Dear Lister,

It has been impressed upon me that I have been more than a little deranged of late. I must apologise for whatever I may have written.

Though on reflection, I realise that you’re not likely to have received any of my recent letters. Since I can’t bear to submit the expressions of my heart to Matron Clarkson’s scrutiny, I’ve formed the habit of writing Miss Anne Lister, perhaps at Halifax on each folded, sealed packet, and dropping it out of my bedroom window in hopes that some passing Good Samaritan will pick it up and take the trouble to send it on. But now I’ve come back to my senses, it’s clear to me that my letters are very probably piling up in the gutter below, made illegible by rain. A parcel of papers, which can be of no use whatever to anyone but the owner. I should do you the justice of believing that, had you received even one, you’d have replied, if only out of compassion.

Now I am calm, I’m attempting to form a clear narrative of events in my mind. Matron Clarkson tells me that I came here to the Clifton House Asylum on the final day of October, last year, which was 1814. I must take her word for it; I find it difficult to sort the tangled silks of memory.

I do remember moments, but out of order. I have a vivid recollection of slamming the Duffins’ door and fleeing down Micklegate in a pair of silk slippers, in a state of utter dishevelment. I can picture myself thundering along Petergate to the Belcombes’ house, to throw myself on the mercy of Mariana, being unable to think of anywhere else I might take refuge. (Her father, Dr. Belcombe, has her eyes; I think of her every time he feels my pulse.) I call it one of Dame Destiny’s cruellest jokes, Lister, that your beloved Mariana was kind to me when you—but no, I’ll make no accusations. I am quite tranquil today.

What I can’t remember is whether I asked Dr. Belcombe or Mather to admit me to their asylum, but I do know I begged them for help. So now I’m here, am kept here. Whenever I express any restlessness, Matron Clarkson persuades me of the need to stay a while longer until my malady be perfectly cured.

She tells me that persons in all walks of life can be struck by lunacy—a hereditary taint in one case, a sharp grief in another. Among the patients next door in the men’s house is one young fellow here for his fourth stay, whose madness is always brought on by drink. In my case, the cause is not clear. (Some natures swim, I remember telling you, and some sink.) My sister’s wild and disgraceful behaviour, since she came back from India without her husband, inclines Dr. Belcombe to think it may lie in our blood. Our father’s sister (Lady Crawfurd’s mother) is of course feebleminded, but Dr. Mather suspects some deeper strain of frailty on the Indian side, about which I can tell them nothing. Neither of them can account for my malady coming on all at once like a storm last autumn (making me lash out at all my nearest connections), except it be by act of God.

Dr. Duffin must have let slip to his colleagues that I came near to being engaged to Captain Alexander two summers back, since they’ve repeatedly asked me about any “disappointment in love.” I give them only blank looks. The truth is, I do believe the start of my undoing was love, Lister, but it’s a precious secret I don’t mean to spoil by sharing. I was only fourteen when I first tasted that intoxicating draught, and I must have drunk too deep.

But no, you’ll hear no more sad music from my quill. What’s done is done, and no good can come of brooding over it. Recollection is an insidiously rising tide around me. Qui n’avance pas, recule; even by standing still I risk slipping backwards, drowning in time past. I must exert myself to shake off morbid preoccupations, and hold tight to my newfound calm.

Dr. Mather has been trying nervous mixtures on me: hartshorn, calomel, digitalis, lavender water. Matron Clarkson gives me shower-baths, warm, to stimulate, or cold, to quell. The regimen here at Clifton is a gentle one, of which no patient can reasonably complain. We rise early (except those unfit for company, one of whom moans unceasingly in her room). New milk in the morning, tea cakes in the afternoon, sago in the evening. There are no mirrors here, since they’re thought to have a disturbing effect. We go up on the mound in the garden when we crave a wider view. I always hope to see the Manor girls go by, but haven’t yet. We attend church on Sundays and take walks in the countryside every afternoon. Today Matron Clarkson brought us right down Water End to where the ferry crosses the Ouse, and I looked down the river and glimpsed the towers of York on the horizon. There was a pair of swans, and I wondered if they could possibly be the same ones.

The old song rings in my head: Oh my love, lov’st thou me? Oh my love, lov’st thou me?

Newspapers are denied us, as upsetting, but from conversation with the matron and the doctors I am quite conversant with the facts of the present day. The Earl of Liverpool is Prime Minister. Mr. Wilberforce has managed to ban the selling, though not the keeping, of slaves. The poor King has lost his mind again, and his quondam piglet rules over us now as Prince Regent. The motherless wildcat Princess Charlotte grew up and broke off her match with the Prince of Orange, ran away in a hack and was dragged back and locked up by the Prince Regent her father, but she’ll have satisfaction once he’s in the ground: she’ll be queen of the whole Empire. The French War is finally won, and Boney exiled to St. Helena, of all places—that baked rock at the end of the world I remember well, where our ship stopped when I was seven years old, and off whose shores our father’s body was slipped into the blue waters two years after that.

Better not to harp on what’s lost. I remind myself that by following the rules of a well-regulated life, I may fully recover my sanity. I picture the great bulging eye in the ceiling fixed on me, following me everywhere. I know that all here is done with a view to restoring patients and returning them to the bosom of family and friends.

Not that I have any left—friends or family, I mean. Time, le temps, uncountable time. Imperfectly past time. Its great scythe cuts down all before it. My childhood is a distant country that no ship can reach. I had a sister—have one still, on paper—but we are nothing akin, quite lost to each other. I once had a father, but full fathom five he lies. I once had a mother; how long since I forgot how to speak her tongue. Dearer than all these, I once had a friend who was far more than that; a beloved whose name will ever be graven on my heart.

Matron Clarkson came, just now. I begged her for five minutes more with my pen, since I’m thoroughly serene. She said that too much writing could rob me of that serenity but allowed me one more minute.

What to say, when time’s so short? Not that you’ll read these words, of course. Much as I long for you to read my words, I can’t bring myself to submit them to the censors’ gaze. These pages, like the others, I’ll drop out my window; let the wind take them.

My taper’s dying. There’s a lesson: we are as grass.

Time’s up and here comes Matron, so I’ll sign myself,

once your own

Raine

P.S. Do you only frown now, when the rain says my name? Or does it not say it anymore?

P.P.S. I still have my teeth.