Arthur O'Leary: His Wanderings And Ponderings In Many Lands

‘“Won again, by Jove!” said he, opening his hand; “I think you’ll find that rouleau correct; and now, sir, au revoir. I shall have my revenge one of these days.”

‘He shook my hand and went out, leaving me sitting up in the bed, trying to remember some one circumstance of the previous night, by which I could recall my joining the play-table. But nothing of the kind; a thick haze was over everything, through which I could merely recollect the spicy bishop, and my continued efforts to keep their glasses filled. There I sat, puzzled and confused, the bed covered with bank-notes, which after all have some confounded magic in their faces that makes our acceptance of them a matter of far less repugnance than it ought. While I counted over my gains, stopping every instant to think on the strange caprices of fortune, that wouldn’t afford me the gambler’s pleasure of winning, while enriching me with gain, the door opened, and in came Crotty.

‘“Not up yet! why, we start in ten minutes; didn’t the waiter call you?”

‘“No. I am in a state of bewilderment this whole morning – ”

‘“Well, well, get clear of it for a few seconds, I advise you, and let us settle scores – ”

‘“What!” cried I, laughing, “have I won from you also?”

‘“No, by Jove, it’s the other way. You pushed me rather sharply though, and if I had taken all your bets I should have made a good thing of it. As it is” – here he opened a memorandum-book and read out – “as it is, I have only won seven hundred and twenty, and two hundred and fifty-eight – nine hundred and seventy-eight, I believe; does not that make it?”

‘I shivered like one in the ague, and couldn’t speak a word.

‘“Has Jacob booked up?” asked Crotty.

‘“Yes,” said I, pointing to the notes on the bed, that now looked like a brood of rattlesnakes to my eyes.

‘“All right,” continued he, “Jacob is a most punctilious fellow – foolishly so, indeed, among friends. Well, what are we to say about this – are you strong in cash just now?”

‘“No,” stammered I, with a sigh.

‘“Well, never mind – a short bill for the balance; I’ll take what’s here in part payment, and don’t let the thing give you any inconvenience.”

‘This was done in a good off-hand way. I signed the bill which he drew up in due form. He had a dozen stamps ready in his pocket-book. He rolled up the banknotes carelessly, stuffed them into his coat-pocket, and with a most affectionate hope of seeing me next day at Wiesbaden, left the room.

‘The bill is paid – I released it in less than a week. My trip to Kreuznach just cost me seven hundred pounds, and I may be pardoned if I never like “bishop” for the rest of my life after.’

‘I should not wonder if you became a Presbyterian to-morrow,’ said I, endeavouring to encourage his own effort at good-humour: ‘but here we are at the Rhine. Good-bye; I needn’t warn you about – ’

‘Not a word, I beseech you; I’ll never close my eyes as long as I live without a double lock on the door of my bedroom.’

CHAPTER XXVII. THE RECOVERY HOUSE

Frankfort is a German Liverpool, minus the shipping, and consequently has few attractions for the mere traveller. The statue of ‘Ariadne,’ by the Danish sculptor Danneker, is almost its only great work of art. There are some, not first-rate, pictures in the Gallery and the Hôtel de Ville, and the Town Library possesses a few Protestant relics – among others, a pair of Luther’s slippers.

There is, however, little to delay a wanderer within the walls of the Frey Stadt, if he have no peculiar sympathy with the Jews and money-changers. The whole place smacks of trade and traders, and seems far prouder of being the native city of Rothschild than the birthplace of Goethe.

The happy indolence of a foreign city, the easy enjoyment of life so conspicuous in most continental towns, exists not here. All is activity, haste, and bustle. The tables d’hôte are crowded to excess by eager individuals eating away against time, and anxious to get back once more to the Exchange or the counting-house. There is a Yankee abruptness in the manners of the men, who reply to you as though information were a thing not to be had for nothing; and as for the women, like the wives and daughters of all commercial communities, they are showy dressers and poor talkers, wear the finest clothes and inhabit the most magnificent houses, but scarcely become the one and don’t know how to live in the other.

