Authors: Sheridan Le Fanu
"'No,' said he, after me, 'of course, no;' and I said to him, 'Wouldn't
it be well, sir, you went to bed? It's just five o'clock;' and he said
nothing, but, 'Very likely; good-night, Jones.' So I went, sir, but in
less than an hour I came again. The door was fast, and he heard me, and
called as I thought from the bed to know what I wanted, and he desired
me not to disturb him again. I lay down and slept for a little. It must
have been between six and seven when I went up again. The door was still
fast, and he made no answer, so I did not like to disturb him, and
thinking he was asleep, I left him till nine. It was his custom to ring
when he wished me to come, and I had no particular hour for calling him.
I tapped very gently, and getting no answer, I stayed away a good while,
supposing he was getting some rest then. It was not till eleven o'clock
I grew really uncomfortable about him—for at the latest he was never,
that I could remember, later than half-past ten. I got no answer. I
knocked and called, and still no answer. So not being able to force the
door, I called Thomas from the stables, and together we forced it, and
found him in the shocking way you saw."
Jones had no more to tell. Poor Mr. Jennings was very gentle, and very
kind. All his people were fond of him. I could see that the servant was
very much moved.
So, dejected and agitated, I passed from that terrible house, and its
dark canopy of elms, and I hope I shall never see it more. While I write
to you I feel like a man who has but half waked from a frightful and
monotonous dream. My memory rejects the picture with incredulity and
horror. Yet I know it is true. It is the story of the process of a
poison, a poison which excites the reciprocal action of spirit and
nerve, and paralyses the tissue that separates those cognate functions
of the senses, the external and the interior. Thus we find strange
bed-fellows, and the mortal and immortal prematurely make acquaintance.
My dear Van L—, you have suffered from an affection similar to that
which I have just described. You twice complained of a return of it.
Who, under God, cured you? Your humble servant, Martin Hesselius. Let me
rather adopt the more emphasised piety of a certain good old French
surgeon of three hundred years ago: "I treated, and God cured you."
Come, my friend, you are not to be hippish. Let me tell you a fact.
I have met with, and treated, as my book shows, fifty-seven cases of
this kind of vision, which I term indifferently "sublimated,"
"precocious," and "interior."
There is another class of affections which are truly termed—though
commonly confounded with those which I describe—spectral illusions.
These latter I look upon as being no less simply curable than a cold in
the head or a trifling dyspepsia.
It is those which rank in the first category that test our promptitude
of thought. Fifty-seven such cases have I encountered, neither more nor
less. And in how many of these have I failed? In no one single instance.
There is no one affliction of mortality more easily and certainly
reducible, with a little patience, and a rational confidence in the
physician. With these simple conditions, I look upon the cure as
absolutely certain.
You are to remember that I had not even commenced to treat Mr. Jennings'
case. I have not any doubt that I should have cured him perfectly in
eighteen months, or possibly it might have extended to two years. Some
cases are very rapidly curable, others extremely tedious. Every
intelligent physician who will give thought and diligence to the task,
will effect a cure.
You know my tract on "The Cardinal Functions of the Brain." I there, by
the evidence of innumerable facts, prove, as I think, the high
probability of a circulation arterial and venous in its mechanism,
through the nerves. Of this system, thus considered, the brain is the
heart. The fluid, which is propagated hence through one class of nerves,
returns in an altered state through another, and the nature of that
fluid is spiritual, though not immaterial, any more than, as I before
remarked, light or electricity are so.
By various abuses, among which the habitual use of such agents as green
tea is one, this fluid may be affected as to its quality, but it is more
frequently disturbed as to equilibrium. This fluid being that which we
have in common with spirits, a congestion found upon the masses of brain
or nerve, connected with the interior sense, forms a surface unduly
exposed, on which disembodied spirits may operate: communication is thus
more or less effectually established. Between this brain circulation and
the heart circulation there is an intimate sympathy. The seat, or rather
the instrument of exterior vision, is the eye. The seat of interior
vision is the nervous tissue and brain, immediately about and above the
eyebrow. You remember how effectually I dissipated your pictures by the
simple application of iced eau-de-cologne. Few cases, however, can be
treated exactly alike with anything like rapid success. Cold acts
powerfully as a repellant of the nervous fluid. Long enough continued it
will even produce that permanent insensibility which we call numbness,
and a little longer, muscular as well as sensational paralysis.
I have not, I repeat, the slightest doubt that I should have first
dimmed and ultimately sealed that inner eye which Mr. Jennings had
inadvertently opened. The same senses are opened in delirium tremens,
and entirely shut up again when the overaction of the cerebral heart,
and the prodigious nervous congestions that attend it, are terminated by
a decided change in the state of the body. It is by acting steadily upon
the body, by a simple process, that this result is produced—and
inevitably produced—I have never yet failed.
Poor Mr. Jennings made away with himself. But that catastrophe was the
result of a totally different malady, which, as it were, projected
itself upon the disease which was established. His case was in the
distinctive manner a complication, and the complaint under which he
really succumbed, was hereditary suicidal mania. Poor Mr. Jennings I
cannot call a patient of mine, for I had not even begun to treat his
case, and he had not yet given me, I am convinced, his full and
unreserved confidence. If the patient do not array himself on the side
of the disease, his cure is certain.
OUT of about two hundred and thirty cases more or less nearly akin to that I have entitled "Green Tea," I select the following which I call "The Familiar."
To this MS., Doctor Hesselius has, after his wont, attached some sheets of letter-paper, on which are written, in his hand nearly as compact as print, his own remarks upon the case. He says:
"In point of conscience, no more unexceptionable narrator than the venerable Irish Clergyman who has given me this paper, on Mr. Barton's case, could have been chosen. The statement is, however, medically imperfect. The report of an intelligent physician, who had marked its progress, and attended the patient, from its earlier stages to its close, would have supplied what is wanting to enable me to pronounce with confidence. I should have been acquainted with Mr Barton's probable hereditary predispositions; I should have known, possibly by very early indicators, something of a remoter origin of the disease than can now be ascertained.
