The French Lieutenant's Woman (33 page)

La Ronciere was found
guilty and sentenced to ten years' imprisonment. Almost every eminent
jurist in Europe protested, but in vain. We can see why he was
condemned, or rather, by what he was condemned: by social prestige,
by the myth of the pure-minded virgin, by psychological ignorance, by
a society in full reaction from the pernicious notions of freedom
disseminated by the French Revolution. But now let me translate the
pages that the doctor had marked. They come from the Observations
Medico-psychologiques of a Dr. Karl Matthaei, a well-known German
physician of his time, written in support of an abortive appeal
against the La Ronciere verdict. Matthaei had already had the
intelligence to write down the dates on which the more obscene
letters, culminating in the attempted rape, had occurred. They fell
into a clear monthly--or menstrual-- pattern. After analyzing the
evidence brought before the court, the Herr Doktor proceeds, in a
somewhat moralistic tone, to explain the mental illness we today call
hysteria--the assumption, that is, of symptoms of disease or
disability in order to gain the attention and sympathy of others: a
neurosis or psychosis almost invariably caused, as we now know, by
sexual repression.

If I glance back over my
long career as a doctor, I recall many incidents of which girls have
been the heroines, although their participation seemed for long
impossible . . .

Some forty years ago, I
had among my patients the family of a lieutenant-general of cavalry.
He had a small property some six miles from the town where he was in
garrison, and he lived there, riding into town when his duties
called. He had an exceptionally pretty daughter of sixteen years'
age. She wished fervently that her father lived in the town. Her
exact reasons were never discovered, but no doubt she wished to have
the company of the officers and the pleasures of society there. To
get her way, she chose a highly criminal procedure: she set fire to
the country home. A wing of it was burned to the ground. It was
rebuilt. New attempts at arson were made: and one day once again part
of the house went up in flames. No less than thirty attempts at arson
were committed subsequently. However nearly one came upon the
arsonist, his identity was never discovered. Many people were
apprehended and interrogated. The one person who was never suspected
was that beautiful young innocent daughter. Several years passed; and
then finally she was caught in the act; and condemned to life
imprisonment in a house of correction.

In a large German city,
a charming young girl of a distinguished family found her pleasure in
sending anonymous letters whose purpose was to break up a recent
happy marriage. She also spread vicious scandals concerning another
young lady, widely admired for her talents and therefore an object of
envy. These letters continued for several years. No shadow of
suspicion fell on the authoress, though many other people were
accused. At last she gave herself away, and was accused, and
confessed to her crime ... She served a long sentence in prison for
her evil.

Again, at the very time
and in this very place where I write,* the police are investigating a
similar affair . . .
[*
Hanover, 1836.]

It may be objected that
Marie de Morell would not have inflicted pain on herself to attain
her ends. But her suffering was very slight compared to that in other
cases from the annals of medicine. Here are some very remarkable
instances.

Professor Herholdt of
Copenhagen knew an attractive young woman of excellent education and
well-to-do parents. He, like many of his colleagues, was completely
deceived by her. She applied the greatest skill and perseverance to
her deceits, and over a course of several years. She even tortured
herself in the most atrocious manner. She plunged some hundreds of
needles into the flesh of various parts of her body: and when
inflammation or suppuration had set in she had them removed by
incision. She refused to urinate and had her urine removed each
morning by means of a catheter. She herself introduced air into her
bladder, which escaped when the instrument was inserted. For a year
and a half she rested dumb and without movement, refused food,
pretended spasms, fainting fits, and so on. Before her tricks were
discovered, several famous doctors, some from abroad, examined her
and were horror-struck to see such suffering. Her unhappy story was
in all the newspapers, and no one doubted the authenticity of her
case. Finally, in 1826, the truth was discovered. The sole motives of
this clever fraud (cette adroite trompeuse) were to become an object
of admiration and astonishment to men, and to make a fool of the most
learned, famous and perceptive of them. The history of this case, so
important from the psychological point of view, may be found in
Herholdt: Notes on the illness of Rachel Hertz between 1807 and 1826.

At Luneburg, a mother
and daughter hit on a scheme whose aim was to draw a lucrative
sympathy upon themselves--a scheme they pursued to the end with an
appalling determination. The daughter complained of unbearable pain
in one breast, lamented and wept, sought the help of the professions,
tried all their remedies. The pain continued; a cancer was suspected.
She herself elected without hesitation to have the breast extirpated;
it was found to be perfectly healthy. Some years later, when sympathy
for her had lessened, she took up her old role. The other breast was
removed, and was found to be as healthy as the first. When once again
sympathy began to dry up, she complained of pain in the hand. She
wanted that too to be amputated. But suspicion was aroused. She was
sent to hospital, accused of false pretenses, and finally dispatched
to prison.

Lentin, in his
Supplement to a practical knowledge of medicine (Hanover, 1798) tells
this story, of which he was a witness. From a girl of no great age
were drawn, by the medium of forceps after previous incision of the
bladder and its neck, no less than one hundred and four stones in ten
months. The girl herself introduced the stones into her bladder, even
though the subsequent operations caused her great loss of blood and
atrocious pain. Before this, she had had vomiting, convulsions and
violent symptoms of many kinds. She showed a rare skill in her
deceptions.

