preserve you from harm, and preserve your dear children.”
But Mrs. Kinder’s mother was becoming suspicious, and, it would seem, not only of the relationship between her daughter and the Sydney dentist.
She advises me to be careful what we write, as she says there are many reports with regard to us in Sydney, and that the detectives have power, and might use it if they thought to find out anything by opening our letters. I was not aware they had that power; it is only in case of there being anything suspicious with regard to people.
Mamma, in fact, read her daughter a lecture, refusing to countenance “anything wrong”. With all this, there was no question of turning away Mrs. Kinder and her children. “As far as anything in the shape of love and affectionate welcome goes, to the last crust they have I can depend.” But the takings of the shop were never more than five shillings a day, and sometimes not sixpence. She could not go on being a burden; “I would rather be a common servant.” Upon this situation she reflects:
How black everything looks, Lovey, does it not? Our good fortune seems to be deserting us.
Was this a reference to the death of Kinder, an affair surely of management rather than luck? If so, it is the only reference in the letters, which run to some ten thousand words. They keep their pattern of lamentations, shrewd planning, passion, and where her family is concerned a kind of affectionate independence, together with one or two items of actual news. She had become a seamstress to help the family finances; her father was off to New Zealand again; her brother Llewellyn was staying in Bertrand’s house; she was determined to come to Sydney. The last letter, dated November 21st, ends:
When I think I shall be with you in less than a week—oh, this meeting, love, oh, I shall go mad; it is too delicious to dream of; oh, let it be in reality, darling, do, do. My feelings will burst, but still, dear one, I trust you will do what is best for us in the end, I would say——
The newspaper report says: “Remainder illegible.”
IV
These were the first documents read by Mr. Butler, the Crown counsel. It is odd to picture the scene. The Water Police Court is not an impressive or a roomy building. The month was December, when Sydney is beginning to feel the weight of summer. There is great humidity, heat lies upon the town like a blanket, and all the distances dance. To Bertrand, even the stuffy court must have seemed spacious compared with his cell in Darlinghurst Gaol. Mrs. Kinder, brought down from the greater heats of Bathurst, may have found the air of Sydney grateful. Only Mrs. Bertrand, poor Jane, coming to the box from her pleasant house in Wynyard Square, must have felt bitterly the confinement and the heat. Mr. Butler, who had already spoken and read for some hours, returned to the charge in the afternoon; and when the diary’s handwriting had been identified by Bertrand’s assistant, Alfred Burne, he began, in the passionless tones congruous with his duty, to read aloud the diary of Louis Bertrand.
October 26th. Thursday.
Lonely! Lonely! Lonely! She is gone—I am alone. Oh, my God, did I ever dream or think of such agony? I am bound to appear calm, so much the worse. I do so hate mankind. I feel as if every kindly feeling had gone with her. Ellen, dearest Ellen, I thank, I dare to thank God, for the happiness of our last few moments. Surely He could not forsake us, and yet favour us as He has done. Tears stream from my eyes, they relieve the burning anguish of my bursting heart. Oh, how shall I outlive twelve long months! Child, I love thee passionately—aye, madly. I knew not how much until thou wert gone. And yet I am calm. ’Tis the dead silence which precedes the tempest.…
Do not rouse the demon that I know lies dormant in me. Beware how you trifle with my love. I am no base slave to be played with or cast off as a toy. I am terrible in my vengeance; terrible, because I call on the powers of hell to aid their master in his vengeance. God, what am I saying? Do not fear me, darling love. I would not harm thee, not thy dear self, but only sweep away as with a scimitar my enemies or those who step between my love and me. Think kindly of me—of my great failings. See what I have done for thee, for my, for our love.
Such were the first paragraphs of this document in madness. The diary was faithfully kept, reflecting Bertrand’s love, his fantasies, his finances, and his health. In itself it would be enough, nowadays, to support a defence of insanity. But the magistrates of 1865 took it seriously, and Sydney shuddered as the newspapers reported it piecemeal. The journal covers only twenty-four days, from the date on which he parted from Mrs. Kinder to that on which he was summoned on the charge of writing a threatening letter to a woman, Mrs. Robertson. His triumph over Jackson makes odd reading, when it is considered that three weeks later both were serving sentences for a parallel offence.
In the train I borrowed half the Empire, which contained this paragraph: “Francis Arthur Jackson, convicted of sending a threatening letter to Henry L. Bertrand with the intent to extort money, sentenced to 12 months’ hard labour in Parramatta Gaol.” It pleased me. I am satisfied. Thus once more perish my enemies. He is disposed of for the present.
On the same page:
I feel that I love you as mother, sister, husband, brother, all combined. What work I have before me, God only knows, but I will call His love to help me, and strive to do right. I feel I shall. Thy dear devoted love will save me. I know it will, and we may yet be good and happy together.
An echo of the gossip which was alive concerning him may be found in the brief statement which follows: “Am doing no business whatever.” He was ill, too, with some internal trouble, concerning which he makes this reflection:
I am now, by my own agonies, paying a debt to retributive justice; how and what I have made others suffer, God only knows; but if I have, I richly deserve all I now feel; and you, my love, have you not done the same?
’Tis strange our two natures are so much alike. I love a companion who can understand my sentiments, respond to the very beating of my heart, help me to think, to plan, and by clear judgment advise me on worldly affairs. A woman is not a toy. Women are as men make them. I have found, from experience, that half the trouble women give their husbands is caused by the husbands themselves—sometimes directly, but often from some indirect cause that might have been avoided if the man had used even moderate care in the guidance of the being sacredly entrusted to his charge.… One more day stolen from fate.
This was Friday, October 27th. Two days later he was up and about, spending an artistic rather than a conventional Sunday.
I awoke this morning too late for church—I did not dress or shave. I fear, my dear Nelly, that not having you to fascinate I shall become slovenly and untidy, for if I consulted my own feelings I should not dress at all.
I want fame, as well as wealth and power, and as usual little Bertrand must have his way. You know he is a spoilt child, spoilt in more ways than one. So as I was saying, I must have fame, fortune and power, as well as the most ardent, pure, passionate, and devoted love of the most fascinating, amiable and best of women that the world at present contains. There, if this is not flattery I do not know what is; but it is the truth—at least, I think it is the truth to the best of my belief, as we say in court. Oh, I must not speak of courts; we have had enough of them, at least for the present.
At this time he set to work to model two salt-cellars for the third Victorian exhibition of 1866; Fijians, “kneeling in a graceful attitude”, holding pearl shells, upon stands “emblematical of the sea shore”; the spoons to consist of paddles, “formed of some sort of shell, small of course”; all to be cast in solid silver, frosted. “Dearest, it is for thee that I toil.” He turned from this work to conversations with his sister, who recommended a divorce as being the kindest thing that he could do for poor Jane; and to his diary, intended for Ellen’s reading later on, when the period of separation was over. Certain further passages of this were read with emphasis by Mr. Butler.
I should feel ashamed of my love, of what I have done for it, if it were no different from that of others. That is our only excuse, whether on earth or Heaven, for what we have accomplished.… Let us not be cowed or terrified at aught that besets us. I warned you what to expect, and, dearest, for the greatness of our love for one another, surely we