The Butterfly Cabinet (22 page)

“It will not come to that,” said Edward. “The worst is over. We are not the same.”

Edward’s forebears were lords and barons, dukes and high sheriffs, grand jurors every one. I have dragged him into the courtroom in a wholly different capacity from that which would have been expected. I have done irreparable damage to the Ormond name. Edward never missed Mass, had all the children baptized in that strange little chapel at Portrush. He wanted me to convert and I had no difficulty with it. It mattered little to me whether I sat in the kirk or knelt at the altar rails. I must admit I was curious to experience what the Reverend Mr. Begg had termed “the weekly pantomime for slumbering idolaters.” I was not disappointed, although I doubt that he would have been pleased with my response. I was surprised and intrigued by the symbolism of the whole thing, water for washing sin away, oil to anoint, ashes for humility. The alien rituals I observed with amusement and not a little sense of theater: the flickering of candles under the statuary; the washing of the feet; the kissing of the cross; the acrid smell as the thurible swung through the church; the glazed and elaborate monstrance, like a burst sun, on the altar. Looking on the flickering candles under the statue of the Blessed Virgin, my father’s voice came to me, quoting from the Confession of Faith. “Religious worship is to be given to God, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; and to him alone; not to angels, saints, or any other creature…” At Priorwood we observed the service in silence—we were listeners—but at Oranmore the voices of the farm laborers and servants, the shopkeepers and justices, the ladies of the Industrial Society and the village fishermen, all rose together, rose
right up into the apse and hung there, heavy like incense, and all of us under the weight of what had been uttered. It did not matter that most of them did not understand the Latin chant. That may even have added to it. For all my cynicism, it did used to move me.

I must have appeared dutiful. The fool of a priest thought me devout and after my arrest took it upon himself to defend me in his homilies. I was speechless when he suggested to Edward that it would help my case if he accompanied me to the readjournment. I suppose that the trial was just another piece of theater for him, a new audience, a different auditorium. I can still see him now, the sheen on his black frock, rubbing his hands, patrolling up and down the anterooms like a cormorant on the rocks at low tide, giving an occasional guttural grunt as a new idea occurred.

If the
Watchman
article, in its implied criticism, was damaging, then Father McGarrity’s defense of me was worse again. When the servants gave their evidence at the courthouse in Coleraine, he began thumping the table with his fist and had to be restrained by Mr. Crankshaft, and despite the seriousness of the situation, I could not stifle a laugh. He delivered a sermon the following Sunday in which he publicly objected to the religious makeup of the jurors, there not being a Roman Catholic among them, and accused them all of bias. His contortions to explain my eccentricity had me squirming in my seat. The
Watchman
printed the sermon where he brought up the question of my having ridden to the hunt while I was heavy with child. I could imagine the disapproval rise up into the church and hang above the heads of the entire congregation. I believe he wished to portray me as brave and fearless. “She is always well to the front,” I read, “and generally in at the death … she is a lady of great determination and power of will, and has never been known to quail when pitted against the most vicious or unmanageable animal.” Ordinarily a compliment, perhaps, in hunting circles, but not necessarily attributes that one would wish to have emphasized when on trial for the killing of
one’s own child. “Brave” and “fearless” belong in the vocabulary of soldiers and kings, and not in that of doting mothers. How was that to help my case? I wished, as the
Watchman
had suggested, that I could muzzle him. I was powerless, though: both Edward and Mr. Crankshaft thought his presence was an endorsement of my good standing. Each time he opened his mouth to speak, I could see the horrid little man from the Cruelty Society scribble like fury in his notebook. And the public liked me less and less.

