IN A GLASS DARKLY.
BY
J. SHERIDAN LE FANU,
AUTHOR OF “UNCLE SILAS,” &C.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
LONDON:
R. BENTLEY & SON, NEW BURLINGTON STREET.
1872.
TO
BRINSLEY HOMAN, ESQ.
THESE VOLUMES ARE INSCRIBED,
WITH MUCH AFFECTION,
BY HIS OLD FRIEND
THE AUTHOR.
In a Glass Darkly.
GREEN TEA.
PROLOGUE.
MARTIN HESSELIUS, THE GERMAN PHYSICIAN.
Though carefully educated in medicine and surgery, I have never
practised either. The study of each continues, nevertheless, to interest
me profoundly. Neither idleness nor caprice caused my secession from the
honourable calling which I had just entered. The cause was a very
trifling scratch inflicted by a dissecting knife. This trifle cost me
the loss of two fingers, amputated promptly, and the more painful loss
of my health, for I have never been quite well since, and have seldom
been twelve months together in the same place.
In my wanderings I became acquainted with Dr. Martin Hesselius, a
wanderer like myself, like me a physician, and like me an enthusiast in
his profession. Unlike me in this, that his wanderings were voluntary,
and he a man, if not of fortune, as we estimate fortune in England, at
least in what our forefathers used to term “easy circumstances.” He was
an old man when I first saw him; nearly five-and-thirty years my senior.
In Dr. Martin Hesselius, I found my master. His knowledge was immense,
his grasp of a case was an intuition. He was the very man to inspire a
young enthusiast, like me, with awe and delight. My admiration has stood
the test of time and survived the separation of death. I am sure it was
well-founded.
For nearly twenty years I acted as his medical secretary. His immense
collection of papers he has left in my care, to be arranged, indexed and
bound. His treatment of some of these cases is curious. He writes in two
distinct characters. He describes what he saw and heard as an
intelligent layman might, and when in this style of narrative he had
seen the patient either through his own hall-door, to the light of day,
or through the gates of darkness to the caverns of the dead, he returns
upon the narrative, and in the terms of his art, and with all the force
and originality of genius, proceeds to the work of analysis, diagnosis
and illustration.
Here and there a case strikes me as of a kind to amuse or horrify a lay
reader with an interest quite different from the peculiar one which it
may possess for an expert. With slight modifications, chiefly of
language, and of course a change of names, I copy the following. The
narrator is Dr. Martin Hesselius. I find it among the voluminous notes
of cases which he made during a tour in England about sixty-four years
ago.
It is related in a series of letters to his friend Professor Van Loo of
Leyden. The professor was not a physician, but a chemist, and a man who
read history and metaphysics and medicine, and had, in his day, written
a play.
The narrative is therefore, if somewhat less valuable as a medical
record, necessarily written in a manner more likely to interest an
unlearned reader.
These letters, from a memorandum attached, appear to have been returned
on the death of the professor, in 1819, to Dr. Hesselius. They are
written, some in English, some in French, but the greater part in
German. I am a faithful, though I am conscious, by no means a graceful
translator, and although here and there, I omit some passages, and
shorten others and disguise names, I have interpolated nothing.
CHAPTER I.
DR. HESSELIUS RELATES HOW HE MET THE REV. MR. JENNINGS.
The Rev. Mr. Jennings is tall and thin. He is middle-aged, and dresses
with a natty, old-fashioned, high-church precision. He is naturally a
little stately, but not at all stiff. His features, without being
handsome, are well formed, and their expression extremely kind, but also
shy.
I met him one evening at Lady Mary Heyduke’s. The modesty and
benevolence of his countenance are extremely prepossessing. We were but
a small party, and he joined agreeably enough in the conversation. He
seems to enjoy listening very much more than contributing to the talk;
but what he says is always to the purpose and well said. He is a great
favourite of Lady Mary’s, who it seems, consults him upon many things,
and thinks him the most happy and blessed person on earth. Little knows
she about him.
The Rev. Mr. Jennings is a bachelor, and has, they say, sixty thousand
pounds in the funds. He is a charitable man. He is most anxious to be
actively employed in his sacred profession, and yet though always
tolerably well elsewhere, when he goes down to his vicarage in
Warwickshire, to engage in the actual duties of his sacred calling his
health soon fails him, and in a very strange way. So says Lady Mary.
There is no doubt that Mr. Jennings’ health does break down in,
generally a sudden and mysterious way, sometimes in the very act of
officiating in his old and pretty church at Kenlis. It may be his heart,
it may be his brain. But so it has happened three or four times, or
oftener, that after proceeding a certain way in the service, he has on a
sudden stopped short, and after a silence, apparently quite unable to
resume, he has fallen into solitary, inaudible prayer, his hands and
eyes uplifted, and then pale as death, and in the agitation of a strange
shame and horror, descended trembling, and got into the vestry-room,
leaving his congregation, without explanation, to themselves. This
occurred when his curate was absent. When he goes down to Kenlis, now,
he always takes care to provide a clergyman to share his duty, and to
supply his place on the instant should he become thus suddenly
incapacitated.
When Mr. Jennings breaks down quite, and beats a retreat from the
vicarage, and returns to London, where, in a dark street off Piccadilly,
he inhabits a very narrow house, Lady Mary says that he is always
perfectly well. I have my own opinion about that. There are degrees of
course. We shall see.
