of the place for roaring and screaming about the streets with men, at
between one and two in the morning, and disturbing the quiet village. So
Mrs. P—— and her brother did not get much by their infamy to me, and to
their highly connected Patroness Mrs. B——, more especially as I lodged a
complaint of their conduct with the Baptist minister, who lectured them
publicly in chapel for it. A fortnight after Mrs. B——’s expulsion, Mr.
B—— came down solo, and went to the Chester races, in an open carriage
and four, with those two blackguards, J—— of the Gin Shop, and D—— of
the Post-office, driving past my windows, shouting and roaring and
waving their hats; and previous to his departure, B—— wrote me a most
infamous anonymous letter, beginning that “he had the QUEEN’S and ——’s
permission to sleep with me”—which letter was _precisely_ in the same
hand-writing as all those purporting to be from Mr. L——, the _soi-disant_
Theatrical Manager, _which infamous letter, and all the rest_, I have
got. Upon this crowning outrage inflicted by that far more ruffianly
B——’s myrmidons, I sent for Mr. WHALLEY, the Magistrate, the present
member for Peterborough—(Maynooth WHALLEY), and he told J—— he would
take away his licence. I, of course, could not stay in a place where I
had been so outraged and persecuted; and then it was I wrote to a friend
of mine to engage me rooms in some Hotel in this dead-letter town; and
sending all my luggage on to London, directed to a Mrs. WILSON, for her
to forward them _here_; I took a young person who used to make my dresses
at Llangollen as my maid, coming on here without any luggage but a carpet
bag with “passenger” on it, so that none of the Llangollen people knew
_where_ I was going, by which means Sir —— completely lost the track of
his victim, which made him so furious that when good Mr. HODGSON went to
receive my pittance, as he always did, Sir —— and the ruffian L—— vowed
they would not pay it till they had a clergyman’s certificate! to say I
was alive! which was, of course, as they thought, a clever plan to find
out _where_ I was; but Mr. HYDE, my solicitor, whose country place was at
Sangport, 16 miles from this, and who was then alive, and had not _yet_
found his account in selling me “_to screen the party_,” wrote to say,
that if my beggarly pittance was not instantly paid, Sir —— should have
the best of all assurances that I was _alive_, as he, Mr. HYDE, would
drive down to K—— with me to take possession, and remain there with me to
protect me. So the dastardly brute was foiled for the nonce. Soon after
I came here Miss R—— again was homeless, and gave me the benefit—no, the
discipline—of her company, and worried me into sending a statement of my
case to Lord LYNDHURST, who was then, with MESSALINA NORTON, concocting
the job of the Divorce Court. Apropos of the latter, she is such an
awful hypocrite, quite of Sir ——’s calibre, that they would have made
a matchless pair, because she is actually a _proverb_ for brutalising
servants and governesses. I see in to-day’s _Times_ she has a long and
charmingly benevolent letter advocating the cause of Poor Servants
against their not sufficiently considerate masters and mistresses! Oh!
why does not the Devil foreclose his mortgage upon those three such
hypocrites, Mother NORTON, Sir ——, and DICKENS, and drive them and their
fine sentiments round his dominions. Sir —— at least would not be quite
new to the lash, as years ago, when that infamous Mrs. NORTON kept her
amateur house of ill-fame in Bolton-row, and Sir —— was intriguing with a
cousin of hers, a Mrs. BARTON, the wife of a clergyman—some “good-natured
friend” wrote to Mr. BARTON and told him if he would go at such an hour
to Mrs. NORTON’S, and walk up into the back bedroom, he would find Sir ——
with his wife. He did so, and horsewhipped Sir ——. Whereupon MESSALINA,
putting her arms akimbo, said, “If you are such a d——d fool that you
cannot manage a little affair of this sort without being found out, you
must go elsewhere.” The uninitiated keep wondering how the _Examiner_
could puff that intensely trashy and immensely infamous last book of Mrs.
