup than before dinner was over I was seized
with the most agonizing pains and violent retchings. My Doctor gave me
antidotes; and said some attempt had been made to poison me, but the dose
had not been sufficient. This seemed to be confirmed by my (in about
three weeks) getting a letter from old P—— (_which letter I have got_),
with another from another old adventuress, calling herself Mme. S——, who,
being at K—— with some more of Sir ——’s elegant acquaintances, says she
overheard the whole plot to incarcerate me in a Mad-house, and so have me
_gradually_ made away with. She also sent me a copy of a letter, which
she says(?) she sent to Sir ——, after I _was_ incarcerated, saying if
a hair of mine was injured she would denounce him publicly as the black
villain he was. Well, to return to old P——’s letter. In it she seemed
seized with a remorse of conscience—her grandchild having died suddenly,
and that she was off to Paris, but could not go without _warning me_ “for
GOD’S sake to be upon my guard, as a person would be sent down whose
name would begin with G, and to attract my attention, in order to scrape
acquaintance with me, she would have a little black King Charles dog,”
_as old P—— herself had had_.
Before I come to the spy No. 2, Miss G——’s arrival, I must tell you
of three other personages in this infamous _dramatis personæ_. Soon
after my arrival at Llangollen, a man calling himself “Mr. LEIGHTON,”
and purporting to be a theatrical manager, wrote to me for permission
to dramatise my novel of ——, which I gave him; but this correspondence
extended over so many months without anything being done, his letters
being dated Theatres Royal, Southampton, Birmingham, Liverpool,
Manchester, in short, every provincial theatre in the kingdom, that I,
of course, began to see this was some fresh villainy of Sir ——, who,
after cutting the ground from under me in every unimaginably mean way,
by preventing my earning the bread he will not give me, no doubt thought
it a rare jest to fool me into the supposition that one of my books,
which is a ready made drama, was going to be dramatised. But one has
only to look at his hideous face, and that of that other brute, DICKENS,
to see that _every_ bad passion has left the impress of its cloven hoof
upon their fiendish lineaments. However, as HAYDON the painter told old
MELBOURNE years ago, “Any scamp who trades in politics is considered a
fit companion for Lords,” and my Lord DERBY seems to have a _foible_ for
most unprincipled and disreputable scamps, and such adventurers as D——
and Sir —— are admirably calculated for ‘Nyanziang’ at our exceptionally
stupid and inane Court, before our Royal BETTY FOY, “the idiot mother of
an idiot boy.”
But to return to Llangollen. I luckily kept all the _soi-disant_ Mr.
LEIGHTON’S letters, and the Llangollen post office was kept by a druggist
of the name of G—— D——, while _next_ to his shop was a gin shop kept by
a _very_ low person of the name of J——, who had formerly had something
to do with minor theatres and had narrowly escaped transportation for
some of his malpractices. He and this D—— were great cronies, and a
private door in a passage of J——’s gin-shop _opened into the post office
department of D——’s shop_. Bear all this in mind. This J—— was then
living with the maid of a woman with whom he had formerly intrigued,
and whose whole family he had ruined. Well, as soon as I got old P——’s
letter of warning, I put all the people of the ‘Hand Hotel’ on their
guard, and as it was then the depth of winter, no tourists came to
Llangollen, and I told them to be _sure_ and let me know if anyone whose
name began with a G came to stay there. About ten days after this,
BRELLISFORD, the waitress, came to me, and said an old woman looking
like a housekeeper had just arrived from the station to take apartments
for “her young lady,” a Miss G——, who had just lost her mother, and who
intended to spend some time at Llangollen. BRELLISFORD, who had been by
me put in possession of old P——’s letter, answered her sharply that it
was very strange that a young lady who had lost her mother had no friends
to go to, but should come to such a desolate out-of-the-way place, to
which the old woman made no reply. I then told BRELLISFORD to let me
see (unseen) this old woman, and to be _sure_ and let me know when the
_young lady_ arrived. Soon after B—— came up in haste to say the old
woman was going to the Post, and that I could see her from the window. I
ran to it, and who should I see but old TATE, Sir L——’s housekeeper!!!
The young _lady_ did not arrive till two nights after; a most hideous
vulgar-looking creature, past 40, with a fiery red face. The morning
after her arrival, old TATE left in haste for London, telling Mrs. P——,
the woman of the Inn, that she had a large dinner to attend to. For six
mortal days Miss G—— was unable to fire her first shot, for even old
P——’s old King Charles “Tiney,” who had been re-christened “Prince” for
the new campaign, had only succeeded in getting a snap from my Blenheim
Tiger on the stairs, unaccompanied by his mistress. For I was waiting
for the enemy’s first move before I opened my batteries. It appears that
the very first day at dinner, so well acquainted was she with the _carte
du pays_ from her predecessors, that she accosted the waitress by her
somewhat uncommon name of “BRELLISFORD,” asking her to carve a chicken.
“Pray,” said the latter, “how did you know my name?” Miss G—— coloured
and stammered and said she’d heard her called so. “That you havn’t since
you’ve been in this house, for all the servants call me SARAH.” On the
seventh day, instead of resting from her labours, the amiable G—— could
hold out no longer, and _apropos de bottes_ asked BRELLISFORD at dinner
“If I never went out?” “Seldom in the winter,” was the reply. “Dear me,”
said Grogblossom, returning to the charge, “I wish Lady —— would take a
drive with me.” Though of course the vulgar wretch, _a la_ DICKENS, said
“ride.”—“Not very likely,” said B., “after that _other_ (emphasising the
word) vulgar old Spy of that bad man, Sir —— ——, Mrs. P——, playing up the
games she did here, Lady —— is not likely to let any more, _no one knows
who_, force themselves upon her.” “Spies,” re-echoed Grogblossom, “dear
me, what can he have to spy her about. Every one knows what a profligate
bad man he is; but at all events, I am not in a sphere of life to know
Sir —— —— as an acquaintance, and I’m far too respectable to do his
dirty work.” “Then,” said BRELLISFORD, firing up as she snatched the
last dish off the table, “if you are not in a _spear_ of life to know
Sir ——, who is just fit for the likes of you, how dare you presume to
ask, or to think, that her ladyship would go out with you?” and slamming
to the door, with an excellent imitation of thunder, she hurried down
the passage, and came to my room to report “that Miss GET-NOTHING’S,” as
she always called her, impudence, and tell me the whole conversation.
Whereupon, I instantly wrote a short note saying that if Miss G—— did not
take herself off _instantly_ to her infamous employer, I would have her
forcibly ejected. This note I took _myself_, and, opening the door, flung
it _without going in_, on the round table, in the middle of the room. A
_full_ quarter-of-an-hour after she got up a series of screams, doing
duty for hysterics, and rang the bell violently for Mrs. P——, telling her
that I had insulted her (G——) in the most violent and unprovoked manner,
and that I must be _mad_ (_c’etait la sa consigne_). Old P—— came to me
in great consternation, saying, “I should not have taken the law into my
own hands.” “You never mind that,” said I, “but go back and tell her that
if she does not leave this to-morrow morning, I’ll find a way of making
her; and if she feels herself aggrieved, and don’t know what to do, I’ll
tell her—namely, if she is _not_ a Spy of that Cowardly Ruffian, Sir ——
——’s, sent to finish the job old P—— begun, let her instantly go to her
lawyer, and instruct him to bring an action against me for defamation.”
Mrs. P—— returned in a very short time to say that Miss G—— had said very
_humbly_ she _would_ go as soon as she possibly could; but she had come
in such a hurry she had had to buy a flannel petticoat!!! on her arrival
(_idem_ old P——’s _darter_, to whom the same romantic incident of travel
had happened), and that she must write for _money_ (ditto old P——’s
“darter” again), having none, and she could not possibly get an answer
before the day after to-morrow.
[Illustration: EDWARD, LORD LYTTON.]
Now Sir —— was at that time flaring up at Leeds, lecturing at Mechanics’
Institutes upon “The Holiness of Truth” to the “snobs,” and the
Sacredness of Probity!! till, as a lady who wrote me word of it said,
she wondered the earth did not open and swallow the blasphemous monster.
I told SARAH BRELLISFORD to be sure and bring me any letter or letters
that came to Miss G—— on the morning she expected the _indispensable_
remittance, _not_ to open or destroy them, or intercept them, as her
friend Sir —— would have done; but merely to see the superscription, that
is, the handwriting of the remittance letter. Well, it came, with Sir
——’s unmistakable mean scrawl, and _crest_ on the seal, and the Leeds
postmark, _and no mistake_, and two hours after Miss G—— was bundled
off. She was scarcely gone when I got letters from London imploring me
to be on my guard, as these G——’s lived at Brighton, and the one sent to
Llangollen _had a carriage always ready on the road, in order, if I could
be found out walking, to kidnap me, and carry me off to a Madhouse_, as
Sir —— was giving out all over London, _via_ a Mr. ROBERT BELL, one of
the DICKENS’S literary clique, that I was _quite mad_, and also by his
infamous _ame damnée_, the infamous attorney, L——. Now this L——, you must
know, Sir —— himself told me years ago, “_intrigued with his own sister,
to save the expense of a mistress!_” A fitting tool, truly, for so
loathsome a ruffian as the bran new baronet! And the attorney boasts with
his sardonic grin, “Oh! Sir —— ——, he _must_ do whatever I please.” After
I had put Miss G—— to flight, I wrote to Lady HOTHAM and several others
at Brighton, to find out who and what those G——’s were, and telling them
of the Madhouse Conspiracy _en train_. To which I got back an ocean of
English twaddle and conventional cant, telling me not to talk of spies
and madhouse conspiracies in the 19th century, but to remember that I
lived in a _free_ country (very _free_, for any villainy to be practised
with impunity, where there is money to pay for it, a position to cover
it, or Lords PALMERSTONS, DERBYS, LYNDHURSTS, or Chief Justice COCKBURNS,
who so long as they do the _public_ humbug well in verbal sounding brass,
can and do employ the most infamous tools to do their _private_ dirty
work, and of course are in duty bound to _screen_ and protect the said
tools in all their own little personal crimes and enormities) and above
all, I was told to remember that however bad Sir —— might be, he knew the
laws of his country, and _couldn’t_ (couldn’t he, when it is done every
day!) incarcerate me without a public (oh, dear) and full enquiry about
all my sayings, and doings, and habits, which would be the very _best_
thing that could happen to me, as he had so many years ground me down to
poverty, as to effectually make me a dead letter; so that all the lies
he so indefatigably disseminated about me went by default. However, as
one evening Lady HOTHAM was repeating at dinner the sapient advice that
she had written to me to her Brighton Doctor, a Dr. T——, who lives in
Regency-square there, and another gentleman, an acquaintance of mine,
Dr. T—— said, “G——, G——! Stop; I _do_ know some people who know two Miss
G——s. My wife and I are going to a party there to-morrow night, and
I’ll try and find out what I can about those Miss G——s.” “Do,” said the
other gentleman, “and as I must return to town to-morrow, be so good as
to write and let me know what you do find out, that I may tell Lady ——,
as I don’t at all agree with Lady HOTHAM about the madhouse conspiracy
being a chimera of hers.” Accordingly, the day after the party, this
gentleman received the following letter from Dr. T——, which he sent me,
and which I have got. It began: “Dear Sir,—I went to the party I told
you of last night, and sure enough who should be there but a Miss G——,
who was boasting that Sir E—— L—— was a great friend of theirs, and that
her _sister_ had just returned from Llangollen, where she had seen that
horrid wife of his (a lie, for she had _not_ seen me), who was quite mad,
but she was happy to say also, so ill, that she could not live a week.
Poor Lady L——, it is really too hard,” Dr. T—— goes on to say—but I need
not trouble you with the rest of the letter.
The summer after this I got out of the hotel into a lodging, small, but
very nicely furnished, of which I took the whole _except_ the parlours,
which, as the woman only asked 25 shillings a week for them, I told her
on _no_ account to let them to any one, but if she had an offer to do
so I would pay her for them rather than have any other lodger in the
house, after all I had suffered. Nothing could exceed the attention
and _prevoyante_ civility of these people. But when I had been there
about three weeks, to my great horror and indignation, in the teeth of
her promise, she informed me that she had let the parlour to a lady
and gentleman, as they had given her two guineas a week for them; this
alarmed me more, whereupon this silly woman, to reassure me, told me
she was a lady of the highest connections, a Mrs. B——, as she herself
had told her she was related to Lord This and the Marquis of That. I
said, my good Mrs. P——, depend upon it by her giving you more than you
asked for your rooms, and bragging about her great relations, she is
not a gentlewoman, but some improper person or other. The next morning
the plot began to thicken, and up came a great disgusting dish of _raw_
trout with Mr. B——’s compliments, as he had been out fishing, though
Mrs. P—— let out that he had bought them of Mrs. J—— at the gin-shop.
I returned them saying I was much obliged, but I never ate river fish.
Through the windows I had the felicity of seeing Mr. and Mrs. B——. He
looked a something between a retired undertaker and a methodist parson
in a rusty black coat and a dirty white cravat and shoes and stockings
of a morning; and she was a perfect hybrid (with long black ringlets, a
staring silk Stuart plaid dress, and very short petticoats) between a
ballet girl at a fifth-rate theatre and a Regent’s-street social evil,
who did _not_ attend the midnight meetings. I have since heard from
indisputable authority that these vulgar wretches are always with Sir
—— at K—— and Ventnor, and elsewhere, that he took to intriguing with
that raw-boned frau, Madame ERNST, and dedicating his Balderdashiana in
‘Blackwood’ to her paralysed gorilla of a husband, ERNST the fiddler,
whose society must be delightful to a man who is as deaf as a post, and
who, before he was so, in point of music did not know “BOB and JOAN”
from “GOD save the QUEEN,” and who does not know _one word_ of German.
For of all his literary charlataneries, his pretended translation of ——
—— was the most iniquitous, as at them it was he slaved his poor young
daughter to death. His French is execrable and ridiculous enough; still
he can read and understand it, though he does call naïveté _navetty_!!
which is almost as marvellous a travesty as that other woful attempt at
an admirable CRICHTON and an omniscient genius(?), Mr. W—— R——, who calls
VOLTAIRE—VOLL-TAIRE, so as to rhyme with NOLL; and who seems strongly
to confound notoriety with fame, and therefore went to the trouble and
expense of going to Africa to so _usefully_ enlighten the world by
informing it that when he attempted to kiss the African young ladies,
they ran away! Why—he need not have gone so far to make that discovery,
as “my dear husband to a toad-stool” (which is a fair bet, the venemous
reptile against the poisonous fungus), had he made the experiment in
England every young lady, to a crinoline, would have done the same. This
singularly antipathique young gentleman who, after favouring me with a
brisk correspondence which I knew must have some covert meaning, as an
Englishman _never_ does anything without a sordid or selfish motive,
last June did me the honour of inflicting upon me a three days’ visit,
ostensibly _en route_ to Tenby to see his parents, of whom he spoke in
a depreciating contemptuous manner that quite disgusted me, as if, poor
silly people, they were quite below par, and unworthy of having such
a son—I beg pardon, such a genius(?) of a son. With true English good
breeding he hunted me up the day before I could possibly receive him,
but however stupid he might have been to me, I daresay it was agreeable
enough to him; as I understand he spent his nights down in the bar,
which I should think was a much more congenial place to him than a
drawing-room. When he went, as I thought, to Tenby, he wrote me word
he had gone back to Oxfordshire, “and his parents would keep,” as upon
getting to Reading he found he had no money! This was so very like all
the Sir ——’s innumerable myrmidons, that it gave me as I wrote a cold
shudder; as I could not but solve the mystery of his correspondence and
invasion by setting him down as one of Sir ——’s spies, in which idea I
am confirmed by his after getting or not getting what he wanted, just
like a true English boor, and with his insane literary mania and evident
absence of principle, I have no doubt he would be glad to ingratiate
himself with that infamous man on _any_ terms. A friend of mine suggested
to me as a solution of his visit, that perhaps he had heard that I was
such a fool, as the dear, selfish English say, in helping others, when I
so sorely needed help myself, that he might have wanted to borrow money;
but though I may be able to skin myself in £20 or £30, he surely could
not suppose that any one condemned to the miserable and disinherited
life I lead could have any hundreds to lend him towards ministering to
his overweening and senseless vanity? I have not seen his book, feeling
no interest in it after seeing him; but I was silly enough two or three
years ago to give him a volume of Essays that I had written in great
haste, thinking he might sell them for a few pounds; and I should not be
the least surprised if every thought in them (originality certainly not
being his forte) were, _a la_ Sir L——, made to do duty as his reflections
in “Savage Africa.” The kissing episode I have quoted was sent me by a
lady in a newspaper extract to make me laugh, which it did most heartily.
Now to return to the dear B——, whom I understand with the Swiss drab of a
governess whom Sir —— seduced long ago at Malvern, and whom recently in
that pretty —— trial about the crystal ball he improvised as his cook!
thinking, no doubt, that as the devil sends cooks and also concubines, it
was all the same thing, and cook sounded better in a Court of Justice.
So these B——s and the Swiss Traviata form the _corps d’armee_ of his
spirit-rapping establishment, which is this great man’s mode of combining
spirit and matter: the vice being the _real_, and his genius the _ideal_,
or _non est_.
Well, Mr. B——, I suppose by way of doing his spiriting gently, that
is, not disturbing the spirits (except those in the brandy bottle, to
which he gave no quarter, but always full measure), used always to take
off those pretty dust undertaker’s _shoes_ of his to steal up and down
stairs, which I suppose meant that if I was going out of the drawing-room
I might not be deterred from doing so by hearing a step upon the stairs.
A few evenings after I had returned the trout caught in the lake of
_Gin_-eva down at J——’s, the evening being very sultry, I was obliged to
leave my drawing-room door slightly ajar, when, to my horror, who should
come tripping in with a basket of strawberries but the social amateur
evil, dressed, or rather undressed, to a pitch that would have alarmed
even an art student. She made me a sort of theatrical speech in which
she introduced herself and her strawberries. I never eat strawberries
any more than trout; and in the absence of Wenham-lake ice, my reception
of her must have been most refreshing, or rather refrigerating. Nothing
daunted, this intensely vulgar piece of effrontery (who, I understand,
is a natural daughter of that horrid old scamp, Lord LOWTHER: hence her
high connexions) spread her furbelows, and, uninvited, seated herself;
and seeing the shoeless undertaker creeping upstairs, she had the
crowning impertinence to call him in, and introduce him to me, I visibly
petrifying the while, and not replying to a single thing he said; till
the he B——, by way of saying something pleasant, remarked that DICKENS
was a wonderful man. “A wonderful brute and humbug he certainly is,” said
I. The she B—— then began, with a volubility that reminded one of one
of CHARLES MATTHEWS’S patter songs, to recount to me a spirit-rapping
story of an umbrella that had been left in a corner, and suddenly took
it in its head—its ivory dog’s head at the end of the handle—to turn
round, walk across the room, and walk downstairs; whereupon I said in an
insinuating voice: “_Will_ you both have the goodness to show me how it
went downstairs?” At which Mr. B—— indulged in a loud guffaw, and gently
and elegantly knocking his two thumbnails together, as if he had been
trying vivisection on a flea, said, “Not bad; not bad.” I then rose, and
very stiffly announced that I had drank tea, was going to bed, and could
not offer them any wine and water, as I never drank wine; whereupon this
“charming woman,” turning briskly to the undertaker, said, “B——, run
down, and bring up the wine and spirits.” I said, “Not here, pray,” and
darting into my bedroom, locked the door.
The next day came a note from Mrs. B——, expressing her great sympathy
with all I had suffered; and as the cuisine was not particularly good at
those lodgings, would I do them the favour of dining with them at the
hotel? I sent down a verbal message to say that I never dined out. The
next day the pair took their departure for London; but the people of the
house became suddenly and unbearably insolent; and although I had taken
the rooms for six months certain, said I must leave them _immediately_,
as they had let them. This was pleasant, for lodgings are difficult to
get at Llangollen, and worse than that, it wanting six weeks to the time
I should receive my parish allowance, and also to the time when the two
months’ rent would become due, I had not a _sou_ wherewith to meet this
sudden and unfair demand in the teeth of a written agreement. But my
kind old Dr. PRICE not only came to the rescue, rating these vile people
soundly, and telling them they would repent their shameful conduct before
they were much older (which they did), but he kindly got me another
lodging higher up in the same road, in which I had not been installed a
week when Dr. PRICE wrote to me, saying that horrid woman Mrs. B——, and a
woman she called her maid, were installed in my old lodgings. I put on my
bonnet and went out to pass the house, and what should I see but Mrs. B——
and her _soi-disant_ maid sitting on the _sill_ of the open drawing-room
window, with a salver between them with two decanters of wine on it, and
glasses in their hands, over which they were laughing and singing; and as
soon as they saw me they set up a perfect shout.
Two nights after this, the lady and her maid were literally drummed out
of the place for roaring and screaming about the streets with men, at
between one and two in the morning, and disturbing the quiet village. So
Mrs. P—— and her brother did not get much by their infamy to me, and to
their highly connected Patroness Mrs. B——, more especially as I lodged a
complaint of their conduct with the Baptist minister, who lectured them
publicly in chapel for it. A fortnight after Mrs. B——’s expulsion, Mr.
B—— came down solo, and went to the Chester races, in an open carriage
and four, with those two blackguards, J—— of the Gin Shop, and D—— of
the Post-office, driving past my windows, shouting and roaring and
waving their hats; and previous to his departure, B—— wrote me a most
infamous anonymous letter, beginning that “he had the QUEEN’S and ——’s
permission to sleep with me”—which letter was _precisely_ in the same
hand-writing as all those purporting to be from Mr. L——, the _soi-disant_
Theatrical Manager, _which infamous letter, and all the rest_, I have
got. Upon this crowning outrage inflicted by that far more ruffianly
B——’s myrmidons, I sent for Mr. WHALLEY, the Magistrate, the present
member for Peterborough—(Maynooth WHALLEY), and he told J—— he would
take away his licence. I, of course, could not stay in a place where I
had been so outraged and persecuted; and then it was I wrote to a friend
of mine to engage me rooms in some Hotel in this dead-letter town; and
sending all my luggage on to London, directed to a Mrs. WILSON, for her
to forward them _here_; I took a young person who used to make my dresses
at Llangollen as my maid, coming on here without any luggage but a carpet
bag with “passenger” on it, so that none of the Llangollen people knew
_where_ I was going, by which means Sir —— completely lost the track of
his victim, which made him so furious that when good Mr. HODGSON went to
receive my pittance, as he always did, Sir —— and the ruffian L—— vowed
they would not pay it till they had a clergyman’s certificate! to say I
was alive! which was, of course, as they thought, a clever plan to find
out _where_ I was; but Mr. HYDE, my solicitor, whose country place was at
Sangport, 16 miles from this, and who was then alive, and had not _yet_
found his account in selling me “_to screen the party_,” wrote to say,
that if my beggarly pittance was not instantly paid, Sir —— should have
the best of all assurances that I was _alive_, as he, Mr. HYDE, would
drive down to K—— with me to take possession, and remain there with me to
protect me. So the dastardly brute was foiled for the nonce. Soon after
I came here Miss R—— again was homeless, and gave me the benefit—no, the
discipline—of her company, and worried me into sending a statement of my
case to Lord LYNDHURST, who was then, with MESSALINA NORTON, concocting
the job of the Divorce Court. Apropos of the latter, she is such an
awful hypocrite, quite of Sir ——’s calibre, that they would have made
a matchless pair, because she is actually a _proverb_ for brutalising
servants and governesses. I see in to-day’s _Times_ she has a long and
charmingly benevolent letter advocating the cause of Poor Servants
against their not sufficiently considerate masters and mistresses! Oh!
why does not the Devil foreclose his mortgage upon those three such
hypocrites, Mother NORTON, Sir ——, and DICKENS, and drive them and their
fine sentiments round his dominions. Sir —— at least would not be quite
new to the lash, as years ago, when that infamous Mrs. NORTON kept her
amateur house of ill-fame in Bolton-row, and Sir —— was intriguing with a
cousin of hers, a Mrs. BARTON, the wife of a clergyman—some “good-natured
friend” wrote to Mr. BARTON and told him if he would go at such an hour
to Mrs. NORTON’S, and walk up into the back bedroom, he would find Sir ——
with his wife. He did so, and horsewhipped Sir ——. Whereupon MESSALINA,
putting her arms akimbo, said, “If you are such a d——d fool that you
cannot manage a little affair of this sort without being found out, you
must go elsewhere.” The uninitiated keep wondering how the _Examiner_
could puff that intensely trashy and immensely infamous last book of Mrs.
NORTON’S. But those who know that she used to intrigue with that hideous
old ALBANY FONBLANQUE, and any other dirty editor that came in her
way, for a puff, don’t wonder at all. If any of Mrs. NORTON’S ill-used
servants were to write to the _Times_, illustrating by a few _facts_ her
practical benevolence and consideration towards them, I should just like
to see the _Times_ printing _them_, though thanks to our wheel within
wheel of Humbug within Humbug, and Sham upon Sham, the _Times_ can do its
cheap brummagem philanthropy and championship of the oppressed as well as
any other “Tartuffe” in the kingdom. And yet this most vile woman (with
plenty of others of the same sort) is received at “our Virtuous Court,”
and quite worthy of being so, by the little selfish sensuous Inanity
who rules over it, the Murderess of poor Lady FLORA HASTINGS, and the
_amiable_ daughter who did all she could to hold up her own mother with
Sir JOHN CONROY. Poor excellent Prince ALBERT, a _rara avis_—a man who
_had principle_ and acted up to it, from the smallest to the greatest
things,—knowing neither truckling nor _expediency_, had a life of it!
happy he to have so soon escaped, and gone home to a more congenial
sphere, where he invested the great treasure of _good deeds_, while
still a labourer here.—But to return to the LYNDHURST affair: I told
Miss R—— that my sending my case to Lord L—— was like writing in water;
nothing would come of it. Still, I drew it up as briefly as I could, with
a full statement of the last Llangollen infamy; but fortunately I was
obstinate in my own common sense and would not yield to the _sapient_
Miss R——’s advice to send him some infamous letters of Sir R——’s, which
he, the ruffian, has denied on oath! For what are perjuries to one who
has lived upon them as MITHRIDATES did on poisons, till they have become
his daily food? Neither did I send him any original documents, beyond my
own written statement of facts. So well am I aware, with regard to the
thimble-rig of Politics, of what _my_ fate would be, no matter who were
the _ins_ or the outs. I told Lord LYNDHURST _not_ to take the trouble
of writing, but merely make his secretary acknowledge the receipt of my
papers till he returned them with his opinion. But two months passed and
I had no acknowledgment of even the receipt of the packet. I then wrote
again, expressing my surprise at this, when I received a note from Lord
LYNDHURST, beginning, “My dear lady L——.” Cool, from a man I did not know
personally. This is the note—
“My dear Lady L——, In the hurry of business I mislaid your _present_
address, and therefore wrote to you at Llangollen, telling you that I had
read your papers, and written my opinion on them, and that they were left
with my porter ready for you whenever you sent for them. Ten days after
I had despatched my letter to you, a young woman called at my house,
saying she had been sent by Lady L—— for her papers, and my porter gave
her the packet addressed to you. Therefore I was much surprised on the
receipt of your letter this morning, saying you had _not_ received the
papers.—Believe me, yours faithfully, LYNDHURST.”
