Savage Magic (26 page)

Once again she draws a black-nailed finger along her jaw.

‘Did you speak to them?’

‘I spoke to the mother. But not to the daughter. She was a deranged girl, magistrate. She screamed and she shrieked and the mother could not keep her quiet. I had to ask her to leave us.’

‘Where did she go?’

‘She did not say. Or at least if she did, no one here remembers.’

Graham frowns at this.

‘Why do they not remember?’

‘I know not.
I
remember her. But she,’ nodding towards one of the younger women who stand waiting, ‘she may not.’

‘I do not understand.’

‘You do not? Well, the guineas have spoken, and they promised information, but not understanding. Perhaps you should consult this Dreaming?’

She smiles at him.

‘As for you, magistrate. I see in your face what you desire, and some of it you will get. You will rise to the pinnacle of your profession. But you will only stay there for a day or two. And with that, farewell.’

Her face goes back into the darkness, and the shutter of the hut falls down with a slap.

A Treatise on Moral Projection

As my mind cleared, and as I spoke to John Burroway, some of my memory returned. Perhaps all my memory came back to me, but it was impossible to be certain of this, for how could I know?

It became clear to me that my patient Maria Cranfield had exhibited two extraordinary abilities. One of these was to force others to do her bidding, even against their own will. The other was to persuade their memories to forget certain events. The effect of this latter ability was to prove to be temporary, but how much
long-term
destruction of remembrance is occasioned by this ability it may prove impossible to fathom.

In other words, Maria Cranfield was able to step inside the conscious mind of another, and adapt that consciousness to her own will – either by
enforcement
or
deletion
. She possessed the ability – it seemed to me then, as it does today – to
mesmerise
others.

I use the word
mesmerise
deliberately in this case to evoke a concept which has fallen out of fashion but which, at the time of the events described in this treatise, was still very much discussed and debated in Europe. I speak of course of the techniques laid out at the end of the last century by that brilliant son of Swabia, Franz Anton Mesmer.

In Mesmer’s original conception a
universal fluid
existed within and between living beings which was subject to an external force, called by Mesmer the
animal magnetism
. He believed that it was possible to manipulate this magnetic force, and thus manipulate the flow of that invisible fluid through the human body. He applied this theory to a whole range of diseases and afflictions, arguing that a great many of these were caused by blockages or misdirections of the fluid.

Of course, this
mechanical
explanation of bodily functions was soon discredited. It smacked too strongly of Galen’s concept of the intermixture of the
four humours
being at the root of physical and mental wellbeing. Surely we had moved on from such mistaken ancient theories? What continued to be true, however, was that even after this dismissal of the
explanation
of his technique, Mesmer
continued to have significant therapeutic success
.

Even as late as the time of which I write, Mesmer was still practising, in quiet semi-retirement amidst the uproar of war and revolution. People continued to come to him for treatment. Even those who had investigated his theories at the request of France’s doomed Louis XVI, and had found Mesmer’s magnetism to be little more than charlatanism, did not dispute the effectiveness of his methods.

After three decades of reading on this subject, it seems clear to me why Mesmer was able to succeed. One must put aside his own notions of
universal fluid
and
animal magnetism
. They are a discredited set of terms from an outmoded medicine. One must instead look at
what Mesmer did when he treated patients
.

Some of Mesmer’s cures were on the surface sophisticated and even bizarre. For instance, he would connect as many as a dozen patients to a vessel via iron rods, and seek to make of them a kind of
electrical circuit
through which he could manipulate the magnetism between them and thus their universal fluid. I do not speak of these techniques. I speak only of the most familiar of Mesmer’s approaches, the one with which he had the most success of all, which involved only him and the patient, with no intervening device or mechanism.

Mesmer would sit before the patient and look deeply into the man or woman’s eyes. At the same time, his knees would touch the knees of the patient, and he would take the thumbs of the patient in his hands. After holding this position for a time, Mesmer would move his hands from the shoulders of the patient, all the way down their arms. After some time doing this, he would then press his fingers into the patient’s upper stomach, in the region of the
hypochondrium
. He was known to hold his hands sometimes for hours in these positions.

Does this not smack strongly of my own
moral therapy
? For what is this but the creation of a strong emotional bond between the doctor and the patient, through which something powerful can be transmitted? Might it indeed be that moral therapy was working through precisely the same medium as mesmerism? Had we mad-doctors, without even knowing it, been practising a species of mesmerism? Had the Reverend Willis
mesmerised a King?

When subjected to these treatments of Mesmer’s, patients reported convulsions, either mild or severe, and it was believed (indeed, it is often believed still) that these convulsions were a kind of crisis of the body, during which the patient’s ailment was corrected, or perhaps forced out. What was firmly believed, both by Mesmer, his patients, and the army of physicians and charlatans who claimed to provide similar treatments, first in France, and then throughout the whole of Europe, was that some kind of
transfer
was taking place. Mesmer’s power, in this theory, was the ability to manipulate the
animal magnetism
between himself and the patient and thus change the flow of the
universal fluid
within his patient.