NORTON’S. But those who know that she used to intrigue with that hideous
old ALBANY FONBLANQUE, and any other dirty editor that came in her
way, for a puff, don’t wonder at all. If any of Mrs. NORTON’S ill-used
servants were to write to the _Times_, illustrating by a few _facts_ her
practical benevolence and consideration towards them, I should just like
to see the _Times_ printing _them_, though thanks to our wheel within
wheel of Humbug within Humbug, and Sham upon Sham, the _Times_ can do its
cheap brummagem philanthropy and championship of the oppressed as well as
any other “Tartuffe” in the kingdom. And yet this most vile woman (with
plenty of others of the same sort) is received at “our Virtuous Court,”
and quite worthy of being so, by the little selfish sensuous Inanity
who rules over it, the Murderess of poor Lady FLORA HASTINGS, and the
_amiable_ daughter who did all she could to hold up her own mother with
Sir JOHN CONROY. Poor excellent Prince ALBERT, a _rara avis_—a man who
_had principle_ and acted up to it, from the smallest to the greatest
things,—knowing neither truckling nor _expediency_, had a life of it!
happy he to have so soon escaped, and gone home to a more congenial
sphere, where he invested the great treasure of _good deeds_, while
still a labourer here.—But to return to the LYNDHURST affair: I told
Miss R—— that my sending my case to Lord L—— was like writing in water;
nothing would come of it. Still, I drew it up as briefly as I could, with
a full statement of the last Llangollen infamy; but fortunately I was
obstinate in my own common sense and would not yield to the _sapient_
Miss R——’s advice to send him some infamous letters of Sir R——’s, which
he, the ruffian, has denied on oath! For what are perjuries to one who
has lived upon them as MITHRIDATES did on poisons, till they have become
his daily food? Neither did I send him any original documents, beyond my
own written statement of facts. So well am I aware, with regard to the
thimble-rig of Politics, of what _my_ fate would be, no matter who were
the _ins_ or the outs. I told Lord LYNDHURST _not_ to take the trouble
of writing, but merely make his secretary acknowledge the receipt of my
papers till he returned them with his opinion. But two months passed and
I had no acknowledgment of even the receipt of the packet. I then wrote
again, expressing my surprise at this, when I received a note from Lord
LYNDHURST, beginning, “My dear lady L——.” Cool, from a man I did not know
personally. This is the note—
“My dear Lady L——, In the hurry of business I mislaid your _present_
address, and therefore wrote to you at Llangollen, telling you that I had
read your papers, and written my opinion on them, and that they were left
with my porter ready for you whenever you sent for them. Ten days after
I had despatched my letter to you, a young woman called at my house,
saying she had been sent by Lady L—— for her papers, and my porter gave
her the packet addressed to you. Therefore I was much surprised on the
receipt of your letter this morning, saying you had _not_ received the
papers.—Believe me, yours faithfully, LYNDHURST.”
In reply to this “Strange Story,” before Sir L——’s other blasphemous
“Strange Story,” that that brute DICKENS just published, I wrote to Lord
LYNDHURST to say that in the first place I never should have sent in that
vulgar, cavalier way, without writing a note to him for my papers; in
the next, it was strange he should have forgotten my _present address_!
and only remember my former one at Llangollen, since BOTH addresses were
_equally mentioned in the papers he said he had left with his porter for
me_. But that such being the case, it behoved him for his own honour (?!)
to stir in the matter, and find out who had got the letter he wrote to me
at Llangollen, out of the Llangollen post-office, and who the woman was
who had called for the papers, with the infamous lie that I had sent her.
