myrmidons overleaped the wall. They were presently on the spot where the
female had been seated, and even in their hurry observed that the
heart-broken creature had been occupied as her last act by throwing some
silly bits of flowers over the grave,--signs which as little physically as
morally interfered with their design of spoliation. In a few minutes the
object they sought was in their possession, and if there was any care more
than ordinary observed in putting all matters to right on the surface, it
was the selfish wish to keep so convenient a place free from those
suspicions which might bar another visit. Nay, so heartless were they,
that one of the party, whether Liston himself we cannot say, though it
would not have been unlike him, decorated his jacket by sticking one of
the slips of offering into the button-hole. They now hurried with their
burden to the boat and pushed off, but they had scarcely got beyond a few
yards when they saw the same figure hurrying to the dike. The light of the
moon was now brighter, and they could easily observe the figure as it
passed hurriedly, as if in great excitement, backwards and forwards,
occasionally holding out the arms, and uttering the most melancholy sounds
that ever came from the human heart. It might be that as yet she had hope
in mere adjuration, but as the boat moved further and further away, there
came a shrill wail, so piercing that it might have been heard even at the
distance of the village. But heedless of an appeal, which nature responded
to faithfully by an echo, they rowed away, still hearing, in spite of the
splash of the oars, the same wail as it gradually became faint in their
increasing distance. At length they could hear nothing but the sweltering
of the waters, and Rosyth with its solitary mourner bade fair to be
forgotten under the Lethe of the flask, which on such occasions was never
awanting.
This story was very soon made readable to Liston and the others by the
concatenation of certain very simple circumstances. A newspaper report
which Liston had seen some days before, had announced the death, by
drowning, of a young sailor belonging to Limekilns. The account was
sufficiently lugubrious for any readers; but the editor, as usual, had
mixed up with it, whether truly or not, the old story of love and
impending marriage; the object too being, of course, young, brave,
virtuous, and comely. Then came the account of the funeral, also
touchingly given. But it seemed that all this poetry had been thrown away
upon the ardent anatomist; nor even when afterwards, in the hall, he
became satisfied that he had secured the right object, would he in his
heart admit that he had in this adventure done anything more than would be
justified by the use he could make of his knowledge in ameliorating
physical evils in his fellow-men, however dearly that advantage might have
been acquired in the agony of that figure he had left wailing at Rosyth.
Yet it is but fair to say that Liston himself admitted that the sound of
that cry, the sight of those wringing hands, and the rapid goings to and
fro of the shade on the shore, never passed from his memory.
Robert Liston, beyond all the others, carried so much of the spirit of
chivalry into his adventures of body-snatching, that he thought it as
noble an act to carry off a corpse as an ancient knight-errant did to bear
off a prisoner; but his followers were more like mimallons than myrmidons,
and required more of the flask to keep up their spirits. Some of these
youths once made a mistake at Rosyth. Having run up their boat, they
proceeded to the little death's croft to take up the body of a woman who
had died in child-bed. The night was dark and gusty, and the wind whistled
through the long grass as if Nænia had been presiding there to hear her
own doleful music; but our youths cared little for these things, and,
after twenty minutes' work, they pulled up "the tall beauty," as they
called her after they got home. Away they hurried her to the dike, upon
which they laid her, till two got over to place her in the boat. All
seemed fair, but just at the moment, some ill-mannered tyke set up,
without the excuse of a moon,--for she was far enough away beyond the
shadows,--a deep howl, so prolonged and mournful, that even all the
potency of the flask could not save them from being struck with awe, as
well as a fear of detection. But they had more to be afraid of, for almost
immediately after, one of them called out, "There's a lantern among the
graves;" and thus flurried, yet determined not to lose their prize, they
rugged the body from the top of the rubble dike so roughly, if not
violently, that a great portion of the long hair, which had got entangled
among the stones, was, along with a piece of the scalp, torn away, and
left hanging on the other side. Safe on board, they lost no time in
pushing off, in spite of the surly breakers that threatened to detain
them; nor did they now care for either the dog or the lantern, the latter
of which they saw through the dark medium, dodging towards the very spot
they had left, and then remain stationary there, as if the bearer had been
stayed and petrified by the relic they had left. Up to not a very late
period, the story went in the neighbourhood that he who bore the lantern
was the husband of "the tall beauty," and that he discovered the hair, and
knew from the colour, which nearly approached flaxen, that it was that of
his wife, whose untimely death had rendered him frantic.
