constructed creature, man; and have written down those cases where the
two mutually operate upon each other, in such a manner as to bring out
startling characteristics, which, by many, are scarcely believed to
belong to our nature. I am now to exhibit a case, where an extreme love
of mental excitement produced by extraordinary sights and positions,
gave rise to a species of disease, which we have no name for in our
nosology. The individual was a Mr. Y----, a gentleman of fortune, who
came to reside in the town where I practise. When I first visited him, I
found him a poor emaciated creature, sick of the world, dying of
_ennui_, thirsting after morbid excitements, yet shuddering at the
recollection of what he had witnessed. I saw at once that he was a
victim of some engrossing master passion, that had fed upon the natural
feelings and sentiments, till his whole soul was under the power and
operation of the presiding demon; and got him to give me an account of
the manner in which he became enthralled.
Even now, he began--and he trembled as the thoughts he was to evolve
recurred to him, even now, though it is fully two years since I was
placed in one of the most extraordinary situations in which man was ever
doomed to be, I cannot call up again the ideas and sensations which then
occupied my mind, without trembling, and endeavouring to fly, as it
were, from myself, and, by seeking for natural thoughts among natural
appearances and converse, rear up again the belief that I am a regularly
organized being, capable of again becoming happy among the sons of men.
But the thought still haunts me as a spectre, that I may be once more,
by some other cause not less fortuitous than that which then took me out
of the region of experience, precipitated, in spite of all my care, into
some new position, where the feelings which we are led to consider as a
part of our nature, may be so entirely changed that no new world we are
capable of conceiving any notion of, could possibly produce a more
extraordinary disruption of all the old workings of the brain. Oh! it is
a fearful thought, but one seldom entertained by the slaves of
experience. Changes occur daily to all men; but, in the general case,
each mere worldly position of ever-changing circumstances, possesses so
much of the form and character of some prior one, that we are very soon
reconciled to the idea of a variety composed of a mere mutation of the
mixture of old elements. The mind, looked upon as a microcosm peopled by
the representations of things that be--of the past and possible, of the
future and probable--is held to be our own little world, with which, and
all its inhabitants, we are or may be familiar; we forget that there are
recesses in it, or capabilities within it, that may contain or produce
things as new as striking, as horrible as if they were the creations of
an unknown power, out of elements we never saw or heard of. A sane
person, living and acting in the world, may be for a time mad, but with
the difference, that, while ordinary maniacs know not their condition,
he may be conscious of a thinking identity, while all his thoughts seem
to be imposed upon him by other powers than those that regulate this
sphere, and he is himself, what he was, but placed in a new world, and
acted on by new impulses at which he shudders, but which he is sternly
bound to receive and feel. What a view does this open up to the state of
man in this lower world!--how much is there in it of a cause of
humiliation and trembling. I am myself, from what I suffered, altogether
a changed being; having no faith in the stability of things; conceiving
myself placed among dangerous rocks and precipices, from which, in the
next moment, I may fall, I know not where; and eyeing with doubt and
dismay even the most composed and settled of all the circumstances of
life. He is a happy man who is doomed to pass from the cradle to the
grave, without having cause to _experience_ the faithlessness of
experience, who has only read of those dreadful disruptions of the mind
and feelings, that scatter the old elements, in order that some new
consolidating power may throw them into forms and combinations a
thousand times more horrible than all the creation of dark brooding
incubus.
Like most other men of an ardent and imaginative temperament, I was
dissatisfied with the dull routine of ordinary things. I used to feed my
fancy with creatures of the possible, and, without the aid of artificial
stimulants of the brain, often conjured up imaginary beings and
predicaments which had a charm for me, I cannot very well explain or
account for. I cared little for dreams, or the artificial combinations
produced by narcotics; they had too little of reality for me: I never
was satisfied with a mere effort of the fancy, where the judgment was
entirely in abeyance, or at least mocked by what it had no control over.
