Alias Grace (57 page)

From Mrs. William P. Jordan, Laburnum House, Loomisville,
Massachusetts, The United States of America; to Mrs. C. D.
Humphrey, Lower Union Street, Kingston, Canada West
.

May 15th, 1862.

Dear Mrs. Humphrey:

   Your communication to my dear Son came to hand this morning. I open all his mail nowadays, for reasons I will shortly explain. But first permit me to remark, that I could have wished you to express yourself in a less extravagant manner. To threaten to do yourself an injury, by jumping off a bridge or other elevated location, might carry weight with an impressionable and tender-hearted young man, but it does not, with his more experienced Mother.

In any case, your hope of an interview with him must be disappointed. Upon the outbreak of our current lamentable
war, my Son joined the Union army to fight for his country in the capacity of Military Surgeon, and was sent at once to a field hospital near the front. The postal services have been sadly disrupted, and the troops are moved about so quickly due to the railroads, and I had no word of him for some months, which was not like him as he has always been a most regular and faithful correspondent; and I feared the worst.

In the meantime I did what I could in my own limited sphere. This unfortunate War had already killed and wounded so many, and we saw the results daily, as yet more men and boys were brought in to our improvised Hospitals, mutilated and blinded, or out of their minds with infectious fevers; and every one of them a dearly loved Son. The ladies of our town were kept thoroughly occupied, in visiting them and arranging for them any little home-like comforts it was within our power to supply; and I myself aided them as best I could, despite my own indifferent state of health; as I could only hope that if my dear Son were lying ill and suffering elsewhere, some other Mother was doing the same for him.

At last, a convalescent soldier from this town reported hearing a rumour that my dear Son had been struck in the head by a piece of flying debris, and when last heard of had been lingering between this world and the next. Of course I was almost dead with worry, and moved Heaven and earth to discover his whereabouts; until much to my joy, he was returned to us, still alive but sadly weakened both in body and spirit. As a result of his wound he had lost a part of his memory; for although he recalled his loving Parent, and the events of his childhood, his more recent experiences had been completely erased from his mind, among them his interest in Lunatic Asylums, and the period of time he spent in the city
of Kingston; including whatever relations of any kind he may or may not have had with yourself.

I tell you this that you may see things in a broader – and I may add, a less selfish perspective. One’s own personal doings look small indeed, when faced with the momentous travails of History, which we can only trust are for the greater good.

Meanwhile, I must congratulate you on the fact that your husband has been at last located, although I must also commiserate with you on the unfortunate circumstances. To discover that one’s spouse has passed away due to prolonged intoxication and the resulting delirium, cannot have been at all pleasant. I am happy to hear that he had not yet exhausted his entire means; and would suggest to you, as a practical matter, a dependable Annuity, or – what has served me quite well during my own trials – a modest investment in railway shares, if a solid company, or else in Sewing Machines, which are sure to make great progress in the future.

However, the course of action you propose to my Son is neither desirable nor feasible, even should he be in any condition to entertain it. My Son was under no engagement to you, nor is he under any obligation. What you yourself may have understood, does not constitute an understanding. It is also my duty to inform you, that before his departure my Son became as good as engaged to be married, to Miss Faith Cartwright, a young lady of fine family and impeccable moral character, the only obstacle remaining, being his own honour, which prevented him from requesting that Miss Cartwright bind herself to a man whose life was so soon to be imperilled; and despite his damaged and at times delirious state, she is resolved to respect the wishes of the two families, as well as those of her own heart, and is at present helping me to nurse him with loyal devotion.

He does not yet remember her in her proper person, but persists in believing that she is called Grace – an understandable confusion, as Faith is very close to it in concept; but we persevere in our efforts, and as we daily show him various little homely objects once dear to him, and lead him on walks through local spots of natural beauty, we have increasing hopes that his full memory will shortly return, or at least as much of it as is necessary, and that he will soon be well enough to fulfil his marital undertakings. It is the foremost concern of Miss Cartwright, as it should be for all those who love my Son disinterestedly, to pray for his restoration to health and the full use of his mental faculties.

In closing, let me add that I trust your future life will be more productive of happiness, than has been the recent past; and that the evening of your life will bring with it a serenity, which the vain and tempestuous passions of youth so often unfortunately, if not disastrously, preclude.

