Bedlam: The Further Secret Adventures of Charlotte Bronte

3

How had Slade, the man I loved, come to be here in Bedlam?

Almost three years ago he had told me he was going to Russia. I had thought him still there. I’d had no reason to believe otherwise.

What was happening to him, and why?

I saw a door at the back of the room open. Through it stepped a man whose narrow figure wore a dark coat and trousers of a distinctly foreign cut. He had Germanic features-pale, hooded eyes behind gold-rimmed spectacles, a long nose, a cruel mouth. His hair was close-cropped and silvery, his bearing imperious.

Reader, you will recognize him as the Prussian who conspired with the Tsar against England. At that time I had no knowledge of the man.

He strode toward Slade. An object glittered in his hand. It was a glass cylinder with a plunger, attached to a long, sharp needle. While the nurses struggled to hold Slade still, the man jabbed the needle into Slade’s arm. He worked the plunger. Slade jerked as the liquid contents of the cylinder ran into his body. His struggles weakened. His eyes closed. The nurses adjusted the clamps around his head. The doctor gathered up the wires connected to the strange apparatus. Each had a small metal disc at its end. He affixed these discs to Slade’s temples and forehead. He turned a crank on the machine.

Lights on its surface blinked. I heard a crackling sound. Slade stiffened as if from a convulsion. The foreigner moved to his side, whispered in his ear. I did not know what these men were doing to Slade, but it could not be good. I tried to open the door; it was locked. I beat my fists against it and cried, “Stop!”

The doctor, the nurses, and the foreigner looked in my direction. At the same instant I heard someone call my name. Dr. Forbes hurried toward me, saying, “There you are, thank heaven.” He seized my arm and propelled me away from the door, out of the dungeon. Soon we were in the ward where I’d left him, amid the staff, the visitors, and blessed normalcy.

“That was the criminal lunatics’ ward,” Dr. Forbes said. “I shouldn’t have let you wander in there.”

“In there-I saw-they-” With an effort, I composed myself. I stammered a description of what I’d seen.

“It’s a treatment called galvanism,” Dr. Forbes explained. “An electrical charge is administered to the patient’s head. It cures melancholia, hypochondria, mania, and dementia. It’s perfectly safe. Don’t be upset.”

“The patient. I know him. He-”

Dr. Forbes frowned. He led me down the staircase, toward the main door. “You should go home. Your experience has distressed you so much that you’re confused. You couldn’t possibly know that patient. He’s a lunatic who was arrested and brought to Bedlam by the police. He’s the suspect in a crime.”

I was sure a mistake had been made. John Slade a lunatic and a criminal? It was impossible!

He was a graduate of Cambridge, a former clergyman. He spoke at least four languages besides English. He’d been a soldier in the army of the East India Company, had served in the Middle East, and later joined the British intelligence service. Moreover, he was a hero who’d risked his life in the line of duty.

Now I told Dr. Forbes that I must save Slade; I begged him to stop the torture. Perhaps if I had behaved calmly and rationally he would have complied, but I was so agitated that I raved as if I were mad myself.

“Miss Bronte, you must leave at once,” Dr. Forbes said. “People are staring.”

That brought me to my senses. If the gossips should hear about this episode, what hay they would make of it! Famous authoress Currer Bell goes insane in Bedlam, the newspaper headlines would read. I had to let Dr. Forbes escort me out.

“This is my fault. I shouldn’t have let you come,” he said regretfully as he put me into a carriage. “I must apologize.” He added, “I am leaving in two days for a holiday in Ambleside in the Lake District, but if you should need my assistance, please let me know.”

Alone in my carriage on my way back to Gloucester Terrace, I conjectured that Slade must have gotten himself into trouble which had led to his arrest and incarceration. But what kind of trouble? I wondered if Dr. Forbes had sent me away from Bedlam because he was a party to Slade’s persecution and he didn’t want me to see it. But I could not persuade myself of that. He must truly believe Slade was a criminal lunatic and I had mistaken his identity.

When I arrived at the Smiths’ house, I would have liked to sit alone in my room and decide what to do, but George greeted me at the door and said, “I’m glad you’re back early. We’re going to the Great Exhibition.”