In the world around me, I found food for my appetite; whatever I saw or
heard of the _real_, I wrought upon in my solitary moments, till I
produced creations, that, being actually within the limits of the
possible, I could survey with the satisfaction that I was contemplating
what might or would be actually experienced in some future stage of the
world. Yet it is a fact--and no one who knows anything of morbid
indulgences of this kind can doubt it--that it is questionable, even to
myself, whether, upon the whole, I ever derived any real pleasure from
these moods of the mind. The imaginary positions I loved most, were
generally of the painful kind: the greater the sufferings of the
personages concerned in my various plots of combined circumstances, the
more was my propensity gratified. From this morbid state of excitement,
I was, of course, often precipitated, by the mere decay of the cerebral
energy that fed it; and when I was forced again to contemplate and mix
with the common affairs of life, I felt the contrast operate to the
disadvantage of even the most stirring incidents that are daily
befalling mankind. I was, indeed, much in the position of those who
stimulate the fancy by extraneous applications; all the boasted efforts
of judgment I tried to mix up with and control the workings of my fancy,
I found were but a species of delusive energies, to take myself out of a
class of dreamers I heartily despised. I was, in fact, just as complete
a visionary as they--with this difference,--I thought I required to
satisfy the condition of a waking judgment, which, after all, had very
little to do in the matter.
There was, however, one peculiarity of my character not found among my
class of visionaries. I was always anxious to throw myself into
situations that, being new and wonderful, might supply my mind with a
species of experience, from which, in my after moods, I might draw, as
from a real source, all the _substrata_ of my creations. I visited
asylums, executions, and dissecting-rooms; accompanied Mr ----, the
aeronaut, in his ascent from Manchester; when on the Continent, I stood
below the falls of Terne, and descended into that hell upon earth, the
mines of Presburg; yet I must avow that I was a coward; the very
experiences I courted, I often trembled at, not only at the time when
the objects were busy with my senses, and sending their influences
through my nerves to my brain, but afterwards, when I called up the
images to my mind, and threw them into the forms that obeyed the
creative power of my fancy. I was also, in some degree, peculiar in
caring little for the works of fictioneers; if I were to try to account
for this, I would trace the cause to the same disposition of mind that
led me to despise all artificial modes of stimulus. The fancies of other
men roused my scepticism; my own, founded always on experience, and
never going beyond the province of the possible, seemed to me to possess
a reality sufficient to satisfy the conditions of my deluded judgment.
It had been fortunate for me had I been less exclusive in my resources
of gratification; and oh, how dearly I paid for these my imaginative
flights, may too soon be made apparent to those who follow me in my
narrative, to be benefited, I trust, from my errors.
I had nearly exhausted all my stock of real perceptions, and was
beginning to be forced to recombine my old thoughts, so as to produce
new associations of the strange and wonderful, when I accidentally met
with Mr W----, a gentleman well known in the world of experimental
science by the improvements he made on the diving-bell, in addition to
the contributions of Rennie and Spalding. I was then living at E----,
and he was on his way to Portsmouth, to superintend the workings of a
bell that had been sent thither for the purpose of recovering the specie
contained in the ship A----, which had been sunk on her return from
South America. He described to me the construction of the bell, the
manner in which it was worked, and the many extraordinary sights that
the divers saw in the course of their submarine operations. I told him
that I had accompanied Mr ----, the aeronaut, in his ascent from
Manchester, and had often felt a strong desire to reverse my former
flight, and descend into the great deep, to see its wonders, and compare
my sensations with those I had already experienced in the air. He told
me that my wish might easily be gratified; adding that, although he had
never been beyond the top of a steeple, he could take it upon him to
assure me, that the feeling of vastness and sublimity induced by an
aerial ascent, was almost in direct contrast to the sensations of the
diver--the one being comparable to the effects produced by the enlarged
views of generalization, indulged in by speculative ontologists--the
other, to those that result from the inductive process of searching into
the physical arcana of nature. He was not aware of the bent of my mind,
or his comparison might have been made more suitable to the feelings of
one who cared far less for science than the monstrous things of
thaumatology; but he had said enough, or rather the mere mention of the
subject was sufficient to fire my fancy; and, after he left me, I
brooded continually on the subject of the bed of the great deep--that
world unexplored by man, where strange creatures obey laws unknown to
us, and feed on the dead bodies of those who relentlessly pursue them;
where the bones of the men of distant nations meet and cross each
other--those of the sons of science and those of the unlettered negro,
bound together by tangled sea-weed--orbless skulls, the receptacles of
unclassified reptiles, lying on the treasures that the living man sighed
to bring home, as the reward of his toils in foreign lands; and where
the very mystery of the unexplored recesses throws a green shadow over
the strange inhabitants and things of the earth, buried there for
countless ages, that makes the whole watery world like a vision of
enchantment. I had found a new source of unthought of reveries, that
would supply my enraptured hours with aliment according to my wishes.
