XII
When I had decided that my chance for securing the little stiletto spike
was very uncertain, I at once busied myself with plans which were designed
to bring about my death by drowning. There was in the ward a large bath
tub. Access to it could be had at any time, except from the hour of
nine (when the patients were locked in their rooms for the night) until
the following morning. How to reach it during the night was the problem
which confronted me. The attendant in charge was supposed to see that
each patient was in his room before his door was locked. As it rarely
happened that the patients were not in their rooms at the appointed
time, the attendants naturally grew careless, and often locked a door
without looking in. "Good night"—a salutation usually devoid of
sentiment—might, or might not, elicit a response, and the absence of a
response would not tend to arouse suspicion—especially in a case like
mine, for I would sometimes say "good night," but more often not.
My simple and easy plan was to hide behind a piece of furniture in the
corridor and there remain until the attendant had locked the doors of
the rooms and gone to bed. I had even advanced so far in my plan as to
select a convenient nook within twenty feet of my own room. Should the
attendant, when about to lock the door, discover my absence, I should,
of course, immediately reveal my hiding-place by leaving it; and it
would have been an easy matter to convince him that I had done the
thing as a test of his own vigilance. On the other hand, if I escaped
discovery, I should then have nine hours at my disposal with little
fear of interruption. True, the night watch passed through the ward
once every hour. But death by drowning requires a time no longer than
that necessary to boil an egg. I had even calculated how long it would
take to fill the tub with water. To make sure of a fatal result, I had
secreted a piece of wire which I intended so to use that my head, once
under water, could by no possibility be raised above the surface in the
inevitable death struggle.
I have said that I did not desire death; nor did I. Had the supposed
detectives been able to convince me that they would keep their word, I
would willingly have signed an agreement stipulating on my side that I
must live the rest of my life in confinement, and on theirs that I
should never undergo a trial for crime.
Fortunately, during these dismal preparations, I had not lost interest
in other schemes which probably saved my life. In these the
fellow-patient who had won my confidence played the role of my own
private detective. That he and I could defeat the combined forces
arrayed against me hardly seemed probable, but the seeming
impossibility of so doing only lent zest to the undertaking. My friend,
who, of course, did not realize that he was engaged in combat with the
Secret Service, was allowed to go where he pleased within the limits of
the city where the hospital was situated. Accordingly I determined to
enlist his services. It was during July that, at my suggestion, he
tried to procure copies of certain New Haven newspapers, of the date of
my attempted suicide and the several dates immediately following. My
purpose was to learn what motive had been ascribed to my suicidal act.
I felt sure that the papers would contain at least hints as to the
nature of the criminal charges against me. But my purpose I did not
disclose to my friend. In due time he reported that no copies for the
given dates were to be had. So that quest proved fruitless, and I
attributed the failure to the superior strategy of the enemy.
Meanwhile, my friend had not stopped trying to convince me that my
apparent relatives were not spurious; so one day I said to him: "If my
relatives still live in New Haven, their addresses must be in the
latest New Haven Directory. Here is a list containing the names and
former addresses of my father, brother, and uncle. These were their
addresses in 1900. To-morrow, when you go out, please see whether they
appear in the New Haven Directory for 1902. These persons who present
themselves to me as relatives pretend to live at these addresses. If
they speak the truth, the 1902 Directory will corroborate them. I shall
then have hope that a letter sent to any one of these addresses will
reach relatives—and surely some attention will be paid to it."
The next day, my own good detective went to a local publishing house
where directories of important cities throughout the country could be
consulted. Shortly after he went upon this errand, my conservator
appeared. He found me walking about the lawn. At his suggestion we sat
down. Bold in the assurance that I could kill myself before the crisis
came, I talked with him freely, replying to many of his questions and
asking several. My conservator, who did not know that I doubted his
identity, commented with manifest pleasure on my new-found readiness to
talk. He would have been less pleased, however, had he been able to
read my mind.
Shortly after my conservator's departure, my fellow-patient returned
and informed me that the latest New Haven Directory contained the names
and addresses I had given him. This information, though it did not
prove that my morning caller was no detective, did convince me that my
real brother still lived where he did when I left New Haven, two years
earlier. Now that my delusions were growing weaker, my returning reason
enabled me to construct the ingenious scheme which, I believe, saved my
life; for, had I not largely regained my reason when I did, I am
inclined to believe that my distraught mind would have destroyed itself
and me, before it could have been restored by the slow process of
returning health.
