My meeting with the governors’ subcommittee took place four days later, in the Bethlem court-room I had first entered with the steward Alavoine on our futile search for Haslam. Now that it was full of men, it was warm and well lit, both fireplaces ablaze. The individuals I faced were eight or nine kindly enough looking businessmen in ordinary business coats, sitting round the far end of a long table. John Haslam not being among them, I recognized no one except Alavoine. You know you’re in foreign waters when that’s your familiar face. My words to them were simple and few. Nervousness took the volume out of my voice, but I think they all heard me:
“I am wife to Mr. Matthews and demand to know by what authority my husband is detained.”
In response, Mr. Poynder, Clerk of Bethlem, with whom I’d been in correspondence, a rangy, quiet-spoken fellow in a bag wig, with crooked teeth somewhat furred, as if his regular practice was to dip them in a solution of mouse-coloured velvet, stood up and after looking at me softly, read out in the sonorous style of a barrister-at-law the terms by which James Tilly Matthews had been admitted.
These, however, telling me nothing new, only that Jamie had indeed been admitted, when (the 28th of January), and at whose expense (Camberwell Parish’s), which bare facts I already knew, I demanded to know further why he could not be discharged today and allowed to return home with me, his lawful wife, who hereby swore to take entire responsibility for his care and future conduct.
They then asked me to withdraw, and I did not need to wait long before Alavoine fetched me back in, so Mr. Poynder could read me a motion they’d just unanimously passed, saying they would not comply with my request. But by a second motion, they ordered Mr. Poynder to forward a copy of the day’s proceedings to Mr. Fasson, a Camberwell churchwarden, to request that he and Mr. Clark, overseer of the poor of that parish, attend the committee at its next Saturday meeting.
And so the following week (after two more fruitless attempts to get past Bulteel), the shop temporarily closed, there being no one now but myself to run it, I waited once more on the bench outside the court-room, this time in the company of Mr. Fasson and Mr. Clark, and these gentlemen, calm Mr. Lean and nervous Mr. Fat, confessed they were as much in the dark as myself concerning the reasons for Jamie’s admission. All they knew was, a certain government authority had required their parish to pay for the incarceration of a former parishioner.
“What kind of government authority?” I asked.
They supposed it would be the Board of Green Cloth. “And you thought that was only a billiard table!” Mr. Lean said, winking at me. But no, he explained, it was the Privy Council acting as a court with the power to imprison anyone deemed a threat to the Crown in an area twelve miles around the King’s household, wherever it may be: St. James, Windsor, etc. Lean and Fat together explained the Green Cloth goes into effect every once in a while, which is fair enough, but if relied on too often can prove, as Mr. Fat expressed it, “a mighty drain on the old coffers.” At £3 4s payable on admission for bedding and £1.11.6 per week thereafter, a patient can fast eat up parish funds, especially when you consider the political ones are often kept much longer than the usual year for incurables—those incurables, that is, who aren’t locked up for good as a danger to themselves or the public.
Mr. Lean then mentioned the case of Peg Nicholson, whose cell it happened was not a hundred feet from where we sat, she having been a resident of the women’s wing nearly twelve years.
Of course I had heard of Peg Nicholson. Whenever Bethlem comes up in conversation, she’s the inmate everybody agrees they’d most like to shake the hand of. Peg was an upper servant in a good family who misconducted herself with a valet and was let go and reduced to needlework in a room over a stationer’s in Wig-more Street. From there she first sent the King a petition intimating he was a tyrant and usurper. But real fame came only when, at age fifty-two, she made a public attempt on his Majesty’s life, using some say a rusty, some say an ivory-handled, some say a worn-to-razor-sharpness, dessert knife—though by her own account she was only trying to deliver a second petition and in her nervousness happened to draw the knife from her pocket along with the paper. Accounts of the incident vary, but the one I know has the King, who was in the midst of receiving the petition with a noble condescension, avoiding the sudden knife at his breast by stepping back. Peg then making a second thrust (or perhaps only, as she said, once again encouraging him to take hold of the petition), the King’s footman wrenched the weapon from her hand, at which his Majesty declared with the greatest equanimity and fortitude, “I am not hurt. Take care of the poor woman. She must certainly be mad.”
And things might have gone well for her had she not at her Privy Council hearing insisted she wanted nothing but her due, which was the Crown of England, and if she wasn’t given it, the nation would be drowned in blood for a thousand generations. And so, by the King’s express direction, for the past dozen years she’s resided in Bethlem, where by all reports she does nicely, though daily expecting a visit from His Majesty that never comes.
