she cries every time a servant is sent up to you with anything instead
of her.” Never was anything so beautiful! as that always lovely view
from Richmond Hill upon that glorious July evening, with the golden sun
steeping it in light and turning the “Silver Thames” into a perfect
Pactolus, while the fresh breeze from the river was a real luxury after
my nearly three weeks’ incarceration in that large, but low-ceilinged
stuffy room, with its nailed down windows. And as caged birds are always
wild when they do get out, MARY HILL and I took to running races, and
not the least part of the pleasure of which to me was seeing old fat H——
“Like panting Time, toiling after us in vain,” and puffing and blowing
like a steam engine; till he made almost as much noise as all his ten
children with their hoops and skipping ropes under my windows of a
morning, when, groaning in my cage, I used to say, “Why skip ye so ye
little HILLS?”
By the time we got back to T—— L—— the evening was fast closing in, and
though as always I had an invitation to sit below in a really magnificent
groined lofty roofed banquetting room, some 50 feet long, that they had
there, I always preferred my own society, even with my own ills, to Mrs.
H—— and all her Ills,—which with the greatest Ill of all—her husband—made
a party of thirteen of them, which yet did not comprise _all_ the ills
that flesh is heir to.
And now comes the most horrible and cruel part of this history, and which
is so painful to me to write, or rather to excavate out of the desolate
grave of all my hopes, where it has lain buried for the last five years
and a half, and where I thought it would remain till GOD had mercy on me
and I was buried with it. But it would have been impossible to tell you
all the rest without telling this too; or you would really think me not
only mad, but a liar, that I had not in our Courts of Justice, or more
frequently of Injustice, fully exposed, and got at least as much redress
as public indignation and condemnation can afford to the Victim, when
bestowed upon the perpetrators of such dastardly and chronic and complex
infamy. But Sir EDWARD does not do his fiendish work by halves. He knew
that from me _he_ could neither expect mercy nor longer forbearance. So
he, with demoniacal and _unscrupulous_ astuteness baited the trap with
the two lacerated hearts of both Mother and Child; for he knew that
even to expose him I would not, and could not, expose my own son—whom
GOD forgive—though I firmly believe that _he_, at _first_, was as much
duped as I was. For though under ordinary circumstances—he was well
aware, from bitter experience, that he could not believe in any promise
his father ever made—still he naturally thought that after standing
upon the brink of such a ruinous Abyss, and having been only saved by
nature’s great miracle, a Mother’s Love—he would for once in fear and
trembling have kept faith with his victims wholly and solely in his own
sordid and selfish interest. And so this truly unhappy young martyr did
evil that good might come of it; and that, as he at the time told me, he
might buy his Mother back at any price. It is WALTER SCOTT, I think, who
says—“There can be no Virtue without Truth, and there can be no Truth
without Moral Courage.” But where was this poor predestined young victim
to acquire that? when the whole course of his accursed literary training
was to _develope_ his intellect, and _stultify_ his moral qualities,
by, from his youth denying to his _naturally_ gentle and affectionate
nature the holy vigils of a Mother’s care, and the humanizing and
heart-expanding influences of HOME. While the diplomatic obligations of
his detestable profession could not fail to weaken to annihilation that
plebeian appendage called conscience; so surely does custom blunt and
familiarize either the worst or most frightful things. No wonder then
that I should have no admiration for, but a positive contempt for, mere
intellect; as intellect without a moral _fulcrum_ is, of all the Devil’s
levers, the one that raises the most fearful preponderances of evil, and
causes them to float buoyantly and triumphantly over the world. But I
must get on, and get over this last heartquake of mine as rapidly as I
can. GOD knows I would not injure him in the world’s estimation (little
as it is worth) more than he has already injured himself; and GOD, I am
convinced, has punished him far more than He has thought fit to afflict
me. Five years and a half since this crowning iniquity have I waited,
hoping against hope that now, that he was no longer a Boy, he would
shake off the glamour of his father’s terrorism, and show some spark of
manliness and human feeling, if only as a sort of expiatory conscience
tax to GOD. But when was conscience, courage, or feeling, ever evinced by
either a B—— or a L——? For the rest of this disgraceful history, I should
be only too glad if you proclaimed it at the market cross. But _that_ I
am very sure you will not do; as I am fully aware of the requirements
of literary amenities and social conventionalities; and therefore it
is that I have lived too long alone with GOD, and the bitter sorrows
He has sent me, not to gauge everything by simple Truth, unalloyed by
expediency; and, perhaps too, as ESMOND says, “I have seen too much of
success in life to take off my hat and huzza to it, in its gilt coach, as
it passes.” I am also fully aware of literary posthumous chivalry, and
its Bayard courage! upon the safe vantage ground of posterity! therefore,
when I have been dead some hundred years,—how pens will start from their
inkstands, like swords from their scabbards, to avenge me! while Electric
