I may be doing you an injustice, Bertie, but it seemed to me in
your last that there were indications that the free expression of my
religious views had been distasteful to you. That you should disagree
with me I am prepared for; but that you should object to free and honest
discussion of those subjects which above all others men should be honest
over, would, I confess, be a disappointment. The Freethinker is placed
at this disadvantage in ordinary society, that whereas it would be
considered very bad taste upon his part to obtrude his unorthodox
opinion, no such consideration hampers those with whom he disagrees.
There was a time when it took a brave man to be a Christian. Now it
takes a brave man not to be. But if we are to wear a gag, and hide our
thoughts when writing in confidence to our most intimate----no, but I
won’t believe it. You and I have put up too many thoughts together and
chased them where-ever{sic} they would double, Bertie; so just write to
me like a good fellow, and tell me that I am an ass. Until I have that
comforting assurance, I shall place a quarantine upon everything which
could conceivably be offensive to you.
Does not lunacy strike you, Bertie, as being a very eerie thing? It is
a disease of the soul. To think that you may have a man of noble mind,
full of every lofty aspiration, and that a gross physical cause, such
as the fall of a spicule of bone from the inner table of his skull on
to the surface of the membrane which covers his brain, may have the
ultimate effect of turning him into an obscene creature with every
bestial attribute! That a man’s individuality should swing round
from pole to pole, and yet that one life should contain these two
contradictory personalities--is it not a wondrous thing?
I ask myself, where is the man, the very, very inmost essence of the
man? See how much you may subtract from him without touching it. It does
not lie in the limbs which serve him as tools, nor in the apparatus by
which he is to digest, nor in that by which he is to inhale oxygen. All
these are mere accessories, the slaves of the lord within. Where,
then, is he? He does not lie in the features which are to express his
emotions, nor in the eyes and ears which can be dispensed with by the
blind and deaf. Nor is he in the bony framework which is the rack over
which nature hangs her veil of flesh. In none of these things lies the
essence of the man. And now what is left? An arched whitish putty-like
mass, some fifty odd ounces in weight, with a number of white filaments
hanging down from it, looking not unlike the medusae which float in our
summer seas. But these filaments only serve to conduct nerve force
to muscles and to organs which serve secondary purposes. They may
themselves therefore be disregarded. Nor can we stop here in our
elimination. This central mass of nervous matter may be pared down on
all sides before we seem to get at the very seat of the soul. Suicides
have shot away the front lobes of the brain, and have lived to repent
it. Surgeons have cut down upon it and have removed sections. Much of it
is merely for the purpose of furnishing the springs of motion, and much
for the reception of impressions. All this may be put aside as we search
for the physical seat of what we call the soul--the spiritual part of
the man. And what is left then? A little blob of matter, a handful of
nervous dough, a few ounces of tissue, but there--somewhere there--lurks
that impalpable seed, to which the rest of our frame is but the pod. The
old philosophers who put the soul in the pineal gland were not right,
but after all they were uncommonly near the mark.
You’ll find my physiology even worse than my theology, Bertie. I have
a way of telling stories backwards to you, which is natural enough when
you consider that I always sit down to write under the influence of the
last impressions which have come upon me. All this talk about the soul
and the brain arises simply from the fact that I have been spending the
last few weeks with a lunatic. And how it came about I will tell you as
clearly as I can.
You remember that in my last I explained to you how restive I had been
getting at home, and how my idiotic mistake had annoyed my father and
had made my position here very uncomfortable. Then I mentioned, I think,
that I had received a letter from Christie & Howden, the lawyers. Well,
I brushed up my Sunday hat, and my mother stood on a chair and landed me
twice on the ear with a clothes brush, under the impression that she
was making the collar of my overcoat look more presentable. With which
accolade out I sallied into the world, the dear soul standing on the
steps, peering after me and waving me success.
Well, I was in considerable trepidation when I reached the office, for I
am a much more nervous person than any of my friends will ever credit
me with being. However, I was shown in at once to Mr. James Christie,
a wiry, sharp, thin-lipped kind of man, with an abrupt manner, and
that sort of Scotch precision of speech which gives the impression of
clearness of thought behind it.
“I understand from Professor Maxwell that you have been looking about
for an opening, Mr. Munro,” said he.
Maxwell had said that he would give me a hand if he could; but you
remember that he had a reputation for giving such promises rather
easily. I speak of a man as I find him, and to me he has been an
excellent friend.
