Kit himself never talked of the matter and continued his carouses as though no beadle had never crossed his path. But she liked to tease me. Some months later at a water pique-nique she said: You see that man over there.
The one in the black hat?
The same.
What of him?
He swears he saw you vomit in Whetstone Park – and then she laughed and went off.
Another time, I was going down a dark passage at New Hall when I met a young gentleman in a snuff-coloured coat who said in a gruff voice:
Surely you remember me?
No, ah that is, you have the advantage of me. I can’t recall the exact occasion on which –
I saw you vomit in Whetstone Park – and with a laugh, my lady threw off her velvet beaver and shook out her long fair curls.
She was much given to masquerade and once with other ladies of the Court acted in a masque which greatly vexed her parents who were sober country folk and her mother wrote to rebuke her, though she was glad it was a woman acted the man’s part with her and not some young man.
But though she had her giddy flights, she was much given also to melancholy – and to suspicion.
Why are you all whispering against me?
What? Nobody was whispering, my dear.
I heard whispering. I heard someone say, she is too stupid to understand.
No one would say such a thing. Jem, tell her nobody was uttering a word before she came in.
It’s true, I swear, madam. I was reading the Mercury, and His Grace was polishing his new pistols. Perhaps it was the noise of His Grace’s brushes.
Hah, you think I shall believe that? Too stupid indeed.
Madam, it is the truth.
Then she laughed as if it were she had been playing some prank on us, but I do not know what.
Don’t look so solemn, she said. I’ll not betray you.
What is there to betray?
I must write to my mother, she said thoughtfully, breaking off the former conversation as though it had never been.
She called for my company if she had none better, when Kit had gone off to the new Dutch wars in search of glory, though he heard not a shot fired, or when he was drilling his militia, for he was Lord-Lieutenant of two counties now, of Essex and Devon. ‘Playing at his soldiers’ his wife called it, for she thought little of his martial prowess. Then he must go to the House of Lords, and to the King’s, for he was lately made a Gentleman of the Bedchamber and enjoyed a pension of £1,000 a year, though God knows how little he needed it.
Thus willy-nilly I became escort to Duchess Elizabeth, but not in the same sense as I had been to her mother-in-law. Elizabeth was very young and she wanted a guide to the sights of the town. So it was that I showed her the shipyards at Deptford, and the Tower of London and the new churches in the City that was yet all dust and clangour with the rebuilding after the Great Fire and many another palace and temple.
Jem, will you take me to New Bedlam?
It isn’t a fitting place for ladies. Your husband would not forgive me if I caused you distress.
But the Duchess of Grafton has been there, and the Duchess of Portsmouth. They say the lunatics are greatly diverting.
They’re not put there for our diversion.
Oh Jem, don’t be so pompous. Besides, we may give them money for their lodging and I’ve heard the hospital is very fine.
So we went to the New Bethlehem Hospital on Moorfields, to call it by its proper name. And indeed it was a fair palace with a French spire and gable in the centre and long wings with a French pavilion at either end, not unlike the hospital that Wren also built at Chelsea, but Bedlam is more beautiful. As we came in, men upon a scaffold with ropes were bringing two great stone figures up to the top of the gate-piers. The statues were naked and couchant. One was in chains and snarled like a dog, the other bore an expression of sightless vacancy. They swung in the air above our heads like horrid phantasms in a nightmare.
Mania and Melancholy, said Matthew the porter, our cicerone in his blue gown and bearing a fine silver staff. They are carved by Mr Cibber, after the statues by Michael Angelo at Florence.
But isn’t it cruel to show the sufferings of the Mad to the world?
You’ll see them soon enough inside, madam. The governor is much pleased with the statues. May I also draw your attention to these ingenious figures here? See the boxes they carry. If you drop in a penny, it goes straight down into the pedestal. You see, they’re in blue, same as me, that’s our livery. They were made at the expense of Mr Foot, one of our governors.