And the first step towards this was to tell the date of the letter he had
written to me, and the day, and then the office in London at which the
letter had been posted; and next, to employ Mr. PEACOCK, the Solicitor of
the post-office, to sift out the affair, as, like a true-born Briton, he
of course would be likely to put more zeal into his measures if employed
by Lord LYNDHURST to detect an affront and fraud practised upon _him_,
than merely an outrage and an injustice practised upon me, or every other
defenceless woman in England. To this I received a _palpably_ shuffling
and wide of the mark note from Lord LYNDHURST, and the farce was gone
through of writing to that vile fellow D——, at Llangollen, who actually
had the effrontery to pretend that no such letter had ever arrived at
Llangollen post-office for me. Then _how_—as I told my Lord LYNDHURST,
_could_ the swindlers who called for my papers have known where to do
so, but for the information contained in that letter? unless, indeed,
the letter _was a myth_, and his lordship, to make things pleasant to
_the party_, had kindly made over my papers to my Lord DERBY’S creditable
Colonial Secretary? which was the only other _possible_ solution of the
affair. D—— then wrote to me, “did I suppose that after my great kindness
to his poor wife, in her last illness, which he should never forget, that
he could do anything to injure me?” To which I replied yes, that was the
very reason why he would; as I had never yet served anyone, in much,
or in little, that they had not repaid me by the basest ingratitude,
treachery, and injury—of some kind. My Lord LYNDHURST, finding I would
_not_ be quiet, though the old Tory jobbing attorney Mr. C—— H——, under
the pretence of setting Mr. PEACOCK to work, but in _reality_ to seize
the golden opportunity of scraping personal acquaintance with an old
Tory law lord, and by joining issue with him, to make things pleasant to
the _party_, and crush and gag their victim a little more. So, finding
that I was not the plastic, swallow-anything Fool that men think women
ought to be, and which for the propagation and comfortable impunity of
their vice, too many women are, my Lord LYNDHURST sent down his nephew
and private secretary, Mr. RICHARD CLARKE, to see what he could do in
the much-ado-about-nothing-humbug line. I boldly taxed him with this
Divorce Bill being a job concocted between Lord LYNDHURST and Mother
NORTON. “Well,” said he, “you put it in such a point blank way, that I
cannot deny it.” You can, if you like, said I, or anything else, but I’m
not bound to believe you. I then taxed D—— with having a finger in the
pie with regard to the swindle of my papers; knowing the creditable way
in which, years ago, his acquaintance with Lord LYNDHURST (which was his
first political stepping stone, after poor fool of a WYNDHAM LEWIS had
paid his election expenses at Maidstone) had begun, namely, by their
joint property with three more in Lady SYKES. “Oh,” said Mr. CLARKE,
“D—— and Lord LYNDHURST are two. D—— has not crossed our threshold for
ages; and we all nearly fell off of our chairs laughing at breakfast,
the other morning, at the capital, and to the life facsimile you gave in
that imaginary conversation you put into his mouth, in your last letter
to Lord LYNDHURST.” But Mr. RICHARD CLARKE could do nothing with me, for
I assured him this disgraceful affair should _not_ rest between Lord
LYNDHURST, me, _and the post_. I then, as a _pis aller_, got General
THOMPSON to present a petition in the House of Commons demanding an
inquiry into the fate of the papers sent to Lord LYNDHURST, of which I
could obtain no _clear_ or satisfactory account. The poor superannuated
Conservative peer, from his place in the House of Lords, mumbled some
circumlocution rubbish about his being the last man to be guilty of want
of courtesy to a lady.—Hang his courtesy!! his justice and common honesty
were what I wanted, and not his courtesy; but it is precisely those
two exotics which are not to be had in this accursed land of crime and
cant, and so this infamy ended in smoke, as most things do in the two
Houses of Humbug down at Westminster. I need not tell you, from the day
I ordered her out of Llangollen to this, _dear_ Miss G—— never brought
any action against me. No doubt your Orthodox English Conventionality is
greatly shocked at my “coarse,” “violent,” “unladylike language”! But you
must make some allowance (though English people never do, being wisely
and justly only shocked and scandalized at terrible results, while they
remain perfectly placid and piano upon terrible _causes_); but I was
going to say you must make some allowance for a person writhing under
nearly life-long, unparalleled, ever-recurring, and never-redressed
outrages,—and suffering from a chronic indigestion of falsehood,
hypocrisy, and unscrupulous villainy. No wonder, then, that the other day
I cordially sympathised with a man who said, that though no more fires
blazed, or faggots crackled in Smithfield—for which thank GOD—he should
like to make a bonfire of all the fine benevolent sentiments DICKENS,
Sir EDWARD LYTTON, and Mrs. NORTON ever wrote, with those of that other
scoundrel LAWRENCE STERNE, and placing the three former within smelting
heat of the flames, collect an equivalent quantity of ink to all they
had ever used in gulling the public, and force the black-lie-vehicle
down their throats! It was this same man who wittily said, constituting
himself _Advocatus Diaboli_, when a whole room full of people were crying
out against the utter trash and horrible immorality of Mrs. NORTON’S
last book—“Well, now, I like the book, for it may be considered as Mrs.
