Piccadilly A Fragment of Contemporary Biography — 03 - Part IIb: Madness

People call me odd.

I wonder really whether the conflicts of which my brain is the occasional arena are fiercer than those of others.

I wonder whether other people's thoughts are as like clouds as mine are--sometimes, when it is stormy, grouping themselves in wild fantastic forms; sometimes chasing each other through vacancy, for no apparent purpose; sometimes melting away in "intense inane;" and again consolidating themselves, black and lowering, till they burst in a passionate explosion.

What are they doing now?

and I tried in vain to stop the mental kaleidoscope which shifted itself so rapidly that I could not catch one combination of thought before it was succeeded by another; but always the same prominent figures dodging madly about the chambers of my brain--Chundango, Ursula, Lady Broadhem, and Grandon;

Lady Broadhem, Chundango, Grandon, and Ursula--backwards and forwards, forwards and backwards, like some horrid word that I had to spell in a game of letters, and could never bring right.

Love, friendship, hate, pity, admiration, treachery--more words to spell, ever combining wrongly, and never letting me rest, till I thought something must crack under the strain.

Then mockingly came a voice ringing in my ears--Peace, peace, peace--and I fancied myself lulled to rest in her arms, and I heard the cooing of doves mingle with the soft murmur of her voice as she leant wistfully over me, and I revelled in that most fatal of all nightmares--the nightmare of those who, perishing of hunger and thirst, die of imaginary banquets.

"Sweet illusion," I said, "dear to me as reality, brood over my troubled spirit, deaden its pain, heal its wounds, and weave around my being this delicious spell for ever."

Then suddenly, as though my brain had been a magazine into which a spark had fallen, it blazed up; my hair bristled, and drops stood upon my forehead, for a great fear had fallen upon me.

It had invaded me with the force of an overwhelming torrent, carrying all before it.

It said, "Whence is the calm that soothes you?

Infatuated dreamer, think you it is the subsiding of the storm, and not rather the lull that precedes it?

Beware of the sleep of the frozen, from which there is no waking."

What was this?

was my mind regaining its balance, or was it going to lose it for ever?

Most horrid doubt!

the very thought was so much in the scale on the wrong side.

Oh for something to lean upon--some strong stay of common-sense to support me!

I yearned for the practical--some fact on which to build.

"I have got it," I exclaimed suddenly.

"There must be some osseous matter behind my dura mater!"

I shall never forget the consolation which this notion gave me: it relieved me from any further psychological responsibility, so to speak; I gave up mental analysis.

I

attributed the keen susceptibility of my aesthetic nature to this cause, and accepted it as I would the gout, without a murmur.

Still I needed repose and solitude, so I determined to go to Flityville and arrange my ideas, no longer alarmed at the confusion in which they were, but with the steadfast purpose of disentangling them quietly, as I would an interesting knot.

Hitherto I had been tearing at it madly and making it worse; now I had got the end of the skein--"osseous matter"--and would soon unravel it.

So I descended calmly to the drawing-room.

I found it empty, but it occurred to me I had left my letter to Lady Ursula in the recess, and in the agitation attending my interview with Lady Broadhem, had forgotten to go back for it.

I pushed back the _portiere_, and saw seated at the writing-table Lady Ursula herself.

She looked pale and nervous, while I felt overwhelmed with confusion and embarrassment.

This was the more trying, as many years have elapsed since I have experienced any such sensations.

"Oh, you don't happen to have seen a letter lying about anywhere, do you, Lady Ursula?"

said I. "It ought to be under your hand, for I left it exactly on that spot."

"No," she said; "I found mamma writing here when I came, and she took a packet of letters away with her; perhaps she put yours among them by mistake.

She will be back from her drive almost immediately."

"I hope so," said I. "I should be sorry to leave without seeing her."

"To leave, Lord Frank!

I thought you were going to stay till Monday."