As our coins went chink, chink down through the figures of the begging gypsies, I could see an unhealthy excitement had taken hold of Elizabeth. Her cheeks were flushed and her hands trembled, as she put a shilling into each of the poor-boxes.
We passed through these Penny Gates, as Matthew called them, into a large hall. On either side were long galleries from which we could hear a dim hubbub as of a crowd gathering with evil intent.
That room there is where the physician and the apothecary examine the patients when they come in and before they go out, though they must stand before the court first to see whether they are cured. Oh they’re tigers that court, I’ve seen many a patient look as sane as you or me, butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths, but give ’em ten minutes before the court and they are raving and gibbering and it’s back to the lock-up and no appeal, I can tell you.
Elizabeth was scarcely listening but was already off out of the hall down the gallery. I followed her through the press of people who were standing in idle chatter, some eating and drinking, others smoking their pipes or playing at cards on little folding tables. We might have been in Covent Garden or Westminster Hall.
Which are the lunatics? Elizabeth whispered to Matthew.
Oh they are mostly in the cells, though some of the quieter ones have the liberty of the gallery.
What sport it must be to distinguish which is which. Jem, that sad-looking gentleman over there, is he a melancholiaque, do you think?
That, madam, is Dr Allen, he keeps a private madhouse at Finsbury, but he takes care of patients in Bedlam too. His methods are said to be very modern. The masculine patients are on this floor. We have separated the females on to the floor below that there may be no lewdness.
We stared through the iron grilles that pierced the high gallery every five yards. The cells were high too and airy like bare chapels in a cathedral, but instead of an altar in each there was a piteous creature upon a heap of straw, moaning or communing with himself in a ceaseless low babble. Some among them seemed unconscious of our presence but others stood up against the bars and bared their teeth at the idlers or held their hands out for alms and other gifts that were thrust at them.
Ha, I heard a sharp voice louder than the rest, there goes the Mad-Quack, that’s him, Allen the torturer. You want bleeding or vomiting or purging, go to Finsbury, he’ll suit you with his rusty lance.
There was a crowd gathered around the cell from which the voice came. And it was a minute or two before I could make my way through them to see the speaker who was still ranting.
I’m a gentleman, sir, and a middling scholar and something of a poet. The Quack tried to beat the poetry out of me. He beats the madmen at Finsbury, you know, birching’s his Physick. You wouldn’t think it to look at him. Hey Quack, where’s your birch?
We looked for the sad-looking gentleman, but he had vanished in the throng.
Suddenly I came face to face with the man behind the bars and knew him instantly.
Mr Carcase, sir.
More people know Tom Fool than Tom Fool knows. You’ve heard me read my verses perhaps. They’re to be published shortly, the first poems ever to be written at Bedlam. I advise you to subscribe for a rarity. I shall entitle them Lucida Intervalla.
Don’t you remember me? Jeremiah Mount? We used to meet at the Leg.
You have the advantage of me, sir. The Duchess of Portsmouth was here last week and Mi
stress Gwyn. I upbraided them both on the grounds of their loose behaviour. As a minister of the Established Church I could do no other. The Quack will have me unfrocked. He had me committed here while I was about the Lord’s work, bringing damnable Dissenters back to the true Church. I told Mistress Gwyn that the King should cleave to her, being a Protestant. The Quack has me locked up here claiming that I am no priest, but my flock are not deceived. As you see, they come and I absolve them. The Duke of Grafton looked into my cloister and asked me how I did and I wrote him a poem. Mr Stackhouse presented me with a periwig, and I wrote him a poem. No matter how small the gift – an orange, a sixpence, a bottle of ink – they all have a poem. Thus they have absolution and immortality together. Is that not a fair bargain?
Do you not remember . . . the matter of Pepys?
Pepys. He spat out the word. There is the author of all my misfortunes, he and the Quack. Yet it was the design of Providence that I was removed from the Navy Office to Bedlam, for I became free to do the Lord’s work and reduce Dissenters to the Church. Hear my words, O Israel.
