A BLIGHTED LIFE.
A BLIGHTED LIFE.
BY THE
RIGHT HON. LADY LYTTON.
A True Story.
WITH THREE ILLUSTRATIONS.
London:
THE LONDON PUBLISHING OFFICE,
3, Falcon Court; 32, Fleet Street, E.C.
1880.
[ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.]
ILLUSTRATIONS.
EDWARD, LORD LYTTON.
ROSINA, LADY LYTTON.—(COPYRIGHT.)
ROBERT, LORD LYTTON.
PREFACE.
“THE BLIGHTED LIFE,” by the Rt. Hon. ROSINA, Lady LYTTON, with the
Supplemental Notes which seemed necessary to make it complete, is now
presented to the world in a perfect form; and the Editor hopes, that as
it is one of the most interesting, so it will prove likewise one of the
most useful of books. It details, in a highly graphic manner, a narrative
of persecution of the most base and unmanly kind, practised by a wicked
Man of great talent and resources, upon a Noble Lady, who had hardly
anything to defend her but a high spirit, a consciousness of innocence,
and a resolve not to be crushed. This man had all the help that Power,
and the Plots of guilty Associates could give him; he was himself false,
cruel, cunning, and unscrupulous; and yet he was foiled by Lady LYTTON,
alone and almost unaided, except by the Voice of Public Opinion, which
conquered the devices of both Court and Cabinet—for we believe that each
was implicated in this most foul transaction.
The Volume contains Three Portraits; one of Lady LYTTON, which is now
for the first time given to the world; but which hardly does justice
to her beauty, intellect, and grace: a Portrait of her husband, highly
flattered; for almost every low and evil passion was traced indelibly on
that odious countenance; and it was impossible to look upon him for any
time without feelings of disgust and even horror: the third is that of
her Son, the present Lord LYTTON, on whose conduct in this business we
forbear to comment; we leave the consideration of it entirely to the
public. As the handwriting of Nature developes in the features, the eyes,
the forehead, and the mouth, the true character of the soul and spirit
within, we recommend a careful contemplation of these Portraits to all
students in physiognomy, and think they will find, as they examine, a
confirmation of their own best experience in this most interesting branch
of science. Lord LYTTON the First hid his mouth with his moustache and
beard, because he was too conscious of its frightful expression to let it
be seen.
The most saddening thought that arises after the perusal of this Volume,
is, that no change has yet been made in the infamous Lunacy Laws, for
which, in the main, we have to thank our Whig Rulers. Never was a more
criminal or despotic Law passed than that which now enables a Husband to
lock up his Wife in a Madhouse on the certificate of two medical men,
who often in haste, frequently for a bribe, certify to madness where
none exists. We believe that under these Statutes thousands of persons,
perfectly sane, are now imprisoned in private asylums throughout the
Kingdom; while strangers are in possession of their property; and the
miserable prisoner is finally brought to a state of actual lunacy or
imbecility—however rational he may have been when first immured. The
Keepers of these Madhouse Dens, from long study in their diabolical art,
can reduce, by certain drugs, the clearest brain to a state of stupor;
and the Lunacy Commissioners take all for granted that they hear over the
luxurious lunch with which the Mad Doctor regales them.
Let us hope that this Volume may again call public attention to the
monstrous crimes that are perpetrated under this dreadful system; and
that it may help to unrivet only one of the brazen fetters which now bind
down our People in bondage.
The character of the main Figure in this Volume has been often drawn in
flattering colours—most usually, we fancy, by his own descriptive pen. He
has been called Poet, Novelist, Orator, Statesman, and we know not what;
but if his Wife’s Narrative, as contained in these pages, be correct,
he was assuredly about as complete a Scoundrel as ever walked in shoe
leather. And that the Narrative is strictly accurate and absolutely true,
we entertain no doubt whatever. And if so, how odious was his conduct to
that injured Lady. We believe that the man who would immure a perfectly
sane Wife in the prisons of a Madhouse would not hesitate at her murder,
if he thought himself safe. And it was in that horrible crime that Lord
LYTTON was detected, and fortunately was foiled. How well we recollect
the universal horror which the news of the deed occasioned. _The Daily
Telegraph_ was then on its last legs. It had hardly a circulation of
3,000 a day. As each new morning dawned we expected to hear of its death.
In a happy moment for the LEVY-LAWSON-LEVIS, Lady LYTTON was betrayed,
seized, and immured. The Editor saw his chance, and made the Metropolis
ring with the outrage. LEVI was saved; so also was Lady LYTTON. She was
released, as described in “THE BLIGHTED LIFE;” but to the horror and
indignation of all decent people, her betrayer and most brutal torturer
was nevertheless retained in office as Colonial Minister by the QUEEN,
who, soon after, in order to mark her high sense of his conduct, elevated
him, and his equally-infamous brother HENRY, to the peerage. A more
shameful insult, either to the People or to the House of Lords, was never
committed; but insult now seems to be the lot of us all, and so VIVAT
REGINA!
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
A BLIGHTED LIFE.
