I had been about six years at L---- when I became suddenly involved in
a controversy with Dr. Lloyd. Just as this ill-fated man appeared at the
culminating point of his professional fortunes, he had the imprudence
to proclaim himself not only an enthusiastic advocate of mesmerism as a
curative process, but an ardent believer of the reality of somnambular
clairvoyance as an invaluable gift of certain privileged organizations.
To these doctrines I sternly opposed myself,--the more sternly, perhaps,
because on these doctrines Dr. Lloyd founded an argument for the
existence of soul, independent of mind, as of matter, and built
thereon a superstructure of physiological fantasies, which, could it
be substantiated, would replace every system of metaphysics on which
recognized philosophy condescends to dispute.
About two years before he became a disciple rather of Puysegur than
Mesmer (for Mesmer hard little faith in that gift of clairvoyance of
which Puysegur was, I believe, at least in modern times, the first
audacious asserter), Dr. Lloyd had been afflicted with the loss of a
wife many years younger than himself, and to whom he had been tenderly
attached. And this bereavement, in directing the hopes that consoled
him to a world beyond the grave, had served perhaps to render him more
credulous of the phenomena in which he greeted additional proofs of
purely spiritual existence. Certainly, if, in controverting the notions
of another physiologist, I had restricted myself to that fair antagonism
which belongs to scientific disputants anxious only for the truth, I
should need no apology for sincere conviction and honest argument; but
when, with condescending good-nature, as if to a man much younger than
himself, who was ignorant of the phenomena which he nevertheless denied,
Dr. Lloyd invited me to attend his seances and witness his cures, my
amour propre became aroused and nettled, and it seemed to me necessary
to put down what I asserted to be too gross an outrage on common-sense
to justify the ceremony of examination. I wrote, therefore, a small
pamphlet on the subject, in which I exhausted all the weapons that irony
can lend to contempt. Dr. Lloyd replied; and as he was no very skilful
arguer, his reply injured him perhaps more than my assault. Meanwhile,
I had made some inquiries as to the moral character of his favourite
clairvoyants. I imagined that I had learned enough to justify me in
treating them as flagrant cheats, and himself as their egregious dupe.
Low Town soon ranged itself, with very few exceptions, on my side. The
Hill at first seemed disposed to rally round its insulted physician, and
to make the dispute a party question, in which the Hill would have been
signally worsted, when suddenly the same lady paramount, who had secured
to Dr. Lloyd the smile of the Eminence, spoke forth against him, and the
Eminence frowned.
“Dr. Lloyd,” said the Queen of the Hill, “is an amiable creature, but on
this subject decidedly cracked. Cracked poets may be all the better for
being cracked,--cracked doctors are dangerous. Besides, in deserting
that old-fashioned routine, his adherence to which made his claim to
the Hill’s approbation, and unsettling the mind of the Hill with wild
revolutionary theories, Dr. Lloyd has betrayed the principles on which
the Hill itself rests its social foundations. Of those principles Dr.
Fenwick has made himself champion; and the Hill is bound to support him.
There, the question is settled!”
And it was settled.
From the moment Mrs. Colonel Poyntz thus issued the word of command,
Dr. Lloyd was demolished. His practice was gone, as well as his repute.
Mortification or anger brought on a stroke of paralysis which, disabling
my opponent, put an end to our controversy. An obscure Dr. Jones, who
had been the special pupil and protege of Dr. Lloyd, offered himself as
a candidate for the Hill’s tongues and pulses. The Hill gave him little
encouragement. It once more suspended its electoral privileges, and,
without insisting on calling me up to it, the Hill quietly called me
in whenever its health needed other advice than that of its visiting
apothecary. Again it invited me, sometimes to dinner, often to tea; and
again Miss Brabazon assured me by a sidelong glance that it was no fault
of hers if I were still single.
I had almost forgotten the dispute which had obtained for me so
conspicuous a triumph, when one winter’s night I was roused from sleep
by a summons to attend Dr Lloyd, who, attacked by a second stroke a few
hours previously, had, on recovering sense, expressed a vehement desire
to consult the rival by whom he had suffered so severely. I dressed
myself in haste and hurried to his house.
A February night, sharp and bitter; an iron-gray frost below, a spectral
melancholy moon above. I had to ascend the Abbey Hill by a steep, blind
lane between high walls. I passed through stately gates, which stood
wide open, into the garden ground that surrounded the old Abbots’
House. At the end of a short carriage-drive the dark and gloomy building
cleared itself from leafless skeleton trees,--the moon resting keen and
cold on its abrupt gables and lofty chimney-stacks. An old woman-servant
received me at the door, and, without saying a word, led me through a
long low hall, and up dreary oak stairs, to a broad landing, at which
she paused for a moment, listening. Round and about hall, staircase, and
landing were ranged the dead specimens of the savage world which it had
been the pride of the naturalist’s life to collect. Close where I stood
yawned the open jaws of the fell anaconda, its lower coils hidden, as
they rested on the floor below, by the winding of the massive stairs.