In other words, Mesmer claimed the ability to change the internal arrangements of his patients – either in their heads or in their bodies –
through the power of thought alone
.

As I sat there on that long-ago day in my consulting room at Brooke House, my memories fading back into my mind, these thoughts started to come to me. I had long held an interest in Mesmer, and his ideas came to me with some force on that fateful day. I was willing, you see, to countenance Maria Cranfield’s abilities, because I seemed to have come across something like them before in my own practice of moral therapy.

In the months and years that followed that extraordinary episode, I attempted to synthesise these three strands into the concept I now present to you. The first strand was the
moral therapy
I sought to engage in at Brooke House – the interplay between a doctor and his patient, the ability of the doctor to impose order and calm on a frenzied mind. The second strand was
mesmerism
, though even then I found Mesmer’s concepts of
universal fluid
and
animal magnetism
unconvincing; it was his method, and his success with it, that attracted me. And the third aspect, the final cog in this little machine, was what I had just experienced; Maria Cranfield reaching into my mind, compelling me against my will to perform a task, and then wiping my memory of it.

These three elements combine to form my new conception, which I now send out into the public sphere for the first time. I have named it
moral projection
and I believe Maria Cranfield represents the first documented case of its demonstration. Of course, if I am right about this being an ability of the human brain which, to some extent, we must all share, then moral projection has always been with us. Have we not all known people who were peculiarly able to influence others, to have them behave in ways they wanted? And have we also not all experienced that odd, unaccountable inability to remember a simple experience from a week, a day, even an hour ago? Have we not, then, all experienced moral projection working in the real world?

I have much more to say on this matter, and I have many notes. This concept does, of course, require more research, more experimentation, more observation. But I feel a great urgency to present these ideas in the face of those new theories delineated by the Manchester physician James Braid. He has conceived of ideas based on his theory of
hypnotism
, which themselves build upon the original conception of
mesmerism
.

When I read Braid’s work
Neurypnology
I recognised straightaway a kindred spirit. But I believe Braid fell into error in disavowing Mesmer’s concept, that to send someone into a state of hypnosis meant transferring some unseen charge or power from the object to the subject which affected a change within the subject. Instead, Braid asserted that a state of
hypnosis
could be created by inducing
fatigue
, through forcing the subject to stare fixedly at a bright object. In Braid’s conception,
hypnosis
is actually a form of
sleep
.

But how can this possibly be? It is clear that Maria Cranfield did not cause me to
sleep
. She caused me to perform actions of her own desiring, and to forget about them. At no point did I fall asleep – such a thing would have been nonsensical!

What Braid did was to assert that it seemed to be possible to deliver another human into a state under which their consciousness might be manipulated, or
projected upon
. But he disagreed that this involved an intervening substance such as the
animal magnetism
mentioned by Mesmer. No, in Braid’s hypothesis, the mind of the subject is put into a receptive state of
hypnosis
by exhausting it. Once in this state, some kind of projection of will becomes possible; I may, if I so wish, put thoughts and wishes into the mind of another. But only if they be asleep.

Nay, I say. The power exhibited by Maria Cranfield was not that which Dr Braid describes. It was (to use my own term again)
moral projection
. Miss Delilah came closest to it with her own demotic description: she said Maria ‘got into people’s heads’ and once there could do as she wished.

How did she do this? Through the same techniques I used to assert my own moral control over patients: through arresting their attention, focusing it entirely upon me. The eye is the window to the soul, but it is also the gun-barrel for this kind of projection. There is no need for any kind of universal fluid, but there is a kind of magnetism at work: the magnetism of one man’s
moral will
over another’s.

But these are the thoughts of a man who has wrestled with these ideas for nigh on half a century. On that day in September 1814, I had no conception of these matters, even as I tried to rebuild my memory of the events in the cell. I had an understanding of the writings of Mesmer, but his techniques were not used by Doctor Monro, in Bethlem or in Brooke House. They smacked of French Tricks, and in any case they ran counter to Monro’s own view that madness was a temporary thing, which would expire before long if the patient was separated from their daily routine. This was the core diagnostic rock on which all Monro’s practice rested. Touching patients to shift their magnetism? Why, such a thing was almost blasphemous!

But Monro was wrong, as were we all. Mesmerism did have results, and did have obvious correlations with practices which were already in use as moral therapy. We were all, in some way, mesmerists.

THORPE

Am I awake?

He can feel the soft cotton of Thorpe Lee House’s pillows on his face, but he can also see dark figures dancing on the lawn outside. He can feel the fullness of his bladder underneath him, but he can also hear the sound of rough music from the woods. He can taste the dry insides of his mouth, but he can also smell burning.

Am I awake?

He watches Elizabeth Hook appear on the lawn. A witch watching the house?

He watches Sarah Graham appear on the lawn. A witch leaving it?