any possible danger, some one of those fair maidens whose far-off smile,
whose graceful movements, at once attracted and agitated me? I can only
answer this question to the satisfaction of any really inquiring reader
by giving him the true interpretation of the singular phenomenon of
which I was the subject. For this I shall have to refer to a paper of
which I have made a copy, and which will be found included with
this manuscript. It is enough to say here, without entering into the
explanation of the fact, which will be found simple enough as seen
by the light of modern physiological science, that the “nervous
disturbance” which the presence of a woman in the flower of her
age produced in my system was a sense of impending death, sudden,
overwhelming, unconquerable, appalling. It was a reversed action of the
nervous centres,--the opposite of that which flushes the young lover's
cheek and hurries his bounding pulses as he comes into the presence of
the object of his passion. No one who has ever felt the sensation can
have failed to recognize it as an imperative summons, which commands
instant and terrified submission.
It was at this period of my life that my father determined to try the
effect of travel and residence in different localities upon my bodily
and mental condition. I say bodily as well as mental, for I was too
slender for my height and subject to some nervous symptoms which were a
cause of anxiety. That the mind was largely concerned in these there
was no doubt, but the mutual interactions of mind and body are often
too complex to admit of satisfactory analysis. Each is in part cause and
each also in part effect.
We passed some years in Italy, chiefly in Rome, where I was placed in a
school conducted by priests, and where of course I met only those of
my own sex. There I had the opportunity of seeing the influences under
which certain young Catholics, destined for the priesthood, are led to
separate themselves from all communion with the sex associated in
their minds with the most subtle dangers to which the human soul can be
exposed. I became in some degree reconciled to the thought of exclusion
from the society of women by seeing around me so many who were
self-devoted to celibacy. The thought sometimes occurred to me whether I
should not find the best and the only natural solution of the problem
of existence, as submitted to myself, in taking upon me the vows which
settle the whole question and raise an impassable barrier between the
devotee and the object of his dangerous attraction.
How often I talked this whole matter over with the young priest who was
at once my special instructor and my favorite companion! But accustomed
as I had become to the forms of the Roman Church, and impressed as I was
with the purity and excellence of many of its young members with whom
I was acquainted, my early training rendered it impossible for me to
accept the credentials which it offered me as authoritative. My friend
and instructor had to set me down as a case of “invincible ignorance.”
This was the loop-hole through which he crept out of the prison-house
of his creed, and was enabled to look upon me without the feeling of
absolute despair with which his sterner brethren would, I fear, have
regarded me.
I have said that accident exposed me at times to the influence which
I had such reasons for dreading. Here is one example of such an
occurrence, which I relate as simply as possible, vividly as it is
impressed upon my memory. A young friend whose acquaintance I had made
in Rome asked me one day to come to his rooms and look at a cabinet of
gems and medals which he had collected. I had been but a short time
in his library when a vague sense of uneasiness came over me. My heart
became restless,--I could feel it stirring irregularly, as if it were
some frightened creature caged in my breast. There was nothing that I
could see to account for it. A door was partly open, but not so that I
could see into the next room. The feeling grew upon me of some influence
which was paralyzing my circulation. I begged my friend to open a
window. As he did so, the door swung in the draught, and I saw a
blooming young woman,--it was my friend's sister, who had been sitting
with a book in her hand, and who rose at the opening of the door.
Something had warned me of the presence of a woman, that occult and
potent aura of individuality, call it personal magnetism, spiritual
effluence, or reduce it to a simpler expression if you will; whatever
it was, it had warned me of the nearness of the dread attraction which
allured at a distance and revealed itself with all the terrors of the
Lorelei if approached too recklessly. A sign from her brother caused
her to withdraw at once, but not before I had felt the impression which
betrayed itself in my change of color, anxiety about the region of the
heart, and sudden failure as if about to fall in a deadly fainting-fit.