She looked up rather appealingly, I thought, as if my presence would have been a satisfaction to her under the circumstances; and I saw, as I returned her steady earnest gaze, that she little guessed the purport of the missing letter.

At that moment my head began to swim, and the figures to dance about in my brain again.

Chundango and Grandon seemed locked in a death-struggle, and Ursula, with dishevelled hair, trying to separate them, while Lady Broadhem, in the background, was clapping her hands and urging them on.

I seemed spinning round the group with such rapidity that I was obliged to steady myself with one hand against the back of Lady Ursula's chair.

"What's the matter?

what's the matter, Lord Frank?"

she exclaimed.

"Osseous matter, osseous matter," I murmured mechanically, and it sounded so like an echo of her words that I am sure she thought me going mad.

Should I throw myself at her feet and tell her all?

If she would only trample upon me and my feelings together, it would be a luxury compared to the agony of self-control I was inflicting upon myself.

If I could only pour myself out in a torrent of passionate expression, and wind up with a paroxysm of tears, she was welcome to treat me as a raving lunatic, but I should be much less likely to become one.

But how, knowing what I did, could I face Grandon afterwards?

Before that fatal conversation with Lady Broadhem, I should have had the satisfaction of hearing my fate from Lady Ursula herself, and I know that she would have treated me so tenderly that rejection would have been a thousand times preferable to this.

She would have known then the intensity of my affection, she would have heard from my own lips the burning words with which I would have pleaded my cause, and, whatever might have been the result, would have pitied and felt for me.

Now, if I say nothing, and Lady Broadhem tells her when I am gone that she considers us engaged, what will Ursula think of me?

Again, if Lady Broadhem thinks I am really going to do what my conscience urges, and sacrifice myself for Grandon, then, poor girl, she will be sacrificed to Chundango.

Nothing but misery will come out of that double event: if I do what is right, it will bring misery; if I do what is wrong, it will bring misery too,--that is one consolation--it makes the straight and narrow path easier.

The only difficulty is, I can't find it--and standing here with my hand on her chair, my head swimming, and Lady Ursula looking anxiously up at me, I am not likely to find it.

"Lord Frank, do let me ring the bell and send for a glass of water," she said at last.

"Thanks, no; the fact is, that letter I have lost causes me the greatest anxiety, and when I thought what the consequences might be of its going astray I felt a little faint for a moment."

"Dear me," said Lady Ursula, kindly, "I will make mamma look for it at once, and I am sure if it is a matter in which my sympathy could be of any use, you will appreciate my motive in offering it; but I do think in this world people might be of so much more use to each other than they are, if they would only trust one another, and believe in the sincerity of friendship.

Although you did try to shock me last night," she said, with a smile, "I have heard so much of you from Lord Grandon, and know how kind and good you are, although he says you are too enthusiastic and too fond of paradoxes, but I assure you I consider you quite an old friend.

You remember, years ago, when I was a little girl, how you used to gallop about with me on my pony in the park at Broadhem?

You won't think me inquisitive, I am sure, in saying this, but there are moments sometimes when it is a relief to find a listener to the history of one's troubles."

"But when, by a curious fatality, that listener is the cause of them all, these moments are not likely to arrive," I thought, but did not say.

Is it not enough to love a woman to distraction, and be obliged by every principle of honour to conceal it from her, without her pressing upon you her sympathy, and inviting your confidence?

and the very tenderness which had prompted her speech rose up against her in judgment in my mind.

So ready with her friendship, too!

Should I tell her bitterly that she was the only being in the whole world whose friendship could aggravate my misery?

Should I congratulate her upon the ingenuity she had displayed in thus torturing me?

or should I revenge myself by giving her the confidence she asked, and requesting her to advise me how to act under the circumstances?

Then I looked at the gentle earnest face, and my heart melted.

My troubles!

Do I not know too well what hers are?

Perhaps it would be a relief to her to hear, that if worse comes to worst, she can always escape Chundango by falling back upon me.

