Paul Gosslett's Confessions in Love, Law, and The Civil Service

by Charles James Lever

I rung my bell, and desired Mr. Bracken might be sent to me. The messenger was a long time absent, and came, at last, to say that Mr. Bracken had left the castle that evening, and taken all his luggage with him. The tidings struck me like a blow,—here, then, was the thief! And for what purpose could such a theft have been accomplished? “Tell Mr. Deechworth I want him,” cried I, being no less eager to make him my deepest apologies for my false accusation than to consult his strong common-sense in my difficulty.

The servant returned to say Mr. Deechworth had gone too. He had left the castle almost immediately after our stormy interview, and was already miles away on his road to the Rhine.

In my misery and desolation, in that abandonment to utter terror and confusion in which, with the drowning instinct, one snatches at straws, I sent to know if I could speak to Mrs. Dacre, or even her maid. How shall I describe my horror as I heard that they also were gone! They had left soon after Mr. Bracken; in fact, the post-horses that took them away had passed Mr. Bracken at the gate of the park.

I know no more how the rest of the night was passed by me, how the hours were spent till daybreak, than I could recount the incidents of delirium in fever. I must have had something like a paroxysm of insanity, for I appear to have rushed from room to room, calling for different people, and in tones of heart-rending entreaty begging that I might not be deserted. Towards morning I slept,—slept so soundly that the noises of the house did not disturb me. It was late in the afternoon when I awoke. The servant brought me my coffee and my letters; but I bade him leave me, and fell off to sleep again. In this way, and with only such sustenance as a cup of milk or coffee would afford, I passed fourteen days, my state resembling that of a man laboring under concussion of the brain; indeed, so closely did the symptoms resemble those of this affection, that the doctor carefully examined my head to see whether I had not incurred some actual injury. It was five weeks before I could leave my bed, and crawl down with difficulty to my study. The table was covered with the accumulated letters of thirty-odd posts, and I turned over the envelopes, most of which indicated communications from the company. There was also one in my uncle's hand. This I opened and read. It was in these words:—

“So, sir, not satisfied with a life of indolence and dependence, you have now added infamy to your worthlessness, and have not even spared the members of your own family the contagion of your vice. If you can give information as to the present abode of your wretched victim, do so, as the last amends in your power, and the last act of reparation, before you are consigned to that jail in which it is to be hoped you will end your days.”

I read this till my head reeled. Who were the members of my family I had contaminated or corrupted? Who was my wretched victim? And why I was to die in prison I knew not. And the only conclusion I could draw from it all was that my uncle was hopelessly mad, and ought to be shut up.

A strange-looking, coarse-papered document, that till then had escaped my notice, now caught my eye. It was headed “Court of Probate and Divorce,” and set forth that on a certain day in term the case of “MacNamara versus Mac-Namara, Gosslett, co-respondent,” would come on for trial; the action being to obtain a rule nisi for divorce, with damages against the co-respondent.

A notice of service, duly signed by one of my own people, lay beside this; so that at last I got a faint glimmering of what my uncle meant, and clearly descried what was im plied by my “victim.”

I believe that most readers of the “Times” or the “Morning Post” could finish my story; they, at all events, might detail the catastrophe with more patience and temper than I could. The MacNamara divorce was a nine-days' scandal. And “if the baseness of the black-hearted iniquity of the degraded creature who crept into a family as a supplicant that he might pollute it with dishonor; who tracked his victim, as the Indian tracks his enemy, from lair to lair,—silent, stealthily, and with savage intensity,—never faltering from any momentary pang of conscience, nor hesitating in his vile purpose from any passing gleam of virtue,—if this wretch, stigmatized by nature with a rotten heart, and branded by a name that will sound appropriately in the annals of crime, for he is called Gosslett,”—if all this, and a great deal more in the same fashion, is not familiar to the reader, it is because he has not carefully studied the Demosthenic orations of the Court of Arches. In one word, I was supposed to have engaged the affections and seduced the heart of Mrs. MacNamara, who was a cousin of my own, and the daughter of the Rev. W. Dudgeon, in whose house I had been “brought up,” &c. I had withdrawn her from her husband, and taken her to live with me at Lahneck under the name of Dacre, where our course of life—openly, fearlessly infamous—was proved by a host of witnesses; in particular, by a certain Virginie, maid of the respondent, who deposed to having frequently found me at her feet, and who confessed to have received costly presents to seduce her into favoring the cause of the betrayer. Mr. Bracken, a retired detective, who produced what were called the love-letters, amused the jury considerably by his account of my mad freaks and love-sick performances. As for Mrs. MacNamara herself, she entered no appearance to the suit; and the decree nisi was pronounced, with damages of five thousand pounds, against Paul Gosslett, who, the counsel declared, was in “a position to pay handsomely for his vices, and who had ample means to afford himself the luxury of adultery.” I was told that the mob were prepared to stone me if I had been seen; and that, such was the popular excitement about me, a strong police force was obliged to accompany a red-whiskered gentleman to his house because there was a general impression abroad that he was Gosslett.

Of course I need not say I never ventured back to England; and I indite this, my last confession, from a small village in Bohemia, where I live in board—partial board it is—with a very humble family, who, though not complimentary to me in many things, are profuse in the praises of my appetite.