“I should be very happy to hear of any opening,” said I.
“Of your medical qualifications there is no need to speak,” he went
on, running his eyes all over me in the most questioning way. “Your
Bachelorship of Medicine will answer for that. But Professor Maxwell
thought you peculiarly fitted for this vacancy for physical reasons. May
I ask you what your weight is?”
“Fourteen stone.”
“And you stand, I should judge, about six feet high?”
“Precisely.”
“Accustomed too, as I gather, to muscular exercise of every kind. Well,
there can be no question that you are the very man for the post, and I
shall be very happy to recommend you to Lord Saltire.”
“You forget,” said I, “that I have not yet heard what the position is,
or the terms which you offer.”
He began to laugh at that. “It was a little precipitate on my part,”
said he; “but I do not think that we are likely to quarrel as to
position or terms. You may have heard perhaps of the sad misfortune of
our client, Lord Saltire? Not? To put it briefly then, his son, the Hon.
James Derwent, the heir to the estates and the only child, was struck
down by the sun while fishing without his hat last July. His mind has
never recovered from the shock, and he has been ever since in a chronic
state of moody sullenness which breaks out every now and then into
violent mania. His father will not allow him to be removed from
Lochtully Castle, and it is his desire that a medical man should stay
there in constant attendance upon his son. Your physical strength would
of course be very useful in restraining those violent attacks of which
I have spoken. The remuneration will be twelve pounds a month, and you
would be required to take over your duties to-morrow.”
I walked home, my dear Bertie, with a bounding heart, and the pavement
like cotton wool under my feet. I found just eightpence in my pocket,
and I spent the whole of it on a really good cigar with which to
celebrate the occasion. Old Cullingworth has always had a very high
opinion of lunatics for beginners. “Get a lunatic, my boy! Get a
lunatic!” he used to say. Then it was not only the situation, but the
fine connection that it opened up. I seemed to see exactly what would
happen. There would be illness in the family,--Lord Saltire himself
perhaps, or his wife. There would be no time to send for advice. I would
be consulted. I would gain their confidence and become their family
attendant. They would recommend me to their wealthy friends. It was all
as clear as possible. I was debating before I reached home whether it
would be worth my while to give up a lucrative country practice in order
to take the Professorship which might be offered me.
My father took the news philosophically enough, with some rather
sardonic remark about my patient and me being well qualified to keep
each other company. But to my mother it was a flash of joy, followed by
a thunderclap of consternation. I had only three under-shirts, the
best of my linen had gone to Belfast to be refronted and recuffed, the
night-gowns were not marked yet--there were a dozen of those domestic
difficulties of which the mere male never thinks. A dreadful vision of
Lady Saltire looking over my things and finding the heel out of one of
my socks obsessed my mother. Out we trudged together, and before evening
her soul was at rest, and I had mortgaged in advance my first month’s
salary. She was great, as we walked home, upon the grand people into
whose service I was to enter. “As a matter of fact, my dear,” said she,
“they are in a sense relations of yours. You are very closely allied to
the Percies, and the Saltires have Percy blood in them also. They are
only a cadet branch, and you are close upon the main line; but still it
is not for us to deny the connection.” She brought a cold sweat out upon
me by suggesting that she should make things easy by writing to Lord
Saltire and explaining our respective positions. Several times during
the evening I heard her murmur complacently that they were only the
cadet branch.
Am I not the slowest of story-tellers? But you encourage me to it by
your sympathetic interest in details. However, I shall move along a
little faster now. Next morning I was off to Lochtully, which, as you
know, is in the north of Perthshire. It stands three miles from the
station, a great gray pinnacled house, with two towers cocking out above
the fir woods, like a hare’s ears from a tussock of grass. As we drove
up to the door I felt pretty solemn--not at all as the main line should
do when it condescends to visit the cadet branch. Into the hall as I
entered came a grave learned-looking man, with whom in my nervousness
I was about to shake hands cordially. Fortunately he forestalled the
impending embrace by explaining that he was the butler. He showed
me into a small study, where everything stank of varnish and morocco
leather, there to await the great man. He proved when he came to be a
much less formidable figure than his retainer--indeed, I felt thoroughly
at my ease with him from the moment he opened his mouth. He is grizzled,
red-faced, sharp-featured, with a prying and yet benevolent expression,
very human and just a trifle vulgar. His wife, however, to whom I
was afterwards introduced, is a most depressing person,--pale, cold,
hatchet-faced, with drooping eyelids and very prominent blue veins at
her temples. She froze me up again just as I was budding out under the
influence of her husband. However, the thing that interested me most
of all was to see my patient, to whose room I was taken by Lord Saltire
after we had had a cup of tea.