In reply to this “Strange Story,” before Sir L——’s other blasphemous
“Strange Story,” that that brute DICKENS just published, I wrote to Lord
LYNDHURST to say that in the first place I never should have sent in that
vulgar, cavalier way, without writing a note to him for my papers; in
the next, it was strange he should have forgotten my _present address_!
and only remember my former one at Llangollen, since BOTH addresses were
_equally mentioned in the papers he said he had left with his porter for
me_. But that such being the case, it behoved him for his own honour (?!)
to stir in the matter, and find out who had got the letter he wrote to me
at Llangollen, out of the Llangollen post-office, and who the woman was
who had called for the papers, with the infamous lie that I had sent her.
And the first step towards this was to tell the date of the letter he had
written to me, and the day, and then the office in London at which the
letter had been posted; and next, to employ Mr. PEACOCK, the Solicitor of
the post-office, to sift out the affair, as, like a true-born Briton, he
of course would be likely to put more zeal into his measures if employed
by Lord LYNDHURST to detect an affront and fraud practised upon _him_,
than merely an outrage and an injustice practised upon me, or every other
defenceless woman in England. To this I received a _palpably_ shuffling
and wide of the mark note from Lord LYNDHURST, and the farce was gone
through of writing to that vile fellow D——, at Llangollen, who actually
had the effrontery to pretend that no such letter had ever arrived at
Llangollen post-office for me. Then _how_—as I told my Lord LYNDHURST,
_could_ the swindlers who called for my papers have known where to do
so, but for the information contained in that letter? unless, indeed,
the letter _was a myth_, and his lordship, to make things pleasant to
_the party_, had kindly made over my papers to my Lord DERBY’S creditable
Colonial Secretary? which was the only other _possible_ solution of the
affair. D—— then wrote to me, “did I suppose that after my great kindness
to his poor wife, in her last illness, which he should never forget, that
he could do anything to injure me?” To which I replied yes, that was the
very reason why he would; as I had never yet served anyone, in much,
or in little, that they had not repaid me by the basest ingratitude,
treachery, and injury—of some kind. My Lord LYNDHURST, finding I would
_not_ be quiet, though the old Tory jobbing attorney Mr. C—— H——, under
the pretence of setting Mr. PEACOCK to work, but in _reality_ to seize
the golden opportunity of scraping personal acquaintance with an old
Tory law lord, and by joining issue with him, to make things pleasant to
the _party_, and crush and gag their victim a little more. So, finding
that I was not the plastic, swallow-anything Fool that men think women
ought to be, and which for the propagation and comfortable impunity of
their vice, too many women are, my Lord LYNDHURST sent down his nephew
and private secretary, Mr. RICHARD CLARKE, to see what he could do in
the much-ado-about-nothing-humbug line. I boldly taxed him with this
Divorce Bill being a job concocted between Lord LYNDHURST and Mother
NORTON. “Well,” said he, “you put it in such a point blank way, that I
cannot deny it.” You can, if you like, said I, or anything else, but I’m
not bound to believe you. I then taxed D—— with having a finger in the
pie with regard to the swindle of my papers; knowing the creditable way
in which, years ago, his acquaintance with Lord LYNDHURST (which was his
first political stepping stone, after poor fool of a WYNDHAM LEWIS had
paid his election expenses at Maidstone) had begun, namely, by their
joint property with three more in Lady SYKES. “Oh,” said Mr. CLARKE,
“D—— and Lord LYNDHURST are two. D—— has not crossed our threshold for
ages; and we all nearly fell off of our chairs laughing at breakfast,
the other morning, at the capital, and to the life facsimile you gave in
that imaginary conversation you put into his mouth, in your last letter
to Lord LYNDHURST.” But Mr. RICHARD CLARKE could do nothing with me, for
I assured him this disgraceful affair should _not_ rest between Lord
LYNDHURST, me, _and the post_. I then, as a _pis aller_, got General
THOMPSON to present a petition in the House of Commons demanding an
inquiry into the fate of the papers sent to Lord LYNDHURST, of which I
could obtain no _clear_ or satisfactory account. The poor superannuated
Conservative peer, from his place in the House of Lords, mumbled some
circumlocution rubbish about his being the last man to be guilty of want
of courtesy to a lady.—Hang his courtesy!! his justice and common honesty
were what I wanted, and not his courtesy; but it is precisely those
two exotics which are not to be had in this accursed land of crime and
cant, and so this infamy ended in smoke, as most things do in the two
Houses of Humbug down at Westminster. I need not tell you, from the day
I ordered her out of Llangollen to this, _dear_ Miss G—— never brought
any action against me. No doubt your Orthodox English Conventionality is
greatly shocked at my “coarse,” “violent,” “unladylike language”! But you
must make some allowance (though English people never do, being wisely
and justly only shocked and scandalized at terrible results, while they
remain perfectly placid and piano upon terrible _causes_); but I was
going to say you must make some allowance for a person writhing under
nearly life-long, unparalleled, ever-recurring, and never-redressed
outrages,—and suffering from a chronic indigestion of falsehood,
hypocrisy, and unscrupulous villainy. No wonder, then, that the other day
I cordially sympathised with a man who said, that though no more fires
blazed, or faggots crackled in Smithfield—for which thank GOD—he should
like to make a bonfire of all the fine benevolent sentiments DICKENS,
Sir EDWARD LYTTON, and Mrs. NORTON ever wrote, with those of that other
scoundrel LAWRENCE STERNE, and placing the three former within smelting
heat of the flames, collect an equivalent quantity of ink to all they
had ever used in gulling the public, and force the black-lie-vehicle
down their throats! It was this same man who wittily said, constituting
himself _Advocatus Diaboli_, when a whole room full of people were crying
out against the utter trash and horrible immorality of Mrs. NORTON’S
last book—“Well, now, I like the book, for it may be considered as Mrs.
NORTON’S oral confession, her _peccavi_, in fact, as it so clearly and
abundantly proves that there is not a single _Traviata_ ‘dodge’ in all
Babylon that she is not _practically up to_.” Which sally was received
with peals of laughter, and “Hear, Hear’s.”—Talking of the humbug and
omnipresence of _Self_ in Authors, how thoroughly characteristic was
that vainglorious “_In Memoriam_” of poor THACKERAY by Mr. DICKENS in
this month’s _Cornhill_; it being a mere stalking-horse to parade his
own importance and repeat the compliments poor THACKERAY had paid him,
though there were so many other and better things the public would all
have rather heard of _good_ THACKERAY. It was also a way of letting the
groundlings know that his son, Master DICKENS had been at Eton, though
he took good care not to tell them that Miss BURDETT COUTTS had paid
for him there. For she can do these supererogatory display things, and
build churches, though she cannot give a private _unknown_ guinea to her
own starving relations, of which, like everyone else, she has some. I
liked Mr. TROLLOPE’S “_In Memoriam_” much better, and from the extracts
I have read from his wishy-washy vulgar Novels, I did not think he
could have written so well. Only I wish he had not opened with that tag
Latin quotation; for though Latin is all very well, and indeed at times
necessary for terseness’ sake to add force to sense or satire, _real_
feeling generally finds expression in our mother tongue.
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.
But this I will tell you, that, calling at the Mayor’s before I went (for
the people had asked me to address them in the Town Hall in the evening),
as I wanted him to explain to them that I was tied to time and could not
go; his wife told me that as I drove past to go to the hustings an old
woman of 85, who lived in the village of Knebworth, and was a tenant of
Sir LIAR’S, and had been one of his grandfather’s, and who came into
Hertford occasionally to sell poultry, and who happened to be in the hall
at the Mayor’s house when I drove by, upon hearing it was I, and that
I was going to the hustings, fell upon her knees and said, “Thank GOD!
thank GOD! that I have lived to see this day, and that villain will be
exposed at last, and poor dear Miss L——’s death avenged.” I can only say
that if the horrible opinion that _all_ classes in the town of Hertford
have of him be any criterion of that of those in the country (except
that they, to be sure, belong to our putrescently rotten and profligate
Aristocracy), it _is_ a miracle how any amount of political jobbery or
party bribery can get him returned.
Well, the journey back from Hertford being as hurried as the journey
there, and I having been so ill when I set out, I was on my return,
with all the painful excitement in addition, quite knocked up. And on
the second day after my return, being in bed about 11 o’clock a.m., a
card was brought to me with Mr. F—— H—— T——, 4, C—— Street, Piccadilly,
on it, accompanied by a message that that gentleman wanted to see me
particularly. “Why did you not say I was ill in bed, and could not
see any one?” “HENRY told him so, my lady.” “Then go and tell him so
again.” “The gentleman says he _must_ see your ladyship, as it is for
your advantage,” was the answer to my message. “If he has any business,
he can write,” said I. “He can be no gentleman to persist in attempting
to see a lady who is ill in bed, and a total stranger to him.” Shortly
after this I heard several voices loud in altercation outside my bedroom
door, and Mrs. C——’s above them all, saying, “You shall _not_ force your
way in, unless you cut me down first.” Whereupon I rang my bell, and Mrs.
C—— came round the other way, through the drawing room, in a very excited
state, and I said, “What on earth is the matter?” “A pack of wretches,”
said she, “evidently some of that villain Sir EDWARD’S emissaries.” “Let
them in,” said I, “and if they should attempt to carry me off bodily,
send for the police. Now,” added I, sitting up in bed, arranging the
frills of my night things, and settling myself down to freezing point on
the score of calmness and impassibility, as is my wont in every crisis
that must be met, “unbolt the door, or rather unlock it” (for she had
carried off the key that they should not force their way in during her
absence), “and let them in.” She did so; and in walked a little very dark
man, with very black hair and eyes, of about 60, followed by a Patagonian
woman of six feet high, who was a keeper from the Madhouse at Fairwater,
near this, conducted by a Dr. W——. The giantess he told to sit down at
one side of my bed, while he came round to the other, but followed by
Mrs. C——. “Pray, Lady L——,” said he, pulling out an election skit on blue
paper, purporting to be Sir LIAR’S address to his constituents, saying
that one of the first measures he should propose in Parliament would be
about “the social evil,” to which he had always so largely contributed,
and that as family ties and domestic duties had always been held so
sacred by him, he regretted that his loved and honoured wife was not
there to share his triumphs upon that occasion, as, although it might be
considered a weakness in him, ambition had no charms for him but as it
contributed to the happiness of his _alter ego_ and those who blest his
own fireside!!! and a great deal of similar _persiflage_ and more pungent
satire. Before I could reply, Mrs. C—— cried out, “No, I can answer
for _that_, for I it was who, in great haste, got Lady L——’s placards
printed—those on white paper pasted on the walls.”
“No,” said I, very quietly, “upon my honour I never saw that effusion
before; but GOD bless the honest man who wrote it, whoever he be.” “Your
word is quite sufficient” said T——, who then, feeling my pulse the whole
time—which he remarked was one of the most quiet and even he had ever
felt—began divers florid panegyrics upon Sir LIAR’S brilliant talents,
success in life, and everything else that was exasperating, with the
evident intention of exasperating me, in which he did _not_ succeed.
After an hour spent in this work, he went out of the room to consult
with some one in another room, leaving the gaunt keeper in possession,
and this round of going backwards and forwards he repeated till nine
at night; for, of course, he had to earn the £100, which was his fee,
for coming down here. Had I _then_ known what Mrs. C—— told me after,
_i.e._, that the wretch L—— was the person in the other room, with whom
he went to consult, and that there was a carriage with the horses to
waiting _all_ day at the other (Castle) Hotel, ready to carry me off to
W——’s Madhouse, at Fairwater, I don’t think I _could_ have had sufficient
control over myself to have retained my imperturbable calmness as I did.
When this T—— returned from a two hours’ conference with the vile
_Unknown_ in the other room (during which time I had been very civil to
the giantess, offering her luncheon), he again began feeling my pulse,
and touching upon every irritating topic he could devise, and then upon
European politics and other topics of the day; and then as a charming
little variation he made me put out my tongue, looked at my teeth, and
raised up my eyelids, in short, investigated me as minutely as if I
had been a 500 guinea horse he was going to buy; after which, turning
himself to the gaunt keeper, he said, “Well, I don’t know. I think I
never saw any one in sounder mind or body. What do _you_ think?” “Why,
really, sir,” said the giantess, wiping her eyes, for which touch of
human feeling I felt very grateful to her, “I _do_ think _this_ is one of
the cruellest outrages I ever witnessed or heard of.” “Humph,” said T——,
going out for another season of two hours’ duration, which brought it
to 5 o’clock before he returned, and when he did so, he was accompanied
by Dr. W—— who pursued his plan of irritating topics, but with more
provincial coarseness and vulgarity, culminating it all by saying in a
sort of jibing way, “I must really say, Lady L——, that I think you are
unreasonable to Sir EDWARD, for £400 a year is a very good allowance.”
“It might be for a mad Doctor or attorney’s wife,” I replied. “Ah!
true—yes—a—certainly, that makes a difference.” “And even then,” added
I, “they _might_ be so _very_ unreasonable as to want it _paid_ in coin
instead of _promissory_ notes.” Here ensued a series of telegrams of nods
and winks between the two M.D.’s. So he again left the room, and I heard
T—— mutter, “It won’t do.” When he returned again (without W——), it was 8
at night, so you may suppose what a day of _rest_ I had after that horrid
journey.
“Now, Lady L——,” said T——, “I want you to oblige me by writing me a
note, stating _what_ terms you will accept from Sir EDWARD, to never
again expose him as you did at Hertford on Wednesday.” “It’s no use,”
said I, “it has been urged upon him for years to give me a decent and
punctual allowance; he would rather part with his life than his money,
and, moreover, neither honour, nor oaths can bind him.” “Well, but what
would you accept?” “Why, as one might as well expect to get blood out
of a stone as money out of him, if I asked for an adequate income, I
_know_ he would never even _promise_ it; so if he will _really_ give,
that is, _pay_ me £500 a-year for _my_ life; instead of a mythological
£400 for his;—I’ll not again _publicly_ expose him”—(were you here, I
would _tell_ you _how_ I came to be put off upon the original swindle of
this disgraceful £400 a-year; but it is too long to write). “Well, _do_
write me a note to that effect, and I’ll go into your drawing-room while
you’re writing it.” “And what guarantee have _I_, pray Mr. T——, that the
gross outrage of to-day, so long hatching, shall not be repeated?” “_My
word of honour as a gentleman_ (??) Lady L——,” said he, laying his hand
upon his left side as he walked into the drawing-room. “Do write the
note,” whispered Mrs. C—— hurriedly,—“that man’s your friend;—I’ll tell
you all by-and-by.” I shook my head and said, “I don’t believe in any
_man’s_ friendship; more especially in a mad Doctor’s, employed by Sir
EDWARD.” When the note was finished, it was 9 o’clock! I asked him when I
should hear from him in reply to that note? “In four days, at furthest,”
said he, as at length he rid me of his presence. When he was gone, poor
Mrs. C—— sank down exhausted (as well she might be) into a chair. She
then told me the reason she had said he was my friend was, that L—— had
stormed, foamed, and stamped to _make_ him and W—— sign a certificate of
my insanity. T—— said he _could_ not; and W—— he dare not. The latter
moreover said, down in the Bar—as he went away, “Mad! Lady L—— is no more
mad than I am; I’m afraid Sir EDWARD will find her only too sane.”
I may as well tell you _here_ before you have the pleasure of meeting him
again at his own house in Clarges-street, this H—— T——’s antecedents,
which of course I did not learn until long after. To begin with, he
was a friend of L——’s, which comprises every other infamy,—and to show
himself worthy of so being, he had been dismissed from some Hospital,
to which he was surgeon. Not only the stipulated four days, but nine,
had elapsed, without my hearing from Mr. T—— the result of the note he
had made me write. I then wrote to him to enquire the reason of this?
His reply did not even allude to the subject, but was a rigmarole
about the weather; as if he had been writing to an idiot, who did not
require a rational answer to any question they had asked. So I again
wrote to say—that having been so grossly outraged I was not going to be
insulted and fooled by him, and that if he did not send me a definite
and explicit reply to the note I had written at his urgent request
before the following Tuesday, or the following Wednesday, I should call
at his house, and according to the answer I then received, should know
how to act. Now my plan was, that in case of again being fooled by these
wretches, to take two of Sir LIAR’S infamous letters with me, which he
has denied upon oath; the one, a threat before the publication of my
first book, saying, “_he would ruin me if I published that, or any other
book_”—the other a letter he had written me after one of his tigerish
onslaughts, in which he had frightfully bitten my cheek, in which he
says, “You have been to me perfection as a wife, I have eternally
disgraced myself, I shall go abroad, change a name which is odious to
me,—take £200 a year, and leave you all the rest.” Fancy that selfish,
pompous Sybarite, profligate brute, on £200 a year! But saying is _one_
thing and doing another, as his friend DIZZY and my Lord DERBY know.
By these letters I was determined to seek the only redress left to me
that could not in the _onset_ be tampered with, that of a common woman;
by going to a London Police office, letting the Magistrate read them,
and stating my Lord DERBY’S _creditable_ Colonial Secretary’s recent
persecutions, which statement he could not prevent being taken down by
the reporters, and appearing in all the next day’s papers. This was my
plan, in case that loathsome ruffian, Sir L——, was insane enough not
to accede to the ridiculously moderate and lenient terms I had offered
him, after his life-long, dastardly, and fiendish rascality. Well, on
the Tuesday evening, having heard nothing further from T——, Mrs. CLARK
and I set off for London. With my usual good fortune, the Great Western,
and all the neighbouring Hotels, were full, and we could only get rooms
at a horrid dirty hole, opposite the Marble-arch, where we arrived at 8
in the morning. After washing, dressing, and breakfasting, we set off
for C—— street, getting out at the corner of Piccadilly, and telling
the brougham to wait there; and as St. James’s clock was striking 12 on
Wednesday, 22nd of June, 1858—for GOD knows I never can forget the day!—I
knocked at Mr. H—— T——’s door. We were shown up into the drawing-room.
Presently the fellow came to us—holding out _both_ his hands (which, of
course, I did not see, but retained mine to hold my parasol;) saying he
was delighted to see me (no doubt), and hoped I was come to dine with
him!!! “Mr. T——,” said I, “I have neither come to dine with you nor to be
fooled by you. I come to know what you have done with that note, which
you so entreated me to write, proposing terms to Sir EDWARD L——.” “That
note! that note!—let me see,” said he, tapping his forehead, as if he had
to go back into the night of ages to find out _what_ note I alluded to.
And after this piece of by-play—he said, suddenly, “Oh! oh! that note you
wrote at Taunton. I gave it to L——.” I now knew what to expect. “But
you had better, in his interest, communicate with Sir EDWARD L——, and
tell him I _must_ have a definite answer one way or the other, for which
I shall call at six o’clock this evening. Good morning.” I then went to
call upon Miss R——, and she asked to come with me, to be present when I
returned to T——’s; and fortunately I gave her Sir LIAR’S two infamous
letters to take care of, lest I, in my agitation, should drop or mislay
them. At six, she, Mrs. CLARKE, and I, again drove to the corner of C——
street, and there got out. As we did so, I observed an impudent-looking,
snub-nosed man, who was walking up and down, and stared at me in the
most impudent and determined manner, as if he had been watching for
us, as afterwards turned out to be the case. We were again shown up
into the drawing-room at T——’s, but _this_ time the folding-doors were
closed between the two rooms, and we heard the murmuring of low voices
in the back room. After being kept waiting more than half an hour, I
rang the bell and told the servant to say, “That if I could not see Mr.
T——, I must go.” The wretch then soon after made his appearance, saying
he had been detained by patients; and soon after him stalked into the
room a tall, raw-boned, hay-coloured-hair Scotchman, who I subsequently
learned was an apothecary of the name of R——, keeping a druggist’s shop
in Fenchurch-street (another friend of L——’s, of course, and the second
with T——, who signed the certificate of my insanity!—he never having
seen me, or I him before, and I never having once spoken to him!). This
fellow, like all the other employees, began talking of—quite _a propos
de bottes_—Sir LIAR’S extraordinary cleverness! Whereupon, Miss R——,
in a passion, took his cheek-biting letter out of her pocket, and read
it to him, adding, “Perhaps you” think this brutality another proof of
his cleverness?” “Evidently a man of great sensibility!!” said the lean
apothecary when she had finished. I could not stand this, and finding I
was to get no answer about the letter from T——, I said to Miss R—— and
Mrs. CLARKE, “Come, don’t let us waste any more time in being fooled and
insulted here, we’ll go.” Easier said than done, for upon reaching the
hall we found it literally filled with two mad Doctors, that fellow, his
assistant, the impudent snub-nosed man who had stared so when I got out
of the brougham—two women keepers, one a great Flanders mare of six feet
high, the other a moderate-sized, and nice-looking woman, and a very
idiotic-looking footman of T——’s, with his head against the hall door, to
bar egress, and who seemed to have acquired as an _amateur_ that horrible
Mad Doctor’s trick of rolling his head and never looking _at_ any one,
but over _their_ heads, as if he saw some strange phantasmagoria in the
air above them; and which that fellow had to such a degree, that I am
_certain_ any nervous or weak-minded person would, from sheer physical
irritation, have been driven mad _really_ in a very short time; and no
doubt that is what it is done for. Seeing this blockade, I exclaimed,
“What a set of blackguards;” to which Mr. H——, wagging his head, and
phantom-hunting over mine, with his pale, poached egg-unspeculative
eyes—said, “I beg you’ll speak like a lady—Lady L——.” “I am treated so
like one, that I certainly ought,” I replied. Hearing a loud talking in
the dining-room, into which Mrs. C—— had been summoned by T——, I walked
into it, in time to hear her very energetically saying, “I wont,” to some
proposition they were making to her, and seeing a side door that led
into a back room again, I looked in, and there saw that precious brace
of scoundrels, Sir LIAR, COWARD, SWINDLER himself, and “that sublime of
rascals, his Attorney—listening! for the dastardly brute always fights
shy,” with his vizor down, from behind an ambush; but from the stabs
in the back, and the force of the blows, there is no mistaking one’s
antagonists. So, boldly advancing towards him, “You cowardly villain,”
said I, “this is the second time I have confronted you this month; _why_
do you always do your dirty work by deputy, except when you used to
leave the marks of your horse teeth in my flesh; and boldly strike a
defenceless woman.” At this, the reptile rushed, as he had done at the
Hertford hustings, but this time not into Mr. AUSTIN’S flower garden,
but down Mr. H—— T——’s kitchen stairs! and up his area steps! into the
open street. I turned to Miss R——, who had followed me, and said, “See,
the contemptible wretch has taken to his heels.” Whereupon, going into
the hall, she pushed the idiotic footman aside and said, “Whatever
villainy you are paid to practise towards Lady L——, you have no _right_
to detain _me_.” T—— ordered the hall door to be unchained and unlocked,
and she rushed out into the street. Talk of novels! She told me after,
that at the corner of Piccadilly, she stumbled up against a young man,
and said—“Oh sir, for GOD’S sake, get me a cab, they are taking in the
most iniquitous manner a friend of mine to an asylum, the best friend
I ever had, to whom I owe everything, Lady L——, and she is no more mad
than you are.” The young man turned deadly pale, staggered against the
wall, and said in a voice scarcely audible, “I am very sorry I can’t
interfere.”—The young man was my own wretched son!
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.
The next day, Dr. OILY GAMMON ROBERTS, whom I had known a long time,
called upon me. He had just had the supreme felicity of becoming Lord
PALMERSTON’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 peeresses whom he
attends, (or) though an infidel, to do any amount of canting with Lord
SHAFTESBURY in Exeter Hall in the morning, or any amount of pimping for
Lady SHAFTESBURY 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. OILY GAMMON came, and his
manner was a perfect emulsion of almonds when I told him of Mr. HYDE’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 SOPHIA, alias SPARROW, 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_, 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 ABELARD and old BLUCHER.”
“Oh, certainly, for your ladyship has quite bewitched my little MARY, and
she cries every time a servant is sent 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 a real luxury after
my nearly three weeks’ incarceration in that large, but low-ceilinged
stuffy room, with its nailed down windows. And as caged birds are always
wild when they do get out, MARY HILL 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,” 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 HILLS?”
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 the greatest Ill of all—her husband—made
a party of thirteen of them, which yet did not comprise _all_ the ills
that flesh is heir to.
