Not Quite Dead (27 page)

Elmira Royster had a different view. “There is something terrible going on beneath the surface of this place,” she said, for no apparent reason at all.

“What on earth gives you that idea?”

“Experience, suh, and instinct. Anything this perfect has something to hide.”

MR. AND MRS. HENRI LE RENNET wish to speak to MR. RICHARD A. PERRY
on a matter of utmost urgency. Currently residing at the United States Hotel, Philadelphia
.

L
OCATED IN A
warehouse near the river, the offices of the
Philadelphia Morning News
consisted of a huge room with frosted windows along one side. One window had apparently been broken, then temporarily covered over with newsprint. A cloud of smoke shrouded all within so that one could see the occupants’ legs with perfect clarity but little else. At the center of this cluttered, confusing space stood a huge
worktable, at one end of which two women appeared to be drawing illustrations; behind them, at an upright table like an artist’s easel, a compositor, in a smock that might once have been white, arranged small bits of metal in what looked to be a huge, segmented cigar box. At intervals, two husky young men came to fetch the full boxes and replace them with empty ones. Everyone worked or walked with a slight slouch, as though oppressed by the rhythmic clatter of the iron printing press in another part of the building, like an assembly of metal skeletons performing a jig, all the day long.

The remainder of the room—that which was not littered with stray paper, dropped pencils, and empty bottles—consisted of small wooden tables piled with paper, behind each of which burrowed a man, like a rodent taking shelter. Other men occupied chairs at varying distances from a battered potbellied stove, reading newspapers in a forward position, as though about to spring to action at any moment, with hats and coats on despite the stifling heat. Each consumed a form of tobacco, whether gnawed between the teeth or swelling one cheek like a squirrel. Beside each chair sat a spittoon.

At the reception counter, Mr. and Mrs. Le Rennet awaited service for an absurd amount of time, and no amount of bell ringing seemed to make a difference.

Eventually a lantern-jawed woman lumbered up to the counter, with an inky apron and a scowl that would wither a plant. “What?” she asked succinctly, her meaty hands splayed out on the counter’s scarred surface, arms braced as though prepared for a stiff wind.

“My wife and I wish to place an advertisement in your newspaper,” I said. “Perhaps we have come to the wrong place. Perhaps we should speak to the
Inquirer.”

“No you ain’t,” she replied, immune to any insult short of a blow to the head. “Give it here.”

I produced the text, which I had labored over all night. Our lady of the flowers calculated the price for one week’s notices, and the transaction was complete.

“There was just one other thing if you please, ma’am,” said Elmira Royster, exaggerating her accent slightly. “We have always been so admiring of one of your correspondents.”

“Which one?” asked the woman, startled by the thought that someone here might be worthy of admiration.

“I believe his name is Mr. Rufus Griswold.”

“Land sakes, woman. Haven’t you heard?” Her eyes widened, her voice lowered to a scandalized whisper, and she became almost girlish in her dismay. “Mr. Griswold is possessed by the devil. Mine own eyes have seen it.”

“How terrible for you,” replied Elmira Royster, with an encouraging frown.

“It turned out a blessing. For I have found the Lord since.”

“God love you for it,” replied Elmira Royster, taking her hand, “and may He welcome you into His arms on Judgment Day.”

“Amen, Sister,” and the two appeared about to embrace.

“Forgive my interruption,” I said, fearing that the conversation had gone off-track. “Where did Mr. Griswold suffer his breakdown?”

“Here in this very office. Mr. Griswold were troubled, uncommon troubled, days before, mumbled to himself, stared at nothing much. Then he come in first thing one morning, hollering that the fiend chased him clear up Dock Street, then starts to bawl about something laying for him, wouldn’t let him sleep, come at him from the mirror or the window, or just out of thin air. Then he took a fit, threw a chair right through the window over there, land sakes, it nearly fell on a gentleman walking by outside—well, if that ain’t possessed, you tell me what is.”

“I don’t doubt you for a second,” I asked. “But possessed by what?”