               Yours most sincerely,

                        (Mrs.) Constance P. Jordan.

P.S. Any further communication from you, will be destroyed unread.

From the Reverend Enoch Verringer, Chairman, The Committee to Pardon Grace Marks, Sydenham Street Methodist Church, Kingston, Ontario, The Dominion of Canada; to Dr. Samuel Bannerling, M.D., The Maples, Front Street, Toronto, Ontario, The Dominion of Canada
.

Kingston, October 15th, 1867.

Dear Dr. Bannerling:

   I presume to write to you, Sir, in connection with the Committee of which I am the Chairman, upon a worthy mission which cannot be unfamiliar to you. As the former medical attendant upon Grace Marks, when she was in the Toronto Lunatic Asylum almost fifteen years ago, I know you have been approached by the representatives of several previous committees charged with submitting petitions to the Government, on behalf of this unfortunate and unhappy, and to some minds, wrongly convicted woman, in hopes that you would append your name to the petitions in question – an addition which, as I am sure you are aware, would carry considerable weight with the Government authorities, as they have a tendency to be respectful of informed medical opinion such as your own.

Our Committee consists of a number of ladies, my own dear wife among them, and of several gentlemen of standing, and clergymen of three denominations, including the Prison Chaplain, whose names you will find appended. Such petitions have in the past been unsuccessful, but the Committee expects, as well as hopes, that with the recent political changes, most notably the advent of a fully representational Parliament under the leadership of John A. Macdonald, this one will receive a favourable reception denied to its predecessors.

In addition, we have the advantage of modern science, and the advances made in the study of the cerebral diseases and mental disorders – advances which must surely tell in favour of Grace Marks. Several years ago our Committee engaged a specialist in nervous ailments, Dr. Simon Jordan, who came
very highly recommended. He passed a number of months in this city in making a detailed examination of Grace Marks, with particular attention to her gaps in recollection concerning the murders. In an attempt to recover her memory, he subjected her to Neuro-hypnosis, at the hands of a skilled practitioner of that science – a science which, after a long eclipse, appears to be coming back into favour, both as a diagnostic and as a curative method, although it has thus far gained more favour in France than in this hemisphere.

As a result of this session and the astonishing revelations it produced, Dr. Jordan gave it as his opinion that Grace Marks’ loss of memory was genuine, not feigned – that on the fatal day she was suffering from the effects of an hysterical seizure brought on by fright, which resulted in a form of
auto-hypnotic somnambulism
, not much studied twenty-five years ago but well documented since; and that this fact explains her subsequent amnesia. In the course of the neuro-hypnotic trance, which several of our own Committee members witnessed, Grace Marks displayed not only a fully recovered memory of these past events, but also pronounced evidence of a somnambulistic
double consciousness
, with a distinct secondary personality, capable of acting without the knowledge of the first. It was Dr. Jordan’s conclusion, in view of the evidence, that the woman known to us as “Grace Marks” was neither conscious at the time of the murder of Nancy Montgomery, nor responsible for her actions therein – the memories of these actions being retained only by her secondary and hidden self. Dr. Jordan was of the added opinion that this other self gave strong manifestations of its continued existence during her period of mental derangement in 1852, if the eyewitness reports of Mrs. Moodie and others are any indication.

I had hoped to have a written report to set before you, and our Committee has delayed the submission of its Petition from year to year, in expectation of it. Dr. Jordan had indeed fully intended to prepare such a report; but he was called away suddenly by a family illness, followed by urgent business on the Continent; after which the outbreak of the Civil War, in which he served in the capacity of a military surgeon, was a serious impediment to his efforts. I understand he was wounded in the course of the hostilities, and although providentially now making a recovery, has not yet regained sufficient strength to be able to complete his task. Otherwise I have no doubt that he would have added his earnest and heartfelt entreaties, to ours.

I myself was present at the neuro-hypnotic session referred to, as was the lady who has since consented to become my dear wife; and both of us were most profoundly affected by what we saw and heard. It moves me to tears to think how this poor woman has been wronged through lack of scientific understanding. The human soul is a profound and awe-inspiring mystery, the depths of which are only now beginning to be sounded. Well may St. Paul have said, “Now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face.” One can only guess at the purposes of our Creator, in fashioning of Humanity such a complex and Gordian knot.