And now comes the most horrible and cruel part of this history, and which
is so painful to me to write, or rather to excavate out of the desolate
grave of all my hopes, where it has lain buried for the last five years
and a half, and where I thought it would remain till GOD had mercy on me
and I was buried with it. But it would have been impossible to tell you
all the rest without telling this too; or you would really think me not
only mad, but a liar, that I had not in our Courts of Justice, or more
frequently of Injustice, fully exposed, and got at least as much redress
as public indignation and condemnation can afford to the Victim, when
bestowed upon the perpetrators of such dastardly and chronic and complex
infamy. But Sir EDWARD does not do his fiendish work by halves. He knew
that from me _he_ could neither expect mercy nor longer forbearance. So
he, with demoniacal and _unscrupulous_ astuteness baited the trap with
the two lacerated hearts of both Mother and Child; for he knew that
even to expose him I would not, and could not, expose my own son—whom
GOD forgive—though I firmly believe that _he_, at _first_, was as much
duped as I was. For though under ordinary circumstances—he was well
aware, from bitter experience, that he could not believe in any promise
his father ever made—still he naturally thought that after standing
upon the brink of such a ruinous Abyss, and having been only saved by
nature’s great miracle, a Mother’s Love—he would for once in fear and
trembling have kept faith with his victims wholly and solely in his own
sordid and selfish interest. And so this truly unhappy young martyr did
evil that good might come of it; and that, as he at the time told me, he
might buy his Mother back at any price. It is WALTER SCOTT, I think, who
says—“There can be no Virtue without Truth, and there can be no Truth
without Moral Courage.” But where was this poor predestined young victim
to acquire that? when the whole course of his accursed literary training
was to _develope_ his intellect, and _stultify_ his moral qualities,
by, from his youth denying to his _naturally_ gentle and affectionate
nature the holy vigils of a Mother’s care, and the humanizing and
heart-expanding influences of HOME. While the diplomatic obligations of
his detestable profession could not fail to weaken to annihilation that
plebeian appendage called conscience; so surely does custom blunt and
familiarize either the worst or most frightful things. No wonder then
that I should have no admiration for, but a positive contempt for, mere
intellect; as intellect without a moral _fulcrum_ is, of all the Devil’s
levers, the one that raises the most fearful preponderances of evil, and
causes them to float buoyantly and triumphantly over the world. But I
must get on, and get over this last heartquake of mine as rapidly as I
can. GOD knows I would not injure him in the world’s estimation (little
as it is worth) more than he has already injured himself; and GOD, I am
convinced, has punished him far more than He has thought fit to afflict
me. Five years and a half since this crowning iniquity have I waited,
hoping against hope that now, that he was no longer a Boy, he would
shake off the glamour of his father’s terrorism, and show some spark of
manliness and human feeling, if only as a sort of expiatory conscience
tax to GOD. But when was conscience, courage, or feeling, ever evinced by
either a B—— or a L——? For the rest of this disgraceful history, I should
be only too glad if you proclaimed it at the market cross. But _that_ I
am very sure you will not do; as I am fully aware of the requirements
of literary amenities and social conventionalities; and therefore it
is that I have lived too long alone with GOD, and the bitter sorrows
He has sent me, not to gauge everything by simple Truth, unalloyed by
expediency; and, perhaps too, as ESMOND says, “I have seen too much of
success in life to take off my hat and huzza to it, in its gilt coach, as
it passes.” I am also fully aware of literary posthumous chivalry, and
its Bayard courage! upon the safe vantage ground of posterity! therefore,
when I have been dead some hundred years,—how pens will start from their
inkstands, like swords from their scabbards, to avenge me! while Electric
Caligraphy will not have left sufficient ink in Christendom to blacken
Sir EDWARD, the CÆSAR BORGIA of the nineteenth century (with the beauty
and the courage left out) up to his natural hue. Gentlemen of 1964, I
cannot find words to thank you—for all I shall have to say then, is what
I pray now—_Implora Pace!_
Well, on the evening after my return from Richmond, while I was at tea,
the door was thrown open and Miss R—— was announced. I reproached myself
with ingratitude at the time, but she was more antipathetic to me than
ever; her manner was so brusque, coarse, and unfeeling—meeting me for
the first time in such a place. And she did look so dreadfully ugly, and
so additionally dirty! a great _tour de force_! that I recoiled from her
touch, and when she said, without any preparation in that sharp, shrill,
cracked bell of a voice of hers, “Shure I’ve brought _your_ son to see
you,” I felt almost as though she had knocked me down, and burst out
crying—“Then,” said I, “I won’t see him; he has never acted like a son to
me; and I suppose his infamous father is springed in his own trap, and
he has sent his son to get him out of it.” For two hours ineffectually,
for I would not yield to this evident bullying, did Miss R——, with her
usual want of tact, want of feeling, and coarse uncouthness, irritate
every nerve in my body. I may as well here give you the keynote of her
character. It is an inane and egregious vanity—and a mania _pour se
faire personnage_; one of that dangerous class of meddling fools, who
are for ever rushing in “where angels fear to tread.” She was indeed “a
thing of shreds and patches,” made up of the fragments of other person’s
thoughts and opinions—which she invariably retailed as her _own_. In
all things a mere ape and echo. During the Crimean War, she read up the
leaders in the _Times_, and Mr. RUSSELL’S letters, and then thought
herself quite competent to argue with, or rather to dictate to the first
military authorities, past, or present. Vilely ill-educated, or rather
not educated at all, she could not open her mouth without mutilating the
QUEEN’S English, and, like “The Wife of Bath,” her “French was French
of Bow,” or, rather, of Boœtia—“for French of Paris knew she none,” and
her grotesque and barbaric pronunciation of what she called such, was
worthy of Sir EDWARD himself! or of that other universal genius (in his
own opinion) Mr. W—— R——. She also had, like most vain fools, a literary
mania, and a great ambition to appear very _blue_. I am confident, from
her subsequent ingratitude towards me, who, as she acknowledged to my
son, was the only benefactress she had ever had, that next to her fear,
by my incarceration for life, of losing an excellent milch cow, which
she had no chance of replacing, her motive in writing to the papers,
and making my iniquitous abduction public, was that she thought by so
doing she should put herself forward, and become quite a heroine. I am
also certain that when Sir LIAR got hold of her, and that other patent
scoundrel E—— J—— (who had been plied for him by that little Red Rat,
COCKBURN—as of course it does not do for a Chief Justice to _appear_
in dirty work, all English virtue, being strictly PUBLIC!), seeing the
empty, heartless, vain, unprincipled ass they had to deal with, they
fooled her to the very top of her bent; the rascally Q.C. telling her,
that he, Sir LIAR’S _ame damnée_, had only undertaken the business in
_my_ and my son’s interest; and what a thing it would be for her to
heal family differences! and what a proud position for her, a young
girl (39), to be the sole pivot that could keep the DERBY Ministry in!
and E—— J——, knowing that there was no friend like a woman, and no head
like a woman’s, when dictated to by her heart. All this I learned from
herself after; but where it struck me, like an electric flash, how they
had fooled, and sold—or rather _bought_—her, for I was the sold! was her
saying, the day I left H——’s stronghold, and we were driving to town, as
she pointed out of the window to the Asylum for Idiots, on the left-hand
side of the road, and said, with one of her vain-glorious chuckles, “As
E—— J—— said, ‘we won’t put _you_ there, Miss R——!’” “Then,” said I, “I
am certain that he, and his infamous client, _must_ have fooled you to
their heart’s content.” I have no doubt, too, that when she heard the
jingle of the thimbles, about keeping the DERBY Ministry in! and she
being the sole pivot! that could secure the Cabinet!! a vista opened
to her of all the salons in London; _ibid_, the becoming an honorary
member of all the literary cliques; and ditto, of her being made free of
the sesame of all the backstairs in Downing-street! To say nothing of
her having fallen desperately in love with Mr. L——! (poor fellow, how
soon his punishment overtook him), whom she used to rave about as the
_bo_-eye-dale (alias _beau ideal_) of what a young poet ought to be; so
handsome, so elegant, so charming! and I have no doubt in the plenitude
of her imbecile conceit, she thought she would fasten herself on me, as
a daughter-in-law, for the rest of my life. What a pity she could not
hear the loathing disgust that her _bo-eye-dale_ used to speak of her
with. At all events, it is some comfort to know how those he-villains—the
brand new Baronet, and the outlawed, swindling Q.C.—squeezed the orange
and then threw away the rind, and when they had got all they wanted of
her, kicked her off in a way _quite_ worthy of them. And it is also a
consolation, that, as a Frenchman said to me, when she used to be talking
about her _cost hume de cheval_ (Amazone), as she called her habit, “_Ah!
madame, quel bonheur puisque que cette drolesse la c’en est amourachée de
monsieur votre fils qu’elle ne peut jamais devenir votre belle-fille!_”
And now, before telling you what remains of this terrible history I must
exonerate my unhappy Son from ever having gone such lengths in impious
falsehood and hypocrisy, as to have written that disgusting “Dedication
of Lucile” to his infamous father’s “loved” and honoured name. He _never
did write it_; but how could a son publicly disclaim it, and say my
father is a Liar and a Forger? Of course he could _not_. But where he is
eternally to be blamed is for ever having let weakness and subserviency
come to _that_; when, instead of thanks for having thrown himself into
the breach to save his fiend father from the crushing disgrace of a full
_exposé_ of the Mad House Conspiracy, he found that unscrupulous monster
only wanted him to tell more lies, and forge new springes for his Victim
Mother, he should have unhesitatingly and firmly refused, and said—No,
sir, I have done everything I could, and more than I ought, to screen
you; setting facts, and truth, and my own feelings, and all justice, at
defiance to do so; but if you now intend to break faith, and go back from
all you promised in a moment of imminent peril, you cannot expect me to
write myself down a Coward or a Villain by deserting and betraying the
Mother, through whose unexampled forbearance and noble self-abnegation
I was alone able to serve you. For had not my poor, generous Mother
accepted _me_ as a hostage, you know the QUEEN’S dominions would not have
bribed her to forego the public redress she was so more than entitled to.
But this would have been honest and true; and how could Sir E——’s son,
pupil, and tool, be either? And, alas! the Bible is right—as the twig is
bent, so will it grow. Poor, poor, unfortunate young martyr! as his Fiend
Father has crushed my life from out its setting, so has he crushed that
young and once bright soul from out its orbit, and sent it erring through
the tenebrous nebula of his own Avernus. Poor young victim! truly
“His honour, rooted in dishonour stood,
And faith, unfaithful! made him falsely true.”
For if you only knew his opinion of and feeling towards that vile Father,
you would not wonder that after, through sheer moral cowardice, having
been made to run counter to all his _feelings_ and his whole nature, and
play the part of a sort of _Judas tranie Tartufe_! he should have written
in that heart-cry of his, called “Last Words,” that appeared three years
ago in the _Cornhill Magazine_.
“But what will the angels say, when they are looking at me?”
They will tell him perhaps that his Mother pitied even while she despised
him. There _are_ some persons who can manage to love, and yet despise; I
cannot, as I told him; for with me contempt is a moral bourne from which
no affection ever returns. But I am _not_ angry with him. Oh no, I wish
I was; for that would pass. No, I am not angry with him; I have left him
all I have in the world—not money, for I have none; but all my pictures,
books, bronzes, rare carvings, and rarer historical enamel portraits,
and miniatures, including a most exquisite one of _la belle Ferronière_,
that belonged to FRANCOIS PREMIER, and a fine miniature of Madame DE
MONTESPAN, set in a diamond bracelet, which had belonged to her son,
the Duc DE MAINE! also a fine miniature of the great Lord STRAFFORD, and
that most beautiful miniature of Lord BYRON that Lady CAROLINE LAMB left
me; my large Sèvres jewelled _Ecrelles_, with a portrait of LOUIS Quinze
on it, which he gave to poor MARIE ANTOINETTE when she was Dauphine; and
which she gave to the Comte D’ARTOIS (CHARLES DIX), who gave it to his
cousin, the Duc DE BOILLON, and he it was left it to my mother. All my
_bijouterie_ I have also left him, but with a solemn injunction in my
will, on pain of GOD’S judgment! that he should never desecrate the grave
of the Mother he had so _cruelly betrayed_, and inhumanly neglected, by
any tombstone, verbiage, or any impious posthumous sentimentalities! in
Poems or Magazines.—Amen.
And yet with all my knowledge of and unlimited faith in the diabolical
villainy of Sir EDWARD, there is _still_ a mystery of iniquity about his
unhallowed power (divorced as it is from all affection and respect) over
his truly unfortunate Son, that even I cannot fathom, nor even guess at.
But I must get to the end as quickly as possible; for much as I have
tried to condense this complex tissue of iniquity, which after all is but
a drop in the great ocean of it, in which I have been plunged; it would
have been quite unintelligible to you, as a stranger to both the actors,
and their actions, had I not, in narrating the latter, put you in some
degree _au fait_ to the former.
Well, the next day, after Miss R——’s semi-nocturnal visit, when without
giving me any particulars, she informed me I was to be set at liberty
almost immediately, H—— came up, and was more explicit, for he was in
a towering passion, fanning himself with a newspaper that he clutched
vindictively. “’Pon my word,” said he, “those abominable papers are
too bad! More especially the Somersetshire ones; to read their abusive
tirades, one would really suppose, Lady L——, that instead of being
surrounded with every comfort, you had been thrown into a dungeon.” “You
forget, Mr. H——,” said I, “to the impartial public, who are not _paid_,
and have no _interest_ in thinking otherwise, the infringement upon the
liberty of the subject in _any_ way, much less in the brutal one of so
unwarrantably kidnapping and seizing without judge or jury an inoffensive
and defenceless woman, and incarcerating her in a lunatic asylum, is
in itself a quite sufficient deed of iniquity—whatever the Sybarite
surroundings of the locale may be—to raise a storm of public indignation
far more easily evoked than quelled. And you also forget that, take a
person nolens volens, and by force, to Buckingham Palace, or to the
Tuileries, which is rather more like a palace—and nail down the windows,
lock the doors, and put keepers to attend to them, and _presto_! you
convert the palace into a prison, and the most terrible of all prisons,
a Madhouse.” Finding he could get no sympathy from me, as he might have
supposed! he began tapping that bay window of a paunch of his, and said
he was so ill with all the uproar that was going on, that he was obliged
to take “_shugger_” (sugar) in his tea!!!! which he never did but when he
was ill! Having stated this highly interesting and physiological fact,
he left the room as abruptly as he had entered it. Now really his coming
to _me_ for sympathy and consolation, on the vituperations of the public
against him, was almost as fine a piece of logical and inverse justice as
Lord DUNDREARY, in _Punch_, saying in a fury to his wife upon getting his
brother’s letter, “I tell you what, GEORGINA, if I had known you would
have had such a beastht of a brother-in-law as THOM, I would not have
married you.” Feeling very sure that Mr. L—— would return to the charge,
I sat down and wrote him a letter, ready to be given to him when he came.
Oh! if we have a Guardian Angel, why did mine desert his post on that
day! of all days? I had nearly finished my letter, when that too odious
Miss R—— marched in again informing me she had brought my Son down with
her again; then, said I, “you may take him _back_ with you again; but
just wait two minutes and my letter will be finished, which I am writing
to him, and you can give it to him.” Whereupon this always vulgar,
ill-bred, and unwarrantable person, pounces down her skinny, talon-like
hand, seizes my letter, and tears it to pieces. I was indignant at such
an impertinent outrage, and ordered her to leave the room. She had
scarcely done so, before the door again opened, and in walked Mr. L——,
while the door was locked on the outside! The next moment he was kneeling
and kissing my feet in a paroxysm of tears—I cannot describe the scene
that followed, and I would not, if I could. Enough, that at the end of
three hours, he still found me _determined_ to seek legal redress, both
in the Divorce Court and elsewhere, for the culminating outrage his
Father had inflicted upon me. He said he thought his Father would destroy
himself, rather than stand the disgrace. I laughed at _that_, and told
him not to alarm himself, for that his Father was far too great a coward
to die voluntarily, even a coward’s death; he might, indeed, said I,
murder either you or me, if he thought he could lay the crime on anyone
else, or make it appear that we had committed suicide. And to tell you
the truth, I have _no_ compassion for that nice sense of honour which
only shrinks from the public odium of exposure, but defies GOD, by never
recoiling before the commission of any amount of evil doing that money
can conceal, or hypocrisy varnish. “Then, mother,” said he solemnly and
sadly,—“every prospect I have in life is ruined, I never _can_ stand the
fearful, the horrible exposure of my Father that is inevitable.” Here,
he had hit the mark; I leaned back in my chair, irresolute, and he saw
it, while he continued kneeling with both my bands in his, and his pale
tearful, agonized face, looking up to mine. “But don’t you know, don’t
you see, ROBERT, that the _moment_ your Father has cleared this precipice
with impunity; then shall I be debarred by ‘condonation’ from my redress,
and left more at his mercy (who has none!) than ever.”
“No, no, my own angel darling Mother, then you will bind me to you for
ever; he _cannot_, he _dare_ not, after owing his salvation to your
generosity—prevent your having me to protect, and be devoted to you all
my life, and if anything goes wrong in future, you will always have me
to appeal to, and protect you. Oh, Mother! if you could but see into my
heart, you would see that I would, that I have given up everything to
get to you and to be with you. I know I am not worth it, that is, that
I _have_ been far from worth it, but if you could, darling, make this
great, great, noble sacrifice for me—your child—never, never, shall you
repent it.” After a great deal in the same strain, striking the one
chord in my heart that he knew he was _sure_ of, till he had brought it
into perfect unison with his own wishes, he had conquered. I threw my
arms about his neck and said, “Oh, ROBERT, had you asked me to tear my
heart out bodily, and give it naked and unguarded into your keeping, it
would not be half such a sacrifice as you require of me.” “I know it,
mother darling, I know it;” and then, after a couple of the happiest and
perhaps the most foolish hours I ever passed in my life, believing—as I
firmly did—that out of such a Slough of Despond I had walked into the
warm sheltering Paradise of my child’s heart, who at least _externally_
and in manner was all I could wish, which was in itself a great boon
after the coarse, common clay I had so long been used to be knocked and
bruised against. When he urged me to go abroad with him, to pass what he
called our honeymoon, and to take Miss R——, as he might not be able to
get sufficient leave of absence to return with me at the end of three or
four months, “Oh! no, not Miss R——,” said I, “she is so very antipathic
to me. I’ll give her any sum of money for any exertions she may have
made in getting my incarceration made public, but we shall be so happy
without her, and she is such a wet blanket, and a dirty wet blanket
too.” “Well, that she certainly _is_, and when I first saw her I said to
myself, ‘Heavens! _can_ this be a _friend_ of my mother’s?’ But when she
told me all you had done for her, I then knew how it was. She seems to
have set her heart upon going abroad with us, and after all she’s done,
I don’t think we could well refuse her.” “Well, dear,” said I, very much
annoyed at this, “you might have let me choose my own evils and not have
extended your hospitality to my _bete noire_. But suppose I _do_ yield
every point to you, in this way; you know I cannot possibly go abroad,
whatever arrangements are made, without appointing one Trustee, and
that is more easily said than done, as I know of old the great dislike
people have to being brought into contact with your Father; knowing that
they have either to abandon my rights, or quarrel with him, which before
was what drove me to the _pis aller_ of appointing the do-nothing-goose,
Sir THOMAS CULLUM.” After considering a little while, I said: “I have no
great faith in public philanthropists, more especially of the Exeter Hall
breed; but as he is one of the Commissioners in Lunacy, and knows the
whole affair, I wonder if, under the circumstances, as a piece of good
Samaritanship, Lord SHAFTESBURY would consent to be my Trustee? for he
might be a check upon your Father.” “A very good person,” said he, “I’ll
ask him, and let you know to-morrow, darling.” So, it being then seven
o’clock, and he having to get back for his Father’s dinner, left me after
this most harrowing day; though I then little dreamed of the red-hot
ploughshares there were to come, after being kept full three months in a
Fool’s Paradise about my son’s love and devotion to me; and when I used
to chide him for being so demonstrative, even in public places, and say
people would think I was some old woman whom he had married for money, he
would say, “Oh, but Mother darling, we are not like ordinary Mother and
Son; I love you in every possible way, and then I love you back all the
love I’ve not been let to pay you for years; and then you have suffered
_so_ much, and borne it so nobly, that you are to me something holy.”
At other times he would cry out after hugging me, “Mamma,” as he always
called me, “what I worship in you, is, that with a lion’s heart, you are
so tender a woman!” All these demonstrations were, of course, music to
my ears, and what tended materially to keep me in this Fool’s Paradise,
was that there was a girl whom he was much attached to (not an English
miss, thank GOD), and whom his vile Father was luring him on to suppose
he would give him sufficient money to marry, and when I used to see him
looking wretched, and thinking it was about her, he’d burst into tears,
and throw himself into my arms, saying, “Oh, no! it’s not that, Mother,
for I declare before GOD, if it were to be made a matter of alternative,
which I would give up, her or you, I’d give her up to-morrow, if I might
always have you with me.” Then, too, a very old and kind benefactor of
his, an elderly gentleman, who had shown him much kindness, and whose
large means, when ROBERT was a boy, had often atoned for his father’s
sordid parsimony, wrote to me, saying, “I can answer for the deep love
and yearning, dear, dear ROBERT has always had for his Mother; and oh!
how sincerely do I rejoice in his happiness now.” Add to which my maid
was always telling me that FLETCHER, ROBERT’S valet, used to say to her,
“Oh! how Mr. L—— does adore his Mother. I often surprise him kissing her
gloves, and slippers. Poor young gentleman! I never saw a happy face on
him till now; he seems like a natural person now, which he never did with
his Father, of whom he is mortally afraid.” So you will own that if this
was fooling, I was _well_ fooled. But I must return to the horrors. The
next day, after the first on which I had seen him, Mr. L—— returned to
the lodge, and on coming into the room, said, “Well darling, you owe me
a million of kisses, for I have good news for you; SHAFTESBURY consents
to being your trustee, so _that’s_ settled.” I thought this exceedingly
kind of Lord SHAFTESBURY, as I did not know him personally, and of course
wrote to thank him, which note I gave to Mr. L—— to take to town; and,
despite the almost universality of English bearishness and ill-breeding,
still as anything in the shape of a gentleman or gentlewoman always
answers a letter, more especially such a one as I had written, I was
surprised at that evening, and the whole of the next day passing without
my receiving any reply; and I said to Mr. L——, late on the following day,
“Are you _sure_, ROBERT, that my note went to Lord SHAFTESBURY?” “I would
not trust it to a servant, so I took it myself.” At this I felt quite
satisfied and did not think any more of the matter. The next day the
invasion increased; I was quite knocked up, and in bed. That vile fellow,
H——, came down to see me. I told Miss R—— to say I could not see him, as
I was in bed, and I added to her—though he was acting in my interest,
I would not see him if I were not. Indeed, a friend of mine, Mrs. T——,
told me, after my return from my trapped going abroad, that hearing ——
was engaged, she had driven down to Miss R—— at 12 at night, to tell her,
for Heaven’s sake to be on her guard, that that man, of such notoriously
infamous character, retained by Sir E——, did not wreck me. But she having
so completely done so, in order, as she thought, to play her own game,
replied, like the double distilled ass she is, “Oh, —— is all on Lady
L——’s side!” “Oh, Miss R——,” said Miss T——, “how can you believe such
nonsense as that?”
Well, it appears that with E—— J—— had come down Mr. L——, and Dr. F——
W——, who, I was told, was come on my behalf to counteract—that is,
contradict—the statements made by that precious pair of rascals, R——
and H—— T——. “But how,” said I, “can he possibly do that when he knows
nothing about me—has never seen me, and will only do so for a few
minutes?” Verily they are a nice set, one and all of them, ready to swear
a poor victim mad or sane, at a moment’s notice, for value received!
Shame! shame! That disgusting Miss R—— then began screaming out in her
peacock voice, “Now your son wants you to go abroad with him to-morrow.”
“But I won’t and can’t,” said I; “I must at least have a week to get some
clothes and things.” And then this horrid creature made me quite ill
with her vulgar bullying manner, and I begged she would leave the room.
The dulcifluous Dr. F—— W—— was then sent up to me, as he with more tact
than truth expressed it, to know my wishes. I told him that I thought
I had done quite enough in yielding to my son’s wishes in going abroad
at all; and that I did not see why I was to be hurried off in this life
and death way, as if _I_ had committed a crime, and was to be smuggled
out of the country. “Very true,” said the amiable Doctor, “and I am
sure nothing can be more reasonable than your wish to have a few days
to prepare for the journey.” He then added, “You are to have, or they
are getting you (I don’t remember the exact words) a thousand a year,
and a house to be furnished for you in town;” which flourishing promise
ended in £500, but the solemn assurance from Sir LIAR, E—— J——, and HYDE,
that all my debts should be immediately paid, and my debts of honour,
before I could get across the Channel was never kept. The dulciferous
Dr. W——, after so perfectly agreeing in all I said, then went down, to
as perfectly agree with all the opposition said; and was again sent back
to urge _their_ suit; telling me confidentially that the fact was, that
the place was in such an uproar that Sir E—— was terrified; and there
would be no peace till the public was assured I was at liberty, and
really gone abroad with my son. I may as well here tell you, that such
was the honourable estimation Sir L—— was held in by the said public,
that people fully believed I was sent abroad to be made away with; and
hence, among _many others_, the atrocious lie, that I was accompanied
by a _relation of my own! M—— R——, by my own special request!_ Whereas,
as I discovered, like all the rest, too late, this wretch was only sent
as a Spy on me and my Son—upon the Jesuitical plan _of triplets_, and
as “own correspondent” to Sir LIAR, to whom she used to write _every_
day from the programme _he_ had given her, the blackest lies, for him
to read to people:—such for instance, as that I had been very violent
and unmanageable till I had arrived in Paris, when I became calmer! the
real truth being, that I was _so_ exhausted, in body and mind from all
I had gone through, that I could scarcely move or speak, but used to
say, lying down, while my son sat beside me, my hand clasped in his,
that I felt so grateful to GOD for his being restored to me that I could
almost forgive the relentless author of my life-long misery, and cruelly
exceptional persecutions; but that at all events now I’d try and forget
him and them, and think of nothing but the present and the future. Well,
Dr. F—— W——, finding he could not move me from my resolve of not being
smuggled out of the country like a felon, sent up the only person who
could fool me, my son. And when he told me what it would entail upon
him, if he could not succeed in doing his father’s bidding, why then I
yielded; and having been brought to Mr. H——’s stronghold on Wednesday
the 22nd of June, 1858, at 7 p.m., I left it on Saturday, July the 17th,
1858, at 3 p.m., by almost an equal degree of treachery, falsehood, and
springeing. Poor little MARY H—— cried so violently, that I was really
grieved to leave her, and felt quite selfish in going (as I then thought)
to be happy, when she who had been for three weeks my one sole Star in
the Desert was left so unhappy. Mrs. H—— said the whole affair had made
her _us_band _hill_; I said I thought he had been always HILL; while
_he_ said he had never suffered so much in his life; the uproar that
had been made had played the deuce with him. “I told you it would, Mr.