“Fellers here says it was Mr. Edgar Poe as died lately. They say he had a good reason. But I say it was the work of the devil.”

“And where is Mr. Griswold now?”

“In the madhouse, has been ever since. Fellers here taking bets on when he gets out, but he never will. The man is possessed, I do believe it.”

Ghost
,
n
. The outward and visible sign of an inward fear.

—Ambrose Bierce

S
ITUATED ON EXPANSIVE
grounds to the west of the city, the new Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane had the well-groomed look of a university or government building. There were no bars in evidence; upon
entering we encountered none of the racket I had come to expect in such a place—no calling for forgiveness, no wailing for one’s mother.

“I am Dr. Chivers from Baltimore, and this is my assistant, Nurse Slatin. I believe we are expected.”

The receiving nurse, a pleasant woman of middle age, the sort who won baking contests and participated in sewing bees, assured me that I was expected and welcome. “The superintendent regrets that he cannot conduct you personally, owing to his heavy schedule. He commends you to Dr. Rush, who is a resident. Shall I fetch him for you, Doctor?”

“Please do, nurse. We are most grateful to you.”

I scarcely expected to meet Dr. Kirkbride on a few hours’ notice. Nor did I wish to do so on this occasion, for the eminent Scotsman was a sharp Quaker and not easily fooled. In truth, I hoped for an intern, and as green as possible. It is the very devil to maintain a fiction with an experienced alienist, one accustomed to sensing the lie in the air.

As we awaited the arrival of our guide, Elmira Royster and I engaged in our accustomed gay banter.

“Why on earth did you call me Nurse Slatin? I declare, the name sounds obscene.”

“Might I remind you, ma’am, that I am
somewhat
familiar with hospital procedure. Both names must correspond to the faculty roster in Baltimore.”

“Were there no other nurses at your hospital? I should very much like to meet this Nurse Slatin. I think you are making a private joke at my expense.”

To which I had nothing to reply, for indeed I was, and now felt ashamed of myself. Private jokes are a coward’s revenge.

We wandered about the waiting area, glancing at the various figures coming and going, and to look at them I would not have known the attendants from the patients. Of course I speak visually; the conversation of the mad people was plenty mad enough.

Dr. Rush turned out to be a young, pie-faced gentleman from Maine, of Nordic extraction with a halo of fine blond hair, a premature bald spot, and an almost comically earnest dedication to Dr. Kirkbride’s Moral Treatment.

“We house rich and poor folks together, to keep things fair. Purging, blood letting, and twirling are not practiced. We have no strait-waistcoats, fetters, or handcuffs—though we do require the tranquilizing chair from time to time when someone gets all het up.”

I feigned interest, while my mind returned to the Hospital for Insane and Disordered Minds, where my mother had been subjected to all of the above, as well as generous doses of jalap, syrup of buckthorn, tartarised antimony, and ipecacuanha—all of which made the patient violently ill in various ways, according to the hypothesis of the week.

“What on earth is
twirling
?
”
asked Nurse Slatin, which should instantly have given us away were Dr. Rush capable of suspicion.

“Try to recall, nurse,” I said, as though gently admonishing a colleague, “that in Maryland it is known as
whirling
. The patient is strapped to a platform and whirled at high speed to send blood to the brain.”

“Of course,” replied Elmira Royster. “I declare, you Northerners have some outlandish ideas.”

“It was thought to stimulate the mind,” added Dr. Rush, shaking his cottony little head to indicate his disapproval. “It was darned painful, and to no good effect.”

“If the effect is the point of it, why do they continue to administer it?” asked my companion.

“Nurse Slatin, you just hit the nail on the head,” replied Rush, instantly smitten.

A whitewashed hallway branched out at the end into a series of long galleries with wards in each one. Patients flocked about us, unrestrained. In a corner, a group seemed absorbed in a bilbo catcher, in which they took turns attempting to cup and balance the ball. Not entirely to my surprise, Elmira Royster joined them and took her turn, and was able to cup the ball on the second try, to general applause.

