A Mortal Antipathy

by Oliver Wendell Holmes

Alas! this was not all. While I was suffering from the effects of my fall among the thorns I was attended by my old nurse, assisted by another old woman, by a physician, and my father, who would take his share in caring for me. It was thought best to keep me perfectly quiet, and strangers and friends were alike excluded from my nursery, with one exception, that my old grandmother came in now and then. With her it seems that I was somewhat timid and shy, following her with rather anxious eyes, as if not quite certain whether or not she was dangerous. But one day, when I was far advanced towards recovery, my father brought in a young lady, a relative of his, who had expressed a great desire to see me. She was, as I have been told, a very handsome girl, of about the same age as my cousin Laura, but bearing no personal resemblance to her in form, features, or complexion. She had no sooner entered the room than the same sudden changes which had followed my cousin's visit began to show themselves, and before she had reached my bedside I was in a state of deadly collapse, as on the occasions already mentioned.

Some time passed before any recurrence of these terrifying seizures. A little girl of five or six years old was allowed to come into the nursery one day and bring me some flowers. I took them from her hand, but turned away and shut my eyes. There was no seizure, but there was a certain dread and aversion, nothing more than a feeling which it might be hoped that time would overcome. Those around me were gradually finding out the circumstances which brought on the deadly attack to which I was subject.

The daughter of one of our near neighbors was considered the prettiest girl of the village where we were passing the summer. She was very anxious to see me, and as I was now nearly well it was determined that she should be permitted to pay me a short visit. I had always delighted in seeing her and being caressed by her. I was sleeping when she entered the nursery and came and took a seat at my side in perfect silence. Presently I became restless, and a moment later I opened my eyes and saw her stooping over me. My hand went to my left breast,—the color faded from my cheeks,—I was again the cold marble image so like death that it had well-nigh been mistaken for it.

Could it be possible that the fright which had chilled my blood had left me with an unconquerable fear of woman at the period when she is most attractive not only to adolescents, but to children of tender age, who feel the fascination of her flowing locks, her bright eyes, her blooming cheeks, and that mysterious magnetism of sex which draws all life into its warm and potently vitalized atmosphere? So it did indeed seem. The dangerous experiment could not be repeated indefinitely. It was not intentionally tried again, but accident brought about more than one renewal of it during the following years, until it became fully recognized that I was the unhappy subject of a mortal dread of woman,—not absolutely of the human female, for I had no fear of my old nurse or of my grandmother, or of any old wrinkled face, and I had become accustomed to the occasional meeting of a little girl or two, whom I nevertheless regarded with a certain ill-defined feeling that there was danger in their presence. I was sent to a boys' school very early, and during the first ten or twelve years of my life I had rarely any occasion to be reminded of my strange idiosyncrasy.

As I grew out of boyhood into youth, a change came over the feelings which had so long held complete possession of me. This was what my father and his advisers had always anticipated, and was the ground of their confident hope in my return to natural conditions before I should have grown to mature manhood.

How shall I describe the conflicts of those dreamy, bewildering, dreadful years? Visions of loveliness haunted me sleeping and waking. Sometimes a graceful girlish figure would so draw my eyes towards it that I lost sight of all else, and was ready to forget all my fears and find myself at her side, like other youths by the side of young maidens,—happy in their cheerful companionship, while I,—I, under the curse of one blighting moment, looked on, hopeless. Sometimes the glimpse of a fair face or the tone of a sweet voice stirred within me all the instincts that make the morning of life beautiful to adolescence. I reasoned with myself:

Why should I not have outgrown that idle apprehension which had been the nightmare of my earlier years? Why should not the rising tide of life have drowned out the feeble growths that infested the shallows of childhood? How many children there are who tremble at being left alone in the dark, but who, a few years later, will smile at their foolish terrors and brave all the ghosts of a haunted chamber! Why should I any longer be the slave of a foolish fancy that has grown into a half insane habit of mind? I was familiarly acquainted with all the stories of the strange antipathies and invincible repugnances to which others, some of them famous men, had been subject. I said to myself, Why should not I overcome this dread of woman as Peter the Great fought down his dread of wheels rolling over a bridge? Was I, alone of all mankind, to be doomed to perpetual exclusion from the society which, as it seemed to me, was all that rendered existence worth the trouble and fatigue of slavery to the vulgar need of supplying the waste of the system and working at the task of respiration like the daughters of Danaus,—toiling day and night as the worn-out sailor labors at the pump of his sinking vessel?

Why did I not brave the risk of meeting squarely, and without regard to any possible danger, some one of those fair maidens whose far-off smile, whose graceful movements, at once attracted and agitated me? I can only answer this question to the satisfaction of any really inquiring reader by giving him the true interpretation of the singular phenomenon of which I was the subject. For this I shall have to refer to a paper of which I have made a copy, and which will be found included with this manuscript. It is enough to say here, without entering into the explanation of the fact, which will be found simple enough as seen by the light of modern physiological science, that the “nervous disturbance” which the presence of a woman in the flower of her age produced in my system was a sense of impending death, sudden, overwhelming, unconquerable, appalling. It was a reversed action of the nervous centres,—the opposite of that which flushes the young lover's cheek and hurries his bounding pulses as he comes into the presence of the object of his passion. No one who has ever felt the sensation can have failed to recognize it as an imperative summons, which commands instant and terrified submission.

It was at this period of my life that my father determined to try the effect of travel and residence in different localities upon my bodily and mental condition. I say bodily as well as mental, for I was too slender for my height and subject to some nervous symptoms which were a cause of anxiety. That the mind was largely concerned in these there was no doubt, but the mutual interactions of mind and body are often too complex to admit of satisfactory analysis. Each is in part cause and each also in part effect.

We passed some years in Italy, chiefly in Rome, where I was placed in a school conducted by priests, and where of course I met only those of my own sex. There I had the opportunity of seeing the influences under which certain young Catholics, destined for the priesthood, are led to separate themselves from all communion with the sex associated in their minds with the most subtle dangers to which the human soul can be exposed. I became in some degree reconciled to the thought of exclusion from the society of women by seeing around me so many who were self-devoted to celibacy. The thought sometimes occurred to me whether I should not find the best and the only natural solution of the problem of existence, as submitted to myself, in taking upon me the vows which settle the whole question and raise an impassable barrier between the devotee and the object of his dangerous attraction.