Caligraphy will not have left sufficient ink in Christendom to blacken
Sir EDWARD, the CÆSAR BORGIA of the nineteenth century (with the beauty
and the courage left out) up to his natural hue. Gentlemen of 1964, I
cannot find words to thank you—for all I shall have to say then, is what
I pray now—_Implora Pace!_
Well, on the evening after my return from Richmond, while I was at tea,
the door was thrown open and Miss R—— was announced. I reproached myself
with ingratitude at the time, but she was more antipathetic to me than
ever; her manner was so brusque, coarse, and unfeeling—meeting me for
the first time in such a place. And she did look so dreadfully ugly, and
so additionally dirty! a great _tour de force_! that I recoiled from her
touch, and when she said, without any preparation in that sharp, shrill,
cracked bell of a voice of hers, “Shure I’ve brought _your_ son to see
you,” I felt almost as though she had knocked me down, and burst out
crying—“Then,” said I, “I won’t see him; he has never acted like a son to
me; and I suppose his infamous father is springed in his own trap, and
he has sent his son to get him out of it.” For two hours ineffectually,
for I would not yield to this evident bullying, did Miss R——, with her
usual want of tact, want of feeling, and coarse uncouthness, irritate
every nerve in my body. I may as well here give you the keynote of her
character. It is an inane and egregious vanity—and a mania _pour se
faire personnage_; one of that dangerous class of meddling fools, who
are for ever rushing in “where angels fear to tread.” She was indeed “a
thing of shreds and patches,” made up of the fragments of other person’s
thoughts and opinions—which she invariably retailed as her _own_. In
all things a mere ape and echo. During the Crimean War, she read up the
leaders in the _Times_, and Mr. RUSSELL’S letters, and then thought
herself quite competent to argue with, or rather to dictate to the first
military authorities, past, or present. Vilely ill-educated, or rather
not educated at all, she could not open her mouth without mutilating the
QUEEN’S English, and, like “The Wife of Bath,” her “French was French
of Bow,” or, rather, of Boœtia—“for French of Paris knew she none,” and
her grotesque and barbaric pronunciation of what she called such, was
worthy of Sir EDWARD himself! or of that other universal genius (in his
own opinion) Mr. W—— R——. She also had, like most vain fools, a literary
mania, and a great ambition to appear very _blue_. I am confident, from
her subsequent ingratitude towards me, who, as she acknowledged to my
son, was the only benefactress she had ever had, that next to her fear,
by my incarceration for life, of losing an excellent milch cow, which
she had no chance of replacing, her motive in writing to the papers,
and making my iniquitous abduction public, was that she thought by so
doing she should put herself forward, and become quite a heroine. I am
also certain that when Sir LIAR got hold of her, and that other patent
scoundrel E—— J—— (who had been plied for him by that little Red Rat,
COCKBURN—as of course it does not do for a Chief Justice to _appear_
in dirty work, all English virtue, being strictly PUBLIC!), seeing the
empty, heartless, vain, unprincipled ass they had to deal with, they
fooled her to the very top of her bent; the rascally Q.C. telling her,
that he, Sir LIAR’S _ame damnée_, had only undertaken the business in
_my_ and my son’s interest; and what a thing it would be for her to
heal family differences! and what a proud position for her, a young
girl (39), to be the sole pivot that could keep the DERBY Ministry in!
and E—— J——, knowing that there was no friend like a woman, and no head
like a woman’s, when dictated to by her heart. All this I learned from
herself after; but where it struck me, like an electric flash, how they
had fooled, and sold—or rather _bought_—her, for I was the sold! was her
saying, the day I left H——’s stronghold, and we were driving to town, as
she pointed out of the window to the Asylum for Idiots, on the left-hand
side of the road, and said, with one of her vain-glorious chuckles, “As
E—— J—— said, ‘we won’t put _you_ there, Miss R——!’” “Then,” said I, “I
am certain that he, and his infamous client, _must_ have fooled you to
their heart’s content.” I have no doubt, too, that when she heard the
jingle of the thimbles, about keeping the DERBY Ministry in! and she
being the sole pivot! that could secure the Cabinet!! a vista opened
to her of all the salons in London; _ibid_, the becoming an honorary
member of all the literary cliques; and ditto, of her being made free of
the sesame of all the backstairs in Downing-street! To say nothing of
her having fallen desperately in love with Mr. L——! (poor fellow, how
soon his punishment overtook him), whom she used to rave about as the
_bo_-eye-dale (alias _beau ideal_) of what a young poet ought to be; so
handsome, so elegant, so charming! and I have no doubt in the plenitude
of her imbecile conceit, she thought she would fasten herself on me, as
a daughter-in-law, for the rest of my life. What a pity she could not
hear the loathing disgust that her _bo-eye-dale_ used to speak of her
with. At all events, it is some comfort to know how those he-villains—the
brand new Baronet, and the outlawed, swindling Q.C.—squeezed the orange
and then threw away the rind, and when they had got all they wanted of
her, kicked her off in a way _quite_ worthy of them. And it is also a
consolation, that, as a Frenchman said to me, when she used to be talking
about her _cost hume de cheval_ (Amazone), as she called her habit, “_Ah!
