Watson’s Apology

by Beryl Bainbridge

  ‘I fear he is,’ remarked Dr Rugg solemnly. ‘And I’m afraid epilepsy must be ruled out. I found no evidence of it.’

  ‘We must all help him,’ said Fraser. ‘Many, many people have reason to be thankful to him. He has always been the most generous of men. I have seen him give the shirt off his back to a beggar in the street.’

  ‘Hardly the class of person who will be of much use to him now,’ objected Dr Rugg, but the young man wasn’t listening. He had left the table and now stood in front of the drawn curtains, his back to the doctor.

  ‘You don’t know him as I do,’ he said. ‘He is an unusual man.’ His voice shook. ‘He has a peculiar sweetness of character.’

  ‘So I have heard,’ murmured Dr Rugg, and he looked thoughtfully at the floor, remembering a woman under a filthy blanket, jack-knifed in the corner like an old battered doll.

  The next day Fraser visited Watson. He didn’t expect it would be an easy matter to get him to speak of the events of the previous day and had thought out his approach carefully. He was taken aback, when, after complaining that he wasn’t allowed to shave, Watson began immediately to talk of his wife. ‘I cannot pretend I have been a good husband,’ he said. ‘I have always been a man out of the ordinary for silence and reserve, and yet she was worried about some letters I had written to her in happier times. She said they were important to her. Do you think an unfeeling woman would concern herself with old love letters?’

  ‘I suppose not,’ said Fraser.

  ‘Only an hour before she was helping me gather my books together, in readiness for our move from the house. She wanted me to tie them into bundles – I admit it hadn’t crossed my mind. Books are much easier to transport in bundles of a dozen or so. She is a sensible woman, don’t you agree? No doubt she felt she was in a desperate situation. To have no home, no place to go – can you imagine how she felt? It is a dreadful thing for a man to lose his position, the roof over his head – but for a woman, just think of it, and for it to happen twice in a lifetime! It was the same for her when she was a young girl in Dublin – cast on to the world by an improvident father. Why else would she have married me? I should have lived my life alone. She could not resist saying hurtful things – there was more of aloes than of honey in her character. She would be the first to tell you that she wasn’t brought up to take second place. She always wanted more –’ Suddenly his mouth twitched; he looked bewildered. He was sitting opposite Fraser at a small table in a windowless anteroom.

  ‘Her words,’ prompted Fraser. ‘Her attitude. I would spare you if I could, but you must see that I have to know everything. I need to know the facts. The details.’

  ‘I don’t think I can remember them,’ replied Watson.

  It was not true, but he didn’t see why he should enlighten Fraser. What good would it do either of them? Details were a matter of subjective preference and merely reflected personal prejudices.

  ‘Do you remember feeling confused?’ asked Fraser.

  ‘In dealings with my wife,’ said Watson, ‘confusion was a daily occurrence. Sunday was no different in that respect. I had been working on a story about Hercules, I think, or perhaps that was the day before. As you know I’ve recently finished a translation of the expedition of the Golden Fleece and the two things may have merged in my mind. As far as I recall, the only moment of confusion, as you put it, was when I imagined that I was wearing the shirt of Nessus.’

  ‘And on the Sunday afternoon, Mrs Watson was sitting with you while you worked?’

  ‘The idea of love being harmful to the beloved is an interesting one,’ said Watson. ‘In my own experience, injury has been gradual rather than immediate.’

  On the rickety table stood a jug and a metal cup. All at once Watson dipped his finger into the jug and flicked out a dead fly. It landed on Fraser’s papers and wobbled there in a drop of water. ‘My wife always sat with me,’ he said. ‘Sunday or any other day you care to name.’ He smiled, but almost at the same moment his face became serious again. Fraser had the oddest feeling that his client was play-acting, though it was difficult to tell whether it was madness or sanity that he imitated.

  Suddenly Watson demanded, ‘What has happened to my dog? Where have they put him?’

  Fraser told him that Ellen Pyne was looking after it. It was on a chain in the backyard. He said, ‘I beg you to think of your position, head master. A motive will be sought, an intention –’

  ‘Cui bono?’ murmured Watson. Jumping to his feet he brushed a speck of dust from his trouser leg.

