by Anna Vaught
What do you think?
Do these names make you feel free?
As I was saying, my life was all mapped out for me. I was to be what the patriarchy decreed. Father’s quiet dignified girl. Do not disappoint your mother. I shot myself. I missed. I rallied. A thought formed in the soul. Take him away. That man-monster, Benito. He is the scourge of the people. And whether I could martyr myself for a cause. I wasn’t really a very good martyr either! But I stuffed my Lebel revolver in my case, went to Rome, lived with the nuns and did charity, felt my soul fall into a well of sadness as I sat that day in the Coliseum, but I acted. Raised my arm on Campidoglio and got closer than anyone else, whether they mocked me or not.
Him. As if he were modelled on you or on your predecessor, Augustine, at the Salpêtrière, Blanche. The tropes of the hysterics as recorded in Charcot’s photographic albums. I have heard about that and would like to say I have seen them. Lounging tongue, hands up, smug-face back, lean forward, crouching beast, grin. All that! You should see some of the poor souls here! He was no original because we thought of it first! Or it thought of us first, I should say. Oh, Il Duce. The rest is silence. For me. More or Less. Prison, asylum, here, St Andrew’s. And they thought I was more dangerous than him! I am generally a good girl, but I know I will never leave so I must do what I will do and, in that, I need your help.
I want to tell you: through prayer and through the imagination, the most extraordinary things can be achieved. I do believe that. But do you? Might I convince you?
Lucia, I know; my latter-day friend, my song thrush, she is walls away and I whisper and I whisper to her and when we go outside to feed the lovely birds, on the gravelly patch I call my own, where the passerines come tenderly to my hands, I think she is my co-conspirator, a sort of heiress, but realise that the last makes me sound full of grandiloquence and not conversant with reality. Does that matter, though? Looks like my captors have already made their minds up about that! Looks like they have about Lucia, too, though I am nursing other ideas.
But what of you, Anna O and Bertha, who you really are and oh what things in time you might become? I don’t know but sense it of you because I read and read and hear what you said to Dr Breuer and, through him, to Dr Freud. I sense you are clever, imaginative and far more refined than I. Lucia will, I am sure, outlive me; perhaps she will be able to tell your story more, in years to come? Thoughts for that coalesce as I write. I can feel a shiver of excitement. She started a novel once, you know, but that, like letters, records, vestiges of her, has been burnt somewhere. Now, she is scribing like her life depended on it.
And Blanche. Pretty plump little robin. I hear rumours of you. Read of the workings of the Salpêtrière and its eight thousand and have seen, though in tiny form, the painting of you by Monsieur Brouillet; I know some of the company you keep, or rather were compelled to keep. Am I wrong? What if you got to choose, not merely manipulate a choice made for you?
You know, we women. I sense we want to sing aloud of who and what we are. Like the birds —suspend your disbelief—that brought these letters to you, dates and time swimming in the air, just so.
Will you meet me? Be together, a quartet? Dublin. France, London, Switzerland? Rome. We should start off here, at St Andrew’s Lunatic Asylum. Here, drear old place that it is. There are some things I want to do and some gifts I should like to give to you. As I said, these are my crepuscular years. I have rallied, after so much bed time, because these are things I want to do. And also, I have something I would like for Lucia. If we, together, can urge her on somewhat? They would all be amazed at what mad women could achieve, do you not think?
Love, all benison, faith in the Living Christ, if you like,
Violet Albina Gibson, the Honourable.
PS: have you ever handled a revolver?
Thought that might get your attention! Must fly.
Meet me. St Andrew’s Northampton. Gates.
Next Tuesday.
And now, Lucia, says Violet, make sure you’ve taken this letter down just so and then scatter it to the four winds, when they allow us out, tomorrow, and the birds of the air will take it. Do you remember the little swallow, sometimes there and sometimes not, in those gorgeous Fra Angelico paintings; the many he did of the Annunciation? Yes. I showed you in my Lives of the Artists, just as I showed Dr Griffith. Do you know, when he’s not there, he is helping me? I’ve been so alone.
And, after certain preparations and invocations and prayers over the letter by Violet, I did just as she asked and scattered and the little birds were there too. It is a moment I hold dear forever.