madame, quel bonheur puisque que cette drolesse la c’en est amourachée de
monsieur votre fils qu’elle ne peut jamais devenir votre belle-fille!_”
And now, before telling you what remains of this terrible history I must
exonerate my unhappy Son from ever having gone such lengths in impious
falsehood and hypocrisy, as to have written that disgusting “Dedication
of Lucile” to his infamous father’s “loved” and honoured name. He _never
did write it_; but how could a son publicly disclaim it, and say my
father is a Liar and a Forger? Of course he could _not_. But where he is
eternally to be blamed is for ever having let weakness and subserviency
come to _that_; when, instead of thanks for having thrown himself into
the breach to save his fiend father from the crushing disgrace of a full
_exposé_ of the Mad House Conspiracy, he found that unscrupulous monster
only wanted him to tell more lies, and forge new springes for his Victim
Mother, he should have unhesitatingly and firmly refused, and said—No,
sir, I have done everything I could, and more than I ought, to screen
you; setting facts, and truth, and my own feelings, and all justice, at
defiance to do so; but if you now intend to break faith, and go back from
all you promised in a moment of imminent peril, you cannot expect me to
write myself down a Coward or a Villain by deserting and betraying the
Mother, through whose unexampled forbearance and noble self-abnegation
I was alone able to serve you. For had not my poor, generous Mother
accepted _me_ as a hostage, you know the QUEEN’S dominions would not have
bribed her to forego the public redress she was so more than entitled to.
But this would have been honest and true; and how could Sir E——’s son,
pupil, and tool, be either? And, alas! the Bible is right—as the twig is
bent, so will it grow. Poor, poor, unfortunate young martyr! as his Fiend
Father has crushed my life from out its setting, so has he crushed that
young and once bright soul from out its orbit, and sent it erring through
the tenebrous nebula of his own Avernus. Poor young victim! truly
“His honour, rooted in dishonour stood,
And faith, unfaithful! made him falsely true.”
For if you only knew his opinion of and feeling towards that vile Father,
you would not wonder that after, through sheer moral cowardice, having
been made to run counter to all his _feelings_ and his whole nature, and
play the part of a sort of _Judas tranie Tartufe_! he should have written
in that heart-cry of his, called “Last Words,” that appeared three years
ago in the _Cornhill Magazine_.
“But what will the angels say, when they are looking at me?”
They will tell him perhaps that his Mother pitied even while she despised
him. There _are_ some persons who can manage to love, and yet despise; I
cannot, as I told him; for with me contempt is a moral bourne from which
no affection ever returns. But I am _not_ angry with him. Oh no, I wish
I was; for that would pass. No, I am not angry with him; I have left him
all I have in the world—not money, for I have none; but all my pictures,
books, bronzes, rare carvings, and rarer historical enamel portraits,
and miniatures, including a most exquisite one of _la belle Ferronière_,
that belonged to FRANCOIS PREMIER, and a fine miniature of Madame DE
MONTESPAN, set in a diamond bracelet, which had belonged to her son,
the Duc DE MAINE! also a fine miniature of the great Lord STRAFFORD, and
that most beautiful miniature of Lord BYRON that Lady CAROLINE LAMB left
me; my large Sèvres jewelled _Ecrelles_, with a portrait of LOUIS Quinze
on it, which he gave to poor MARIE ANTOINETTE when she was Dauphine; and
which she gave to the Comte D’ARTOIS (CHARLES DIX), who gave it to his
cousin, the Duc DE BOILLON, and he it was left it to my mother. All my
_bijouterie_ I have also left him, but with a solemn injunction in my
will, on pain of GOD’S judgment! that he should never desecrate the grave
of the Mother he had so _cruelly betrayed_, and inhumanly neglected, by
any tombstone, verbiage, or any impious posthumous sentimentalities! in
Poems or Magazines.—Amen.