  ‘You must defend yourself,’ said Fraser miserably. ‘If not –’ he shrugged his shoulders and looked down at the fly.

  Seated again, Watson leaned across the table and asked who was taking care of his books and papers.

  Fraser thought it was a grotesque question. Dr Rugg was right – Watson was surely mad.

  ‘I will see to them,’ he said. ‘They will be quite safe for the time being, though I expect the owner of the house will want the contents cleared as soon as possible.’

  ‘Is it that urgent?’ demanded Watson. He seemed put out.

  ‘I’m afraid it is,’ replied Fraser. ‘You must realise that it may be some time before she will be able to rent the property again.’

  Watson said he didn’t see why. Notwithstanding certain irritations he had always found it a very pleasant house to live in.

  Fraser stood up, and rapping on the door waited to be let out.

  ‘I don’t think I will have anything more to tell you,’ Watson said. ‘It is, after all, a personal matter.’ Whether Watson was genuinely mad or not it was obvious to Fraser that the only possible line of defence was one of insanity. Witnesses must be found to say that the marriage had always been harmonious and medical men produced to speak of a sudden outburst brought on by melancholia. Later that day he spoke to Ellen Pyne; and he found her as uncommunicative as her master. ‘I know nothing, sir,’ she said, ‘beyond what Mr Watson has probably told you.’

  The day before, when Ellen had fetched Dr Rugg, she had given way to hysteria, but it had only been for a minute. She wouldn’t let her master down again, not after that one momentary lapse when she had gabbled of bonnets in the wardrobe and someone being shot and the dog digging a grave in the yard.

  The Daily Telegraph

  Excerpts from some writings found in a carpet bag in Horsemonger Lane Gaol, said to have been written by Mr Watson while waiting trial for his life and entitled: ‘Dead. A Contemplation.’

  I

  She is dead. She lies motionless. That which once animated her, animates her no longer. Thou canst not disturb her. Thou canst not touch her cheek and awaken her, and call upon her face, as thou wast wont, a smile answering to thine own. No; no feature, no limb will she stir more

  Nor will she utter a sound. The voice which for so many years addressed thee so familarly is dumb. Thou dost address her; thou callest her by name; thou lavishest on her the terms of endearment with which thou wast accustomed to please her ear; but the only reply is silence.

  II

  She is dead, but not gone. She will live in the memory of many, and especially in thine; she will live in thine to the end of thy life, an oft-recurring object of contemplation to thee

  Thou canst not free thyself, as it were, from her presence. Sleeping or waking, she is with thee wherever thou goest. She cannot be excluded.

  III

  Thou goest into another room. Thou rememberest the place where she used to sit, and the seat which she most frequently occupied. Was it this chair that was her favourite? No, it was this, with the peculiar wavy marks in the wood. The door opens. You look round. But no, it is a living member of the household that comes in. You seem half-disappointed. You had almost allowed yourself to think that the dead was coming to resume her place in her chair

  The seat which she loved you will regard as sacred to her. You will perhaps put it in a place by itself; so that no one can violate it.

  IV

 
; Thou venturest to inspect her little boxes and cases, the receptacles in which she treasured up gifts from friends. The things themselves may be of small value, but they had powerful charms in her eyes

  Here is something which thou recognisest with surprise. A scrap of paper, a little note which thou hadst utterly forgotten.

  V

  Thou sittest and reflectest upon her character, and upon the time which she passed with thee. Thou knowest that she was not quite perfect, and thou art at times disposed to let thy thoughts dwell upon her faults and imperfections. Was she not occasionally wayward, somewhat perverse, and difficult to persuade to comply with that which thou desirest? But what were these failings, which were but those of an hour, in comparison with the whole course of her married life? Was she not devoted to thy interests, and desirous to promote thy comforts, though sometimes it was difficult to perceive those feelings in her. Thou wilt not meditate on these little imperfections of a woman’s nature

  Are we not disposed, in regard to those who are deemed the good in mankind, to look, after their deaths, on their virtues only, and to dismiss from our thoughts whatever faults there were in their characters? Are we not desirous to remember only the sweet scent of the rose, and to forget the thorns among which it grew?

