LEAVES FROM A SUICIDE’S DIARY
I was very young when the idea of suicide first suggested itself to me;—my life had its troubles as far back as my memory extends. I have a vivid recollection of taking a certain degree of interest in the subject when I was a mere lad,—long before I first thought of keeping a record of my impressions. My father had whipped me for some trivial matter; so trivial was it, and so severe my punishment, that I was overwhelmed with a sense of the cruel injustice of it all. Father was a stern, cold man, and a man of moods. He could be affectionate at times, and I presume that deep down in his heart he loved me, but, as I have said, he was a man of moods—and they were not always pleasant ones for those around him. It is a curious psychic fact that some men are subject to storms of passion which, concealed through politic motives from all but those most entitled to consideration, seemingly must be vented upon those whom affection should protect. My father was such a man, and I, his eldest child, was the member of the family who most often suffered from his horrible nerve storms. As I grew older he became more and more inconsiderate in his treatment of me, and more and more severe in his punishments.
I believe that all boys of good breeding and average physical stamina, are conscious at times that paternal punishment is frequently dictated by love and sincere interest in the welfare of the victim. It is this sort of punishment that is followed by a healthy moral and physical reaction. But with punishment undeserved, and out of all proportion to the offense which it is intended to reprove, it is quite different. Once let a boy experience such punishment, and there arises in him a sense of rebellion against parental authority, and his respect and affection for the parent becomes tinctured with bitterness that even Time cannot efface.
Once let the iron of vindictive resentment against oppression and injustice enter his soul, and your loving and lovable boy becomes transformed—he ages perceptibly, and his fair young life, his innocent childhood is gone—to return no more. “When I am a man!” he cries, and that part of the river of life which flows between childhood and manhood,—his youth,—is spanned by a bridge of sighs over which he who crosses can not return. “WHEN I AM A MAN!” Alas! the bitter words are hardly spoken ere the boy is a man—and such a man! A man without memory of happy and tranquil youth—is he not a flower that has bloomed to a semblance of maturity, yet has never been pervaded by that subtle fragrance which only the warm, tender affection of budding youth imparts?
In my case the effect was very peculiar; I was made to feel not only the injustice of my punishment, but a profound sense of humiliation. My pride was wounded more than my physical body—and, God knows, that was wounded severely enough. Ah, thou hadst a heavy hand, oh father mine! Would that I had experienced more of resentment and less of mortification. The former would have been bad enough, but the latter made life a hell on earth for me. I was fragile, nervous, sensitive, and of a physique that ill bore abuse. Sensitive though my physical body was, I had a mental make-up that was even more so. How I brooded over that terrible whipping—the last my father ever gave me, for he died soon after. The world seemed so dark and gloomy to me. There was no rift in those sombre clouds that gave forth the bitter rain which tinctured my young life with gall and wormwood. There was no happiness anywhere.
My mother, angel that she was, and is,—if there be aught of justice or compassion in the hereafter,—tried to stem the torrent of grief that was overwhelming my young life, tried to dispel the poisonous miasm that had disseminated itself throughout every element of my moral and intellectual being, by such love and consolation as only a tender, sympathetic mother can give, but in vain. A constant, oppressive, deeply rooted melancholy took possession of me. I lost my animation and became as near a misanthrope as one of my years and limited experience could possibly be. And the shadow of that storm cloud of emotion has never been quite dissipated in the wearing of the passing years of life’s battle. Woe to him the memory of whose youth is enwrapped in a funereal pall and in whose mouth there remains the bitter taste of humiliation, of outraged pride and self-respect.
It was during the period immediately following the castigation I have mentioned, that the notion of self-destruction first crystallized in my mind. I do not remember just how I reasoned upon the matter; I recall clearly enough, however, that I was profoundly impressed with the idea that my woes were bearing me down to the depths of misery and despair. There rested upon me a dreadful incubus from which there seemed to be but one means of escape.
I had seen persons lying dead, and I remember that in my despairing, hopeless state of mind the thought of the peaceful, quiet expression upon their faces was positively fascinating to me. I found myself dwelling upon it with much interest, and a feeling akin to envy.
Well, as I have said, I do not remember precisely how I formulated my conclusions, but I finally resolved to make away with myself. Unfortunately, however, one of the traits with which I was endowed by nature, was a fear of physical suffering, and when the resolution to take my own life had been formed, I still had to deal with my physical cowardice.