And yet with all my knowledge of and unlimited faith in the diabolical
villainy of Sir EDWARD, there is _still_ a mystery of iniquity about his
unhallowed power (divorced as it is from all affection and respect) over
his truly unfortunate Son, that even I cannot fathom, nor even guess at.
But I must get to the end as quickly as possible; for much as I have
tried to condense this complex tissue of iniquity, which after all is but
a drop in the great ocean of it, in which I have been plunged; it would
have been quite unintelligible to you, as a stranger to both the actors,
and their actions, had I not, in narrating the latter, put you in some
degree _au fait_ to the former.
Well, the next day, after Miss R——’s semi-nocturnal visit, when without
giving me any particulars, she informed me I was to be set at liberty
almost immediately, H—— came up, and was more explicit, for he was in
a towering passion, fanning himself with a newspaper that he clutched
vindictively. “’Pon my word,” said he, “those abominable papers are
too bad! More especially the Somersetshire ones; to read their abusive
tirades, one would really suppose, Lady L——, that instead of being
surrounded with every comfort, you had been thrown into a dungeon.” “You
forget, Mr. H——,” said I, “to the impartial public, who are not _paid_,
and have no _interest_ in thinking otherwise, the infringement upon the
liberty of the subject in _any_ way, much less in the brutal one of so
unwarrantably kidnapping and seizing without judge or jury an inoffensive
and defenceless woman, and incarcerating her in a lunatic asylum, is
in itself a quite sufficient deed of iniquity—whatever the Sybarite
surroundings of the locale may be—to raise a storm of public indignation
far more easily evoked than quelled. And you also forget that, take a
person nolens volens, and by force, to Buckingham Palace, or to the
Tuileries, which is rather more like a palace—and nail down the windows,
lock the doors, and put keepers to attend to them, and _presto_! you
convert the palace into a prison, and the most terrible of all prisons,
a Madhouse.” Finding he could get no sympathy from me, as he might have
supposed! he began tapping that bay window of a paunch of his, and said
he was so ill with all the uproar that was going on, that he was obliged
to take “_shugger_” (sugar) in his tea!!!! which he never did but when he
was ill! Having stated this highly interesting and physiological fact,
he left the room as abruptly as he had entered it. Now really his coming
to _me_ for sympathy and consolation, on the vituperations of the public
against him, was almost as fine a piece of logical and inverse justice as
Lord DUNDREARY, in _Punch_, saying in a fury to his wife upon getting his
brother’s letter, “I tell you what, GEORGINA, if I had known you would
have had such a beastht of a brother-in-law as THOM, I would not have
married you.” Feeling very sure that Mr. L—— would return to the charge,
I sat down and wrote him a letter, ready to be given to him when he came.
Oh! if we have a Guardian Angel, why did mine desert his post on that
day! of all days? I had nearly finished my letter, when that too odious
Miss R—— marched in again informing me she had brought my Son down with
her again; then, said I, “you may take him _back_ with you again; but
just wait two minutes and my letter will be finished, which I am writing
to him, and you can give it to him.” Whereupon this always vulgar,
ill-bred, and unwarrantable person, pounces down her skinny, talon-like
hand, seizes my letter, and tears it to pieces. I was indignant at such
an impertinent outrage, and ordered her to leave the room. She had
scarcely done so, before the door again opened, and in walked Mr. L——,
while the door was locked on the outside! The next moment he was kneeling
and kissing my feet in a paroxysm of tears—I cannot describe the scene
that followed, and I would not, if I could. Enough, that at the end of
three hours, he still found me _determined_ to seek legal redress, both
in the Divorce Court and elsewhere, for the culminating outrage his
Father had inflicted upon me. He said he thought his Father would destroy
himself, rather than stand the disgrace. I laughed at _that_, and told
him not to alarm himself, for that his Father was far too great a coward
to die voluntarily, even a coward’s death; he might, indeed, said I,
murder either you or me, if he thought he could lay the crime on anyone
else, or make it appear that we had committed suicide. And to tell you
the truth, I have _no_ compassion for that nice sense of honour which
only shrinks from the public odium of exposure, but defies GOD, by never
recoiling before the commission of any amount of evil doing that money
can conceal, or hypocrisy varnish. “Then, mother,” said he solemnly and
sadly,—“every prospect I have in life is ruined, I never _can_ stand the
fearful, the horrible exposure of my Father that is inevitable.” Here,
he had hit the mark; I leaned back in my chair, irresolute, and he saw
it, while he continued kneeling with both my bands in his, and his pale
tearful, agonized face, looking up to mine. “But don’t you know, don’t
you see, ROBERT, that the _moment_ your Father has cleared this precipice
with impunity; then shall I be debarred by ‘condonation’ from my redress,
and left more at his mercy (who has none!) than ever.”