  VI

  The time for the funeral approaches. Those who once quarrelled now cease from discord. Thou bearest her in memory and will always bear. Thou art now at peace with her. She will offend thee no more in this life. Thou wilt not suffer thy memory to dwell on her failings

  She is dead, but thou dost not think of her as gone.

  The Times

  The strange murder at Stockwell must for the moment engross attention, and throw a distressing gloom over all thoughtful minds. It is one of those tragedies, happily rare, which reveal the possibilities of human evil, of moral and mental disease, or of both, under circumstances of everyday life, and which seem, therefore, to come close home to us like spectres dogging our steps.

  When some wretched, unintelligent, half-brutalised ruffian butchers his wife in a fit of drunkenness or rage, we feel divided by a great gulf from the very possiblities of such an outrage. He is an animal and has lived like an animal, and we seem simply to behold a more terrible and furious kind of wild beast among us. We view all such horrors as fearful spectacles, but we fail – perhaps more than we ought – to feel that community of nature and similarity of circumstances which could bring such crimes and miseries home to our own imaginations and could at once deepen and sober our horror by some dim sympathetic dread.

  Are these the possibilities which lie hidden in ordinary flesh and blood, in simple circumstances, and in ordinary middle-class life? Is our everyday human nature such a mere crust over a seething abyss? We fear such a lesson needs to be taken to heart. We have smoothed down our lives by civilisation to such a decent and regular exterior that we are apt to feel rather injured by the plain words and broad denunciations which ancient authorities, and even modern poets, are occasionally heard to mutter against us. Our novelists and would-be moralists play with the vices of the heart and body as mere materials for an amusing tale, fit to be read even by boys and girls. Our philosophers contemplate with serenity the emancipation of men, women and children from the old restraints and the stern regulations of tradition. It is only unscrupulous kings who set continents in flames, and we are thought to need nothing but a little education and political economy to keep the people steady and prosperous.

  Amid these flattering fancies we are startled by a deed which, at first glance, recalls nothing so much as the primaeval murder; and it occurs not amid those dens of violence or in those haunts of malicious crime which are nearer hell than earth, but in a decent neighbourhood, at a clergyman’s hearth, on a Sunday afternoon after a morning’s visit to church, associated with grey hairs and honoured age …

  PART 4

  Central Criminal Court

  Day One Jan. 10th 1872.

  Having pleaded ‘Not Guilty’ at the November Sessions, Watson was not asked to plead again. On being asked whether he wished to challenge any of the jury, he simply shook his head.

  The Hon. George Denman, Q.C., with Messrs Poland and Beasley, conducted the Prosecution, instructed by Mr Pollard, Assistant Solicitor to the Treasury. Mr Sergeant Parry, with the Hon. F. Thesiger, conducted the Defence, instructed by Mr Fraser, solicitor, of Dean Street. Mr Justice Byles presided.

  The Hon. G. Denman, in opening the case to the jury, said: ‘Gentlemen of the Jury, the prisoner at the bar, Mr John Selby Watson, is a clergyman of the Established Church, and, I believe, a man of about 67 years of age. He stands charged upon this indictment with the wilful murder of his wife, Anne Watson, who was 63 or 64 years of age at the time of her death. He himself, being a clergyman of the Established Church, and having been a schoolmaster, and being a man of learning and education and culture, stands charged with this offence.

  ‘Gentlemen, I need say nothing more to ensure your best attention to this case. I fear upon the facts it will be terribly clear that by the hand of the prisoner, and by his wilful act, the deceased came to her death; and so far as I am instructed, and so far as I can form any guess, the only defence that is at all likely to be set up is one frequently adopted in cases of murder; namely, that at the time the offence was committed the prisoner was not responsible for his actions. I am heartened to know that the prisoner is in the hands of one of the most powerful and eloquent counsels who ever conducted a case in a court of justice, and that the case is to be tried before a humane, learned, and experienced Judge.

