Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (2186 page)

She now complained of cold, and was removed to a large, old-fashioned arm-chair, with a high back, which stood near the fire. We were then shown how to place ourselves in communication with her, so that she might hear what we said. To do this, it was only necessary to touch any part of the chair in which she sat, while speaking to her. Thus addressed, she smiled and answered immediately. Great amusement was produced while we were trying her in this way by one of my friends, whose hearty English jokes, translated literally into very English French, appeared to astonish and delight V — beyond measure. She was sometimes literally in fits of laughter when he touched the chair and spoke to her. When he did not touch it, nothing that he said produced the smallest outward effect on any feature. I watched her closely, and could be certain of this.

The next experiment failed. The Count took a piece of sugar and desired me to write down and show him what I wished her to believe the sugar to be. I first wrote “An olive,” and then “Chocolate.” He magnetized the sugar in both instances; and in both instances, when he gave it to her and asked what it was, she answered at once, “Sugar.” He could not account for this; perhaps we had tried the experiment too soon; perhaps she had not been magnetized enough yet; all he could say was that he had succeeded an evening or two before, where he had failed now. My friends saw, in this very failure, a guarantee of the genuineness of the proceedings; and I agreed with them. A conjuring trick would have been better rehearsed before it was exhibited to the spectator.

Three experiments were tried after this, and all with success. In performing the first, the Count placed himself behind her chair, in a position where she could not see him, unless she raised herself and turned round. At a sign from me, as I stood by his side (also out of her sight), he made her alternately sensible and insensible to the touch; each time by a single gesture with his hand, which it was physically impossible, from her position, that she could see. Sensible, she smiled when her hand was taken — insensible, you might squeeze it, pinch it, hold it up above her head, and let it drop violently in her lap, without producing the smallest effect. This done, the magnetiser, after making some preliminary passes (still standing in the same position), drew his right hand slowly upward. Inch by inch, as it moved, her right arm raised itself, until it was extended, stiff and straight, at its full stretch, above her head. There it remained, until he moved his hand sideways and then it followed the direction thus given — just as a needle would have followed a magnet — sometimes to the left, and sometimes to the right. When he dropped his hand (quite noiselessly), her hand fell at the same instant into her lap. I was in front of her during this experiment, looking close under her eyes; and satisfied myself that her eyelids were firmly closed. The back of her head was against the back of the chair, behind which, at a distance of full three feet, the Count was standing.

The third experiment was still more curious. The magnetiser was now about to fix her, beyond the possibility of being moved, in her chair. Before he began we each took her by the shoulders and lifted her with ease; she laughed excessively as we did so. Then, after the Count had made one pass with his hand (still behind her), we tried again. I tried first. She was reclining in the chair, with both her hands on her lap. I grasped her by both shoulders, and pulled; but only succeeded in moving the chair. Then placing my knees against it, to keep it steady, and to serve me as a lever as well, I made another effort with all my strength. I might as well have endeavoured to pull the Monument towards me — I could not move her, even in the slightest degree. Both my friends tried (one of them a tall, powerful man), and with no more success. I closely observed her face at this time. It bore a perfectly placid expression; a calm, unconscious look. Her colour did not betray even so much as an approach to heightening. She seemed to be slumbering as calmly and as sweetly as a child.

She was now in a highly magnetized state, so much so as to complain from time to time of oppression in her head, which was relieved by passes. The Count proposed a fresh experiment, as likely to succeed in her present condition. This new evidence of the power of magnetic influence was so painful to behold, that I much doubt whether we should have been willing to see it, could we have known what symptoms were to be displayed beforehand.

W. W. C.

January, 1852.

(
To be continued
.)

Letter 2
The Leader
14 February 1852

LETTER II.* — TO G. H. LEWES

THE experiment to which I referred, at the close of my last letter, as being of a more extraordinary nature than any we had yet beheld, was this: — Our host proposed to make V — exhibit all the effects of having taken poison — any poison I chose to indicate — by magnetizing a glass of water, with the
will
that she should believe, on drinking it that she was really drinking a poisonous liquid. Before, however, the experiment began he made two provisos. The first was, that I should select no poison the effects of which were immediately fatal when it was taken in ordinary doses; the second, that instead of whispering the name of the poison chosen to him, or afterwards to my friends, I should write it down on a piece of paper and only show that paper to him and to them. The Count insisted on this arrangement, as tending to prevent the possibility of any deception, in case we might still suspect that V — could overhear what was said in the room. Even when none of us were placed in communication with her. These preliminaries agreed on, a sheet of paper was placed before me, and a glass of water was procured from a jug standing on the sideboard, out of which some if the persons present had already been drinking.

The poison I chose, and wrote down was
Strychnine
. In the first place I knew that this poison was not immediately fatal, and, in the second place, I was aware that “cases” exhibiting its effects were rare in medical practice, and that, consequently, those effects must be little, if at all, known to “the general public.” When the Count read what I had written he shook his head as a sign that he was unacquainted with the nature of Strychnine, and asked me whether I was quite sure that I had strictly complied with the terms of his first proviso: if I had any doubt on the subject, he said he would decline pursuing the experiment; for he dared not assume a responsibility which, under those circumstances, might perhaps lead to a fatal result. I reassured him on this point and he then magnetized the glass of water without further delay.

