Not Quite Dead

by John MacLachlan Gray

  “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

  SITUATED 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 intere
st 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.

  “Causing a public disturbance is the charge. The report allows he made quite a spectacle of himself. Caused a passel of damage at the newspaper in which he is, or was, employed.”

  I turned to Elmira Royster: “An interesting case, would you not say so, Nurse Slatin?”

  “Indeed, Doctor. I declare, Dr. Rush, that I should be ever so grateful for an opportunity to observe the patient.”

  I did not catch what passed between them, but instant agreement followed. “However,” said Dr. Rush, “I must caution you folks that the patient is still delusional, though he appears perfectly normal in all respects.”

  “I believe that is the case with many men,” replied Elmira Royster, and I wondered what she meant by that.

  RR.RUSH KNOCKED politely, and after a considerable pause we were favored with a “come in, please” from within—uttered, or rather sung, in a reedy, preoccupied voice. Through the open door we were favored with a view of the occupant, dressed in black, stooped over a table, and writing with a quill—a virtual emblem of the poet at work; in fact I suspected it to be a pose for our benefit.

  “Good afternoon, Dr. Rush,” he said without looking up from his work. “It is good of you to come.”

  “Please forgive the distraction, Mr. Griswold. And how goes the writing, sir?”

  “Painful and laborious as always, but we carry on.” The patient had not yet looked up from his work.

  “Dr. Chivers and Nurse Slatin, permit me to introduce you to the Reverend Rufus Griswold. Mr. Griswold, these folks have come from Baltimore to observe our work here. I trust that is agreeable to you.”

  After a pause, the patient set pen, ink, and foolscap at precise angles on the table’s leather surface and rose to greet us. As Dr. Rush continued to explain our business to him, Elmira Royster silently drew my attention to the foolscap, on which a poem, or part of one, had been written and rewritten, its words and phrases scratched out and replaced until there scarcely remained a word visible. With difficulty I made out the following:

  And peering through a lattice

  Of a humble cottage near,

  I see a face of beauty,

  Adown which glides a tear,

  A rose amid her tresses

  Tells that she would be gay,

  But a thought of some deep sorrow

  Drives every smile away.

  “It reads like Eddie on a bad day,” whispered Elmira. “It does not scan—and what in heaven does adown mean?”

  I did not attempt to reply, having no appetite for poetry, well written or not.

  With remarkable care, Griswold had transformed his tiny room into a miniature library-study consisting of a couch, a writing desk, a chair, and a small Turkey carpet. Every vertical surface was filled with books, neatly stacked in improvised bookcases made of raw lumber from the asylum workshop.

  The patient appeared to be perhaps thirty, slender, sharp-nosed, and pale, with hair of Romantic length and a parson’s beard—the latter no doubt a relic of his years as a Baptist clergyman, suggesting that the transition from preacher to man of letters remained incomplete.

  As we were led to expect, Griswold did not seem the least bit mad. He greeted us like a perfect gentleman, apologized for the size of the accommodations, and bade Elmira Royster to seat herself on the couch. Of course, hardly had she settled her skirt when Dr. Rush took up the space beside her with unseemly eagerness. I preferred to stand.

  Seating himself at the desk, Griswold spoke of his days here at the institution as though it were a trip to a spa. Seemingly, the peace and quiet had done him no end of good. In fact, after years devoted to the selfless tasks of an editor, critic, and mentor to poets, he at last felt the creative sap coursing through his own veins, praise God, and had been writing almost nonstop ever since.

  “I expect you would find me impertinent,” said Elmira Royster, “if I were to ask for a short reading. I am evuh so fond of poetry, suh, and I hear so little, and if you were to favor us with a verse I should be so pleased.” If her James River accent had become anymore pronounced, we could have hummed to it.

  “It would be an honor I assure you, ma’am,” replied Griswold. (It was clear that, deranged or no, the editor retained an eye for a well-turned ankle.) After a moment of reflection and throat clearing, he began to read aloud, in a high-pitched, ministerial drone.