The following is a true Woman’s Record of sad suffering. Her
wrongs have driven her half mad, and we do not wonder that it
should be so, for she has sought redress in vain from almost
every source. Her trampler and her tyrant was always victorious
in every conflict. The QUEEN, as she most usually does with all
criminals, took him by the hand; petted, favoured and promoted
him; while his Victim was driven from Society into poverty and
exile, and was for years the unceasing object of abuse, slander
and libel. God pity her! May God protect and avenge her! Excuse
her language, O Reader, whenever it seems “strong,” for it is
the cry of an indignant and broken heart—it is the wild shriek
of Right, crushed under the heel of insolent and guilty Might.
SIR,—Time was, ere I grew too sick of fiction, or rather of the hollow
unprincipled _vaux rien_, who for the most part trade upon it, that your
and THACKERAY’S works were the only _novels_ that I read; because they
were the only ones independent of their indisputable talent[1] that
bore the Hall mark of sincerity, and of conveying the real feelings and
opinions of the writers; and not written up to the market standard,
whether the twaddle was to be about very little children, which costs
nothing—on paper—or underfed and overbirched boys; to say nothing of that
great charm, that intellectual aroma of their being written by educated
_gentlemen_. But your Novel I have not read, having a horror of all
things that emanate from or appear under the auspices of that patent
Humbug, Mr. CHARLES DICKENS, or any of his clique, and it is only the
having seen in the “Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine” for this month,
a review of your Novel, and an extract of your Notice, and requesting
all persons in various ranks of life, who by letter or _viva voce_,
during the last five years have told you of some persons incarcerated
in asylums, &c., &c., &c., and inviting fresh communications, &c., &c.,
&c., which induces me to furnish you with a few additional facts as
to the incarceration—villainy—so much in vogue. But don’t mistake my
motive in so doing. _I want you to do nothing for me_; for nothing can
_now_ be done, and if it could, _je connais mon Angleterre trop bien_
not to know that the English to a man are _the_ most sordid, selfish,
time-serving tuft-hunters in the whole world; Mammon being their only
god, and Self high priest: and moreover I am also too fully aware, after
25 years’ bitter experience, that wherever the literary element enters,
there _cameraderie_, expediency, clap-trap, treachery, moral cowardice
and concrete meanness are _sure_ to follow. There _is_ such a thing as
cheap chivalry, as well as cheap philanthropy, which are the only sorts
_à la porte de Messieurs les litterateurs Anglais_. And it makes all
the difference in the world to make a _cheval de bataille_ (and become
a hero upon it) of a poor man’s wrongs, who has _no_ powerful foes
to bring their masked batteries to bear upon his champion—aye, or in
the event of the victim’s being a chimney sweep’s wife—for the _same_
reason there is nothing easier than for chivalry to make a desperate
and victorious onslaught upon Soot, as psychologically as well as
horticulturally that pulverised darkness would only make the laurels
flourish the more luxuriantly. But change the venue and let the victim
only be in the upper sphere of life, without father, mother, or _money_,
while her infamous husband not only having with his brother done dirty
work for _every_ government for the last 30 years, and being moreover a
_litterateur_ whose grossly immoral plagiaries had been be-puffed by a
venal press as immortal works, for value received in government interest,
and invitations to their vulgar wives—shew me the man in England who
would move a finger that might make this Infernal Machine of occult power
_explode against himself_ to save any woman from being incarcerated in
fifty mad-houses and _bechameled_ afterwards in minced meat, as small as
that into which Puss in Boots threatened to cut the reapers, and to save
the lurch of your _true_ motto.
