Twelve years it’s been since The Schoolmaster determined me a specimen for medical study and twelve too since I saw my last outside visitor, my beloved Margaret. Unless, that is, you count Haslam’s daughter, Henrietta, who six and seven years ago used to visit me daily to offer chatty reports on her life and more soberly confide her fears for her mother’s. I don’t think she had anyone else to talk to about those. Henrietta was a fine young girl, in appearance a bonny version of her father, in mind and manner an interesting blend of his dogged immediacy and what I guess is her mother’s righteous passion. To my surprise—though I suppose it shouldn’t have been, for wasn’t I on my first arrival here similarly dazzled?—she was a fanatic of her father, thinking him an exemplarily good and brilliant man and interested in all he claimed to be attempting on behalf of lunatics everywhere. Before I could disabuse her, he set in motion that process himself when, discovering her visits to me, he abruptly put an end to our friendship—or thought he did. After that, her visits, being secret, were rarer. Though she never openly criticized him, you could sense the diminishment of her esteem, until by the day six years ago I last saw her, I would say she hated him, except more likely she only resented his possessive attachment to the little girl she no longer felt herself to be. That same week, owing to the deterioration of the fabric of the family residence along with most of the east wing, the Haslams moved to a house in Islington. In those days there was confident talk of a new hospital up there. The talk has since—
No sooner had my lettering proceeded as far as the above than, befitting the mind-toying agent he is a puppet of, the keeper Davies astonishingly brought in my first outside visitor in twelve years. This was my doughty childhood companion, Robert Dunbar, who has just now assured me that he and assorted others of my former acquaintance are doing everything they can to get me out.
“And Margaret?” I asked. “Is she somewhere in this, I hope?”
Dunbar looked at me dumbfounded. He’s no longer the youth on Camberwell Green with tears streaming down his face as he thrashed me for reasons often mysterious to us both. The flesh has settled heavily upon the bones of the face, the emotion showing when it shows at all in compulsive adjustments of his long legs, which are always being crossed and recrossed or braided round themselves. I wonder why. “So it’s true,” he said in dismay. “You don’t receive her letters—”
“Cheer up, Robert. It’s not like I ever feared she don’t write. What do they say?”
“I don’t know, Jimmy! How much she misses you, I guess, and something of how she directs all we do.”
“Directs because eleven years ago she herself was banned from entering this place?”
“That’s right.”
We were sitting side-by-side on my bed. Davies was not far away, leaning against the wall eating an apple when he wasn’t lumbering off to sow menace in the gallery on the principle that if you want frightened birds you keep the air frightened.
I should explain my cell in the uncurable wing disappeared four years ago when the governors ordered the east wing demolition. I now reside in a sort of recess off a larger room in what remains of the second floor east of the central hall. The room contains six of us. All except Jack Baker and me are chained to the walls. In exchange for a pittance of light and privacy, my alcove offers chilling drafts from a broken casement located so high it can be seen out of only if I place my chair on my table and climb up. The view is of rooftops and southwest to the river and its bridges and shipping traffic. St. Paul’s would be visible were it not for a jag of the exterior wall caused by the straw-burning flue.
Something had occurred to Dunbar. “Does no letters from Margaret, Jimmy, mean you don’t know you have a son?”
At this last word the floor under me gave a lurch. “What?” I cried. “A father—!?”
“Since nearly twelve years—”
“My God, Robert!” I cried, tears flowing. “What kind of news is this? Is he a fine boy? Tell me! What’s his name?”
“The finest there ever lived, Jimmy. His name’s Jim.”
“Jim. Now, there’s a name—!”
Dunbar was looking at his watch. When he saw I noticed he cast his eyes significantly at Davies to say we had little time. Though I was bursting to hear everything about Jim, I said, dropping my voice (though it happened at that moment Davies was trundling off), “My informants, Robert, tell me several years ago two letters arrived, one for Monro and one for the governors, both requesting my discharge and both signed by Margaret. Of course, on the advice of the medical officers, the subcommittee said no. Still, it’s good of you all to be trying.”
“They would never allow a visit by any of us,” he said, with a bitter look, “until mine, today.”
“But why now?”
By his answer I was brought up to date.