A few hours after my own private detective had given me the information
I so much desired, I wrote the first letter I had written in twenty-six
months. As letters go, it is in a class by itself. I dared not ask for
ink, so I wrote with a lead pencil. Another fellow-patient in whom I
had confidence, at my request, addressed the envelope; but he was not
in the secret of its contents. This was an added precaution, for I
thought the Secret Service men might have found out that I had a
detective of my own and would confiscate any letters addressed by him
or me. The next morning, my "detective" mailed the letter. That
letter I still have, and I treasure it as any innocent man condemned to
death would treasure a pardon. It should convince the reader that
sometimes a mentally disordered person, even one suffering from many
delusions, can think and write clearly. An exact copy of this—the most
important letter I ever expect to be called upon to write—is here
presented:
AUGUST 29, 1902.
DEAR GEORGE:
On last Wednesday morning a person who claimed to be George M.
Beers of New Haven, Ct., clerk in the Director's Office of the
Sheffield Scientific School and a brother of mine, called to see
me.
Perhaps what he said was true, but after the events of the last
two years I find myself inclined to doubt the truth of everything
that is told me. He said that he would come and see me again
sometime next week, and I am sending you this letter in order that
you may bring it with you as a passport, provided you are the one
who was here on Wednesday.
If you did not call as stated please say nothing about this letter
to anyone, and when your double arrives, I'll tell him what I
think of him. Would send other messages, but while things seem as
they do at present it is impossible. Have had someone else address
envelope for fear letter might be held up on the way.
Yours,
CLIFFORD W.B.
Though I felt reasonably confident that this message would reach my
brother, I was by no means certain. I was sure, however, that, should
he receive it, under no circumstances would he turn it over to anyone
hostile to myself. When I wrote the words: "Dear George," my feeling
was much like that of a child who sends a letter to Santa Claus after
his childish faith has been shaken. Like the skeptical child, I felt
there was nothing to lose, but everything to gain. "Yours" fully
expressed such affection for relatives as I was then capable of—for
the belief that I had disgraced, perhaps destroyed, my family prompted
me to forbear to use the family name in the signature.
The thought that I might soon get in touch with my old world did not
excite me. I had not much faith anyway that I was to re-establish
former relations with it, and what little faith I had was all but
destroyed on the morning of August 30th, 1902, when a short message,
written on a slip of paper, reached me by the hand of an attendant. It
informed me that my conservator would call that afternoon. I thought it
a lie. I felt that any brother of mine would have taken the pains to
send a letter in reply to the first I had written him in over two
years. The thought that there had not been time for him to do so and
that this message must have arrived by telephone did not then occur to
me. What I believed was that my own letter had been confiscated. I
asked one of the doctors to swear on his honor that it really was my
own brother who was coming to see me. This he did. But abnormal
suspicion robbed all men in my sight of whatever honor they may have
had, and I was not fully reassured.
In the afternoon, as usual, the patients were taken out of doors, I
among them. I wandered about the lawn and cast frequent and expectant
glances toward the gate, through which I believed my anticipated
visitor would soon pass. In less than an hour he appeared. I first
caught sight of him about three hundred feet away, and, impelled more
by curiosity than hope, I advanced to meet him. "I wonder what the lie
will be this time," was the gist of my thoughts.
The person approaching me was indeed the counterpart of my brother as I
remembered him. Yet he was no more my brother than he had been at any
time during the preceding two years. He was still a detective. Such he
was when I shook his hand. As soon as that ceremony was over, he drew
forth a leather pocketbook. I instantly recognized it as one I myself
had carried for several years prior to the time I was taken ill in
1900. It was from this that he took my recent letter.
"Here's my passport," he said.
"It's a good thing you brought it," I replied, as I glanced at it and
again shook his hand—this time the hand of my own brother.
"Don't you want to read it?" he asked.
"There is no need of that. I am convinced."
After my long journey of exploration in the jungle of a tangled
imagination, a journey which finally ended in my finding the person for
whom I had long searched, my behavior differed very little from that of
a great explorer who, full of doubt after a long and perilous trip
through real jungles, found the man he sought and, grasping his hand,
greeted him with the simple and historic words, "Dr. Livingstone, I
presume?"