I certainly should not like to pitch my tent in Frankfort, even as successor to the great Munch Bellinghausen himself – Heaven grant I may have given him all his consonants! – the President of the Diet. And yet to the people themselves few places take such rooted hold on the feelings of the inhabitants as trading cities. Talk of the attachment of a Swiss or a Tyrolese to his native mountains – the dweller in Fleet Street or the Hoch Grasse will beat him hollow. The daily occupations of city life, filling up every nook and crevice of the human mind, leave no room for any thought or wish beyond them. Hence arises that insufferable air of self-satisfaction, that contented self-sufficiency, so observable in your genuine Cockney. Leadenhall Street is to his notion the touchstone of mankind, and a character on ‘Change the greatest test of moral worth. Hamburg or Frankfort, Glasgow or Manchester, New York or Bristol, it is all the same; your men of sugar and sassafras, of hides, tallow, and train-oil, are a class in which nationality makes little change. No men enjoy life more, few fear death as much. This is truly strange! Any ordinary mind would suppose that the common period of human life spent in such occupations as Frankfort, for instance, affords would have little desire for longevity – that, in short, a man, let him be ever such a glutton of Cocker, would have had enough of decimal fractions and compound interest after fifty years; and that he could lay down the pen without a sigh, and even for the sake of a little relaxation be glad to go into the next world. Nothing of the kind; your Frankforter hates dying above all things. The hardy peasant who sees the sun rise from his native mountains, and beholds him setting over a glorious landscape of wood and glen, of field and valley, can leave the bright world with fewer regrets than your denizen of some dark alley or some smoke-dried street in a great metropolis. The love of life – it may be axiomised – is in the direct ratio of its artificiality. The more men shut out Nature from their hearts and homes, and surround themselves with the hundred little appliances of a factitious existence, the more do they become attached to the world. The very changes of flood and field suggest the thought of a hereafter to him who dwells among them; the falling leaf, the withered branch, the mouldering decay of vegetation, bear lessons there is no mistaking; and the mind thus familiarised learns to look forward to the great event as the inevitable course of that law by which he lives and breathes – while to others, again, the speculations which grow out of the contemplation of Nature’s great works invariably are blended with this thought. Not so your man of cities, who inhabits some brick-surrounded kingdom, where the incessant din of active life as effectually excludes deep reflection as does the smoky atmosphere the bright sky above it. Immersed in worldly cares, interested heart and soul in the pursuit of wealth, the solemn idea of death is not broken to his mind by any analogy whatever. It is the pomp of the funeral that realises the idea to him; it is as a thing of undertakers and mourning-coaches, of mutes and palls, scarfs, sextons, and grave-diggers, that he knows it – the horrid image of human woe and human mockery, of grief walking in carnival. No wonder if it impress him with a greater dread!

‘What has all this sad digression to do with Frankfort, Mr. O’Leary?’ inquires some very impatient reader, who always will pull me short up when I ‘m in for a four-mile-heat of moralising. Come, then, I’ll tell you. The train of thought was suggested to me as I strolled along the Boulevard to my hotel, meditating on one of the very strangest institutions it had ever been my lot to visit in any country; and which, stranger still, so far as I know, guidebook people have not mentioned in any way.

In a cemetery of Frankfort – a very tasteful imitation of Père la Chaise – there stands a large building, handsomely built, and in very correct Roman architecture, which is called the Recovery House – being neither more nor less than an institution devoted to the dead, for the purpose of giving them every favourable opportunity of returning to life again should they feel so disposed. The apartments are furnished with all the luxurious elegance of the best houses; the beds are decorated with carving and inlaying, the carpets soft and noiseless to the tread; and, in fact, few of those who live and breathe are surrounded by such appliances of enjoyment. Beside each bed there stands a small table, in which certain ivory keys are fixed, exactly resembling those of a pianoforte. On these is the hand of the dead man laid as he lies in the bed; for instead of being buried, he is conveyed here after his supposed death, and wrapped up in warm blankets, while the temperature of the room itself is regulated by the season of the year. The slightest movement of vitality in his fingers would press down one of the keys, which communicate with a bell at the top of the building, where resides a doctor, or rather two doctors, who take it watch and watch about, ready at the summons to afford all the succour of their art. Restoratives of every kind abound – all that human ingenuity can devise – in the way of cordials and stimulants, as well as a large and admirably equipped staff of servants and nurses, whose cheerful aspect seems especially intended to reassure the patient should he open his eyes once more to life.