H——, the day you _forced_ me to come here; why did you not listen to
me?” “And then,” said he, “my daughter MARY is breaking her heart, and I
have got, I’m sure, a confirmed liver complaint from it.” “Then,” said
I, “you must leave off ‘_shugger_,’ it is the worst thing in the world
for the liver.” Dr. OILY GAMMON R—— told me, after my return, that H——
had been on his knees, imploring him to have pity on his ten children,
and not ruin him. The valiant Doctor, who literally could not, or would
not say Boo! to a goose, or he might have had _beau jeu_ with H——,
pretends he said to him, “You should have thought of these before. You
had no mercy upon Lady L—— when you dragged her to your asylum in that
iniquitous manner.” However, after my departure Brentford became too hot
for him, and he removed to London, where, between him and the _rest_
in whose power he, of course, was completely, I understand Sir LIAR
was completely beggared with hush-money; not with my tremendous debts,
which, at the end of 20 years’ _ceaseless_ persecutions, and consequent
onerous law expenses, amounted to the mighty sum of £4,500, which, when
at last at the point of the sword, _alias_ the _writ_, that generous
and honourable man was _compelled_ to pay; he did so by disgorging some
of my own money. Upon this memorable and broiling 17th of July, 1858,
from 3 to 7 p.m., I had to drive all over London in quest of ready-made
things, and then go to ‘Farrance’s Hotel’ to eat a hurried dinner, and
after from Belgrave-square to the London Bridge Station, so that I was
really quite worn out when at 11 o’clock at night I found myself in bed
at the ‘Lord Warden Hotel,’ Dover, from whence we did not cross to Calais
till Monday, the 19th, all _newspapers_ being _carefully_ kept _out of
my way_; and, indeed, I was both too happy and too tired to ask for any,
which, of course, was _precisely_ what was calculated upon. Abroad, I
can only suppose that all my letters were intercepted by that vile Miss
R—— in her capacity of own correspondent to Sir LIAR, as Mrs. CLARKE
told me she had forwarded innumerable ones; and, on my return, I found
duplicates, recapitulating their painful contents, and alas! too late
warnings, as warnings generally are. “For I told thee so” the Fiend
ever whispers, when the deed is done! At Bordeaux I got a letter from
JUDAS H——, in which the following audacious and asinine passage occurred,
“Sir EDWARD is _quite_ changed, his only wish is to render your life
in future as happy as possible.” To which I replied, “Yes, no doubt,
for it is a patent fact in natural history that the leopard is in the
habit of changing its spots at a moment’s notice.” A few nights after
this H—— humbug, ROBERT was brought some letters from England at the
Opera, one of which he no sooner read than bursting into a perfect agony
of tears, he rushed out of the box. I, of course, went after him, when
that beast, Miss R——, caught hold of my dress to prevent my following
him, saying, “Augh, shure, he’s often in dat way,” as if she had known
him all her life, and had been his _bonne d’enfant_. I could not find
him; and when that night I went to kiss him, and wish him good-night,
I found him pacing his room in a state of distraction, with his hands
to his head, exclaiming, “What _does_ my father think I’m made of! what
can he suppose I am?” And upon another occasion, though not so fearfully
shaken, he appeared in a greater rage; his vile father had written him
a furious letter about the scandalous expenses of our journey! “As if,”
said ROBERT, “I was a dishonest courier; and talks of withdrawing his
patronage! from me, as if I was some beggar he had picked up in the
street!” “Well dear,” said I, “you should keep a strict account of the
expenditure; enclose your father all the bills, and ask him if he knows
of any way in which five persons can travel for nothing in a country
where everything now is fabulously dear?” For even at Luchon at the _end_
of the season, after leaving the _Hotel de Bonne Maison_ as being too
expensive, they made us pay 500 francs a week for the Châlet we had, for
which in the season Mme. DE ROTHSCHILD had paid 1000. Often and often,
when I saw the poor boy in these dreadful paroxysms of mingled rage
and despair, I implored him on my knees to confide in me, and I would
_help_ him, if it were even against myself, for I could bear anything and
everything, but to feel and find out that my own child, for whom I had
sacrificed everything, and in whom I had garnered up all my hopes, was
deceiving me! And who _can_ you trust if not your own mother? But no,
the chronic habits of terror and subterfuge were too strong! even when
stung or goaded into making me little half-confidences, from which no
one, as I told him, could give sound advice, as the very point that is
kept from them is in all probability the turning one, which would alter
their whole opinion and counsel. But his terror of his vile father was so
great, and now added to it, that of that “beastly disgusting old Spy,” as
he called her, that even in the heart of the Pyrenees, if he did unburden
himself in the least to me, it was in a whisper; and he would turn pale,
and look furtively around, as if the very birds of the air would carry
his words back to Park-lane, or Downing-street. Poor young martyr! poor
young martyr! But all the tortures he was then enduring were worthy of
the Fiend-Father, who when the poor boy had had a fearful, and nearly
fatal, fever at Lucca—took no note of whether he lived or died, only
to storm about the expense of the Doctors!!! Yet this is the loathsome
wretch! to whom he allowed the impious dedication to “Lucile” to appear,
and blaspheme about his “loved! and honoured name!! and his _gentle_
kindness to him as a child!!” And this is the Father for whom he could
so cruelly and treacherously sacrifice the Mother who _had_ sacrificed
everything, and every chance of redress for him, and whom he professed
to adore, in a way that might have deceived the Recording Angel himself.
And worse still! Miss R——, whom he so loathed and detested, that old Spy,
as he called her—was the parasite he could afterwards cabal with against
his Mother, to steal those letters of his infamous Father’s, which I had
entrusted to that creature the day I was kidnapped at H—— T——’s; but
in _that_ they did not succeed, as you shall hear presently. So much
for that paralysis of the conscience, moral cowardice, which is at once
the germ and hotbed of every vice. It was not until I had been thus
far springed upon, and thus far on the journey, that after writing to
know if all my debts of honour had been paid, as so _solemnly promised_
before I could get across the channel, and the deed drawn up, settling
that beggarly £500 a year on me for _my_ life, that I got a letter from
that precious rascal, Mr. —— ——, coolly telling me that everything was
at a standstill, _till_ I had appointed a trustee!!! I sent for Mr. L——,
and pointing to the paragraph, said “What does this fresh shuffle mean?
did you not explicitly tell me at Inverness Lodge that Lord SHAFTESBURY
had consented to be my trustee? and that you _yourself_ took my note of
thanks to him? to which I have never from that day to this received any
answer?” He turned red and pale alternately, stuttered, stammered, and
said, “Did not H—— tell you?” “Tell me what?” said I; “when and where
could I have seen him, to tell me anything?—when I was hurried out of
the country like a condemned felon. Of course, that your father, and
Mr. —— ——, might have the whole arena to themselves, to concoct their
unscrupulous lies and plots.” _This_ was the first terrible wrench my
affection, that is my esteem for, and confidence in, my son got. A
few days after, I saw an advertisement in the _Times_, from that low
swindling publisher ——, of Paternoster-row, of a cheap railway edition of
a book of mine called ‘—— ——,’ which at the time it came out, two years
before, Sir LIAR had left no stone unturned to get crushed and abused.
Now a Mr. IRONSIDE had undertaken to sell _one_ of my books to —— for a
re-issue, and knowing the apathetic hand-over-head way English people do
other people’s business, I gave Mr. IRONSIDE a list of the books he was
_not_ to allow to go into a railway edition, and another list of books
of which I had _not_ the copyrights, and ‘—— ——,’ was _first_ upon the
interdicted list. Seeing this barefaced swindle, I sent for Mr. L——,
knowing how potential a man’s name always is with English blackguards,
and I said, “Will you just write two lines to that fellow ——, saying,
‘Sir,—My mother having seen in the _Times_ of the 26th of September
(1858), an advertisement of yours re-issuing a novel of hers, entitled
“—— ——,” which Mr. IRONSIDE had so expressly forbidden you to do, she
wishes to know by whose, and what authority you have now done so?—I am,
sir, your obedient servant,
“‘R—— B—— L——.’”
“Ah!” said the young gentleman, “my father has written to me about this
re-issue, and says you have broken faith with him about that book in
re-issuing it.” “How broken faith with him?” said I. “How could that
be when I have never had any communication with him upon that or any
other subject? I merely interdicted ——’s re-issuing that book, because I
could get better terms for it elsewhere. So pray ask your father _how_ I
could have broken faith with _him_ about it; and how angry I am at ——’s
barefaced swindle! and pray go and write that letter to —— directly.” I
may as well here tell you while I think of it, that part of their plan
was to get me to go back and live with Sir LIAR for a short time to patch
up his character, and throw dust in the eyes of the public, which is all
that is ever required on the score of English morality. Had I been such
a glorious fool as to do this, of course he could have poisoned me off
comfortably out of hand, and then written a touching _In Memoriam_ on me
in Mr. HUMBUG DICKENS’S “_All the Year Round_.” For that vile Miss R——,
one day at Luchon, had the imbecility and the effrontery to bring me a
letter from her employer, from which that meanest of all villains had
ordered her to read out the following _unique_ in the annals of humbug
paragraph: “Try and soften Lady L——’s heart, by reminding her of the time
when I was so devoted to her”!!!
“Dear, now, do _tink_ of your own interest, and tell me what I shall
write back to Sir EDWARD.” “One word will do,” said I, “the word ‘When?’”
In my dreadful dilemma of being without a trustee—not to leave them any
pretext for keeping the poor people out of their money, I had written to
Dr. OILY GAMMON R—— to know if _he_ would be my trustee? Not certainly
from choice, as I never have any but Hobson’s choice; but because he was
already _au fait_ to the last Madhouse Conspiracy, and knew all the
_dramatis personæ_. He wrote me back a most oleaginous letter, accepting
the office, and praising Mr. L—— up to the skies, with one of those
double barrelled compliments which professionally he was in the habit of
bestowing upon my lord and my lady—_i.e._, saying “He is a noble fellow,
worthy of the mother who bore him.” No, verily; _she_ is _not_ a coward;
and for all the kingdoms of the earth could neither lie away a person’s
life, repay good with evil, or cringe to infamy in high places; nor
pander to treachery and injustice. Though as FALSTAFF was not only witty
himself, but the cause of wit in others; so Sir EDWARD is not only false,
treacherous, and infamous, but is the cause of falsehood, treachery, and
infamy in others. Yet, thank GOD, neither by bribery nor intimidation,
has he ever, or will he ever, be able to mould me to his purposes; and
hence his implacable persecution, and his poisoned treacherous arrows
that always fly in _darkness_, and from an ambush. When Mr. L—— returned
with his dispatch to C——, he put it into my hand, saying “Will that do?”
It began: “SIR,—Lady B—— L—— having seen in _The Times_,” &c., &c. “No,”
I said, “it will _not_ do; I told you to say my mother having seen, &c.,
&c., that he fully might know that I had a son, and therefore conclude,
however erroneously, that he would protect me.” At this he left the room,
and I felt so angry and heart-stricken, that I wrote him an indignant
note, reproaching him with having lured and springed me abroad, merely
to patch up his father’s character, which, sooth to say, was rather past
mending. Upon the receipt of this, for truth to evil-doers is the most
unpardonable of all crimes, _car ce n’est que la verité qui blesse_,
the young gentleman having of course had his _orders_ (and when did
this pious ÆNEAS ever dare to disobey any order of his loved!!! and
honoured!!! father, “from pitch-and-toss up to manslaughter?”) sent for
post horses and set off to Toulouse, on his return to Paris, leaving
his Mother, now nothing more could be done with her, and the bubble was
beginning to burst, to find her way home as she could. Certainly he did
leave his man FLETCHER to attend upon me, who kept saying to WILLIAMS
(my maid) the whole journey, “’Pon my soul, it’s too, too bad; I did
not think Mr. L—— _could_ have acted so by his Mother—whom I know he
loves—merely from fear of that old villain Sir EDWARD.” When I found Mr.
L—— gone, without a word, without a line, my short dream all shattered
and shimmering about me! and a cold, black, unfathomable abyss before
me,—never shall I forget the first petrifying yet bewildering agony—the
severing, as it were, of body and soul—that I felt, and which I am
certain must be what one feels when the real severing of them by death
comes. For hours I seemed turned to stone, and could not shed a tear,
till I saw, sitting under the trees opposite our windows, in her little
carriage, a poor little lame girl about thirteen, who used to sit there
begging. She had a little, pale, melancholy face, with imploring eyes,
that seemed to say, “_Pour l’amour de Dieu!_” for she never asked in
words. ROBERT had given her a five-franc piece one day, and came into
me with the tears streaming down his cheeks, and said, “Oh, Mother,
can you give me any warm wraps for her? she is so cold and so thinly
clad.” How I loved the poor fellow at that moment—so much good feeling
was so _un_-Bulwerish, and so _un_-Lyttonian. I gave him all he wanted,
and he then flung his arms round my neck, and said, “How good you are
to me, darling; anyone else would have laughed at me.” “Then they must
be thorough wretches if they did,” said I. Upon seeing his poor little
_protegée_ looking up wistfully, that cold, gloomy November day, after he
was gone, I put on my bonnet, and went down to her. Her first question
was for “Monsieur”—for he was her idol; no one, she said, had ever been
so kind, or so gentle to her. When I told her he was gone, and would not
return, she cried bitterly. Her name was JEANNE HESTIER. I said, “JEANNE,
would you like to be taken out of the cold and clothed, and taught, and
live entirely _avec les bonnes sœurs a l’Hospice_?” She clasped her
hands and said, “Oh, that would be too good—but what would my mother
say?” who took all the money people gave her at the baths (and indeed
I had trouble enough with the worthless, grasping mother after). “Oh,
never mind, I’ll settle that,” said I, and I took the pole of her little
carriage and drew her to the convent, where I consigned her to the _Mère
Superieure_, paying the first year in advance, and sufficient besides
for her “_necessaire_”—have done so ever since, and shall do so as long
as I live; and as it is only £20 a year, I hope and trust Mr. —— won’t
leave poor JEANNE to starve when I am dead, as I send the money every six
months, through his old Luchon Doctor, Dr. PEJOT. It is so _pleasant_
to have his inquiries about “_le jeune homme charmant Monsieur votre
fils_.” Oh, what a bitter! bitter! sting, life is to some of us. Well,
when I arrived in Paris, I still made a last effort to save this wretched
young victim from himself. I sent a note to the hotel, where he always
put up, to tell him not, after what _he_ and _he_ alone (for no one else
could have done it) had trapped me into, to let us part in such a manner;
for if he did, nothing should induce me ever to see him again. He came,
but the hideous KATE R—— was in the room, and his manner was cold and
constrained. To get rid of her (for she always stuck to us like a leech),
I sent her off on a wild goose chase to GALIGNANI’S. I then implored him
only to be candid with me, and tell me all, no matter how bad it was, or
what his orders were to do against me; I would not only freely forgive
him, but help him, for, as I said before, I could bear all things;
but to feel _he_ was deceiving me, and I should not at all mind what I
suffered, or even try to get redress for any outrages or insults from
his father, and his father’s tools; if I could be only _certain_ that my
own child was merely playing a part against me, and _not_ doing so in
his own heart; much as I deprecated such expedient duplicity, and which,
to save my life, I could not resort to myself. He flung himself at my
feet, hiding his face in my lap, and in such an agony of hysterical sobs,
that I really was quite frightened. But not one word could I get out of
him. As there is no courage like a coward’s for rashness, when pushed to
desperation, so I suppose there is no obstinacy like a weak vacillator’s,
when they have been pushed to take the Curtius’ leap into the gulf of
determination. At dinner, the Spy being there, he again congealed into
a proper B—— L——ish degree of frigidity, and talked of this, that and
the other, _sachant sans doute, que la bete noire R——, etait la faisant
son courier, et dressant son procès verbal—pour son barbe bleu de pere_.
Then he said how sorry he was to leave beautiful Luchon, which was the
most lovely place he had ever seen. And that poor little lame girl—her
face haunted him—he must send her something, “You need not, at least just
now,” said I, “for I thought you would be glad of it, so I’ve provided
for your child.” “Provided for her! how?” I then told him I had deposited
her with my friends, the Sisters of Charity, at the Hospice, where both
she and her health would be taken care of. At this he drew up, with an
air of pomposity that was almost worthy of “my father,” and said—while
Miss R——’s hideous, toad-like eyes were fixed upon him, “Those sort of
things are all very well, if people have large fortunes.” “Well,” I broke
in, “it will neither come out of your father’s private fortune (whatever
that may really be, it is so magnified to the public, and so contradicted
to his family), nor out of his £5,000 a year as Colonial Secretary; and,
by doing without something else, I have no doubt I shall be able to
manage £20 a year, even out of my splendid income.”
But all my pleasures were still to come! The good people of Taunton,
when they heard I was to return safe and sound, wanted to give me a
triumphal entry from the station. But upon my unhappy son’s account, I
wrote to Mrs. CLARKE to say how grateful I felt, and always should feel,
to them for their great kindness and zeal on my behalf; but that they
would greatly add to their kindness, if they would allow me to return
to them as quietly as possible, as I was far from well. On my return, I
found duplicates of the intercepted letters, which had not reached me
abroad; they were all to the same purport, and in the same strain, viz.,
that it was natural for me to believe in my son, but imploring me not
to _trust_ him; as “the world paints him in the same colours as his
father—black, and very black.” And in confirmation of this, they enclosed
me two infamous letters, tissues of the _grossest_ falsehoods, which had
appeared in _The Times_ on Saturday, July the 17th, 1858, the very day
I was taken from H——’s stronghold, and hurried off without breathing
time to Dover, which letters bore my son’s signature! But knowing the
unscrupulous use his Ruffian of a Father made of his name, I tried to
hope that they were a concoction of his and L——’s, and wrote of course
to JUDAS H——, and my OILY GAMMON of a trustee, Dr. R——, about them. Mr.
H—— of course “very much disapproved” of these letters! but thought
it better—no doubt he was paid for so doing—to let them die away, by
not taking any notice of them! a nice way of defending a client truly!
While Dr. OILY GAMMON “was quite shocked and startled at them, and would
certainly have contradicted every false statement contained in them,
_had he been my trustee at the time(!!!)_ and he had quite dreaded the
effect they would have on me when they came to my knowledge!” Yet the
sneaking toady and loathsome double-dealer, being perfectly cognisant of
them at the time, could, with all his pretended friendship and sympathy!
let me leave England with this mine of cowardly lies exploding after
me, and continue his horrible hypocrisy by writing to me that my son
“was a noble fellow”! _Il parint en ce cas la que, noblesse! n’obligéant
pas!_ I was also sent some Hertford Papers with a letter from that
vile wretch, Miss R——, saying that “she was bound to say (no doubt of
it) that Sir EDWARD —— had never been unkind to me! and that from the
_representations made to him (!!!!!!)_ he could not have done otherwise
than send me to Mr. H——’s _establishment!_ which had been done solely for
the benefit of my health.” The attorney H——, signing himself “Lady BULWER
LYTTON’S Solicitor,” was, of course, _bound_ to tell the same lies. But
the Hertford Papers opened a perfect battery of indignation upon that
vile Miss R——, saying—who could have but the worst opinion of a person
who, for ten days had printed statements in not only the Hertford but
London papers, that _nothing_ could exceed Sir EDWARD ——’s cruelty to,
and persecution of me for years, which she could vouch for before his
culminating Conspiracy of the Madhouse, and that out of Hell there were
not two other such demons as he and L——. And then! in the short space
of half an hour after her first interview with these men, she writes to
say he had never been unkind to me! Why, they _could_ only say that she
was a bribed perjurer, and that if anything _could_ damage Sir EDWARD
more in public opinion, it would be her present sudden and contradictory
statements respecting him. As for Mr. H——! solicitors are a proverb for
_their_ elastic consciences. But it is the old story in all cases of
the wicked strong against the innocent weak. Sir WALTER RALEIGH, it was
arranged _beforehand_, was to be condemned; therefore, vain were his
cloud of witnesses, his legions of facts, and his eloquence of truth.
Just as, of course, Prime Ministers never are, under the most glaring
and palpable of facts, to be found guilty in cases of _crim. con._ Why
should they, with secret service money and unlimited patronage at their
command? I remember that very clever, but intensely unprincipled literary
man, Dr. MAGINN, as most literary men that I have had the misfortune to
know _are_, telling me the clever dirty work he did in Lord MELBOURNE’S
and that vile Mrs. NORTON’S Trial; how _he_ packed the Jury, and how
_he_ invalidated the testimony of the only witness they were afraid
of—a footman, by worming out all his evidence, and sending it to her
Counsel, and making the man so beastly drunk at the eleventh hour at a
public house, “The Chequer’s” at Westminster, that when he was called
into Court it completely invalidated his evidence! And he also gave me
chapters and verses of the _exact_ sums of money—Baronetcies and civil
service appointments—he had had to distribute in the higher quarters; old
MELBOURNE sticking out more about the money than anything, but sending
Sir JOSEPH YORKE to close with his demands at 7 o’clock on the morning of
the Trial. But _because_ MAGINN was a high Tory, the sapient public of
course would never suspect _him_ of doing dirty work for a Whig Premier.
Yet this unscrupulous fellow, dining at my house at Bath at the time,
showed me two articles he had written upon this Trial simultaneously,
one, for the Tory _John Bull_ and _Standard_, making Mrs. NORTON out ten
times more scarlet than the Lady of Babylon; the other for a Whig organ
_proving_ her to be purer than unturned snow! which is the way Literature
and Politics are conducted in this country. And my miserable lot in
life having thrown me chiefly among Political and Literary Magnates, I
have no hesitation in saying that _all_ the misery and crime in this
country (where—despite sermons—schools—refuges and reformatories they
are _ever frightfully on the increase_), originate in the Stygian vices
and blasphemous hypocrisy! of these two great motive powers. And have
we not just been edified with another signal example of English virtue!
and above all, English justice! in high places, in the Trial of “O’KANE
_versus_ O’KANE and PALMERSTON,” where you perceive it was _Mr. O’Kane’s
friends!!_ that negotiated the compromise! as poor dear Lord PALMERSTON
_could_ have no possible interest in the matter!—Oh dear no! so it was
solely for Mr. O’KANE’S interest that he should accept Lord PALMERSTON’S
money, offered by _his_ O’KANE’S friends! and as Mrs. O’KANE had been a
maid of Lady JOCELYN’S, and therefore had the run of Cambridge House,
it’s not likely that a man of Lord PALMERSTON’S Cato-like virtue ever
even looked at her. So the superannuated Joseph came out pure and
spotless! (as most men are) amid the plaudits of a properly crammed
court, dear COCKBURN having no doubt, _sub rosa_, played the manager,
and “animated the whole,” even to inspiring _Mr. O’Kane’s friends_ with
the ways and means to inspire O’KANE with a suitable idea of his own
interests! Verily the force of humbug can no farther go! On my return
to all these agreeable, perhaps not exactly, surprises, I had also the
pleasure of finding that none of my debts of honour were paid, despite
the solemn promises of all concerned that they were to be, before I
crossed the Channel. Only JUDAS H—— had been sent down in hot haste to
Taunton to throw dust in the people’s eyes by paying the _tradespeople_
here, who were in no hurry to be paid, and whom I would much rather have
paid myself on my return, when cordially thanking them all for their
unanimous and active zeal, for they had even felt in their _pockets_ for
me, and told Mrs. CLARKE that two or three thousand pounds, or more,
should be instantly raised if wanted for law expenses. The only person
who had _not_ sent in his bill was a Quaker upholsterer, who was owed £5.
This turned out a very fortunate circumstance for me, as you will hear
presently. After this homœopathic gold-dust throwing at Taunton, Sir LIAR
began _a son ordinaire_, going back from _every_ promise, when he thought
the storm had a little blown over, and what he more particularly stood
out about most resolutely, was insisting that that beggarly £500 a year
should not be settled upon me for my life, but only for _his_. Whereupon
the admirable Mr. E—— J—— told him that if that at least was not done, I
should of course proclaim the whole affair, and bring an action for false
imprisonment, &c., &c. So that it was at the eleventh hour, four days
after my return, that it was at length done; upon which Dr. OILY GAMMON
R——, my valiant trustee, wrote me a most heroic piece of braggadocia,
that he would not leave the room till the deed was executed, signed, and
duly attested. But by this time, not believing one word any of them said,
I sent my copy of this deed to a barrister of my acquaintance, Mr. HENRY
COLE, to know if it were a quibble or a fresh _swindle_. He said no,
it was stringent and _en regle_, and about a month after its execution
JUDAS H—— wrote to me saying Miss R—— and E—— J—— had written, and called
innumerable times on him at his office in Ely-place, to try and make
him give up the original of that document _to them_; no doubt E—— J——
having promised his friend Sir LIAR that if he’d _only_ sign that deed,
to humbug me and the public a little more, he (E—— J——) would swindle H——
out of it in some way or other, under pretence of looking at it, and then
destroy it. And JUDAS H—— made a tremendous merit to me of his fidelity
in not giving it up; to which I wrote him back word: “Clearly not, Mr.
H——; you have got all you were to get for selling me, and for your lies
to the Hertford and other papers about being _bound_ to say that infamous
man, Sir EDWARD H——, had never been unkind to me. And of course you were
not such a fool as to risk being struck off the Rolls for such an overt
breach of trust as the giving up the original of that deed would have
been.” This reminded me to tell Dr. R—— to get my two letters (those two
letters of Sir LIAR’S) from that vile Miss R——. When I told him about my
going abroad in the full belief that Lord SHAFTESBURY was my trustee,
he, who is Lord SHAFTESBURY’S Physician, said that in the first place
he had never been asked, and never got my note, and in the next, if he
had, he would have declined, his horror of Sir EDWARD —— was so great. So
much for his philanthropy. Mr. L—— having returned to England about his
own business with his father, and finding that after solemnly promising
poor Lady BLACKBURNE the interest of the £400 she had generously lent
me when I was starved out at the Revolution of Geneva in 1846, which
interest she never would accept from me, I wrote to Mr. L—— to know if
it were possible that in the teeth of all truth he had written those two
letters, with his signature to them, which had appeared in the _Times_
the day I left England, and which such care was taken I should not see.