And in his high sour voice, he recited:
I’m a minister of God’s most Holy Word:
Have taken up the gown, laid down the sword.
Him I must praise, who open’d hath my lips,
Sent me from Navy to the Ark by Pepys.
For the Duke’s favour more than years thirteen.
But I excluded, he high, fortunate;
This Secretary I could never mate.
But Clerke of th’ Acts, if I’m a parson, then
I shall prevail: the voice outdoes the pen.
Some among the crowd snickered when they heard the verses, at which Carcase shouted, those who mock the Lord’s word shall be cast into outer darkness.
Of course he’s not a parson, Matthews murmured in my ear. They brought him here for breaking up a Dissenters’ meeting. Six strong ’uns to hold him down, then he broke the windows of the coach, we put him in a cell with no glass, but nowadays he’s harmless enough, except he still thinks he’s a reverend.
As Matthews finished, Carcase crooked his finger at me to signal me to come up closer. I pressed my nose against the bars so that we were only two inches apart (his breath was foul and fishy).
I knew you at once, he whispered to me, I have to feign madness, this is the only place I’m safe from my enemies. But I’ll be released soon in time for the great conflagration.
Conflagration?
Now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face. Come here tomorrow at the same time, when the people are gone, and I shall unfold more of the matter you spoke of.
While I had been conversing with Carcase, I had lost sight of the young Duchess and for some minutes could not find her again in the throng. She was handing apricots through the bars to an old man who could say nothing by way of thanks except to set his teeth chattering. He wore only a dirty white robe which fell from his shoulders as he stretched forward to receive the apricots and uncovered his filthy privates. He laughed and my lady laughed too, as though they had hatched the trick between them. I began to wish to be free of the place, but the Duchess insisted we must stay and talk with each of the lunatics in turns.
The next day being Sunday, there were no visitors but by appointment. The gallery was as quiet as a church aisle and as chilly though it was yet September. To my surprise Mr Carcase was not alone.
At the bars of his cell stood a tall gentleman in a long black coat edged with lace. His eyebrows and beard were black as night. As he turned to look at me, I perceived that he squinted so that he appeared to examine me with a magistrate’s eye.
Colonel John Scott, sir, of Scotts Hall in the County of Kent, at your service.
Don’t I know you? I burst out, for there was something profoundly familiar about the man, yet I could not recall having seen anyone like him.
I wish I could claim the pleasure of your acquaintance. Perhaps we met in the Americas. Are you acquainted with Long Island?
Not at all.
Or New York perhaps. I have considerable property in both places.
I was never there in my life.
Indeed I’ve so much property there, continued the Colonel, paying me little heed, that I lately found it convenient to sell two or three expanses to the Governor of Barbados. I removed to the West Indies to lead one of our regiments against the French, you may have heard some mention of the action. That was before I returned to my native land to assist Lord Sandwich’s Committee on the Plantations with informations on conditions in America. There are so few white men who are conversant with the Indian tongue. I count Sunk Squaw as a particular friend, a remarkable woman, she is queen of the Indians of Long Island. Have you ever had a Indian woman?
Ah no.
There is no experience like it. I don’t say they are clean, but they are perfectly formed for the arts of love. They sing, you know.
Sing?
As they fuck. Sounds much like a lullaby. I speak of the Indians of Long Island. In the Carolinas they are silent. You’re a friend of Mr Carcase?
We have had dealings in the past.
And shall have again. For we’ll soon have you sprung from this trap, sir. But not before we are ready. All our bells must chime together.
Bells?
I cannot say more at the moment. All depends on the great bell that must be tolled. Here, sir, I’ve brought you some victuals.
The Colonel thrust a bag of oranges and some bread and cheese through the bars. Carcase took them and placed them carefully under a blanket. He looked pale this morning, but wide awake. He might have been an attentive clerk who hoped to win favour with his master. One could scarce imagine him ranting or raving as he had the day before. Only his yellow eyes flickered to and fro between us.
He knows S.P., Carcase said in a discreet whisper.