7
Wrought iron gates: St Andrew’s Hospital. Tuesday. It’s I, Miss Lucia Joyce, daughter of... oh, you know what: just me. But with Finnegans Wake rattling around my furious head. Oh God bless us and spare her! Ah. Stop. Let me speak in my own language because this is the beginning of a momentous journey.
Now, here’s a bit of a map for you reader, as we set out.
We should add again that Blanche can speak only French, therefore what exists in this text is my translation and that when Bertha, Violet or I, Lucia, speak to Blanche, they are, we are, in fact, always speaking in French. But don’t worry too much about such detail! Anyway, we are speaking the international language of virago and the important thing is that by miracle and winged helper, the quartet was, as Violet requested, at the gates. Looking back and looking outward, where fields and dark towns heaped up; where life lay. And Violet smiled and began:
Shuffle up girls. Pleased to meet you, Bertha, Blanche. Come on Lucia.
Hello hello, Bonjour, Guten Tag!
Look at this place! Our loony bin! They are so proud of their rich heritage of care. I’ve read the bloody material. Oh yes, Our history as a charity begins in 1838 with the opening of a hospital at Northampton offering humane care to the mentally ill. It could have been worse, but I do not consider a surfeit of bars on windows and wretched clicking knitting needles to be humane. But I am a spoilt aristocratic lunatic, so what would I know?
Look. We have to be quick. Handsome gates. Bend in the road (of course! Around the bend: keeps us out of sight!). As this is my forever home and I can hardly bear to show you the two previous (prison, asylum in Rome, and so on), I need to tell you a few things about this place before we fly. But we need to look back at it, not get closer. At this stage, I cannot chance a dash back through the gates to show you my gravelled patch where the passerines first came to me. If they were to see me, well now it might not end well. I’d love to show the spruce and the yew nearby, my back to the windows as I fed and dandled those lovely little birds, as Lucia will remember. Or my room. It’s well-appointed and I have plenty of books; was just showing Dr Griffith—I’d say he was my jailer but then he’s also a man of some delicate sensibility I think—my book, Vasari’s Lives of the Artists, particularly the bit on Fra Angelico. There is a Wilton rug and mahogany panelling in the room. For a while, for the family to save money and because the National Health Service began and they let in plenty of ordinary mad folk, they put me below stairs on a shared ward. Cheaper place. Not enough seclusion for me, either. Now I am dying, I’ve got my private accommodation back, my well-appointed cell.
Quick girls, look back! This old place. It was designed by Mr George Wallet of the Bethlem Hospital, and funded in large part from the reserves of the by-then-disbanded Northamptonshire Yeomanry. Yeomanry? That rings a bell.
I will definitely talk a lot. I’ve been stopped up, with Lucia feeling the full verbiage of late.
Just don’t do the cod-Joyce, please, I implore you, say I. Keep it toned down or you’ll lose your audience.
Violet continues: The original architecture is still appreciated by patients, who enjoy the interiors of our Main Building and the parkland which surrounds it. Oh yes, we do appreciate it so. It is a fine old place, but it is still a place of desolate proportions because its d
oors are locked and most of its windows are barred, never mind the beautifully appointed Chesterfields and the country house aspect. The 106-acre estate at Northampton includes the chapel of 1863—and may I make it clear that I want a Catholic burial with the correct rites and to be laid in the proper place; not because I am of posh stock, but because I went over to Rome, I mean!—yes, the chapel was designed by Sir Gilbert Scott, famous for The Midland Grand Hotel at St Pancras Station and the Albert Memorial. Ah that hotel. I stayed there once and it was a sight to behold. Grand staircases, gold leaf on the walls, fireplace in every room, hydraulic lifts and revolving doors.
Revolving doors? Ha! The story of my life. Perhaps it contained a panopticon, too, and secretly spied on its guests, some of whom may have been lunatics.
Violet, say I, don’t go too fast. You’ll upset yourself and it’s hard to follow. Then I think, Oh God, dear old bird, I want to derail her, but...
