My nerve was shaken to its weakest, remember; and I was alone with him! It was not an hotel. It was a lunatic asylum.

III.

Of what followed for the next few days I cannot say much; for my head was then so thoroughly weakened that I had almost lost all count of time. It was a very merciful weakness, for without it I do not think that a sensitive brain could have borne a succession of shocks such as I described at the end of my last chapter. There was a very large number of madmen in the place, which was avowedly regarded as an asylum chiefly for ‘incurables,’ whence I conclude that it was thought convenient in my case to take the extremest view of matters at once. So little was I myself able to realise that resort could have been had with me to such a step as this, that, strange as it may seem, some months passed before I knew that I was the inmate of an asylum. I thought, in the dazed state of trance in which I contrived to exist from hour to hour, that I was in some sort of establishment devoted to nervous patients, whence I should be removed in due course of time; though, in the vague and dreamy speculations which occupied my days, I was wont inwardly to wonder what possible effect for good those broken nerves of mine could derive from constant association with a variety of people who were ‘nervous’ to such a very marked degree. Their ailments used at times to cause me much inward perplexity. One of them used to rush wildly about the passages of the house—generally with a file of old numbers of the ‘Times’ under his arm, in all sorts of wonderful costumes, which he was very fond of changing, an Inverness cape and a velvet cap being his garments of choice—shouting out scraps of song in a discordant voice. Another always wished to shake hands with me, and recite medical prescriptions at hazard; at supper, when a number of us sate down at a long table to consume some incredible beef-sandwiches as a wholesome prelude to quiet sleep, he would finish by crossing himself and eating the parsley. Tobacco he was rather fond of eating, too, poor fellow. He is dead now, thank God for it; for even in his vagaries and in my illness he impressed upon me with singular force the idea that he was exceptionally a ‘gentleman,’ and a good one. A few days before his end—he died of Bright’s disease, good reader; and he wanted something more, I think, than asylum treatment—I remember his expressing his dislike to sitting down at dinner in a lady’s company without being properly dressed. One of the ‘matrons’ was in charge of us at the time; a kind-hearted, clear-headed woman, to whom I was to owe my first release (I was condemned twice to my fate). From her first I learned exactly where I was, and the sort of net that had immeshed me; and, after she had talked to me once or twice for five minutes, ‘This,’ she said, ‘is a cruel and a shameful thing. You have no business to be here. Your friends should remove you instantly.’

But I am anticipating a little. I met this lady, happily for me, at a seaside ‘house of ease,’ to which some few of the patients were periodically sent from the ‘Establishment,’ as the asylum was euphemistically called (we were very refined and Pickwickian altogether, and our warders were our ‘attendants’), for change of air. To obtain even that slight relief, an order from the magistrates, who execute justice and maintain truth—and in this case were connections or near neighbours of the head of the establishment—is considered necessary. No loophole for escape was left us which the law can sew up. For five fearful months I lived at head-quarters in the asylum, the whole morale of heart and mind being more played upon and shattered every day. I have described the ways of two of my companions. Another, with an abnormally large head of hair, had a way of skipping about the house with startling entreaties for ‘baccy,’ or singing to himself a favourite little song, which ran thus: ‘Hey-diddle-diddle, I want some more beer.’ Yet he could be consecutive sometimes, too, when one talked with him; and under the care of the same matron he sensibly improved, as, when I met him again afterwards—how shall in due course be told—he had sensibly deteriorated. He was mad, no doubt, quite mad, but very gentle; and I ask all good and reasonable people, on every good and reasonable principle, how such a malady as his can be bettered by constant association with other mental maladies of every sort and kind? For myself—I say it again—my physical weakness saved me, with the consequent incapacity of the brain to receive immediate impressions strongly. But the impressions were made, deep and enduring; and they come out afterwards in the light of health and freedom, as the photograph takes form and strength under the action of the chemicals. Now, happy and free, the horrors that were like dreams at the time seem to shake me as I write; and strongly balanced as I know my brain to be, I doubt if the companions who in sickness but vaguely frightened me, in health would not break me down. There is a very fearful responsibility somewhere for what was done to me.

Patients there were of other and of many kinds. There was one black gentleman from India who never spoke; but who used ever and anon to glare at me, and make one or two steps towards me as if meditating a rush. Then he would lick his lips with a very red tongue, sit down opposite me, calmly pull off his boot and stocking, and nurse his foot. I think that he had for me the greatest fascination of any of them; and I remember being at times under the impression that he was a wild animal in disguise. One poor creature there was whom I dimly but firmly believed to be an ape; truly, for my desire in writing these papers is neither to extenuate nor set down aught in malice. He was in truth, I have been assured, a gentleman of large private fortune; but never have I seen humanity so fearfully lowered. He was very ape-like, small and muscular. His chief employment was to sit over old volumes of the ‘Illustrated London News,’ which periodical was weekly sent to his address and taken in for him; to lick his fingers, and turn the pages rapidly over, crooning the while some horrible gibberish to himself in a voice quite inhuman, without two consecutive syllables or one ray of reason; to tear out little bits or whole pages of the volume, and throw them away with a triumphant yell, which curdled all my blood and improved the nature of my dreams, watched over as they were by two or three keepers, who would report me the next morning as having had ‘a bad turn’ if I awoke in the night, utterly nerve-shaken, under the influence of this living nightmare. This hapless youth was known by the name of ‘Jemmy,’ and was a standing jest with the warders, who delighted in playing in every possible way upon his ghastly idiotcies. For he was lower than a madman, far; he was a raving idiot. He would jump at times from his seat, mount on a chair, and play hideous symphonies upon the window-pane to the accompaniment of his own voice; once or twice, I am thankful to say, nature had its way, and he would strike a warder violently between the eyes. When he dealt out this measure, as once he did in my presence, to the servant whom I have described as with me in the forest, who conveyed me to the asylum, and there took service as a keeper—no doubt of personal affection to me—I was, I confess, inwardly but intensely gratified.