But whatever you may think of Dr. Jordan’s professional opinion – and I am well aware that his conclusions may be difficult to credit, for one not familiar with the practice of Neuro-hypnosis, and who was not present at the events to which I allude – surely Grace Marks has been incarcerated for a great many years, more than sufficient to atone for her misdeeds. She has suffered untold mental agony, and agony of body as well; and she has bitterly repented whatever part she
may have taken in this great crime, whether conscious of having taken it or not. She is by no means any longer a young woman, and is in but indifferent health. If she were at liberty, something might surely be done for her temporal, as well as her spiritual weal, and she might have an opportunity of meditating on the past, and of preparing for a future life.

Will you – can you, in the name of charity – still persist in refusing to join your name to the Petition for her release, and thereby perchance close the gates of Paradise to a repentant sinner? Surely not!

I invite you – I beg you once again – to aid us in this most praiseworthy endeavour.

               Yours very truly,

                        Enoch Verringer, M.A., D. Div.

From Dr. Samuel Bannerling, M.D., The Maples, Front Street,
Toronto; to the Reverend Enoch Verringer, Sydenham Street
Methodist Church, Kingston, Ontario
.

November 1st, 1867.

Dear Sir:

   I acknowledge receipt of your letter of the 15th of October, and its account of your puerile antics in regards to Grace Marks. I am disappointed in Dr. Jordan; I had some previous correspondence with him, in which I warned him explicitly against this cunning woman. They say there is no fool like an old fool, but I say there is no fool like a young
one; and I am astonished that anyone with a medical degree would allow himself to be imposed upon by such a blatant piece of charlatanism and preposterous tomfoolery as a “Neuro-hypnotic trance,” which is second in imbecility only to Spiritism, Universal Suffrage, and similar drivel. This rubbishy “Neuro-hypnotism,” however beribboned with new terminologies, is only Mesmerism, or Animal Magnetism, re-writ; and that sickly nonsense was discredited long ago, as being merely a solemn-sounding blind, behind which men of questionable antecedents and salacious natures might obtain power over young women of the same, asking them impertinent and offensive questions and ordering them to perform immodest acts, without the latter appearing to consent to it.

So I fear that your Dr. Jordan is either credulous to an infantile degree, or himself a great scoundrel; and that, should he have composed his self-styled “report,” it would not have been worth the paper it was written on. I suspect that the wound of which you speak, was incurred, not during the war, but before it; and that it consisted of a sharp blow to the head, which is the only thing that would account for such idiocy. If Dr. Jordan keeps on with this disorderly course of thought, he will soon belong in the private asylum for lunatics, which, if I recall aright, he was once so set upon establishing.

I have read the so-called “testimony” of Mrs. Moodie, as well as some of her other scribblings, which I consigned to the fire where they belong – and where they for once cast a little light, which they certainly would not have done otherwise. Like the rest of her ilk, Mrs. Moodie is prone to overwrought effusions, and to the concoction of convenient fairy tales; and for the purposes of truth, one might as well rely on the “eye-witness reports” of a goose.

As for the gates of Paradise to which you refer, I have no control whatever over them, and if Grace Marks is worthy to enter there she will doubtless be admitted without any interference on my part. But certainly the gates of the Penitentiary will never be opened to her through any act of mine. I have studied her carefully, and know her character and disposition better than you can possibly do. She is a creature devoid of moral faculties, and with the propensity to murder strongly developed. She is not safe to be entrusted with the ordinary privileges of society, and if her liberty were restored to her the chances are that sooner or later other lives would be sacrificed.

In closing, Sir, allow me to remark that it ill becomes you, as a man of the cloth, to pepper your screeds with allusions to “modern science.” A little learning is a dangerous thing, as I believe Pope once observed. Busy yourself with the care of consciences, and with the delivery of edifying sermons for the improvement of public life and private morals, which God knows the country is in need of, and leave the brains of the degenerate to the authorities who specialize in them. Above all, in future, be pleased to desist from pestering with these importunate and ridiculous appeals,

               Your most humble and obedient servant.

                        (Dr.) Samuel Bannerling, M.D.