NORTON’S oral confession, her _peccavi_, in fact, as it so clearly and
abundantly proves that there is not a single _Traviata_ ‘dodge’ in all
Babylon that she is not _practically up to_.” Which sally was received
with peals of laughter, and “Hear, Hear’s.”—Talking of the humbug and
omnipresence of _Self_ in Authors, how thoroughly characteristic was
that vainglorious “_In Memoriam_” of poor THACKERAY by Mr. DICKENS in
this month’s _Cornhill_; it being a mere stalking-horse to parade his
own importance and repeat the compliments poor THACKERAY had paid him,
though there were so many other and better things the public would all
have rather heard of _good_ THACKERAY. It was also a way of letting the
groundlings know that his son, Master DICKENS had been at Eton, though
he took good care not to tell them that Miss BURDETT COUTTS had paid
for him there. For she can do these supererogatory display things, and
build churches, though she cannot give a private _unknown_ guinea to her
own starving relations, of which, like everyone else, she has some. I
liked Mr. TROLLOPE’S “_In Memoriam_” much better, and from the extracts
I have read from his wishy-washy vulgar Novels, I did not think he
could have written so well. Only I wish he had not opened with that tag
Latin quotation; for though Latin is all very well, and indeed at times
necessary for terseness’ sake to add force to sense or satire, _real_
feeling generally finds expression in our mother tongue.
After this LYNDHURST swindle of my papers, Miss R—— went to her brother,
who was then in London: this was in the autumn of 1857. The part Mr.
H—— had acted on that occasion first raised my suspicions against him:
but alas, what is the use of a prophetic spirit, when one has nobody
to help one? That is no visible earthly help; and no wonder if long
before this time I had reversed the injunction to fear GOD and love my
neighbour, for I love GOD more and more however much bitter wrong He
may for some inscrutably wise purpose allow, but I fear my neighbour
most “consumedly.” Sir LIAR had of course found out my new abode by the
LYNDHURST conspiracy, so the creature lost no time in being at his dirty
work again. Accordingly, towards the end of October I was brought up a
card with “Mrs. S—LL—” upon it, accompanied by a message that the lady
(!) wanted particularly to see me. I enquired where this lady came from,
and was told she had just arrived from London by the train; had engaged
a bed here, but had not a vestige of luggage, or any servant with her. I
told them to say I was not well enough to see any one; and to repeat that
answer while she remained; and that whatever business she wanted to see
me upon she could state in writing. I then told them to send Mrs. C—— to
me; and when she came I begged of her to watch this woman narrowly, as I
strongly suspected she was some fresh Spy of that infamous wretch Sir L.
The next morning Mrs. C—— came to report herself, and said she was sure
she was some “infamous baggage,” by her theatrical manner; and saying
that she would get a divorce from her husband, if she knew where he was;
but she did not know whether he was dead or alive, or anything about him
(_that_ there could be no doubt of), that she had come here to teach
music and give theatrical readings, for which she wanted to hire Mrs.