“Now, Peg would be a Green Cloth case,” Mr. Fat leaned over to remind Mr. Lean.
“Aye,” Mr. Lean agreed. “And Monro and his father together were the doctors consulted. Once Peg was in here, old Monro used to play at cards with her. It’s him who said it’s possible to be insane and still take a hand at whist.”
“Is your husband a threat to the Crown?” Mr. Lean now politely asked me, as if enquiring after Jamie’s taste in pocket handkerchiefs.
“My husband,” I assured him, “wouldn’t harm a flea.”
“I know,” said Mr. Fat warmly. “He don’t have to. Not in these perilous times. Do you remember that missile from an air-gun that broke the window of the King’s carriage and passed out the other side, about two years ago—?”
“And how the mob,” Mr. Lean taking up the story, “once the coach reached St. James, flipped it on its side and half destroyed it? Of course by that time his Majesty was home safe in the palace—”
“Yes,” I said. “I do remember something—”
“These days you can’t look sideways at the lowliest fart-catcher,” Mr. Fat continued, “but they’ll toss you in here and throw away the key. It’s all this revolution in the air. The nabs is quaking in their boots, and when they quake they come down hard on the poor and unsuspecting. They come down very hard indeed.”
As he said the last of this he looked at me smiling, not grimly, I don’t think, at the thought of coming down hard on the poor and unsuspecting, but to let me know he was pleased to believe with me my husband wouldn’t harm a flea.
And then the court-room door opened and the steward Alavoine emerged to summon the two of them in, and I was left alone to wonder, yet again, what it was Jamie had done to get himself in a place like this. Told Lord Liverpool he’d live to see his head on a pike at Temple Bar? Created a curfuffle in the public gallery of the House? Are these offences of the sort likely to get you locked up in a madhouse? Perhaps Lean and Fat were right: In times like these they could be. But why would Haslam, whether or not he knew why my husband was in, act so sceptical when I mentioned the Privy Council? Even new to the job, he’d know about the Board of Green Cloth, through the case of Peg Nicholson, if no way else. Or has he listened to too much political fantasy from too many lunatics to believe Jamie could have had dealings with the leaders of Britain and France and so got into actual hot water? If so, for all he’s found out about him, he doesn’t yet know my husband or what he’s capable of.
My vigil on the bench continuing, my thoughts moved next to Haslam’s assertion that this committee saw all patients on their admittance and discharge. Well, they hadn’t seen Jamie. And neither this week nor last while waiting on this bench had I seen anyone enter or leave that room who resembled a patient, either pending or dischargeable. In a population of three hundred, were so few admitted and sent away each week, there’d be no one to pass before this committee two weeks running? Then again, how would Haslam know whether the committee saw them or not, if he came to the meetings only once in a while?
Now the door opened, and without Lean and Fat emerging, Mr. Alavoine indicated with a haughty look it was my turn. And so inside once more, and everything was the same as the week before except every face but Alavoine’s and Poynder’s was different. Again no Haslam. This time I was not invited to say anything but only made to listen to a resolution read out by Mr. Poynder that Mr. Matthews continuing to be insane—
“Upon whose judgment?” I said.
This interruption was ignored, unless you counted Mr. Poynder’s patiently repeating, Mr. Matthews continuing to be insane the committee had reconsidered my application with great attention and unanimously concluded they could not, consistent with their duty, discharge my husband, unless so directed by a higher authority.
“And who would that be, Almighty God?” was my next question, also ignored. A possible twitch about the lips of one or two was assurance of nothing more than a little surreptitious amusement.
The members were, however (Mr. Poynder continued), desirous to acquaint me that I might easily apply for a writ of habeas corpus to bring my husband before a judge, who would determine on the propriety of his detention. It’s long been the right of every British citizen, I was reminded, to live free of arbitrary imprisonment.
At this information I nodded and said nothing, wondering if this was their way to signal that some among them had sympathy for my case or only to shift the responsibility elsewhere while easily increasing the difficulty and expense for me. Probably all three at once, as well as others invisible, in undiscoverable proportions.
Next, Lean and Fat were asked if they approved the answer of the committee. Craning round, I spotted them at last, seated along the back wall. They bleated out their approval. A further statement read out by Mr. Poynder informed them they’d be apprised should the committee receive any further application from Mrs. Matthews—who was me, standing right there, by every appearance voice-deprived, and rights- too, if these stranglers had their way.
