Through the toxified haze of his neural firings he was vaguely disappointed when the policeman walked away. What he wanted, he realised at that giddying moment, was not to be secretive but to be discovered and disgraced. To be kicked into the gutter and spat on by the respectable. Recognised for the untouchable he knew he was.
He returned to his townhouse that sweltering night shaking with an emotion he thought must be fear. We know he spent most of the following afternoon talking alone with a minister of religion; though what was discussed we do not know. Whatever it was, it appears to have changed nothing. At dusk that evening he was seen in Whitechapel.
That was the night he became aware that he was being followed. Near Christ Church Spitalfields he noticed him first: that tall, cadaverous, unusually dressed blade with the huntsman’s short jacket and the mop of russet curls. His complexion apart, he might have been a gondolier. He was smoking a cheroot and staring up at the moon. Something about him took Merridith’s attention. For a while he didn’t quite know what it was. But then it occurred to him in a moment of fierce clarity ‘like the one immediately before the opiate brings sleep or stupefaction’. It was the man’s very nonchalance, his casual air. It marked him out like a pointing finger. He was the only man in the East End at midnight who did not appear to be selling or buying.
He saw him again in King David Lane, again at the bottom of Ratcliff Road, standing in the light of a gin-shop doorway and reading a newspaper that was folded in half. The sound of raucous singing was coming from the groggery: a song of the beauty of Whitechapel girls. Merridith watched for fifteen minutes. The man never turned a page of his newspaper.
Two women drifted towards the Viscount and briefly tried to tout him. A lamp-man illuminated the naphtha globes on the corner. A window opened. A window closed. A coach went past in a clatter of wheels. When he looked again, the man was gone.
Perhaps just paranoia: an hallucination of some kind; like the clack of footsteps behind him in the soot as he crossed by the match factory to find a hackney. But three mornings later he saw the man outside the house, peering down curiously into the below-stairs area. As though sensing the gaze from the drawing-room window he had looked up slowly and steadily to meet it. A foxlike face. Ginger sideburns. He smiled and tipped his hat and walked casually away, as leisurely as if he owned Tite Street and all its inhabitants and had finished making inventory of his possessions.
For weeks afterwards Merridith dreaded the arrival of the mail, certain it would bring an extortionist’s missive. He sat awake at night in a chill slick of sweat, cursing himself for his weakness but mostly for his stupidity. Laura would leave him. The boys would be taken away. It would be Laura and the boys who had to bear his disgrace.
On the morning of his thirtieth birthday, he realised he had contracted an infection. A discreet consultant doctor, a former college-mate at Oxford, had taken care of matters in a briskly efficient way. He had made no accusations; asked no questions. Probably he did not need to ask. But Merridith would have to be careful, he counselled. He had been fortunate this time but might not be again. Gonorrhoea could cause insanity. Syphilis could kill. Such dreadful diseases could be passed to his wife. Given the sleeping arrangements at Tite Street that would have been impossible, but he appears to have made up his mind to swear off the East End.
December came. Laura and the boys returned from Sussex. Christmas was peaceful enough in the Merridith household that year. He began to calm down, to take less laudanum. In April the family engaged a controversial new physician, a pioneer of hypnotism and other unorthodox methods: he prescribed the smoking of hemp to soothe the patient’s nerves. It seemed to work, at least for a time. A strong swimmer since his boyhood on the shores of the Atlantic, Merridith took to bathing in the Serpentine early in the morning. The journals start to display a lighter touch: a man emerging from a long, fearful night. By summer he had become a regular at a Turkish Baths near Paddington, where he was ‘thrashed about by chubbies with the branches of trees’. He exercised at the gymnasium at his Mayfair club and ‘chucked about the medicine-ball like a champion bloody pugilist’. Relations with his wife evidently improved a little, though the use of separate bedrooms was always to remain. Sestinas and villanelles appear in the diaries, rather workmanlike little sonnets but not entirely unimpressive. (One, perhaps importantly, is entitled: ‘Reparation’.4) That he had done harm to ‘the unfortunate of the East End of London’ perhaps gave him cause for a deal of careful thought; so it might appear from his numerous large donations to the church groups and charities working in that area. In October 1844, he writes in a margin: ‘Certain painful events of the last several years have come to seem as those from the life of some other man; a creature with little to do with myself.’