_Dict sans faict,_
_A Dieu deplait._
The Chivalric Philanthropist in question would immediately and most
conveniently feel that “no man had a _right_ to interfere between
another man and his wife, as this, of course, came under the category of
strictly private and family affairs.” To say nothing of the _real_ gist
of the matter, to wit the Freemasonry which exists among “gentlemen,”
(?) that each gentleman’s vices should be held sacred by any other
gentleman, as there is no knowing when their _own_ turn may come. So
the non-intervention plan is by far the best, alias the safest, both
for Parliamentary and Philanthropic humbug. How well my meanest of all
villains, and most unlimited of all blackguards knew this, when years
ago, after one of his brutal outbursts of personal violence, the cowardly
reptile said to me: “_Remember, Madame, you have neither father nor
brother, and therefore you are completely in my power._” When, 23 years
ago, I and my then infant children were turned out of our home, to make
room for one of this loathsome brute’s then strumpets, Miss LAURA DEACON,
Serjeant TALFOURD had just cooked up _his_ sham popularity-catching
Custody of Infants’ Bill. A silly friend of mine persuaded me to send
my case to him, as one of the _strongest_ and _most flagrant_ that
could possibly be. I pointed out to her that he also wrote Plays and
Poems; and knowing what utter blackguards you “literary men” are in this
country—for as old LANDOR says, “there is a spice of the scoundrel in
them all”—and therefore _he_ was not likely to risk either the puffery
or the persecution of that literary political ruffian. And I was the
Cassandra as I always am, for the “learned Serjeant” kept my papers a
few days and then returned them to me, saying, “he was very sorry he
had not _time_ to look at them.” A pretty person to bring a Bill into
Parliament, who had not _time_ to look into the most flagrant abuses
that necessitated the change in the law. True, GOD’S judgment overtook
_this_ hypocrite at last; for he who _never_ went to bed sober, after
a most eloquent diatribe against drunkenness the Bacchanalian Judge
fell back stone dead, instead of _a son ordinaire_ dead drunk. But how
_could_ this country be anything but the Land of Cant and Crime it is,
when we see the irredeemably infamous men who occupy the highest places
in literature and politics in England at the present day? Men whose
triumphant vices and poisonous example are enough to breed rottenness in
the very marrow of the nation. And they _have_ done so; more especially
their impious hypocrisy. When GOD was on earth the _only_ sin he had _no_
mercy on was hypocrisy. And why? Because it is a rank and blasphemous
forgery on Heaven. When the late Sir ROBERT PEEL wanted to make Lord
LYNDHURST Lord Chancellor, he could not do so because of the £15,000
unpaid damages hanging on him about his crim.-con. with Lady SYKES,
whereupon Mr. BARING, the present Lord ASHBURTON said, “I’ll pay the
damages for COPLEY if you’ll give me a peerage,” and this _creditable_
guardian of the public morals (which, of _course_ are only preserved
by private debauchery) had not been six months Lord Chancellor before
he had another crim.-con. with Lady G., during the trial for which,
poor Lord G. cut his throat. But he, the moral cause of the tragedy,
lived to concoct at the instigation of one of _the_ most infamous of our
extensive aristocratic Traviataocracy, MESSALINA NORTON, our present
job Divorce Court, and to die, puffed by a venal press as if he had
been a saint or a demi-god. Faugh! how sick it all makes one. Then see
we not still living, to false-weight the scales of justice, that other
precious legal DON JUAN and doer of dirty work _dessous les cartes_, for
his old college chum, the Chief Justice Sir ALEXANDER COCKBURN, who, as
DENISON, the law reporter of the _Times_, said the other day, was “about
the most unprincipled scoundrel in England,” passing his whole time
in debauching the wife or daughter of every man who came in his way.
So with all this _Diabolus ex machina_ up the _backstairs_, like the
onions in SYDNEY SMITH’S salad, “unsuspected, animating the whole,” you
may imagine the fearful odds a poor legal Victim with “neither Father,
Brother, nor Money” has against her! But never mind, “wait for the end.”
_Dieu et mon droit_, and the indomitable hatred and colossal contempt of
them _all_ with which I am nerved makes me feel that, single-handed and
alone as I have before partially been, I shall yet effectually be more
than a match for these immund reptiles. This is a long Proem, but it
was almost necessary to make you comprehend this of necessity condensed
and therefore not over-clear because not categorical _résumé_ of such a
tissue of complex and chronic iniquity before coming to the culminating
atrocity of Sir ——’s mad-house conspiracy; which, beyond the details
you have _asked_ to be supplied with from all quarters, of course can
have no earthly interest for you, who once truly remarked in a note I
received from you, that “for the most part the fine feelings or rather
fine sentiments of Authors were all fused in their inkstands for general
circulation, which left them none for their own personal use.” And yet
verily, I think LAMARTINE is right, when he says, “_Si l’on savait tout
on ne serait indifferent a rien._”
To begin at the beginning of the Mad-house Conspiracy episode, for the
Ruffian long ago began his lies in Paris, having put an infamous libel
in his lick-dust _ame damnée_, the _Court Journal_, about my having
insulted his brother at a ball at Lady AYLMER’S, to which Lord AYLMER had
forbidden the brother to be asked, and to which, therefore, he was _not_
asked. For this gross lie and libel, my solicitor, a Mr. —— ——, _then_
and ever a red-hot Tory, instantly brought an action against Sir ——’s
tools, as Sir L. _then_ called himself a Whig, and got me for my counsel
Sir F. POLLOCK, the present Chief Baron. The defence the dastardly
wretches set up in court was that _I_ had fabricated this gross libel
against myself, to bring myself before the public!!! Whereupon my counsel
remarked that even in a Court of Justice I was not free from the base