  ‘The prisoner – Mr John Selby Watson – was appointed in 1844 as head master of Stockwell Grammar School. In September, 1870, he received notice that his services would be no longer required. At that time, and I believe for some five or six years previously, he had resided with his wife at 28, St Martin’s Road, Stockwell, and so far as external appearances went, they lived in a friendly and affectionate manner, the sort which subsists between a man and his wife, and especially so in the case of an aged couple. From the middle of 1870, at the beginning of the hot summer months, they slept in different apartments, and strange to say the servant was not asked to take any part in the cleaning of Mrs Watson’s room. This curious arrangement might possibly be due to the straitened means which had resulted from the prisoner losing his situation. However, as I told you, they lived on affectionate terms, though I should state there were no children born to the marriage. Nothing, as I will prove to you, indicated anything contrary to ordinary relations between the parties down to the 8th October, 1871, to which I am now about to call your attention.

  ‘The servant had been in the habit of taking a holiday every other Sunday, and the 8th of October was a Sunday. The prisoner and his wife went to church as usual, had their dinner as usual, and wine was taken to them in the library. The servant went away at four o’clock and did not return until nine, when certain things occurred which are of great importance in this case. The only person whom I am able to bring in communication with the prisoner and his wife, between the departure of the servant and her return, is an old lady named Tulley. Mrs Tulley will tell you that she went to the house at five o’clock and was kept a long time waiting at the door, and that she heard some confusion before she was let in.

  ‘When the servant returned at nine o’clock, she saw nothing at all unusual, except that she was informed that Mrs Watson had gone out and would not be back until next day. As she was going upstairs to bed the prisoner called her attention to a mark on the stairs outside the library door, and told her port wine had been spilt on the landing. In so doing, he was stating something he deliberately knew to be false.

  ‘On Monday the 9th the prisoner went to Turner’s on the Clapham Road and asked them to furnish him with a trunk or packing case. The box is here if it is necessary for you to see it. It is a box which is undoubtedly capable of holding any person of Mrs Watson’s size, if the object for which it was ordered was to place a corpse in that
box. The same afternoon the servant asked if her mistress would be back that day and the prisoner said she would not; whereupon she remarked it would be awkward, because there were candles or something of the kind which she wanted.

  ‘On Tuesday, the 10th October, the prisoner told the servant he would be away that night and advised her to get somebody in to keep her company. In the event, he did not go out; at about eleven o’clock he called out to her that if there was anything wrong with him in the morning, she should go for Dr Rugg. You will hear from the evidence that later that night he took some prussic acid with the probable intention of destroying his life.

  ‘On Wednesday, the 11th October, the prisoner went out both before and after breakfast. On his return he again told the servant that if he should fall ill she should go for the doctor. An hour or so later she heard him groaning, and subsequently fetched Dr Rugg. Dr Rugg found the prisoner unconscious, and after doing what he could for him he was shown some letters by the servant. Having read the note addressed ‘To the surgeon’, he went into the room behind the library and found the body of the deceased in a corner, in a sort of sitting position – in fact the sort of position which would have made it easy to dispose of the body by placing it in just such a box as I have described being ordered at the trunkmakers. Dr Rugg will tell you of the curious remark the prisoner made while dressing. He pointed to the chest of drawers and said, “Isn’t that a curious oyster shell?” He said it coolly and in such a way as you would hardly expect from a man, unless he were of a very great nerve indeed, who had committed a very horrible crime. It made a great impression on Dr Rugg, and in that way he will to some extent be a witness on behalf of the prisoner, his impression being that his coolness indicated the existence of insanity.

  ‘There was another document found, and as far as I can make out, it gives a clue to an expression, otherwise unintelligible, with regard to the exception of his happiness and felicity. It is in Latin and is as follows – Felix in omnibus fere rebus praeterquam quod ad sexum attinet femineum. Saepe olim amanti amare semper nocuit. The former part means – “Happy in all things except that pertaining to the female sex”. The latter part may be said to be ambiguous. The sentence is one capable of three or four interpretations. I should say a scholarlike translation would be, “To a person who has loved often in former times, loving has never been anything but a trial and an injury.”