And also as he had so solemnly promised that I should appeal to _him_ if
anything went wrong in future; and I found Dr. R—— (as was his bounden
duty), though always more than agreeing with me in everything, never saw,
or insisted upon any compact being fulfilled, and was worse than none as
a trustee. I must depend upon him in common honour and common decency
to see that Lady BLACKBURNE, who had acted so kindly and generously by
me, should be paid the interest of her money, and all my other debts of
honour also _immediately_ paid. To this, the young gentleman, who now
had his papa, and his papa’s cane! to lean over him, and see that he did
his lessons properly (what in mathematics is called a _Crocodile_, I
suppose), boldly replied, that “he _had_ written those letters,—and that
as for Lady BLACKBURNE, she must recollect that in _law!_ she could claim
_nothing_, and must therefore be contented with the principal without the
interest! (though bear in mind the interest had been solemnly promised
to her by _the whole gang_)—and as to taking any proceeding against
his father, if I _had no respect for family ties_ (_this_ from _him_
to _me_), that at all events he hoped that I would at least have some
respect for the name he (Mr. L——) inherited”! To which I wrote back—“GOD
forgive you—you poor unfortunate young man, but as you have every reason
to be heartily ashamed of ‘the name you inherit’! take my advice, and say
as little about it as possible, and try before it is too late to act so
that _your_ children may not have equal cause to be ashamed of the name
_they_ inherit.” You may suppose that by this time I had my quietus! and
could not be more wounded and disgusted. After that contemptible sneak
and double-dealer Dr. R—— had been for _weeks_ writing me lying excuses
about Miss R—— not returning me that cheek-biting and other letter, which
he _knew_ to be lies; I received the following charming effusion from Mr.
L——, and to rejoice my mother’s heart the more it came on New Year’s Day!
and showed me _he_ was still doing his father’s dirty work in concert
with that vile wretch Miss R——, whom I had forbidden to ever again darken
my doors, if she was fifty times turned penniless into the streets of
London, or any other place.
“Dear mother, what is this Miss R—— tells me about some letters of my
father to you? Surely there was a broad understanding that all your
papers(!!) were to be given up to him.” My reply to this disgusting and
too brutal piece of audacity, bearing the stamp of Sir LIAR’S cloven
foot upon every word, was to send a gentleman to town to go to Sir
RICHARD MAYNE, who gave him a police force, with which he went to that
vile wretch, Miss R——, and got the letters at last! while to Mr. L——
I wrote—“As it is not in my nature to love what I could not esteem,
all intercourse must cease between us.”—To get that £1,000, that the
gentleman on the Stock Exchange so kindly lent me, when I had been turned
out of my cottage, _he_ had to send a man with a writ to dear E—— J——,
who had the nominal paying of those debts; because, you see, it would
not do on _my_ account to have lying, swindling, or any other villainy
brought _directly home_ to that great man, Sir LIAR! like the villainous
and atrocious lie worthy of him, or of any of his literary gang—that from
the _representations made_ to him, _he_ could not have done otherwise
than incarcerate me at H——’s. Well, this man, E—— J——, tried to bully,
saying, “No, my good fellow, what can you do? Surely you’d never think of
arresting me, or Sir EDWARD, for a debt, which in law we might dispute.”
“Shouldn’t I, Mr. J——,” said he, pulling the writ out of his pocket,
“you either instantly give me a cheque for £1,000, which I don’t leave
your house _without_, or I instantly serve this writ upon you.” So the
_honourable_ Q.C. preferred giving the cheque to having the writ served
on him! and the gentleman who had lent me the money, kindly returned
me from the Insurance Office some £50 odd, on the policies I had been
paying for seven years,—they being for life although I had only borrowed
the money for ten years. About this time, Dr OILY GAMMON R—— began being
tremendously civil and _prevenant_ to me; he and his wife sending me
Dresden china, and engravings, for which I had no room, my walls being
covered with good pictures. I did not dream at that time that this
smooth-tongued sneaking J——, was actively enlisted to cheat me out of
the copy-right of that book (Sir LIAR’S little bit of _entr’acte_ dirty
work, while I was safely out of the country), for which I have never
received sixpence, or got the slightest redress;—but _more_ injustice,
as you shall hear. But although I did not know this then, yet I am so
fully aware that English people are never commonly civil; and much less
never _give_ even a used postage stamp without some sordid or selfish
motive; that I began to puzzle my brains as to what this sudden civility
could mean? I must say, all the good that is to be found in the English
character, is among the middle class, and this arises more from their
strong commercial instinct, than anything else; they will give an apple,
where they are perfectly sure of getting an orchard, or perhaps two;
but the upper and lower classes, invariably swindle—or at least _try_
to swindle—you out of the orchard, without even giving you an apple-pip
for it. Like a poor fool, I went to town, and made an appointment with
Dr. OILY GAMMON to go to Mr. C——’s in Paternoster-row, at nine in the
morning; despite this matutinal hour, Mr. C—— had had his telegram to
keep out of the way, and he was out. OILY GAMMON then went through the
farce of writing some bosh to C——, telling his substitute in the shop
that he particularly required an answer by the four o’clock post at
latest. At four p.m. OILY GAMMON brought me C——’s reply in triumph! which
was, that he had _my_ authority in my own handwriting, in a note written
to Mr. IRONSIDE two years before, to re-issue my novel of “Cheveley!”
“Cheveley!” who on earth is talking of “Cheveley”? surely Dr. R——, you
would not have made such a ridiculous mistake; when even this morning in
C——’s shop, I was reiterating it to you that it was “Very Successful.”
To say nothing of my having written to you, so _much_ on the subject.
Then _much_ against his will, I made Dr. OILY GAMMON write to C—— to
say this; to which that fellow gave the barefaced lie, that he had Mr.
IRONSIDE’S authority to publish “Very Successful.” _This_ I _know_ to be
a black lie! for when I was abroad, Mr. IRONSIDE was so astonished at
seeing the book advertised in the teeth of his, and my, prohibition, that
he wrote to Mr. H—— to inquire about it, as he was sure I would be very
angry when I heard it. That double distilled rascal, liar, and perjurer,
wrote back word that it was _all right_, as _I myself_ had given C——
permission to re-issue it!!!! Indignant at this, I made Mr. OILY GAMMON
write to Mr. IRONSIDE, that he might state to _him_ again in writing,
what I have just told you, and which he had written a short time before
to another gentleman! which letter _I have_. As my grinding poverty is
always putting spokes in my wheel (and that is _why I have been always
kept poor_), I could not afford to remain in London, either at the houses
of fine friends, or at an hotel, so that I returned here, begging OILY
GAMMON to let me know Mr. IRONSIDE’S answer, which finding he did _not_
do, in the course of five weeks, I wrote to him to know what reply he had
received, and to beg he would send me Mr. IRONSIDE’S letter. To this the
contemptible wretch wrote back word that he had _lost_ Mr. IRONSIDE’S
letter, but that all he (IRONSIDE) had said was, that “really, it was so
long ago (two years), that he could not remember anything about it”!!!
Upon this I made a solicitor of this town write to Dr. R——, saying that
after all the contradictory and palpably false statements that had been
made to me about that book, it was a great pity that instead of sending
_me_ Mr. IRONSIDE’S letter at once, as he was in duty bound, he should
have lost it, and sent me _no reply at all_, till I had written to him on
the subject at the end of five weeks, as both circumstances had a very
awkward appearance for him (Mr. R——). Whereupon Mr. OILY GAMMON (for
weak cowards are invariably _false to all parties_, themselves included)
suddenly and miraculously _found_ Mr. IRONSIDE’S letter, and instead of
its being (as stated by Dr. R——) only two lines, to say it was so long
ago he could not remember, it was a long letter (which I have) of four
sides, crossed, on large old-fashioned Bath post paper, such as was used
in the days of franking. In this letter he recapitulated _all_ he had
previously stated in his former letter, of his surprise at the re-issue
of the book, and his writing to Mr. H——, to inquire about it, and that
lying rascal’s answer, stating that it was “all right,” I myself having
given C—— permission to re-issue it; and Mr. IRONSIDE concluded by saying
that my statement was correct to the letter, and that C—— was such....
Armed with this _fresh_ proof of the fraud that had been practised upon
me, I again went to London, and went to Mr. H—— C——, at his chambers
in Brick-court, showed him all the documents I had on the subject, and
asked him if he could recommend a good sharp solicitor (honest, I feared,
there was none), who would immediately bring an action against C——? That
I was quite aware that, as a married slave, _I_ could not bring one, or
get any redress against my lord and master’s infamy: but that by making
the book over to what one of the law’s charming fictions call “a next
friend,” I could do so. Mr. C—— said it was a most scandalous shame, and
he would recommend me to a clever solicitor, who he thought would settle
it (he did, indeed), a Mr. H—— (which may be considered as the generic
name of the whole tribe), of Regent-street. This fellow was the image of
NAPOLEON the _First_, so I did not doubt his _capacity_—nor, perhaps, his
unscrupulousness. As all London knew of the Madhouse Conspiracy then, Mr.
JOHN H—— (as I told him I wished his name had been TOM, as a Tomahawk was
what I wanted for my enemies) found out many truths about Sir LIAR and
E—— J—— deserving hanging, and was urgent, nay importunate, with me, to
bring an action against H—— and the rest of them (of _course_, for that
would have been a feather in the H——’s cap, or tail, and gold in his
crop), but I told him for my truly unfortunate son’s sake, I could not,
or rather would not; but that he must go to work forthwith about C——.
He then asked me what Judge I would like it tried before? adding, “I
would recommend the Chief Justice, Sir ALEXANDER COCKBURN, for he is a
friend of mine.” Good heavens! said I, if you want to ruin me outright,
you will not mix him up in the affair, or let him know anything about
it. Now, you must know that although COCKBURN always says I am the
worst-used woman in England, so have all my husband’s doers of dirty
work for that matter; he and Sir L. were at Cambridge together, and in
their green and salad days—when the little carrotty, briefless barrister,
who had nothing to eat but his terms, except when he dined with us—Sir
L. used to lend him money when he was intriguing with some tradesman’s
wife, whom he called “CLARA,” and by whom he had his bastard son and
daughter, whom he has at least the redeeming points of acknowledging
and well-providing for—and I respect him for it. But you comprehend,
this having been the state of affairs between him and Sir L., they,
like literary vice and politics, have their laws and amenities, which
require that dirty work and backstair services should always be paid in
kind, and however dislike and contempt may be and are in the ascendant
in private, homage, deference and friendship (?) is _de riguéur_ in
public. And as astronomers say that it takes two-and-twenty years for a
ray of light to reach the earth from Sirius, the Dog Star; so I suppose
it takes two-and-twenty centuries for a ray of conscience to penetrate
such a lawyer as COCKBURN, or, indeed, most men’s brains. “Humph!” said
H——. “Well, I’d rather have a case tried by COCKBURN than any Judge on
the bench.” “You might,” said I, “but mine is such a hard case that I
don’t want it made harder.” Well, not to bore you longer than need be,
Mr. H—— having started with the _greatest_ energy in the C—— affair,
suddenly came to a dead lock. I could not even get a letter from him,
though I had never had but four, and after _pretending_ to be ill, though
I ascertained he came to his business every day, and, sending Mr. COLE
to hunt him up, who never could find him either in his office or at his
own house, and after fooling me in this manner for thirteen months!
this new addition to the scoundrelocracy flatly refused to give me up
my documents about this iniquitous swindle until I had paid him £60 for
torturing my life out, and doing worse than nothing, as usual selling me
to my ruffianly and dastardly husband. Mr. COLE said his demands were
simply preposterous and absurd. How differently would a French _juris
consulte_ have acted had the commonest woman in the place been so used
by an _Avoué_, to whom he had recommended her; he would very soon have
brought him to book, or have held him up to public scorn. But trust an
English barrister risking a single brief by embroiling himself with any
attorney if all the women in England had been skinned by them to save
parchment. Mr. COLE no doubt thought he was doing great things in getting
me Mr. COMYN of Lincoln’s Inn, his own solicitor (whose bill I had of
course to pay), to cut down that other bird of prey’s extortion to £35,
and at length got me back my papers, when time, and COCKBURN, had given
security and consolidation to that meanest of all ruffians, Sir EDWARD
BULWER LYTTON, and as Mr. COLE refused a fee (as well he might), I gave
him a piece of plate that cost me £20, for the Englishman is not yet born
whom I like sufficiently, or think sufficiently well of, to rest under
the cold shadow of an obligation to.
And here, as I am on COCKBURN, let me mention a curious fact,
which proves the sincerity of that intimacy and friendship which
existed between himself and Sir LIAR. I was one day sitting in the
breakfast-room, when ALEXANDER the Little was suddenly shown in. Poor
small man, how shabby, and how frightened he looked! With tears in his
eyes, he said that he had been hunted about by bailiffs (or duns, I
forget which) all the morning; and had taken refuge here. He said he had
not been to chambers for several days, as he knew he should be arrested;
and having not a sou in his pockets, even to buy him a dinner, he had
called on my husband, as an old Cambridge friend, to ask him for the loan
of only five pounds. And the poor dwarf looked haggard and hungry; and
the tears were in my eyes as I saw his woe-begone and famished face. I
told him my husband was in the next room, and that I had no doubt when
he heard the facts he would be happy to oblige him; and I left C. in
the breakfast-room, having ordered some coffee and rolls for him, for
I really thought he was starving. I then made my way to Sir LIAR, and
asked him for the cash. Oh! what a scene! Sir LIAR swore like a trooper.
He cursed, he raved, he foamed at the mouth; for it seems he had been
previously “not at home” to his small friend, who had then, in despair,
enquired for me, and been shown in. His oaths, his fury were fearful.
He stamped about, raved like a madman, calling COCKBURN every name of
cheat, card-sharper, swindler, scoundrel, adulterer, &c., &c. He poured
forth all the choicest phrases of the _Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue_,
which—I forget the fool’s name—one somebody has published. At length I
was pushed violently out of the room, and I came back to COCKBURN, who by
this time had devoured the rolls and swallowed the coffee. I told him how
sorry I was, that I could do nothing with Sir E., and, as I had no money
of my own, I actually gave him a ring off my finger for his necessities;
and he went down on his knees and thanked me in the most abject manner
that ever I saw in my life.
But to come back to “Very Successful.” Were you here I could soon explain
to you, _viva voce_, Sir LIAR’S _double_ motive in his conspiracy about
this copyright, which does not in any way appear on the _surface_, since
in addition to his usual efforts to crush _all_ my books by the venal
and unscrupulous abuse of his literary gang, and so starve me out that
way, he took especial means to crush and defame that particular book
on its first appearance. But exclusive of the tax upon your time and
patience—having already written so much, and having still so much to
write, I can neither afford the time nor the space to do so. And now
for the Quaker Upholsterer and his £5! He wrote letters innumerable to
Dr. R—— about it (for after the mean and barefaced lies of the latter
in the plot, and about Mr. IRONSIDE’S letters, I of course returned him
his _Normandy presents_, and renounced all further intercourse with
him). OILY GAMMON began by assuring FODEN LAWRENCE, the Quaker, that of
_course_ he ought to be paid, and he _should_ be paid. But, as usual,
the vane did not long remain towards one point. So at last he wrote to
say, he could not possibly recover the debt, not having it included in
the schedule of the other Taunton tradespeople’s claims. I then of course
offered to pay it to the poor man. “No,” said he, “not if thee were
made of gold and swimming in diamonds; I’ll make them pay me and they
shall.” He then wrote to Sir LIAR, who sent him back a demented looking
scrawl, which looked as if an insane spider had tumbled into the ink, and
then the webs of Sir L’S. lies, being too flimsy to make it a straight
waistcoat, it had with _my_ complaint! _delirium tremens!_—from the ink
it had imbibed—frantically dashed itself against the paper; the purport
of its plungings being to inform the Quaker “that I had a most liberal
(very!!) allowance to pay my own debts, and that Sir LIAR was neither
morally nor legally obliged to do so.” The Quaker then wrote to E—— J——
a few _highly spiced_ truths about the infamy of the Madhouse Conspiracy
(for you must know that friend LAWRENCE, albeit a man of peace, was one
of the most bellicose and irate of my many indignant champions here) and
more particularly of himself and his client! Whereupon EDWIN the Unfair
wrote back that neither he, nor Sir EDWARD BULWER LYTTON, were persons
to be _bullied_ into anything.—“Well then,” said the Quaker, making his
_debut_ as a wit, on reading this letter to me, with an expression of
face (as he held the letter at arm’s length in one hand, and shook the
fingers of his other at it), the inimitable comicality of which would
have made the fortune of WEBSTER or SAVASSEUR, “If _bullying_ won’t do,
I’ll try _courting_ you—you precious pair!”—and he accordingly forthwith
cited Sir LIAR to appear before the County Court, at which, by return
of post, on the Sunday, so that LAWRENCE got it on the Monday, a cheque
for the £5 was enclosed! but J——S dying hard—as he had lived—saying with
a flourish on the last trumpet “That although neither he nor Sir EDWARD
LYTTON were either legally or morally bound to pay that £5, Sir EDWARD
with his usual (ahem) generosity (!!!!), rather than Mr. LAWRENCE should
be a loser, sent it!” The Quaker threw up his eyes piously, and said he
hoped he should never want food or raiment till Sir EDWARD BULWER LYTTON
was generous! or E—— J——S!!! and then sat down and wrote the Q.C. the
following letter, of which I took a copy:—“I have to acknowledge the
receipt of the £5 due to me by Sir EDWARD BULWER LYTTON, which he and
thee should have sent long ago, without putting me to the trouble of
County Courting him. If, as he says, he is neither legally nor morally
obliged to pay it; I am very _sure_ it was both _legally_ and _morally
due to me_; or I neither should have demanded it, nor compelled thee and
thy client to pay it.—FODEN LAWRENCE.”
What I would give to have seen Sir LIAR’S face when he read what the
spirit, and a very proper spirit too, had moved the Quaker to write to
him! No wonder that GOD’S judgment overtook him, and that soon after,
being more mad and outrageous than usual, the great man (very) was packed
off to Algiers with two keepers. “_Vengeance is Mine, saith the Lord, I
will repay._”
[Illustration: ROBERT, LORD LYTTON.]
It would appear that E—— J——, not having told lies enough, and done dirty
work enough in the country, must needs re-commence after his outlawry;
for it is only last year, in America, that upon a woman being tried for
the murder of her husband, and the defence set up being his barbarous
usage of her, that the Judge said, “If brutal usage and persecution was
an excuse for committing murder, _I_ ought to have murdered Sir EDWARD
BULWER LYTTON long ago, if only _half_ the papers had stated about his
brutal treatment and persecutions of me was true.” Whereupon, that model
of all honour and truth! Mr. E—— J——, rose up in Court and said, “He must
beg to set the Judge right on that point, for that Lady LYTTON had never
complained (!!) of unkindness from Sir EDWARD, and _could_ not!!! and
that it was only last year, just before he (E—— J——) quitted England,
that Sir EDWARD, having been left a large fortune by a relation” (Oh!!
Mr. J——! what next? and next?) “he had _generously_ doubled his wife’s
income”!!!!! There! let his Satanic Majesty beat _that_ if he can! I of
course instantly wrote to the _New York Times_ (as these most infamous
and barefaced lies had appeared in that beastly _Daily Telegraph_),
refuting them, and saying, “that for the many colossal falsehoods, for
which Mr. E—— J—— was proverbial, never had he dared to utter any
equal in magnitude to these!” But as my doing so had of course been
anticipated, and the Press of all countries is equally corrupt and venal,
“_The Editor of the New York Times could not publish my letter, as its
contents referred to strictly private and family matters!!_” This is
quite England over again, where the most horrible lies and calumnies by
a husband (in power) are to be given full and world-wide publicity! but
if the victim wife dares to refute them, ah! _then_ they become strictly
private, and personal affairs, and _no_ newspaper, for fear of the Law
of Libel, will give any refutations admission into their columns! And
so this meanest and cruellest of all Villains and Cowards! Sir EDWARD
BULWER LYTTON, who has not even the courage of his loathsome vices, goes
on for ever, strutting over the ruins of the moral Carthage _he_ has
razed, and heralding forth to posterity, through the brazen trumpet of
mendacity, all the inverse virtues of his hideous and manifold vices. But
let the wretch beware! The last time, a wave of my fan drove the cowardly
reptile from the Hertford hustings, but only let him _dare_ ever again
to parade his physical and moral leprosy upon any hustings; and he shall
find his escape shall not be so _easy_. After I had declined any further
intercourse with my _useful_, and honourable, and veracious trustee, Dr.
R——, his petty spite was to keep me each quarter two or three weeks out
of my beggarly pittance, a most _serious_ inconvenience to me; but their
calculation was, no doubt, that I should, as of old, eat it all up in
paying lawyers to obtain it, _Pas si bete_. So, pondering the matter a
little while, a bright thought struck me. I went down to FODEN LAWRENCE
the Quaker, and asked him “if he would each quarter, _on the day it was
due_, pay me this beggarly £125, and send Dr. R—— my receipt for it,
making him repay him. He said “with pleasure,” and wrote to Dr. R——: “As
I think it a most scandalous shame that, used as she has already been,
Lady LYTTON should be kept one hour out of so scandalously inadequate
a pittance, I have this day paid her the £125 due to her; and _shall
continue to do so punctually_, every quarter when it becomes due, and I
enclose thee her receipt for the £125 paid this day, and will thank thee
to send me a cheque by _return of post_ for the amount.—FODEN LAWRENCE.”
And as, like all knaves, these cowardly wretches are mortally afraid of
an honest, straightforward, and _resolute_ man, and of my fighting Quaker
in particular, he has ever since, now four years, paid me to the day,
and got the money from them by return of post. Meanwhile that dastardly
villain, Sir EDWARD BULWER LYTTON, is comfortably playing out his game of
lies; his victim buried alive, too poor to mix in the society to which
she belongs, and too proud to go upon sponging visits she cannot repay by
invitations in return, to say nothing of _this_ being the _only_ place I
could ever feel _safe_ in while that monster lives, as _here_, after the
uproar there was, he never dare attempt any fresh villainy. I am doubly
crippled by that trapped journey abroad, having done much, which having
known all I _now_ know, I should _not_ have done. I don’t mean about poor
little JEANNE HESTIER, for that is a drop in the sea, and, moreover,
having told good Mrs. CLARKE that as long as I live, whether here or
not, I shall always pay her the same, which I thought was the least I
could do after her kindness and fidelity to me, you may suppose I have no
money to go about with; so being all the same as if I were buried dead,
instead of only being buried alive, of course the outer public believe
(as Sir LIAR has worked _so_ hard for them to do) that I _really am_ mad,
or imbecile, or something, or else I of _course_ should have brought an
action for false imprisonment and conspiracy against those villainous mad
doctors long ago, or got a divorce from that monster, or been seen or
heard of somewhere. It is little matter what they think—GOD and my own
conscience know the truth. But it is hard, bitterly cruelly hard! Still
I would not change with one of the wretches, more especially H—— H——,
and H——, who have now gone to their fearful account! A lady was here the
other day, furious! at that vile wretch, Sir L., having dared to come so
near me as Bath. “Pooh! never mind,” said I, “He can’t be more near than
he has always been.” About six months after my return from that trapped
journey, I heard that Mr. ROBERT LYTTON’S marriage was broken off, his
father having broken faith with him (as I told him he would), and given
him nothing to marry on; and that he had quarrelled with his father. He
was then first paid _attaché_ at Vienna; despite my having written to him
to say all intercourse must cease between us, when he was trying with
that vile Miss R—— to purloin those letters; now that he was in such
deep misery, and I know in such deep humiliation, at the unworthy part
he had acted when so noble a one was before him, I felt I was still his
mother; and wrote to him a letter, which, if he had had a heart of stone,
provided it were only in the shape of a heart! and a conscience, even
if no bigger than a midje’s egg, he would have answered! but he never
has. I then thought that if he could not trust the Embassy bag, and was
equally afraid of the post with such a father, whose Jesuitical influence
he believes to be ubiquitous—that as he was at Copenhagen when his great
friend Sir AUGUSTUS PAGET came over here for the Prince of Wales’s
marriage, that surely he might have trusted him;—but no—nothing. Never
mind, he’ll want me, before I want.
And now, sir, I ought to, and would make you many apologies for
inflicting upon you such a long, and to you—necessarily uninteresting
history—but that I read and _believed_ the “Notice” appended to your
last (_every_ one says) “masterly work,” and have done you the honour
of taking you for an honest man. And hence this otherwise unwarrantable
infliction. As I told you at the commencement of this letter, I want you
to do nothing for me; for nothing _can_ now be done; and yet for three
things in your power to do, without in any way compromising yourself, I
should be _very_ grateful to you:—
Firstly. To _tell_ the facts herein contained as far, and as wide as you
can.
Secondly. In telling them, to say nothing of, or _nothing against_ my
truly unfortunate son, who, GOD knows, is _well_ punished! for the
fearful weakness in which he has been _purposely_ trained, by his
relentless and unscrupulous father, that he _might_ effectually crush by
moulding him resistlessly to his will.
Thirdly. As a man of real genius, as you are, you must be in the habit
of analysing human nature, by a sort of psychological vivisection, or
you never could produce the photographs of characters you do. Can you
then conjecture, or suggest any clue, to my unhappy son’s contradictory
conduct? Emanating as it were from two distinctly _opposite natures_;
the one almost angelic, the other almost the reverse. But putting his
weakness, and more than Hamletish _dreamy irresolution_ out of the
analysis; you must not seek a solution of his unworthy conduct in the
equally unworthy and mundane fear of being disinherited. No doubt his
vile father! _would_ leave him a beggar, if he could, but that he might
not immolate all to his own Juggernaut selfishness, Knebworth is not only
strictly entailed upon his son, but luckily, stringently 12 deep after
him, or Sir L. might have got his poor weak victim to cut off the entail.
If you can solve this enigma, I should be so grateful.
I have the honour to be, sir,
Your obedient servant,
ROSINA BULWER LYTTON.
Wednesday, February 10th, 1864.
P.S.—One thing I forgot to mention to you, which was, that the last time
I saw that double-dealing sneak, Dr. R——, which was the day that upon
leaving town I asked him to write to Mr. IRONSIDE about the swindle of
my book; he said suddenly, _apropos de bottes_, “the fact is we have
been _completely sold_!” which solitary truth from him was, as you may
suppose, a great consolation to me, seeing how indefatigably _he_ had
assisted in selling me. He then added, clenching his hand, and muttering
to himself, “Well, I think I’d have begged my bread before I could have
used _my_ mother so!” It is _he_ that would! But it is _so_ easy always
to _say_ the right and _do_ the wrong thing, which is the compromise most
men make with the Devil.—R.B.L.