The objects to be seen within the short space circumscribed by the bell,
or comprehended within the range of its lights, could not be many; but
there was the new mode, as it were, of existence--the breathing under
water, the living in the element of the creatures of the deep, all the
multifarious sensations that would spring up in the mind and body, as if
some new power of life and feeling penetrated to the very well-springs
of existence.
A letter from Mr W---- soon afterwards invited me to Portsmouth, from
which I was then not far distant. The divers had been for some time
busy; a great part of the wreck had been laid open, and some curious
discoveries been made, and treasures recovered, which inspired the
workmen with ardour. On the following day, I was at the scene of
operation. When I went on board of the lighter, from which the bell was
suspended, I examined the apparatus. The bell was then down, the men
stood holding the crane, and listening attentively to hear the signals
that were, every now and then, coming from the divers. At a little
distance was the apparatus of the air-pump, which several other workmen
were busily engaged working. The whole scene was calculated to produce
an extraordinary impression on a beholder. The sky was hazy; the air
thick and oppressive, from the heat of the sun acting upon the dense
medium of a mist that hung on the water; there was not a breath of wind
to ruffle the surface of the calm deep; the only sound heard was the
whizzing of the air-pump, and the clang of the apparatus by which it was
worked. There was nothing seen of the bell; it was far down in the bosom
of the deep. The chain, by which it was suspended, dipped into the sea
and disappeared, carrying the mind with it down to the grim recesses
where living, breathing men were buried. Clear as the waters were, the
eye could not reach the depth to which the huge living cemetery had
descended; a recoiling feeling, which made the heart leap, followed the
effort to trace the chain down, down through the translucent sea. The
red sun, struggling through the mist, was reflected in a lurid glow from
the surface of the deep. As the air-pump ceased for short intervals, and
absolute silence reigned around, a clang, unlike any sounds of earth,
came upon the ear--
"As if the ocean's heart were stirred
With inward life, a sound is heard."
It was a signal from those in the bell; it seemed as if the sea
trembled, and old Ocean spoke from the deeper recesses of his soul. The
sound struck the ear as something unnatural, or what might be conceived
to issue from a sepulchre when the spirits of the dead hold converse in
the still night. The signal was answered; and, in a short time
afterwards, there were heard three successive strokes quickly
repeated--clang, clang, clang. The quickness of the strokes, and the
strangeness of the sound, coming whence such sounds are never heard,
seemed the doom-peal of these men.
"The sea around me, in that sickly light,
Shewed like the upturning of a mighty grave."
But the sound told other things to the workmen: the wheel began to
revolve; after many revolutions, the waters began to boil as if moved by
a ground swell, and the large black engine appeared rising up like a
mighty monster of the deep.
