There was another thing held up very prominently to the patients, and also to outsiders. This was, that patients are not obliged to work either in the house or in the field, unless they chose to do so, and that no coercion is used either by the attendants or superintendents.
And this doctrine some believe; and indeed it is true with a qualification, but that qualification spoils it. The fact is simply this, that if a patient is told to do a thing whether it is to work in the house or in the field, that if that patient does it, all is well—if not, the patient must take the consequences, perhaps that patient is changed to some other hall, provided he or she is on the first, or some other lower hall; but suppose a patient is on the ninth or tenth or the old eleventh hall, and is told to do something and refuses?
Perhaps they would not be removed, for to remove them would be no punishment; but would the attendants on these halls submit to it? No one had better believe this. It is precisely in the asylum as it was in a certain school in this country; a boy was punished for violating the rules of the school, the teacher punished him; the boy made complaint to his father; his father told him he need not obey the rules of the school unless he chose to, but must go back to school.
The boy returned the next day and was punished again; he again made complaint to his father, the father still told him that he need not obey the teacher unless he chose to do so, but must return to school, he went the third day and was punished as before, he again made complaint to his father. His father then told him that he need not obey the rules of the school unless he chose to do so, if he preferred punishment, rather them to obey, but to school he must go.
By this time the boy waked up; he saw it was punishment or obedience; so with patients in the asylum, they are not obliged to work unless they choose to do so. But it is a base deception to pretend that patients are not obliged to work in the asylum.
I would recommend that all men who are sent to the asylum be permitted and advised to let their beards grow, and not shave at all during their stay there, especially on any other hall except the first, for the attendants do all the shaving; the patient is not permitted to shave himself, except on one or two of the halls, and so far as my experience goes, it is more like skinning than shaving; the razors are horrible things, as one of the attendants said to me “he should get it off unless the handle of the razor broke.” I then understood the saying, “that it is easier to skin than to be skinned.”
While confined in my prison-house my mind was continually haunted with the “Lament of Tasso,” and that the outside world may have a faint idea of my feelings while there, I will append a few extracts from that work:[D]
“Long years of outrage, calumny and wrong;
Imputed madness, prison'd solitude,
And the mind's canker in its savage mood,
When the impatient thirst of light and air
Parches the heart; and the abhorred grate,
Marring the sunbeams with its hideous shade,
Works through the throbbing eyeball to the brain,
With a hot sense of heaviness and pain;
And bare, at once, captivity displayed,
Stands scoffing through the never-opened gate,
Which nothing through its bars admits save day
And tasteless food, which I have eat alone,
Till its unsocial bitterness is gone;
And I can banquet like a beast of prey,
Sullen and lonely, couching in the cave,
Which is my lair, and it may be—my grave.
All this hath somewhat worn me, and may wear,
But must be borne. I stoop not to despair;
For I have battled with mine agony,
And made me wings wherewith to overfly
The narrow circus of my dungeon wall.
I weep and inly bleed,
With this last bruise upon a broken reed.
What is left me now?
For I have anguish yet to bear—and how?
I know not that, but in the innate force
Of my own spirits shall be found resource.
I have not sunk, for I had no remorse,
Nor cause for such—they called me mad—and why?
Oh, my judges! will not you reply?
Above me, hark! the long and maniac cry,
Of minds and bodies in captivity,
And hark! the lash and the increasing howl,
And the half inarticulate blasphemy!
There be some here with worse than frenzy foul,
Some who do still goad on the o'er labored mind,
And dim the little light that's left behind,
With needless torture, as their tyrant will
Is wound up to the lust of doing ill;
With these, and with their victims, am I classed,
'Mid sounds and sights like these, long years have passed.
'Mid sights and sounds like these my life may close;
So let it be—for then I shall repose.