Appendix.
All my Lord LYTTON’S infamy, and my fame as a patient Grizzle was pretty
well established—and even acknowledged by the wretch who benefitted by
it—for one day at a dinner at our house, when some vituperative humbug
was going on about poor Lord BYRON, and someone said, “No woman could
have lived with such a man,” my Lord LYTTON pointed to me, and said,
“There is one that could, for she has lived with me.” And in that letter
he wrote about his going abroad and changing his name (why the—Lady SYKES
didn’t he)—all of which is from beginning to end as usual—after biting
my cheek, though of course he began it with a well-studied colossal lie
about the “visible restraint he had tried to put upon himself, and his
doubting whether it was humane to goad a man with his terrible infirmity
(to wit, a diabolical and unbridled temper), but being himself to blame,
God forbid he should judge others.” Sweet, patient, virtuous, just
creature! Now the goading and provocation I had given him was this.
Having asked him before dinner for a little money to pay some of the
housebills left owing before we went to Italy—where he had so beggared
himself _on himself_ buying statues, &c., &c., that he had to retrench
in every way upon me and the children, and began by taking away my
carriage horses—and I had been ordered to stand sponsor to that vulgar
Mrs. FONBLANQUE’S child, I had to ask Lady STEPNEY to take me! He said at
dinner, How are you going to FONBLANQUE’S to-night? I told him, whereupon
he began with a sardonic grin, and repeating a dozen times, humming,
“My mother calls Lady STEPNEY that ugly old woman.” I made no reply,
when he thundered out, “Do you hear me, madame?” “Yes, of course I hear
you.” “Then why the d——l in h—ll” (which being _his_ strong language,
of course that concrete ass, the British public, would consider as fine
writing!) “Then why the d——l in h—ll don’t you answer me?” “I did not
consider it required an answer.” Whereupon he rose, seizing a carving
knife, and crying as he darted at me, “D——n your soul, madam, I’ll have
you to know that whenever _I_ do you the honour of addressing you it
requires an answer.” Seeing the glitter of the knife, I cried out “For
GOD’S sake, EDWARD, take care of what you are about,” at which he dropped
the knife, and springing on me like a tiger, made his hideous teeth meet
in my left cheek. My screams brought the servants back into the room,
one of whom tried to collar him, but he broke from him, and putting
on one of the footmen’s hats! rushed down Piccadilly, and from thence
betook himself to Richmond, from whence four days after he wrote me that
letter, which from being read and re-read is in too worn a state to be
trusted to the casualties of the Post. Well, in _that_ letter, occurs the
following paragraph _underlined_, “You have for the last six years” (the
whole time of our marriage), “_been to me an incomparable wife_, and if
for the last year, you have judged my character too harshly,” &c., &c.,
&c., &c., &c. Now this too harsh judgment here alluded to rose from a
mere trifle, which of course a “ladylike,” feminine, lachrymose, clever
woman carrying on her _own_ game, would have thought nothing of. He had
been intriguing with a Mrs. ROBERT STANHOPE, and exhibiting himself and
her in every drawing-room. But it was not I, patient Grizzle, who made
the scandal about it—but her husband’s relations—Lady TAVISTOCK at the
head, whereupon that charming man gave me his solemn oath (his! or his
son’s oath!!) that everything was at an end between them, and went on his
knees to me, to go to Italy with him. When I did so, the vessel had not
sailed an hour, when who should I see but Mrs. ROBERT STANHOPE sitting
wrapped up—my Lord LYTTON at her feet, and her contemptible little wretch
of a husband (who my Lord LYTTON afterwards told me used to sell her to
men[2]) looking on. Nor was this enough—I was forced by brutal threats,
and personal violence—to offer this woman a seat in my carriage to
Paris—and the brutality I endured there—it would take reams of paper to
describe. Oh! oh! oh! cries manly, and “ladylike” conventionality. “You
should have returned to England, instantly from Calais.” “Very true,
my dear madam, there was only one little, but still _insurmountable_
impediment, viz., the same which at this moment prevents my leaving
Taunton, and freeing myself from one of the cruel and degrading tortures
I am enduring, and which are so truly, though, alas! so slowly killing
me—that all-powerful one of not having a shilling!” Many years ago—two
or three after it was written, I showed that cheek-biting letter to Dr.
LUSHINGTON, who was, of course, too busy to give a pauper anything but
the English parish order of verbal sympathy; but never so long as I live
shall I forget the probing, searching, expression of those keen analytic
eyes of his, as looking up from the very first page of that letter, he
said, “This man has been in the habit of ill-using you?” “What makes you
think so?” said I. “Two circumstances. First, the great and palpably
artful pains he takes to convey the idea—knowing, of course, such a
letter would be read—that he put every possible restraint upon himself,
as—if you had been exasperating him—he proves rather too much there. The
second is: the equally artful pains he takes to talk of this outrage, as
a first and _solitary_ one! Now, _no_ man ever got to such a pitch of
brutality at a _first_ essay.” And yet, what was all this, compared to
his perversion of the only child his brutality had left me—oh! the black,
fiendish cruelty of it! As this great genius (?) has nothing original
about him but his sin, and therefore must always plagiarise from someone,
I can fancy him giving his instructions to his son, and when I was
entrapped abroad in 1858, saying to him, with a sardonic grin, which it
is to be hoped his worthy pupil reflected—as he borrowed ISAAC WALTON’S
receipt for impaling a wretched frog—only substituting her for him, “Use
her as though you loved her!” And so the hook was baited with my own
heart.
An astute, unscrupulous Villain, who from the hour I was turned out of
my house, has been working _systematically_ to starve me out by _never_
having given me enough to live on! He _premeditated this_ before we
married, when then not having an acre of land in the world—(for it was
my little pittance of £350 a year that gave him a qualification for
Parliament), he settled the munificent sum of £1,030 on me to _bar
dower_. Soon his necessity made him want what little land I had, and
though strictly tied upon me, I gave it up,—the sole surviving trustee
to my marriage settlement being _then_ his brother WILLIAM BULWER. Soon
after this he again wanted money. I said, You know I have no more,—“Yes,
you have that £1,000 I settled upon you to bar dower.” Oh! I said that
is neither worth giving or refusing. Now this reminds me to answer your
other questions. The sum my Lord LYTTON paid for my 25 years’ debts,
to patch up the Madhouse conspiracy, was £3,500, and Mr. HYDE told me,
and I think he also wrote it in one of his letters while I was abroad:
“Sir EDWARD boasts that he has generously given you back all your own
money, to pay your debts; and I’m sure you would rather feel this than be
beholden to him.”
Supplemental Notes.
THE CASE OF LADY BULWER LYTTON.
From the _Somerset County Gazette and West of England Advertiser_, July
13th, 1858.
For some three years past a lady, rather above middle age, of somewhat
portly figure and handsome countenance, has occupied apartments in the
quiet, comfortable, and pleasant establishment at Taunton, known as
CLARKE’S Hotel. Her appearance, manners, and habits, so far as the latter
were known, did not cause her to be particularly noticed as she walked
in public; for she was much like ordinary ladies—plainly and becomingly
dressed—conducted herself with propriety, remarked objects that were
likely to attract attention, and passed without notice those that were
not so. She sometimes did a little “shopping,” as ladies generally are
fond of doing, and when she asked for any particular article, she did so
in ordinary terms, and answered questions in a rational manner, though
at times with haughtiness. In her country walks she was occasionally
accompanied by a female friend, though generally in these her only
companion was a little dog, for which she always showed great fondness.
Sometimes also she has been seen at public entertainments, though but
seldom, and there her attire has been similarly becoming to that in
her walks in town or country. In a place like Taunton, a person of any
note does not long reside before he or she becomes known to many of
the inhabitants; and soon after the arrival of the lady we have been
describing she was generally known to be Lady BULWER LYTTON, wife of the
eminent novelist, who now holds the distinguished position of Colonial
Secretary in her Majesty’s Government.
Persons who are in a state of madness give indications of their
misfortunes at home and abroad. They
“Bend their eyes on vacancy,
And with the incorporeal air do hold discourse;
Their words are loose
As heaps of sand, and scattering wide from sense;”
But Lady LYTTON during the three years she was at Taunton never did aught
that we are aware of (and we have taken pains to ascertain the truth) to
cause in any one with whom she had communication the slightest suspicion
that in her case reason had been dethroned, or that her brain was in any
degree affected with lunacy. Yet this lady has been taken from the quiet
retreat she had chosen in this fair town of Somerset—perhaps we might
say to which she was driven—and carried to one of those miserable abodes
of the most hapless of human beings—a “Madhouse.”
The circumstances under which Taunton has lost one of its inhabitants,
are so extraordinary and so shocking, that, as may be supposed, they have
greatly excited the minds of the people generally. Upon those persons
who were on terms of intimacy with Lady LYTTON (they were only few, for
she evinced little inclination to mix in society, and it was pretty well
known that her pecuniary means were too limited to allow of her doing
so), upon her personal friends the first mention of the fact fell like
a clap of thunder, when the skies give no sign of an approaching storm.
They could not credit such strange information with truth; but when
convinced of its veracity their exclamation has been, “Good Heavens!
Lady LYTTON in a _Madhouse_. For what? Who can have sent her there? She
is no more mad than I am, or any one else.” And those who have merely
seen her as she passed them in the streets or other public highways,
have been hardly less startled by the intelligence. There is on all
hands a firm belief that this unfortunate lady—we say unfortunate in
allusion only to her present lamentable position, and without reference
to circumstances which have given both to herself and her husband an
unenviable notoriety—there is, we say, a firm belief that Lady LYTTON is
the subject of a horrible and appalling injustice and wrong; that while
perfectly sane she has been shut up in a lunatic asylum, merely in order
that a woman who has, no doubt, been a constant source of annoyance to
her husband, may be prevented for ever, from again giving him similar
trouble, or again molesting him in any way. In ascribing to her the
character we have given, we desire to avoid the indication of any opinion
as to her conduct towards Sir Edward, or as to his general treatment of
her. We only state a fact, that people among whom she has resided during
a period of three years—to many of whom she is well and intimately known,
and most of whom have had frequent opportunities of seeing her—believe
that though sent to an asylum for lunatics, her intellect is perfectly
sound, and therefore that she has been made, for some reason or other,
the victim of an atrocity which a hundred years ago might have excited
no great attention beyond the circle of the doomed one’s own relatives,
but which cannot be overlooked in the present age without danger to “that
liberty of the subject” which has been since achieved, and which is the
highest boast and most glorious privilege of the people of this country.
In giving to Lady LYTTON the character we have ascribed, and in stating
what is the general opinion of her in this town, we by no means wish
to have it supposed that we regard her as one of the most pleasant or
amiable of women. Her later literary works (for none of which can be
claimed any considerable praise) seem to have been undertaken in a great
measure for the purpose of publishing to the world her own sufferings,
and of exposing what she conceived to be the foul treatment she received
from one who vowed at the altar to “love and cherish her”; and in more
than one instance her writings evince unkind and uncharitable feelings
towards very estimable and excellent persons. We particularly allude to
one of her latest productions, entitled, “Very Successful,” in which
a lady of this town, who is only known to be respected and esteemed,
is held up to most undeserved ridicule for no other reason than that
she did not desire to cultivate her ladyship’s acquaintance, having,
probably from the nature of her daily engagements, little time to give to
the maintenance of friendships beyond the circle of associates she had
already gathered around her. And we happen to know that in several cases
her ladyship has manifested much haughtiness to persons who have had
occasion to come in contact with her. But such things as these, however
much to be deprecated in all persons, certainly cannot be regarded as
evidence of a deranged brain, for if unkind and offensive personalities
in print were so considered, few writers would be safe from incarceration
in a Lunatic Asylum; and if haughtiness were held to be a proof of
lunacy, who is there that should give the necessary “certificates,” and
who become “warders”? Displays of ill-temper and malignity, of pride and
arrogance, are never very reasonable; they are in truth very ridiculous;
still there is much yet to be learnt if they are to be held as
indications of madness. We make these remarks to show that, while under
an impression—we will say a conviction—that in Lady LYTTON’S transfer to
a Lunatic Asylum she has been made the victim of a shocking outrage and
crime, we are not unacquainted with, or insensible to, her weaknesses
and defects. And we may here state that our object in alluding to her
case at all is to enforce by its publicity that strict investigation into
its circumstances to which she is in common justice entitled, and which
society demands for its own satisfaction and as its own safeguard.
Lady LYTTON when married, in 1827, to Sir EDWARD, possessed a small
property worth about £400 per annum, and it is stated that, her husband
being then in far less affluent circumstances than at present, she
transferred this to him, in order to give him a qualification for a
seat in Parliament. Her experience of the married state was an unhappy
one, and in 1838 a separation took place by mutual consent, Sir EDWARD
consenting to pay her £400 a year during his life, which has been her
allowance from that to the present time, notwithstanding he is, or is
reputed to be, a wealthy man, his annual income being estimated at from
£8,000 to £10,000.
Four hundred a-year being unequal to the requirements of a lady who
had moved in the higher classes of society—leaving luxuries out of the
question—Lady LYTTON became involved in debt, which of late has claimed
about one half of her income, and of course every year saw her sink
deeper and deeper into the mire. One of her chief complaints against
her husband was, the smallness of the means he allowed her for her
support, and certainly if, as is stated, his own income is £10,000, it
is a very reasonable one—for the allowance of £8 a year to his wife by
a man whose income is £200 would be just in the same proportion; and
there are few who would not decry and condemn the injustice which such
a payment by a person having £200 a-year would exhibit. By the deed of
separation Lady LYTTON was to possess in her own right any property she
might acquire thereafter, which has been chiefly from her publications—in
some cases remunerative, but in others miserable failures. She has
been severely censured for the bitterness displayed in some of her
writings, but perhaps not altogether with justice. Let those who would
condemn the use of harsh language just learn under what circumstances
it has been used; and if they find the author’s life has been one of
excessive trial and suffering—that she has either been compelled to
quit, or has felt it imperatively necessary to flee from, the house of
her husband—that from a position of pecuniary ease she has been cast
down to a condition of humiliating poverty—that instead of her society
being courted by numerous “friends” whose acts of kindness caused her
days to pass lightly and happily, she is shunned by most of them as no
longer worthy of their regard—that while her husband still moves among
the gayest and noblest of society, she remains the occupant of two small
rooms in a country hotel—if they make in her case the allowance which
such an accumulation of woes and miseries ought to ensure, they will not
fail to be very sparing of censure—they will hardly express surprise,
perhaps, at the display of ill-feeling, however bitter or general it may
be. When a person is treated as an Ishmael, it is not to be wondered at
if he regards himself as such; and the best of tempers will at last be
soured and ruined by constant irritation and suffering. A not very high
authority has said, “Revenge is sweet, especially to women.” Perhaps he
did not flatter the sex when he so wrote; but assuredly if there are
ever circumstances in which the worm will turn, and may be pardoned for
turning, they are such as are here represented. It is human so to turn,
as it is to “err” generally. When persons are under a higher influence
than any which belongs to mere humanity, they may adopt a higher line
of conduct, and submit patiently to whatever befalls them, under a
conviction that it is good for them to suffer; but Lady LYTTON has
never made any pretensions or professions that would justify the higher
standard to her case, and therefore should not be too hardly judged.
Divesting one’s thoughts of the unfavourable effect produced by her
display of bitter feeling towards others—though they are those to whom
she ascribes treatment almost too dreadful for human endurance—her life
appears unsullied and blameless. This is a tribute undeniably her due.
Lady LYTTON has for some years past endeavoured to obtain an increase
to her allowance, which in consequence of the liabilities which she had
incurred and was obliged to meet as best she could, had fallen to about
£180 per annum; but her appeals, if not wholly disregarded, were quite
unsuccessful. Continually smarting under the denial of her claims, and
rendered desperate probably by increasing difficulties, she determined
to adopt a step which might prove more effective in this behalf than the
means she had previously employed. Sir EDWARD having recently accepted
office as a Cabinet Minister, the seat he held in Parliament as one of
the members for Hertfordshire became vacant, and according to custom
it was necessary for him to meet his constituents in order to his
re-election. Lady LYTTON resolved to be present upon that occasion, and
to take a conspicuous part in the proceedings. Before she left Taunton
she caused handbills to be circulated in Hertfordshire in which it was
announced that she would address the assembled electors on the day of the
nomination; and accompanied by a female friend, she proceeded by railway
to Oxford, and thence posted to Hertford. Precaution seems to have been
taken to prevent the scandal which had been thus threatened, and on her
arriving at the hotel, and asking at what hour the proceedings at the
hustings would commence, she was answered that it was twelve o’clock—the
fact being that eleven was the time appointed. Shortly before twelve,
still in the company of her friend, she drove to the hustings in a hired
carriage, and arrived there just in time to hear her husband close his
address with an eloquent tribute to the galaxy of beauty by which he was
surrounded. The scene that followed is thus graphically described in a
London contemporary:—
“Towards the close of the proceedings of the Hertfordshire
election, just after Sir EDWARD had concluded his address with
a fervent tribute of admiration to the womanly beauty exhibited
in the long line of open carriages, chaises and vans, drawn
up in front of the hustings, there was an unwonted stir in
the crowd, which parted to admit of the passage of a hired
brougham from one of the town inns. Two ladies alighted—one
an exceedingly handsome woman of about 45 years of age,
with fresh complexion and eyes of dazzling beauty. Evidently
labouring under excitement, she advanced through the crowd
towards the hustings, and announced herself as the wife of Sir
E. BULWER LYTTON. She had come according to promise to confront
her husband and expose the wrongs described in her works and in
a pamphlet. The appearance of the lady was not unexpected, as
her coming had been announced in placards and bills; but some
person had detained her while the election was proceeding in
the vicinity. Recognised, as soon as observed, her voice was
nearly drowned by the shouts of Sir EDWARD’S supporters: but
Sir EDWARD’S eye caught hers, and his face paled. He looked
like a man suddenly attacked by paralysis. Those near him
say he trembled exceedingly. For a few moments he retained
his position in front of the hustings, and turned his back
on the unwelcome visitor. Then he suddenly disappeared below
the hustings platform, while his wife cried ‘COWARD,’ and he
having hastily signed the usual declaration, escaped into the
residence of the gentleman on whose grounds the election took
place. Lady LYTTON continued to address the audience assembled
for more than a quarter of an hour. Her ladyship subsequently
made an application to the Mayor for the use of the Town Hall,
for the purpose of making a public statement; but this being
refused her, she left the town early in the afternoon. Lady
LYTTON arrived in Hertford at three o’clock on the morning of
the election, having posted from Taunton, where she resides.
It is needless to say that the event has caused the greatest
possible excitement in Hertfordshire.”
For several months past, her ladyship was under an impression that she
was closely watched, and she seemed to be suspicious that the object of
this espionage was the miserable fate which has at last fallen upon her.
Circumstances occurred about a month ago that were of a character to
confirm her apprehensions. At that time a gentleman came to Taunton, and
took up his residence at the Castle Hotel, which was in close contiguity
to the house in which she resided. He had had a great deal to do with the
subject of her separation from Sir EDWARD, being, in fact, the honourable
baronet’s solicitor, and she held him in extreme aversion. He remained
here some short time, it is said, and then left, but not before his
sojourn had become known to her ladyship. On the 12th of June, another
gentleman arrived in Taunton, and calling at CLARKE’S Hotel, sent his
card to Lady LYTTON, with a request for an interview. This was a “Dr.
THOMPSON,” and he was accompanied by a nurse from a neighbouring lunatic
asylum. After some reflection, her ladyship consented to his admission,
but took the precaution to request the landlady’s presence during his
stay. Mrs. CLARKE was present accordingly, and we are informed that
the conversation which ensued between Lady LYTTON and Dr. THOMPSON,
originated and sustained by him, referred wholly to subjects that were
calculated to excite intense anger and indignation on her part. This
interview lasted five hours, and at last she asked if he had not come
from Mr. LOADER, Sir EDWARD’S solicitor, to which interrogatory he
answered, “I am.” Her ladyship, who had preserved unwonted calmness,
then asked, “Is the farce played out?—and if not, how much longer is it
to last?” Dr. THOMPSON replied, “The farce is ended, and your ladyship
will not, from this hour, hear any more upon these painful matters.”
It may be stated that during the interview, two police officers, a
solicitor, and a medical gentleman, were in the adjoining room, the
object of whose presence it is not difficult to imagine. But Lady
LYTTON’S calmness rendered their presence unnecessary. Previous to his
departure, Dr. THOMPSON requested her to put upon paper what demand she
wished to make upon her husband; and she complied, writing in substance
as follows:—“Sir EDWARD to pay my debts, the interest of which swallows
up the greater part of my income, and increase my income to £500 a year.
Upon his doing this, I solemnly promise never again to molest him in any
way, nor even to mention his name.” Dr. THOMPSON promised to lay these
requirements before Sir EDWARD immediately upon his return to London,
and then withdrew, Lady LYTTON giving vent on his departure to her
overwrought feelings in a flood of tears, which could not be restrained
for a considerable time, notwithstanding the consolation offered by
the landlady, whose kindness to her throughout these painful and sad
proceedings had been very great; and even of the nurse, whose opinion as
to the state of her ladyship’s mind had undergone a considerable change
since the time she was in her presence.
Several days elapsed, and still no communication arriving from Dr.
THOMPSON, Lady LYTTON naturally became impatient, and she wrote him,
reminding him of his promise, and requesting information as to his
success with Sir EDWARD. No answer was received to her letter, and she
addressed him again and again with the same result. Unable to remain
longer in suspense, upon a matter of such moment, she at last wrote
to him to the effect that she would go to London in the course of the
following week, and hoped to be able to see him with a view to a final
arrangement. Unfortunately for her, she carried out her intention.
Accompanied by a Miss RYVES, and a lady of Taunton, who has always taken
an interest in her affairs, and will hereafter be found, it is presumed,
capable of rendering her very important service in the proceedings which
are contemplated, with a view to prove her sanity, Lady LYTTON took an
evening train, and arrived in London shortly after 5 o’clock in the
morning, a dreary time to enter the great lumbering city, even when one’s
business is of no such dreary character as theirs. The chief reason
of their travelling by night instead of by day, was the inability of
the female friend referred to, to remain away from her home more than
one day. But another may have been a sudden desire of Lady LYTTON’S to
know, without further delay, what determination, if any, her husband
had come to with respect to her written request, taken charge of by Dr.
THOMPSON—an insatiable craving for the answer which should place her in
comparatively pecuniary ease, or doom her still to the “shameful needs
of poverty.” Entering an hotel, they partook of refreshments, and whiled
away, as well as they could, the lagging hours until what was deemed an
appropriate time to call upon Dr. THOMPSON came round. They then set out,
and on reaching his house were courteously received. It was remarked by
the doctor, however, that as they had come rather early, “Would they do
him the favour to postpone discussion of the subject which had brought
them until five o’clock in the afternoon?” Assent was, of course, given,
and at the hour specified they were again at the door of his residence.
On announcing their names, they were shown into the drawing-room, and
Dr. THOMPSON waited upon them. He had hastily closed the door, however,
when it was again opened, and another gentleman entered—“A friend of
mine, who has casually dropped in.” It was remarked that, notwithstanding
the subject to be discussed, and which had been broached, was quite of
a private nature, the friend kept his seat, and that though he took no
part in the conversation, he listened attentively to what was said.
There being signs that the interview was near its close, he withdrew.
Lady LYTTON seemed to have, on entering the house, a presentiment that
there was no favourable information for her, and after putting a few
questions to Dr. THOMPSON, which he answered hesitatingly, she said, “You
have not consulted Sir EDWARD, Dr. THOMPSON; tell me, is not that the
case?” He owned that he could not give her any satisfactory answer, and
her ladyship arose with her friends to depart, Dr. THOMPSON expressing a
desire that she would not hurry away. Nevertheless she proceeded, and, on
getting outside the room, was astonished to see before her two policemen,
two women who had the appearance of nurses, and a gentleman who, it has
since been found, is a keeper of a Lunatic Asylum in the neighbourhood
of London. Dissemblance or concealment being no longer necessary or
possible, the purpose of this assembly was in a few words explained.
There are not many persons in existence, mad or not mad, who on a
discovery of so horrifying a nature would not have become wild with
excitement, and fallen into a state closely bordering upon insanity;
but Lady LYTTON sustained throughout these most trying and frightful
circumstances a calm and dignified demeanour. She was indeed the calmest
of the two—herself and her Taunton friend—for the affrighted Miss
RYVES had rushed into the street. She was ushered into another room,
on entering which she observed a figure, like that of Sir EDWARD’S,
hastily retreating by a door at the other end. At first she refused to
yield up her liberty, but the policemen were called, and she then said,
“Resistance being vain, I submit, but under compulsion.” Her friend
insisted upon accompanying her, and she saw on the table in the room a
paper which she presumed to be a certificate of Lady LYTTON’S insanity.
Upon this were the names of two medical gentlemen, and it is believed
of Sir EDWARD. Her ladyship being requested to proceed to the door,
where she was told a carriage was ready to receive her, again refused
compliance except under compulsion; and on this the policemen, each
taking an arm, led her forward—her friend—the only one she could in these
tremendous moments of agony appeal to—endeavouring to console her and
seeming to comfort her by the confident exclamations, “Never mind, Lady
LYTTON; they may take you, but they cannot take me. You may be inside
the Asylum, but I shall be out.” One might suppose that under such
circumstances some gentleman to whom her ladyship was known, some male
friend, would have been requested to attend and witness proceedings which
were so terribly to affect her, which were to convey her to a living
tomb, to worse than death; but, besides the lady to whom we have so often
referred, there was no one present on Lady LYTTON’S part. The policemen
“did their duty,” and her ladyship was constrained to enter the carriage,
her friend forcing herself in immediately after, and refusing to leave
her. One or two gentlemen also seating themselves within it, the party
was rapidly driven to an Asylum at Brentford, kept by a person of the
name of HILL.
Arrived at the gates of the gloomy abode, the ladies were told they must
part, and after a short scene, which we will not attempt to depict,
they separated, the gates closing on “The Insane,” and her friend being
driven back to her lodgings. Previous to this lady’s leaving London,
she received a note from Sir EDWARD’S solicitor, in which it was stated
that the hon. baronet would be glad to see her at his residence, No. 1,
Park-lane. She indignantly declined the interview. Shortly afterwards
the solicitor called and represented that it might be advantageous to
her to see Sir EDWARD; but she gave him a denial in similar terms, and
immediately returned to Taunton.
