Monday I suffered my last time on the stand.
The one way I earned the esteem of just about every lunatic I met with in twenty years was the perfect discipline of myself. My assault on Matthews told me what Sarah used to: It was also how I distinguished myself from them. My intention Monday was to float up there the soul of equanimity, but though I could tell myself my collapse was a healing catharsis, it was also a sign of things to come. For soon as I opened my mouth in answer to a perfunctory and-what-are-your-duties-at-Bethlem-again? question, I could feel the clench in my jaw that told me the emotion ran too deep for containment even here.
When the real questions started, no more than on my previous four excursions to the stand did any concern Matthews. But this was too much like readers presuming to know the diarist from his diary, and for me it was easy to go from anxiety about being asked anything about Matthews to outrage at being asked nothing. Now I think—as Jerdan had hinted and Matthews knew it would be—this was my own conscience at work. For though I communicated every outward sign of an amiable attitude, I self-destructingly neglected to provide the sentiments appropriate to it, characterizing Bryan Crowther, for example, as when not drunk so insane as to require a strait-waistcoat, which though true (and who doesn’t now and then need a little strait-waistcoat time? ha ha) must have sounded chilling when delivered as a casual comment on a nineteen-year-colleague just lowered into the ground. This impression of icy distance (though inside I was anything but cool) I confirmed by another, not-so-casual statement I made when asked what general agreement there existed among the Bethlem faculty as to the advantage of emetics in cases of insanity.
Having already stated that I never believed in vomits but was obliged to administer them because Monro said I must (though he didn’t believe in them either but before this committee pretended he did), and heartily sick and tired of being made to appear negligent in matters I had no say in when I was the only one who ever did anything, and sick and tired too of a line of questioning designed to bugger me coming and going, for if I admitted I gave medicine then it must be to punish not cure, but if a patient wasn’t drenched in it then he must be sorely neglected, I replied as follows: “I confess, gentlemen, I am so much regulated by my own experience that I have not been disposed to listen to those who have less of it than myself.”
This admission was no less true than my unfortunate characterization of Crowther in his last days, but the collective gawp it received gave me plenty of time to wonder what in God’s name I thought I was doing. Feebly I added, “I hope, gentlemen, you will excuse the appearance of vanity in that answer.”
Would it were only vanity’s appearance.
But at least this was their cue to ask me, finally, about Matthews.
Their first question: “How often and for what periods was he shackled?”
Matthews, I wearily acknowledged, was on his arrival handcuffed. Later, after a scuffle with a keeper, he was briefly legironed. In his case, I added, shackling was hardly the issue. Once it achieved its end—to curb his violence and break the pride that at first had him thinking he was too good to associate with other patients—he was so far from a violent patient as to be a positive peacemaker about the place, the one to whom all parties, whether employee or lunatic, made cases for redress.
By this account, I was seen as attempting to draw a veil over my own cruelties. Why was he put in irons at all if he was innately peaceful?
“While shackling a lunatic may at times be essential,” I patiently explained, “the committee must understand there is an absolute difference between that and severity of ordinary discipline in any hospital devoted to care of the mad.”
This answer, whether they understood it or no, they didn’t much like.
Several questions then addressed other aspects of Matthews’ treatment, such as the rumour he was not allowed the warmth of a fire during his enchainment, and that’s what accounted for the abscess in his back.
To this I replied that someone’s facts must be amiss, for the abscess developed much later, probably as a result of Matthews’ constant stooping and digging in all weather in the plot of garden I allowed him. That this too failed to convince them was confirmed when they didn’t bother even to cross-examine. I then—too insolently, I fear—volunteered the reminder that no matter what anybody said, even at St. George’s Fields a certain amount of restraint would continue necessary, and if not restraint then depletory medicines and treatments of various kinds, at least until the day a cure for madness is found. But (just to rub it in) there was no reason whatsoever to assume restraint and depletion incompatible with every kindness and humanity. Meanwhile, my question for them was, “Why this condescension to him as an innocent, helpless, unwitting victim of an evil establishment when his journal has been your authoritative guide to the place for six weeks?”
By their annoyed looks, they found this presuming. But it inspired one of them to ask how my Illustrations of Madness could be such a sympathetic account of Matthews’ delusions, when its purpose was to characterize him as a senseless lunatic. Why such loving care to so uncaring an end?
I said I didn’t understand the question. I didn’t see my Illustrations as a loving account, only an honest and accurate one.
“But surely, sir, one designed to defend the decision of the examining committee that he was wholly unfit to be released?”
“No, I simply set forth his delusions and said the reader must exercise his own judgment of them.”