There was no loss in that case; but another which was current among the
classes not long after was less fortunate, though not less true, as indeed
may be verified by the brother, still living, of the young student who
figured in it. Somewhere about Gilmerton or Liberton, we are uncertain
which, a small farmer who had lost his wife went out one morning very
early, probably because he could not rest in his bed for the dreary blank
that was there,--that negative so much more appalling to love than the
dead positive. On going along the Edinburgh road, he observed some white
figure lying close by the footpath, and making up to see what it was, he
came upon the corpse of a woman, dressed in her scolloped dead-clothes,
and lying extended upon her back, with the "starr eyes" open, glazed, and
fixed. On looking more narrowly, he discovered that it was his own wife,
and, all dismayed and wild as he became, he could still have the power to
think that she had come back to life after having been buried and lain in
the grave for three days, and had thus far struggled to get to her beloved
home. Frenzy knows nothing of logic, and was he to think how she could
have thrown off a ton of earth and got up again to the light of the sun?
The idea took him by force, and, throwing himself upon the body, he looked
into the dead orbs, and watched the cold stiff lips, and listened for a
breath. Vain heart, with all its hopes and tumults! no sign in return for
all this madness. Yet he persevered, and gave up, and resumed, and, as the
hope died to come back again, he writhed his strong body in an agony
tenfold more acute than his first grief; nor would he in all probability
have renounced the insane hope for a much longer time, if the Penicuik
carrier had not come up, and, hearing the wonderful tale, hinted the
explanation of an interrupted body-snatching. The light flashed upon him
in an instant, and, in pursuance of a desire to keep the occurrence secret
for the sake of her friends, he prevailed upon the man to take the body in
the cart and remove it to his house. It was buried again privately on the
following night, and few ever heard of the occurrence. And now comes the
explanation of a story which may seem altogether incredible. A young
student of the name of F----y, belonging to Monro's class, entered with
two others into an adventure of body-snatching, in imitation of those
whose exploits had produced in them an enthusiasm untempered by prudence,
and not directed by experience. They fixed upon their ground, and hired a
gig, and the hour was regulated by an obituary. Away accordingly they set,
with no more knowledge of the secrets of the art than what they could get
from the regular purveyors of the class, but provided with the necessary
instrument. They soon got to their destination, and, leaving the gig in
the charge of one of them, the two others got over the low wall, and, by
the aid of the moon, discovered the last laid turf. Going to work
vigorously, they succeeded in raising the body of a woman, but not having
brought from the gig the indispensable sack, and, being fluttered and
hurried, they bethought themselves of carrying the object to the side of
the road, just as it was with the dead-clothes, and then running along by
the side of the hedge to where their companion waited. F----y accordingly,
with the aid of his friend, got the white burden hoisted on his back,
holding it as firmly as he could by the linen. So far all was well, and
they were fortunate, moreover, in getting out by a gate which they could
open; but just as F----y got to the road, along which he had to go a
considerable space, the grasp he had of the shroud began to give way,
perhaps almost unknown to himself, the effect of which was that the body
slipped so far down that the feet touched the ground. The consequence was
altogether peculiar; as F----y bent and dodged in the hurry of getting
forward, the feet of the corpse, coming always to the ground, resiled
again with something like elasticity, so that it appeared to him as if it
trotted or leaped behind him. Fear is the mother of suspicion, and the
idea took hold of him that the body was alive. He uttered a roar,--threw
his burden off, and crying out to his friend, "By G----, she's alive!"
jumped into the gig. His friend was taken by the same terror, and away
they galloped, leaving the corpse in the place where it was found next
morning by the husband.
