In the year 1828, a great sensation was created throughout the civilized
world, by the story of Casper Hauser. This, as it appears, was in
substance as follows:--
On the 20th May, in the year above named, as a citizen of Nuremburg, in
Bavaria, was proceeding along one of the streets, he happened to see a
young man in the dress of a peasant, who was standing like one
intoxicated, attempting to move forward, yet appearing hardly to have
command of his legs. On the approach of the citizen, this stranger held
out to him a letter directed to a well-known and respectable military
officer, living in Nuremburg.
As the house of this person lay in the direction of the citizen's walk,
he took the youth thither with him. When the servant opened the door,
the stranger put the letter into his hand, uttering some unintelligible
words. The various questions which were asked, as to his name, whence he
came, &c., he seemed not to comprehend. He appeared excessively
fatigued, staggered as if exhausted, and pointed to his feet, shedding
tears, apparently from pain. As he seemed to be suffering from hunger, a
piece of meat was given to him, but scarcely had he tasted it, when he
spat it out, and shuddered as if with abhorrence. He manifested the same
aversion to beer. He ate some bread and drank water, with signs of
satisfaction.
Meantime, all attempts to gain any information from him were fruitless.
To every question he answered with the same unintelligible jargon. He
seemed to hear without understanding, and to see without perceiving. He
shed many tears, and his whole language seemed to consist of moans and
unintelligible sounds.
The letter to the officer, above mentioned, contained no satisfactory
information. It stated that the writer was a poor day-laborer, with a
family of ten children; that the bearer had been left with him in
October, 1812, and he had never since been suffered to leave his house:
that he had received a Christian education, been baptized, &c. He was
sent to the officer with the request that he might be taken care of till
seventeen years old, and then be made a trooper, and placed in the sixth
regiment, as his father had been of that corps. This letter was
supposed, of course, to be designed to mislead, and no reliance was
placed upon it.
The officer, suspecting some imposition, sent the stranger to the
police. To all inquiries the latter replied as before, displaying a kind
of childish simplicity, and awkward dulness. He was continually
whimpering, and pointing to his feet. While he had the size of a young
man, his face had the expression of a child. When writing materials were
placed before him, he took the pen with alacrity, and wrote _Kaspar
Hauser_. This so contrasted with his previous signs of ignorance and
dulness, as to excite suspicions of imposture, and he was therefore
committed to a tower used for the confinement of rogues and vagabonds.
In going to this place, he sank down, groaning at every step.
The body of Caspar seemed perfectly formed, but his face bore a decided
aspect of vulgarity. When in a state of tranquillity, it was either
destitute of expression, or had a look of brutish indifference. The
formation of his face, however, changed in a few months, and rapidly
gained in expression and animation. His feet bore no marks of having
been confined by shoes, and were finely formed; the soles were soft as
the palms of his hands. His gait was a waddling, tottering progress,
groping with his hands as he went, and often falling at the slightest
impediment. He could not, for a long time, go up and down stairs
without assistance. He used his hands with the greatest awkwardness. In
all these respects, however, he rapidly improved.
Caspar Hauser soon ceased to be considered either an idiot or an
impostor. The mildness, good nature, and obedience he displayed,
precluded the idea that he had grown up with the beasts of the forest.
Yet he was destitute of words, and seemed to be disgusted with most of
the customs and habits of civilized life. All the circumstances combined
to create a belief that he had been brought up in a state of complete
imprisonment and seclusion, during the previous part of his existence.
He now became an object of general interest, and hundreds of persons
came to see him. He could be persuaded to taste no other food than bread
and water. Even the smell of most articles of food was sufficient to
make him shudder. When he first saw a lighted candle, he appeared
greatly delighted, and unsuspectingly put his fingers into the blaze.
When a mirror was shown him, he looked behind to find the image it
reflected. Like a child, he greedily reached for every glittering
object, and cried when any desired thing was denied him. His whole
vocabulary seemed hardly to exceed a dozen words, and that of ross
(horse) answered for all quadrupeds, such as horses, dogs, and cats.
When, at length, a wooden horse was given as a plaything, it seemed to
effect a great change in him; his spirits revived, and his lethargy and
indifference were dissipated. He would never eat or drink without first
offering a portion to his horse.