Ahem, Lucia. Yes. Closed its doors in 1935. That hotel, I mean. Keep up. Did I say it had a ladies’ smoking room? That was my favourite and I would sneak up there to those lovely women and imbibe a little and Mother didn’t notice. Sometimes I snuck to the men’s room, just to shock. Oh yes yes yes. I am like a guide to the place, to our hospital, am I not?
Yes, Bethlem. Mr George Wallet of Bethlem designed our asylum. Blanche, Bertha, you are nodding. You’ll have heard of Bethlem Asylum, or Bedlam. I need hardly tell you of that. A Church of Our Lady that is named Bedlam. And in that place be found many men that be fallen out of their wit. And full honestly they be kept in that place; and some be restored onto their wit and health again. And some be abiding therein forever, for they be fallen so much out of themselves that it is incurable unto man. So said William Gregory, Lord Mayor of London, somewhere around 1450. I may have had a mahogany sideboard, but still that was me. Incurable and abiding therein forever. For a while I was even the most dangerous woman in Britain. And he murdering Matteotti! The socialist leader, head caved in by Mussolini’s boys and dumped in a ditch? No? Sending money to the dead man’s wife and child, though of course he, Caesar in waiting, was not guilty. Oh, no, no, no! Thousands. Ditches. Putting a wife in the asylum, letting her die there and then their son, also in a madhouse, pumped full of opiates and kept in a coma.
Violet, say I: calm down, calm down. I’ve made her cross, now.
I shall NOT calm. There is so little time and so much voice. So much flight. And WHO has the title here, dear girl?
Oh yes, I was talking about the chapel here. Gilbert Scott, did St Pancras and The Albert Memorial. Not a single songbird on the Frieze of Parnassus on the latter, though such would have improved it. But let me think. A bird? Yes, I knew it was there, somewhere. Memory is like a chest of drawers, gorgeous little drawers, with mother of pearl inlay, each one just waiting.
There. That beautiful picture of the bird. I was trying to link a memory of a lovely bird to all these things. It’s Prince Albert. Queen Victoria’s husband? Yes, Blanche, Bertha? Noting, Lucia? My parents took us to Osborne House on the Isle of Wight and I have always remembered it. Precious memories on that little private beach, eagles aplenty and this: in Queen Victoria’s sitting room, a lovely watercolour, framed within an arched mount, of a young woman in Greco-Roman dress, seated in profile to the right with her left foot on a footstool, and her right hand holding a sparrow to her lips; the bird is calm and she I think she whispers to it. There is a rather luscious leopard skin by her feet and beyond them both, a sunlit garden; A. Bouvier inscribed lower left. Did you know that Albert, the queen’s consort, had this ordered for a Christmas present in 1861? When you were tiny children, Bertha, Blanche. But her beloved died on the fourteenth of December, and there was she, in blacks for years and years, and this lovely picture in the sitting room. As a child, I could not get it out of my head. Was the sparrow a prisoner, set back in its gilded cage, or did it simply love the young woman who whispered to it and caressed it so? What did Victoria think when she regarded it?
Can you two stand to listen on? I, Lucia, ask, though my heart is warm.
Well we read the letter and that was wordy, yes, so we were sort of prepared, replies Bertha.
I shall make you call me Lady Gibson in a moment! I have a lot to get out. Time is of the essence and I’ve felt restrained for so long. Now, as for the yeomen… You remember. Let me think. Yeomanry—St Andrew’s, our lovely asylum paid for with reserves from the then-disbanded Northamptonshire Yeomanry; yeomen, yeoman. The word sparks an image too. Let me think. Yes. The Chaucer I read. Our governess in Merrion Square read it with me. It was because I’d got cross about our shabby reading. I shouted at her once: Give me something more challenging. So. The Canterbury Tales and the Canon, the alchemist. Yes, ‘The Canon Yeoman’s Tale’—that was it!
But al thyng which that shineth as the gold
Nis nat gold, as that I have herd it told…
And isn’t that true? A gilded cage is still a cage and the things I should have held dear, the balls, fine gowns, all all all, were sham gold, at least to me.
Please bear with me. I know I can be disjointed, or at least seem so. But my imagination is violent and necessary because my freedom was taken away. They closed my case. I knew. I heard them talk. But still they kept me here.
