Posted on 2016-10-31
Darcy stared incredulously at the shabby building. His own physician resided in Harley Street, and although he was dimly aware that not everybody might be able to consult there, his imagination had never stretched as far as this. There was a plaque, not brass, but wood, advertising
Doctor Thorpe‘s Clinick for Amorous Gentlemen
Relief for all Sorts of Masculine Trouble, including Poxes Great and Small.
Electro-magnetic Marital Bed on the Premises.
Warlock learned in the Ancient Arte of Magick
Available upon Request.
Credit extended
to Callers of good Standing.
Bets placed for you.
Discretion Guaranteed.
and the house was far from the shabbiest in the neighbourhood – quite the opposite. There was nothing to it, however. Darcy squared his shoulders and girded his loins with courage. The interior was less shabby than the building‘s facade had suggested but far from the understated grandeur that Darcy preferred. The inner doors opened into a salon of sorts, with quite a few men – possibly gentlemen, Darcy was withholding judgment on that matter, and potentially amorous – sitting on couches that, although now faded, had once been too garish. Darcy wondered whether they were there to see the warlock, or to place bets (discretely, of course).
At one end of the room was some sort of counter, where a bored-looking wench (very possibly not a gentlewoman) was seated. She was observing with some fascination her own reflection in a small mirror. Darcy stepped up to the counter and cleared his throat. The girl failed to look up.
‘Name, sir,’ she said while rubbing one of her freckled experimentally.
Darcy internally debated the merits and the abhorrence of giving a false name but then decided on his real one.
‘Fitzwilliam Darcy,’ he stated, standing, as always when he did so, a little more proudly.
‘Will that be the usual, Mr Darcy, or would you like to see the doctor before?’
Darcy was about to protest that he had no usual, but the girl had started squeezing some freckles and so he just asked to see the doctor and was told to sit down and wait. Things progressed in an odd speed in the waiting room of Dr Thorpe’s Clinick for Amorous Gentlemen. Some men were called into the surgery and reappeared fairly quickly, clutching small paper bags which they tried to stuff into their jackets unobtrusively. Others only emerged again after over half an hour had passed, looking rather faint. Some men were not called into the surgery at all, but into a small, curtained booth behind which an unpleasant odour seemed to reside. The one person who was not called in to see the doctor at all was Darcy. He used the time to observe the other patrons of the clinic. Some of them did almost look like gentlemen indeed. Darcy felt embarrassed on their behalf that they were seen in an establishment like this. Others made no attempts to pass for gentle folk. One man appeared to be wearing yellow garters, crossed. Now and then, Darcy caught snippets of the conversations that other patrons were having with the wench at the counter.
‘Do you want to see the doctor today, Mr Ferrars?’
‘Yes, it’s the Ferret, he’s refusing to stand to action again -’
Once, a woman – Darcy could not bring himself to call her a lady – stepped brazenly up to the counter followed by her smug-looking husband, announced her name to be Elton and that she had booked an hour and a half on the electro-magnetic bed. A rather smartly dressed military gentleman gave his name as Tilney and said that his father had made an appointment for him. A young man with a clerical collar picked up a tonic for his brother, a Mr Bertram, and then, when asking the wench a question in an undertone, was referred to the warlock. Darcy noticed that none of the men tried to interact with one another. Most of them just stared into space absent-mindedly. The young priest was biting his fingernails. One man with the most absurd coiffure sat in one corner idly leafing through the Baronetage.
Finally, it was Darcy’s turn. He was told to go down a dark corridor, passing a room with a red velvety door, possibly containing the galvanised bed, and a set of stairs to the cellars, where the warlock probably resided. Dr Thorpe’s surgery itself was, surprisingly enough, in the stables, and they were not former stables. The man whom Darcy presumed to be Dr Thorpe stood with his back to the entrance, bent over the wheel of a natty high-perched phaeton which he was treating with a screw-driver.
‘Right, Darcy, my man,’ he said without turning around. ‘Southern regions rotting again? Drop your britches and we’ll get the unpleasant business over with, shall we?’
The hair on Darcy’s neck stood on end at the thought of it.
‘I will do no such thing,’ he said firmly.
Dr Thorpe turned around. He was younger than Darcy had expected, a very common-looking man, his hair slicked back with too much oil and his hands black with grease.
‘Sorry, wrong client,’’ he said, baring his teeth in what he must have thought would pass as a smile. ‘How can I help you, old chap? Picked up something nasty? Wife not happy with your performance? Need a little precaution for visiting the lady friends? No worries, you’ve come to just the right man -’
‘I do not care about your insinuations,’ Darcy said through gritted teeth. ‘I have come about a bill.’
Dr Thorpe smiles his horrible grimace again.
