Colleen McCullough - Morgan’s Run

In theas yet unmodified Gloucester Gaol disease and proximity worked their wills.

Weeping Willy Insell, still weeping, was discharged, a free man, on the 5th of April. On the same day Mr. James Hyde the attorney forwarded the Humble Petition of Richard Morgan to Lord Sydney, together with a letter from Mr. John Fisher, Commander of the Bristol Excise Office. Lord Sydney’s indefatigable and highly efficient secretary, Mr. Evan Nepean, forwarded it on the 15th of April to the chambers of Sir James Eyre in Bedford Row; it would be up to him, the presiding judge in Morgan’s case, to review that case and advise Lord Sydney as to whether the King’s Mercy might or might not be extended to Richard Morgan. All very prompt, given that the trial had taken place on the 23rd of March. But there in Bedford Row the Humble Petition of Richard Morgan moldered; Mr. Baron Sir James Eyre was so busy that he had not the time to deal with any petitions, humble or otherwise.

In lateJuly a letter came from Mr. Jem Thistlethwaite, who had disappeared from his lodgings and the London scene at much the same date as William Henry had vanished. Richard took it from Old Mother Hubbard with a sinking sensation in his chest; he would now have to open up that wound and air it. From the time that he had entered the Bristol Newgate it had been buried beneath conscious thought. Though what he had not realized was that his blotting out of William Henry had generated his determination to survive, even spurred him to perform the rituals he had established for himself, the rituals of purification which set him apart from all his fellows and caused them to regard him as somewhere between untouchable and mad. Why survive? To get through these seven years in a fit state to resume his search for William Henry, buried deep in his mind.

“Richard, I have just received a letter from your father, and I am utterly overset by his awful news. Getting through the last few gallons of my pipe of rum apparently caused me to think I had written to inform you of my intended flight, but that letter was either not written or went astray. I have been absent abroad since June of last year-Italy beckoned, I went running into her glorious embrace. It is our combined luck that upon my return a bare week ago, I was able to engage my old lodgings again, and so your father’s pages reached me.

“I have always known that your life would not go as you thought it would-do you remember? You said, ‘I was born in Bristol and I will die in Bristol.’ Even as you said it, William Henry on your knee, I understood that it would not turn out so. I feared for you. And I, who am quite incapable of love, loved you then as I love you now. I just do not know the how or why, save that I see something in you that you do not realize is there.

“Of William Henry I will say no more than that you will never find him. He was not meant for this earth, but wherever he is, Richard, he is happy and at peace. The truly good have no business here, for they have nothing to learn. And even atheists like me can believe that sometimes these things happen because, did they not, the future would hold worse. Be glad for William Henry.”

Richard put the letter down blindly, unable to see for the tears he had never been able to shed for William Henry. The other prisoners in the felons’ common-room, including Lizzie Lock, made no attempt to approach him as he sat on his box and wept. How strange that it should be Jem Thistlethwaite who broke down the dam and let the torrent of grief flow free at last. But he was not right. William Henry would come back one day, he was not gone from this world forever.

He took up the letter again at dinner time the following day, having spoken to no one, and no one having spoken to him.

“I have carved a little niche for myself among the new breed of Whigs the presence of a young leader like Pitt has permitted.

Oligarchy, though it must ever rule in the Lords, has quit the Commons. Men of ideas abound, and Pitt, could he only find the money, would indulge them all.

“Getting to you yourself, the prospect of transportation is nonexistent. The African experiment was such a disaster that no one at Westminster has the courage-or the stupidity, miraculously enough-to revive it in any form. India has been suggested, and discarded the way a man would divest himself of a shirt made of snakes. Our outposts there are perilous and circumscribed. Though these are not the reasons behind the decision. They are firmly based in the opposition of the East India Company, which wants no felons jeopardizing its activities in Bengal and Cathay. The West Indies want none but negroes for indenture or slavery, and the English grip on places like Nova Scotia and Newfoundland does not allow transportation. The French hover. As do the Spanish in the south.

“So it would seem that you will serve out your time in Gloucester. Rest assured, however, that as soon as I hear anything, I will pass it on to you. Dick says that you have organized yourself with what Cousin James-the-druggist calls a ‘cool kind of passion.’ ”

His answer had to wait until Sunday, when he took possession of the end of the table Old Mother Hubbard had installed in the felons’ common-room just before the assizes and not removed after them, on the theory that it gave some felons an extra storey to perch upon when the place was overcrowded. As if it knew times of undercrowding.

A rash of visitors had broken out, envoys of a friend of Mr. Pitt’s named Jeremy Bentham, at present touring Russia with the intention of writing a legal code for the Empress Catherine, but also the author of a treatise on the virtues and vices of setting felons to hard labor on public works, and exponent of a new kind of prison-in-the-round. His envoys popped in and out of the gaol inspecting it minutely and shaking their heads gloomily, gazing at the extensions its inmates were erecting and muttering about its all having to be pulled down again. Square! Why did the minds of men think square when round had no corners?

“I would rather be in Italy than in Gloucester Gaol, Jem, of that I can assure you.

“Of Ceely Trevillian and the affair at the distillery I can say no more than that I had the misfortune to run up against a man of birth and brain with no better outlet for his talents than intrigue, conspiracy and manipulation. He belongs on the stage, where he would have out-acted Kemp, Mrs. Siddons and Garrick combined. My only consolation is that when Cave and Thorne have arrived at a settlement with the Excise Office, I will be able to pay my debts and ensure that the Cousins James are not out of pocket when they buy me more things. I am never without a new book, though reading some of them is painful, as Clifton and the Hotwells keep cropping up. Two places I would rather not be reminded of, even by an Evelina or a Humphry Clinker. Not so much because of William Henry or Ceely as because of Annemarie Latour, with whom I sinned grievously. I can see the exasperation at my prudishness on your ugly face from here, but you were not there, nor could you have loved the man I became with her. Pleasure meant too much. Can you understand that? And if you cannot, how can I make you? I was a bull, a stallion. I rutted, I did not make love. And I loathed the object of my animality, who was an animal too.

“In Gloucester Gaol we are all in together, men and women-and children. Though it is a place of more fucking than suckling. The babies usually die, poor little creatures. And their poor mothers, who constantly carry and bear for nothing. At first the presence of the women appalled me, but as time has gone on I have come to realize that they make Gloucester Gaol endurable. Without them, we would be a collection of men brutalized beyond recognition.