calumnies of my unscrupulous enemies. _Bref_, I gained this action,
costs and damages against them, but pray bear in mind the name of my (as
I thought) devoted attorney, Mr. —— ——, who, as the sequel will show,
was only a devoted and unscrupulous jobber to the Tory faction. Well,
as I said before, to begin at the beginning of the Mad-house Conspiracy
episode, I had taken a cottage in the Fulham-road in 1852, but being very
poor I was obliged to furnish it by degrees, and after the drawing-rooms
and library, had only furnished my own bed-room and dressing-room, when,
with my usual good luck, a most—to me—loathsomely disgusting person,
from her extreme personal dirt, hideousness, and inanity, came down to
me crying one cold wet November day, saying her relation, Mrs. LOUDON
(Mrs. CORN-LAW LOUDON, who says COBDEN stole all her fame from her), had
literally turned her into the streets, that she had not a _sou_, knew no
one in London but me, who she thought would have compassion on her, and
both her brothers were away. What could I do? Had I had ready money to
pay for a lodging I would have done so; but I had not a farthing till
a publisher’s (of the name of SHOBERL) bills for between £400 and £500
became due. Then my poor pretty furniture, among which I would rather
have let loose a whole litter of pigs! Oh! it was a horrible dilemma;
but not being made of stone cemented with mud, as I ought to be, with
the infamous name I had the irreparable misfortune to be branded with
at the matrimonial galleys, I gulped all my difficulties and disgusts,
and sent for an upholsterer in hot haste to furnish at a year’s credit a
bedroom (which should have been a sty for this biped swine), and as my
intention was to let my cottage whenever I left town, there was no use
in furnishing it less well than the rest of my little gem of a house,
which I had done cheaply enough, picking up the things by degrees for
ready money. Alas, in one week the housemaid came to me with tears in
her eyes to come and see the wreck; and truly the Augean stable must
have been the _beau ideal_ of neatness and cleanliness to it. The honest
creature stayed with me a year in my poor cottage, I finding her not
only in evening dresses, but in clothes from head to foot, as I did for
three years after in other places, being, of course, therefrom obliged to
do without essentials for myself. At the end of that year, my swindling
publisher, SHOBERL, went smash, and I did not get a penny; but the
obliging upholsterer came down upon me with an exorbitant fancy bill for
the furnishing Miss R——’s room, more in amount than any three other rooms
in the house. I really felt stunned, or rather crushed, as if an elephant
had trodden down my heart. I was for four months ineffectually trying
to let my cottage, and as ineffectually (tied up as I was on a beggarly
pittance of £400 a year for that monster’s life, irregularly paid) trying
to borrow money. At length a good Samaritan at the Stock Exchange, a
stranger of course, and his good, excellent unattorney-like lawyer, poor
Mr. HODGSON, now also dead, said he had heard such a good character of
my honesty from the best judges, or at least the most impartial ones,
the creditors, that he most humanely and generously lent me £1000 at £5
per cent. for 10 years, and paying £100 a year off the principal, and
insuring both Sir ——’s and my own life. With this fearful drain upon
my already disgraceful pittance, as you may suppose, I could not stay
in London. My friends, by way of economising, asked me to go on visits
to them; so I went first to Lady HOTHAM at Brighton, and then to other
friends there, but soon found out that there is nothing _so_ expensive as
visiting in great houses, and dressing and going out, &c., &c., &c. So
after a short trip to Paris with Lady HOTHAM, I went to bury myself in a
little village in Wales (Llangollen), where the people about the country
were good enough to come and see me, but I honestly told them I could
not afford to go and see them, as I was even obliged to give up my maid,
which to me was indeed a bitter, bitter privation. Then it was, being at
a village _inn alone_, that that cowardly brute Sir —— thought he had
_beau jeu_; and sent down first a vulgar old woman calling herself Mrs.
P—— with her “darter” and one of Sir ——’s bastards (of whom I could give
you an incident quite fit for a novel, but too long to insert here), the
said P—— scraping an acquaintance with me upon the plea of her being an
American, which she acted to the life by obtruding herself upon me at
all hours, breakfast and dinner, and in my bedroom before I was up of a
morning, and of course she had as good a right to be in the _hotel_ as I
had. One day, before I came into the dining-room, she had helped me to
soup. I found her with her bonnet on, and before I had time to eat the
soup, she pretended she had had a sudden summons to London and was off.
I had no sooner eaten the soup than before dinner was over I was seized
with the most agonizing pains and violent retchings. My Doctor gave me
antidotes; and said some attempt had been made to poison me, but the dose
had not been sufficient. This seemed to be confirmed by my (in about
three weeks) getting a letter from old P—— (_which letter I have got_),
with another from another old adventuress, calling herself Mme. S——, who,
being at K—— with some more of Sir ——’s elegant acquaintances, says she
overheard the whole plot to incarcerate me in a Mad-house, and so have me
_gradually_ made away with. She also sent me a copy of a letter, which
she says(?) she sent to Sir ——, after I _was_ incarcerated, saying if
a hair of mine was injured she would denounce him publicly as the black
villain he was. Well, to return to old P——’s letter. In it she seemed
seized with a remorse of conscience—her grandchild having died suddenly,
and that she was off to Paris, but could not go without _warning me_ “for
GOD’S sake to be upon my guard, as a person would be sent down whose
name would begin with G, and to attract my attention, in order to scrape
acquaintance with me, she would have a little black King Charles dog,”
_as old P—— herself had had_.