‘Say no more,’ he said and winked at him, ‘say no more, I have just the right horse if you need money quickly – not much of a sire, but he just cannot lose -’
‘I have come,’ Darcy said again, ‘about a bill which you have had the presumption – the absolute audacity – to send to me. My name is Fitzwilliam Darcy and I demand an explanation.’
Dr Thorpe’s mien suddenly changed quite radically.
‘Now, look here, sir,’ he said. ‘I can only work with what I’m given, and if that young gentleman from the militia chose not to give his real name for his pox treatments -’
Darcy finally had the missing piece of the jigsaw, but just as he was about to inform Dr Thorpe that he would go to his lawyer this very hour, the sounds of a mighty uproar reached him. Outside the stables, men were yelling and dogs yapping and a shrill whistle sounded. The stable door was forced open by a group of brutal-looking men and Darcy, who was too perplexed even to take cover, was hit squarely over the head with somebody’s large baton.
He went down like a felled tree and did not even have the satisfaction of seeing Dr Thorpe, when he finally allowed himself to be apprehended, arrested by John Knightley, Esq., the local magistrate. He did not see the warlock dragged up from the cellars, nor a shrieking Mrs Elton covering herself with a sheet as best as she could. Darcy was oblivious to the riot that had broken out, the stampeding of men that took place or the collapse of Dr Thorpe’s large phaeton, bringing with it a thunderstorm of dust, debris, black paint and oil.
Then, the warlock’s potion kettle exploded.
It was only many hours later that Darcy awoke, although, as a matter of fact, he had no idea of how much time had passed, nor, actually, of where he was or how he had gotten there. He awoke in a bare room, lying on a sack of straw on a narrow iron bedstead. Somebody had covered him with a thin, rather hairy blanket. He began a physical assessment. His head hurt in such a way that he was not even sure he remembered the way it felt not to have a headache. Something stung in his leg. Very slowly, he sat up and moved away the blanket. He was wearing the remains of a pair of tan breeches, sooty and grease-stained, with a deep gash on his left thigh. He was not sure if he had worn a jacket, a coat, or anything else – he supposed he must have, but he had no recollection of getting dressed. All he could tell was that he was now wearing only a very ragged shirt, with the ubiquitous grease stains, the sleeve slightly singed and some blood down the front.
He wondered if this was the style in which he usually dressed and found, to his slight horror, that he had no recollection of his dressing habits nor whether these clothes actually belonged to him. Extending the thought, he wondered whose the room was. He had no idea if he had ever seen it before. Now slightly alarmed, he went through a list of things that he still did recall and was slightly calmed. He knew perfectly well the names of all English kings from the Conqueror. The opening verses of the Iliad sprang to his mind in an instant. He could order a coffee in fluent French with a pleasing Parisian accent, although he was not sure how he knew about the different accents of France.
Some other details also still eluded him. He looked around the room for any further clues, but it was still just as bare as it had been when he woke up. Carefully, he got up. The door to the room was not locked and he soon found himself limping down an unlit corridor at one end of which a dwindling staircase descended. It had to be a servants’ quarter. He wondered whether he had servants – or was he one himself? But then, why would he know the Iliad by heart?
Through a process of trial and error, he suddenly found himself standing in a drawing-room in which a kind-faced matron was sitting on a sofa busy with her cross-stitch.
‘Excuse me, madam,’ he said and was pleased to find he appeared to have manners, ‘I do beg your pardon, but I find myself in a rather awkward -’
The matron looked up and screamed. A large footman appeared and dragged him out of the room and across the hall to a library. The matron followed them.
‘John! John!’ she screamed. ‘Get him out of the house, will you? What if the children -’
A serious gentleman was sitting behind the desk in the library into which the man who had once known himself to be Darcy had been man-handled.
‘My name is John Knightley,’ the serious gentleman said, not unkindly. ‘I am this area’s magistrate. Please explain how you came to be in that clinic.’
‘I – I am not sure -’
‘The place where we found you is known as a port of call for all sorts of persons with venereal diseases and other sorts of disgusting afflictions. What is it that ails you?’
‘I am not sure -’
The magistrate sighed.
‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Why don’t we start with your name and address?’
The other man flushed.
‘I seem to have temporarily forgotten those,’ he admitted. ‘But I can recite the Iliad .’
It seemed important to point that out.
‘I can multiply fractions, too,’ he added. ‘And I know all the provinces of the Roman Empire.’
The magistrate sighed again.
‘The French pox then,’ he said. ‘And already in that hopeless stage where it addles the brain – and at your young age too – what a waste -’
He called for the footman again.
‘We will have to take him to Bedlam,’ he said. ‘I don’t think he will last much longer.’