The institution is a most costly one. The physicians, selected from among the highest practitioners of Frankfort, are most liberally remunerated, and the whole retinue of the establishment is maintained on a footing of even extravagant expenditure. Of course, I need scarcely say that its benefits, if such they be, are reserved for the wealthy only. Indeed, I have been told that the cost of ‘this lying in state’ exceeds that of the most expensive funeral fourfold. Sometimes there is great difficulty in obtaining a vacant bed. Periods of epidemic disease crowd the institution to such a degree that the greatest influence is exerted for a place. Now, one naturally asks, What success has this system met with to warrant this expenditure, and continue to enjoy public confidence? None whatever. In seventeen years which one of the resident doctors passed there, not one case occurred of restored animation; nor was there ever reason to believe that in any instance the slightest signs of vitality ever returned. The physicians themselves make little scruple at avowing the incredulity concerning its necessity, and surprised me by the freedom with which they canvassed the excellent but mistaken notions of its founders.

To what, then, must we look for the reason of maintaining so strange an institution? Simply to that love of life so remarkably conspicuous in the people of Frankfort. The failure in a hundred instances is no argument to any man who thinks his own case may present the exception. It matters little to him that his neighbour was past revival when he arrived there; the question is, What is his own chance? Besides that, the fear of being buried alive – a dread only chimerical in other countries – must often present itself here, when an institution is maintained to prevent the casualty; in fact, there looks a something of scant courtesy in consigning a man to the tomb at once, in a land where a kind of purgatorial sojourn is provided for him. But stranger than all is the secret hope this system nourishes in the sick man’s heart, that however friends may despond, and doctors may pronounce, he has a chance still; there is a period allowed him of appealing against the decree of death – enough if he but lift a finger against it. What a singular feature does the whole system expose, and how fond of the world must they be who practise it! Who can tell whether this House of Recovery does not creep in among the fading hopes of the death-bed, and if, among the last farewells of parting life, some thoughts of that last chance are not present to the sick man’s mind? As I walked through its silent chambers, where the pale print of death was marked in every face that lay there, I shuddered to think how the rich man’s gold will lead him to struggle against the will of his Creator. La Morgue, in all its fearful reality, came up before me, and the cold moist flags on which were stretched the unknown corpses of the poor seemed far less horrible than this gorgeous palace of the wealthy dead.

Unquestionably, cases of recovery from trance occur in every land, and the feelings of returning animation, I have often been told, are those of most intense suffering. The inch to inch combat with death is a fearful agony; yet what is it to the horrible sensations of seeming death, in which the consciousness survives all power of exertion, and the mind burns bright within while the body is about to be given to the earth. Can there be such a state as this? Some one will say, Is such a condition possible? I believe it firmly. Many years ago a physician of some eminence gave me an account of a fearful circumstance in his own life, which not only bears upon the point in question, but illustrates in a remarkable degree the powerful agency of volition as a principle of vitality. I shall give the detail in his own words, without a syllable of comment, save that I can speak, from my knowledge of the narrator, to the truth of his narrative.

CHAPTER XXVIII. THE ‘DREAM OF DEATH’

‘It was already near four o’clock ere I bethought me of making any preparation for my lecture. The day had been, throughout, one of those heavy and sultry ones that autumn so often brings in our climate, and I felt from this cause much oppressed and disinclined to exertion, independently of the fact that I had been greatly over-fatigued during the preceding week, some cases of a most trying and arduous nature having fallen to my lot – one of which, from the importance of the life to a young and dependent family, had engrossed much of my attention, and aroused in me the warmest anxiety for success. In this frame of mind I was entering my carriage to proceed to the lecture-room, when an unsealed note was put into my hands; I opened it hastily, and read that poor H – , for whom I was so deeply interested, had just expired. I was greatly shocked. It was scarcely an hour since I had seen him; and from the apparent improvement since my former visit, I had ventured to speak most encouragingly, and had even made some jesting allusions to the speedy prospect of his once more resuming his place at hearth and board. Alas! how short-lived were my hopes destined to be! how awfully was my prophecy to be contradicted.