The very instant I caught sight of my letter in the hands of my
brother, all was changed. The thousands of false impressions recorded
during the seven hundred and ninety-eight days of my depression seemed
at once to correct themselves. Untruth became Truth. A large part of
what was once my old world was again mine. To me, at last my mind
seemed to have found itself, for the gigantic web of false beliefs in
which it had been all but hopelessly enmeshed I now immediately
recognized as a snare of delusions. That the Gordian knot of mental
torture should be cut and swept away by the mere glance of a willing
eye is like a miracle. Not a few patients, however, suffering from
certain forms of mental disorder, regain a high degree of insight into
their mental condition in what might be termed a flash of divine
enlightenment. Though insight regained seemingly in an instant is a
most encouraging symptom, power to reason normally on all subjects
cannot, of course, be so promptly recovered. My new power to reason
correctly on some subjects simply marked the transition from
depression, one phase of my disorder, to elation, another phase of it.
Medically speaking, I was as mentally disordered as before—yet I was
happy!
My memory during depression may be likened to a photographic film,
seven hundred and ninety-eight days long. Each impression seems to have
been made in a negative way and then, in a fraction of a second,
miraculously developed and made positive. Of hundreds of impressions
made during that depressed period I had not before been conscious, but
from the moment my mind, if not my full reason, found itself, they
stood out vividly. Not only so, but other impressions registered during
earlier years became clearer. Since that August 30th, which I regard as
my second birthday (my first was on the 30th of another month), my mind
has exhibited qualities which, prior to that time, were so latent as to
be scarcely distinguishable. As a result, I find myself able to do
desirable things I never before dreamed of doing—the writing of this
book is one of them.
Yet had I failed to convince myself on August 30th, when my brother
came to see me, that he was no spy, I am almost sure that I should have
compassed my own destruction within the following ten days, for the
next month, I believed, was the fatal one of opening courts. You will
recall that it was death by drowning that impended. I liken my
salvation itself to a prolonged process of drowning. Thousands of
minutes of the seven hundred and ninety-eight days—and there were over
one million of them, during which I had been borne down by intolerably
burdensome delusions—were, I imagine, much like the last minutes of
consciousness experienced by persons who drown. Many who have narrowly
escaped that fate can testify to the vividness with which good and bad
impressions of their entire life rush through their confused minds, and
hold them in a grip of terror until a kind unconsciousness envelops
them. Such had been many of my moments. But the only unconsciousness
which had deadened my sensibilities during these two despondent years
was that of sleep itself. Though I slept fairly well most of the time,
mine was seldom a dreamless sleep. Many of my dreams were, if anything,
harder to bear than my delusions of the day, for what little reason I
had was absolutely suspended in sleep. Almost every night my brain was
at battledore and shuttlecock with weird thoughts. And if not all my
dreams were terrifying, this fact seemed to be only because a perverted
and perverse Reason, in order that its possessor might not lose the
capacity for suffering, knew how to keep Hope alive with visions which
supplied the contrast necessary for keen appreciation.
No man can be born again, but I believe I came as near it as ever a man
did. To leave behind what was in reality a hell, and immediately have
this good green earth revealed in more glory than most men ever see it,
was one of the compensating privileges which make me feel that my
suffering was worth while.
I have already described the peculiar sensation which assailed me when,
in June, 1900, I lost my reason. At that time my brain felt as though
pricked by a million needles at white heat. On this August 30th, 1902,
shortly after largely regaining my reason, I had another most distinct
sensation in the brain. It started under my brow and gradually spread
until the entire surface was affected. The throes of a dying Reason had
been torture. The sensations felt as my dead Reason was reborn were
delightful. It seemed as though the refreshing breath of some kind
Goddess of Wisdom were being gently blown against the surface of my
brain. It was a sensation not unlike that produced by a menthol pencil
rubbed ever so gently over a fevered brow. So delicate, so crisp and
exhilarating was it that words fail me in my attempt to describe it.
Few, if any, experiences can be more delightful. If the exaltation
produced by some drugs is anything like it, I can easily understand how
and why certain pernicious habits enslave those who contract them. For
me, however, this experience was liberation, not enslavement.
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