Here Rose, chairman of the proceedings, a decent old man who knew the salient facts of Matthews’ case, spoke up. “Sir, you went further. In your book you explicitly defend the governors’ decision not to ‘liberate a mischievous lunatic to disturb the good order and peace of society.’ That’s your conclusion. Mr. Matthews’ illness has resulted in a dangerous loss of agency. I have your last page open in front of me.”
I was sweating now. Could I really have said it so baldly? Could I really have forgot I had?
“I was only defending the governors’ decision, your Honour, as it was my duty—”
“Yes, yes, but what did you yourself believe, Mr. Haslam?”
“If you wish. Or as apothecary to Bethlem Hospital, the place where you indicate you wrote your preface. I hope he holds the same view as yourself.”
This was too close to home. My face was burning with an emotion lately familiar, and more than shame. “Sir, I believed then, and still believe, that Matthews is a lunatic. My purpose in writing the Illustrations was to publish an answer to those who, by claiming he was not, had cast aspersions upon Bethlem and the judgment of its governors and medical officers.”
“To support, in other words, as you say here—” indicating my book—“the governors in having him kept. I don’t need to remind you, Mr. Haslam, the purpose of a writ of habeas corpus is to seek the release of the one detained.”
“The writ had already been rejected, your Honour. It was evident at the time there was no longer any chance of Matthews’ release.” Here I thanked God I’d earlier restrained myself from blurting to this committee the confusing circumstance of my late resolution to support Matthews’ transfer to a private madhouse. “My purpose in writing the Illustrations was to defend Bethlem against unfair charges by making the argument that a lunatic remains a lunatic whether he’s declared one or not.”
“And this you sought to do by retailing the dangerous delusions of a madman.”
“More laughable and pathetic, I would say, your Honour, than dangerous—”
“Mr. Haslam, your superior, Dr. Monro, is on record as saying he’s heard Mr. Matthews utter too many threats against the royal family for him to say in conscience he should ever be at liberty. Does he still make these threats?”
“When convinced he’s unacknowledged sovereign of the universe, he still makes them, your Honour, yes he does.”
“Then he does remain incurably insane, in your view?”
“Yes, though perhaps not so dangerous as formerly.”
“Unless, it would seem, to the royal family—”
Was Matthews ever dangerous to anyone? I had sat by and said nothing when Monro declared it. I myself had said and writ that he was.
“The example of Mr. Hadfield must come to mind,” Rose prompted me, almost kindly, when I was slow to respond.
“Matthews, your Honour, is not like Hadfield.”
“No? How not?”
“Matthews is a man of wit and discernment. Hadfield is not.”
“But isn’t your professional conviction well known, Mr. Haslam, that madness is madness? That lunatics may be quieter at some times than others, but this doesn’t mean they’re sometimes sane, too many being adept at putting aside, or obscuring, delusional thinking should the situation require it, the lucid interval being, as you have argued so persuasively in your published work, a much misunderstood concept? How predictable can Mr. Matthews’ actions be when his sentiments conform at times with Mr. Hadfield’s, and Mr. Hadfield is known to have fired a pistol at the King?”
Rose allowed me time to reply to this eminently sensible query, but what could I say that would not be heard as outright self-contradiction? More than this, the question reminded me that my failing Matthews and my betrayal of him were not unrelated to my history of listening to him as a man of sense when he sounded like one and as a lunatic when he didn’t or grew obstreperous. And sitting there with the good Justice Mr. Rose awaiting my answer, I considered how you can think of yourself as a certain sort of person yet watch yourself behave as quite another; and how easy it is that disjunction becomes simply how things are with you, and your failure to reconcile that contradiction, whenever it noses its way to awareness, you tell yourself is only the small, private price you must pay awhile longer yet if you would achieve such-and-such worthy end. And so, like everybody else, at the same time as you inwardly congratulate yourself on your goodness and work toward your admirable goal, you silently endure a nagging fissure in your soul and go on wreaking blind havoc in everything you do.
I was thinking this or something like it when an M.P. named McManus rescued me from further hot-eared silence by leaping up to pursue a new line of questioning:
“Do you not think, Mr. Haslam, that Mr. Matthews’ delusions of persecution are a direct result of his detention in Bethlem?”
Not being as interested in my humiliation by Rose as I was, the committee had been for some minutes stifling yawns and sneaking peeks at their watches. Now they shot to attention with gratified looks that said, Why, that’s exactly what I was thinking.
By their familiarity with Matthews’ journal it had dawned on them that the gang was none other than us—his gaolers—under different names. More than this: Though they had no idea what his delusions were before he was with us, they assumed that once his gaolers were taken away, his delusions would follow. In their minds, the fact he was in at all was the alpha and omega of his mental suffering.
“An ingenious speculation,” I replied, smiling through gritted teeth, “though it would seem to assume he arrived amongst us sane. But perhaps a more pertinent question in the circumstances, sir, would be why the Government’s wanted him in.”