On the following day the Solicitor came to Taunton, and calling upon
Mrs. CLARKE, demanded all the documents and other papers and such other
property as Lady LYTTON had left; but Mrs. CLARKE refused to deliver and
dared him to remove any of them, alleging as one reason that she had a
lien upon them in the shape of a bill of £300 against her Ladyship; but
in truth she was fortified in her refusal by a letter from Mr. HYDE,
Lady LYTTON’S solicitor, who had previously informed her, if any attempt
should be made to take the property, or any part of it, she would be
justified in calling in the police and giving the party into custody.
Mr. LOADER offered to pay the bill, but the answer to this was, “I would
rather forfeit every shilling of it than deliver the goods to you. They
are in my possession, and I will not allow of their removal.” Finding
persuasion vain, Mr. LOADER retired.
We have said Lady LYTTON’S capture, and the circumstances connected with
it, have caused a great degree of excitement among the inhabitants of
this town, and if any proof of this were called for, or any evidence of
the opinion generally entertained required, we could hardly give more
indubitable testimony than is contained in the following resolutions,
which were adopted at a meeting of inhabitants called by a gentleman who,
though a perfect stranger to Lady LYTTON, felt that a monstrous injustice
had been inflicted upon her, and determined to use the very considerable
influence he possessed to obtain her freedom if really not insane, or at
least to force on such an inquiry into her mental condition as to satisfy
the public that she is not in a fit state to be at liberty. The gentleman
in question arrived in this town only a day or two before the case came
to his knowledge, and immediately upon becoming acquainted with it he
proceeded into the street, called together such of the more influential
inhabitants as he met, and within an hour the meeting took place. After a
discussion of the subject, the resolutions were thrown into the following
form:—
“At a meeting of certain inhabitants of Taunton and the
neighbourhood, held at Clarke’s Hotel on the 6th of July, 1858.
Mr. HITCHCOCK in the chair, it was resolved:—
“On the motion of Capt. JONES, seconded by R. EASTON, Esq.
“1. That the removal of Lady BULWER LYTTON to a Lunatic
Asylum, or other place of confinement, and the circumstances
under which she was incarcerated therein, call for a public
expression of alarm for the rights and liberties of the
subject, and particularly of distrust of the treatment to which
her ladyship is said to have been subjected.
“2. That a Committee be now appointed to watch the result of
the extraordinary measures reported to have been adopted in
Lady LYTTON’S case, to the end that the public mind may be
satisfied, through their report, that in her ladyship’s case
justice may be done.—W. R. HITCHCOCK.
“The meeting was then adjourned for a week.”
Here we will leave this miserable tale, but we are anxious, before
closing our remarks, to avow that in taking it upon ourselves to set it
before the public, we are actuated only by a sense of duty and justice.
For the truth of the narrative, we can refer to the lady who accompanied
Lady LYTTON to London; the details are given as they were furnished to
us—without exaggeration or distortion. If her ladyship’s mind is in
such a state that she is a fit subject for a lunatic asylum, and an
asylum is the only suitable place for her, no harm can come from the
publicity we give to her case; if not, then much good must inevitably
arise from its publicity, to her chiefly and in an immeasurable degree,
but also to society in no unimportant measure. The whole question is,
of course—Is Lady LYTTON actually insane? We have said, from what we
have seen and heard of her, she is not; and this view is entertained by
all we have heard express any opinion on the subject. It is a question
of deep importance whether it is not utterly wrong, and most dangerous
to the liberties of individuals, that upon the word of two medical men
persons may be taken to a madhouse, when if not already insane, they
are undoubtedly placed in circumstances in every way calculated, by
their horrible and frightful character, to destroy reason and produce
insanity. We say nothing of their continued confinement, but of their
being consigned to such a place even for a moment. On every account a
power of such awful magnitude should be destroyed, and confinement in a
lunatic asylum be possible only after a public enquiry, similar to that
which must precede the committal of a person accused of felony to the
common gaol. Society in general demands this; helpless women require it;
and if there are any individuals for the sake of whose character and
reputation before the world the change should be made, they are those who
occupy such a position as Sir EDWARD LYTTON now holds in her Majesty’s
Government. As a Secretary of State, he, as is well known, exercises
great authority in such cases; and men so highly stationed can always
find ready tools for any work, however nefarious. It is right then that
suspicion against them should be rendered impossible, that no reasonable
person should have ground for the supposition that they have committed
or connived at an atrocity at which the body shudders and the mind is
appalled. It is true that investigation into cases like that of Lady
LYTTON is compelled when demanded by the friends of the incarcerated
person; but the system is altogether contrary to the general equity of
British laws and customs. To send to a madhouse a person suspected of
lunacy, and afterwards institute an enquiry whether he is mad or not,
is a mode of procedure very unworthy of a civilised nation, and which
the people of this country ought no longer to endure. Lady LYTTON’S
case will no doubt have the effect of drawing general attention to this
great anomaly, and probably it will tend in a great measure to the
accomplishment of the desired change. Heaven grant it may be so!
THE CASE OF LADY LYTTON.
_To the Editor of the Daily Telegraph._
SIR,—Can you inform me whether Mr. B. W. PROCTER, an intimate friend
of Sir BULWER LYTTON, is a Commissioner of Lunacy? Can you also state
whether Mr. JOHN FORSTER, also an intimate friend of Sir EDWARD, is
Secretary to the Lunacy Commission?—Your obedient servant, DOUBTFUL.
[Our correspondent is correct in assuming that Mr. PROCTER is a Lunacy
Commissioner, and that the Secretary to the Commission is Mr. JOHN
FORSTER.]
NOTE BY THE EDITOR.—This JOHN FORSTER was afterwards rewarded for his
guilty complicity in this most horrible transaction by being made a
Commissioner of Lunacy himself with a salary of £2,000 a year. He died
very rich, no one knowing how his wealth was got. He was on the most
social terms with three very wicked men—DICKENS, LYTTON, and COCKBURN.
_Daily Telegraph, July 15th, 1858._
Sir EDWARD BULWER LYTTON has succeeded in hushing up the scandal of his
wife’s arrest and conveyance to a madhouse at Brentford. The matters
in dispute, so say the persons interested, will be arranged to the
satisfaction of all concerned. For the sake of the lady herself the
public will rejoice that such a compromise has been extorted from the
Secretary of State; if the victim be content no one has a right to
complain, but it must be remembered that Sir BULWER LYTTON alone has
gained by the suppression of enquiry. We are now told that he will seal
a treaty of perpetual truce with the woman who was, apparently under his
instruction, dragged by policemen into a carriage, hurried to a lunatic
asylum, and there compelled to sign a compact of forbearance towards the
individual by whom, according to her statement, she had been grossly and
flagitiously wronged. It is with pleasure we record that this ignominious
family war has been terminated, and the accusation of insanity has been
abandoned; that Lady LYTTON is confessedly qualified to treat with her
husband upon terms of equality. Justice may boast of a triumph, for
though it would have been more satisfactory to have forced the entire
transaction before an authentic tribunal, it may suffice to know that
popular opinion has driven Lord DERBY’S choice and brilliant colleague
into a virtual surrender. It matters little whether Sir BULWER LYTTON,
under Cabinet influence, has found it necessary to save the reputation of
the government as well as his own, but it is not to be forgotten that he
employed attorneys, nurses and policemen to capture his wife; that she
was forcibly consigned to a lunatic asylum—that medical certificates were
obtained to prove her insanity, and that now, an explosion of national
feeling having taken place, she is to be released and allowed to live in
personal independence.
All that now remains for investigation is who and what the professional
gentlemen were who handed over this lady to the keepers of a madhouse;
whether she was sane at the time of her capture, and whether she was
not kidnapped by the myrmidons of her flattered and successful husband.
Individually she may benefit by the compromise, though it may be that
a salutary exposure has been stifled. On one point the public are
agreed; the power at present exercised under the lunacy law of England
is dangerous to social liberty. Anyone, by obtaining the certificate
of two medical men, may imprison wife, child, or other relative, for
years, perhaps for life, in a madhouse. The Lunacy Commissioners, we
are reminded, may interfere with its machinery of visitors’ inspections
and reports, but what is the result? Men might be named who open
establishments of this character, accumulate fortunes, and live in
affluence, and are pointed at by their neighbours as the creatures of
conspiracy. Their residences are nobly furnished, their grounds rival
those of the nobility, and when official visitors, after sumptuous
luncheons, pass their patients in review, and an exasperated captive
pours forth his vehement denunciations, “they write him down mad,” and
the wretch is left for another year, to be goaded by a sense of wrong,
wrought upon by the contagious presence of insanity, and at length made
all that his officious friends desire him to be. Without casting a
general slur upon a body of men, many of whom are highly respectable, we
may state it as the conviction of those who stand above all prejudice in
their profession, that the lunatic asylums of this country are frequently
applied to the same uses as the Bastille, where the Man in the Iron Mask
was immured for life and buried in secrecy because his pretensions were
considered dangerous by claimants to estates and titles, or perpetrators
of unsearched crimes.
But a social question of far more universal importance is connected with
the deplorable disclosure in the case of Sir BULWER LYTTON. The baronet’s
wife may be released from the terrible captivity to which, by the
practical confession of her persecutors, she never ought to have been for
a moment consigned, and from which we have made no unsuccessful effort to
deliver her; but what of humbler persons? What of the domestic victims in
whose name no publicity is invoked? We hear of jealous and bitter-tongued
women, of outcast wives, who go down to bury their humiliation in the
shade of equivocal watering-places, of ladies whose “fashionable” manners
shock the propriety of German spas; but when these scandals are the
popular table-talk, in the name of justice let the woman be considered.
The lord and the lady, the baronet and his wife, the parents of children,
do they stand in the eyes of the world upon a level? We hear of a man who
has been compelled to part with the mother of his children, and we know
that while she goes into retirement with her happiness blasted in her
declining years, his car of triumph rolls on, he is still the ornament
and delight of society. But when the forsaken woman glides into the
shadow of suspicion, who cares to remind us that a cluster of children
call her mother; that twenty years of married life should have made her
sacred; that even her failings should have been holy to her husband;
that bitterness itself is pardonable when it rises from the fountains
of love, that what by the triumphing “Lord of the Creation” is termed
“incompatibility” may be nothing more than the satiety of a selfish
affection? If manliness, if chivalry, if the noble principles of honour
dominate more supremely than they do in the circles of our English life,
would these published separations so continually feed the mass of scandal
to the detriment of names once invoked in confidence and affection at the
altar? Let cynicism utter what it will, let irony do its worst, let men
affect to despise the heart-born passions, the chief happiness of every
human being is at home; neither Church nor State, nor military glory,
nor political conflict, can destroy the supremacy of that instinct which
makes joy itself a virtue—the pride of an honest man in his family. How
implacable then must the antipathy be that breaks these consecrated
bonds; how utterly exhausted and callous must be the affection that
permits this last repudiation of a moral tie, linking children with
children, and teaching those children to reverence their parents.
As may be imagined the most desperate efforts were at this time made by
FORSTER, DICKENS, and others of the “Press-gang,” to stifle enquiry,
or discussion on this Case. The _Times_ remained silent as to all;
but its impression for July 14th, 1858, contains the following:—“LADY
BULWER LYTTON.—We are requested to state, upon the best authority, that
all matters in reference to this Lady, about whom certain statements
have appeared in some of the public journals, are in process of being
amicably settled by family arrangements, to the satisfaction of all
parties concerned.”
SKETCH OF LORD LYTTON.
A friend of ours, who met Lord LYTTON at dinner, favours us with an
extract from his Diary, June 25, 1864, in which there is a lifelike
sketch. We think it well to preserve it here. “Dined to-night with the
Chief Justice, Lord HOUGHTON, and Sir BULWER LYTTON, and other senators
and ladies. B. L. is the most perfect of snobs. He was shabbily dressed
and sidled into the room with a slimy, slouching air and gait, and held
his hat in his hand, as if he were about to drop it on the floor, and
looked as if he did not know what to do with his legs, and gaped with
lack-lustre eye, and said nothing, but seemed bewildered like an idiot
in fine company, so that it is almost impossible to believe that he ever
wrote the works which pass under his name, or, that if he did, his brain
is now softening, and that he is only the wretched shadow of a man. He
has a great nose like FITZBALL or BARDOLPH, only that it is not so red
as the latter’s; his skin is coarse and dirty; he has cut off his great
beard and the hairs now look scanty and scrubby down his long, lank,
lantern, Don Quixote jaws; his hair is wild and like tow; his voice is
harsh and slimy, and slobbering; he presents an appearance foul and
horrid, like that of JAMES I. when hanging on that odious ‘STEENIE,’ and
kissing his painted cheeks with swollen licking tongue. I do not know
that I ever saw so odious a wretch, and I would not sit near or talk to
him for a thousand pounds, poor as I am. I cannot describe his putrid
corpse-like loathsomeness; I expected a fine gentleman, perhaps a fop,
like his own DEVEREUX, or like BOLINGBROKE, and I saw a dirty, stupid,
fish-eyed crapulous catamite—if ever human creature bore the impress of
that fearful monomania. He took a lady (Mrs. R.) down to dinner, but he
never spoke a word to her during the whole entertainment; he remained
silent or jabbering to himself like an old orangoutang for more than an
hour; and then when he had drank more champagne than he should, he spoke
the most utter rot about Denmark that ever oozed out of Avernus itself.
I think COCKBURN was ashamed of him, and although he asked me specially
to meet him, he did not venture to solicit my opinion of this dirty
creature; but I told him mine, and related the anecdote of SAM WARREN,
whom, PEARSON having one day beaten in a long legal argument before the
Chief Baron, he in the exuberance of his joy bawled out to Serjeant
MURPHY, ‘There’s a b—— man of genius for you.’ I told this to the C.J.,
and made him laugh—but he was ashamed of his dirty guest, as he could
hardly fail to be. And this is the nasty animal that Lady BLESSINGTON
and her set used to call ‘SHAKESPERE.’—GOD help us—I don’t wonder his
wife loathed him. I am so sensitive that I believe if he touched me with
his cold gorilla paw, I should feel a pang through my heart almost like
that of Death itself. He got at last so maudlin that he felt he could not
go upstairs, and he took his leave of the C.J. at the foot of them.”
_Daily Telegraph, July 15th, 1858._
In the daily business of life it is difficult and painful to sever
long-contracted bonds; even partners in commerce bear and forbear beyond
the ordinary rules of patience, rather than break from old connections,
but how immeasurably more binding is the compact between man and wife,
how bitter is the gracelessness of the one who rends that sacred tie, and
issuing from the cloud to the enjoyment of all the world has to give,
dismisses the other to sneers, misrepresentations, and ignominy. Not but
that in the instances present to public memory the blame of this bitter
rancour may have been divided. It is but too true that domestic errors
are wantonly magnified into crimes, that feminine sympathies appeal
sometimes to an unnatural code, but what is the position of a woman in
a civilised country compared with that of a man? What is the wife when
appealing against the husband? It may be that at an earlier period, as
in Lady LYTTON’S case, she has been his benefactor, his patron, and that
through long years she has been more to him than he to her; but all this
is forgotten when the opportunity for legal separation arrives, when
children are to be parted by an attorney’s document from their mother;
when malicious friends are to condole with the injured husband, or when
obtrusive advisers, who have been unfortunate themselves, rejoice to drag
down to their own level the individual who has previously galled them by
the superiority of his personal reputation. In almost every instance the
woman is the sacrifice; to her the public insinuations point; upon her
contemptuous pity is lavished; her name is set up as a mark for jibes
and insults; she bears the miserable burden, and her husband continues
to shine as the accomplished writer, the favoured magistrate, or the
statesman expecting a peerage.
It may be beating the air to dwell on this anomaly of our social code.
While selfishness is supreme, while masculine strength prevails over
helpless right, while, in fact, the sins of men are popularly condoned,
and the mortal distempers of women ranked as mortal sins, the scandal of
a separation will always attach to a wife as a perpetual and malignant
curse, re-echoed by every class of society; but it may seem an object of
justice to suggest that while scandals of twenty years’ duration have
been revived, while honour is recalling a thousand anecdotes of domestic
differences and compromises, it has not been by men that the most
unpardonable injuries have been suffered. This we say without any direct
reference to the case of Lady LYTTON. Against her, as far as we know, a
calumny has never been hinted, in spite of her ill-conceived diatribes
against her husband; but the tendency of public opinion, we are sorry to
acknowledge, runs in the direction of malevolence when the characters of
separated wives are in question. It will argue a marked development of
the national morality when, while these transactions are under notice,
some consideration is bestowed upon the possibility that when a woman has
been expelled from her husband, cut off from her family interests, buried
in a social tomb, and stigmatised by her husband’s repudiation, the real
wrong may have been endured by herself, and the cruelty practised by
another.
After this came the letter of Mr. ROBERT LYTTON, our present Viceroy in
India, which we publish; and which speaks for itself, even if his mother
did not. How Mr. EDWIN JAMES came into the transaction we are not told;
but the value of Mr. FORBES WINSLOW’S certificate is well known in the
profession. No one explains how it was that this lady, who was locked up
as being insane, early in July, all of a sudden, recovered the perfect
use of her senses. Dr. CONNOLLY has got a splendid and lucrative place
since he wrote his strange certificate, and we congratulate him upon it.
_To the Editor of the “Daily Telegraph.”_
SIR,—As the son of Lady BULWER LYTTON, with the best right to speak on
her behalf, and so obviously with the best means of information as to
warrant the hope that my simple assertion will be at once believed in the
matter to which I am compelled to refer, I beg to say that the statements
which have appeared in some of the public journals are exaggerated and
distorted, and that they are calculated to convey to the public mind
impressions the most erroneous and unjust. As was natural, I put myself
into constant communication with my mother, and with the gentleman in
whose family, in his private house, she was placed (for I beg distinctly
to state she was never for a moment taken to a lunatic asylum), and I
carried out the injunctions of my father, who confided to me implicitly
every arrangement which my affection could suggest, and enjoined me to
avail myself of the advice of Lord SHAFTESBURY in whatever was judged
best and kindest for Lady LYTTON.
My mother is now with me, free from all restraint, and about, at her own
wish, to travel for a short time, in company with myself and a female
friend and relation, of her own selection.
From the moment my father felt compelled to authorise those steps which
have been made the subject of so much misrepresentation, the anxiety
was to obtain the most experienced and able physician, in order that my
mother should not be subject to restraint for one moment longer than was
strictly justifiable. Such was his charge to me.
The certificates given by Dr. FORBES WINSLOW and Dr. CONNOLLY are
subjoined, and I ought to add that Dr. CONNOLLY was the physician whom
my father had requested to see Lady LYTTON; that Dr. FORBES WINSLOW was
consulted by my mother’s legal advisers, and I felt anxious to obtain
the additional authority of the opinion of the latter gentleman, and
requested my friend, Mr. EDWIN JAMES, to place himself in communication
with him. I trust that such journals as have given publicity to partial
and inaccurate statements will do me the justice to publish this
communication, to which I need add no more than to say that this painful
matter has been arranged, as it ought to be, by the members of the family
whom it exclusively regards.—I have the honour to be, sir, your most
obedient servant,
ROBERT B. LYTTON.
1, Park Lane, July 17th, 1858.
[Copy No. 1.]
To EDWIN JAMES, Esq., Q.C.
Having at your request examined Lady B. LYTTON this day as to her state
of mind, I beg to report to you that in my opinion it is such as to
justify her liberation from restraint.
I think it but an act of justice to Sir EDWARD B. LYTTON to state that
upon the facts which I have ascertained were submitted to him, and upon
the certificates of the medical men[3] whom he was advised to consult,
the course which he has pursued throughout these painful proceedings
cannot be considered harsh or unjustifiable.—I remain, sir, your obedient
servant,
FORBES WINSLOW, M.D., D.C.L.
23, Cavendish square, July 16th, 1858.
[Copy No. 2.]
London, July 17th, 1858.
SIR,—Notwithstanding the decided opinion which I felt it my duty to
express with reference to Lady LYTTON, after my visit to her at the
private residence of Mr. and Mrs. HILL, and which I need not repeat,
justified the course you adopted; I have much satisfaction in hearing
of the arrangements which have been made for her ladyship leaving their
family in the society of her son and her female friend.—I have the honour
to be, sir, very faithfully, your obedient servant,
G. CONNOLLY, M.D.
To the Right Hon. Sir EDW. BULWER LYTTON, Bart., M.P., &c., &c., &c.
The whole of this is, no doubt, full of satisfaction to all persons
concerned; and to the outside world. We own that it does not satisfy us:
but then perhaps _we_ belong to the discontented. Our readers have only
to bear in mind that at this time Sir E. B. L. was a Cabinet Minister,
with all the immense resources of that post; that he was backed up by the
QUEEN, by Lord DERBY, and Mr. DISRAELI; and that under such circumstances
any attempt to “make the worse appear the better cause” could have little
doubt of perfect success. Such appears to have been the opinion of the
writer of what follows:—
_To the Editor of the “Daily Telegraph.”_
SIR,—Thanks to you for your noble and eloquent defence of Lady
LYTTON, and the outrage on public justice perpetrated by her husband.
Your watchfulness may have been rendered unnecessary by the family
“arrangement” which has been announced, but heaven help Lady LYTTON
travelling abroad under the guardianship of such “affection,” with the
stigma of insanity upon her, available for any purpose.
The letter of Mr. ROBERT LYTTON explains nothing, answers nothing. It
does not even show where his mother is. He writes—“My mother is now with
me, free from all restraint.” This letter is dated 1, Park-lane, the town
residence of Sir BULWER LYTTON, who is now in London. Does Mr. LYTTON
mean to say that his mother is or was on Saturday last under the roof of
her husband? There is more than meets the eye in this. Is Lady LYTTON
free from all restraint? Whatever the “arrangement” is, it was made when
she was in durance, and not a free agent, and if that arrangement has
taken her from the custody of Mr. HILL, of Brentford, to that of her own
son and husband, it is only that her prison-house has been changed. “From
the moment my father felt compelled to authorise those steps which have
been made the subject of so much misrepresentation, &c., in order that
my mother should not be subject to restraint for one moment longer than
was strictly justifiable, such was his charge to me.” If Sir EDWARD was
so solicitous to procure the opinions of the most able physicians, we may
ask how it happened that instead of consulting Dr. FORBES WINSLOW and
Dr. CONNOLLY in the first instance, that he employed a Mr. THOMPSON to
kidnap the lady at his own residence. Mr. LYTTON says the statements are
“exaggerated” and “distorted,” but he does not explain how. He says he
has the best right to speak on behalf of his mother, and has “the best
means of information,” and that his assertion will be at once believed.
It is hard to refuse this to a son, and in ordinary cases one would not
feel inclined to do so; but he seems to have acted entirely under the
influence of the father, and to have been from first to last so directly
opposed to his mother, that before we give him the credence he asks there
are several questions he ought to answer. Is it true he has neither
sought after nor corresponded with his mother, nor even seen her, for
nearly seventeen years, until he met her at the Hustings, at Hertford,
during the recent election there? Is it true that on that occasion
he made the preliminary attempt which culminated at the house of Mr.
THOMPSON, in Clarges-street, to put his mother in a madhouse by sending a
physician to the house of the Mayor of Hertford where she was on a visit?
Is it true that when his mother was kidnapped in Clarges-street, and Miss
RYVES ran out into the street, and seeing Mr. LYTTON waiting outside,
entreated him to interfere and procure assistance to prevent his mother
being carried off to Brentford, he refused to have anything to do with
the matter? Other questions suggest themselves, not directly affecting
Mr. LYTTON, but important to an understanding of this painful case.
He says, “I put myself in constant communication with my mother.... I
carried out the injunctions of my father, who confided in me implicitly,
... enjoined me to avail myself of the advice of Lord SHAFTESBURY in
whatever was judged best and kindest for Lady LYTTON.” Is this a solemn
farce, a piece of well-acted hypocrisy, or a truth in letter and spirit?
Is it conceivable that Sir EDWARD LYTTON, not having set eyes on his wife
for seventeen years, and leaving her to live and suffer and complain
during all that time on £400 a year, suddenly became tenderly solicitous
on her behalf, as to require “all that was best and kindest” should be
done for her? Why is Lord SHAFTESBURY introduced? Is it to give the
shelter of his sanctity to a cruel outrage? MEPHISTOPHELES might envy the
genius which suggested the mention of Lord SHAFTESBURY as the adviser and
referee of Sir BULWER LYTTON.
The certificates appended to Mr. LYTTON’S letter are not properly
“certificates;” they are intended as apologies for the conduct of Sir
BULWER LYTTON. But though put forward with this view, they substantiate
that the state of Lady LYTTON’S mind “is such as to justify her
liberation from restraint,” and prove nothing to his honour. It is easy
to see that the “certificate” of Dr. FORBES WINSLOW is but an answer to
certain questions put by Mr. EDWIN JAMES, who was strangely employed by
Mr. LYTTON, and whose object was to extract from the doctor everything
that he could on behalf of Sir EDWARD. On this part of the question we
are all competent to form an opinion, and if it should appear that the
facts submitted to Sir EDWARD were facts suggested by himself, and the
medical men, on whose certificates he acted, were employed by him, which
is the fact, Dr. FORBES WINSLOW’S opinion upon this part of the question
goes for nothing.
The more enquiries we make into the matter the more convinced we are that
a great wrong was attempted, and has now been glossed over. That wrong
was not done to Lady LYTTON alone, but to all society. Her wrath may have
been appeased, her personal wounds may have received a plaister, and her
friends may have been flattered and cajoled into silence, but is the
public satisfied, or the wrong to society been atoned for, while the case
of Lady LYTTON remains uninvestigated, and the conduct of her husband
escapes official and public censure? Is any one of us safe so long as the
law permits the “next of kin” to do what has been done to her?
AN ENGLISHMAN.
