Betsy Trotwood, David’s aunt, was an embodiment of a good heart united with an eminently practical head. She did not talk about religion, as did the Murdstones, but she showed her religious life in good, reasonable, self-sacrificing, helpful living. David asked her for an explanation of Mr. Dick’s case.
“He has been called mad,” said my aunt. “I have a selfish pleasure in saying he has been called mad, or I should not have had the benefit of his society and advice for these last ten years and upward—in fact, ever since your sister, Betsy Trotwood, disappointed me.”
“So long as that?” I said.
“And nice people they were, who had the audacity to call him mad,” pursued my aunt. “Mr. Dick is a sort of distant connection of mine—it doesn’t matter how; I needn’t enter into that. If it hadn’t been for me, his own brother would have shut him up for life. That’s all.”
I am afraid it was hypocritical in me, but seeing that my aunt felt strongly on the subject, I tried to look as if I felt strongly too.
“A proud fool!” said my aunt. “Because his brother was a little eccentric—though he is not half so eccentric as a good many people—he didn’t like to have him visible about the house, and sent him away to some private asylum place; though he had been left to his particular care by their deceased father, who thought him almost a natural. And a wise man he must have been to think so! Mad himself, no doubt.”
Again, as my aunt looked quite convinced, I endeavoured to look quite convinced also.
“So I stepped in,” said my aunt, “and made him an offer. I said, ‘Your brother’s sane—a great deal more sane than you are, or ever will be, it is to be hoped. Let him have his little income, and come and live with me. I am not afraid of him; I am not proud; I am ready to take care of him, and shall not ill treat him as some people (besides the asylum folks) have done.’ After a good deal of squabbling,” said my aunt, “I got him; and he has been here ever since. He is the most friendly and amenable creature in existence; and as for advice!—but nobody knows what that man’s mind is, except myself.”
Dickens was greatly delighted with the asylums of the United States, and he strongly advocated the adoption in England of American methods of treating the insane. He says, in American Notes:
At South Boston, as it is called, in a situation excellently adapted for the purpose, several charitable institutions are clustered together. One of these is the State Hospital for the Insane; admirably conducted on those enlightened principles of conciliation and kindness, which twenty years ago would have been worse than heretical, and which have been acted upon with so much success in our own pauper asylum at Hanwell. “Evince a desire to show some confidence, and repose some trust, even in mad people,” said the resident physician, as we walked along the galleries, his patients flocking round us unrestrained. Of those who deny or doubt the wisdom of this maxim after witnessing its effects, if there be such people still alive, I can only say that I hope I may never be summoned as a juryman on a commission of lunacy whereof they are the subjects; for I should certainly find them out of their senses, on such evidence alone.