Mary Toft; or, the Rabbit Queen

by Dexter Palmer

  John rose and began to pace the floor in the darkness. “Zachary,” he said. “Listen to my reasoning, though it takes a strange path. The Lord made us in his own image. It is also true that he made us creatures of reason—our minds are what differentiate us from the animals. Therefore the Lord must also be a being of reason, yes? Which means the Lord’s actions might be inscrutable to us, we being not as wise as him, but they would not be senseless. If this is a miracle, then it is a strange one, for, if its cause is truly unfathomable, if its sole purpose is to affirm God’s existence and force us to admit our ignorance and powerlessness before him, then the only course of action remaining to us is to abdicate the exercise of our reason, and abandon our attempts to comprehend it. Which would involve going against our very nature, as God created us. Which would, in turn, involve going against God’s nature.

  “As inscrutable as the Lord might be to us, what God would ask such a thing? To deny the very feature of our being that makes us what we are, that makes us what he is? For what reason?

  “There must be a how to this, Zachary. Even if we cannot perceive it with what we presently know, we must continue to try. We are less than men if we believe otherwise.”

  * * *

  *

  Zachary thought about his father, left back in Godalming. The last time he’d spoken to him was in the crowd that marched to Mary Toft’s house: Though I do—I did—serve a purpose! Listen to these people: the word God falls from their lips so easily. But to what ends are his name being used? It was only now that Zachary realized that his father had spoken in the wounded voice of a man usurped, who had been robbed of his authority to describe God, and with it, the power to describe the world and have others proceed as if that description were true.

  And, if Zachary were to be honest with himself, was that not a small part of the reason he had wanted to become a surgeon? For was not the pronouncing of a diagnosis a means of description, to one who, because of his illness, had temporarily resigned his power to describe? It was, as surely as Zachary’s father stood in his pulpit and described God’s ways to men. Certainly Zachary’s training had taught him to identify ailments from their symptoms, but at the moment when he spoke the name of the disease—easy as saying Quinsy, I believe—there was a relieved look in the patient’s eyes that was almost as satisfying as the successful performance of the cure. It was undeniably wonderful to witness an acknowledgment of the power that lay in your mind and in your hands, from someone who did not hold that power.

  Was Zachary any different than Lord M——, who saw humanness as a finite resource, of which he wished to deprive others so he could have more for himself? In his heart of hearts, he felt that he was not—that it was best that some had more power of description and definition than others in some subjects, to serve the good of all.

  But what if a phenomenon occurred that was so impossible to explain that it not only confounded experts, but challenged the very nature of expertise? Would it not (Zachary thought as John continued to pace the floor and talk to himself) give people cause to believe that in such an instance, the power to define and describe ought to be shared out equally, just as humanity would be shared out equally in a just world? And if it was true in that instance, why not in others? Would those who did not possess the power to describe and define see this phenomenon as a sign that it was time to reclaim what was rightfully theirs?

  Those people standing in front of the bagnio, holding their vigil, day and night—were they at war? Each of them for their own unspoken reasons, small or significant; many of them for reasons that were understandable or even good; but all of them, nonetheless, at war?

  * * *

  *

  “There must be a how. What are we failing to understand?” said John. “If the phenomenon is so far outside our experience, does this not suggest that we are failing to comprehend something elemental about it? Perhaps we should not be searching for a new understanding of medicine that builds on our previous knowledge, but attempting to correct a misunderstanding of a first principle, or something close to one.”

  Zachary looked at John’s drawn, dimly lit face in the moonlight; his head seemed to be hovering in midair, ghostlike. “Something so plain that it will be obvious to us once the truth is spoken,” he said.

  The young man’s mind went back to the beginning of the case, when Joshua first set foot in the door of Howard’s office, cap in hand; then farther back still. A phenomenon far outside his experience: in his mind materialized a scrim, lit from behind, and a shadow behind it, of a woman with two heads.

  “Something that would make us wish to kick ourselves,” said John.

  Afterward, surgeon and apprentice had returned home together, minds aflame almost as they were now. Only when I had left the barn did I start to question, to consider alternatives, John had said. It was as if a spell had been lifted once I had come into the open air.

  “Something that would make all of us brilliant surgeons feel like fools,” said John.

  In the moment when we were in the barn, looking at the woman as she stood behind the curtain. If all of us believed in her, would not her existence be a matter of fact, and not a—

  Zachary suddenly sprang out of bed. “Like—”

  “—dupes!” John finished excitedly. “Like dupes!”

  “Cat’s paws!” Zachary said, running across the room on bare feet toward John.

  “Gulls!” John said, taking Zachary’s hands in his.

  “Oafs and laughingstocks!”

  “Spectacles and imbeciles!”

  Understanding flew back and forth between the two of them as each of them saw their own idea reflected in the other’s eyes, and with that understanding came an irrepressible joy. And then, as they saw their sentiments confirmed, and began to consider the consequences, they let go of each other, and backed away, and each sat down on his own bed, and they put their heads in their hands.