_Daily Telegraph, July 21, 1858._
We return unwillingly, and, we trust, for the last time, to the
melancholy scandal in which Sir BULWER LYTTON has involved himself. It
had been our intention not to carry further this painful controversy,
yet additional explanations are extorted from us by the peculiar
tactics not only of particular individuals, but of some among our
contemporaries. There have been allusions to “misrepresentations”
contained in “paragraphs,” and “exaggerated and distorted statements,”
circulated with reference to the Lady, who a few days since was spirited
away by stratagem to Brentford. Now in respect of the persons principally
concerned, nothing more need be said; if the Right Hon. Secretary for
the Colonies has effected a settlement agreeable to his conscience and
his wife, none has a right to interfere; if the Electors of Hertford are
satisfied, the general public has perhaps little reason to complain, and
if legality and justice are not to be permanently outraged we rejoice
that family negociations have been successful. Yet there are points
connected with our own position, which should be clearly set forth. The
vague and solemn rebukes that have been set forth were addressed almost
exclusively to ourselves, not of paragraphs, but of articles based upon
a well-prepared narrative published in a provincial journal, no one
assertion, of which to the present moment has been invalidated. But
if there has been “exaggeration,” if there has been “falsity,” who was
the person and what was the time to correct them? The proper individual
was the son of Sir BULWER LYTTON himself, and the proper time was upon
one of the occasions, when since the exposure in our columns, he called
at the _Daily Telegraph_ office, sometimes not alone. Did we hear then
anything about “distortion” or “misrepresentation”? Most certainly not
a word. Mr. ROBERT LYTTON acted then as the champion of his mother,
and not he only, but her personal friends also appeared delighted that
upon public grounds an appeal had been made, bearing so directly upon
their private interests. Then, we think, was the moment for substituting
accurate for erroneous impressions; but since this retort is forced upon
us, what if we suggest if the original case was not one to be explained
away? Lady LYTTON was by no means the person interested in a concealment
of the facts or in hushing up the affair before it was dragged before
a Commission of Lunacy. We are now told, indeed, that the Baronet was
satisfied in the course he adopted, which we have never pretended
to deny, for we have insisted only on enquiry. We asked whether the
allegations against him were true, and we pointed out the impossibility
of allowing a public man to remain under an imputation so scathing, and
we expressed our hope that the sinister rumours afloat would be set at
rest by an ample vindication of the Privy Councillor’s conduct. Is it our
fault then that no such vindication has been attempted—that Sir BULWER
LYTTON has preferred a private arrangement—that he has defied the written
opinion of two professional men, and allowed his so-called insane Wife
to be once more at large upon terms to which he had previously refused
his consent? Nothing would have been more satisfactory to ourselves and
the public than that Lord DERBY’S Colonial Secretary, after a strict
judicial investigation, should have demonstrated himself a Man of Honour,
incapable of kidnapping an obnoxious Wife.
But upon whose authority was Lady LYTTON captured and sent to
Brentford? Not originally, as has been stated, upon that of Dr.
CONNOLLY. The certificates were signed by a Mr. HALE THOMPSON, once
known at Westminster Hospital, and by a Mr. ROSS, an apothecary of
Farringdon-street, whose medical reputation seems to have travelled
providentially from east of Temple-bar to an official residence in
Downing-street. The sanction of these “eminent” gentlemen enabled the
policemen and nurses to place Lady LYTTON by force in a carriage, but
through a humane after-thought, Dr. CONNOLLY was ultimately called
in and dispatched to the residence of Mr. ROBERT GARDINER HILL, at
Brentford. There he certified that Lady LYTTON was a demented patient;
there, however, Dr. FORBES WINSLOW, within a day or two, certified in
singularly cautious and ambiguous terms, that she was _not_ a demented
patient; she was in fact fit and unfit to live without restraint, and
the result is that with her son and a female relation, she is to enjoy a
continental tour. At all events, it is gratifying to know that whatever
has been the effect on the Lady’s nerves, she has been benefitted by the
public discussion of her case. Instead of the Brentford process, she will
sojourn at the Spas, and Florentine gaiety may compensate her for a week
of Middlesex gloom under the Lunacy Law.
Concerning the Brentford question, Mr. ROBERT GARDINER HILL is pleased
to think himself aggrieved. We may remark that Mr. HILL claims to have
penetrated the secrets of physiological science. That he is not the
proprietor of a “notorious Madhouse” we will admit, if he will allow that
he is the principal of a “celebrated Lunatic Asylum.”
What consolation would it be to any of our readers, if falsely accused of
insanity, that a “lunatic asylum,” and not a “madhouse,” shuts its doors
upon them. Would a paltry verbal quibble reconcile them to captivity
among maniacs and the mentally afflicted? He is among the proprietors, he
confesses, of Wyke House, which, if he will not permit us to describe it
as “notorious,” is at least well-known as a Madhouse, or, if the term be
offensive, of a Lunatic Asylum.
Though not standing alone in this controversy, we have been solitary
among the organs of the press in claiming a public enquiry on behalf of
Lady LYTTON. In our main object we have succeeded. The “patient” is no
longer in legal or in medical clutches. Her position has totally changed
since the protest of public indignation rose against the treatment to
which she had been subject. The Taunton people are satisfied that a great
wrong is not to be perpetrated, and Lady LYTTON’S friends, who rejoiced
in the original exposure, are now at liberty to be as ungrateful as
they please. They will not induce us, at all events, to state whence
our information was derived, or how far the Right Honourable Baronet
is indebted to themselves for the publication of a monstrous scandal.
But it was due to ourselves, to our readers, and to the innumerable
correspondents whose letters we have felt it necessary to suppress, to
remind Mr. ROBERT LYTTON and his colleagues in the negociation just
concluded, that they have to thank the press for the publicity which
spared them the painful alternative of a judicial investigation. It fell
to us, fortunately, to produce a movement of public opinion in favour
of Lady LYTTON; and it is not for her personal advocates to blame the
persistency with which we have followed it to its final issue. Least of
all, whatever gracelessness may be exhibited in Park-lane, do we regret a
course of proceedings without which, in all probability, the wife of Sir
BULWER LYTTON might have been still, and possibly for the rest of her
life, subject to the galling tendernesses of our Asylums for Lunatics.
LORD LYTTON THE FIRST.
This man was once called by his admirers (who were probably well paid for
it) “The modern SHAKSPERE.” We now know in what estimation his writings
are held. But his private character was so vile and detestable, that
it will cause almost incredulity if it ever should be exposed in its
true colours to the world. Mr. LABOUCHERE, in _Truth_, has a paragraph
upon him, which is truth itself. Here it is:—“A man may be endowed with
genius and with numerous amiable qualities, and yet be a Snob. Few of
those who have lived during the present century have been gifted with
more genius than Lord LYTTON, and yet few have been so arrant a Snob. In
his works of fiction he has frequently sought to portray gentlemen, and
these gentlemen, each of whom has a family likeness to his creator, are
the beau-ideals of Snobs—clever, pushing, conceited, florid Snobs, with
Brummagem manners, Brummagem morals, a Brummagem varnish of philosophy,
and a Brummagem varnish of poetry.” In Friday’s _Times_ we read this
advertisement, anything meaner than which we never perused:—
Herts, Knebworth-park, with 1,500 acres of capital Shooting,
three miles from Stevenage and Welwyn Stations (G.N.R.)—A
handsome FURNISHED baronial MANSION, surrounded by a fine park
and splendid gardens and grounds. Particulars of &c., &c.
Is the son as mean a fellow as the father? Lord LYTTON left him about
£300,000; and he is paid as Viceroy of India £100,000 a year, with
“pickings;” and he offers to let his family mansion. Would he not do
better to let his Mother, that noble, injured Lady, into Knebworth, than
hire it out to some stranger?
MR. JOHN FORSTER.
This man, who was one of Lord LYTTON’S tools, and who also played
toady for the greater part of his life to a congenial evil spirit, Sir
ALEXANDER COCKBURN, is thus described by Lady LYTTON. Under the name
of JANUS ALLPUFF, she alludes to her accomplished husband:—“The chief
MECÆNAS of this FUDGESTER (FORSTER) is a Sir JANUS ALLPUFF, who not
content with having hunted his unhappy Wife nearly to death, and reduced
to the lowest ebb of pecuniary destitution, from defending herself
against his infamous Conspiracies, also prevents her in every possible
way from earning her bread: and who so useful in this way as FUDGESTER?
I should tell you, in order to show you the astuteness and diabolical
cunning of this Infamous Gang, and the tortuous sneaking measures they
adopt to prevent their dirty work being brought home to them, by always
employing others, as far a-field as possible, to do it; this FUDGESTER,
from being a known tool and toady of that vile old profligate, Sir JANUS
ALLPUFF, and a declared enemy of his Victim, never reviews her books,
or mentions her name in any way, in his own particular paper, _The
Excruciator_ (_The Examiner_), but merely sets on the ramifications of
the Gang to attack and malign her in every possible way: and from the
wording of some of these attacks, it is quite clear that Sir JANUS gives
the substance of what he wishes them to do, as the same internal evidence
exists of such being the case, that does as to his furnishing the pith
of the puffs about himself to those organs of his myrmidons. But after
all there is nothing so silly as your over-cunning people; which the very
bungling way in which Sir JANUS gets his dirty work done, will ultimately
prove: and indeed some of the anonymous letters which his infamous
Literary Myrmidons are set to write to his Victim, strongly resemble, in
their little mean cramped characters, his own, or his JACKAL FUDGESTER’S
writing.”
THE LATE DUKE OF ATHOL.
One of VICTORIA’S chief favourites, and one who knew a little more of her
than we think it well to publish, was one of the BULWER LYTTON Gang, and
is thus described:—
Another member of this worshipful clique of Stop-at-nothings, a few
grades higher as to station, but quite on a par as to blackguardism, is
the Duke of TWILGLENON.
“Ah, I’ve seen that horrid fellow,” broke in Mr. PHIPPEN; “what a
horrid-looking Wretch it is—for all the world like a low, drunken Grazier
in appearance, looking as if he had just beaten or worried one of the
poor animals he had been driving, to death.”
“Well, sir, I believe he does kick and worry the only animal which every
Englishman has a right to ill-treat to any amount, which is his wife; for
beautiful and amiable as the poor Duchess is, it don’t prevent her being
well brutalized by her ruffianly-looking husband. Ah, sir, I often think
that had Princess CHARLOTTE lived, _she_ would have had some feeling for
her own sex, and that such notoriously profligate men as this Duke of
TWILGLENON, and his worthy associate, that Sir JANUS ALLPUFF, would not
have disgraced the English Court. But perhaps a man in my sphere of life
is no judge of such matters; only I cannot help thinking, according to
the Laws of GOD, Vice is Vice, and Infamy is Infamy, all over the world,
whether in Queens, or Dukes, or Dustmen, or in Baronets or Bricklayers.”
“To be sure it is,” said Mr. PHIPPEN, “only ten times worse in the
Patrician than in the Plebeian, as _they_ have not even the excuses of
misery, as provocation, to drive them into low vice.”
But Sir JANUS ALLPUFF had other irons in the fire.
I am not aware, even from the insight I have had into the Sodom and
Gomorrah of the literary world, that it is customary for Reviewers (?)
previous to reviewing a work, to write _anonymous_ letters to the author,
stating that theirs was rather an influential Review, but that before
they reviewed her last work, they must first assure her that the world
did not care one straw whether she was well-used or ill-used, but _they_
(the _Reviewer_, mind, and the Writer of the _anonymous_ letters, for
there were two) wished to know was it possible that she meant Mr. ——,
one of the characters in the novel, for her own husband?—as though they
should ask, “Is it possible you have dared to blaspheme your GOD!!”
though indeed, among _that_ class of notoriously infamous and profligate
men, who have left _no_ law of GOD unviolated, Husbands of course are
generally given precedence to the Almighty in the awe and reverence
such men endeavour to inculcate in the female slaves of Great Britain.
Now, with regard to that, the authoress had only to say “that it was
impossible to write a novel without having bad characters in it, and it
would be equally impossible to mention _any_ vice or any meanness which
would not be perfectly applicable, and which therefore might not appear
_personal_ to Sir JANUS ALLPUFF, who having taken high degrees in them
_all_, was at perfect liberty to take his choice, and fit them on as he
pleased; and as for the sacredness of the mere word _husband_, as to
_her_ it was only the synonyme of the most extreme personal violence and
brutality, terminating in being turned out of her home to make way for
her legal tyrant’s mistresses, and to having had one child destroyed
physically and the other morally, being swindled out of every shilling,
and hunted by a relentless Fiend through the world, it could not be very
sacred, _quoique sacré_, to her.” “Oh, but respect to her position,”
said Conventionality; _he_ had not left _her any_ save one of honest
superiority, which, as it arose from herself, it was not in _his_ nor in
his myrmidon’s power to deprive her of. Then what _was_ she to respect?
Surely _not_ the iniquitous laws that allowed a woman to be so treated,
nor the vicious and immoral society which tolerates such conduct; and
least of all the opinion of a certain obsequious clique of the press,
which panders to, puffs, and protects such infamy. The silliest thing
that ever tyrant did is to leave his slave _nothing_ to lose, to hope,
or to fear, for _then_ comes the reaction: the pigmy springs into an
armed giant, and the trampled worm is, _for the sake of others_, willing
to become a martyr to a cause of which they have been so long a Victim;
and of this overreaching folly the clever Sir JANUS ALLPUFF had been
guilty. “Oh! but his talents,” simpers some Miss, to whom they no doubt
appear, as compared with her own, _very great_; but his Victim, being
an exceedingly well-read Woman, could not even bow down to and worship
_them_, looking upon him much in the light of the ass which carried the
relics, from having read the most of his works _in the authors from
whom he transferred them_; and, moreover, having more original ideas in
her own head than _he_ ever purloined from anybody else’s. So, finding
there was nothing to be done with a Wretch of this kind, and that he
could not even hunt her to death, it was necessary to make the Clique
set up a hue-and-cry about the _personality_ of her books; but _who_
more personal, pray, without the excuse of gross outrage that _she_ had
had, than Sir JANUS himself, even to formerly ridiculing the _Assinæum_
and others of his now obedient vassals, to say nothing of his converting
Her Majesty’s ministry into highwaymen? Who more personal, either, than
his friend Mr. JERICHO JABBER, in his Caucasian romances? And who _so_
personal, without any regard to _vraisemblance_, much less to _truth_, as
my Lady GORGON,[4] in her trashy productions? But because _she_ has made
her house _convenient_ to the English aristocracy for the last quarter of
a century, she has a pension of three hundred a-year, while poor HAYDON
starved on an under-footman’s wages of twenty-five—Shame! Shame! But
Sir JANUS had not done with his victim yet. _The New Quarterly_, _The
Literary Gazette_, in old SILENUS JERDAN’S most unscrupulous strain,
so that his reminiscences seemed to hiccup through every line; _The
Assinæum_, and, in short, _all_ Sir JANUS’ _special tools_ and literary
bravoes—
“Cursed by the goose’s and the critic’s quill,”
were ordered to affect to treat her book as the production of a mad
woman. Nay, more, BOB CLAPPER,[5] another star of this galaxy, and _quite
worthy of being one_, considering that he lives with another man’s wife
and is always drunk, was also set to _bell_ all over London that Sir
JANUS’S victim was mad, which really was very unfair towards FUDGESTER,
as they had just concocted a job appointment for him, and inducted him
into it, under the very appropriate title of Purveyor of Lunatics to
the Literary Fund. But if Sir JANUS had only had the goodness, instead
of _saying_ and telling his gang to say all this, _to have instituted
a medical inquiry, or any other inquiry_, that could have his Wife’s
conduct and his own _examined into, thoroughly sifted, and brought
before the public_, she would have been, and still would be, infinitely
obliged to him. But no! the calumnies of this most loathsome and utterly
contemptible _Clique_, like their _charities_ (?), are upon the principle
of _publicity_ and _self-security_. With regard to the former, they
stab in the back and in the dark; with regard to the latter—_via_ the
_Times_—they dip their hands into other people’s pockets; and no matter,
as far as Sir JANUS ALLPUFF is concerned, if his Victim wife has been
hunted down to the lowest straits of pecuniary destitution, as long as
_his_ name figures in £100 subscriptions for restoring Churches, or any
other sound-of-trumpet doings, he will still have the Reverend Incumbent
of any living in _his_ gift, swearing that he is a reformed character!!
and FUDGESTER endeavouring to demonstrate to the British public, by dint
of brass and ink, that what _might_ have the appearance of a bare-faced
plagiary in others, is the highest proof and evidence of profound
_originality_ in Sir JANUS ALLPUFF, and that _so_ any _generous_ critic
must admit; and certainly it is very easy for critics, _à la_ FUDGESTER,
to be generous with other people’s property, and there is no generosity
in giving people what they don’t want; so FUDGESTER is quite right to
give _his_ friends as much honour, originality, and generosity as he
possibly can. But it was not to be supposed that the clever Sir JANUS,
with such a _corps d’esprit_ (?) at his command, would let his Victim
rest; so he next sets a fellow calling himself a theatrical manager
(?), of the name of “LEYTON,” to write to her, demanding permission
to dramatise one of her Novels. Now the motive of this was two-fold:
first, it inculpated the rare jest of leading the poor, struggling,
financially-crippled Wife to suppose that she was about to get a little
money, which would be a great godsend to her, considering the terrible
embarrassments his ceaseless conspiracies had entailed on her; and next,
it established a correspondence under the pretext of arranging the scenes
and condensing the plot of the play, which correspondence was drawled
out over the space of several months, which of course kept Sir JANUS
perfectly in possession of his Victim’s whereabouts. But at length even
such a very bungling plotter as this very “_clever_” man felt the hum of
the play could not last for ever; consequently the plot began to thicken,
and the _soi-disant_ Mr. LEYTON was sent with a woman, who had every
appearance of being a street-walker, in _person_, and under the name of
BARNES. This phase of the plot consisted in getting into the same house
as Sir JANUS’S victim, and giving her the trouble and expense of getting
out of it; and at a later period of the plot, this low fellow BARNES
wrote her a most infamous letter, the handwriting of which was precisely
the same as the letters of the _soi-disant_ LEYTON. But as Sir JANUS
ALLPUFF invariably adopts the opposite _verbal_ virtue to the particular
vice he may be at the moment practising, about this time he was seized
in the House of Commons with such a “_generous_” (a favourite _word_ of
his) horror of the under-hand and the anonymous, that _he_ would like
to have every article in a newspaper signed with the writer’s name! But
surely he must have uttered this _fanfarronade_ under the full conviction
that such an absurd law never would or could be passed; for otherwise,
what dreadful high wages some of his doers of dirty work would require
for some of the paragraphs, _pro_ and _con._, which they are ordered
to indite! Shocking to think of! for it almost makes one see, in one’s
mind’s eye, Sir JANUS _himself_ reduced to such a state of pecuniary
destitution as not to have coin sufficient to pay for a raspberry puff,
much less for a literary one! Thus hunted out of the miserable and remote
village in which she had taken refuge, Sir JANUS’S victim left it, not
letting anyone know the place she was going to, which so exasperated
her tyrant to think that she should for even a week, a day, or an hour,
escape from his persecutions, that the next time the miserable pittance
he doles out to her became due, and from which he even deducts the
Income Tax! he positively refused to pay it to one of her solicitors
till he had a clergyman’s certificate from the place where she then was,
_guaranteeing that she was alive_, and this he no doubt thought a very
_clever_ way of finding out where she was. But honesty is always not only
braver, but shrewder, than rascality, not only because it has nothing to
fear, but because all resources are within its grasp, and as his Victim
was determined not to yield to this disgusting, though too ridiculous,
piece of petty tyranny—a very clever lawyer of hers, and one as honest
as he is clever, soon brought that contemptible wretch Sir JANUS and
his rascally attorney to his senses by writing them word what he would
do if this disgraceful swindle which he calls an allowance was not paid
instantly. Of course he soon hunted out his Victim again, but his spy
(everyone being now forewarned) was sent about her business in a manner
that must have rather surprised her and her “gifted” employer, and as now
there is a talk of a general election, with what he himself and FUDGESTER
would call those “high and generous instincts” for his own safety which
never quit him, I suppose he will keep quiet for some little time, and he
had better!
“What a contemptible, dastardly set of Blackguards, to be sure!”
“You’d say so, sir, if you knew as much of them as I do.”
“Egad! I think you’ve told me quite enough. How old is this Sir JANUS
ALLPUFF, and what sort of a looking fellow is he?”
“Well, sir, in years, I don’t believe he is much more than fifty, but
from the horrible life he has led he looks eighty; however, in the puffs,
of course, all this is attributed to his literary labours. His person
is not so easy to describe; it is the head of a goat on the body of a
grasshopper. But it’s the expression of his face that is so horrible;
the lines in it make it look like an intersected map of Vice, bounded on
one side by the Black Sea of Hypocrisy, on the other by the Falsehood
Mountains.”
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES
[1] _Genius_ was written originally, but was obliterated, and _talent_
substituted for it.
[2] This is something like RICHARDSON’S transfer to HOLKER; and HOLKER’S
anticipated assignment to MONTAGU CORRY: and HOLKER like COPLEY, or
LYNDHURST, will no doubt sit on the Bench!!! Thus HOLKER helps to get Dr.
KENEALY disbarred and destroyed, because, unlike HOLKER, he is not fit to
belong to an “honourable profession,” and all the Ministry look on, and
uphold, and applaud!!!
[3] The “medical men” here referred to are Mr. ROSS, an apothecary,
of Farringdon street, City, and Mr. HALE THOMPSON, of Clarges-street,
formerly connected with the Westminster Hospital.
[4] Lady MORGAN.
[5] BOB CLAPPER—the late Mr. ROBERT BELL, author of “Marriage, a Comedy.”
JERICHO JABBER is DISRAELI.
INDEX TO “A BLIGHTED LIFE.”
Account of Jean Hestier, the poor orphan, 60
Anecdote of Sir E. L.’s brutality to his wife, 76
Appendix, 76
Attempt to induce Lady L. to live with her husband, 58
Aylmer’s, Lady, Ball at, 6
Bell, Mr. Robert, spreads the report of the pretended madness of Lady
L., 12
Blackburn, Lady, Money lent by, and Mr. L.’s notions of honour, 65
Brellisford, the Maid, Courage of, 10
Clarke’s, Mrs., interview with Sir E.’s solicitor, 37
Cockburn, described, 6;
alluded to, 47, 69;
tries to borrow money from Sir E., scene, 70
Cole, Mr., Q.C., alluded to, 64, 69;
Lady L. gives a testimonial to, 70
D—— and Wyndham Lewis, 20
Deacon, Miss Laura, Account of, 23, 24
Dedication of “Lucille” defended, 47, 57
Dickens, Charles, described, 4;
“In Memoriam” by, 22
Directions to her son in case of Lady L.’s death, 49
Divorce Court, Why Lady L. did not apply to, 50
Drives with Mary H. described, 39, 43
E. J.’s flattering account of Sir E. in an American Court, 72
Grattan, alluded to, 41
H——, the Madhouse Keeper, driven from Brentford, 55
Hertford Election, Lady L. speaks at, 27
Hodgson, the good attorney, 8
Hotham, Lady, Visit to, 8
Hyde, Mr., Lady L.’s solicitor, opposes Sir E.’s plot to prevent the
pittance being paid, 17
Interview with her son described by Lady L., 50
Lady Lytton describes her son’s conduct, 44;
abandoned by him abroad, 59;
ceases to have intercourse with him, 66
Lamartine quoted, 6
Llangollen, Mrs. P., the spy, at, 8
Lawrence, the Quaker, and Lord L., 71, 73
Leighton set upon Lady L., 10
London, Lady L. visits, and is trapped, 33
Loudon, Mrs., Account of, 7
Lytton, Sir E., lectures on the Holiness of Truth, 11;
on the scene of abduction, 35;
drummed out of Nice, 40
Lyndhurst, Lord, applied to, 19;
his letter, 19
Lyndhurst, Lord, and Lady Sykes, 6, 20;
his conduct as to Lady L.’s papers, 22
Madhouse conspiracy carried out, 35;
Arrival at, 36;
Waking at, for the first time, 38
Maginn, Dr., alluded to, 63
Mary H——, Lady L’s little friend, described, 37;
Drives with, described, 39, 43
Massey, Lord, alluded to, 41
Norton, Mrs., 6;
Anecdote of, 18;
Trial of, 63
O’Kane and Palmerston, Case of, 63
Plot as to copyright of “Very Successful,” 67
Queen, The, and Prince Albert compared, 19;
alluded to, 42
R——, Miss, 47;
as a spy, 54
Return from abroad and reception at Taunton, 61
Roberts, Dr. Oily Gammon, described, 43
Shaftesbury, Lord, and the trusteeship, 53, 57, 65
Sparrow, the maid, 38
Stepney, Lady, alluded to, 76
“Strange Story, A,” alluded to, 19
Terror of Lord L. in his son, 56
Talfourd, Mr. Serjt., and his Custody of Infants Bill, 5
Whalley, Mr., sent for, 17
INDEX TO SUPPLEMENTAL NOTES.
Allpuff, Sir Janus, 102, 105, 106, 107
“An Englishman’s” letter to the _Daily Telegraph_, 97
Athol, The late Duke of, described by Lady L., 103
Brentford Asylum, Arrival at, 87
Clarke, Mrs., refuses to allow Lady L.’s goods to be removed, 83
Clapper, Bob, 105
Cockburn, Sir Alex., alluded to, 102
_Daily Telegraph_, The, Extracts from, 90, 94, 99
Forster, Mr. John, 102
Gorgon, Lady, 105
Hertford Election, 83
Hill, Mr., the keeper of the Brentford Asylum, and his grievance, 101
Hyde, Mr., Lady L.’s solicitor, alluded to, 88
Income of Lady L. shamefully small, 82
Jabber, Mr. Jericho, 105
Knebworth to let, Advertisement of, 102
Letters to the _Daily Telegraph_, 90, 95, 96, 99
Letter of Mr. Lytton to the _Daily Telegraph_, 96
Letter of Mr. Forbes Winslow to Edwin James, Q.C., 96
Letter of Dr. Connolly, 97
Leyton, Mr., alluded to, 106
London, Lady L.’s visit to, and abduction, 85
Lytton, Lady, described, 79
Lytton, Sir E., on the scene of abduction, 87
Lytton, Lord, the first, 102
Madhouse dens and the Lunacy Laws, Preface, iii.
Meeting of the inhabitants of Taunton, and the resolutions passed, 88
Sketch of Lord Lytton, 93
_Somerset Gazette_ Extract from, 79
Thompson, Dr., visits Lady L., 84
“Very Successful,” Extract from, 102, 103
[Illustration: THE END.]
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