After such examples,
which it would be easy to extend, who would say that it is impossible
for a girl, in order to attain a desired end, to inflict pain upon
herself?*
[*
I cannot leave the story of La Ronciere--which I have taken from the
same 1835 account that Dr. Grogan handed Charles--without adding that
in 1848, some years after the lieutenant had finished his time, one
of the original prosecuting counsel had the belated honesty to
suspect that he had helped procure a gross miscarriage of justice. He
was by then in a position to have the case reopened. La Roncifere was
completely exonerated and rehabilitated. He resumed his military
career and might, at that very hour Charles was reading the black
climax of his life, have been found leading a pleasant enough
existence as military governor of Tahiti. But his story has an
extraordinary final twist. Only quite recently has it become known
that he at least partly deserved the hysterical Mile de Morell's
revenge on him. He had indeed entered her bedroom on that September
night of 1834; but not through the window. Having earlier seduced the
governess Miss Allen (perfide Albion!), he made a much simpler entry
from her adjoining bedroom. The purpose of his visit was not amatory,
but in fulfillment of a bet he had made with some brother officers,
to whom he had boasted of having slept with Marie. He was challenged
to produce proof in the form of a lock of hair--but not from the
girl's head. The wound in Marie's thigh was caused by a pair of
scissors; and the wound to her self-esteem becomes a good deal more
explicable. An excellent discussion of this bizarre case may be found
in Rene Floriot, Les Erreurs Judiciaires, Paris, 1968.]

Those latter pages were
the first Charles read. They came as a brutal shock to him, for he
had no idea that such perversions existed--and in the pure and sacred
sex. Nor, of course, could he see mental illness of the hysteric kind
for what it is: a pitiable striving for love and security. He turned
to the beginning of the account of the trial and soon found himself
drawn fatally on into that. I need hardly say that he identified
himself almost at once with the miserable Emile de La Ronciere; and
towards the end of the trial he came upon a date that sent a shiver
down his spine. The day that other French lieutenant was condemned
was the very same day that Charles had come into the world. For a
moment, in that silent Dorset night, reason and science dissolved;
life was a dark machine, a sinister astrology, a verdict at birth and
without appeal, a zero over all.

He had never felt less
free.

And he had never felt
less sleepy. He looked at his watch. It lacked ten minutes of four
o'clock. All was peace now outside. The storm had passed. Charles
opened a window and breathed in the cold but clean spring air. Stars
twinkled faintly overhead, innocently, disclaiming influence, either
sinister or beneficent. And where was she? Awake also, a mile or two
away, in some dark woodland darkness.

The effects of the
cobbler and Grogan's brandy had long worn off, leaving Charles only
with a profound sense of guilt. He thought he recalled a malice in
the Irish doctor's eyes, a storing-up of this fatuous London
gentleman's troubles that would soon be whispered and retailed all
over Lyme. Was it not notorious that his race could not keep a
secret?

How puerile, how
undignified his behavior had been! He had lost not only Winsyatt that
previous day, but all his self-respect. Even that last phrase was a
tautology; he had, quite simply, lost respect for everything he knew.
Life was a pit in Bedlam. Behind the most innocent faces lurked the
vilest iniquities. He was Sir Galahad shown Guinevere to be a whore.

To stop the futile
brooding--if only he could act!--he picked up the fatal book and read
again some of the passages in Matthaei's paper on hysteria. He saw
fewer parallels now with Sarah's conduct. His guilt began to attach
itself to its proper object. He tried to recollect her face, things
she had said, the expression in her eyes as she had said them; but he
could not grasp her. Yet it came to him that he knew her better,
perhaps, than any other human being did. That account of their
meetings he had given Grogan . . . that he could remember, and almost
word for word. Had he not, in his anxiety to hide his own real
feelings, misled Grogan? Exaggerated her strangeness? Not honestly
passed on what she had actually said?

Had he not condemned her
to avoid condemning himself?

Endlessly he paced his
sitting room, searching his soul and his hurt pride. Suppose she was
what she had represented herself to be--a sinner, certainly, but also
a woman of exceptional courage, refusing to turn her back on her sin?
And now finally weakened in her terrible battle with her past and
crying for help? Why had he allowed Grogan to judge her for him?

Because he was more
concerned to save appearances than his own soul. Because he had no
more free will than an ammonite. Because he was a Pontius Pilate, a
worse than he, not only condoning the crucifixion but encouraging,
nay, even causing--did not all spring from that second meeting, when
she had wanted to leave, but had had discussion of her situation
forced upon her?--the events that now led to its execution.

He opened the window
again. Two hours had passed since he had first done so. Now a faint
light spread from the east. He stared up at the paling stars.

Destiny.

Those eyes.

Abruptly he turned.

If he met Grogan, he met
him. His conscience must explain his disobedience. He went into his
bedroom. And there, with an outward sour gravity reflecting the
inward, self-awed and indecipherable determination he had come to, he
began to change his clothes.
 

29

For a breeze of
morning moves,
And
the planet of Love is on high . . .
--
Tennyson,
Maud (1855)

It is a part of
special prudence never to do anything because one has an inclination
to do it; but because it is one's duty, or is reasonable.
--
Matthew Arnold,
Notebooks (1868)

The sun was just redly
leaving the insubstantial dove-gray waves of the hills behind the
Chesil Bank when
Charles,
not dressed in the clothes but with all the facial expression of an
undertaker's mute, left the doors of the White Lion. The sky was
without cloud, washed pure by the previous night's storm and of a
deliciously tender and ethereal blue; the air as sharp as
lemon-juice, yet as clean and cleansing. If you get up at such an
hour in Lyme today you will have the town to yourself. Charles, in
that earlier-rising age, was not quite so fortunate; but the people
who were about had that pleasant lack of social pretension, that
primeval classlessness of dawn population: simple people setting
about their day's work. One or two bade Charles a cheery greeting;
and got very peremptory nods and curt raisings of the ashplant in
return. He would rather have seen a few symbolic corpses littering
the streets than those bright faces; and he was glad when he left the
town behind him and entered the lane to the Undercliff.