“On whose judgment,” I said again, louder, “is my husband insane?”
The time for this question must have arrived, for all eyes now went to a certain member of the committee, a man perhaps forty, with a head in the shape of an egg, the smaller, top end adorned with cornsilk hair indented in a ring just above the ears, and with a long nose and keyhole mouth high up under its drooping tip. This individual, who for some reason had been making a great show of being engrossed in sketching with pencil on an overlarge sheet of paper in front of him, next to his hat, now glanced up and, seeing all eyes on him, though I think he knew the whole time what was going on and only feigning this ridiculous insouciance, tilted his head toward the man beside him—more play-acting, because the man only looked at him blankly—and then, as if he’d just had something crucial cleared up, rose to his feet to address me as from a considerable height.
“Madam, I am Dr. Monro, physician here. I know we’ll have met upon the day or thereabouts of your husband’s admission—”
“No, I never saw you before. My husband is not here by my consent, and I was not informed of his admission until a week after it was effected.”
This information seemed a source of shock to several on the committee. A murmur went round it.
Monro, meanwhile, at my ungrateful behaviour, glanced pointedly about the room with a look that said, Do you see what I mean? Do you see? before he turned smiling hard-eyed to me. “However that may be, Mrs. Matthews, it is my unhappy duty to assure you your husband is completely mad. But this don’t mean his condition won’t change with isolation, rest, and care of the sort we’ve long known how to provide here at Bethlem Hospital. Madam, I know what great temptation it must be to believe a loved one well when he’s not—”
“Well or not,” I said, “my husband’s not dangerous. I want him home with me, as the law requires, and if I can’t have him, I want to know who wants him in here. If it’s you or Mr. Haslam, then tell me. If it’s not, I want to know what higher power of government this committee is awaiting direction from. If it’s the Privy Council then tell me, so I know the charge and what I can do about it.”
“Madam-”
“You might also while you’re at it tell me how you can assure me my husband’s mad when after four weeks in here he never saw you.”
“Why, that’s entirely—”
“What colour’s his hair?”
“I attend this hospital—”
“What colour is my husband’s hair?”
“Madam, you can’t expect—”
“Admit, sir, you’re just pronouncing on him what the apothecary’s told you to pronounce.”
“I’m doing nothing of the kind! I have been here, regularly, and yes, I have conferred, as usual, with Mr. Haslam—”
“If Haslam’s a member of this committee, where is he? And where was he last week?”
“—and I’ve seen your husband too, as a matter of fact, and do pronounce him totally mad, and that’s all I have to say!” Monro sat down.
Now I was in a fury. “Who admitted my husband if not you as physician of this hospital?”
Once more all eyes went to Monro, who, without rising from his chair, and not looking at me, for he was well aware he was not answering the question, in a trembling voice said, “Madam, I assure you Mr. Haslam’s in perfect agreement with me when I say your husband’s a most insane and deranged lunatic, and this court don’t need to call in a mere apothecary to announce the same thing all over again.”
At this I flew into a tirade but was not so beside myself I didn’t see Monro tip Alavoine the wink, and the next thing I knew strong fingers were gripping my arm and that clown accent was in my ear. “Come along, Mrs. Nuisance—”
And so, still crying, “Who admitted my husband?” “Why can’t I see him?” “What higher authority of government?” and “Where’s Haslam?” I was carried squirming from the room.
Thus ended my second interview with the governors’ subcommittee of Bethlem Hospital.
Later, walking home, my mind running the event over and over, as it will do, never quite sure whether for tips to better conduct next time or for proof the course of action it came up with was a model for future behaviour, I remembered a glimpse I had when being led out, of Mr. Lean and Mr. Fat, sitting in chairs along the back wall, both with eyes closed and heads bowed, though whether seeking divine assistance for my husband or in the ostrich way of more modern mortals, my escort allowed me no leisure to determine.
Next, to the continuing detriment of the shop, I turned my energies to making my case in writing before the full Court of Governors of Bridewell and Bethlem, the two institutions—house of correction and hospital—at that level being jointly administered (which tells you something). This fact I discovered from my conversation with Lean and Fat, the Bethlem subcommittee comprising a small group of these governors serving in rotation, whereas the Court of Governors of both institutions meets not even monthly.