Poor thing, again. She’s calmer and the others understood and tried their best to follow. Of course they understood, God love them. I touch Violet’s shoulder gently.
I am sorry, she says. I am crying. Please. Hold my hand. Have you seen enough, the sweep of green back beyond the gate? Heard enough? My mad reminiscences of time in London, where we had our house in Grosvenor Square; of the Isle of Wight and a bereaved Queen Victoria, losing Albert at about the age when I shot the monster and lost my freedom. The little sparrow that the queen saw, in her picture from a dead consort, caressed by a beautiful girl in her drapes? To me, this... this imaginative freewheeling... it is a bit like going for an unsupervised walk. A proper long tramp, untrammelled. in which there is no boundary. A flight for a captive bird. Intoxicating, surely.
But keep holding my hand. It’s coming up like a wave now, not being alone. That cry of not being alone. I can hardly stand up.
Shuffle up, girls. Let’s go.
Help her, girls, say I.
I cannot wait! says Blanche, muffling up; it is chilly.
Aufregend. Exciting! mouths Bertha.
But after a few paces, Violet stops. She’s supposed to be in her last days (I’ve heard the nursing staff; Doctor Griffith: I know she has a weak heart.) She turns and I don’t think I’ve ever seen those brown eyes so full of fire.
Her voice is steady: And do we say it is 1926, not 1956? 1926. Can we, just for a breath or two, feel its gyre widening? In the year I shot the monster? In this minute, as we contemplate. Do you feel the time? Its transposition, a kind shift—tender on us like the velvet wings of the bird; like a caress from the swallow that flew, sometimes, from the pillars in Fra Angelico’s Annunciation. I dreamed that it came to my hand, pecked nourishment from me, as I had planned.
1926, I say. I, Lucia. I was dancing and I had more of my own life. I was nineteen. We were in Paris then and I remember Mother crying and Father pacing. His life was never quiet and it was the year that Samuel Roth, in America, had pirated Ulysses. Oh, the furore.
Yes well, he, Roth, retorts Violet, he also pirated Lady Chatterley’s Lover, was an egg chandler and went to prison for distributing pornography, which included, in charges, your father’s book BUT we must think of you now, dear girl. Of you. You are not dancing now and I should love it if you would. I should be happy if you were consumed by your own concerns, words and rhythms, so be collected.
You’re a sharp one, Lady Gibson, says Bertha.
Now. Shh, says this Lady: It was Wednesday the 7th of April when I shot Mussolini. Today, or rather in this minute, this breath, I think it is earlier in the month. This asylum loo
ks just the same; birds fly, as ever, and it is a little cold. In Rome, the weather is balmier, in that time before. Let’s not get there yet, because there are other times to see and I want you to be there with me and I want to ask you to help me, to bear witness, but also to make some choices of your own, if you will. I had thought that sometimes we might spectate what we were then and sometimes we might... participate, as we are now.
There is a sigh of yes.
I will take your arm, fine lady, says Bertha, straightening her back and looking like she means business but still mouthing a prayer. My Gebete, yes? I am publishing them. Gebete means prayers in German.
To think you can all be here with me, I say, sparking one up. I’ve always loved my Lucky Strikes. Oh, whatever would my mother have said? We’re where we’re not supposed to be!
Says Bertha, clasping Violet’s hand, quoting from her Gebete, Prayers:
Strength strength,
Send with the flame on my journey
So that its light may show me the way.
And I will not err from the path
Through you, to you.
Strength strength,
Help me amid the tangle of voices,
So that I do not, misled by the noise,
Fail to find the words
Through you for you.
Strength strength
Let me in breath and heartbeat
Be filled by the rhythm
That carried justice and truth
From you to you.
That’s one of mine. I do have some hopes it might be useful. Gebet einer Vorsitzende, vor der Sitzung Gebete.
I translate quickly: Prayer of a Chairwoman Before The Meeting. I mean, I’m setting this down in English, as scribe, but I need to express some things more quickly, to Blanche and to Violet, who cannot speak German.
Says Bertha: Exactly. Today you are Chair, Violet. Strength to all, dance, my Lucia, and let us keep our voices straight and clear amid the tangle. But I do wonder. How might you square your faith in God with killing a man?