His powers seemed now to be rapidly developed; he soon quitted his toy,
and learned to ride the living horse with astonishing rapidity. He,
however, was greatly oppressed, as he acquired knowledge, at discovering
how much inferior he was in knowledge to those around him, and this led
him to express the wish that he could go back to the hole in which he
had always been confined. From his repeated statements, now that he had
learned to speak, it appeared that he had been, from his earliest
recollections, confined in a narrow space, his legs extended forward
upon the floor, and his body upright; and here, without light, and
without the power of locomotion, he had remained for years. The date or
period of his confinement he knew not, for in his dungeon there was no
sunrise or sunset, to mark the lapse of time. When he awoke from sleep,
he found some bread and water at his side; but who ministered to his
wants, he knew not; he never saw the face of his attendant, who never
spoke to him, except in some unintelligible jargon. In his hole he had
two wooden horses and some ribands as toys--and these afforded him his
only amusement. One day had passed as another; he had no dreams; time
run on, and life ebbed and flowed, with a dull and almost unconscious
movement. After a time his keeper gave him a pencil, of which he learned
the use; he was then partially taught to walk, and shortly after, was
carried from his prison, a letter put into his hand, and he was left,
as the beginning of our story finds him, in the streets of Nuremburg.
The journals were now filled with accounts of this mysterious young man.
A suspicion was at last started that he was of high birth, and that
important motives had led to the singular treatment he had received. He
was himself haunted with the fear of assassination, from the idea that
the circumstances which led to his incarceration, now that his story was
known, might tempt his enemies to put a period to his life--thus seeking
at once the removal of a hated object, and security against detection.
His fears were at last partially realized; while he was under the care
and protection of Professor Daumer, he was attacked and seriously
wounded by a blow upon the forehead.
After this event, Earl Stanhope, who happened to be in that part of
Germany, caused him to be removed to Anspach, where he was placed under
the care of an able schoolmaster. Here his fears subsided; but in
December, 1833, a stranger, wrapped in a large cloak, accosted him,
under the pretence of having an important communication to make, and
proposed a meeting. Caspar agreed, and they met in the palace garden,
alone. The stranger drew some papers from beneath his cloak, and while
Hauser was examining them, the russian stabbed him in the region of the
heart. The wound did not prove immediately fatal. He was able to return
home, and relate what had happened. Messengers were sent in pursuit of
the assassin, but in vain. Hauser lingered three or four days--that is,
till the 17th December, 1833, when he died. On dissection, it appeared
that the knife had pierced to the heart, making an incision in its outer
covering, and slightly cutting both the liver and stomach. A reward of
five thousand florins was offered by Lord Stanhope, for the discovery of
the assassin, but without effect--nor was the mystery which involved
Caspar's story ever fully unravelled.
Such was the tale of this extraordinary individual, as it appeared a few
years ago. Since that period, the facts in the case have been carefully
sifted, and the result is a settled conviction, that Hauser was an
impostor; that the story of his confinement was a fabrication; that his
pretended ignorance, his stupidity, his childishness, were but skilful
acting to enforce his story; and, strange as it may appear, there is no
good reason to doubt that the wounds he received, in both instances,
were inflicted by himself. Such were the deliberate convictions of Earl
Stanhope, and others who investigated the facts on the spot, and with
the best advantages for the discovery of the truth. Caspar's motive for
wounding himself doubtless was, to revive the flagging interest of the
public in his behalf--a source of excitement he had so long enjoyed, as
to feel unhappy without it. In the latter instance, he doubtless
inflicted a severer wound than he intended, and thus put an undesigned
period to his existence.
His story presents one of the most successful instances of imposture, on
record. It appears probable that he was aided in his imposition by the
narrative of Fuerbach, one of the judges of Bavaria, who adopted some
theory on the subject, which he supported with gross, though perhaps
undesigned misrepresentation. He published an interesting account of
Hauser, in which he rather colored and exaggerated the facts, thus
making the narrative far more wonderful than the reality would warrant.
It was, doubtless, owing to these statements of Fuerbach, that an
extraordinary interest in the case was everywhere excited; and it is
highly probable that Hauser himself was encouraged to deeper and more
extended duplicity, by the aid which the mistaken credulity of the judge
afforded him, than, at first, he had meditated. He probably looked with
surprise and wonder at the success of his trick, and marvelled at seeing
himself suddenly converted from a poor German mechanic, as he doubtless
was, into a prodigy and a hero--exciting a sensation throughout the four
quarters of the globe. The whole story affords a good illustration of
the folly of permitting the imagination to lead us in the investigation
of facts, and the extended impositions that may flow from the want of
exact and scrupulous veracity in a magistrate.
[Illustration]