The Regular Staff.
It is, we think, laid down in that strange book of Robert Forsyth's on
morals, that the gratification of the desire of knowledge is, at least on
this earth of ours, the true end of man; and, no doubt, were we to judge
of the strength of this desire in forcing man down into the bowels of the
earth, and up into the heavens, across unknown seas, and over equally
unknown continents, we would not be slow to confess its great power. And
yet how many there are who assign the same place to the power of mammon,
while others stand up for love and the social affections! We will not
presume to decide where the range goes from the things of earth to those
of heaven; but it appears pretty certain that there have been a good many
Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpes, who have lauded, while in health, the
practice of leaving the body to the doctors, and who yet have shrunk from
the personal example when the shadow of the dark angel was over them.
There have been also, we suspect, fewer Jeremy Benthams, who actually have
left their carrion to the vultures of science, than of Merryleeses, who
have robbed churchyards, and sold the stolen article for money.[4] Nor, in
estimating the motives of the few scientific testators, can we say that we
have much belief in their professions, if it is not more true that they
are only seekers of notoriety, sometimes, as in the case of the author of
the Fallacies, so weak as to be bribed by the offer of having their skins
tanned and distributed in slips--the skin being, in such instances, the
most valuable part of their corporations.
In pursuance of these notions, we may safely infer that if the wants of
the halls had been left to be supplied by the scientific zeal of the
amateurs, the state of anatomy would have been less perfect than we find
it under the auspices of such men as Schwann, or Bell, or Hall, in our
day. And we say this without being much satisfied that all the boasted
discoveries have led to much more than the conviction that we get deeper
and deeper into the dark, while--admitting many ameliorations--the people
recover from operations, or die of diseases, very much as they used to do.
What are called the high cases might very well be left alone, so that we
might be still bound to admit that Nature's purpose, in imposing the
sacred feeling for the dead, is consistent with her determination, that if
in this defeated by man, he shall earn nothing by trying to get at her
secrets. But there was no necessity that the matter of purveyance should
be left to the students. There have always been body-thieves; but the time
had come in Scotland, when not only their number behoved to be increased,
but their energies also, by the multiplied demands of the halls.
How far this increase might have progressed, but for the great drama of
"The Scotch Court of Cacus," it is impossible to say; but for a time the
staff of Knox's artists were rather put upon their wits and exertions,
than increased by dangerous bunglers. The trade was perilous, and required
attributes not very often found united,--a total bluntness of feeling, a
certain amount of low courage, much ingenuity of device, clever personal
handling, and total disregard of public opinion--the love of money being
the governing stimulant. Few classes of men could have afforded a better
study in the lower and grosser parts of human nature. There was one called
Merrylees, or more often Merry-Andrew, a great favourite with the
students. Of gigantic height, he was thin and gaunt, even to
ridiculousness, with a long pale face, and the jaws of an ogre. His shabby
clothes, no doubt made for some tall person of proportionate girth, hung
upon his sharp joints, more as if they had been placed there to dry than
to clothe and keep warm. Nor less grotesque were the motions and gestures
of this strange being. It seemed as if he went upon springs, and even the
muscles of his face, as they passed from the grin of idiot pleasure to the
scowl of anger, seemed to obey a similar power. Every movement was a
spasm, as if the long lank muscles, unable to effect a contraction through
such a length, accomplished their object by the concentrated energy of
violent snatches. So, too, with the moral part: the normal but grotesque
gravity was only to be disturbed by some sudden access of passion, which
made him toss his arms and gesticulate. So completely was he the cause of
fun in others, that often on the street some larking student would cry
out, "Merry-Andrew," for no other purpose than to see him wheel about,
clench his hands, and throw his face into all manner of furious
contortions. All this only conspired to make him a butt, and the loud
laugh which always came when there was nothing to laugh at, or rather
something which would have produced gravity in another, helped the
consummation.