As if this were not bad enough, the reverend father decided that a letter was the thing, and wrote to the
Derry Gazette
. Perhaps he had been a little harsh, he wrote, in claiming that the jury was prejudiced, but there was no question in his mind that the public had been made so by virtue of what the press had printed. I was, he admitted, “eccentric in some respects,” apparently at ease mingling with men in the public marketplace; given to traveling, at times, in the horse boxes with my horses. However, he implied without actually saying it, this did not make me guilty of killing my daughter. Had the child not struggled, he averred, the stocking would not have slipped; had the stocking not slipped, the child would not have died. “If it had kept quiet,” he wrote, “it would not have been strangled.” Thus says my only public defendant in so many words: she did it to herself. Such defendants I can do without. He disputed that there was a general feeling of indignation against me: “Among the Catholics, at least, there is a feeling of sorrow and sympathy,” he stated. He admitted that I was “peculiar.” “She is fearless almost to insensibility,” he preached (this in my defense!). “Really,” he stated, “there appears to be a regular conspiracy against her and her husband, and it is almost entirely on account of their religion.” The
Watchman
returned by saying that it was almost refreshing to hear a member of the Roman Catholic clergy defend a landlord. It really would have been quite comic had it not been for the circumstances. It was as a direct result of his histrionics (which went all the way to the ears
of the attorney general) that the trial was heard not at the Derry assizes, but at the Four Courts in Dublin, with the solicitor general acting for the crown. Mr. Morell had clashed with Edward’s father on a number of occasions. I could not see how such an outcome could possibly benefit my case.

It was only my second visit to Dublin, and in very different circumstances from the first. Edward had brought me down for the castle season, not long after Harry was born, to be presented to Lord and Lady Spencer. On that occasion, we stayed at the Shelbourne, of course, but I was most struck, I remember, by the majestic Bank of Ireland, formerly Parliament House, and its likeness to the façade of the British Museum. It made me think again of all the stunning butterflies housed there, when Edward and I had gone to view them. We attended the State Ball in St. Patrick’s Hall and danced a Viennese waltz, to Liddell’s Orchestra, I remember, and later Edward tried to teach me a country dance while the orchestra played an Irish jig. We were invited to an occasion in the Throne Room, a much smaller and more select affair, which proved, said Edward, that my Irish jig had made an impression! Edward spent his mornings in his Sackville Street club, from whence he returned each afternoon, having lunched on oysters and champagne; he left me free to wander among the Royal Dublin Society’s collections at Leinster House. I recall that on one such day, he said to me, a smile on his face, “What butterfly would you be, Harriet?”

And I said, without hesitation, “A painted lady.”

He laughed heartily, feigned outrage, said nothing could be less like me since I was never gaudy or superficial or false but always frank and true, even at the risk of injury to myself. But I refused to relinquish my choice. I would arrive, I said, from North Africa in spring, soar over the castle and settle in the nettle patch behind the garden wall, and sip from the aster and the lavender, and lay my eggs on the thistles and spread my wings and bask
in the rare April sunshine when it came, glorious in orange and brown and black. A painted lady could be anyone she wished under her disguise, I told him: the world would be fooled by the mask, but beneath it she would be free.

It was bedlam at the courthouse in Dublin: the hall was packed with people, women mostly, pushing and protesting and insisting on their right to be present for the trial. The police were hard-pressed to keep the entrance clear and to distinguish between witnesses, jurors and those members of the public who were determined to be present. I waited in an anteroom for Mr. Crankshaft to come for me, to escort me into the pew, where I was to sit alone throughout the hearing. It took me a little time to find the courage to raise my eyes and look around. I recall the smell of wood polish, remember seeing the dust motes dance in a shaft of sunlight from one of the high windows, how we all stood to attention when the judge entered, attired in his black robes, powdered wig. I felt every face in the court turned toward mine, the weight of all those glances bent on me. I have never enjoyed public display. The whole process of the trial must be designed to humiliate the defendant. Since one is not permitted to speak, what other reason can there be for being present?

I must admit, my heart stopped when Justice Murray gave his opening address. I will never forget his words: “If death is caused to any person by the act of another the law first says, as human life is sacred, that causing the death of another is murder.” It was the first time, I believe, that the word had been spoken aloud, although it had been stuck in all of our throats for weeks. “It lies on the person who has caused the death to show beyond all reasonable doubt that the crime can be reduced to manslaughter.” So it was up to me, then, to prove, without speaking or being heard in any way, that I was not a murderess.