  * * *

  *

  “Dupes,” said Zachary.

  “Fools,” said John.

  * * *

  *

  “She was right,” said John. “Alice was right.”

  PART FOUR.

  | CHAPTER XXIV.

  HASENPFEFFER.

  There was one lone guest at the dinner held by Lord P—— on the evening of Saturday, December 3, at his home on the outskirts of London: Sir Richard Manningham, who’d arranged for John Howard to take his shift with the patient. In a capacious dining hall whose ceiling was veiled in flickering shadows, the lord and the surgeon sat huddled together at one end of a table large enough to seat twenty—though the space near them was candlelit, the other end of the table was cast in darkness, and the only other illumination in the room came from the twin fireplaces needed to heat the cavernous space. On this night, Lord P—— wanted conversation, and though he could have filled the table with a dozen minds as august as that of the surgeon who sat before him, he had found in the past that gathering too many intellectuals in the same room tended to aggravate all their myriad insecurities, and turn discourse into combat. Lord P—— was of the opinion that no more than three people above a certain level of intelligence and schooling should be in the same room at the same time, if all the people in the room were to leave it wiser rather than more foolish; two was best of all, if both were sure of themselves, able to explain the reasons behind their positions, and willing to concede their errors. And concession was something that Lord P—— expected Sir Richard would have to do, this night.

  The dish before them tonight was German, starchy and sitting heavy in the stomach. Lord P——’s cook had obtained the recipe from one of the chefs who had come over from Hanover with King George—hasenpfeffer, a stew of rabbit cooked in red wine along with bacon, shallots, and garlic, served with carrots and potatoes. Lord P—— had been mostly silent for the past few minutes, attacking the dish before him until the
rabbit leg had been stripped to the bone. “Is there a problem?” he said to Manningham, who had eaten the vegetables on his plate but left the meat untouched. “Don’t be reluctant—the rabbit’s soul gives it a wonderful flavor! Sharp and peppery.” He laughed and poured himself a glass of French brandy, from a bottle he’d smuggled in the last time he’d visited to the Continent: while Manningham had predictably chosen to abstain thus far, this drink was Lord P——’s third of the evening, and the first two had made him garrulous. “You’ll have some?” he said to Manningham, not for the first time.

  “Water suffices for me,” Manningham replied, once again.

  “You wound my heart,” Lord P—— said, hand held over the presumably injured organ. “I tell you this is better than our English gin, distilled from corn and shit and mouse bones, good for getting empty-headed maids between the sheets and nothing more. English gin is a drink for people who think a sin must always be accompanied by its penance.

  “You’ve seen the debates in the pamphlets, yes?” Lord P—— continued, taking a sip of his drink. “Not the publication of your colleague St. André—which, given what I know of him, shows an admirable and unexpected restraint, and restricts itself to what he sees as the facts—but those of the anonymous theologians and philosophers who’ve chosen to offer up their opinions in his wake. The implications are significant, if you believe in such things: there are factions. The Thomists, who argue that Toft’s so-called ‘children’ have souls of a lesser kind than those of humans; the Cartesians, who hold that rabbits have no souls at all. The Thomists think we are in the presence of a monstrous inversion of the Great Chain of Being, that this is a message sent by God that prophesies a coming inversion of the social order—fools in the place of geniuses, beggars lounging on thrones. The Cartesians think this is a plain abomination, an early sign that humanity has reached the end of its tenure on earth.”

  “And what do you think?” said Manningham.

  The lord drained his glass. “I think it is nonsense, plain and simple,” he said. “I believe that your patient Mary Toft and her husband are purveyors of the purest horseshit. When I visited her, it seemed highly likely to me that the woman was shamming. My dear friend Lord M—— was willing to believe in what he saw, but his mind is full of strange notions, and one might therefore conclude that he is more susceptible to being taken in. And dear Lord S——, who last night was sitting in the very chair where you sit, may have had his reasoning compromised by his…perverse notions.”

  “What do you mean?” Manningham asked.

  “I shudder to say it. But he speculated on whether Mary Toft’s next delivery, whenever it occurred, might be…purchased, at a high price. For eating. That perhaps it would merely taste as any other rabbit does, or would have the flavor of…the species of its mother. That perhaps it would offer the rarest of culinary experiences, while letting one avoid the commission of a sin so black that even a man such as Lord S—— hesitates.”

  “Revolting,” Richard said, pushing his dish away for good.

  * * *

  *

  “We might reasonably expect the extremely rich to be gullible, for their foolishness is well documented,” Lord P—— continued, narrowing his eyes at Manningham, “but I do not yet understand why several well-renowned experts in medicine, one of whom has been knighted, have also been fooled by something that seems ludicrous beyond dispute the moment one speaks of it plainly.”