If she is driven to begging me to offer myself up on her shrine, what a very willing sacrifice she would find me!

As she knows that I must have overheard what passed between her and Chundango this morning, shall I make a counter-proposition of mutual confidence, and allude delicately to that most painful episode!

If she is generous enough to forget her own troubles and think of me, why should not I forget mine and think of her?

The idea of this contradiction in terms struck me as so exquisitely ludicrous, that I laughed aloud.

"Ha!

ha!

ha!

Lady Ursula, if you only knew what a comic aspect that last kind speech of yours has given to the whole affair.

Don't think me ungrateful or rude, but--ha!

ha!

ha!"

Here I went off again.

"When once my sense of humour is really touched, I always seem to see the point of a joke to quite a painful degree.

Upon two occasions I have suffered from fits after punning, and riddles always make me hysterical; but I assure you, you unconsciously made a joke just now when you asked me to tell you exactly what I felt, which I shall remember as long as I live, for it will certainly be the death of me--ha!

ha!

ha!"

But Lady Ursula had risen from her chair and rung the bell before I had finished my speech, and I was still laughing when the servant came into the room, followed by Lady Broadhem and Lady Bridget.

"Dear me," said Lady Broadhem, with her most winning smile, "how very merry you are!

--at least Lord Frank is.

You seem a little pale, dear," turning to Ursula; "what is the matter?"

"Oh, nothing, mamma.

Lord Frank has been looking for a letter in the recess.

You don't happen to have put it up with yours, do you?"

"No, my dear, I think not," said Lady Broadhem, looking through a bundle.

"Who was it to, Lord Frank, if you will pardon my curiosity?

I

shall find it more easily if you will give me the address."

"Nobody in particular," said I, "so it does not matter; you can keep it and read it.

It is a riddle; that is what has been amusing us so much.

Lady Ursula has been making such absurd attempts to guess it.

Good-bye, Lady Broadhem.

Here is the servant come to say that my fly is at the door."

"Good gracious!

Why, where are you going?"

said she, evidently imagining that her daughter and I had had some thrilling episode, and that I was going away in a huff, so I determined to mystify her still more.

"Oh, only to Flityville to get everything ready; you know what a state the place is in.

Now," and I looked tenderly into the amazed face of Lady Ursula, "I shall indeed have an object in putting it in order, and I shall expect you and Lady Ursula to come some day soon and suggest the improvements.

I have only one request to make before leaving, and I do so, Lady Ursula, in the presence of your mother and sister; and that is, that until I see you again, the subject of our conversation just now may never be alluded to between yourselves.

Trust in me, Lady Broadhem," I said, taking her hand affectionately, "and promise me you will not ask Lady Ursula what I have just told her; if you do," I whispered, "you will spoil all," and I looked happy and mysterious.

"Do you promise?"

"I do," said Lady Broadhem.

"And now, Lady Ursula," I said, crossing over to her and taking her hand, "once more good-bye, and"--I went on in so low a tone that it was impossible for Lady Broadhem to overhear it, but it made her feel sure that all was arranged between us--"you have got the most terrible secret of my life.

I know I can trust you.

You have seen me"--and I formed the word with my lips rather than uttered it with my breath--"MAD!

Hush!"

for Lady Ursula gave a quick exclamation, and almost fainted with alarm;

"I am myself again now.

Remember my happiness is in your keeping"--this out loud for Lady Broadhem's benefit.

"I am going to say good-bye to Lady Dickiefield, and you shall hear from me when I can receive you at Flityville."

I am endowed with a somewhat remarkable faculty, which I have not been in the habit of alluding to, partly because my friends think me ridiculous if I do, and partly because I never could see any use in it, but I do nevertheless possess the power of seeing in the dark.

Not after the manner of cats--the objects which actually exist--but images which sometimes appear as the condensations of a white misty-looking substance, and sometimes take a distinctly bright luminous appearance.