And then one morning at breakfast what he had dreaded finally happened. His winnings from the raffle were delivered through the door.
1 At the time of revising the present edition of this book (1915) Lord Kingscourt’s executors still insist that the drawings may never be published, and that only selected quotations from the journals may be used. (Mysteriously, one of his drawings appeared in a pornographic work published anonymously in London in the late 1870s. In fect it is not one of his ‘Whitechapel’ sketches but a copy of ‘The Three Graces’ from the book of symbols Emblematum Liber (1531) by Andrea Alcation, which Lord Kingscourt made while honeymooning in Italy.) The daybooks in which the Whitechapel drawings were made are kept under lock and key at the ‘Secretum’ or Secret Museum for Obscene Works at The Department of Antiquities, British Library, London. – GGD
2 ‘Towards the end of the run occurred an unsavoury incident, recollection of which has never quite left me. A Negro cabin-lad, formerly a slave, was being cruelly set-upon by a drunken Commodore when a young Irish Lieutenant, Viscount Kingscourt of Carna, happened upon the scene. Contrary to every rule, the Commodore had stripped the boy. A brawl ensued during which the Viscount struck his superior officer. The former had been Middle-Weight champion at Oxford University, a matter the latter discovered ere long. It was only at the intervention of the Viscount’s father that profounder unpleasantness was avoided.’ From Four Bells For the Dog-Watch: A Life at Sea by Vice-Admiral Henry Hollings K.C.M.G. (Hudson and Hall, London, 1863.)
3 Though he was never a committee member of any such body, he appears to have made regular financial contributions to one: a society established by Dickens and his friend Angela Burdett-Coutts (of the banking family) ‘to rescue betrayed and unfortunate girls’. – GGD
4 Permission to reproduce has not been granted by the executors. – GGD
CHAPTER XXIV
THE CRIMINALS
IN WHICH DAVID MERRIDITH EXPERIENCES A NUMBER OF GRAVE REVERSALS.
He looked at it for a time as it lay on the salver. Kingscourt. Tiet Street. Chelsea. London. It was not the error in spelling that gave away the contents, but the anonymously careful print in which the envelope had been addressed. No copperplate hand that might be identified: the exaggerated neatness of the poison pen.
‘Is something the matter?’ the Viscountess asked.
She had not seen the letter, Merridith knew that. Easily he could have pocketed it and waited until later to read it. But he did not try to conceal it; nor his fear. Instead he ordered the servants to leave the room immediately and he waited until his wife returned to the table. His thoughts at that moment may only be guessed. His actions we know about; and they seem perhaps strange.
He told Laura Markham he had loved her always, that he always would, as long as she would have him. But what was in this letter could not bring them happiness. It would change things between them, possibly for ever. He had suspected it was coming. Now it had come. She might feel she had to leave; he would understand if she did. He would leave the house himself if that were her decision. But whatever the letter’s contents, he could not hide any more. He had hidden for so long; the time had come to face things. Did she understand what he was asking? Could sh
e bear to be asked it? She said she did – or thought she did – and would stand by him now, no matter the cost.
Opening the envelope, he sliced into his fingertip. A smear of betraying blood may still be seen across the first page.