The man who had once been Fitzwilliam Darcy allowed himself to be led to the carriage quietly. Somewhere, deep down, he knew that he was not the sort of person to approve of making a scene before the magistrate.
Relief for all Sorts of Masculine Trouble, including Poxes Great and Small.
Electro-magnetic Marital Bed on the Premises.
Warlock learned in the Ancient Arte of Magick
Available upon Request.
Credit extended
to Callers of good Standing.
Bets placed for you.
Discretion Guaranteed.
and the house was far from the shabbiest in the neighbourhood – quite the opposite. There was nothing to it, however. Darcy squared his shoulders and girded his loins with courage. The interior was less shabby than the building‘s facade had suggested but far from the understated grandeur that Darcy preferred. The inner doors opened into a salon of sorts, with quite a few men – possibly gentlemen, Darcy was withholding judgment on that matter, and potentially amorous – sitting on couches that, although now faded, had once been too garish. Darcy wondered whether they were there to see the warlock, or to place bets (discretely, of course).
At one end of the room was some sort of counter, where a bored-looking wench (very possibly not a gentlewoman) was seated. She was observing with some fascination her own reflection in a small mirror. Darcy stepped up to the counter and cleared his throat. The girl failed to look up.
‘Name, sir,’ she said while rubbing one of her freckled experimentally.
Darcy internally debated the merits and the abhorrence of giving a false name but then decided on his real one.
‘Fitzwilliam Darcy,’ he stated, standing, as always when he did so, a little more proudly.
‘Will that be the usual, Mr Darcy, or would you like to see the doctor before?’
Darcy was about to protest that he had no usual, but the girl had started squeezing some freckles and so he just asked to see the doctor and was told to sit down and wait. Things progressed in an odd speed in the waiting room of Dr Thorpe’s Clinick for Amorous Gentlemen. Some men were called into the surgery and reappeared fairly quickly, clutching small paper bags which they tried to stuff into their jackets unobtrusively. Others only emerged again after over half an hour had passed, looking rather faint. Some men were not called into the surgery at all, but into a small, curtained booth behind which an unpleasant odour seemed to reside. The one person who was not called in to see the doctor at all was Darcy. He used the time to observe the other patrons of the clinic. Some of them did almost look like gentlemen indeed. Darcy felt embarrassed on their behalf that they were seen in an establishment like this. Others made no attempts to pass for gentle folk. One man appeared to be wearing yellow garters, crossed. Now and then, Darcy caught snippets of the conversations that other patrons were having with the wench at the counter.
‘Do you want to see the doctor today, Mr Ferrars?’
‘Yes, it’s the Ferret, he’s refusing to stand to action again -’
Once, a woman – Darcy could not bring himself to call her a lady – stepped brazenly up to the counter followed by her smug-looking husband, announced her name to be Elton and that she had booked an hour and a half on the electro-magnetic bed. A rather smartly dressed military gentleman gave his name as Tilney and said that his father had made an appointment for him. A young man with a clerical collar picked up a tonic for his brother, a Mr Bertram, and then, when asking the wench a question in an undertone, was referred to the warlock. Darcy noticed that none of the men tried to interact with one another. Most of them just stared into space absent-mindedly. The young priest was biting his fingernails. One man with the most absurd coiffure sat in one corner idly leafing through the Baronetage.
Finally, it was Darcy’s turn. He was told to go down a dark corridor, passing a room with a red velvety door, possibly containing the galvanised bed, and a set of stairs to the cellars, where the warlock probably resided. Dr Thorpe’s surgery itself was, surprisingly enough, in the stables, and they were not former stables. The man whom Darcy presumed to be Dr Thorpe stood with his back to the entrance, bent over the wheel of a natty high-perched phaeton which he was treating with a screw-driver.
‘Right, Darcy, my man,’ he said without turning around. ‘Southern regions rotting again? Drop your britches and we’ll get the unpleasant business over with, shall we?’
The hair on Darcy’s neck stood on end at the thought of it.
‘I will do no such thing,’ he said firmly.
Dr Thorpe turned around. He was younger than Darcy had expected, a very common-looking man, his hair slicked back with too much oil and his hands black with grease.
‘Sorry, wrong client,’’ he said, baring his teeth in what he must have thought would pass as a smile. ‘How can I help you, old chap? Picked up something nasty? Wife not happy with your performance? Need a little precaution for visiting the lady friends? No worries, you’ve come to just the right man -’
‘I do not care about your insinuations,’ Darcy said through gritted teeth. ‘I have come about a bill.’
Dr Thorpe smiles his horrible grimace again.