Before I come to the spy No. 2, Miss G——’s arrival, I must tell you
of three other personages in this infamous _dramatis personæ_. Soon
after my arrival at Llangollen, a man calling himself “Mr. LEIGHTON,”
and purporting to be a theatrical manager, wrote to me for permission
to dramatise my novel of ——, which I gave him; but this correspondence
extended over so many months without anything being done, his letters
being dated Theatres Royal, Southampton, Birmingham, Liverpool,
Manchester, in short, every provincial theatre in the kingdom, that I,
of course, began to see this was some fresh villainy of Sir ——, who,
after cutting the ground from under me in every unimaginably mean way,
by preventing my earning the bread he will not give me, no doubt thought
it a rare jest to fool me into the supposition that one of my books,
which is a ready made drama, was going to be dramatised. But one has
only to look at his hideous face, and that of that other brute, DICKENS,
to see that _every_ bad passion has left the impress of its cloven hoof
upon their fiendish lineaments. However, as HAYDON the painter told old
MELBOURNE years ago, “Any scamp who trades in politics is considered a
fit companion for Lords,” and my Lord DERBY seems to have a _foible_ for
most unprincipled and disreputable scamps, and such adventurers as D——
and Sir —— are admirably calculated for ‘Nyanziang’ at our exceptionally
stupid and inane Court, before our Royal BETTY FOY, “the idiot mother of
an idiot boy.”
But to return to Llangollen. I luckily kept all the _soi-disant_ Mr.
LEIGHTON’S letters, and the Llangollen post office was kept by a druggist
of the name of G—— D——, while _next_ to his shop was a gin shop kept by
a _very_ low person of the name of J——, who had formerly had something
to do with minor theatres and had narrowly escaped transportation for
some of his malpractices. He and this D—— were great cronies, and a
private door in a passage of J——’s gin-shop _opened into the post office
department of D——’s shop_. Bear all this in mind. This J—— was then
living with the maid of a woman with whom he had formerly intrigued,
and whose whole family he had ruined. Well, as soon as I got old P——’s
letter of warning, I put all the people of the ‘Hand Hotel’ on their
guard, and as it was then the depth of winter, no tourists came to
Llangollen, and I told them to be _sure_ and let me know if anyone whose
name began with a G came to stay there. About ten days after this,
BRELLISFORD, the waitress, came to me, and said an old woman looking
like a housekeeper had just arrived from the station to take apartments
for “her young lady,” a Miss G——, who had just lost her mother, and who
intended to spend some time at Llangollen. BRELLISFORD, who had been by
me put in possession of old P——’s letter, answered her sharply that it
was very strange that a young lady who had lost her mother had no friends
to go to, but should come to such a desolate out-of-the-way place, to
which the old woman made no reply. I then told BRELLISFORD to let me
see (unseen) this old woman, and to be _sure_ and let me know when the
_young lady_ arrived. Soon after B—— came up in haste to say the old
woman was going to the Post, and that I could see her from the window. I
ran to it, and who should I see but old TATE, Sir L——’s housekeeper!!!
The young _lady_ did not arrive till two nights after; a most hideous
vulgar-looking creature, past 40, with a fiery red face. The morning
after her arrival, old TATE left in haste for London, telling Mrs. P——,
the woman of the Inn, that she had a large dinner to attend to. For six
mortal days Miss G—— was unable to fire her first shot, for even old
P——’s old King Charles “Tiney,” who had been re-christened “Prince” for
the new campaign, had only succeeded in getting a snap from my Blenheim
Tiger on the stairs, unaccompanied by his mistress. For I was waiting
for the enemy’s first move before I opened my batteries. It appears that
the very first day at dinner, so well acquainted was she with the _carte
du pays_ from her predecessors, that she accosted the waitress by her
somewhat uncommon name of “BRELLISFORD,” asking her to carve a chicken.
“Pray,” said the latter, “how did you know my name?” Miss G—— coloured
and stammered and said she’d heard her called so. “That you havn’t since
you’ve been in this house, for all the servants call me SARAH.” On the
seventh day, instead of resting from her labours, the amiable G—— could
hold out no longer, and _apropos de bottes_ asked BRELLISFORD at dinner
“If I never went out?” “Seldom in the winter,” was the reply. “Dear me,”
said Grogblossom, returning to the charge, “I wish Lady —— would take a
drive with me.” Though of course the vulgar wretch, _a la_ DICKENS, said
“ride.”—“Not very likely,” said B., “after that _other_ (emphasising the
word) vulgar old Spy of that bad man, Sir —— ——, Mrs. P——, playing up the
games she did here, Lady —— is not likely to let any more, _no one knows
who_, force themselves upon her.” “Spies,” re-echoed Grogblossom, “dear
me, what can he have to spy her about. Every one knows what a profligate
bad man he is; but at all events, I am not in a sphere of life to know
Sir —— —— as an acquaintance, and I’m far too respectable to do his
dirty work.” “Then,” said BRELLISFORD, firing up as she snatched the
last dish off the table, “if you are not in a _spear_ of life to know
Sir ——, who is just fit for the likes of you, how dare you presume to
ask, or to think, that her ladyship would go out with you?” and slamming
to the door, with an excellent imitation of thunder, she hurried down
the passage, and came to my room to report “that Miss GET-NOTHING’S,” as
she always called her, impudence, and tell me the whole conversation.