Does all this seem strange and incredible to the reader of my
manuscript? Nothing in the history of life is so strange or exceptional
as it seems to those who have not made a long study of its mysteries.
I have never known just such a case as my own, and yet there must have
been such, and if the whole history of mankind were unfolded I cannot
doubt that there have been many like it. Let my reader suspend his
judgment until he has read the paper I have referred to, which was drawn
up by a Committee of the Royal Academy of the Biological Sciences. In
this paper the mechanism of the series of nervous derangements to which
I have been subject since the fatal shock experienced in my infancy is
explained in language not hard to understand. It will be seen that such
a change of polarity in the nervous centres is only a permanent form and
an extreme degree of an emotional disturbance, which as a temporary
and comparatively unimportant personal accident is far from being
uncommon,--is so frequent, in fact, that every one must have known
instances of it, and not a few must have had more or less serious
experiences of it in their own private history.
It must not be supposed that my imagination dealt with me as I am
now dealing with the reader. I was full of strange fancies and wild
superstitions. One of my Catholic friends gave me a silver medal which
had been blessed by the Pope, and which I was to wear next my body. I
was told that this would turn black after a time, in virtue of a power
which it possessed of drawing out original sin, or certain portions
of it, together with the evil and morbid tendencies which had been
engrafted on the corrupt nature. I wore the medal faithfully, as
directed, and watched it carefully. It became tarnished and after a time
darkened, but it wrought no change in my unnatural condition.
There was an old gypsy who had the reputation of knowing more of
futurity than she had any right to know. The story was that she had
foretold the assassination of Count Rossi and the death of Cavour.
However that may have been, I was persuaded to let her try her black
art upon my future. I shall never forget the strange, wild look of the
wrinkled hag as she took my hand and studied its lines and fixed her
wicked old eyes on my young countenance. After this examination she
shook her head and muttered some words, which as nearly as I could get
them would be in English like these:
Fair lady cast a spell on thee,
Fair lady's hand shall set thee free.
Strange as it may seem, these words of a withered old creature, whose
palm had to be crossed with silver to bring forth her oracular response,
have always clung to my memory as if they were destined to fulfilment.
The extraordinary nature of the affliction to which I was subject
disposed me to believe the incredible with reference to all that relates
to it. I have never ceased to have the feeling that, sooner or later, I
should find myself freed from the blight laid upon me in my infancy. It
seems as if it would naturally come through the influence of some young
and fair woman, to whom that merciful errand should be assigned by the
Providence that governs our destiny. With strange hopes, with trembling
fears, with mingled belief and doubt, wherever I have found myself I
have sought with longing yet half-averted eyes for the “elect lady,”
as I have learned to call her, who was to lift the curse from my ruined
life.
Three times I have been led to the hope, if not the belief, that I had
found the object of my superstitious belief.--Singularly enough it
was always on the water that the phantom of my hope appeared before
my bewildered vision. Once it was an English girl who was a fellow
passenger with me in one of my ocean voyages. I need not say that she
was beautiful, for she was my dream realized. I heard her singing, I
saw her walking the deck on some of the fair days when sea-sickness was
forgotten. The passengers were a social company enough, but I had kept
myself apart, as was my wont. At last the attraction became too strong
to resist any longer. “I will venture into the charmed circle if it
kills me,” I said to my father. I did venture, and it did not kill me,
or I should not be telling this story. But there was a repetition of the
old experiences. I need not relate the series of alarming consequences
of my venture. The English girl was very lovely, and I have no doubt has
made some one supremely happy before this, but she was not the “elect
lady” of the prophecy and of my dreams.