When the bell was fairly suspended above the water, the crane was
pulled round, and the heavy appendage was wheeled over the deck of the
lighter. There were three individuals in it, seated high and dry upon
the _vis-a-vis_ seats. There were instruments of various kinds hung
round the inside, the uses of which were explained to me. The men told
me that a storm, a few days before, had so broken up and removed the
wreck, that it would be necessary to pull the lighter a little farther
to the eastward. It came out, too, with some indications of terror which
they attempted to conceal, that the dead bodies of those who had
perished in the cabin were beginning to make their appearance, now that
the hull was broken. Mr W---- looked at me askance, as if to ascertain
whether that circumstance would have any effect in making me forego my
purpose in descending; and, doubtless, he observed me shudder. But he
knew me not: the expedition possessed greater, perhaps grimmer charms to
me on that account: the horror that passed over me, as I heard the
statement of the men, was only an indication that my zeal was stirred by
the expectation of food for my depraved appetite.
"Dead men are not the most dangerous enemies of divers," said Mr W----,
with a grim smile. "We have sometimes greater reason to be alarmed from
inroads of the living inhabitants of the waters. It is not a week yet
since the fearful _tenth_ signal rung from the deep; and, upon the
machine being raised in great alarm by the workers of the crane, it was
ascertained that a shoal of finners (some of them fourteen feet long)
had passed close by the mouth of the bell, with a noise like the rushing
of a mighty army. But the alarm was greater on the side of the creatures
themselves: on observing the bell with the men in it, they lashed their
tails with fearful fury, till the waters seemed to boil in the midst of
them, and the whole host were enshrined in a thick muddy medium that
prevented the divers from seeing an inch before them. The sound,
meanwhile, was like that of thunder--snorting, lashing, and shrill
cries, produced by some action of their breathing organs, were mixed
together; and the confusion into which they were thrown precipitated
many of them on the sides of the bell, which being at the time suspended
from within five feet of the ground, swung from side to side in such a
manner as to rouse the fears of the workmen above before the signal
reached their ears. In a short time afterwards, when the bell was
raised, we saw the shoal making with great speed to the westward,
blowing, as they careered onwards, with a loud noise. I never knew of a
circumstance of the same kind before; and to-day you will not, I trust,
be alarmed by such visitors."
This statement roused my fears, already excited by what I had heard of
the dead bodies that lay on the wreck; but I adhered to my purpose. The
lighter was moved about twenty feet eastward, and the bell was again
swung round to be let down, it being resolved that I should accompany
the divers in their next descent. I watched the operations with an
interest derived from my expected position in the same circumstances
with these fearless men. The huge mass hung in the air, dangling over
the smooth surface of the sea; and the signal being given, was plunged
down. In a moment it had disappeared, and a heavy mass of waters rushed
on, swelling and boiling in the abyss, that seemed to have entombed the
daring adventurers. The rolling off of the chain in a long succession of
coils, and the disappearance of link after link, filled the mind with a
shuddering impression of the depth to which they were attaining. The
signal was again given; the air-pump began to play and whiz, and my
thoughts, burdened with the superstitious fear produced by the
narratives I had heard, took a new direction, picturing the men among
the floating bodies of the dead mariners, which, among the green lights
of the sea, would appear invested with additional horrors--the monsters
of the deep playing round them, or feasting upon the decayed
limbs--numberless crabs, sea urchins, and centipedes, crawling on
members once consecrated to beauty. The silence on board the lighter
aided my fancy in its gloomy revels; and when the clang of the hammer on
the bell announced the wish of the divers to rise again, I started from
a seat on a coil of ropes which I had in my musings taken possession
of--having been oblivious of the intervening half hour, during which I
had been shadowing forth the secrets of the green charnel-house, with
its surface lying smiling before me in the lurid glare of the still
enshrouded sun.