Edward had engaged two illustrious counsels for my defense, but out of deference had not sent Mr. Crankshaft away. Mr. McKinney was eloquent on my behalf. He cautioned the jury not
to “enter into the spirit of enthusiastic ferocity that was abroad” with regard to my case; reminded them that this was a trial by law and not “a trial by newspapers” or by tea table, a reference no doubt to the hordes of reporters who peopled the public gallery, and to the ladies who had been refused admittance but who were assembled still outside the courthouse. He urged them to “emancipate themselves from prejudice” and to “shut their ears to the poisoned air,” to judge me on evidence alone. The evidence he referred to was damning enough in itself. “This woman has been roasted before a slow fire for weeks and months,” he said; “she might have strange, hard notions of correction and training for the young mind” but “she has only made a mistake.” I grew nervous. He seemed to be falling into Mr. Crankshaft and Father McGarrity’s trap: constructing a defense out of my worst failings. Perhaps the best defense
was
silence. Perhaps it was not such a disadvantage that the defendant was not permitted to speak. I began to see the sense of it, after all. He concluded by recommending that the jury restore me to my home and to my children. There is a fine line, I began to see, between defense and condemnation: there was not much the crown needed to do but to repeat his words in Mr. Morell’s inimitable sneer.

Mrs. Walsh, the ornithologist’s wife, did her best for me and almost got away clear. I seemed genuinely attached to my only daughter, she said, and outwardly affectionate toward her, even though, and here is the rub, “she was a child of very independent will.” I believe I have heard that phrase before, a long time ago now, and in reference to myself.

Mother instructed me to wear my nighttime corset in bed. It was only marginally looser than the daytime version, and pinched my ribs and chest to such a degree that I could not turn without whalebone and steel digging into flesh. She said it was for the best. If my waist were molded and shaped at seven, she said, when my bones were young, I would have no difficulty maintaining sixteen inches when I was eighteen, despite what she called my “large
structure.” She herself had managed fifteen inches in her wedding dress. I felt her eyes on me always at the dinner table, eyeing my portions. She coughed discreetly if she saw me reach for a piece of candied fruit or cheese. What horrors did she imagine would follow if my waist stretched to seventeen inches? I believe I was hungry for the first nineteen years of my life.

Julia had no such restrictions placed on her. “Julia is so fortunate in her frame,” Mother would say. “In that respect, she takes after me.” Julia, it was felt, needed “building up.” She was plied with sugared biscuits and preserves, while I was placed as far away from such delicacies as was possible. Every night, I unlaced the tortuous garment under the covers and slept with it beside me before slipping into it again in the morning. If Elsa remarked on the stays being loose, I said they must have come free in my sleep. I suspect the maid knew I took it off, but she laced me into it every night, as instructed by Mother, and dutifully replaced it with the tighter corset in the morning. Until the night of the thunderstorm, when the rain hammered against the windows and the lightning lit up my little bedroom with flashes of light and I woke, after an uneasy sleep, to see Mother standing over me, leaning on her cane, a candle in her other hand lighting her face in a yellow glow, the covers of the bed turned back to reveal the discarded corset.

“You disobedient child!” she hissed at me. “Do you want to grow up with the figure of a peasant?”

“No, Mother,” I said, terrified at the look on her face.

“Get out of bed this instant.”

I climbed out, not knowing if I was awake or dreaming. It was a long time since I had seen Mother stand unsupported by Father or by one of the servants, and yet there she was, in my bedroom, apparently able to walk by herself.

She sat down on the bed, put the candle on the bedside table and picked up the garment. “Put it on,” she said.

I managed to struggle back into it and pulled the stays as tight as I could.

“Turn around,” she said.

I felt a knee in the small of my back and the stays pulled tighter than ever Elsa had managed. A wave of panic rose up in me: my breathing was so much shortened I could not even half-fill my lungs.

“Go and stand beside the wardrobe,” she said, and I did so. “You will remain there until morning. I will teach you posture, Harriet.” And she stood up, leaned again on her cane. “You may never behave like a young lady,” she said, “but I will at least see that you stand like one.” Then she picked up the candleholder, turned her back on me and walked out, the candlelight glinting on the silver tip of her cane.