It has been said that only cowards and lunatics commit suicide. There was never a greater lie than this. Lunatics may suicide—cowards, never. It requires true heroism to face an unknown hereafter—to fly from those ills we have to those we know not of. And the hapless one to whom life is a burden must have courage par excellence, to enable him to face that dread future which, if he be scripturally credulous, must needs be more fearful than the terrestrial unhappiness that he fain would escape. No, suicide requires bravery, and I was not brave—I had hardly gotten beyond that dread of darkness and solitude which is the bane of childish existence. What wonder that I dreaded to take so radical a road out of my slough of despond?
The physical penalty of self-destruction was the most important obstacle to be overcome if I would escape from my mental slavery. So great was my dread of it, that—well, I lived, and, more’s the pity, am still living, a miserable misanthrope, in whom the misery of the present is exceeded only by his dread of the unknown country, and his physical fears of the means necessary to take him hence.
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I wonder if there are many who are entrusted with the care of youth, who ever think of their influence in moulding its future destinies. I have long since forgiven my father for his harshness—but the memory of my youthful sorrows can never be effaced. Does science recognize such a thing as a mental scar? It should. And mental scars, though unseen, are not only permanent, but ever painful. Death finally claimed my father through his one infirmity. He died of apoplexy, superinduced by one of his attacks of blind, unreasoning passion. I know not where he is, but I trust he is unconscious of the results of his mismanagement of his unfortunate son. I say I know not where he is, advisedly. My views of the hereafter—if I may call the chaotic ideas I have hitherto entertained, views—have undergone considerable modification of late. I am losing my egotism, and gradually coming to believe that death is but another name for oblivion. How prosaic it is, to be sure. By no means so satisfying to the ignorant, and those of the faith—which is sometimes another way of putting the same proposition—as that halo of glory for the good, or that blaze of everlasting fire for the wicked, which theology from time immemorial has prescribed for the dying. And if oblivion be the finality, what more could the All Father do for his tired children?
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What would my life have been had I possessed a different temperament? Possibly if I had been born of other blood, and under more propitious skies, I would have seen the world through different eyes. There might have been more coleur de rose and less of sombre tints and neutrals. To be born in the shadows—ah, me! The sun of morning has never gilded my mountain tops, nor even at mid-day penetrated the fog and gloom of the valleys of my soul. Golden sunsets and glorious afterglows are not for me. Twilight alone is, and ever has been mine. Perhaps if I could have loved—’Tis said that love illumines one’s soul. But I have never loved. There was once a woman, whom men called beautiful, but I do not remember much of her. She had a skin of blood and milk, golden hair, and pale blue eyes that never looked straight at you. Her voice, as I recall it, was sweet enough, but it did not ring true, and when she laughed—but why do I speak of her? She did not understand, and she is but a dream figure now.
Some one has said that ambition is the main-spring of life. I do not know, yet I have had ambition—of a certain kind. Mine has been to learn, to know, to acquire wisdom that should raise me out of the dead level of mediocrity. But Ambition is the twin sister of Discontent, and Discontent is the mother of Melancholy and Despair. Work as I might—and I have never been a drone—there has always been some one just ahead of me whose results were so much more commendable than my own that,—well, one might as well work on, even though he never accomplishes anything worth while. Certain it is that the world has been no better for anything I ever did. And still I work. I often wonder if the fellow ahead of me in life’s battle does not feel the same way;—there’s always another just ahead of him. There can be no satisfaction in work well done when another goal is looming up just beyond the one we have reached. I saw a herd of cattle the other day, lying beneath a spreading oak, placidly chewing their cuds, and as I looked at them I fancied they gazed at me somewhat pityingly. “Ah,” I thought, “here is contentment indeed.” I really envied them—until I noticed the flies that tormented their glossy hides. One might as well be tormented by ambitions as by flies and gnats. Possibly Nature is jealous of her children, and will permit none of them to experience the joy of mere living unannoyed.