The room was a large bare one, at the end of a long corridor. Near the
door was seated a footman, placed there to fill up the gap between two
doctors, and looking considerably relieved at my advent. Over by the
window (which was furnished with a wooden guard, like that of a nursery)
sat a tall, yellow-haired, yellow-bearded, young man, who raised a pair
of startled blue eyes as we entered. He was turning over the pages of a
bound copy of the Illustrated London News.
“James,” said Lord Saltire, “this is Dr. Stark Munro, who has come to
look after you.”
My patient mumbled something in his beard, which seemed to me
suspiciously like “Damn Dr. Stark Munro!” The peer evidently thought the
same, for he led me aside by the elbow.
“I don’t know whether you have been told that James is a little rough in
his ways at present,” said he; “his whole nature has deteriorated very
much since this calamity came upon him. You must not be offended by
anything he may say or do.”
“Not in the least,” said I.
“There is a taint of this sort upon my wife’s side,” I whispered the
little lord; “her uncle’s symptoms were identical. Dr. Peterson says
that the sunstroke was only the determining cause. The predisposition
was already there. I may tell you that the footman will always be in the
next room, so that you can call him if you need his assistance.”
Well, it ended by lord and lacquey moving off, and leaving me with my
patient. I thought that I should lose no time in establishing a kindly
relation with him, so I drew a chair over to his sofa and began to ask
him a few questions about his health and habits. Not a word could I get
out of him in reply. He sat as sullen as a mule, with a kind of sneer
about his handsome face, which showed me very well that he had heard
everything. I tried this and tried that, but not a syllable could I
get from him; so at last I turned from him and began to look over some
illustrated papers on the table. He doesn’t read, it seems, and will do
nothing but look at pictures. Well, I was sitting like this with my back
half turned, when you can imagine my surprise to feel something plucking
gently at me, and to see a great brown hand trying to slip its way into
my coat pocket. I caught at the wrist and turned swiftly round, but too
late to prevent my handkerchief being whisked out and concealed behind
the Hon. James Derwent, who sat grinning at me like a mischievous
monkey.
“Come, I may want that,” said I, trying to treat the matter as a joke.
He used some language which was more scriptural than religious. I saw
that he did not mean giving it up, but I was determined not to let him
get the upper hand over me. I grabbed for the handkerchief; and he, with
a snarl, caught my hand in both of his. He had a powerful grip, but I
managed to get his wrist and to give it a wrench round, until, with a
howl, he dropped my property.
“What fun,” said I, pretending to laugh. “Let us try again. Now, you
take it up, and see if I can get it again.”
But he had had enough of that game. Yet he appeared to be better
humoured than before the incident, and I got a few short answers to the
questions which I put to him.
And here comes in the text which started me preaching about lunacy at
the beginning of this letter. WHAT a marvellous thing it is! This man,
from all I can learn of him, has suddenly swung clean over from one
extreme of character to the other. Every plus has in an instant become a
minus. He’s another man, but in the same case. I am told that he used
to be (only a few months ago, mind you) most fastidious in dress
and speech. Now he is a foul-tongued rough! He had a nice taste in
literature. Now he stares at you if you speak of Shakespeare. Queerest
of all, he used to be a very high-and-dry Tory in his opinions. He
is fond now of airing the most democratic views, and in a needlessly
offensive way. When I did get on terms with him at last, I found that
there was nothing on which he could be drawn on to talk so soon as on
politics. In substance, I am bound to say that I think his new views are
probably saner than his old ones, but the insanity lies in his sudden
reasonless change and in his violent blurts of speech.
It was some weeks, however, before I gained his confidence, so far as
to be able to hold a real conversation with him. For a long time he was
very sullen and suspicious, resenting the constant watch which I kept
upon him. This could not be relaxed, for he was full of the most apish
tricks. One day he got hold of my tobacco pouch, and stuffed two ounces
of my tobacco into the long barrel of an Eastern gun which hangs on the
wall. He jammed it all down with the ramrod, and I was never able to get
it up again. Another time he threw an earthenware spittoon through the
window, and would have sent the clock after it had I not prevented
him. Every day I took him for a two hours’ constitutional, save when it
rained, and then we walked religiously for the same space up and down
the room. Heh! but it was a deadly, dreary, kind of life.