As I gaze into absolute darkness, I first see a cloud, which gradually seems to solidify into a shape, either of an animal or some definite object.

In the case of the more brilliant image, the appearance is immediate and evanescent.

It comes and goes like a flash, and the subject is generally significant and beautiful.

Perhaps some of my readers may be familiar with this phenomenon, and may account for it as being the result of what they call imagination, which is only putting the difficulty one step back; or may adopt the wiser course which I have followed, and not endeavour to account for it at all.

Whatever be its origin, the fact remains, and I only advert to it now, as it is the best illustration I can think of to describe the mental process through which I passed in the train on my way to Flityville.

My mind seemed at first a white mist--a blank sheet of paper.

My interview with Lady Ursula had produced this effect upon it.

Gradually, and quite unconsciously to myself, so far as any mental effort was concerned, my thoughts seemed to condense into a definite plan of action; now and then a brilliant idea would appear like a flash, and vanish sometimes before I could catch it;

but in so far as the complication in which Grandon, Ursula, the Broadhem family, and myself were concerned, I seemed to see my way, or at all events to feel sure that my way would be shown to me, if I let my inspirations guide me.

When once one achieves this thorough confidence in one's inspirations, the journey of life becomes simplified.

You never wonder what is round the next corner, and begin to prepare for unknown contingencies; but you wait till the corner is turned, and the contingency arrives, and passively allow your mind to crystallise itself into a plan of action.

At this moment, of course, I have no more notion what is going to happen to me than you have.

Divest your mind, my friend, that I know anything more of the plot of this story of my life which you are reading than you do.

I positively have not the slightest idea what either I or any of the ladies and gentlemen to whom I have introduced you are likely to do, or how it is all going to end.

I have told you the mental process under which I act; and, of course, this is the mere record of those inspirations.

Very often the most unlikely things occur to me all of a sudden: thus, while my mind was, as it were, trifling with the events which I have recounted, and throwing them into a variety of combinations, it flashed upon me in the most irrelevant manner that I would send L4000 anonymously to the Bishop of London's fund.

In another second the unconscious train of thought which led me to this determination revealed itself.

"Here," said I, "have I been attacking this poor colonial bishop and the Establishment to which he belongs, and what have I given him in return?

I expose the abuses of his theological and ecclesiastical system, but I provide him with no remedy.

I fling one big stone at the crystal palace in which Protestantism is shrivelling away, and another big stone at the crystal palace in which Catholicism is rotting, and I offer them in exchange the cucumber-frame under which I am myself squatting uncomfortably.

I owe them an apology.

Unfortunately I have not yet found either the man or the body of men who do not prefer hard cash to an apology--provided, of course, it be properly proportioned to the susceptibility of their feelings or the delicacy of their sense of honour.

Fairly, now," I asked myself, "if it was put to the Bench of Bishops, would they consider L5000 sufficient to compensate the Church for the expressions I made use of to one of their order?"

"More than sufficient," myself replied.

"Then we will make it four thousand."

But the whole merit of the action lies in the anonymous, and so nobody knows till they read this who it was made that munificent donation.

That I should have afterwards changed my mind, and answered the advertisement of the committee, which appeared in the "agony" column of the 'Times,' who wanted to know how I wished the money applied, by a request that it should be paid back to my account at the Bank, does not affect the question; I merely wished to show the nature of my impulses, and the readiness with which I act upon them.

Some days elapsed after my arrival at Flityville before I felt moved to write to Grandon.

The fact is, I was writing this record of my trials for the world in general, and did not know what to say to him in particular.

At length, feeling that I owed him an explanation, I wrote as follows:-- "FLITYVILLE, _March 19_.

"You are doubtless surprised, my dear fellow," I began, "at my turning myself into a hermit at this most inopportune season of the year; but the fact is, that shortly after you left Dickiefield, I became so deeply impressed with the responsibility of the great work I had undertaken, that I perceived that a period of retirement and repose was absolutely necessary with a view to the elaboration of some system which should enable me to grapple with the great moral and social questions upon which I am engaged.

