PETER IBBETSON
by George du Maurier
With an Introduction by His Cousin Lady **** ("Madge Plunket")
Edited and Illustrated by George Du Maurier
Part One
INTRODUCTION
The writer of this singular autobiography was my cousin, who died atthe ----- Criminal Lunatic Asylum, of which he had been an inmatethree years.
He had been removed thither after a sudden and violent attack ofhomicidal mania (which fortunately led to no serious consequences),from ----- Jail, where he had spent twenty-five years, having beencondemned to penal servitude for life, for the murder of ---- ----,his relative.
He had been originally sentenced to death.
It was at ---- Lunatic Asylum that he wrote these memoirs, and I receivedthe MS. soon after his decease, with the most touching letter, appealingto our early friendship, and appointing me his literary executrix.
It was his wish that the story of his life should be published just ashe had written it.
I have found it unadvisable to do this. It would revive, to no usefulpurpose, an old scandal, long buried and forgotten, and thereby givepain or annoyance to people who are still alive.
Nor does his memory require rehabilitation among those who knew him, orknew anything of him--the only people really concerned. His dreadfuldeed has long been condoned by all (and they are many) who knew theprovocation he had received and the character of the man who hadprovoked him.
On mature consideration, and with advice, I resolved (in order that hisdying wishes should not be frustrated altogether) to publish the memoirwith certain alterations and emendations.
I have nearly everywhere changed the names of people and places;suppressed certain details, and omitted some passages of his life (mostof the story of his school-days, for instance, and that of his briefcareer as a private in the Horse Guards) lest they should too easilylead to the identification and annoyance of people still alive, for heis strongly personal at times, and perhaps not always just; and someother events I have carefully paraphrased (notably his trial at the OldBailey), and given for them as careful an equivalent as I could managewithout too great a loss of verisimilitude.
I may as well state at once that, allowing for these alterations, everyincident of his _natural_ life as described by himself is absolutelytrue, to the minutest detail, as I have been able to ascertain.
For the early part of it--the life at Passy he describes with suchaffection--I can vouch personally; I am the Cousin "Madge" to whom heonce or twice refers.
I well remember the genial abode where he lived with his parents (mydear uncle and aunt); and the lovely "Madame Seraskier," and her husbandand daughter, and their house, "Parva sed Apta," and "Major Duquesnois,"and the rest.
And although I have never seen him since he was twelve years old, whenhis parents died and he went to London (as most of my life has beenspent abroad), I received occasional letters from him.
I have also been able to obtain much information about him from others,especially from a relative of the late "Mr. and Mrs. Lintot," who knewhim well, and from several officers in his regiment who remembered him;also from the "Vicar's daughter," whom he met at "Lady Cray's" and whoperfectly recollects the conversation she had with him at dinner, hissudden indisposition, and his long interview with the "Duchess ofTowers," under the ash-tree next morning; she was one of thecroquet-players.
He was the most beautiful boy I ever saw, and so charming, lively, andamiable that everybody was fond of him. He had a horror of cruelty,especially to animals (quite singular in a boy of his age), and was verytruthful and brave.
According to all accounts (and from a photograph in my possession), hegrew up to be as handsome as a man can well be, a personal gift which heseems to have held of no account whatever, though he thought so much ofit in others. But he also became singularly shy and reserved in manner,over-diffident and self-distrustful; of a melancholy disposition, lovingsolitude, living much alone, and taking nobody into his confidence; andyet inspiring both affection and respect. For he seems to have alwaysbeen thoroughly gentlemanlike in speech, bearing, manner, and aspect.
It is possible, although he does not say so, that having first enlisted,and then entered upon a professional career under somewhat inauspiciousconditions, he felt himself to have fallen away from the social rank(such as it was) that belonged to him by birth; and he may have foundhis associates uncongenial.
His old letters to me are charmingly open and effusive.
Of the lady whom (keeping her title and altering her name) I have calledthe "Duchess of Towers," I find it difficult to speak. That they onlymet twice, and in the way he describes, is a fact about which there canbe no doubt.
It is also indubitable that he received in Newgate, on the morning afterhis sentence to death, an envelope containing violets, and the strangemessage he mentions. Both letter and violets are in my possession, andthe words are in her handwriting; about that there can be no mistake.
It is certain, moreover, that she separated from her husband almostimmediately after my cousin's trial and condemnation, and lived incomparative retirement from the world, as it is certain that he wentsuddenly mad, twenty-five years later, in ---- Jail, a few hours afterher tragic death, and before he could possibly have heard of it by theordinary channels; and that he was sent to ---- Asylum, where, after hisfrenzy had subsided, he remained for many days in a state of suicidalmelancholia, until, to the surprise of all, he rose one morning in highspirits, and apparently cured of all serious symptoms of insanity; so heremained until his death. It was during the last year of his life thathe wrote his autobiography, in French and English.
There is nothing to be surprised at, taking all the circumstances intoconsideration, that even so great a lady, the friend of queens andempresses, the bearer of a high title and an illustrious name, justlycelebrated for her beauty and charm (and her endless charities), ofblameless repute, and one of the most popular women in English society,should yet have conceived a very warm regard for my poor cousin; indeed,it was an open secret in the family of "Lord Cray" that she had done so.But for them she would have taken the whole world into her confidence.
After her death she left him what money had come to her from her father,which he disposed of for charitable ends, and an immense quantity of MS.in cipher--a cipher which is evidently identical with that he usedhimself in the annotations he put under innumerable sketches he wasallowed to make during his long period of confinement, which (throughher interest, and no doubt through his own good conduct) was rendered asbearable to him as possible. These sketches (which are veryextraordinary) and her Grace's MS. are now in my possession.
They constitute a mystery into which I have not dared to pry.
From papers belonging to both I have been able to establish beyond doubtthe fact (so strangely discovered) of their descent from a common Frenchancestress, whose name I have but slightly modified and the tradition ofwhom still lingers in the "Departement de la Sarthe," where she was afamous person a century ago; and her violin, a valuable Amati, nowbelongs to me.
Of the non-natural part of his story I will not say much.
It is, of course, a fact that he had been absolutely and, to allappearance, incurably insane before he wrote his life.
There seems to have been a difference of opinion, or rather a doubt,among the authorities of the asylum as to whether he was mad after theacute but very violent period of his brief attack had ended.
Whichever may have been the case, I am at least convinced of this: thathe was no romancer, and thoroughly believed in the extraordinary mentalexperience he has revealed.
At the risk of being thought to share his madness--if he _was_ mad--Iwill conclude by saying that I, for one, believe him to ha
ve been sane,and to have told the truth all through.
MADGE PLUNKET