Bedlam: A Novel of Love and Madness
Greg Hollingshead
Language: English
Pages: 400
ISBN: 0312427425
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
An International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award Nominee
A Toronto Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year
Conspiracies, plots, and paranoia are sweeping through London in the last days of the eighteenth century, and James Tilly Matthews has been caught under false pretenses and locked up in the city's vast, crumbling asylum. As his wife, Margaret, tries desperately to free him, political forces conspire to keep him locked up. Margaret's chief adversary is John Haslam, the asylum's chief apothecary, a man torn between his conscience and the lure of scientific discovery: as James becomes more famous--and more unhinged--he becomes a valuable specimen for the young doctor and a pawn in a grand political conspiracy. Based on real characters and events, Bedlam is a brilliant evocation of a city teetering between darkness and light, and a moving study of every kind of madness.
of his friends and their parents. There is a joke here, Jamie, that sums up the place. A courtier in Hell is asked by the Devil how he likes it. “Not at all disagreeable, Mr. Satan, sir,” he replies. “Upon my honour, rather warm to be sure!” Your wife who misses you more than she can say, Margaret SHAFTESBURY James Norris seen through Wakefield’s eyes reminding Monro how cruel he made us look, he ordered him freed from the bulk of his restraints and the chain on his neck-ring extended
four sane men, and indicated by their scowls they knew I was only defending my own vicious practice when I observed that, right or wrong, the discipline of restraint has been medically accepted for hundreds of years, not only in the treatment but in the cure of madness. The Battle of Waterloo has come and gone. Napoleon Bonaparte was a tyrant who centred all power in himself while calling it the French people’s, yet still the age dreams of freedom. At our Inquiry, the bone that stuck in every
afford not to practise. Instead, convinced that few circumstances impair British health like the dreadful quality and preparation of British food, he threw himself into writing a compendious cookbook, to be called The Cook’s Oracle. As Jerdan put it, “Kitchiner’s medicating is cookbook-making and his cookbook-making is medicating.” To this end, we were all invited to dinner on Sunday nights, to pronounce upon the dishes served. With the assistance of Henry Osborne, who had time on his hands,
but the matter is so extremely serious that were the chances you read this a thousand times less than they really are, it would need to be done. Finally, Jamie, I hope what isn’t necessary to be said is the hearts and thoughts of all who love you will be with you tomorrow. Your ever faithful Margaret BEFORE THE COMMITTEE My first appearance before the Bethlem subcommittee after twelve years and six months at their pleasure took place on the morning of Saturday, August 12th, 1809. Sir
connexion, having already delivered on his behalf letters and valuables to the French government, and vice versa—services for which, as I reminded him, I’d not been paid. He received this information in a noncommittal, I would almost say doubting fashion, as if he hardly knew who I was. Superciliously he informed me the Government, if it saw any point, would form an answer in due course. Once it did, and I was the one chose to convey it to France, they’d contact me. I told him I’d wait. But when