Davies in the meantime was back from the gallery. As he’d passed through the other part of the room, however, little Jack Baker had clambered up on his back and was now perched there naked and howling. Instead of removing the clamorous carrot-pate, Davies was amusing himself by leaning against the wall as casual as before, only now crushing his passenger, who, long convinced he’s experienced an unnatural connexion with his father, fell to moaning and gasping, “Oh my God! I’m broken! A taste of the Grinder of Hell awaiting me! The life squeezed out of me just so on the rack of my own nastiness!” etc., which noise happily prevented Davies from hearing Dunbar’s account.
With one eye on the Grinder of Hell game, Dunbar explained that for three years Margaret, despite her rejection by Lord Erskine’s secretary when I was first put in here, had been writing to him, who was now Lord Chancellor, in his capacity as Secretary of Lunatics (a fitting station, I here insert, for one so imbecilitated by the gang he’s practically Monroish). Finally, a year ago, his Lordship was moved to inquire, by a letter sent to Monro, as to my state of mind and the reason I was detained. Erskine’s letter inspired the Bethlem subcommittee (owing to arguments, it’s been said, by John Haslam, who sometimes attends) at two meetings in autumn of last year to conclude me mad as ever but to observe they’d have no objection to the Parish of Camberwell applying for my release, provided the Lord Chancellor sanctioned their handing me over.
In early December, that sanction being slow to arrive, Margaret sent a third letter, this one requesting on my behalf a six-month leave of absence. And so my case—not me, never me—was yet again examined by the subcommittee, who after they unanimously affirmed I was insane, regretted that since the Lord Chancellor had returned no answer to their official letter, there was nothing they could do, the matter being entirely out of their hands.
I hate to think how many hands the misery of this world is out of.
At last, on Christmas Eve, a letter arrived from the Lord Chancellor’s secretary informing the subcommittee that his Lordship could intervene only by a writ of habeas corpus.
A letter from the committee duly informed Margaret of his Lordship’s advice.
This was not the first time she had been counselled to launch a plea of habeas corpus. The Bethlem subcommittee itself put the idea to her twelve years earlier. She, however, continued to fear a habeas corpus writ would only antagonize the Bethlem governors and officers and, after it was crushed, prejudice my treatment in here, effectively ending my chances of liberty if not my survival. Instead, this past spring, under Dunbar’s name and those of my nephew Richard Staveley and my old friend George Lambeth, she applied once more for my discharge, assuring the committee that if I was released, my friends would confine me until such time as they received favourable medical opinion concerning the actual state of my mind. Further, they would exonerate the Parish of Camberwell of any continuing obligation to maintain me.
“A generous offer,” I remarked to Dunbar.
He was watching Davies and Baker and failed to hear. In his distress, Jack Baker had begun to beshit himself. Now Davies, with the mutter, “Had I a monkey like you, I’d hang him,” in one swift movement swung him round by the forearms and carried him—writhing, squealing, shitting—back to his bed.
“So now what?” I said as Baker’s shrieks rent the air.
“At a meeting of the subcommittee next month, August,” Dunbar resumed, Davies and Baker being out of sight, “we present in person our application to receive you, and they examine you, in our presence.”
“And that of the medical officers.”
“Yes. Haslam and Monro.”
“And what do you think they’ll conclude?”
“Who can say, Jimmy, but I don’t think it’s hopeless. They were willing to abide by the Lord Chancellor—”
“Who said he couldn’t intervene.”
“And this time they’re examining you in person.”
“The last time I was examined in person was twelve years ago, by Lord Kenyon. I’ve been in ever since.”
“All you need to do is show yourself sane.”
“This was never about insanity, Robert.”
“Still. If you do, Margaret believes they’re now ready to be rid of you.”
“Of her, more likely. What they’re ready for is a quiet life.”
He nodded, thinking of something else. Then he told a story.
In January of this year he happened to run into Jack the Schoolmaster (Haslam to him), celebrating with a bookseller named Callow, at The Sow and Sausage in St. Mary Axe. The Schoolmaster had just published the second edition of his book, its title now Observations on Madness, “Madness” replacing the earlier “Insanity,” the former term more in fashion these days, the condition having grown so stylish as to be widely assumed curable—though he don’t believe it. The dedication is a fawning one to Monro’s “superior judgment,” his “skill and liberality,” and the “subsisting friendship” he has with him. That’s all a lie too. On the night in question, he was in his cups, and instead of his own book—which he had a copy of in his pocket but wouldn’t let anybody look inside, saying they must buy their own—was passing around the table a page of my lettering, showing everybody how it’s so neat it can’t be distinguished from type. He kept insisting they should see my engravings, which are as good as plates in a proper book.
