John Harwood - The Asylum

And according to Dr. Straker, she had been at Gresham’s Yard for three of those missing weeks. Was that why I could not remember anything? Again and again I tried to pick up the thread, to move forward, step by step, from those last monotonous days in my uncle’s shop, but it was like stepping into a fog-bank, expecting every time to meet my double, only for the fog to lift an instant later in the infirmary at Tregannon Asylum.

If Dr. Straker was right, it could only be a matter of time before my mind—or what I believed to be my mind—began to disintegrate. Imagining that, I would be seized by a trembling that I could not control, sometimes for hours on end. I had read, often enough, of the tortures of the damned, and had tried to imagine them continuing forever, just as I had tried and failed to imagine the joys of heaven. In the darkness of those interminable nights, it was all too easy to believe that I had died without knowing it; died, and been condemned to a hell in which even my present torment would seem like a paradise compared to what awaited me. Yet much of the day was occupied by the routine of the asylum, which I absorbed, little by little, through a fog of misery and dread.

Between seven thirty and six, the door to the landing stood open, and we could descend to the ground floor, on which were a library, a women’s sitting room, a men’s sitting room, a dining room and a chapel. The men’s ward must have been a mirror image of ours; the men descended by a corresponding staircase at the other end of the wing. Patients were not allowed in one another’s rooms; if you wished to converse with anyone, you had to do so downstairs. Just beyond the foot of the women’s staircase was an outer door leading to an enclosed garden, the one I had seen from the infirmary window, where we were exhorted to walk whenever the weather allowed.

As the days grew even shorter and colder, many of the inmates preferred to remain indoors, and had to be chivvied by the attendants into taking a turn in the garden—if so desolate a place deserved the name—whereas I found some relief in movement, and would put on my cloak and tramp round and round for an hour or more unless it was pouring with rain. Sometimes I would look up at the row of barred windows on the second floor; mine, I thought, had been the third from the right, and four windows farther along—though I tried not to think of it—was the sitting room where I had foolishly put my trust in Frederic Mordaunt. The ground-floor windows were barred as well, but those on the first floor were not, and I would often see faces looking down from them; I wondered if this was where the doctors, or the attendants, had their quarters.

The brick walls that made up the other three sides looked even higher from below. Though they were kept clear of ivy, the mortar had crumbled a little, and it seemed to me that a strong and athletic person, not encumbered by skirts or petticoats, might be able to scramble up where the walls met at a right angle. But the alarm would be raised long before they could reach the top; and even if they got over, they would be instantly pursued. There was a massive wooden door at the far corner of the outer wall, but it was so overgrown that it had obviously not been opened for years. Apart from a scattering of white flowers, the only plants that seemed to be thriving were all of the darkest and most dismal shades of green.

Idleness was strongly discouraged. Those who were agitated were exhorted to knit or embroider: there was basket-weaving or raffia work for those who could not be trusted with a needle. When I could not walk in the garden, I read, or pretended to read, so as to avoid being pressed to play cards or backgammon. In summer, or so I was told, patients who had made good progress were allowed, under strict supervision, to walk around other parts of the estate. All of this, according to Mrs. Pearce, was part of the system of moral therapy. To me it resembled a form of religious persuasion in which, though all the talk was of salvation, the prospect of hell was far more immediate, in realms far more confined, housing dozens or hundreds more inmates whom I never saw.

We were required, too, to take all our meals in the dining room downstairs unless the doctors considered us too ill to attend. Male and female patients dined together. There were several tables of various sizes; Mrs. Pearce and at least one of the doctors (who all seemed to be bachelors, living on the premises) would preside at luncheon or dinner. At one of the tables, the faces changed from day to day; later I learnt that these were patients from the more restricted wards, brought in to show them the freedom to which they might aspire if they progressed. Conversation was encouraged, but meals were sombre affairs at best. If it had not been for the company, you might have imagined yourself in some genteel boarding-house.

Dr. Straker assigned me to a place at the middle table, between a Mr. Wingrave, who talked continuously, and a Miss Traherne, who never spoke. Miss Traherne, a tall, emaciated woman with a corpse-white face and lank, mousey hair, would sit, radiating misery, staring at the uneaten contents of her plate until one of the attendants reminded her to take a mouthful. Even the seating formed part of the system of moral therapy: Mr. Wingrave was an example of a man possessed by a delusion he refused to relinquish, and therefore condemned to live out his days at Tregannon Asylum; Miss Traherne was a terrible warning of the fate awaiting those who succumbed to despair.

In Mr. Wingrave, I thought at first that I had found an ally, for he looked and sounded entirely sane, and seemed to know exactly what was wrong with our fellow diners. But then he confided to me that society was controlled by a race of invisible beings called the Overseers; he knew this because he alone could hear their voices. He appeared to be resigned to his fate; the Overseers, he said, had compelled Dr. Straker to certify him, so as to ensure that no one outside Tregannon Asylum would ever discover their existence. You could tell when an Overseer had taken command of someone’s mind because of the look in their eyes, a distinctive glassy stare that he had learnt to recognise. After everything that had befallen me, it sounded all too plausible, except that Dr. Straker was surely the god of our underworld; the attendants, his familiar spirits.

Others at the middle table included a Miss Partridge, small, elderly, very gracious in manner, and possessed by the unshakable conviction that she was the Queen’s younger sister. She had been confined by her own children, to spare them embarrassment, I could only suppose, since she seemed entirely harmless. There was Mrs. Hawksley, wild-eyed, very tense and jerky in her movements, glaring at anyone who approached her. There was Miss Smythe, a small birdlike lady in middle age, who shook her head unceasingly, even when she was eating; sometimes slowly, sometimes in a seeming frenzy of denial. There was the Reverend Mr. Carfax, distinguished-looking, immaculately turned out, who would arrange his cutlery with mathematical precision and then sit brushing invisible specks of dust from the sleeve of his coat; and Mr. Stanton, gaunt, grey-headed, with haunted eyes and a permanent expression of dread. There was Miss Lewes, a stout woman in the grip of religious mania, listening to inaudible voices and arguing sotto voce with them; and others whose names I never learnt, like the immensely tall and thin man who moved like some strange wading bird, pausing before each step with his foot poised above the ground, his face set in a look of utter desolation.

Some weeks after my arrival in the women’s ward, I was standing by the library window, which, like that of my room above, looked out upon the stable yard. It had rained earlier that morning, and water was still dripping from the eaves of the stable building opposite. A wagon drawn by a pair of horses rumbled into view, and I saw that the driver was George Baker. He pulled up on the gravel nearby, and was warmly greeted by two stable hands who came out to help him unload. If only, I thought, I had gone anywhere but Gresham’s Yard that night; I could have got out at Plymouth and begged shelter from the woman who had helped me at the station. Tears sprang to my eyes; I bit my lip and pressed my face against the bars to prevent anyone from noticing.