November the elivith 1844 Martlemas
Lord David Merridith
sun of THE MURDERER
we men ar sertin of yr Fathers tenants in the distrits of
kilekierin carna glinsk and ailencally this past sixmounth he
has bien raesing the rents by dubbal an more al around
anyman belaytd with his rent by wan weak is afterbien told he is to be evictd no mather his sircumstans or Fambly
he is after sellin some lands alriddy
a third porshion of we his tenants ar now orderd to pay rent to that bastard Blake at Tully a grater meazel who never livd and he is after evicting many by now
five hunderred are put out on the roadsied many is starvd hier with no Relief espectd
theyr is NOTHIN espectd hier only an imediat starvasion
yr Father is afterbien warnd but has not quit so i do heirby warn yrself to advis him most surtinly to put back the rents the way they war an help the poeple in thise desprit timse or if he does not he an yr Fambly will fiel the displaeshuor of me an my bretherin
i am my men will bare it no longer WE AR NOT DOGS
y wil mayke him to quit it or els-be lybill
we are men who wuld rather to work than to fiet but by Christ we will fiet when we have to
shuld he contineu to grind us we wil be under the nisissity of shooting any member of yr Fambly in the open dayliet for we may as wel loose our lifes as to loose our suport
nobody wil get no merci not yrself nor yr Wife nor yr Suns nor any othr whiel or own wifes an childerin get only starvasion an coldnes
i am as wel die on a Rope as by hunger
it puts no plaeshour on us to writ this words but we mean it we swaeyr to Jaesis Chriyst Crucifiyd an vow it solem with our bloud so help us
thier is yr doom David Merridith
so if you liyk it
let yr Father contineu in his tirany
an you wil right sune be held lybill for it
y may see from this letter that we nowhere is yr nous
Be warnd – London is not so far from connemara
YAR WATCHD & MAYBE GOT ANNY TIME
i am
yr humbl an lyill srvnt (no more)
Cptn Moonliet of the Relybill Hibernian Defenders
Jaesis rest her but yr late Mother wuld be ASHAMD this day of the ROTTIN name of Merridith
The smile of the foxman flamed through his mind: the picture of him walking away down the street.
He held the letter lightly, as though the paper were burning.
‘How did you know?’ Laura asked him tearfully.
Her husband answered quietly that it was a matter of intuition.
He wrote to his father immediately but the letter came back unopened. He sent it again but there was no response. Laura said he should go to Galway without further delay, but Merridith felt that might be to make things worse. Almost eight years had passed in silence between son and father. The Earl had never even responded to the news of the births of his grandchildren; had ignored Merridith’s periodic attempts at reconciliation. You couldn’t just amble up to the house without warning.
‘Then write and say you’re coming whether he likes it or no,’ Laura said.
But the spurned son had not been able to do that.
Instead he wrote to the Rector of Drumcliffe, Richard Pollexfen, revealing nothing about the note he had received from the tenants, but merely asking for news of the estate. A long letter came back the following week. Merridith was thanked for the generous donation he had sent and assured that the Rector would put it to good use among the local poor. Things at Kingscourt were not at all happy lately. The north wing had been closed up; the roof had collapsed. The storms of last November, which had damaged the manor, had also torn down the piers in the bay. The fishermen had nowhere to land a catch. Many were begging. Some were in the almshouse. Since the last of the servants had resigned from his father’s employment, the manor had gone to rack and ruin. Only the groom, one Burke, remained on the property, and was living in the ruins of the burnt-down gate lodge. The Earl rarely left the house any more.
The tenants’ rents had been raised by a third in February and then doubled at the start of the summer. Every one of the three thousand families had received a visit from a hired agent, saying rents would have to be paid promptly from now on, or evictions would follow within a matter of weeks. Many observers had found what had happened inexplicable. Lord Kingscourt, if doing things in his own certain style, had always been regarded as fair to the tenants. But that had now changed. Some of his actions were quite beyond understanding. He, the Rector, had tried to intervene, but His Lordship had refused to meet him or even to respond to his letters.
It was true that about a third of the estate appeared to have been sold to Blake of Tully. Immediately the Commander had evicted seven hundred families for non-payment of arrears. The situation was becoming critical. A gang of agitators calling itself ‘The Hibernian Defenders’ or ‘Else-be Liables’ – you did as they ordered, or else you were liable – had been attacking the outlying fields of Connemara’s estates, maiming cattle and burning crops. They ran around the country in hoods and cloaks. Their marque was an H enclosed by a heart. If a man were denounced as a collaborator by one of his neighbours he would soon receive a visit from these miscreant savages. Seven Connaught landlords had been assaulted this year. It was only a matter of time before one of them was murdered. ‘Old obeisances are eroding with frightening suddenness, as the banks of the bay after November’s storms.’ Clichés were beginning to acquire fresh power, for it might now be said with a bitter accuracy that Connemara was edging close to the precipice. Where it all might end was anyone’s guess, but open revolution must be counted a possibility. ‘If Your Lordship can think of any means by which your father might be converted from his recent policies, that would be to do him and the people a very great service.’