"Diverting my anxious gaze from Christendom generally, I concentrated it upon my own country, in the hope that I might discover the root of its disease.

Morbid activity of the national brain, utterly deranged action of the national heart.

Those were the symptoms--unmistakable.

Proximate cause also not difficult to arrive at.

Due to the noxious influence of tall chimneys upon broad acres, whereby the commercial effluvium of the Plutocracy has impregnated the upper atmosphere, and overpowered the enfeebled and enervated faculties of the aristocracy; lust of gain has supervened upon love of ease.

Hence the utter absence of those noble and generous impulses which are the true indications of healthy national life.

Expediency has taken the place of principle; conscience has been crushed out of the system by calculation.

The life-blood of the country, instead of bounding along its veins, creeps sluggishly through them, till it threatens to stagnate altogether, and congestion becomes imminent.

"Looked at from what I may term 'externals,' we simply present to the world at large the ignoble spectacle of a nation of usurers trembling over our money-bags; looked at from internals, I perceive that we are suffering from a moral opiate, to the action of which I attribute the unhappy complaints that I have endeavoured to describe.

This pernicious narcotic has been absorbed by us for hundreds of years unsuspected and unperceived under the guise of a popular theology.

We have become so steeped in the insane delusion, now many centuries old, that we are a Christian nation, that I anticipate with dread the reaction which will take place when men awaken to the true character of the religious quackery with which they have been duped, and, overlooking in their frenzy the distinction which exists between ancient and modern Christianity, will repudiate the former with horror, which, after all, does not deserve to be condemned, for it has never yet been tried as a political system in any country.

Individuals only profess to be theoretically governed by it.

Nor would it be possible, as society is at present constituted, for any man to carry out its principles in daily life.

That any statesman would be instantly ruined who should openly announce that he intended to govern the country on purely Christian principles, may be made clear to the simplest comprehension.

For instance, imagine our Foreign Minister getting up in the House of Commons and justifying his last stroke of foreign policy upon the ground that we should 'love our neighbours better than ourselves, or penning a despatch to any power that we felt 'persecuted' by blessing it.

When do we even do good to anybody in our national capacity, much less to them 'that hate us'?

We certainly pray like Chinamen when we want to propitiate an angry Deity about the cattle-plague; but who ever heard of 'a form of prayer to be used' for nations 'who despitefully use us.'

Fancy the Chancellor of the Exchequer informing us that instead of laying up for the nation treasures upon earth, he proposed realising all that the country possessed and giving it to the poor.

Christian Churchmen and statesmen do not therefore sufficiently believe in the power and efficacy of the Christian moral code to trust the nation to it alone.

Hence they have invented ecclesiastical organisations and theological dogmas as anodynes; and the people have been lulled into security by the singular notion, that if they supported the one and professed to believe in the other, they were different from either Mohammedans or Bhuddists.

In a word, it is the curse of England that its intellect can see truths which its heart will not embody.

The more I think of it the more I am disposed to risk the assertion, that if, as is supposed, the moral code called Christian is divine, it is only not practicable, literally, by the nation for lack of national heart-faith.

I tell you this in confidence, for I am already considered so wild and visionary upon all these matters, and so thoroughly unsound, that I should not like it to be generally known, for fear of its injuring my political prospects.

In the mean time it will very much assist me in arriving at some of my conclusions, if you will kindly procure for me, from any leading member of the Legislature, lay or clerical, answers to the following questions:-- "First, Whether Jonah could possibly have had anything to say to Nineveh which would not apply with equal force to this Christian metropolis?

--and if so, What?

"Second, Specify the sins which were probably committed in Chorazin or Bethsaida, but which have not yet been perpetrated in London.