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A friend of mine once said to me, “How very odd, that you should have taken up the science of chemistry and made a recluse of yourself, delving and diving into secrets of nature which, as you have never made any practical use of them, might as well have remained mysteries.” Here was another who did not understand—another who, like all the rest of those who called themselves and whom I called my friends, could not sympathize with me in my devotion to study, because there were no flesh pots in sight to serve as a motive for the work. To such sordid ones I could not well lay bare the bitter humiliations with which my all too evident failure to attain practical results have afflicted me. I could not lay bare the secret aspirations that impelled me to seek for things which would have given me a place as a benefactor of my kind and enrolled me among the immortals. And suppose I had ever confessed that the mystery of ancient alchemy so impressed me that I must needs grasp at its only modern representative, chemistry—would not my friends have laughed at me?
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What an atmosphere the chemical laboratory is for one of my temperament! What a fascination there is in the thought that the door of escape for the world weary,—which, as dear old Epictetus said, is always open,—is so near—so near that one must needs be careful lest he pass the portals ere he is ready. How many times have I wondered if what the text books say of arseniureted hydrogen, and of anhydrous hydrocyanic acid is really true. And how many times have I been tempted to—well, to put them to a test on a fellow worker. Not upon myself, for I am not yet ready, and I do not court death by accident. My own death must be philosophic when it comes, not sudden and devoid of impressions. Then, too, the slower things are more to my taste—morphine for example. When I am ready—when life becomes insupportable boredom, or an intolerable ache, I shall know just where and how to seek surcease of world tire. And what a record I will write of my impressions. How deliberate and scientific it will all be. And how sure I will make it. These amateurs, with their crude methods and cowardly shrinkings back from the brink—faugh! how I detest them. The idiots! what a mess some of them make of it, and how some of them suffer. As for the fools who do such bungling work that any cheap doctor called in a hurry can undo the thing—no words of mine can express my contempt for them. That doctor who swallowed six grains of morphine and then when the mist began to rise, sent for another fool of his own profession to succor him, was a coward and a bungler. But, I have said that a suicide is never a coward. Yes, and I meant it, too; that doctor was a pretender, and not born in the purple.
These love lorn servant girls and heart sick youths who drink to Death libations of carbolic acid are most amusing folk. They have courage, it is true, and doubtless mean well, but they lack the brains to be original and clever. They are faddists gone mad.
I have studied all of the methods of suicide in vogue and the more I see of them, the wiser I think I was in selecting chemistry as my life work. I have haunted the morgue; I have followed to that horrid, dripping, smelly slab, every case of suicide that has happened in this city. And such sights as I have seen! Bloated, festering masses of flesh that required great imagination to fashion into human semblance, fresh dragged from summer waters; distorted, blackened faces on agony twisted forms freshly cut down from self-made gibbets; heads blown open, brain-bespattered and powder-marked by the pistol; limbs crushed and torn into disgusting masses and shreds of ghastly flesh, the bones staring through in besplintered protest against the savagery of men who seek rest beneath the crunching wheels of locomotives; sickening, fresh made gashes in throats that were once fair to look upon—all these have I seen and marveled at.
Only yesterday I saw lying upon that familiar slab, an old, old man—found dead in bed with his throat cut from ear to ear, a letter in his hand saying only this: “I am tired, so tired.” “What a pity it is,” I thought, as I looked at the fearful gash through which swollen tongue and severed larynx protruded, at the blood bathed clod which perchance had once been loved, “that this man should have lived so long without learning a way.”
Then there was that dead man I saw taken from the river the other day. His friends knew of his business troubles and feared he had suicided. They sought for him for days and days, poor fools. They found him at last, and he went the way of all the others—to that vile slab. I was there when his sweetheart came to see his remains. They tried to keep her out, but she entered the room in spite of them. I was not surprised at what happened. The transition from her ideal, the lover of her memory, to that slimy, oozy, bloated thing with the maggots swarming from its nose and eyes and ears, was enough to shock a stronger heart than hers. She died in a mad house, screaming against the maggots that she fancied were devouring her.
Ah, there’s much of comfort in the thought that one has learned a way, and that my work in science has not all come to naught. How I admire that man of whom my friend Dr. X. told me this morning, who laughed at the doctors who worked a whole night over him, trying to save him from self poisoning. He would revive for a moment under their efforts and mutter, “No you don’t, d—n you,—you can’t do it!” and then lapse into coma again. He knew a way, did that man. The stupid doctors did not know. He, like myself, was a chemist. Was he merely defiant, or was it professional pride that animated him when he challenged those fool doctors, who came to interfere with his plans, but knew nothing of the symptoms produced by a clever admixture of laudanum and potassium cyanide? I glory in that noble man’s artistic achievement—I glory in his vindication of individual rights.
