Bedlam
I confess to never having heard of Victorian artist Richard Dadd before reading this strange foray into a strange mind. The cover features a trio of unsettling faces, obviously a closeup of part of a larger work. Once I delved in, I realized: the cover is Dadd’s own painting, and a picture is worth many of the words in this slim volume.
The framing is that Dadd, incarcerated in Broadmoor in 1888, casts his broken mind back to 1842, which is when his troubles truly began. He leaves behind his family – his much-beloved sister, father, and other siblings – to accompany his patron, Sir Thomas Phillips, on first a European Grand Tour, and then into the exotic locales of the Middle East. The prose is borderline stream-of-consciousness through Dadd’s narration, and the reader is swept along, like Phillips and Dadd on the Nile, from increasing eccentricity to the shoals of madness. Phillips, unable to sound for depth, thinks exhaustion and sunstroke is to blame for Dadd’s oddness and eventual breakdown. After his return to England, Dadd’s family, with the exception of his sister, is likewise unaware of the depth of the problem until Dadd has already tumbled headlong into a psychotic break. The terrible, fatal consequences of this land him first in Bethlem Hospital, and then in Broadmoor.
The portrayal of Dadd and the peregrinations of his mind is accomplished with a simple elegance which never veers into pretension. I’m unsure if I’d say this biographical novel is enjoyable, but it is certainly compelling. Higgie’s portrait exhibits skill and verisimilitude, and it led me to further exploration of its subject and the art he created.