‘No one but him who has himself experienced it knows anything of the deep and heartfelt interest a medical man takes in many of the cases which professionally come before him. I speak here of an interest perfectly apart from all personal regard for the patient, or his friends; indeed, the feeling I allude to has nothing in common with this, and will often be experienced as thoroughly for a perfect stranger as for one known and respected for years. To the extreme of this feeling I was ever a victim. The heavy responsibility, often suddenly and unexpectedly imposed; the struggle for success, when success was all but hopeless; the intense anxiety for the arrival of those critical periods which change the character of a malady, and divest it of some of its dangers or invest it with new ones; the despondence when that period has come only to confirm all the worst symptoms, and shut out every prospect of recovery; and, last of all, that most trying of all the trying duties of my profession, the breaking to the perhaps unconscious relatives that my art has failed, that my resources are exhausted, and, in a word, that there is no longer a hope – these things have preyed on me for weeks, for months long, and many an effort have I made in secret to combat this feeling, but without the least success, till at last I absolutely dreaded the very thought of being summoned to a dangerous and critical illness. It may then be believed how very heavily the news I had just received came upon me; the blow, too, was not even lessened by the poor consolation of my having anticipated the result and broken the shock to the family. I was still standing with the half-opened note in my hands, when I was aroused by the coachman asking, I believe for the third time, whither he should drive. I bethought me for an instant, and said, “To the lecture-room.”

‘When in health, lecturing had ever been to me more of an amusement than a labour; and often, in the busy hours of professional visiting, have I longed for the time when I should come before my class, and divesting my mind of all individual details, launch forth into the more abstract and speculative doctrines of my art. It so chanced, too, that the late hour at which I lectured, as well as the subjects I adopted, usually drew to my class many of the advanced members of the profession, who made this a lounge after the fatigues of the morning.

‘Now, however, I approached this duty with fear and trembling; the events of the morning had depressed my mind greatly, and I longed for rest and retirement. The passing glance I threw at the lecture-room through the half-opened door showed it to be crowded to the very roof, and as I walked along the corridor I heard the name of some foreign physician of eminence, who was among my auditory. I cannot describe the agitation of mind I felt at this moment. My confusion, too, became greater as I remembered that the few notes I had drawn up were left in the pocket of the carriage, which I had just dismissed, intending to return on foot. It was already considerably past the usual hour, and I was utterly unable to decide how to proceed. I hastily drew out a portfolio that contained many scattered notes and hints for lectures, and hurriedly throwing my eye across them, discovered some singular memoranda on the subject of insanity. On these I resolved at once to dilate a little, and eke out, if possible, the materials for a lecture.

‘The events of the remainder of that day are wrapped in much obscurity to my mind, yet I well remember the loud thunder of applause which greeted me on entering the lecture-room, and how, as for some moments I appeared to hesitate, they were renewed again and again, till at last, summoning resolution, I collected myself sufficiently to open my discourse. I well remember, too, the difficulty the first few sentences cost me – the doubts, the fears, the pauses, which beset me at every step as I went on – my anxiety to be clear and accurate in conveying my meaning making me recapitulate and repeat, till I felt myself, as it were, working in a circle. By degrees, however, I grew warmed as I proceeded; and the evident signs of attention my auditory exhibited gave me renewed courage, while they impressed me with the necessity to make a more than common exertion. By degrees, too, I felt the mist clearing from my brain, and that even without effort my ideas came faster, and my words fell from me with ease and rapidity. Simile and illustration came in abundance, and distinctions which had hitherto struck me as the most subtle and difficult of description I now drew with readiness and accuracy. Points of an abstruse and recondite nature, which under other circumstances I should not have wished to touch upon, I now approached fearlessly and boldly, and felt, in the very moment of speaking, that they became clearer and clearer to myself. Theories and hypotheses which were of old and acknowledged acceptance I glanced hurriedly at as I went on, and with a perspicuity and clearness I never before felt exposed their fallacies and unmasked their errors. I thought I was rather describing events, things actually passing before my eyes at the instant, than relating the results of a life’s experience and reflection. My memory, usually a defective one, now carried me back to the days of my early childhood; and the whole passages of a life lay displayed before me like a picture. If I quoted, the very words of the author rushed to my mind as palpably as though the page lay open before me. I have still some vague recollection of an endeavour I made to trace the character of the insanity in every case to some early trait of the individual in childhood, when, overcome by passion or overbalanced by excitement, the faculties run wild into all those excesses which in after years develop eccentricities of character, and in some weaker temperaments aberrations of intellect. Anecdotes illustrating this novel position came thronging to my mind; and events in the early years of some who subsequently died insane, and seemed to support my theory, came rushing to my memory.