Against the dull wainscot walls were pendent cases stored with grotesque
unfamiliar mummies, seen imperfectly by the moon that shot through the
window-panes, and the candle in the old woman’s hand. And as now she
turned towards me, nodding her signal to follow, and went on up the
shadowy passage, rows of gigantic birds--ibis and vulture, and huge sea
glaucus--glared at me in the false light of their hungry eyes.
So I entered the sick-room, and the first glance told me that my art was
powerless there.
The children of the stricken widower were grouped round his bed, the
eldest apparently about fifteen, the youngest four; one little girl--the
only female child--was clinging to her father’s neck, her face pressed
to his bosom, and in that room her sobs alone were loud.
As I passed the threshold, Dr. Lloyd lifted his face, which had been
bent over the weeping child, and gazed on me with an aspect of strange
glee, which I failed to interpret. Then as I stole towards him softly
and slowly, he pressed his lips on the long fair tresses that streamed
wild over his breast, motioned to a nurse who stood beside his pillow to
take the child away, and in a voice clearer than I could have expected
in one on whose brow lay the unmistakable hand of death, he bade
the nurse and the children quit the room. All went sorrowfully, but
silently, save the little girl, who, borne off in the nurse’s arms,
continued to sob as if her heart were breaking.
I was not prepared for a scene so affecting; it moved me to the quick.
My eyes wistfully followed the children so soon to be orphans, as one
after one went out into the dark chill shadow, and amidst the bloodless
forms of the dumb brute nature, ranged in grisly vista beyond the
death-room of man. And when the last infant shape had vanished, and the
door closed with a jarring click, my sight wandered loiteringly around
the chamber before I could bring myself to fix it on the broken form,
beside which I now stood in all that glorious vigour of frame which had
fostered the pride of my mind. In the moment consumed by my mournful
survey, the whole aspect of the place impressed itself ineffaceably
on lifelong remembrance. Through the high, deepsunken casement, across
which the thin, faded curtain was but half drawn, the moonlight rushed,
and then settled on the floor in one shroud of white glimmer, lost under
the gloom of the death-bed. The roof was low, and seemed lower still
by heavy intersecting beams, which I might have touched with my lifted
hand. And the tall guttering candle by the bedside, and the flicker from
the fire struggling out through the fuel but newly heaped on it, threw
their reflection on the ceiling just over my head in a reek of quivering
blackness, like an angry cloud.
Suddenly I felt my arm grasped; with his left hand (the right side was
already lifeless) the dying man drew me towards him nearer and nearer,
till his lips almost touched my ear, and, in a voice now firm, now
splitting into gasp and hiss, thus he said, “I have summoned you to gaze
on your own work! You have stricken down my life at the moment when it
was most needed by my children, and most serviceable to mankind. Had
I lived a few years longer, my children would have entered on manhood,
safe from the temptations of want and undejected by the charity
of strangers. Thanks to you, they will be penniless orphans.
Fellow-creatures afflicted by maladies your pharmacopoeia had failed
to reach came to me for relief, and they found it. ‘The effect of
imagination,’ you say. What matters, if I directed the imagination to
cure? Now you have mocked the unhappy ones out of their last chance of
life. They will suffer and perish. Did you believe me in error? Still
you knew that my object was research into truth. You employed against
your brother in art venomous drugs and a poisoned probe. Look at me! Are
you satisfied with your work?”
I sought to draw back and pluck my arm from the dying man’s grasp. I
could not do so without using a force that would have been inhuman. His
lips drew nearer still to my ear.
“Vain pretender, do not boast that you brought a genius for epigram to
the service of science. Science is lenient to all who offer experiment
as the test of conjecture. You are of the stuff of which inquisitors are
made. You cry that truth is profaned when your dogmas are questioned.
In your shallow presumption you have meted the dominions of nature, and
where your eye halts its vision, you say, ‘There nature must close;’
in the bigotry which adds crime to presumption, you would stone the
discoverer who, in annexing new realms to her chart, unsettles your
arbitrary landmarks. Verily, retribution shall await you! In those
spaces which your sight has disdained to explore you shall yourself be
a lost and bewildered straggler. Hist! I see them already! The gibbering
phantoms are gathering round you!”
The man’s voice stopped abruptly; his eye fixed in a glazing stare;
his hand relaxed its hold; he fell back on his pillow. I stole from the
room; on the landing-place I met the nurse and the old woman-servant.
Happily the children were not there. But I heard the wail of the female
child from some room not far distant.
I whispered hurriedly to the nurse, “All is over!” passed again under
the jaws of the vast anaconda, and on through the blind lane between the
dead walls, on through the ghastly streets, under the ghastly moon, went
back to my solitary home.