Were McManus a dog he’d be a border collie. His head appeared freshly extracted from an instrument designed to foreshorten and depilate canine heads to pass them for human. As his attention readjusted to me, you could almost hear a whirring from the undersized braincase. “The question I already did ask, Mr. Haslam, was why the medical officers haven’t let him go.”
“We were not allowed to.”
“As you’ve just informed us.” Again he looked to his notes.
“And why not?”
Wanly he looked up. “Mr. Haslam, the procedure here is, we ask the questions, you answer ‘em.”
General laughter.
“Ho, ho, ho,” I said. “Why haven’t we let Matthews go?”
“Well, sir, I confess the only reason I know of is his habeas corpus undertaking was refused by the Court. Is there something you now wish to add to that information?”
My mouth opened and then it closed. As Matthews would have reminded me, The Schoolmaster couldn’t do what he couldn’t do.
Here, a little wearily, Justice Rose said, “Mr. Haslam, if you have nothing to add to your statement, would you mind if Mr. McManus went on with his questions?”
Now was my chance to respond that the issue was not whether Matthews should be in but why he was in. What came out instead, at first quietly, was my own anger.
“The human mind, your Honour, is so intriguing unto itself, it’s perfectly understandable when unmedical persons believe they can comprehend it in a state of derangement.”
“This committee, Mr. Haslam,” Rose shot back impatiently, “does not presume to comprehend derangement but only to inquire into the state of the madhouses.”
“If you’d improve the madhouses,” I answered, suddenly too furious to restrain myself, “then de-license the private ones forthwith as too devoted to hiding madness away. Give the government houses funding sufficient to keep lunatics long enough to win a chance of remission. Let them open their doors so the public can see how the money’s spent, and so they never forget the face of madness and with it the fact that medicine, having scant understanding of the brain and none whatsoever how disease affects thinking, has come up with innumerable treatments but as yet no cure, no matter how hopeful religion seeks to make an ignorant public or how soothing the placebos tossed out by mountebank doctors, politicians, senators, magistrates, men of business, and other interested zealots of reformation.”
Gasps.
“Surely, sir,” said a voice trembling with indignation, “you don’t suggest we return to the barbarous days when people flocked to Bethlem as to the animals at the Tower?”
“People are bedlam, sir, and bedlam people, however cleverly you conceal the resemblance. Along with the three great amusements of human life—war, politics, and the vagaries of the human heart—the mad are our living reminders of this elementary fact. When they’re not too annoying and terrifying we keep them at home. When they are, we lodge them in hospitals, in private madhouses, in prisons, or let them roam the streets. But let’s not build our walls so high against them we forget they’re ourselves merely too distressed by their as yet incurable affliction to be sociable. I repeat: incurable affliction. Refuse that kinship, sir, and I wouldn’t trust you to know your own face in the mirror.”
“Mr. Haslam,” someone else put in, “surely you’re not telling us there’s no appreciable difference between a healthy mind and one that’s not?”
“Have you ever examined a human brain, sir?”
“Pickled in a jar, yes I have. What of it?”
“Did you notice how convolved it was? How heterogeneous? If you did, I wonder you’re not as astonished as I am when a human being shows the faintest glimmer of rationality.”
“Aren’t you overstating your case, sir?” someone else ventured.
“Not in the least. Isn’t everybody always a little bit sick? I myself have not known any person completely healthy in body and certainly never one perfectly sound in mind. For I must agree with Dr. Johnson that to speak with exactness, no human mind is in its right state.”
Silence while they took this in. So did I, for it was the first time I knew I believed anything quite like it. Or was anywhere near saying it. There’s a line between what everybody knows and what can be said, and once you cross it, the articulation of things sounds very different from how they looked and felt in the quiet of your own thoughts. Also, it seems, you have no brake.
“There’s only one sound mind,” I continued, “and that’s God’s—at least so I’m assured by certain eminent divines. Which only goes to show what a marvel disembodiment is and how little surprised we should be to find Mystery still rules the affairs of flesh and blood.”
Another stunned silence, the kind people slip into as they witness a unique and absolute act. A Hindoo could set himself on fire in the street and they would not be more fascinated.
Still, though this one seemed to, no moment lasts forever, and we were some minutes into the lunch hour. Rose asking for a motion of adjournment, it was swiftly provided and seconded, the committee scrabbling up their papers and scooting from the room as quick as any mob of students from a lecture hall. In the breeze of their exodus, The Schoolmaster’s trappings streamed and fluttered upon his person like the rags of a man who’d either just been flayed in his clothes or had a lunatic’s unfortunate habit of rending them himself, it was difficult to know which.