And so, while I waited for an answer to my petition from the larger, slower-moving assembly, I spent another six weeks being stopped at the gate by my Cerberus, Bulteel.
One warm spring morning, after being turned away as usual, meaning that in the more than three months of Jamie’s incarceration I had seen him only once, and with as yet no answer or even acknowledgment to my petition to the Court of Governors, I was walking back home down Broker Row, at the east perimeter of Bethlem, when it struck me the commotion issuing from inside was louder and more anguished than I ever heard it. First I tried to convince myself it must be my own imagination, but I didn’t think so. And it wasn’t my being downwind, for there was no breeze and the din had been no less loud at the front gate. Some dire celestial alignment? The only kind I ever knew to affect them was the moon—they’re not called lunatics for nothing—but the full was weeks away. And yet this morning the noise was extraordinary, the wailing and howling of Banshees, for just as infants before language has harnessed their brain utter sounds they never will again, so lunatics make noises unavailable to sanity.
Reaching London Wall, I looked along there, and seeing the door to Haslam’s house that Jamie had showed me the morning he brought me to Bethlem, I climbed the steps and hammered away until a maid, a blithe little thing with a pretty face, opened the door a crack to tell me Mr. Haslam was where he usually was, in the Dead House.
Pressing a coin into her hand, I said, “Sixpence to take me there. I have urgent business with him.”
As she peered at the money I asked her why the patients were so noisy today.
“First week of May it’s warm enough,” she murmured.
“For what?”
“Why,” she said, extricating her gaze from the coin to look at me as if I might be a lunatic myself not to know, “to be bled.”
“Who? Not all of them- ?”
She nodded. “All strong enough, who ain’t incurable. It’s policy. Next, vomits once a week for four weeks. Then purges, to the end of September.” She smiled. “After that, the cold weather is medicine enough.”
Looking cunning, or pretending to, she told me to wait.
“If it’s not while you bring me Mr. Haslam,” I said, “you owe me sixpence.”
Laughing, she pushed the coin back at me and was gone.
Now I peered into the hallway, which was not the one Haslam had led me down from his office but the one to his own residence. But there was more light on the stoop than inside, and all I could see was rattan carpeting and bare walls, which seemed fresh-painted, in a cheerful plum.
Eventually a handsome woman, though pale and frightening thin, came to the door with a girl perhaps five years old clutching her skirts. She wore her straight black hair cut short and was sombrely dressed in a plain charcoal gown. Her left hand, when not covering her mouth as she coughed, she kept lightly at the back of the girl’s head. The girl was sturdy and fair-haired: what her mother was not. She gazed at me saucily, but when I smiled at her, she grew abashed and hid her face in her mother’s skirts.
Though Jamie had told me this was Haslam’s house, it never occurred to me he’d have a family, but why wouldn’t he? Wasn’t this the better part of him I didn’t want to know, so my enmity could remain unalloyed?
Mrs. Haslam’s impatience to be brought to the door by a stranger was communicated by a glance at my basket, as if I had something to hawk. But her maid must have told her what I wanted, for without inquiring anything of me she said her husband would be somewhere in the main building, she didn’t know where.
“The Dead House,” I said. “I was to meet him there.”
“Then I’m afraid you’ve come to the wrong door. This is his residence.”
“Yes, but the porter had no—”
“I’m sorry, you must make another appointment—” She was already stepping back to close the door. Before it reached the eyes of the little girl I cast her a glum look, which she answered with a grin as her foot shot out to help the door along, so it slammed in my face. Immediately it opened again upon the sight of her mother extricating her from her skirts, so she could apologize to me, which, once she was facing me and knew she must, she readily did. As she lisped the formula, her mother looked at me apologetic, and I liked them both. Then her mother bowed her head and stepped back. Once more the door closed, and that time it stayed that way.
A week later I received a letter from Mr. Poynder informing me of two developments. First, by a legal process he failed to specify, on May 2nd, 1797, my husband had been brought before Lord Kenyon, as Lord Chief Justice of the Court of the King’s Bench, in his house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. After conversing with him, Lord Kenyon was satisfied my husband was a maniac. Second, on May 6th the Bethlem subcommittee passed a motion ordering that until their further instruction, the wife of Mr. Matthews not be permitted any visit to Bethlem Hospital, the patient’s disorder being manifestly exacerbated in consequence of her company.
This letter I could only stare at, saying Haslam.