Yet withal this same idiot was the king of Knox's artists. Nothing dared
him, and nothing shamed him, if he was not even proud of a profession
which was patronised by gentlemen and men of science, and paid at a rate
which might have put industrious and honest tradesmen to the blush. Like
many other half simpletons, too, he had a fertility of device in attaining
his object, which insured success, when others apparently more intelligent
despaired. So he was a leader upon whom often depended the hopes of the
students, when their material was scarce or awanting. When not engaged in
his rural exploits, he was always hanging about the Infirmary, where, no
doubt, he was in secret communication with the _élèves_ of that
institution connected with Knox's rooms. From these he got intelligence of
likely deaths, where there was a chance of the persons not being soon
claimed by their relatives. Now was the opportunity of this genius. He
kept a brown black suit for the occasion of a mourner, repaired to the
Infirmary, and acted the part of the relative to such perfection, that the
nurses at least--for the medical men could wink--were deceived. Nay, he
looked at all times so much the afflicted, that the personation even to
something like tears was as easy to him as to the weeper in the House of
Commons, who cried "like a crocodile with his hands in his breeches'
pockets." The moment the body was got outside in the white coffin, the
bearers actually _ran_ with it to the hall, under the inspiration of the,
to such glandered hacks in the shape of men, so enormous a reward.
Another of the leaders, though far inferior to Merrylees, was the "Spune,"
a name given to a man whose real one was scarcely known in the rooms, and
which was supposed to indicate some superior genius in lifting out the
contents of a coffin. He was a littleish man, with a clean-shaved face,
surmounting a dirty black suit, worn down to the cotton, which time had
glazed. One would have taken him not certainly for a remunerated Methodist
preacher, but one who would have given a great amount of doctrine for as
much as would have got him a dinner. Yet he was in reality a mute, being
one of those dumb worshippers of philosophy whose thoughts, going down
into the earth, if not up to heaven, are too deep and sacred for human
speech. Nay, so grave, precise, and wise did he look, that you would have
said he bore all the honours of the science to the advancement of which he
contributed so much; nor is it certain that he did not really feel--so
necessary if not indispensable they considered themselves to be to the
professors--that he was engaged in the holy cause of the advancement of
mankind and the amelioration of their natural ills,--a conviction this, on
the part of the "Spune," not modified by the reception of his fee, which
he considered to be the wages of virtue; for while Merry-Andrew clutched
his reward with a spasm and a spring, his compeer took his with the
dignity and nonchalance of one who laboured for the benefit of his
species. However ludicrous all this, one could scarcely say that it was
out of place, for without the "Spune" the indagators in the hall would
have had small chance of extracting anything from that deep well where it
is said truth can alone be found.
Another was a man whose real name was Mowatt, but who was christened by
the professional appellation of "Moudewart," (_moldewarp_,) sufficiently
indicative of his calling in burrowing into the bowels of the earth. An
old plasterer, too lazy to work, he had betaken himself to this trade from
a mere love of the money, so that he behoved to rank in a much lower grade
than the "Spune." Then, so essentially insensible was he to the honour of
contributing to science, that he did not take on a particle of dignity,
even from the sympathy of his fellow-labourers. It might be in vain that
the "Spune" tried to impress him with the importance of his calling,--he
was a man of merely so many pounds for what is in the bag, and no more.
Without that principle of receptivity which enables a congenial soul to
take on the reflection of the beauty or honour of an act, he was equally
dead to the sublime inspiration of knowledge. Even Merry-Andrew had
collected some scientific terms--such as _caput_, or _cranium_, sometimes
even attempting _occiput_--all parts of the body with which alone he had
anything to do in the process of abstraction; and as for the "Spune," he
could even discourse of _tibias_ and _fibulas_, if he did not stagger
under _os coccygis_, in a manner which might have made his companion prick
up his ear at the wonder that any such head could carry such terms. But
what can be done with a man who has no symptoms of a human soul but that
which shews itself when the eye counts with something like pleasure the
price of a human body? Yet, strange enough, and perhaps unjustly enough,
the two others were not more prized by their patrons than this degraded
son of science, who served their purpose equally well--a fact which would
have brought down the learned dignity of his co-labourers if they had had
sense enough to notice it.