When it was given to V — she smelt it; an expression of disgust came over her face; and she refused to drink. It was only after the Count had made several passes over her, and had insisted on her obeying him, that she could be induced to taste the water. Then, in obedience to the irresistible influence of his will on hers, she drank a very small quantity, with extreme reluctance, and with a visible contraction of the throat after each sip. When the water was taken away, I put myself in communication with her, and asked what was the taste of the liquid she had just been imbibing. She answered rather faintly: “An intensely bitter taste.” At the same moment, I looked carefully at her complexion, and touched her hand and cheek: as yet, there was no appearance whatever of unusual paleness and the temperature of her skin was at its natural degree of warmth.

Soon, while we watched her, we saw that she began to move uneasily from side to side in her chair. Then she took her handkerchief and wiped her lips with it; repeating this action incessantly, though there was not the slightest moisture about her mouth. Her complexion got paler and paler, until at last it grew perfectly livid — livid to her very lips. I touched her face now: her skin had become cold and clammy. I took her hand; it felt like the hand of a corpse. Ere long — while she still wiped her mouth from time to time, and still moved painfully from side to side in her chair — spasmodic contractions appeared about her brow and lips, and spread to her chest, her shoulders, and her arms. Her legs, too, began to stretch out rigidly before her; and she complained, in a faint, gasping whisper, of violent pains in the abdomen, and of a disposition to vomit. We lifted her eyelids, and found that her eyeballs wer [sic] dilated; the pupils being insensible, and turned far upward. The dull, glassy glare of the distorted eye was positively fearful to behold. What further symptoms might have soon appeared, it is impossible to say; for, at this point, we all agreed that the experiment must stop. It was then about ten minutes from the time when she had first tasted the magnetized water.

She was relieved — but very slowly — of the pain in her stomach, by passes; and after that, complained of a sensation of coldness and numbness in her legs. When this also had been removed, she begged for something to quench a great thirst that she felt; and being asked what drink she wished for, answered; “Lukewarm milk.” The Count poured out a fresh glass of water, magnetized it, and gave it to her. She eagerly drank it off at a draught and, in answer to a question from me, said that she was drinking lukewarm milk. After this she sank back in the chair; and, desiring to be left to repose, appeared to fall immediately into a deep sleep. Before she was restored to this state of tranquillity she had engaged the magnetiser’s attention for double the time he had ever occupied before in recovering her from experiments of a similar nature.

The next morning, I consulted Taylor’s
Medical Jurisprudence
(Ed. 3, 1849, pp. 181-183) to ascertain exactly what were the symptoms of poisoning by Strychnine. For the information of persons unacquainted with chemistry, it must be premised, that Strychnine is nothing but a concentration of the poisonous properties of Nux Vomica, which Taylor states to have “an intensely bitter taste” — the very taste, observe, that V — complained of to me. The first case related of poisoning by Strychnine, is that of a young man, aged seventeen, who took
forty
grains (!); and died in an hour and a half after swallowing this tremendous does of poison, the first symptoms having appeared in a quarter of an hour. The second case is the case of Dr. Warner, who died in fourteen minutes from the effect of the smallest dose on record — half-a-grain. A third instance is then cited of a person who recovered from a dose of seven grains. Thus it appears, from medical evidence. that the quantity of Strychnine required to destroy life, the time when the symptoms of having taken it first appear, and the period that elapses before a dose becomes fata1, vary so much in different persons, as to defy any previous computation whatsoever.

Among the symptoms exhibited by the who man who took the dose of forty grains, Taylor describes — lividness of the skin, prominence of the eyeballs, dilatation and insensibility of the pupils, and spasms of the chest. Among the symptoms of poisoning by Nux Vomica (which the author of
Medical Jurisprudence
informs us “
closely resemble
” those of poisoning by Strychnine) are mentioned — vomiting, pain in the abdomen, and a stretching out of the limbs. We have here, then, no less than seven symptoms, detailed on medical authority, as symptoms produced by taking the poison that I wrote down for our magnetic experience, every one of which we saw exhibited by V — . Others of a more aggravated nature might have appeared, had we not stopped the experiment when we did. I, for one, never desire to witness its repetition, under any circumstances whatever.

Now, how are we to account for such a phenomenon as I have just described? People who keep a large stock of ready-made assertions always on hand to answer any emergency, would solve the mystery at once, by saying that V — was acting. Setting aside, for mere argument sake, the weight of evidence which the mere character of the young lady herself, and of the friends under whose care she was living, would bring to bear against the possibility of any deception being practised by her, — what am I obliged to believe, if I believe that she was acting? First, I must believe that she is the most consummate actress in Europe; for I have never seen, on the stage, any simulation of the physical effects of poison-taking comparable for a moment to
her
simulation. Rachel’s performance in the last act of “Adrienne Lecouvreur” was, in regard to those parts of it which were confined to the simple representation of the outward effect of poison on the human frame, tricky and artificial by comparison with V — ’s. Secondly, remembering that I saw with my own eyes the livid paleness come over V — ’s face, and felt with my own hands the clammy coldness of hers, I must believe that, at little more than a minute’s notice, she could
act
away all colour from her cheeks, and
act
away the natural vital warmth from her hands — a perfection of histrionic art to which no other actress, from Mrs. Siddons downwards, has, I venture to assert, ever attained! Thirdly, I must believe that she had “got up” beforehand all the symptoms produced by taking all the known poisons in chemistry, so as to be quite prepared for any selection I might choose to make. And fourthly, I must believe that she knew what poison I had really chosen, though I have no recollection of the name of it having been even faintly whispered by anybody in the room, until she had been awakened out of the magnetic sleep.