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Anthony Trollope,
The Way We
Live Now, 1875
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Death of
Melmotte
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Chapter LXXXIII Melmotte Again at the House
Death of Melmotte:
He might have wrapped his toga around him better
perhaps had he remained at home, but if to have himself talked about
was his only object, he could hardly have taken a surer course. The
scene, as it occurred, was one very likely to be remembered when the
performer should have been carried away into enforced obscurity.
There was much commotion in the House. Mr. Beauclerk, a man of
natural good nature, though at the moment put to considerable
personal inconvenience, hastened, when he recovered his own
equilibrium, to assist the drunken man. But Melmotte had by no means
lost the power of helping himself. He quickly recovered his legs,
and then reseating himself, put his hat on, and endeavoured to look
as though nothing special had occurred. The House resumed its
business, taking no further notice of Melmotte, and having no
special rule of its own as to the treatment to be adopted with
drunken members. But the member for Westminster caused no further
inconvenience. He remained in his seat for perhaps ten minutes, and
then, not with a very steady step, but still with capacity
sufficient for his own guidance, he made his way down to the doors.
His exit was watched in silence, and the moment was an anxious one
for the Speaker, the clerks, and all who were near him. Had he
fallen some one, or rather some two or three, must have picked
his up and carried him out. But he did not fall either there or in
the lobbies, or on his way down to Palace Yard. Many were looking at
him, but none touched him. When he had got through the gates,
leaning against the wall he hallooed for his brougham, and the
servant who was waiting for him soon took him home to Bruton Street.
That was the last which British Parliament saw of its new member for
Westminster.
Melmotte as soon as he reached home got into his own
sitting room without difficulty, and called for more brandy and
water. Between eleven and twelve he was left there by his servant
with a bottle of brandy, three or four bottles of soda water, and
his cigar case. Neither of the ladies of the family came to him, nor
did he speak of them. Nor was he so drunk then as to give rise to
any suspicion in the mind of the servant. He was habitually left
there at night, and the servant as usual went to his bed. But at
nine oclock on the following morning the maid-servant found him
dead upon the floor. Drunk as he had been, more drunk as he
probably became during the night, still he was able to deliver
himself from the indignities and penalties to which the law might
have subjected him by a dose of prussic acid.
Chapter LXXXVIII The Inquest:
On Saturday morning the inquest was held. There was
not the slightest doubt as to any one the incidences of the
catastrophe. The servants, the doctor, the inspector of police
between them, learned that he had come home alone, that nobody had
been near him during the night, that he had been found dead, and
that he had undoubtedly been poisoned by prussic acid. It was proved
that he had been drunk in the House of Commons, a fact to which one
of the clerks of the House, very much against his will, was called
upon to testify. That he had destroyed himself there was no doubt,
nor was there any doubt as to the cause.
In such cases as this is for the jury to say whether
the unfortunate one who found his life too hard for endurance, and
has rushed away to see whether he could not find an improved
condition of things elsewhere, has or has not been mad at the
moment. Surviving friends are of course anxious for a verdict of
insanity, as in that case no further punishment is exacted. The body
can be buried like any other body, and it can always be said
afterwards that the poor man was mad. Perhaps it would be well that
all suicides should be said to have been mad, for certainly the
jurymen are not generally guided in their verdicts by any accurately
ascertained facts. If the poor wretch has, up to his last moments
made himself specially obnoxious to the world at large, then he is
declared to have been mad. Who would be heavy on a poor clergyman
who has been at last driven by horrid doubts to rid himself of a
difficulty from which he saw no escape in any other way? Who would
not give the benefit of the doubt to the poor woman whose lover and
lord may have deserted her? Who would remit to unhallowed earth the
body of the once beneficent philosopher who has simply thought that
he might as well go now, finding himself powerless to do further
good upon the earth? Such, and such like, have of course been
temporarily insane, though no touch even of strangeness may have
marked their conduct up to their last known dealings with their
fellow-mortals. But let a Melmotte be found dead, with a bottle of
prussic acid by his side a man who has become horrid to the world
of his late iniquities, a man who has so well pretended to be rich
that he has been able to buy and sell properties without paying for
them, a wretch who has made himself odious by his ruin to friends
who had taken him up as a pillar of strength in regard to wealth, a
brute who had got into the House of Commons by false pretences, and
had disgraced the House by being drunk there, and, of course, he
will not be saved by a verdict of insanity from the cross roads, or
whatever scornful grave may be allowed to those who have killed
themselves with their wits about them. Just at this moment there was
a very strong feeling against Melmotte, owing perhaps as much to his
having tumbled over poor Mr. Beauchamp in the House of Commons as to
the stories of the forgeries he had committed, and the virtue of the
day vindicated itself by declaring him to have been responsible for
his actions when he took the poison.
He was
felo de se,
and therefore carried away to the crossroads or elsewhere.
But it may be imagined, I think, that during that night he may have
become as mad as any other wretch, have been driven as far beyond
his powers of endurance as any other poor creature who ever at any
time felt himself constrained to go. He had not been so drunk but
that he knew all that happened, and could foresee pretty well what
would happen. The summons to attend upon the Lord Mayor had been
served upon him. There were some, among them Croll and Mr. Brehgert,
who absolutely knew that he had committed forgery. He had no money
for the Longestaffes, and he was well aware what Squercum would do
at once. He had assured himself long age, he had assured himself
indeed not very long ago, that he would brave it all like a man.
But we none of us know what a load we can bear, and what would break
our backs. Melmottes back had been so utterly crushed that I almost
think that he went mad enough to have justified a verdict of
temporary insanity.
 But he was carried away, no one knew whither, and for a week his
name was hateful. But after that, a certain amount of whitewashing
took place, and, in some degree, a restitution of fame was made to
the names of the departed. In Westminster he was always odious.
Westminster, which had adopted him, never forgave him. But in other
districts it came to be said of him that he had been more sinned
against than sinning; and that, but for the jealousy of the old
stagers in the mercantile world, he would have done very wonderful
things. Marylebone, which is always merciful, took him up with
affection, and would have returned his ghost to Parliament could his
ghost have paid for committee rooms. Finsbury delighted for a while
to talk of the great Financier, and even Chelsea thought that he had
been done to death by ungenerous tongues. It was, however,
Marylebone alone that spoke of a monument.
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