The Great Exhibition was a huge museum, opened just this month, that contained some one hundred thousand mechanical devices and works of art from many different countries. It had been conceived by Prince Albert, with the mission of advancing humanity and celebrating the progress achieved in the modern age. Although the Great Exhibition was the talk of England, I didn’t want to go because I was so distressed. Still, I could not refuse George. After a quick luncheon I found myself riding in a carriage with him, his mother, and his two younger sisters. They talked excitedly about the things we would see. Nobody noticed that I sat brooding in silence.

Why had Slade returned to England? Why hadn’t he let me know? I thought of the three lonely years I’d spent without him. I alternated between hurt feelings, fear for Slade, and the first pangs of doubt about what I’d seen at Bedlam. Was that inmate really Slade? How could Slade have become a criminal lunatic? My mind refused to believe he had, for I thought him to be a thoroughly sane, honorable man. But what else could explain his incarceration in the asylum, if indeed the man I’d seen was Slade?

The popularity of the Great Exhibition became evident long before we got there. Our progress slowed behind a crush of carriages and omnibuses. Pedestrians crowded the sidewalks. Eventually we reached a long avenue that led through Hyde Park, where merrymakers lounged on grass shaded by trees. It was such a bright, gay scene that my experience at Bedlam seemed unreal. Perhaps Dr. Forbes was right, and the man I’d seen wasn’t Slade. I’d mistaken Julia Garrs for my sister Anne; why might I not have made another mistake?

“Look!” Mrs. Smith pointed out the carriage window. “There is the Crystal Palace!”

The “Crystal Palace,” the popular name for the building that housed the Great Exhibition, was an enormous glass shell supported by a skeleton of iron, like a gigantic conservatory, more than a hundred feet high. The newspapers had proclaimed it “The Tenth Wonder of the World.” We disembarked from the carriage and joined the queue at the entrance. What a varied company we were in! Clergymen from the countryside shepherded flocks of parishioners; teachers presided over groups of barefoot schoolchildren; rich ladies and gentlemen waited amid soldiers in uniform. I heard foreign languages spoken by visitors from abroad.

As his mother and sisters chattered, George Smith leaned close to me and said, “You’re awfully quiet. Is something wrong?”

“No, I’m fine.” I couldn’t talk about what had happened at Bedlam; I didn’t want to worry him, especially if it had been a case of mistaken identity. Perhaps I’d wanted so much to see Slade that I had superimposed his face upon a stranger.

We entered the Crystal Palace. Its interior resembled a vast cathedral. Awestruck, carried by the tide of the crowd, the Smiths and I moved down a long transept roofed with a glass barrel vault. Iron posts, wrought to resemble classical columns, supported upper galleries on either side of a wide main thoroughfare.

“It’s over eighteen hundred feet long and four hundred fifty feet wide,” George said. “It covers nineteen square acres.”

“There are trees indoors,” his sister Eliza marveled.

I, too, was amazed by the live, full-sized elms that rose within the transept.

“The transept was offset to accommodate the trees that were on the site,” George explained. “The building isn’t completely symmetrical.”

I was so impressed by the Crystal Palace that I almost forgot about Slade. Sunshine poured through the glass ceiling and walls onto potted shrubs, flowering plants, and palmettos set along the main thoroughfare. White marble statuary gleamed. The voices of the spectators and their footsteps on the wooden floor blended into a deep hum, like the sound of the sea. Above it I heard the tinkle of falling water. We joined a crowd that was gathered around a huge crystal fountain.

“It’s twenty-seven feet high and weighs four tons,” George said.

At the center, a column like a splinter from an iceberg glittered with rainbow iridescence. Water cascaded into an enormous, overflowing crystal basin. As we moved on, George said to me, “Queen Victoria and Prince Albert held a grand opening ceremony for the Great Exhibition. I wish you could have come to that. But maybe you’ll see them here some other time. I hear they plan to make frequent appearances.”

I did not tell him that I was acquainted with the royal couple. They had played a part in my secret adventures of 1848.

The Smiths and I explored the displays arranged in courts beneath the upper galleries. Each was dedicated to a particular nation or subject. We saw silk carpets, shawls, and a model of a snake charmer in the Indian Pavilion. The United States Pavilion contained a nude statue of a Greek slave that caused much furor. In the Medieval Court we inspected an altar, vestments, candelabra, and chalices. We wandered among railway locomotives, hydraulic presses, farm and mill machinery, and a zinc Amazon on horseback. We saw vases made of human hair and of mutton fat. The grandeur of the Great Exhibition did not lie in one thing, but in the unique assemblage of all things, arranged with colorful, marvelous power of effect.