A second time I thought myself for a moment in the presence of the
destined deliverer who was to restore me to my natural place among my
fellow men and women. It was on the Tiber that I met the young maiden
who drew me once more into that inner circle which surrounded young
womanhood with deadly peril for me, if I dared to pass its limits. I was
floating with the stream in the little boat in which I passed many long
hours of reverie when I saw another small boat with a boy and a young
girl in it. The boy had been rowing, and one of his oars had slipped
from his grasp. He did not know how to paddle with a single oar, and was
hopelessly rowing round and round, his oar all the time floating farther
away from him. I could not refuse my assistance. I picked up the oar and
brought my skiff alongside of the boat. When I handed the oar to the boy
the young girl lifted her veil and thanked me in the exquisite music of
the language which
'Sounds as if it should be writ on satin.'
She was a type of Italian beauty,--a nocturne in flesh and blood, if
I may borrow a term certain artists are fond of; but it was her voice
which captivated me and for a moment made me believe that I was no
longer shut off from all relations with the social life of my race. An
hour later I was found lying insensible on the floor of my boat, white,
cold, almost pulseless. It cost much patient labor to bring me back to
consciousness. Had not such extreme efforts been made, it seems
probable that I should never have waked from a slumber which was hardly
distinguishable from that of death.
Why should I provoke a catastrophe which appears inevitable if I invite
it by exposing myself to its too well ascertained cause? The habit of
these deadly seizures has become a second nature. The strongest and the
ablest men have found it impossible to resist the impression produced
by the most insignificant object, by the most harmless sight or sound to
which they had a congenital or acquired antipathy. What prospect have I
of ever being rid of this long and deep-seated infirmity? I may well ask
myself these questions, but my answer is that I will never give up
the hope that time will yet bring its remedy. It may be that the wild
prediction which so haunts me shall find itself fulfilled. I have had of
late strange premonitions, to which if I were superstitious I could not
help giving heed. But I have seen too much of the faith that deals in
miracles to accept the supernatural in any shape,--assuredly when it
comes from an old witch-like creature who takes pay for her revelations
of the future. Be it so: though I am not superstitious, I have a right
to be imaginative, and my imagination will hold to those words of the
old zingara with an irresistible feeling that, sooner or later, they
will prove true.
Can it be possible that her prediction is not far from its realization?
I have had both waking and sleeping visions within these last months
and weeks which have taken possession of me and filled my life with new
thoughts, new hopes, new resolves.
Sometimes on the bosom of the lake by which I am dreaming away this
season of bloom and fragrance, sometimes in the fields or woods in
a distant glimpse, once in a nearer glance, which left me pale and
tremulous, yet was followed by a swift reaction, so that my cheeks
flushed and my pulse bounded, I have seen her who--how do I dare to tell
it so that my own eyes can read it?---I cannot help believing is to be
my deliverer, my saviour.
I have been warned in the most solemn and impressive language by the
experts most deeply read in the laws of life and the history of its
disturbing and destroying influences, that it would be at the imminent
risk of my existence if I should expose myself to the repetition of my
former experiences. I was reminded that unexplained sudden deaths were
of constant, of daily occurrence; that any emotion is liable to arrest
the movements of life: terror, joy, good news or bad news,--anything
that reaches the deeper nervous centres. I had already died once, as
Sir Charles Napier said of himself; yes, more than once, died and been
resuscitated. The next time, I might very probably fail to get my return
ticket after my visit to Hades. It was a rather grim stroke of humor,
but I understood its meaning full well, and felt the force of its
menace.
After all, what had I to live for if the great primal instinct which
strives to make whole the half life of lonely manhood is defeated,
suppressed, crushed out of existence? Why not as well die in the attempt
to break up a wretched servitude to a perverted nervous movement as
in any other way? I am alone in the world,--alone save for my faithful
servant, through whom I seem to hold to the human race as it were by
a single filament. My father, who was my instructor, my companion,
my dearest and best friend through all my later youth and my earlier
manhood, died three years ago and left me my own master, with the means
of living as might best please my fancy. This season shall decide my
fate. One more experiment, and I shall find myself restored to my place
among my fellow-beings, or, as I devoutly hope, in a sphere where all
our mortal infirmities are past and forgotten.
