Dr. Wainwright's Patient: A Novel

by Edmund Yates

As he rose, shook hands, and taking up his lamp made his way across the garden, the nurse looked after him with a pleased expression, and said to herself:

"What a nice young man that is!--so pleasant and kind! Nice-looking too, though a trifle old-fashioned and heavy; not like--ah, well, never mind. But much too good to mope away his life in this wretched old place, anyhow."

And when George reached his rooms he smiled to himself, and said:

"Well, if that little talk, and those little compliments, have the result of making Miss Marshall show any extra amount of kindness to my poor maman, my time will not have been ill bestowed."

George Wainwright was tolerably correct in all he had said regarding Madame Vaughan, though he had but an imperfect knowledge of her history. At the time when her mental malady first rendered it necessary that she should be placed under restraint, the private lunatic asylums of England were in a very different condition from what they are now. They were for the most part held by low-born ignorant men, who derived their entire livelihood from the sums of money paid for the maintenance of the unfortunate wretches confided to their charge, and whose gains were consequently greater in proportion to the manner in which they ignored or refused the requirements of their inmates. A person calling himself a physician, and perhaps in possession of some purchased degree, hired at a small stipend and non-resident, looked in occasionally, asked a few questions, and signed certificates destined to hoodwink official eyes, which in those days never saw too clearly at the best of times. But the staff of keepers, male and female, was always numerous and efficient. Those were the merry days of the iron collar and the broad leather bastinado, of the gag and the cold bath, of the irons and the whipping-post. They did not care much about what the Lunacy Commissioners did, or wrote, or exacted, in those days, and each man did what he thought best for himself. The date of the Commissioners' visits, which then were few and far between, were accurately known long beforehand; the "medical attendant" was on the spot; the patients, such as were visible, were tricked up into a proper state of cleanliness and order; and the others were duly hidden away until the authorities had departed. The licensing was a farce, only to be exceeded in absurdity by the other regulations; and villany, blackguardism, brutality, and chicanery reigned supreme.

For two years after Madame Vaughan was first received into the asylum--God help us!--as it was called, the outer world was mercifully a blank to her. She arrived in a settled state of stupor, in which she remained, cowering in a corner of the room which she shared with other afflicted creatures, but taking no heed of them, of the antics which they played, of the yells and shrieks which they uttered, of the fantastic illusions of which they were the victims, of the punishment which their conduct brought upon them. Her face covered by her hands, her poor body ever rocking to and fro, there she remained for ever in the one spot until nightfall, when she crept to the miserable couch allotted to her, and curling herself up as an animal in its slumber, was unheard, almost unseen, until the next day. The wretched food which they gave her, coarse in quality and meagre in quantity, she ate in silence; in silence she bore the spoken ribaldry, and the practical jokes which in the first few weeks after her admission the guardians of the establishment, and indeed the great proprietor himself, amused themselves by heaping upon her; so that in a little time she was found incapable of administering to their amusement, and was suffered to remain unmolested.

At the end of the time mentioned, a change took place in the condition of the patient under the following circumstances. One of the nurses had had her married sister and niece to visit her; and after tea, by way of a cheerful amusement, the visitors were conducted through the female ward. The child, a little girl of five or six years old, frightened out of her life, hung back as she entered the gloomy room, where women in every stage of mania, some fierce and shrieking, some silent and moody, were collected. But her aunt, the nurse, laughed at the child's fears; and the mother, who through the hospitality of their entertainer had, after the clearing away of the tea-equipage, been provided with a beverage which both cheered and inebriated, bade the girl not to be a fool; and on her still hanging back and evincing an intention of bursting into tears, administered to her a severe thump on the back, which had the effect of causing the little one to break forth at once into a howl.

From the first instant of the child's entrance into the room, Madame Vaughan had roused herself from her usual attitude. The sound of the child's pattering feet seemed to act on her with electrical influence. She raised her head from out her hands; she sat up erect, bright, observant. The corner in which she sat was dark, and no one was in the habit of taking any notice of her. So she sat, watching the shrinking child. She heard the mocking laugh with which the nurse sneered at the little one's terror, she heard the harsh tones in which the mother chid the child, and saw the blow which followed on the words. Then she made two springs forward, and the next minute had the woman on the ground, and was grappling at her throat. The attendants sprang upon her, released the woman from her grasp, and led her shrieking to her cell.

"My child, my child! why did she strike my child?" were the words which she screamed forth; almost the first which those in the asylum had ever heard her utter; so, at least, the nurse told the proprietor, who, with other assistants, male as well as female, was speedily on the spot.

"She used to sit as quiet as quiet, never opening her mouth, as you know very well, sir," said the woman, "and was sittin' just as usual, so far as I know, when my sister here, as I was showing round, fetched her little gal a smack on the head because she wouldn't come on; and then Vaughan springs at her like a wild-beast, and wanted to tear the life out of her, she did, a murderin' wretch!"