After that first season a great many bills came in, and I was quite surprised to see I’d spent already, with the year hardly half gone, more than my six hundred pounds. I could not understand how it had happened, and I asked Herbert about it and showed him some of my bills, and for the first time in our married life he was angry with me. He scolded me quite sharply, and told me I must keep within my allowance. I was hurt, and also rather muddled, with all these different accounts—most of which I could not remember—and I made up my mind not to consult Herbert any more, as it only vexed him and made him cross to me, and that I can not bear. All the world must love me. If there is a servant-maid in the house who does not like me—and I can feel it in a minute if she doesn’t—I must make her, or she must go away. But my husband, the best and finest man in the world, to have him annoyed with me and scolding me over stupid bills! Never again would that happen. I showed him no more of them; in fact, I generally tore them up as they came in, for fear I should leave them lying about and he would find them. If I could help it, nothing in the world was ever going to come between Herbert and me.
I also made good resolutions to be more careful in my expenditures. And I really tried to keep them. I don’t know how it happened that they did not seem to get kept. But both in London and in Paris I certainly did spend a great deal—I’m sure I don’t know how much. I did little accounts on the back of notes, and they were so confusing, and I seemed to have spent so much more than I thought I had, that I gave up doing them. After I’d covered the back of two or three notes with figures, I became so low-spirited I couldn’t enjoy anything for the rest of the day. I did not see that that did anybody any good, so I ceased keeping the accounts. And what was the use of keeping them? If I had not the money to pay them with, why should I make myself miserable by thinking about them? I thought it much more sensible to try to forget them, and most of the time I did!
It went on that way for two years. When I got bills with things written across the bottom in red ink I paid part of them—never all; I never paid all of anything. Once or twice tradesmen wrote me letters, saying they must have their money, and then I went to see them, and told them how kind it was of them to trust me, and how I would pay them everything soon, and they seemed quite pleased and satisfied. I always intended doing it. I don’t know where I thought the money was coming from, but you never can tell what may happen. Some friends of Herbert had a place near the Scotch border, and found a coal-mine in the forest. Herbert has no lands near Scotland, but he has in other places, and he may find a coal-mine too. I merely cite this as an example of the strange ways things turn out. I didn’t exactly expect that Herbert would find a coal-mine, but I did expect that money would turn up in some unexpected way and help me out of my difficulties.
The beginning of the series of really terrible events of which I am writing was the purchase of a Russian sable jacket from a furrier in Paris called Bolkonsky. It was in the early spring of last year. I had had no dealings with Bolkonsky before. A friend told me of the jacket, and took me there. It was a real occasion. I knew the moment that I saw it that it was one of those chances with which one rarely meets. It fitted me like a charm, and I bought it for a thousand pounds. That miserable Bolkonsky told me the payments might be made in any way I liked, and at “madame’s own time.” I also bought some good turquoises, that were going for nothing, from a jeweler up-stairs somewhere near the Rue de La Paix, who was selling out the jewels of an actress. It was these two people who wrecked me.
Not that they were my only debtors. I knew by this time that I owed a great deal. When I thought about it I was frightened, and so I tried not to think. But sometimes when I was awake at night, and everything looked dark and depressed, I wondered what I would do if something did not happen. In these moments I thought of telling my husband, and I buried my head in the pillow and turned cold with misery. What would Herbert say when he found out his wife was thousands of pounds in debt—the Marquis of Castlecourt, who had never owed a penny and considered it a disgrace.
Perhaps he would be so horrified and disgusted he would send me away from him—back to Ireland, or to the Continent. And what would happen to me then?
That summer we went to Castlecourt Marsh Manor, and there my anxieties became almost unbearable. Bolkonsky began to dun me most cruelly. Other creditors wrote me letters, urging for payments. The jeweler from whom I had bought the turquoises sent me a letter, telling me if I didn’t settle his account by September he would sue me. And finally Bolkonsky sent a man over, whom I saw in London, and who told me that unless the sable jacket was paid for within two months he would “lay the matter before Lord Castlecourt.”
We went across to Paris in September, and there I saw those dreadful people. My other French and English creditors I could manage, but I could do nothing with either Bolkonsky or the jeweler. They spoke harshly to me—as no one has ever spoken to me before; and Bolkonsky told me that “it was known Lord Castlecourt was honest and paid his debts, whatever his wife was.” I prayed him for time, and finally wept—wept to that horrible Jew; and there was another man in the office, too, who saw me. But I was lost to all sense of pride or reserve. I had only one feeling left in me—terror, agony, that they would tell my husband, and he would despise me and leave me.
My misery seemed to have some effect on Bolkonsky, and he told me he would give me a month to pay up. It was then the tenth of September. I waited for a week in a sort of frenzy of hope that a miracle would occur, and the money come into my hands in some unexpected way. But, of course, nothing did occur. By the first of October the one thousand pounds was no nearer. It was then that the desperate idea entered my mind which has nearly ruined me, and caused me such suffering that the memory of it will stay with me forever.
The Castlecourt diamonds, set in a necklace and valued at nine thousand pounds, were in my possession. I often wore them, and they were carried about by my maid—a faithful and honest creature called Sophy Jeffers. On one of my first trips to Paris a friend of mine had taken me to the office of a well-known dealer in precious and artificial stones who, without its being generally known, did a sort of pawnbroking business among the upper classes. My friend had gone there to pawn a pearl necklace, and had told me all about it—how much she obtained on the necklace, and how she hoped to redeem it within the year, and how she was to have it copied in imitation pearls. The idea that came to me was to go to this place and pawn the Castlecourt diamonds, having them duplicated in paste.