The others of the staff (the names of some of whom we could give) were not
to be compared to these leaders--not even to the "Moudiewart," who,
however stupid in respect to the science, was really sufficiently up to
"the thing" to entitle him to rank as a successful if not respectable
merchant. They were so utterly insensate, that they could not even commit
the great mistake of supposing that their occupation degraded them, for
the good reason that they were unconscious of degradation. Not that they
were unhappy in consequence of not liking the work, for they were even
fond of it as a means of getting them drink and tobacco, without the hope
of which they might have been dull or sad, but not unhappy, a term which
implies something like intelligence, if not sentiment. Fitted only for the
humblest parts of the calling--the carrying, the watching, the calling out
when intruders loomed in the distance--they had no envy towards the higher
orders, and being thus free from all care, they could sing or whistle
beneath the burden of a poet without thinking that they desecrated the
profession of the Muses. We might thus liken them to those interlusive
gentry who play the punning parts of a terribly deep tragedy, and who, not
knowing where the pathos lies, as when Hamlet discourses on the skull, are
contented with the duty of shovelling out either soil or song.
If we were inclined to moralise a little on the condition of such men as
these, if men they can be called, we would hesitate to subscribe to the
old Johnsonian notion that happiness has any relation to the number of
ideas that pass through the mind, if we would not go to the other extreme,
that for aught we know, there may be as much of that kind of thing between
the shells of an oyster as between the ribs of a human being--at least the
question must remain unsettled until we come again in the round of changes
to the doctrine of transmigration of souls. The world is full of the
examples of the meeting of extremes; and if you want one more, just take
that afforded by the fact that these men we have been describing could
carry on their shoulders in a canvas bag a Rothschild or a Byron, and
never think that they were to any degree honoured by the burden. All one
to them--the beautiful young creature who died of a scorned affection, the
shrivelled miser who expired in a clutch of his gold, or the old
gaberlunzie whose puckered lungs could no longer inflate themselves or the
bagpipes which once received so joyfully the superabundant wind. But
seriously, although these things have been, are we entitled to go with the
fatalist, who says that what is, is as it ought to be? Though the wily fox
contrived to get his neighbours to cut off their tails to make them like
himself in his misfortune of being excaudated, is that any reason why
nature should repeal her law and produce therefore tailless foxes? We hope
not. And so also, because science run mad decreed that she should be
served by such men and such acts, in opposition to the first and last
throbbings of the love of kindred, is that any reason why nature should
renounce her right of forming man in the image of God, and with affections
which are to endure through all eternity? But we have even now, when it is
whispered that subjects are again becoming scarce, men of the Christian
faith who speak lightly of the dead human frame as nothing when deprived
of the spirit. This may do for the logic of physics, but we have been led
to believe that the religion we profess is not that of Merry-Andrew or
the "Spune," but a divine intimation that the temple of the soul is not
limited to the time of the earth--yea, that it is something which, _only
changed_, shall rise again and endure for ever. Even this is not adverse
to the claims of science; but as a shade distinguishes homicide and
murder, so does a shade distinguish between science in reverence to God,
and science in desecration of His first and most universal laws.
Sympathising Sextons, Doctors, and Relatives.
All forces are measured by opposition, as, indeed, all the phenomena of
nature are known to us by comparison, and so, in all fairness, we must
estimate the turpitude of the professors and students the more lightly, in
proportion to their freedom from all endearing feelings of recognition or
friendship towards those whose remains came within their studies. The same
metre is due to the class of purveyors, and Heaven knows how much, after
all this abatement, remained at their debit, cognisant as they behoved to
be of the certainty that they were sowing the bitter seeds of misery
throughout the land. But what are we to say of others--doctors in the
country who were privy to the remunerated exhumation of their
patients--sextons who gave the pregnant hint, and then went to sleep in
the expectation of a fee in the morning--nay, of those, and such at that
time were counted among human beings, who bartered their friends and
relatives for a smile of mammon?