In between wards, a common area had been established, which resembled the reading room of a gentleman’s club, with a fireplace, chairs, and tables, where inmates read, knitted, and played skittles and other games. Quite as a matter of course, we were introduced to Dr. Rush’s wife and another lady, chatting with a throng of madwomen,
both black and white. The two women were graceful and handsome, and it was not difficult to believe that their presence had a highly beneficial influence.

On one wall had been written an inscription:
LOVE ONE ANOTHER
,
which seemed like very good advice to me.

Leaning her head against the chimney piece, and with a great assumption of dignity and refinement of manner, sat an elderly female, decked out in scraps of finery as though having looted a pawnshop. Her head was strewn with scraps of gauze and cotton so that it resembled a bird’s nest. She was radiant with imaginary jewels, and wore a pair of gold-trimmed spectacles. As we approached, she gracefully dropped upon her lap a very old greasy newspaper, in which I dare say she had been reading an account of her presentation in court.

“This,” said Dr. Rush, advancing to the fantastic figure with great politeness, “is the hostess of the mansion, sir. It is a large establishment as you see, and requires a great number of attendants. She lives, you observe, in the very first style. She is kind enough to receive my visits, and to permit my wife and family to reside here.”

The madwoman bowed condescendingly, and my guide continued. “This gentleman is newly arrived from Baltimore, ma’am. Dr. Chivers, this here is the lady of the house.”

“Does Lord Baltimore still flourish, sir?” She asked.

“He does indeed, ma’am,” I replied.

“When you last saw him was he well?”

“Extremely well,” I said. “I never saw him looking better.”

The lady seemed delighted by this. After glancing at me for a moment as if to be sure that I was serious in my respectful air, she stood, stepped back a few paces, sidled forward again, made a sudden skip (at which I jumped back a step or two), and said: “I am an antediluvian, sir.”

I said that I had suspected as much from the start.

As Dr. Rush gently eased me away, the lady and I exchanged the most dignified salutations, and our party continued on. The rest of the madwomen seemed to understand that it had all been a play-act, and were highly amused. One by one, Dr. Rush similarly made known to me the nature of their several kinds of insanity (each
seemed aware of everyone’s mistaken assumption but her own), and we left them in the same good humor.

“Dr. Kirkbride’s method puts their own delusion plumb in front of them, in its most incongruous and ridiculous light. Gradually they see the humor in it, and when that happens I’ll allow they are half cured.”

“I have read of the method, and applied it myself only recently,” I replied, reminded of Eddie Poe. In that case, however, had I refrained from Moral Treatment and taken a traditional approach, Eddie would be in the bughouse yet and I should not find myself in this desperate situation.

As for the wards themselves, instead of the usual long, cavernous space where patients mope, pine, shiver, and rattle about all day long, the wing was divided into tiny but separate rooms, each with its own window. Glancing in, one saw a plant or two upon the windowsill, or a small display of colored prints upon the walls, which were washed so white they made one blink.

Another wing housed the orphans of suicides and the children of the insane. The stairs were of Lilliputian measurement, fitted to their tiny strides, and furnished as though for a pauper’s doll house.

However, though all of it inspired me greatly as a scientist, as a desperate felon my area of interest lay elsewhere.

“Has the institution kept an inventory as to the various disorders and their causes?” I asked.

“Indeed yes, and they are many and various. There are the injuries to the head, of course, and ill-health of most any kind (especially fever), and intemperance, and use of opium and quack medicine. Many folks go insane from loss of property, loss of friends, loss of employment, grief. In this state, religious excitement is a frequent contributor to mental disease, as are metaphysical shocks of various kinds.”

“Ah yes,” I put in, quickly. “In that latter category I suppose you would place Mr. Rufus Griswold, the writer.”

“One of our more well-known patients, yes. A difficult case, as they frequently are in a forced admission, which tends to reinforce feelings of persecution.”

“Because they are in fact being persecuted,” Elmira Royster piped up.

“Precisely, ma’am. We doctors are his persecutors—as is anyone who would seek to change the habits of another.”

“Is he charged with a crime?” I interrupted, for the conversation had the smell of philosophy.