I was supposed to have my eye upon him all day, with a two-hour interval
every afternoon and an evening to myself upon Fridays. But then what was
the use of an evening to myself when there was no town near, and I had
no friends whom I could visit? I did a fair amount of reading, for Lord
Saltire let me have the run of his library. Gibbon gave me a couple of
enchanting weeks. You know the effect that he produces. You seem to
be serenely floating upon a cloud, and looking down on all these pigmy
armies and navies, with a wise Mentor ever at your side to whisper to
you the inner meaning of all that majestic panorama.
Now and again young Derwent introduced some excitement into my dull
life. On one occasion when we were walking in the grounds, he suddenly
snatched up a spade from a grass-plot, and rushed at an inoffensive
under-gardener. The man ran screaming for his life, with my patient
cursing at his very heels, and me within a few paces of him. When I at
last laid my hand on his collar, he threw down his weapon and burst into
shrieks of laughter. It was only mischief and not ferocity; but when
that under-gardener saw us coming after that he was off with a face like
a cream cheese. At night the attendant slept in a camp-bed at the foot
of the patient’s, and my room was next door, so that I could be called
if necessary. No, it was not a very exhilarating life!
We used to go down to family meals when there were no visitors; and
there we made a curious quartette: Jimmy (as he wished me to call him)
glum and silent; I with the tail of my eye always twisted round to him;
Lady Saltire with her condescending eyelids and her blue veins; and the
good-natured peer, fussy and genial, but always rather subdued in the
presence of his wife. She looked as if a glass of good wine would do
her good, and he as if he would be the better for abstinence; and so, in
accordance with the usual lopsidedness of life, he drank freely, and
she took nothing but lime-juice and water. You cannot imagine a more
ignorant, intolerant, narrow-minded woman than she. If she had only been
content to be silent and hidden that small brain of hers, it would
not have mattered; but there was no end to her bitter and exasperating
clacking. What was she after all but a thin pipe for conveying disease
from one generation to another? She was bounded by insanity upon the
north and upon the south. I resolutely set myself to avoid all argument
with her; but she knew, with her woman’s instinct, that we were as far
apart as the poles, and took a pleasure in waving the red flag before
me. One day she was waxing eloquent as to the crime of a minister of an
Episcopal church performing any service in a Presbyterian chapel. Some
neighbouring minister had done it, it seems; and if he had been marked
down in a pot house she could not have spoken with greater loathing.
I suppose that my eyes were less under control than my tongue, for she
suddenly turned upon me with:
“I see that you don’t agree with me, Dr. Munro.”
I replied quietly that I did not, and tried to change the conversation;
but she was not to be shaken off.
“Why not, may I ask?”
I explained that in my opinion the tendency of the age was to break down
those ridiculous doctrinal points which are so useless, and which have
for so long set people by the ears. I added that I hoped the time
was soon coming when good men of all creeds would throw this lumber
overboard and join hands together.
She half rose, almost speechless with indignation.
“I presume,” said she, “that you are one of those people who would
separate the Church from the State?”
“Most certainly,” I answered.
She stood erect in a kind of cold fury, and swept out of the room. Jimmy
began to chuckle, and his father looked perplexed.
“I am sorry that my opinions are offensive to Lady Saltire,” I remarked.
“Yes, yes; it’s a pity; a pity,” said he “well, well, we must say what
we think; but it’s a pity you think it--a very great pity.”
I quite expected to get my dismissal over this business, and indeed,
indirectly I may say that I did so. From that day Lady Saltire was as
rude to me as she could be, and never lost an opportunity of making
attacks upon what she imagined to be my opinions. Of these I never
took the slightest notice; but at last on an evil day she went for me
point-blank, so that there was no getting away from her. It was just
at the end of lunch, when the footman had left the room. She had been
talking about Lord Saltire’s going up to London to vote upon some
question in the House of Lords.
“Perhaps, Dr. Munro,” said she, turning acidly upon me, “that is also an
institution which has not been fortunate enough to win your approval.”