C——’s ball-room, which Mrs. C—— refused to let to her; she then asked all
sorts of questions about me, and said, she _must_ see me. Mrs. C—— coolly
told her that the word was rather inappropriate. She then, it appears
first by bribery, and then by bullying, sought to make the chamber-maid
tell her the number of my _bed_-room, and to give her a room next to it;
upon which the chamber-maid very nearly insulted her, but thought it
better to trick her instead, so took her to a room on the second floor,
and quite in another wing of the house. The next morning she returned to
the charge of trying to see me, and gave her a _written_ prospectus of
all the great masters who had taught her singing and the _harp_, and all
the great people whom she had taught; but in this list I did not fail
to remark that both the teachers and the taught were all conveniently
dead; this and the mention of the harp brought a sudden conviction into
my mind _who_ the _soi-disant_ Mrs. S—LL— really was, especially when
Mrs. C—— talked of her exceeding vanity about her personal appearance
(though now an old woman), and above all about her hand, and when I asked
for a personal description of her, and the inventory given was the pale
hay-coloured hair, faded blue eyes, and aquiline nose, I felt sure that
she was no other than the _soi-disant_ Mrs. BEAUMONT, _alias_ Miss LAURA
DEACON, for whom I and my children had been turned out of a home: who
had with some half-dozen predecessors been the mistress of Colonel KING
when he lived at Craven Cottage, Fulham, and who, when he discovered the
game she was carrying on with Sir LIAR, turned her off; however settling
£200 a year upon his poor deformed eldest child by her, GEORGIANA—which
£200 a year I was told was _all_ she had to live upon; as Sir LIAR with
his usual generosity (!) _now_ gave her nothing; though when he kept her
in his fine Pompeian house in Hill-street, and the wretch dared to take
my name (as she did after at petty German courts, which was done by her
monster Keeper, of course, not only to insult but to defame me), a bill
of £300 for a grand piano came in to me from D’ALMAINE, that this wretch
had had; for which blunder poor D’ALMAINE made me every possible apology.
You will see precisely _why_ I bore you with all these details. When I
told Mrs. C—— my suspicions, she said she would get her out of the town
as soon as possible, but first warn the tradespeople about her, or she
might run up bills in my name as part of her instructions. “Do,” said
I, “for I understand she never pays any one.” Mrs. C—— did so—therefore
she did not succeed in hiring the assembly or any other rooms for her
_readings_, or getting any pupils. And Mrs. C—— insisted upon her leaving
this hotel, which she did; going to Weston-super-Mare, but forgetting
to pay her hotel bill here, which she has never done to this day. About
three weeks after Mrs. C—— brought me word that she was still at Weston,
teaching singing in the boarding school of a Miss R——, but that Miss R——
had said she knew this Mrs. S—LL— to be a woman of such character that
she would not be seen in the street with her. No wonder English misses
are what they are, when this is a specimen of English schoolmistresses.
Upon hearing this I set off to Weston to call upon this Miss R——, and
asked her if it was true that she had said so? She replied, “Yes—I
certainly did say so.” “What,” cried I, starting up with indignation,
“you dare place a woman about the young girls confided to your care whom
you _know_ to be so infamous that you would not be seen in the street
with her? Shame, shame upon you.” “Oh,” said the “genteel” Miss R——: “I
only do it for their singing, she teaches in such a very superior manner
to the provincial teachers, and can teach them so much more.” “Of _that_
I have no doubt,” I said, leaving Miss R——’s room, and house. I then
went to ROGERS’S hotel to see if they knew anything about her, and Mrs.
ROGERS said she had slept there one night, but that Mr. ROGERS had turned
her out the next morning: and that there was a Mr. and Mrs. S—— staying
in the hotel, Mr. S—— being a solicitor and a most dissipated man; and
that one day he met the waiter on the stairs carrying up Mrs. S—LL—’S
card to Mrs. S——, and that he (Mr. S——) took the card off the salver, and
looking at it said, “Pooh! pooh! Mrs. S—LL— indeed, come, tell her that I
know who she is, and not to presume to try it on by attempting to scrape
acquaintance with my wife.” Having gained this additional information,
I went to Whereat’s library, where seeing her programmes for a reading
from the ‘Lady of Lyons,’ I wrote under her name, “_alias_ Mrs. BEAUMONT,
_alias_ Miss LAURA DEACON, _maitresse en titre_ to Sir E—— B—— L—— and
half a score more,” and I told ARTHUR KINGLAKE, the Weston magistrate,
he had better warn the tradespeople about her, as she paid no one. He
said she was already in debt all over the place. About a week after this
I was favoured with a letter from a pettifogging solicitor in Bath, a
Mr. P——, upon the part of Mrs. S—LL—, to say that if I did not instantly
send her £50, she would bring an action against me for defamation. To
which I replied she must be aware that no one having the misfortune to
be dependant upon Sir E—— B—— L—— ever had £5, let alone £50, at their
disposal; but as for the action, the sooner he brought it the better:
only according to my knowledge of English law, the little _contretemps_
of Mr. S—LL— being lost or mislaid, might render it a difficult process.