Whereupon, I instantly wrote a short note saying that if Miss G—— did not
take herself off _instantly_ to her infamous employer, I would have her
forcibly ejected. This note I took _myself_, and, opening the door, flung
it _without going in_, on the round table, in the middle of the room. A
_full_ quarter-of-an-hour after she got up a series of screams, doing
duty for hysterics, and rang the bell violently for Mrs. P——, telling her
that I had insulted her (G——) in the most violent and unprovoked manner,
and that I must be _mad_ (_c’etait la sa consigne_). Old P—— came to me
in great consternation, saying, “I should not have taken the law into my
own hands.” “You never mind that,” said I, “but go back and tell her that
if she does not leave this to-morrow morning, I’ll find a way of making
her; and if she feels herself aggrieved, and don’t know what to do, I’ll
tell her—namely, if she is _not_ a Spy of that Cowardly Ruffian, Sir ——
——’s, sent to finish the job old P—— begun, let her instantly go to her
lawyer, and instruct him to bring an action against me for defamation.”
Mrs. P—— returned in a very short time to say that Miss G—— had said very
_humbly_ she _would_ go as soon as she possibly could; but she had come
in such a hurry she had had to buy a flannel petticoat!!! on her arrival
(_idem_ old P——’s _darter_, to whom the same romantic incident of travel
had happened), and that she must write for _money_ (ditto old P——’s
“darter” again), having none, and she could not possibly get an answer
before the day after to-morrow.
[Illustration: EDWARD, LORD LYTTON.]
Now Sir —— was at that time flaring up at Leeds, lecturing at Mechanics’
Institutes upon “The Holiness of Truth” to the “snobs,” and the
Sacredness of Probity!! till, as a lady who wrote me word of it said,
she wondered the earth did not open and swallow the blasphemous monster.
I told SARAH BRELLISFORD to be sure and bring me any letter or letters
that came to Miss G—— on the morning she expected the _indispensable_
remittance, _not_ to open or destroy them, or intercept them, as her
friend Sir —— would have done; but merely to see the superscription, that
is, the handwriting of the remittance letter. Well, it came, with Sir
——’s unmistakable mean scrawl, and _crest_ on the seal, and the Leeds
postmark, _and no mistake_, and two hours after Miss G—— was bundled
off. She was scarcely gone when I got letters from London imploring me
to be on my guard, as these G——’s lived at Brighton, and the one sent to
Llangollen _had a carriage always ready on the road, in order, if I could
be found out walking, to kidnap me, and carry me off to a Madhouse_, as
Sir —— was giving out all over London, _via_ a Mr. ROBERT BELL, one of
the DICKENS’S literary clique, that I was _quite mad_, and also by his
infamous _ame damnée_, the infamous attorney, L——. Now this L——, you must
know, Sir —— himself told me years ago, “_intrigued with his own sister,
to save the expense of a mistress!_” A fitting tool, truly, for so
loathsome a ruffian as the bran new baronet! And the attorney boasts with
his sardonic grin, “Oh! Sir —— ——, he _must_ do whatever I please.” After
I had put Miss G—— to flight, I wrote to Lady HOTHAM and several others
at Brighton, to find out who and what those G——’s were, and telling them
of the Madhouse Conspiracy _en train_. To which I got back an ocean of
English twaddle and conventional cant, telling me not to talk of spies
and madhouse conspiracies in the 19th century, but to remember that I
lived in a _free_ country (very _free_, for any villainy to be practised
with impunity, where there is money to pay for it, a position to cover
it, or Lords PALMERSTONS, DERBYS, LYNDHURSTS, or Chief Justice COCKBURNS,
who so long as they do the _public_ humbug well in verbal sounding brass,
can and do employ the most infamous tools to do their _private_ dirty
work, and of course are in duty bound to _screen_ and protect the said
tools in all their own little personal crimes and enormities) and above
all, I was told to remember that however bad Sir —— might be, he knew the
laws of his country, and _couldn’t_ (couldn’t he, when it is done every
day!) incarcerate me without a public (oh, dear) and full enquiry about
all my sayings, and doings, and habits, which would be the very _best_
thing that could happen to me, as he had so many years ground me down to
poverty, as to effectually make me a dead letter; so that all the lies
he so indefatigably disseminated about me went by default. However, as
one evening Lady HOTHAM was repeating at dinner the sapient advice that
she had written to me to her Brighton Doctor, a Dr. T——, who lives in
Regency-square there, and another gentleman, an acquaintance of mine,
Dr. T—— said, “G——, G——! Stop; I _do_ know some people who know two Miss
G——s. My wife and I are going to a party there to-morrow night, and
I’ll try and find out what I can about those Miss G——s.” “Do,” said the
other gentleman, “and as I must return to town to-morrow, be so good as
to write and let me know what you do find out, that I may tell Lady ——,
as I don’t at all agree with Lady HOTHAM about the madhouse conspiracy
being a chimera of hers.” Accordingly, the day after the party, this
gentleman received the following letter from Dr. T——, which he sent me,
and which I have got. It began: “Dear Sir,—I went to the party I told
you of last night, and sure enough who should be there but a Miss G——,
who was boasting that Sir E—— L—— was a great friend of theirs, and that
her _sister_ had just returned from Llangollen, where she had seen that
horrid wife of his (a lie, for she had _not_ seen me), who was quite mad,
but she was happy to say also, so ill, that she could not live a week.