‘Say no more,’ he said and winked at him, ‘say no more, I have just the right horse if you need money quickly – not much of a sire, but he just cannot lose -’
‘I have come,’ Darcy said again, ‘about a bill which you have had the presumption – the absolute audacity – to send to me. My name is Fitzwilliam Darcy and I demand an explanation.’
Dr Thorpe’s mien suddenly changed quite radically.
‘Now, look here, sir,’ he said. ‘I can only work with what I’m given, and if that young gentleman from the militia chose not to give his real name for his pox treatments -’
Darcy finally had the missing piece of the jigsaw, but just as he was about to inform Dr Thorpe that he would go to his lawyer this very hour, the sounds of a mighty uproar reached him. Outside the stables, men were yelling and dogs yapping and a shrill whistle sounded. The stable door was forced open by a group of brutal-looking men and Darcy, who was too perplexed even to take cover, was hit squarely over the head with somebody’s large baton.
He went down like a felled tree and did not even have the satisfaction of seeing Dr Thorpe, when he finally allowed himself to be apprehended, arrested by John Knightley, Esq., the local magistrate. He did not see the warlock dragged up from the cellars, nor a shrieking Mrs Elton covering herself with a sheet as best as she could. Darcy was oblivious to the riot that had broken out, the stampeding of men that took place or the collapse of Dr Thorpe’s large phaeton, bringing with it a thunderstorm of dust, debris, black paint and oil.
Then, the warlock’s potion kettle exploded.
It was only many hours later that Darcy awoke, although, as a matter of fact, he had no idea of how much time had passed, nor, actually, of where he was or how he had gotten there. He awoke in a bare room, lying on a sack of straw on a narrow iron bedstead. Somebody had covered him with a thin, rather hairy blanket. He began a physical assessment. His head hurt in such a way that he was not even sure he remembered the way it felt not to have a headache. Something stung in his leg. Very slowly, he sat up and moved away the blanket. He was wearing the remains of a pair of tan breeches, sooty and grease-stained, with a deep gash on his left thigh. He was not sure if he had worn a jacket, a coat, or anything else – he supposed he must have, but he had no recollection of getting dressed. All he could tell was that he was now wearing only a very ragged shirt, with the ubiquitous grease stains, the sleeve slightly singed and some blood down the front.
He wondered if this was the style in which he usually dressed and found, to his slight horror, that he had no recollection of his dressing habits nor whether these clothes actually belonged to him. Extending the thought, he wondered whose the room was. He had no idea if he had ever seen it before. Now slightly alarmed, he went through a list of things that he still did recall and was slightly calmed. He knew perfectly well the names of all English kings from the Conqueror. The opening verses of the Iliad sprang to his mind in an instant. He could order a coffee in fluent French with a pleasing Parisian accent, although he was not sure how he knew about the different accents of France.
Some other details also still eluded him. He looked around the room for any further clues, but it was still just as bare as it had been when he woke up. Carefully, he got up. The door to the room was not locked and he soon found himself limping down an unlit corridor at one end of which a dwindling staircase descended. It had to be a servants’ quarter. He wondered whether he had servants – or was he one himself? But then, why would he know the Iliad by heart?
Through a process of trial and error, he suddenly found himself standing in a drawing-room in which a kind-faced matron was sitting on a sofa busy with her cross-stitch.
‘Excuse me, madam,’ he said and was pleased to find he appeared to have manners, ‘I do beg your pardon, but I find myself in a rather awkward -’
The matron looked up and screamed. A large footman appeared and dragged him out of the room and across the hall to a library. The matron followed them.
‘John! John!’ she screamed. ‘Get him out of the house, will you? What if the children -’
A serious gentleman was sitting behind the desk in the library into which the man who had once known himself to be Darcy had been man-handled.
‘My name is John Knightley,’ the serious gentleman said, not unkindly. ‘I am this area’s magistrate. Please explain how you came to be in that clinic.’
‘I – I am not sure -’
‘The place where we found you is known as a port of call for all sorts of persons with venereal diseases and other sorts of disgusting afflictions. What is it that ails you?’
‘I am not sure -’
The magistrate sighed.
‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Why don’t we start with your name and address?’
The other man flushed.
‘I seem to have temporarily forgotten those,’ he admitted. ‘But I can recite the Iliad .’
It seemed important to point that out.
‘I can multiply fractions, too,’ he added. ‘And I know all the provinces of the Roman Empire.’
The magistrate sighed again.
‘The French pox then,’ he said. ‘And already in that hopeless stage where it addles the brain – and at your young age too – what a waste -’
He called for the footman again.
‘We will have to take him to Bedlam,’ he said. ‘I don’t think he will last much longer.’
The man who had once been Fitzwilliam Darcy allowed himself to be led to the carriage quietly. Somewhere, deep down, he knew that he was not the sort of person to approve of making a scene before the magistrate.