Do you, sir? Then you know a damnable villain who has defrauded the Navy. But I will tell you what is worse, sir . . .
Colonel Scott leant very close to me. He smelled of some exquisite fragrance, bergamot or jessamine.
Then very quietly: Popery, sir, that’s what’s worse. That’s what will bring the whole of England tumbling down.
Pepys a p—?
Hush, sir. But you may depend upon it, he’s the worst sort, sly, deceitful and, I scarcely need say, in the pay of a foreign power.
But –
You doubt me, sir. You are wrong to doubt me. I shall overwhelm you if you doubt me.
We were clerks together in O.C.’s time.
Then you know, sir – or ought to know (here he withdrew from me and looked at me sidelong with his squinting eye, as though I might be keeping information from him) that his late wife was a Papist, his musician – one Morelli – is a Jesuit to whom he makes confession, his house is a veritable devil’s cauldron of altars and crucifixes and rosaries and incense –
Of course, I said. Jack Scott. Bare-arse Jack.
What? he said. What?
You must remember. We played together, down by the stream, and you pushed me in as your mother came out of the mill with the parson. Is she still alive, your mother?
And you are –?
Jemmy Mount from Churn.
Ah yes, he said, discommoded, a faint recollection does come back to me. How far our paths have branched.
We were so poor.
It is true that my family’s fortunes were temporarily eclipsed. Scotts Hall had not then –
Your cottage was even smaller than ours.
A cousin –
You remember Emm, I’m sure.
Emm, Emm? I was in love with all the girls. What rascals we were, said the Colonel managing a laugh.
You must remember her.
Certainly I do, he said. Beautiful girl, very fair.
She was brown as a berry but I did not say so, for my temper was hot.
Far-off days, the Colonel said, let us hear no more of them. My mother would be delighted to entertain you on her estate.
<
br /> In Kent?
In Long Island, the Colonel said in a decided manner.
And where do you live yourself?
Scotts Hall is let, temporarily, while I’ve been travelling. I was compelled to come to London at short notice, on this great matter, and I found lodgings in haste, above the Dog and Dripping Pan in Drury Lane. They are modest enough, but there is no harm in that. When one is about business of state, Incognito must be one’s watchword. I trust you will visit me there, but we must be sharp about it, for the great bell is to toll very soon. Mr Carcase, sir, I must take my leave of you. Good-day, good-day.
And the Colonel swung upon his heel, the silver lace of his coat-tails flashing like the wings of a pigeon disturbed from its roost. I wondered what caused this haste and then perceived a group of strollers come into the gallery. He must have heard their voices and taken fright, though I could not see why, for what did it matter who might be visiting a poor lunatic?
Two days later I called at the Dog and Dripping Pan which was a wretched tavern that I had never noticed before though I had walked along the street a hundred times.
I went in to inquire after the Colonel’s lodgings when I saw the man himself taking his ease at the foot of the stairs in conversation with a young woman. While they talked, he was painting his eyebrows and beard with a little black brush.
Hail, friend, one must always be prepared, the Colonel said, seeing my eyes light upon the paintbrush. Greatness lies in detail, as the philosopher said. I beg your pardon, Mrs P., have you met my childhood friend Jem –? I am afraid I forget your surname. We met through a common acquaintance, the Reverend Dr Carcase. Jem, may I present you to my delectable landlady, Mrs Paulett. Well, have not matters sped forward since we met but a couple of days ago?
What matters?
You haven’t heard? The terrible plot is uncovered. The worthy Mr Oates, a patriot if ever there was one, has gone to the King and told all.
All what?
I would have told you at our last meeting but the place was not private. How the Jesuits plotted to burn London and land an army from France, then kill the King and put his brother on the throne and if he would not do it kill him too. The Queen’s physician was to slip a potion in the King’s drink, or if he lacked the opportunity, Coniers the Jesuit stood ready to murder the King in the park, run him through with his knife a foot long which he has had consecrated for the purpose, some say by the Pope himself.
Jem (and Sam) Page 27