“It is a question, Lady Saltire, which I should much prefer not to
discuss,” I answered.
“Oh, you might just as well have the courage of your convictions,” said
she. “Since you desire to despoil the National Church, it is natural
enough that you should wish also to break up the Constitution. I have
heard that an atheist is always a red republican.”
Lord Saltire rose, wishing, I have no doubt, to put an end to the
conversation. Jimmy and I rose also; and suddenly I saw that instead of
moving towards the door he was going to his mother. Knowing his little
tricks, I passed my hand under his arm, and tried to steer him away. She
noticed it, however, and interfered.
“Did you wish to speak to me, James?”
“I want to whisper in your ear, mother.”
“Pray don’t excite yourself, sir,” said I, again attempting to detain
him. Lady Saltire arched her aristocratic eyebrows.
“I think, Dr. Munro, that you push your authority rather far when you
venture to interfere between a mother and her son,” said she. “What was
it, my poor dear boy?”
Jimmy bent down and whispered something in her ear. The blood rushed
into her pale face, and she sprang from him as if he had struck her.
Jimmy began to snigger.
“This is your doing, Dr. Munro,” she cried furiously. “You have
corrupted my son’s mind, and encouraged him to insult his mother.”
“My dear! My dear!” said her husband soothingly, and I quietly led the
recalcitrant Jimmy upstairs. I asked him what it was that he had said to
his mother, but got only chuckles in reply.
I had a presentiment that I should hear more of the matter; and I was
not wrong. Lord Saltire called me into his study in the evening.
“The fact is, doctor,” said he, “that Lady Saltire has been extremely
annoyed and grieved about what occurred at lunch to-day. Of course, you
can imagine that such an expression coming from her own son, shocked her
more than I can tell.”
“I assure you, Lord Saltire,” said I, “that I have no idea at all what
passed between Lady Saltire and my patient.”
“Well,” said he, “without going into details, I may say that what he
whispered was a blasphemous wish, most coarsely expressed, as to the
future of that Upper House to which I have the honor to belong.”
“I am very sorry,” said I, “and I assure you that I have never
encouraged him in his extreme political views, which seem to me to be
symptoms of his disease.”
“I am quite convinced that what you say is true,” he answered; “but Lady
Saltire is unhappily of the opinion that you have instilled these ideas
into him. You know that it is a little difficult sometimes to reason
with a lady. However, I have no doubt that all may be smoothed over if
you would see Lady Saltire and assure her that she has misunderstood
your views upon this point, and that you are personally a supporter of a
Hereditary Chamber.”
It put me in a tight corner, Bertie; but my mind was instantly made up.
From the first word I had read my dismissal in every uneasy glance of
his little eyes.
“I am afraid,” said I, “that that is rather further than I am prepared
to go. I think that since there has been for some weeks a certain
friction between Lady Saltire and myself, it would perhaps be as well
that I should resign the post which I hold in your household. I shall
be happy, however, to remain here until you have found some one to take
over my duties.”
“Well, I am sorry it has come to this, and yet it may be that you are
right,” said he, with an expression of relief; “as to James, there need
be no difficulty about that, for Dr. Patterson could come in tomorrow
morning.”
“Then to-morrow morning let it be,” I answered.
“Very good, Dr. Munro; I will see that you have your cheque before you
go.”
So there was the end of all my fine dreams about aristocratic practices
and wonderful introductions! I believe the only person in the whole
house who regretted me was Jimmy, who was quite downcast at the news.
His grief, however, did not prevent him from brushing my new top-hat
the wrong way on the morning that I left. I did not notice it until I
reached the station, and a most undignified object I must have looked
when I took my departure.
So ends the history of a failure. I am, as you know, inclined to
fatalism, and do not believe that such a thing as chance exists; so I am
bound to think that this experience was given to me for some end. It
was a preliminary canter for the big race, perhaps. My mother was
disappointed, but tried to show it as little as possible. My father
was a little sardonic over the matter. I fear that the gap between us
widens. By the way, an extraordinary card arrived from Cullingworth
during my absence. “You are my man,” said he; “mind that I am to have
you when I want you.” There was no date and no address, but the postmark
was Bradfield in the north of England. Does it mean nothing? Or may it
mean everything? We must wait and see.
Good-bye, old man. Let me hear equally fully about your own affairs. How
did the Rattray business go off?