Poor Lady L——, it is really too hard,” Dr. T—— goes on to say—but I need
not trouble you with the rest of the letter.
The summer after this I got out of the hotel into a lodging, small, but
very nicely furnished, of which I took the whole _except_ the parlours,
which, as the woman only asked 25 shillings a week for them, I told her
on _no_ account to let them to any one, but if she had an offer to do
so I would pay her for them rather than have any other lodger in the
house, after all I had suffered. Nothing could exceed the attention
and _prevoyante_ civility of these people. But when I had been there
about three weeks, to my great horror and indignation, in the teeth of
her promise, she informed me that she had let the parlour to a lady
and gentleman, as they had given her two guineas a week for them; this
alarmed me more, whereupon this silly woman, to reassure me, told me
she was a lady of the highest connections, a Mrs. B——, as she herself
had told her she was related to Lord This and the Marquis of That. I
said, my good Mrs. P——, depend upon it by her giving you more than you
asked for your rooms, and bragging about her great relations, she is
not a gentlewoman, but some improper person or other. The next morning
the plot began to thicken, and up came a great disgusting dish of _raw_
trout with Mr. B——’s compliments, as he had been out fishing, though
Mrs. P—— let out that he had bought them of Mrs. J—— at the gin-shop.
I returned them saying I was much obliged, but I never ate river fish.
Through the windows I had the felicity of seeing Mr. and Mrs. B——. He
looked a something between a retired undertaker and a methodist parson
in a rusty black coat and a dirty white cravat and shoes and stockings
of a morning; and she was a perfect hybrid (with long black ringlets, a
staring silk Stuart plaid dress, and very short petticoats) between a
ballet girl at a fifth-rate theatre and a Regent’s-street social evil,
who did _not_ attend the midnight meetings. I have since heard from
indisputable authority that these vulgar wretches are always with Sir
—— at K—— and Ventnor, and elsewhere, that he took to intriguing with
that raw-boned frau, Madame ERNST, and dedicating his Balderdashiana in
‘Blackwood’ to her paralysed gorilla of a husband, ERNST the fiddler,
whose society must be delightful to a man who is as deaf as a post, and
who, before he was so, in point of music did not know “BOB and JOAN”
from “GOD save the QUEEN,” and who does not know _one word_ of German.
For of all his literary charlataneries, his pretended translation of ——
—— was the most iniquitous, as at them it was he slaved his poor young
daughter to death. His French is execrable and ridiculous enough; still
he can read and understand it, though he does call naïveté _navetty_!!
which is almost as marvellous a travesty as that other woful attempt at
an admirable CRICHTON and an omniscient genius(?), Mr. W—— R——, who calls
VOLTAIRE—VOLL-TAIRE, so as to rhyme with NOLL; and who seems strongly
to confound notoriety with fame, and therefore went to the trouble and
expense of going to Africa to so _usefully_ enlighten the world by
informing it that when he attempted to kiss the African young ladies,
they ran away! Why—he need not have gone so far to make that discovery,
as “my dear husband to a toad-stool” (which is a fair bet, the venemous
reptile against the poisonous fungus), had he made the experiment in
England every young lady, to a crinoline, would have done the same. This
singularly antipathique young gentleman who, after favouring me with a
brisk correspondence which I knew must have some covert meaning, as an
Englishman _never_ does anything without a sordid or selfish motive,
last June did me the honour of inflicting upon me a three days’ visit,
ostensibly _en route_ to Tenby to see his parents, of whom he spoke in
a depreciating contemptuous manner that quite disgusted me, as if, poor
silly people, they were quite below par, and unworthy of having such
a son—I beg pardon, such a genius(?) of a son. With true English good
breeding he hunted me up the day before I could possibly receive him,
but however stupid he might have been to me, I daresay it was agreeable
enough to him; as I understand he spent his nights down in the bar,
which I should think was a much more congenial place to him than a
drawing-room. When he went, as I thought, to Tenby, he wrote me word
he had gone back to Oxfordshire, “and his parents would keep,” as upon
getting to Reading he found he had no money! This was so very like all
the Sir ——’s innumerable myrmidons, that it gave me as I wrote a cold
shudder; as I could not but solve the mystery of his correspondence and
invasion by setting him down as one of Sir ——’s spies, in which idea I
am confirmed by his after getting or not getting what he wanted, just
like a true English boor, and with his insane literary mania and evident
absence of principle, I have no doubt he would be glad to ingratiate
himself with that infamous man on _any_ terms. A friend of mine suggested
to me as a solution of his visit, that perhaps he had heard that I was
such a fool, as the dear, selfish English say, in helping others, when I
so sorely needed help myself, that he might have wanted to borrow money;
but though I may be able to skin myself in £20 or £30, he surely could
not suppose that any one condemned to the miserable and disinherited
life I lead could have any hundreds to lend him towards ministering to
his overweening and senseless vanity? I have not seen his book, feeling
no interest in it after seeing him; but I was silly enough two or three
years ago to give him a volume of Essays that I had written in great
haste, thinking he might sell them for a few pounds; and I should not be
the least surprised if every thought in them (originality certainly not
being his forte) were, _a la_ Sir L——, made to do duty as his reflections
in “Savage Africa.” The kissing episode I have quoted was sent me by a
lady in a newspaper extract to make me laugh, which it did most heartily.