‘As I proceeded, I became gradually more and more excited; the very ease and rapidity with which my ideas suggested themselves increased the fervour of my imaginings, till at last I felt my words come without effort and spontaneously, while there seemed a commingling of my thoughts which left me unable to trace connection between them, though I continued to speak as fluently as before. I felt at this instant a species of indistinct terror of some unknown danger which hung over me, yet which it was impossible to avert or to avoid. I was like one who, borne on the rapid current of a fast-flowing river, sees the foam of the cataract before him, yet waits passively for the moment of his destruction, without an effort to save. The power which maintained my mind in its balance had gradually forsaken me, and shapes and fantasies of every odd and fantastic character flitted around and about me. The ideas and descriptions my mind had conjured up assumed a living, breathing vitality, and I felt like a necromancer waving his wand over the living and the dead. I paused; there was a dead silence in the lecture-room. A thought rushed like a meteor-flash across my brain, and bursting forth into a loud laugh of hysteric passion, I cried, “And I, and I too am a maniac!” My class rose like one man; a cry of horror burst through the room. I know no more.

‘I was ill, very ill, and in bed. I looked around me – every object was familiar to me. Through the half-closed window-shutter there streamed one long line of red sunlight; I felt it was evening. There was no one in the room, and as I endeavoured to recall my scattered thoughts sufficiently to find out why I was thus, there came an oppressive weakness over me. I closed my eyes and tried to sleep, and was roused by some one entering the room. It was my friend Dr. G – ; he walked stealthily towards my bed, and looked at me fixedly for several minutes. I watched him closely, and saw that his countenance changed as he looked on me; I felt his hand tremble slightly as he placed it on my wrist, and heard him mutter to himself in a low tone, “My God! how altered!” I heard now a voice at the door, saying in a soft whisper, “May I come in?” The doctor made no reply, and my wife glided gently into the apartment. She looked deathly pale, and appeared to have been weeping; she leaned over me, and I felt the warm tears fall one by one upon my forehead. She took my hand within both of hers, and putting her lips to my ear, said, “Do you know me, William?” There was a long pause. I tried to speak, but I could not. I endeavoured to make some sign of recognition, and stared her fully in the face; but I heard her say, in a broken voice, “He does not know me now”; and then I felt it was in vain. The doctor came over, and taking my wife’s hand, endeavoured to lead her from the room. I heard her say, “Not now, not now”; and I sank back into a heavy unconsciousness.

‘I awoke from what appeared to have been a long and deep sleep. I was, however, unrefreshed and unrested. My eyes were dimmed and clouded, and I in vain tried to ascertain if there was any one in the room with me. The sensation of fever had subsided, and left behind the most depressing debility. As by degrees I came to myself, I found that the doctor was sitting beside my bed; he bent over me, and said, “Are you better, William?” Never until now had my inability to reply given me any pain or uneasiness; now, however, the abortive struggle to speak was torture. I thought and felt that my senses were gradually yielding beneath me, and a cold shuddering at my heart told me that the hand of death was upon me. The exertion now made to repel the fatal lethargy must have been great, for a cold, clammy perspiration broke profusely over my body; a rushing sound, as if of water, filled my ears; a succession of short convulsive spasms, as if given by an electric machine, shook my limbs. I grasped the doctor’s hand firmly in mine, and starting to the sitting posture I looked wildly about me. My breathing became shorter and shorter, my grasp relaxed, my eyes swam, and I fell back heavily in the bed. The last recollection of that moment was the muttered expression of my poor friend G – , saying, “It is over at last.”