I have told the story of a blighted life without reserve, so that there
shall not remain any mystery or any dark suspicion connected with my
memory if I should be taken away unexpectedly. It has cost me an effort
to do it, but now that my life is on record I feel more reconciled to
my lot, with all its possibilities, and among these possibilities is a
gleam of a better future. I have been told by my advisers, some of them
wise, deeply instructed, and kind-hearted men, that such a life-destiny
should be related by the subject of it for the instruction of others,
and especially for the light it throws on certain peculiarities of human
character often wrongly interpreted as due to moral perversion, when
they are in reality the results of misdirected or reversed actions in
some of the closely connected nervous centres.
For myself I can truly say that I have very little morbid sensibility
left with reference to the destiny which has been allotted to me. I have
passed through different stages of feeling with reference to it, as
I have developed from infancy to manhood. At first it was mere blind
instinct about which I had no thought, living like other infants the
life of impressions without language to connect them in series. In my
boyhood I began to be deeply conscious of the infirmity which separated
me from those around me. In youth began that conflict of emotions and
impulses with the antagonistic influence of which I have already spoken,
a conflict which has never ceased, but to which I have necessarily
become to a certain degree accustomed; and against the dangers of which
I have learned to guard myself habitually. That is the meaning of my
isolation. You, young man,--if at any time your eyes shall look upon my
melancholy record,--you at least will understand me. Does not your heart
throb, in the presence of budding or blooming womanhood, sometimes as if
it “were ready to crack” with its own excess of strain? What if instead
of throbbing it should falter, flutter, and stop as if never to beat
again? You, young woman, who with ready belief and tender sympathy will
look upon these pages, if they are ever spread before you, know what it
is when your breast heaves with uncontrollable emotion and the grip of
the bodice seems unendurable as the embrace of the iron virgin of the
Inquisition. Think what it would be if the grasp were tightened so that
no breath of air could enter your panting chest!
Does your heart beat in the same way, young man, when your honored
friend, a venerable matron of seventy years, greets you with her kindly
smile as it does in the presence of youthful loveliness? When a pretty
child brings you her doll and looks into your eyes with artless grace
and trustful simplicity, does your pulse quicken, do you tremble, does
life palpitate through your whole being, as when the maiden of seventeen
meets your enamored sight in the glow of her rosebud beauty? Wonder
not, then, if the period of mystic attraction for you should be that
of agitation, terror, danger, to one in whom the natural current of the
instincts has had its course changed as that of a stream is changed by a
convulsion of nature, so that the impression which is new life to you is
death to him.
I am now twenty-five years old. I have reached the time of life which
I have dreamed, nay even ventured to hope, might be the limit of the
sentence which was pronounced upon me in my infancy. I can assign no
good reason for this anticipation. But in writing this paper I feel as
if I were preparing to begin a renewed existence. There is nothing for
me to be ashamed of in the story I have told. There is no man living who
would not have yielded to the sense of instantly impending death which
seized upon me under the conditions I have mentioned. Martyrs have gone
singing to their flaming shrouds, but never a man could hold his
breath long enough to kill himself; he must have rope or water, or some
mechanical help, or nature will make him draw in a breath of air, and
would make him do so though he knew the salvation of the human race
would be forfeited by that one gasp.
This paper may never reach the eye of any one afflicted in the same way
that I have been. It probably never will; but for all that, there are
many shy natures which will recognize tendencies in themselves in the
direction of my unhappy susceptibility. Others, to whom such weakness
seems inconceivable, will find their scepticism shaken, if not removed,
by the calm, judicial statement of the Report drawn up for the Royal
Academy. It will make little difference to me whether my story is
accepted unhesitatingly or looked upon as largely a product of the
imagination. I am but a bird of passage that lights on the boughs of
different nationalities. I belong to no flock; my home may be among the
palms of Syria, the olives of Italy, the oaks of England, the elms that
shadow the Hudson or the Connecticut; I build no nest; to-day I am here,
to-morrow on the wing.
