And yet, and yet. At the governors’ annual banquet on St. Matthew’s Day, held that year for the first time in the open air of St. George’s Fields, Monro greeted me as chattily as if he’d never betrayed me, would never dream of slipping a shiv into my back, telling me about his brain-clap to do a painting of the new building and make a gift of it to the governors.
“Better a likeness of the old,” I told him. “It’s the one disappearing.”
This had not occurred to him, but he didn’t like it. “I’d wager, Johnny,” he replied, speaking ventriloquist-style as he scanned the crowd, “this lot’s dead keen to put the old place behind them.”
“Then do it for the patients and staff of the new. Keep us in mind who we are and what we come from.”
“Now, now, man,” he muttered, still scanning. “Play the game.” I’d have said something bitter to this had he not immediately stretched out his arms and strode across me with a great false shout of delight at someone who when he saw who it was gave a start of unbridled contempt.
Not long after, a toast was offered to my health by an alderman named Atkins, who I never saw before, congratulating me on the honest rigour I’d showed in my testimony. But this gesture failing to be followed by three cheers or calls for a speech, I could only raise my glass and return a tremulous smile. Fortunately, everybody immediately drank, as if to forget, and I sank down once more invisible. Still, for the record: The only note heard all afternoon from that crowd of clerks and businessmen was sober self-congratulation, with now and then a muffled dirty guffaw of triumph.
In October, a report issued by the Court of Governors of Bridewell and Bethlem roundly declared Monro and me innocent of any wrongdoing. Vindication, it would seem, and clear sailing once more—until this winter past, when the parliamentary committee published their own report, of which, on Wakefield’s instruction, a complimentary copy was posted to every Bethlem governor. Though this other report contained not a single item of information the governors didn’t already know, its authors were explicit in their advice it be read through with care before the April election of the medical officers. To further assist our employers in their deliberations, Wakefield kept up a barrage against us in the press, declaring in the Examiner, for example, that by our testimony Monro and I were bold-faced deceivers who must be toppled from our high perches and stripped of any honours we’d accrued by our inveterate scheming. And just to make sure, Rose himself is said to have wrote to the governors intimating he didn’t want us re-elected.
Needless to say, our governor champions cowardly backed down, voting to postpone our re-election until Monro and I could report to them on the testimony we’d already given. In this way they forced us, as in a nightmare, to become our own assassins, as we attempted to defend ourselves against the absence of any specific charge.
In our joint submission we repeated our justifications concerning Norris and Matthews and generally defended our behaviour and practices, with frequent reminders to our readers that they had already absolved us.
My oral version of an answer the committee greeted with considerable applause, which might have promised a prosperous issue. But since I was in the present humiliating situation subsequent to being toasted by these self-same bastards, I was not deluded. This was all rope-jumping to satisfy no one. Even Monro, by his doleful looks, understood we were dead. Being a half-wit, he was half right. At a special meeting on the 15th of May, the Court of Governors cravenly reversed their verdict by voting overwhelmingly not to re-elect us. For Monro this is no great financial setback, since he never made more than a hundred pounds per year from his Bethlem post and still has his thriving Hackney madhouse, plus a few others, to keep him in paintbrushes. Even so, to soften the blow for him at the same time as ensure the dynasty that spawned him sleeps on, last week the governors elected his idiot son Edward co-physician of Bethlem.
Her apothecary has received harsher treatment. Though Poynder (who in his detached way nimbly escaped prosecution) did, as treasurer of the Court of Governors, the decent thing of moving I be granted a pension of two hundred pounds per annum, his motion, after it found a reluctant seconder, was grimly defeated. Upon a begging application from me, a subscription list was undertook for the relief of me and my aged father, but to date no fist-fights have broke out to be first in line to sign. A keeper like the idle, skulking scoundrel Rodbird, a casualty of gin and paralysis, basks in the sunshine of a valetudinary pension, while the apothecary, who served the place in a manner that bolstered its reputation worldwide, gets nothing. Finally, to crown my humiliation most exemplarily, at the same time as they awarded Edward Monro the sinecure of co-physician, the man we hired only last year as our new steward, the insufferable Mr. Wallet, was appointed apothecary of Bethlem.
So here I sit in the solitude of my Islington study and write everything down. This house is come into the market, and at the price the agent’s asking (for a rapid sale) I won’t be sitting here long. Neither will the books on these shelves. First thing Monday fortnight, my entire library goes on the block. The Leigh and Sotheby’s buyer tells me catalogues containing more than a thousand items can take three days to get through. And then there’s my mahogany bookcase, with drawers and wardrobe and mahogany ladder. A lucrative week? We shall see. “Works of exceptional taste and learning” they’re calling them. I don’t know why, they’re only what any educated man of medicine should have, with here and there something bizarre and unaccountable, viz., A Parliamentary Inquiry into Mad-houses 1815, or A Curious Collection of Books Handprinted in Black Letter, undated.
So what now for John Haslam? Rented rooms closer to town, where the opportunities reside. A package to be made up of my books, with a cover letter and résumé of my achievements in the field, for posting to Marischall College, Aberdeen, whence in due course should arrive a medical degree. That way I can practise in London. It’s unlikely the College of Physicians will embrace me, but I could scrape by on a dozen patients of modest means if they’re sufficiently chronic or hypochondriacal, and for so few there’s no need to lick arseholes in Warwick Lane. At the Medical Society, at least, I have a few friends. If I ever have fifty pounds to rub together, I can stand for the board of St. Bart’s, or even St. Luke’s. I can always do duty as an expert witness, which I’m told I have a flair for, and the pay, though sporadic, is good. I have more than one book left in me. Somebody needs to clarify the issue of restraint of lunatics, and while they’re at it say something on behalf of the keepers. And of course I’ll champion public mad-doctors, who are the ones with medical training. After that, if time still weighs heavy on my hands, perhaps I shall take up Jerdan’s offer and scribble for his London Gazette.
Who says a man can’t start over at fifty-two? One door closes, another opens. Isn’t that how it works, out in the world? The harder part will be knowing who John Haslam is, now he’s been stripped of The Schoolmaster. It’s an end James Matthews devoutly wished, but I think he preferred I do it by choice. Perhaps I’d have got around to it, given time enough—wasn’t I beginning to feel the pricks? Mad Bess piles on rags as she goes, but Mad Tom strips down till he’s begging naked. She knows who she don’t want to be; he needs to remember who he is. When he wasn’t raving, Matthews knew who Matthews was, and he was in Bethlem. So then will Haslam know Haslam now Haslam’s out. Why else go down with the champion of that weird brotherhood?