“There’s a poor engraving of his mouth-key in that edition,” I told Dunbar. “He wanted me to do it, but I refused.”
“Mouth-key?”
“A key to open mouths.”
Dunbar looked blank a moment before continuing. Just because you’re on a madman’s side does not mean you need to hear what he says.
The Schoolmaster, having never met him before, had no idea who Dunbar was, but when Dunbar said he knew me and inquired after my health, The Schoolmaster assured him he saw me twice a week and I’m very well. He said, though he once thought I’d be the cornerstone of his new edition, over the years he’d come to consider me as good as sane. Except for a few delusional convictions (which likely as not are the effect of my incarceration), I no longer touch on political subjects, am as lucid as himself, far saner (making a jest) than his friend Callow, and it was a thousand pities I can’t be restored to my family, as I’m a most honest, clever, and ingenious fellow.
It was, Dunbar said, this chance encounter that’s inspired them to renewed vigour in the fight for my release. From it they’ve concluded that if Jack the Schoolmaster would say such things in public to one who admitted he knows me, he’s softening if not square on our side.
“He was drunk,” I pointed out.
“Still—”
“You don’t know The Schoolmaster as I do.”
“Haslam? No. But remember, Jimmy, it looks like he was instrumental at the meeting when they said they’d let you go if the Lord Chancellor approved it.”
Davies was now back. The wall and floor where he’d stood with Baker being liberally befouled, he’d unchained old Joseph Panter. Joseph believes himself a child of Apollo, engendered by the sun shining near his father’s door on a dunghill. For the first two hours of life he was a flea, then a fine boy of nine years. Davies was gripping the back of Joseph’s neck to point out Jack Baker’s shit to him by pressing his nose in it, telling him, “Go on, kiss your dear old Mum.” Joseph was gagging. In his hand, I noticed, he was clutching a rag.
“Here’s the thing to understand about our apothecary,” I told Dunbar. “His sense of rank is acute. With his soul in consignment to those above, he won’t take counsel from the side or below. That’s why he resents his betters so much. He suspects but can’t acknowledge to himself he’s too slavish not to obey their every glance. Also, having on all available occasions declared me mad, as his own wonderful exemplum of that condition, he’ll fight to the death anybody who tries to get me out by saying I’m not. He has his principles, you see—”
Dunbar heard this—if he heard it at all—in silence. He was watching Davies and Panter. When his attention returned to me he said, “Jimmy, I can swear out an affidavit Haslam said what he said.”
“Yes, you can, and assuming anybody ever sees your affidavit and having seen it does anything about it, The Schoolmaster can always say he was in a festive mood that night and only pulling your leg, and Callow will back him up.”
Dunbar sighed. “We have to try.”
“Yes, we do. Will Margaret be at the hearing?”
“No. She’s still barred.”
“The bastards.”
Dunbar nodded, glancing uneasily toward the doorway. “Right royal fuckers, the lot of them.”
Davies heard this and looked close at Dunbar, whose eyes returned quick to me. Evidently Davies had detoured by the beer tap after chaining Baker, but such grateful draughts only make him meaner. The keepers, of course, are three-quarters drunk most of the time, the women as inveterately as the men, but Davies’ attitude is singularly disturbing. His watchword—A drunkard is mad for the present, but a madman is drunk always—affords him the conviction that drunk he can be as wayward and dangerous as he imagines we are. In this spirit he makes patients his accomplices, as when he compels one to restrain another so he can force-feed him. Sometimes it’s the mouth-key, sometimes the food jammed in so hard the spoon comes out dripping blood. He also implicates patients by making them watch abuses. I don’t know how many he’s taken to the cellar to watch him fuck poor Mr. Carstairs. All the keepers are wayward and dangerous, but only this one on principle. He especially enjoys placing his thumbs inside a lunatic’s cheeks and vigorously shaking them, particularly if he can arrange it so their head’s struck repeatedly against the wall.
“How is she, Robert?” I asked.
“Margaret? Well. She’s well—” This with shifting eyes, in a tone almost querying, or imploring.
“She’s got along all right, has she? And the lad—?”
