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.