If I quit my native land before the trees have dropped their leaves I
shall place this manuscript in the safe hands of one whom I feel sure
that I can trust; to do with it as he shall see fit. If it is only
curious and has no bearing on human welfare, he may think it well to let
it remain unread until I shall have passed away. If in his judgment
it throws any light on one of the deeper mysteries of our nature,--the
repulsions which play such a formidable part in social life, and which
must be recognized as the correlatives of the affinities that distribute
the individuals governed by them in the face of impediments which seem
to be impossibilities,--then it may be freely given to the world.
But if I am here when the leaves are all fallen, the programme of
my life will have changed, and this story of the dead past will be
illuminated by the light of a living present which will irradiate all
its saddening features. Who would not pray that my last gleam of light
and hope may be that of dawn and not of departing day?
The reader who finds it hard to accept the reality of a story so far
from the common range of experience is once more requested to suspend
his judgment until he has read the paper which will next be offered for
his consideration.
XIX. THE REPORT OF THE BIOLOGICAL COMMITTEE.
Perhaps it is too much to expect a reader who wishes to be entertained,
excited, amused, and does not want to work his passage through pages
which he cannot understand without some effort of his own, to read the
paper which follows and Dr. Butts's reflections upon it. If he has no
curiosity in the direction of these chapters, he can afford to leave
them to such as relish a slight flavor of science. But if he does so
leave them he will very probably remain sceptical as to the truth of the
story to which they are meant to furnish him with a key.
Of course the case of Maurice Kirkwood is a remarkable and exceptional
one, and it is hardly probable that any reader's experience will furnish
him with its parallel. But let him look back over all his acquaintances,
if he has reached middle life, and see if he cannot recall more than one
who, for some reason or other, shunned the society of young women, as
if they had a deadly fear of their company. If he remembers any such, he
can understand the simple statements and natural reflections which are
laid before him.
One of the most singular facts connected with the history of Maurice
Kirkwood was the philosophical equanimity with which he submitted to the
fate which had fallen upon him. He did not choose to be pumped by the
Interviewer, who would show him up in the sensational columns of his
prying newspaper. He lived chiefly by himself, as the easiest mode of
avoiding those meetings to which he would be exposed in almost every
society into which he might venture. But he had learned to look upon
himself very much as he would upon an intimate not himself,--upon a
different personality. A young man will naturally enough be ashamed
of his shyness. It is something which others believe, and perhaps he
himself thinks, he might overcome. But in the case of Maurice Kirkwood
there was no room for doubt as to the reality and gravity of the long
enduring effects of his first convulsive terror. He had accepted the
fact as he would have accepted the calamity of losing his sight or his
hearing. When he was questioned by the experts to whom his case was
submitted, he told them all that he knew about it almost without a sign
of emotion. Nature was so peremptory with him,--saying in language that
had no double meaning: “If you violate the condition on which you
hold my gift of existence I slay you on the spot,”--that he became as
decisive in his obedience as she was in her command, and accepted his
fate without repining.
Yet it must not be thought for a moment,--it cannot be supposed,--that
he was insensible because he looked upon himself with the coolness of an
enforced philosophy. He bore his burden manfully, hard as it was to
live under it, for he lived, as we have seen, in hope. The thought of
throwing it off with his life, as too grievous to be borne, was familiar
to his lonely hours, but he rejected it as unworthy of his manhood. How
he had speculated and dreamed about it is plain enough from the paper
the reader may remember on Ocean, River, and Lake.
With these preliminary hints the paper promised is submitted to such as
may find any interest in them.
ACCOUNT OF A CASE OF GYNOPHOBIA.
WITH REMARKS.
Being the Substance of a Report to the Royal Academy of the Biological
Sciences by a Committee of that Institution.