  “I believe I will want some of your brandy, friend,” Manningham said, and Lord P—— poured him a glass, a healthy serving that rose to the brim.

  Manningham took it, drank, paused, and drank again. “I have had my suspicions for some time,” he said, “which is why I arranged for the patient to be under an unceasing watch once she arrived in London. And at times it was all I could do to refrain from stating them outright—I thought that silence, for the moment, was the best course of action. But now I am ashamed for not acting as if I were sure. If I had been the first surgeon to encounter her, or the second, I believe I would have spoken of my reservations more quickly, but by the time I was brought into the case there were three other surgeons involved, who did not all know each other before first meeting—Ahlers and St. André were professional acquaintances, but there was no love lost between them—and who I could not believe were all engaged in witting conspiracy. So until I knew more, I chose to stay quiet.”

  “I will grant you this one concession,” said Lord P——. “Any reasonable man would admit that we have no way of perceiving truth other than our eyes and ears and memories and instincts. And so the truth must, in the end, be a matter of consensus. By the time you arrived, the three surgeons had already formed that consensus, which even your title did not equip you to dispute. Just as the surgeon who took on the case before you would have found himself arrayed against two more of his profession.

  “I tell you, this hoax is a most strange trap,” Lord P—— continued, as Manningham shifted in his chair with an uncharacteristic restlessness. “Once it snares one, it makes the victim into its own agent, and uses that agent to snare another. The cycle repeats; the number of believers grows; the false belief gains a greater purchase because of the accumulated authority of those who profess to believe, or whose silence is perhaps too eagerly read as consent. Over a hundred people now stand in vigil in the Covent Garden Market, outside the bagnio where Toft lies in. They come and go, but the crowd grows larger every day.”

  “But what about the very first believer?” said Manningham. “St. André is a man I would be slow to trust, but I have spoken to John Howard on several occasions, and he strikes me as honest and intelligent—not as schooled as a London surgeon, but with a solid reputation nonetheless. He is no knave.”

  “But perhaps, in the end,” said Lord P——, “he was not willing to entertain the idea that a woman would desecrate herself in such a vile and unheard-of manner, repeatedly, for so little apparent gain other than perhaps a few shillings here and there, granted out of charity. Easier to believe that a miracle had occurred instead. It was clever of them to approach a surgeon instead of a midwife—I believe a woman would have been far less likely to let herself be deceived. She would have had no scruples concerning the woman’s behavior, no delusions of her wondrous nature, having been a woman all her life, and therefore knowing she was just as human as the rest of us, no more, no less. She would not have given consideration to medical manuals of questionable origin that mix myth with fact. She would have known the hoax for what it was on sight.

  “But: you said Until I knew more, I chose to stay quiet. Has something changed? Has additional information come to light to support our speculations, certain as we are of them?”

  “Yes,” said Sir Richard, “to my further embarrassment. For once, I am glad to be in the company of one who judges gently, where my cheeks are free to burn red.”

  * * *

  *

  “I had my shift watching over the patient late last night,” Manningham continued. “Prior to my arrival, Lady E—— had come to visit her with her young companion: she was there when I entered, and spent an hour with me engaged in amiable conversation as her companion continued to knit, whispering numbers and commands to herself as she worked the needles, the both of them ignoring Joshua Toft as was their wont. Then, at perhaps an hour before midnight, the both of them said their farewells, leaving me alone with Mary and her husband. I began to play solitaire to pass the time, and around midnight, Joshua Toft arose to take a walk through the bagnio to ‘stretch his legs,’ as he said. He returned perhaps a half hour later, climbed into the bed next to the patient, and nodded off to sleep.

  “A half hour after that, there was an urgent knock on the door (which, I observed, Toft appeared to sleep through). It was the bagnio’s elderly porter—apparently, one of the filles de joie in the establishment’s employ had developed a sharp stomach pain that seemed to require a s
urgeon’s immediate attention. He seemed in a panic, and so I followed him to a chamber on another floor of the bagnio, smaller than the one in which the Tofts lay, where a woman lay on her back in a canopied bed, groaning.

  “I feared a ruptured appendix or something worse, but a moment’s observation showed that this was not the case: she was not in nearly enough pain. Her symptoms, I was sure, called for nothing more than a few ripe apples and a few hours’ wait. I made some ado about her condition for a few minutes—in such cases, a surgeon’s mere attention is more than half the cure—and then, after offering my prescription, I returned to the Tofts’ room.

  “But I did not enter immediately, for as I approached I heard a heated argument, between two people who felt they should whisper but whose anger had pushed them into speaking. One of them said, I did what you wanted; you didn’t say you needed me to cut it up; the other, I should have thought that would be plainly obvious; the first, I thought she was merely concealing the creatures beneath her skirts; the second, You oaf, that would be impossible, and would not trick a child; and then I entered to see Joshua Toft in conference with the elderly porter, who had in his hands, to my surprise, a full-grown rabbit.