"In a rough way, we may reduce all similar cases to three distinct classes. They are founded on the primary distinction between the subjective and the objective. Of those whose senses are alleged to be subject to supernatural impressions — some are simply visionaries, and propagate the illusions of which they complain from diseased brain or nerves. Others are, unquestionably, infested by, as we term them, spiritual agencies, exterior to themselves. Others, again, owe their sufferings to a mixed condition. The interior sense, it is true, is opened; but it has been and continues open by the action of disease. This form of disease may, in one sense, be compared to the loss of the scarf-skin, and a consequent exposure of surfaces for whose excessive sensitiveness nature has provided a muffling. The loss of this covering is attended by an habitual impassibility, by influences against which we were intended to be guarded. But in the case of the brain, and the nerves immediately connected with its functions and its sensuous impressions, the cerebral circulation undergoes periodically that vibratory disturbance which, I believe, I have satisfactorily examined and demonstrated in my MS. Essay, A. 17. This vibratory disturbance differs, as I there prove, essentially from the congestive disturbance, the phenomena of which are examined in A. 19. It is, when excessive, invariably accompanied by
illusions
.
"Had I seen Mr. Barton, and examined him upon the points in his case which need elucidation, I should have without difficulty referred those phenomena to their proper disease. My diagnosis is now, necessarily, conjectural."
Thus writes Doctor Hesselius; and adds a great deal which is of interest only to a scientific physician.
The Narrative of the Rev. Thomas Herbert, which furnishes all that is known of the case will be found in the chapters that follow.
I WAS a young man at the time, and intimately acquainted with some of the actors in this strange tale; the impression which its incidents made on me, therefore, were deep and lasting. I shall now endeavour, with precision, to relate them all, combining, of course, in the narrative, whatever I have learned from various sources, tending, however imperfectly, to illuminate the darkness which involves its progress and termination.
Somewhere about the year 1794, the younger brother of a certain baronet, whom I shall call Sir James Barton, returned to Dublin. He had served in the navy with some distinction, having commanded one of His Majesty's frigates during the greater part of the American war. Captain Barton was apparently some two or three-and-forty years of age. He was an intelligent and agreeable companion when he pleased it, though generally reserved, and occasionally even moody.
In society, however, he deported himself as a man of the world, and a gentleman. He had not contracted any of the noisy brusqueness sometimes acquired at sea; on the contrary, his manners were remarkably easy, quiet, and even polished. He was in person about the middle size, and somewhat strongly formed — his countenance was marked with the lines of thought, and on the whole wore an expression of gravity and melancholy. Being, however, as I have said, a man of perfect breeding, as well as of good family and in affluent circumstances, he had, of course, ready access to the best society of Dublin without the necessity of any other credentials.
In his personal habits Mr. Barton was unexpensive. He occupied lodgings in one of the
then
fashionable streets in the south side of the town — kept but one horse and one servant — and though a reputed free-thinker, yet lived an orderly and moral life — indulging neither in gaming, drinking, nor any other vicious pursuit — living very much to himself, without forming intimacies, or choosing any companions, and appearing to mix in gay society rather for the sake of its bustle and distraction, than for any opportunities it offered of interchanging thought or feeling with its votaries.
Barton was, therefore, pronounced a saving, prudent, unsocial sort of fellow, who bid fair to maintain his celibacy alike against stratagem and assault, and was likely to live to a good old age, die rich, and leave his money to an hospital.
It was now apparent, however, that the nature of Mr Barton's plans had been totally misconceived. A young lady, whom I shall call Miss Montague, was at this time introduced into the gay world by her aunt, the Dowager Lady L——. Miss Montague was decidedly pretty and accomplished, and having some natural cleverness and a great deal of gaiety, became for a while a reigning toast.
Her popularity, however, gained her for a time nothing more than that unsubstantial admiration which, however pleasant as an incense to vanity, is by no means necessarily antecedent to matrimony — for, unhappily for the young lady in question, it was an understood thing that, beyond her personal attractions, she had no kind of earthly provision. Such being the state of affairs, it will readily be believed that no little surprise was consequent upon the appearance of Captain Barton as the avowed lover of the penniless Miss Montague.
His suit prospered, as might have been expected, and in a short time it was communicated by old Lady L—— to each of her hundred-and-fifty particular friends in succession, that Captain Barton had actually tendered proposals of marriage, with her approbation, to her niece, Miss Montague, who had, moreover, accepted the offer of his hand, conditionally upon the consent of her father, who was then upon his homeward voyage from India, and expected in two or three weeks at the furthest.
About this consent there could be no doubt — the delay, therefore, was one merely of form — they were looked upon as absolutely engaged, and Lady L——, with a rigour of old-fashioned decorum with which her niece would, no doubt, gladly have dispensed, withdrew her thenceforward from all further participation in the gaieties of the town.
Captain Barton was a constant visitor, as well as a frequent guest at the house, and was permitted all the privileges of intimacy which a betrothed suitor is usually accorded. Such was the relation of parties, when the mysterious circumstances which darken this narrative first began to unfold themselves.
Lady L—— resided in a handsome mansion at the north side of Dublin, and Captain Barton's lodgings, as we have already said, were situated at the south. The distance intervening was considerable, and it was Captain Barton's habit generally to walk home without an attendant, as often as he passed the evening with the old lady and her fair charge.
His shortest way in such nocturnal walks lay, for a considerable space, through a line of street which had as yet merely been laid out, and little more than the foundations of the houses constructed.