  She whom I see there weeping,

  Few save myself do know,-

  A flower in blooming blighted

  By blasts of keenest woe.

  She has a soul so gentle,

  That as a harp it seems,

  Which the light airs wake to music

  Like that we hear in dreams …

  As he read, Elmira Royster raised her handkerchief to her mouth as though moved, and I distinctly heard a suppressed snicker. At my silent urging she regained her poise, and after a pause at the end, made admirable use of her handkerchief, dabbing at one eye as though touched to the marrow.

  “Such skillful alliteration, suh! ‘Blooming, blighted, and blasts’— do you not think it remarkable, Dr. Chivahs?”

  “Indeed so, Nurse Slatin. I have never heard anything quite like it.” In truth, I found it disconcerting to witness Elmira Royster dissemble with the skill of accustomed practice, indicating a thespian bent she held in common with her fiancé.

  However, as a practitioner of Moral Treatment, Dr. Rush was having none of it, and proceeded to enunciate his objections: “To me the verse did not read properly aloud, sir. In order for the speaker to make sense, the phrasing became most unnatural. And I do not see how anything can be ‘blasted by woe’.”

  In an instant, Griswold fired at Rush a look of such undiluted venom that I should not have been surprised had he tried to plunge his pen into the doctor’s eye.

  “Remember, Mr. Griswold,” Rush continued, not in the least discomfited by this outlay of malice. “You are under treatment for delusional behavior. As your doctor it is my duty to dispute you on errors of fact. If you have a rebuttal, please let us hear it.”

  The patient did not reply, but fell into a sulk and refused to look at anyone. “A typical manifestation of delusion, when confronted with reality,” observed Dr. Rush. “First the rage, then the whimper.”

  “I do hope you will forgive me, suh, if I ask you a question,” said Elmira Royster, coy as usual.

  “By all means,” replied Dr. Rush; with his fat face and cottony halo of hair, he could have been the sun itself.

  “I wonder, was not the patient exhibiting the normal reaction of an artist to criticism—first rage, then a disappointment and sadness?”

  “You intrigue me, ma’am. Please continue.”

  “You will think me a terrible fool, but is it suitable to apply Moral Treatment to a poet? If we did, I do rightly fear there would be no poetry at all.”

  Dr. Rush became thoughtful—though I doubt t
hat there was much in it other than the desire to ingratiate himself further. “You make an excellent point, Nurse Slatin,” he replied. “We must always take into account the divine madness behind music and art.”

  I resisted the urge to lash out at the both of them, for disseminating Eddie’s pernicious cant.

  “I thank you, nurse,” said Griswold, who had emerged from his sulk and now affected a dignified air. “Your defense of the poet was most gracious, and profound.”

  “Indeed so,” I said, eager to redirect the discussion, which Elmira had an unnerving way of diverting from its charted course. “And if such a distinction may be made in the case of the poet, perhaps it might also apply to the possessed.”

  This inspired the puzzled silence I had hoped for, and I forged on. “Perhaps we scientists have no business meddling with people who see goblins and ghosts. No matter how consistently one might expose a thing to be fraudulent or mistaken, one can never prove absolutely that it is not ever true.”

  “In the same way that science will never prove that our Lord did not rise from the dead,” said Elmira Royster, entirely distorting the meaning of what I had just said.

  “Amen,” replied Griswold, and a bond was forged between them, and it occurred to me that, in steering this discussion, she possessed a better compass than I did.

  The young doctor was by no means put out by any of this—on the contrary, he seemed to take extraordinary delight in each argument, however inane. “I declare that this is the most fascinating discussion I have undergone in months,” he said. “I promise you that I shall take your points under advisement, and bring it up with Dr. Kirkbride at the earliest opportunity.”

  He produced a notebook, reseated himself on the couch, and began scribbling with great intensity, ceding the floor to me, which I had already ceded to Elmira Royster.

  Rising from the couch, she leaned upon Griswold’s desk so that her wrist and a part of her forearm stood approximately six inches from his nose. Certainly he could smell violet.