Emily returned from her travels in Tuscany. Natasha left Cambridge where she had been studying privately in the hope of somehow gaining admission to take a degree. Both went to Galway at Easter ’45 and stayed. Emily’s letters to London were frightened and confused. The poverty of the people was shocking, she wrote; it seemed far worse than anything she could remember. She had been reading newspaper reports of a strange new potato murrain which had appeared in Europe; if it made its way to Ireland something dreadful would happen. Her father was refusing to discuss whatever he had done. It was nobody’s business how he ran his own lands. His health was deteriorating with a speed that was appalling. He could hardly sit up and had to be helped to do everything. A woman in Clifden market had spat at Natasha’s feet. A little boy had shouted: ‘Landlord’s bitch’. One day, while out walking, she had been followed across the fields by a trio of men in hoods and cloaks.
By September it was clear that the strange blight had come. The smell of the rotting tubers tainted the air of Connemara: a choking sickly-sweetness, like cheap perfume. The poor had nothing. Many were already starving. Lady Emily wrote to her brother and pleaded with him to help. He sent a donation of two hundred pounds.
And then his father had died. And everything had changed. He remembered the words of Emily’s telegram. ‘Papa’s sufferings almost ended. He asks for you, Davey.’
He and Laura had travelled to Dublin that night. His father had died the following evening in the arms of the heir he had driven away. Under his pillow was a note he had left, in a spidery and almost illegible scrawl. According to its date, it had been written more than a year ago, and Merridith did not know which possibility was the more terrible: that his father had lost his understanding of time, or had indeed written it a year ago, knowing he was about to slip into the void. ‘Forgive me, David. Bury me beside Mama. Do your bes
t for the tenants, always.’
The Union colours flown on his last battleship were draped across the casket by the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. Atop was placed a pair of buckskin gloves which the deceased had been gifted by Nelson at Copenhagen. On the advice of the Sergeant of the local constabulary, ‘driver-men’ with shotguns were hired to accompany the coffin, in case the Liables came to attack it. A riderless horse clopped ahead of the procession to Clifden; a slightly ludicrous touch, Merridith thought, and he wondered who had insisted on it.
The roads were heavy with that saccharine stench, the once green meadows now swamps of turbid grime. A cabin was burning on a stone-strewn hillside. Small clumps of clothing were lying in the fields.
Most of the resident landlords of the county were waiting in the dim and draughty chapel. Amelia Blake and her husband, the Baron of Leinster. Tommy Martin of Ballynahinch. Hyacinth D’Arcy of Clifden. The catafalque by the altar had been covered with a banner that was emerald green with a large gold harp. The late Earl’s instruction, the Rector explained; the standard had been draped over his own father’s casket. Not one of Kingscourt’s tenants or former tenants came. Many in the streets of Clifden turned their backs as the cortège passed. One man who had been evicted was seen to spit on the ground. Another called out: ‘May the bastard rot.’ But the mourners pretended they did not notice.
There was a brave attempt at singing, and even at harmony, but the nineteen voices comprising the entire congregation were not quite loud enough to be heard above the organ.
Jesus, Saviour; pilot me,
Over life’s tempestuous sea.
Unknown waves before me roll,
Hiding rock and treach’rous shoal.
Chart and compass come from thee,
Jesus, Saviour; pilot me.
The Lord-Lieutenant dropped the first clod of earth in the grave. He gave a salute as the Last Post was sounded but there was no oration and no volley of gunfire, the Earl having made clear that he wanted neither. The Rector read the verses from the opening of Genesis: the creation of the world, the naming of the animals. Captain Helpman of the Coastguard laid a wreath of white lilies. The instant the Prayers of Farewell were finished, Merridith said he needed a few moments to be alone. Everyone understood. He was told to take his time. Hard to be the mourner who disappointed the deceased.
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