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Existence is growing absolutely insupportable to me. My synthetic experiments with organic elements which seemed so promising have come to naught. Another of my failures! I haven’t the energy to begin all over again, neither am I disposed to devise experiments in other fields. My brain is pumped out, like a dry well. My heart is dead. I suppose one might live with a dead heart, but what’s the use? I begin to believe that it is time to—well, to follow the way. There, in that bottle upon the shelf, are four grains of—I wonder if my figuring was correct? There’s surely enough. But suppose there should be too much? Pshaw! Why do I doubt? My experimental provings have been too carefully made to admit of suspicion of inaccuracy. That huge dog which—
Why not to-night? “If ’twere done, when ’tis done, ’twere well it were done quickly.” There is no reason why I should not. My affairs—What affairs? I have no affairs. My family? There is none. My friends? Possibly there are some who will read the obituary in to-morrow’s paper, and sorrow over the necessity of going to the “crank professor’s” funeral. They will have no keener regret, for, thank the fates, there will be no funeral expenses, and no contributions will be levied; I have attended to all that. My friend, Dr. X., is a prosector at the university, and to him my body is willed. He has promised to wire the skeleton for the museum. Good fellow, X. No sentimental gush about him. I wonder how the skeleton will look. I hope X. knows the French method of cleaning bones. It would be some satisfaction to know that mine will be white and glistening, and nice to handle. I wonder what those French fellows use that gives that faint sweet smell to newly bleached human bones. I suppose I might have written and found out, but I never thought of that.
As usual at this hour I am alone in the laboratory. It is barely possible that Professor A. may return to-night. I fancy he did not quite finish that experiment to-day. It would be embarrassing if he should come in before I had passed clear through the door. With that narcotic there would be great danger of such a mishap. I want to acquit myself at least as creditably as did that man of whom my friend Dr. X.—Great Charon! the very thing. There should be a bottle of cyanide somewhere upon the shelves—
How very awkward! Who could have misplaced that bottle? I thought I knew just where to put my hand upon it. Well, there’s no use fretting about it, to-morrow I will—Ah, now I think of it, there’s a vial of anhydrous prussic acid in that little drawer in A.’s desk, and I have a key!
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I fancy I can do the work much more artistically than did X.’s patient. I will take the narcotic in its most elegant and concentrated form, instead of that beastly tincture. I hate nauseous medicines. As for the prussic acid, I will use a hypodermic. Fortunately there is one yonder, in the room for animal experimentation. I will take the morphia first, and when it begins to act, I will get the syringe. There will be plenty of time.
How simple; just a tongue coating of powder—a mere fleeting dash of bitter—a draught of water and—so far the narcotic. Now, to await results.
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How exhilarating the primary effects of opium. How easy to chronicle one’s impressions. How I can write! No wonder that De Quincey—; I seem to be in a brighter sphere. It is as though the air of the laboratory had turned to pure oxygen. What strength I feel! What mighty deeds could I not accomplish now? How large and vivid the gas lights are. There is an aureola of secondary glow about each of them. I would experiment with them to-morrow if— What music is that? Is it not beautiful? Why, I know that air—it is one my mother used to sing when I was a little lad—I remember how my dear little sister used to—But how faint the strains are now. And the lights are growing dim. It will soon be dark. My chair is rocking, too. How soothing and sensuous the motion seems. How drowsy I am getting—I must take that hypodermic before I get too sleepy.
There, that shows what will power can do. Some men would have gone to sleep and forgotten the rest of their plans. How orderly and systematic A. is, to be sure. No rummaging around in the drawer amid a confusion of things to find the prussic. How tight the stopper is. There, now I have it. Pshaw! I’ve spilled half of it on the floor and cut my fingers. How clumsy and numb my fingers are, and how hot and fiery this blood is. How delightful the prussic smells.
Just a drop—the morphia will combine with it and neutralize it. The drugs will neutralize each other just sufficiently to give me plenty of time, and I shall still be able to write. Here, in my thigh—just here— Ah! My God! too m—.