Aged thirty-seven, admitted 18th April 1822. This patient seemed,
from the whole bent of his mind, and the tenour of his life, to have
been destined by nature for the stage. From his earliest youth the
histrionic profession engrossed his thoughts, and occupied his highest
ambition; but the taste of his friends took an opposite direction,
and they inexorably opposed his favourite object, and forced him to
adopt the graver path of commercial life, for which his taste and
talents seemed equally unsuited. “A poet must be born, not made,” says
a Latin proverb; perhaps the maxim would be equally applicable to an
eminent player. Natural genius is indispensable to genuine excellence
in either; and as to emoluments, instances are not wanting in modern
as well as ancient times, to prove that poets and players may attain
wealth from their professions, as well as the most plodding votaries
of Cocker and the counting-house; and, probably, if the stage-struck
B----r had not been thwarted in his favourite pursuit, he might have
found his way to fortune and eminence, as well as the Kembles and Keans
of the age in which he has lived. But the source of his misfortune lay
in the very track his friends marked out for his prosperity. He was
engaged in trade, was unlucky, got into debt, was arrested, and thrown
into prison; where his philosophy was not proof against the hopeless
privation of liberty. He became deranged in his intellects as well as
in his circumstances, and was ultimately sent here a bankrupt in mind.
Still, however, his attachment to the stage bore the ascendant in his
ideas. When he came to this place he was tolerably quiet: he supposed
Bethlem Hospital to be a Royal Theatre, and he looked with eager
attention at the patients in the airing ground, whom he considered
as rehearsing their several parts; but finding no person to push him
forward for a display of his talents, he determined to volunteer an
effort by himself, and to become the busiest actor in the whole drama.
He commenced his preparation for appearance by kicking his shoes over
the wall; then threw himself into all the varieties of stage attitude,
and occasionally personated Richard, Othello, Shylock, Coriolanus,
Macbeth, King Lear, Brutus, Alexander, and, in short, ranted through
the whole round of tragic characters, in which the Garricks, the
Barrys, the Kembles, the Keans, the Youngs, and all our most celebrated
dramatists have waged their way to fame and fortune. To specify all
the parts he _enacted_ in the course of six months would be an arduous
task. His delight was to go without shoes or stockings, probably from
his conception of the part he was going to perform, and whenever he
received new shoes or half-boots, he took the first opportunity to get
rid of them. He would place them loosely on his feet, and by a sudden
jerk send them over the wall: whenever he was discovered to be thus
discalced, he was directly brought to his own room.
One evening while a party of _learned theologians_, his fellow
patients, were in solemn converse, and profoundly discussing the
question, “what became of man after death,” B----r, with both his
hands full of mud, advanced to the outer part of the ring formed by
this conclave. He listened some time with apparent attention, but
suddenly exasperated by some of their arguments, he started into a
stage attitude, and exclaimed, in a stentorian voice, “curse ye all!
ye vagabonds, and the woman too!” and dashing the mud amongst them,
retreated grim as Bajazet; and as he retired, made frequent stops and
pauses, darting angry looks at the group, and at each pause reciting
some dramatic passage expressive of his rage, until he reached the
bottom of the airing ground, when he made his exit, not to the green
room, but to the privy.
He was at one time necessarily confined in straw, when his malady was
at the height; and during that time he imagined that his task was to
reduce into chaff the material of his couch; in his endeavours to
effect which he was extremely sedulous, for next morning there was not
a single fragment of straw to be found longer than a pin. He slept but
little at a time, for a very considerable period: so that nearly the
whole of each night was employed in thrashing to chaff the straw he lay
on.
The notion “that Bethlem was a large theatre” was still uppermost in
his mind; and that he had an unlimited number of parts to act. And when
he saw so great a number of brother actors in the airing ground, each
performing his own part in the way his fancy suggested, he declared
he could observe no regularity in their acting, nor meaning in their
speeches. A fine opportunity thus offered, in his notion, for a happy
display of his own superior talents, and never did tragedian enter with
more earnest solemnity into the respective parts he assumed for the
moment, during the successive scenes of this heterogenous pasticcio,
which was continued daily for near six months, when the happy
_dénouement_ of his own convalescence terminated his dramatic labours.
In spite of the incessant action of his mind and body, which would have
worn out the most robust health of a sane subject in half the time, his
strength and vivacity continued undiminished, by the aid of a perpetual
appetite for all food he could meet. Never was insanity more impetuous,
nor less abated by intervals of tranquillity.[12] His whole frame was
in constant and violent action, and his tongue never at rest day or
night, but during his short and unfrequent snatches of sleep. Besides
his dramatic occupations, his mind was in constant ferment from notions
of ill-treatment conjured up by his own fancy.
For his wife he had conceived the most inveterate antipathy,
and constantly vented against her the most horrid epithets and
imprecations. In every part he acted, or speech he uttered, he always
contrived to introduce her name in terms of abuse and execration: but
there could not be a stronger trait of a perverted mind; for this
afflicted partner in his misfortunes, during the whole period of his
confinement, was unceasing in her attentions, and made daily inquiries
after his health; managed his affairs with singular application and
economy, paid off a great portion of his debts, greatly improved his
house and business, and conducted herself as a worthy examplar to all
her sex.
But as his malady abated, and “reason resumed her seat,” his gratitude
and affection to her was not only restored, but redoubled. To abuse
and execration, succeeded affection, panegyric, and benediction; and
he seemed to hail his recovery only as it would enable him to make her
amends. After the lapse of six months, his health daily improved; and
on the 7th November 1822, he was discharged cured; and he returned
to his home well dressed, calm, collected, and rational, with his
excellent wife.