Mr. Jennings is a perfectly gentleman-like man. People, however, remark
something odd. There is an impression a little ambiguous. One thing
which certainly contributes to it, people I think don’t remember; or,
perhaps, distinctly remark. But I did, almost immediately. Mr. Jennings
has a way of looking sidelong upon the carpet, as if his eye followed
the movements of something there. This, of course, is not always. It
occurs only now and then. But often enough to give a certain oddity, as
I have said to his manner, and in this glance travelling along the
floor there is something both shy and anxious.
A medical philosopher, as you are good enough to call me, elaborating
theories by the aid of cases sought out by himself, and by him watched
and scrutinised with more time at command, and consequently infinitely
more minuteness than the ordinary practitioner can afford, falls
insensibly into habits of observation, which accompany him everywhere,
and are exercised, as some people would say, impertinently, upon every
subject that presents itself with the least likelihood of rewarding
inquiry.
There was a promise of this kind in the slight, timid, kindly, but
reserved gentleman, whom I met for the first time at this agreeable
little evening gathering. I observed, of course, more than I here set
down; but I reserve all that borders on the technical for a strictly
scientific paper.
I may remark, that when I here speak of medical science, I do so, as I
hope some day to see it more generally understood, in a much more
comprehensive sense than its generally material treatment would warrant.
I believe the entire natural world is but the ultimate expression of
that spiritual world from which, and in which alone, it has its life. I
believe that the essential man is a spirit, that the spirit is an
organised substance, but as different in point of material from what we
ordinarily understand by matter, as light or electricity is; that the
material body is, in the most literal sense, a vesture, and death
consequently no interruption of the living man’s existence, but simply
his extrication from the natural body—a process which commences at the
moment of what we term death, and the completion of which, at furthest a
few days later, is the resurrection “in power.”
The person who weighs the consequences of these positions will probably
see their practical bearing upon medical science. This is, however, by
no means the proper place for displaying the proofs and discussing the
consequences of this too generally unrecognised state of facts.
In pursuance of my habit, I was covertly observing Mr. Jennings, with
all my caution—I think he perceived it—and I saw plainly that he was
as cautiously observing me. Lady Mary happening to address me by my
name, as Dr. Hesselius, I saw that he glanced at me more sharply, and
then became thoughtful for a few minutes.
After this, as I conversed with a gentleman at the other end of the
room, I saw him look at me more steadily, and with an interest which I
thought I understood. I then saw him take an opportunity of chatting
with Lady Mary, and was, as one always is, perfectly aware of being the
subject of a distant inquiry and answer.
This tall clergyman approached me by-and-by: and in a little time we had
got into conversation. When two people, who like reading, and know books
and places, having travelled, wish to converse, it is very strange if
they can’t find topics. It was not accident that brought him near me,
and led him into conversation. He knew German, and had read my Essays on
Metaphysical Medicine which suggest more than they actually say.
This courteous man, gentle, shy, plainly a man of thought and reading,
who moving and talking among us, was not altogether of us, and whom I
already suspected of leading a life whose transactions and alarms were
carefully concealed, with an impenetrable reserve from, not only the
world, but his best beloved friends—was cautiously weighing in his own
mind the idea of taking a certain step with regard to me.
I penetrated his thoughts without his being aware of it, and was careful
to say nothing which could betray to his sensitive vigilance my
suspicions respecting his position, or my surmises about his plans
respecting myself.
We chatted upon indifferent subjects for a time; but at last he said:
“I was very much interested by some papers of yours, Dr. Hesselius, upon
what you term Metaphysical Medicine—I read them in German, ten or
twelve years ago—have they been translated?”
“No, I’m sure they have not—I should have heard. They would have asked
my leave, I think.”
“I asked the publishers here, a few months ago, to get the book for me
in the original German; but they tell me it is out of print.”
“So it is, and has been for some years; but it flatters me as an author
to find that you have not forgotten my little book, although,” I added,
laughing, “ten or twelve years is a considerable time to have managed
without it; but I suppose you have been turning the subject over again
in your mind, or something has happened lately to revive your interest
in it.”
At this remark, accompanied by a glance of inquiry, a sudden
embarrassment disturbed Mr. Jennings, analogous to that which makes a
young lady blush and look foolish. He dropped his eyes, and folded his
hands together uneasily, and looked oddly, and you would have said,
guiltily for a moment.
I helped him out of his awkwardness in the best way, by appearing not to
observe it, and going straight on, I said: “Those revivals of interest
in a subject happen to me often; one book suggests another, and often
sends me back a wild-goose chase over an interval of twenty years. But
if you still care to possess a copy, I shall be only too happy to
provide you; I have still got two or three by me—and if you allow me to
present one I shall be very much honoured.”
“You are very good indeed,” he said, quite at his ease again, in a
moment: “I almost despaired—I don’t know how to thank you.”
“Pray don’t say a word; the thing is really so little worth that I am
only ashamed of having offered it, and if you thank me any more I shall
throw it into the fire in a fit of modesty.”
Mr. Jennings laughed. He inquired where I was staying in London, and
after a little more conversation on a variety of subjects, he took his
departure.