"Third, As statecraft (assisted by priestcraft) consists not in making the State better but richer, explain why it is easier for a collection of rich men--called a nation--to be saved, than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, but not so easy for one man.

"Fourth, Does the saying that the love of money is the root of all evil apply to a nation as well as to an individual?

--and if not, how does it happen that the more we accumulate wealth, the more we increase poverty and misery and crime?

"That is enough for the present.

But oh!

what a string of questions I could propound to these stumbling pagans, stupefied by the fatuous superstition that their country is safer than other countries which have come to judgment, because they are called by a particular name!

Is there among them all not the faintest consciousness of an impending doom?

or is the potency of the drug such that it is impossible to raise a cry loud enough to rouse them?

Why will they go on vainly trying to solve the impossible problem of Government, never seeing that whatever system is introduced is merely a rearrangement of sinners; that voters are like cards--the more you shuffle them the dirtier they get; and that it is of no use agitating for a reform in the franchise without first agitating for a reform in the consciences of those who are to exercise it, and in the fundamental principles of the policy upon which we are to be governed.

"Wisely saith the greatest poet of the age, as yet, alas!

unknown to fame:-- "Reformers fail because they change the letter, And not the spirit, of the world's design.

Tyrant and slave create the scourge and fetter-- As is the worshipper, will be the shrine.

The ideal fails, though perfect were the plan, World-harmony springs through the perfect man.

We burn out life in hot impatient striving;

We dash ourselves against the hostile spears: The bale-tree, that our naked hands are riving, Unites to crush us.

Ere our manhood's years, We sow the rifled blossoms of the prime, Then fruitlessly are gathered out of time.

We seek to change souls all unripe for changes;

We build upon a treacherous human soil Of moral quicksand, and the world avenges Its crime upon us, while we vainly toil.

In the black coal-pit of the popular heart Rain falls, light kindles, but no flowers upstart.

Know this!

For men of ignoble affection, The social scheme that is, were better far Than the orbed sun's most exquisite perfection, Man needs not heaven till he revolves a star.

Why seek to win the mad world from its strife?

Grow perfect in the sanity of life."

[2] [Footnote 2: 'The Great Republic: a Poem of the Sun.'

By Thomas Lake Harris.

New York and London: published by the "The Brotherhood of the New Life."

] "Ah, my dear friend!

how often, from my humble seat below the gangway, have I gazed upon the Treasury Bench, and wondered how it was that right hon. gentlemen, struggling to retain their dignity by sitting on each other's knees, did not perceive that the reason why great reforms perpetually fail is, not because they have not their root in some radical injustice--not because the despotisms against which they rise are in themselves right--but because those who attempt to inaugurate new and better conditions upon the surfaces of society are themselves, for the most part, desolate, darkened, and chaotic within!

I am under the impression, therefore, that no reform-agitation will ever do good which is not preceded by an agitation, throughout the length and breadth of the land, in favour of the introduction, for the first time, of this old original moral code, not merely into the government of the country, but into the life of every individual.

Unless that is done, and done speedily, those who are now morally stupefied will die in their torpor, and the rest who are harmless lunatics will become gibbering and shrieking demoniacs.

-- Yours affectionately, "F. V."

I had become so absorbed by the train of considerations into which I had been led, that I never thought of mentioning to Grandon the circumstances which attended my departure from Dickiefield.

It was not until after I had posted my letter that it occurred to me how singular, considering the last words which passed between us, this silence would appear.

If to be odd has its drawbacks, it also has its advantages; and I felt that Grandon would be as unable to draw any conclusions from my silence as from any other erratic act of my life.

After all, what could I have said?

It will be time, I thought, to venture upon that very delicate ground when I get his reply.

But this I was destined never to receive, and the questions I had propounded are likely to remain unanswered, for on the very next day I received the following telegram from Lady Broadhem:-- "Your immediate presence here is absolutely necessary.

Delay will be fatal.

"MARY BROADHEM.

"GROSVENOR SQUARE, _20th March_."

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