The Elephant Man and Other Reminiscences

by Frederick Treves

He was born, I found, at Salcombe, in Devonshire. At that place, as many know, the sea rushes in between two headlands and, pouring over rocky terraces and around sandy bays, flows by the little town and thence away up the estuary. At the last it creeps tamely among meadows and cornfields to the tottering quay at the foot of Kingsbridge.

On the estuary he had spent his early days, and here he and a boy after his own heart had made gracious acquaintance with the sea. When school was done the boys were ever busy among the creeks, playing at smugglers or at treasure seekers so long as the light lasted. Or they hung about the wharf, among the boats and the picturesque litter of the sea, where they recalled in ineffable colours the tales of pirates and the Spanish Main which they had read by the winter fire. The reality of the visions was made keener when they strutted about the deck of the poor semi-domestic coaling brig which leaned wearily against the harbour side or climbed over the bulwarks of the old schooner, which had been wrecked on the beach before they were born, with all the dash of buccaneers.

In their hearts they were both resolved to “follow the sea” but fate turned their footsteps elsewhere, for one became a mining engineer in the colonies and the other a clerk in a stockbroker’s office in London.

In spite of years of uncongenial work and of circumstances which took them far beyond the paradise of tides and salt winds the two boys, as men, ever kept green the memory of the romance-abounding sea. He who was to be a clerk became a pale-faced man who wore spectacles and whose back was bent from much stooping over books. I can think of him at his desk in the City on some day in June, gazing through a dingy window at a palisade of walls and roofs. The clerk’s pen is still, for the light on the chimney-pots has changed to a flood of sun upon the Devon cliffs, and the noise of the streets to the sound of waves tumbling among rocks or bubbling over pebbles. There are sea-gulls in the air, while far away a grey barque is blown along before the freshening breeze and the only roofs in view belong to the white cottages about the beach. Then comes the ring of a telephone bell and the dream vanishes.

So with the man whose life was cast in unkindly lands. He would recall times when the heat in the camp was stifling, when the heartless plain shimmered as if it burnt, when water was scarce and what there was of it was warm, while the torment of insects was beyond bearing. At such times he would wonder how the tide stood in the estuary at home. Was the flood swirling up from the Channel, bringing with its clear eddies the smell of the ocean as it hurried in and out among the piles of the old pier? Or was it the time of the ebb when stretches of damp sand come out at the foot of cliffs and when ridges of rock, dripping with cool weed, emerge once more into the sun? What a moment for a swim! Yet here on the veldt there was but half a pint of water in his can and a land stretching before him that was scorched to cracking, dusty and shadowless.

It was in connexion with his illness that I came across him. His trouble was obscure, but after much consideration it was decided that an operation, although a forlorn hope, should be attempted. If the disease proved to be benign there was prospect of a cure; if a cancer was discovered the outlook was hopeless.

He settled that he would have the operation performed at the seaside, at a town on the south coast, within easy reach of London. Rooms were secured for him in a house on the cliffs. From the windows stretched a fine prospect of the Channel, while from them also could be seen the little harbour of the place.

The surgeon and his assistant came down from London and I with them. The room in which the operation was to be performed was hard and unsympathetic. It had been cleared of all its accustomed furniture. On the bare floor a white sheet had been placed, and in the middle of this square stood the operation table like a machine of torture. Beyond the small bed the patient was to occupy and the tables set out for the instruments the room was empty. Two nurses were busy with the preparations for the operation and were gossiping genially in whispers. There was a large bow-window in the room of the type much favoured at seaside resorts. The window was stripped of its curtains so that the sunlight poured in upon the uncovered floor. It was a cloudless morning in July.

The hard-worked surgeon from London had a passion for sailing and had come with the hope that he might spend some hours on the sea after his work was done. His assistant and I were to go with him.

When all the preparations for the operation were completed the patient walked into the room erect and unconcerned. He stepped to the table and, mounting it jauntily, sat on it bolt upright and gazed out earnestly at the sea. Following his eyes I could see that in the harbour the men were already hoisting the mainsail of the little yawl in which we were to sail.