However, after several more applications for the £50, I was duly served
with a summons to appear in the Queen’s Bench at the suit of Mrs. MARIA
S—LL— “she having obtained the permission of Sir E—— B—— L—— and Mr. L——
to bring the said action.” But not a word about Mr. S—LL—. I wrote to
Mr. HENRY H—— in London, Mr. C—— H——’s brother and partner, to put in an
appearance for me; Mr. C—— H—— being conveniently ill at Longport. I was
obliged to employ a little reptile of an attorney of this town of the
_name_ of T—— (by the bye he has a niece, a young lady of 18, _qui chasse
bien de race_, for she has just been distinguishing herself in divers
cases of shoplifting, and stole a valuable casolette of Lady TAUNTON’S
at the recent ball given to Captain SPEKE). I now saw that my best card
would be to send him to London to that profligate attorney Mr. S——, who
said he knew all about her, and ascertain beyond a doubt her _real_ name.
But Mr. H——, ever alive to the interests of the Conservative party,
telegraphed in hot haste for this Mr. T—— to go to him; and no doubt to
give him his lesson in the particular trickery and chicanery required
to foil me and protect the party. I can only hope that where he is now
gone, his fidelity may be rewarded by meeting many distinguished members
of “the party” who will there be able to thank him _warmly_! Well, the
reptile T—— went to town, and his report was that Mr. S—— had said,
“Well, I first knew her years ago, when I was articled to old BICKET.
She used to come to our office about a deed of annuity for £200, that a
Colonel somebody was settling upon her, and was a lovely young creature
then.” “But her name, her name, Mr. T——,” I broke in. “Oh, her name,”
said the wretch, biting his lips and his ears burning scarlet, “why
I—a—that is—I ascertained _positively_ that she _is_ a married woman, but
I quite failed in finding out her name”!!!!!
“Do you take me for an idiot,” said I, “that you _dare_ trump up such
a clumsy, bare-faced lie? Your instructions have been to _sell_ me,
in order to screen that unprincipled blackguard Sir E—— L—— and the
‘party,’ and therefore not to divulge his infamous mistress’s name to me,
forgetting in your shallow craft, that of all things marriage requires
identity, and that you _could_ not have positively ascertained that
this creature was a married woman, which you know she is _not_, and yet
have failed to find out in what name she was married”!! After muttering
something about my being so sharp upon him, the wretch pretended to be
highly offended, and rushed out of the room. For truly says ALFONSO KARR,
_On ne peut avoir de plus grand tort, que d’avoir raison contre tout le
monde. Et moi, j’ai ce grand tort là, et on ne me le pardonne pas._
This contemptible fellow did not again make his appearance till three
days before the sham action was to come on. “Let me advise you, Lady
L——,” said the wretch, “to try to stop it by buying off Mrs. S—LL—’S
solicitor. I’ll manage it for you for a £5 note.” “In the first place,”
said I, gulping down my rage, and trying to be calm, “I think £5 more
than all the attorneys in England body and soul are worth. In the next
place you and Mr. H—— must really think my folly quite commensurate to
your and his knavery and to Sir E—— L——’s infamy. But tell him, or
tell both of them for me, that were this room piled with gold up to the
ceiling, and I was suffocating under it, I would not give a single coin
of it to play that ruffian’s game, and write myself an ass, to have it
said _I_ had bribed them to stop a sham action that they can never bring.”
“Oh well, if you _won’t_ be advised by your solicitor”——“I never asked
your advice, I employed you to do my work, and like most of your tribe,
you have done the Devil’s instead, and sold me—but I won’t sell myself to
please you.” No sooner did the special pleader in London see the citation
to the Queen’s Bench, when I sent it up, than he said, “Lady L—— is quite
right; this bears farce and fraud upon the face of it”; and accordingly
the day _before_ S—LL— _v._ L—— was to come on, the suit was withdrawn.
What a pity I did not oblige them by buying it off; and what could that
charming injured man Sir E—— L—— do, but incarcerate such a wretch in
a madhouse, which is the only safe place for wives not wanted, and who
_won’t_ and _can’t_ be fooled?