“What do you think?” George asked me as we listened to a bellows that played “God Save the Queen.”

“It’s very fine, gorgeous, animated, and bewildering,” I said.

He smiled and agreed. “They say that thirty thousand people visit every day. Some come back again and again.”

One would have to, in order to see everything. Three hours later, we had barely scratched the Great Exhibition’s surface. Everything began to blur together. The only thing that stood out in my mind was a model of a steam-powered airship-a hot air balloon combined with a boiler, engine, and propeller. Overwhelmed and fatigued by so much ingenuity, I was glad to sit in the refreshment court and eat strawberry ice. Even gladder was I to visit what I considered the most wonderful attraction of all-the “retiring rooms,” the first public conveniences in Britain. A penny bought me a clean seat in a water closet, a towel, a comb, and a shoeshine.

I was also glad for a few moments alone, to think. Perhaps it was too big a coincidence that Slade should have been in Bedlam on the day I happened by. Perhaps the man I’d seen wasn’t he. But I firmly believe that coincidences do occur. One could call them fate. It was fate when Jane Eyre was rescued by her long-lost cousins after she ran away from Mr. Rochester. Fate had brought Slade and me together the first time. I realized then that I could not help believing that the madman in Bedlam was Slade, and that fate had brought us together again.

As I walked through the park to meet the Smiths, I heard someone call, “Miss Bronte!” It was a man perhaps twenty-eight years old, brown-haired, dressed in a brown coat and trousers. He hurried up to me, smiling radiantly.

“It is Miss Charlotte Bronte, the authoress, isn’t it?” he said.

“It is,” I said warily. I was often recognized by strangers who’d read Jane Eyre, but it usually happened at literary gatherings or in Yorkshire, where everyone knew everyone else. It had never happened in a public place in London. “Have we met?”

“We shook hands after Mr. Thackeray’s lecture last night.”

I took a closer look at him. He had pink, boyish features, a slight build, and a habit of tilting his head. His eyes were large, brown, protuberant, and shining with earnestness. His clothing was neat and clean, but frayed at the collar and cuffs, his shoes polished but worn. He didn’t look familiar, but there had been such a big crowd at the salon, I could easily have forgotten him. “Well, it’s a pleasure to see you again, Mr…?”

“Oliver Heald.” Seizing my hand in both of his, he pumped it vigorously. His hands were warm and moist. “I’m so glad we ran into each other! I’ve been so wanting a chance to talk to you. I love Jane Eyre. I’ve read it ten times. It’s my favorite book.”

He held my hand too long. He stood too close, leaning toward me, his earnest brown eyes gazing into my face. As I stammered my thanks, I backed away, but he followed.

“I can’t wait to tell everyone at school that I met you.” Mr. Heald added, “I teach geography.” That he was a teacher didn’t surprise me. His diction was that of an educated man, and I could imagine him with a class of boys who did mocking imitations of him. “I heard that you were once a teacher, too. Is it so?”

“Yes.”

“But you went on to become a famous authoress.” He confided, “I write a little, too. Were you also a governess?” When I admitted as much, he seemed gratified. “I hope you’ll pardon me for saying that you are exactly as I pictured Jane Eyre.”

Too many people have likened me to her. Although I am aware of the resemblances, it embarrasses me. I made polite, modest disclaimers as I sought a chance to escape.

“You are unmarried?” Mr. Heald inquired.

I owned that I was, although my spinsterhood is a tender subject that I don’t care to discuss. People assume that it is due to my plain appearance. They don’t know that I have turned down four marriage proposals, including Slade’s. I was beginning to be annoyed by Mr. Heald.

He greeted my admission with delight. “I, too, am unattached.”

This conversation was going in a direction that I did not like. “Sir, it’s been a pleasure speaking with you, but my friends are waiting for me. I must go now.”

When I joined the Smiths at our carriage, I forgot Mr. Heald. He was a chance encounter of no significance-or so I believed at the time. My thoughts returned to John Slade.

I knew I must go back to Bedlam, for another look at that lunatic.