“Well enough, Jimmy. They miss you.”
“It’s been a long time to miss me. Him his whole life—”
“Aye—”
“Does she have help? Does she still employ Justina Latimer?”
This name seemed to consternate him. Thinking he’d forgot who she was, I added, “As her maid—”
“No,” he said. “Margaret gave Justina her notice years ago, for insolence, and other crimes—”
“What crimes, Robert? Not theft, I hope—?”
“Not theft—” he said quickly, seeming to curdle into himself.
“There’s a piss-pot under the bed, Robert, if you need—”
He shook his head. “You did write Margaret—?”
“I did. From the question I take it my letters have not got past Sir Archy.”
Talk of letters reminded Dunbar, and before I could stop him he extracted from his jacket an envelope and held it out, saying, “Here’s one that’s getting through—”
“Is it, now?” This was Davies, as he plucked it from Dunbar’s hand.
Dunbar jumped up. “Give that over!” he cried. “That’s Jimmy’s!”
“Whose?” Davies wondered, horribly intrigued by Dunbar’s agitation. Although a thorough unwitting pawn of magnetic agents, and as such the purest case of ignorance-is-force I ever encountered, Davies has never lost the born bully’s delicate nose for infirmity. Now he folded his thigh-thick arms and directed at Dunbar a look that communicated consequences too brutal for such a one not to be instantly reduced to a quaking dish-clout. How severely you judge my old Camberwell friend’s uncoura-geous behaviour will depend on how many William Davies you have met in your life in how many dark alleys and what your rate of success in countering those assaults on the integrity of your body and soul.
My hand on Dunbar’s arm easily drew him back down. “Never mind it, Robert,” I said, but the visit was over. Davies was on top of Dunbar to pull him to his feet and march him out, pausing only to direct a sharp kick at Joseph Panter, who was on his hands and knees, hard at work. Joseph took a moment to recover his balance after the toe of Davies’ boot lifted his ribcage high on one side, and then he returned to smearing ordure in loving circles on the floor and wall.
JULY 13TH, 1809
My beloved Husband,
This is not the first letter I have written to you in your imprisonment, but it is too likely the first you will read. Though I know you yourself will have written faithfully, not a single letter from you has reached me. The day I come upon our correspondence hawked in the street, a ha’penny will buy me evidence of what we both already know: Everything that comes to Alavoine leaves only for money. But at least published we can read what we said, and if to increase their value our words have been doctored we’ll know the true parts as sure as we know each other’s heart.
Dearest Jamie, I write because the governors have granted permission for someone to visit you. Since I remain non grata, our choice has been Robert Dunbar, who will let you know that despite meagre resources and the creaking wheels-inside-wheels of power that run the country while they trap and crush anyone rash enough to attempt to discover how they work, we are doing all we can to win your freedom. But mainly by this letter know that you are father to a son who turns twelve on the 10th of September, your namesake, the most beautiful and intelligent boy that ever walked on this Earth, happy and kind, loving to his mother, thriving at school, praying nightly for your health and long life and the day you come home—
But I break off—Robert’s at the door to say he’s just heard he visits you this morning or not at all—
Jamie, rest assured Jim and I love you with all our hearts, and with your friends and other honest champions of justice we will prevail.
Your devoted wife Margaret
BETHLEM HOSPITAL (12 YEARS HEREIN CONFINED)
JULY THE 13TH, 1809
Dearest Mags,
Though I caught only a glimpse of my name writ in your precious hand as your letter was plucked from Robert Dunbar’s grasp by one of our resident bullies, it was sufficient reminder there have been others before it, each less overtly than this one snatched as it enters the building, just as mine are when they leave it. What heartless predators, to confiscate the loving sentiments of lawful wedded pens!
Your great news must be of young Jim, whose existence Robert had opportunity to tell me of, alas, only the barest fact. Dear Mags, I am speechless—wordless—with joy. My dreams of our boy’s future achievements go shooting off in a thousand directions—
There—I have just scored a notch in the wall opposite my bed, marking his height. I don’t know what it actually is but shall have Robert (if he comes again) offer a correction. This way I’ll track young Jim’s growth while I envision every manner of virtue blooming in him as he matures to an upstanding honourable man, as I know he must, being blest by the love of a mother so worthy and true.
Your fond loving husband (all of an instant a doting parent),
James