Now to return to the dear B——, whom I understand with the Swiss drab of a
governess whom Sir —— seduced long ago at Malvern, and whom recently in
that pretty —— trial about the crystal ball he improvised as his cook!
thinking, no doubt, that as the devil sends cooks and also concubines, it
was all the same thing, and cook sounded better in a Court of Justice.
So these B——s and the Swiss Traviata form the _corps d’armee_ of his
spirit-rapping establishment, which is this great man’s mode of combining
spirit and matter: the vice being the _real_, and his genius the _ideal_,
or _non est_.
Well, Mr. B——, I suppose by way of doing his spiriting gently, that
is, not disturbing the spirits (except those in the brandy bottle, to
which he gave no quarter, but always full measure), used always to take
off those pretty dust undertaker’s _shoes_ of his to steal up and down
stairs, which I suppose meant that if I was going out of the drawing-room
I might not be deterred from doing so by hearing a step upon the stairs.
A few evenings after I had returned the trout caught in the lake of
_Gin_-eva down at J——’s, the evening being very sultry, I was obliged to
leave my drawing-room door slightly ajar, when, to my horror, who should
come tripping in with a basket of strawberries but the social amateur
evil, dressed, or rather undressed, to a pitch that would have alarmed
even an art student. She made me a sort of theatrical speech in which
she introduced herself and her strawberries. I never eat strawberries
any more than trout; and in the absence of Wenham-lake ice, my reception
of her must have been most refreshing, or rather refrigerating. Nothing
daunted, this intensely vulgar piece of effrontery (who, I understand,
is a natural daughter of that horrid old scamp, Lord LOWTHER: hence her
high connexions) spread her furbelows, and, uninvited, seated herself;
and seeing the shoeless undertaker creeping upstairs, she had the
crowning impertinence to call him in, and introduce him to me, I visibly
petrifying the while, and not replying to a single thing he said; till
the he B——, by way of saying something pleasant, remarked that DICKENS
was a wonderful man. “A wonderful brute and humbug he certainly is,” said
I. The she B—— then began, with a volubility that reminded one of one
of CHARLES MATTHEWS’S patter songs, to recount to me a spirit-rapping
story of an umbrella that had been left in a corner, and suddenly took
it in its head—its ivory dog’s head at the end of the handle—to turn
round, walk across the room, and walk downstairs; whereupon I said in an
insinuating voice: “_Will_ you both have the goodness to show me how it
went downstairs?” At which Mr. B—— indulged in a loud guffaw, and gently
and elegantly knocking his two thumbnails together, as if he had been
trying vivisection on a flea, said, “Not bad; not bad.” I then rose, and
very stiffly announced that I had drank tea, was going to bed, and could
not offer them any wine and water, as I never drank wine; whereupon this
“charming woman,” turning briskly to the undertaker, said, “B——, run
down, and bring up the wine and spirits.” I said, “Not here, pray,” and
darting into my bedroom, locked the door.
The next day came a note from Mrs. B——, expressing her great sympathy
with all I had suffered; and as the cuisine was not particularly good at
those lodgings, would I do them the favour of dining with them at the
hotel? I sent down a verbal message to say that I never dined out. The
next day the pair took their departure for London; but the people of the
house became suddenly and unbearably insolent; and although I had taken
the rooms for six months certain, said I must leave them _immediately_,
as they had let them. This was pleasant, for lodgings are difficult to
get at Llangollen, and worse than that, it wanting six weeks to the time
I should receive my parish allowance, and also to the time when the two
months’ rent would become due, I had not a _sou_ wherewith to meet this
sudden and unfair demand in the teeth of a written agreement. But my
kind old Dr. PRICE not only came to the rescue, rating these vile people
soundly, and telling them they would repent their shameful conduct before
they were much older (which they did), but he kindly got me another
lodging higher up in the same road, in which I had not been installed a
week when Dr. PRICE wrote to me, saying that horrid woman Mrs. B——, and a
woman she called her maid, were installed in my old lodgings. I put on my
bonnet and went out to pass the house, and what should I see but Mrs. B——
and her _soi-disant_ maid sitting on the _sill_ of the open drawing-room
window, with a salver between them with two decanters of wine on it, and
glasses in their hands, over which they were laughing and singing; and as
soon as they saw me they set up a perfect shout.