At last, I was called to take my seat in the bell. One of the men came
out to make room for me; but, before I entered, the crane was swung
round to the west side of the lighter, as the men reported that a more
likely field of investigation lay in that direction, where they had
observed a bright body which they took for a mass of glittering specie,
probably rolled out of the packages, and lying there from its greater
specific gravity. On mounting up into the bell, where the two remaining
workmen were refreshing themselves with brandy to recover the play of
the lungs, which, in the last descent, had suffered from a deficiency of
oxygen, I felt a creeping sensation pass over me, in spite of my efforts
to be calm and firm. This I attributed to the already excited state of
my fancy, from the long train of musings I had indulged in over the
green deep. In my ascent with the aeronaut, I experienced a sensation in
some degree similar to that feeling of lofty awe which accompanies the
expectation of the grand impulse of sublimity--[Greek: ton sphodron kai
enthousiastikon pathos]; but now the action of the heart seemed tending
towards a collapse rather than a swell: I felt already the chilling
effect of the cold element before I had descended into its womb. I
looked round me with a nervous eye, and threw the colours of my fancy on
even common objects. The dull yolks of glass placed round the sides to
give light, pale and lustreless--the iron tools, wet and brown with
rust--the black leather flasks of spirits--the big hammer used for
signals of distress--were all strange and invested with new characters;
and the two men, Jenkins, an Englishman, and Vanderhoek, a German, with
sallow countenances, rendered paler than usual by the effects of the
confined air, seemed rather to belong to the watery element from which
they had emerged, than to the fair and smiling earth. I attempted to
look unconcernedly; but the German, as he was lifting his flask to his
head, scanned me with a ludicrous gaze, and, whether it was that the
brandy had, in some degree, inclined him to a merriment that in my eyes
seemed like the grin of a demon, or that he wished to let me hear the
_ringing_ sound of the bell when the human voice echoed within it, I
know not; but he accompanied his potations with a stanza of Burger's
famous Zechlied:--
"Ich will einst, bei ja und nein
Vor dem Zapfen sterben
Alles, meinen Wein nur nicht
Lass' Ich frohen erben."
And, finishing the verse, he looked again at me, to notice the effect
produced on me by the reverberation of the tones, which, reflected from
all sides, mixed as it were in the middle, and loaded the ear with a
confused ringing noise, similar to what I once heard when nearly drowned
in the Thames. If the man had had any intention to increase my alarm, he
could not have taken a more effectual way of compassing his intention;
for his language--the true and natural diction of spirits--responded to
by the confused ringing echoes of the bell, and acting upon a mind
already enervated by the weight of the genius of superstition, appeared
to be all that was necessary to complete the alarm which I in vain
attempted to conceal.
"All ready, Vanderhoek?" cried Mr W----.
"Ja, ja, herr," responded Vanderhoek. "Pull away, Crane-meistern."
And as the men began to work, he dashed carelessly into another stanza
of his favourite ballad. I know not if you are acquainted with German;
but I cannot resist the desire of gratifying my own ears with a
repetition of the sounds of the thrilling consonants which produced so
great an effect on me on that occasion. His voice was rough and
guttural:--
"Wann der Wein in Himmelsclang,
Wandelt mein Geklimper,
Sind Homer, and Ossian,
Gegen mich nur Stumper."
I would have called out to the man to cease his singing, had I not been
afraid of being set down for a coward. The continued sound within
prevented me from observing the motion of the bell, as it gradually
swung off the deck; but the increasing novelty of my situation, as I saw
myself suspended over the calm sea into which I was immediately to be
plunged, fixed my attention, while it increased my nervousness. I would
now have retreated, had it been in my power. The calculated knowledge of
the process of submersion, and of my absolute safety under the laws of
hydraulics, lost so much of its power under the reigning influence of
the natural instinctive horror of being plunged into the womb of the
ocean, that I thought myself on the eve of being drowned; and the same
feeling I had experienced when struggling half-dead with the waters of
the Thames took hold of me by anticipation. Meanwhile, the German
started broken snatches of his song; the bell was gradually descending;
the space of pure light between the rim and the green surface of the sea
was growing every minute less and less. It was upon that decreasing
circle of air that my eye was most intensely fixed; it grew brighter as
the inside of the bell grew darker, till in a moment it appeared like a
bright line of gold-coloured light.
"There," said Jenkins to me, in a loud tone. "That is the last glimpse.
This is the most trying moment for inexperienced divers, when the last
beam of day is extinguished."