What I Remember, Volume 1

by Thomas Adolphus Trollope

“The phenomena I have witnessed are certainly most extraordinary and unaccountable. That one young woman was thrown into a convulsive state, is entirely undeniable. Her muscles, which we felt, were hard, rigid, and in a state of tension, and so remained for a longer time than it is possible for any person voluntarily to keep them so—for, I should say, at least twenty minutes. A little girl became to all appearance somnambulous. This, however, might more possibly be imposture. When the little girl and the young woman were placed near each other, the effect on both was increased, and the girl instead of being merely somnambulous became convulsive. The little girl, as far as the CLOSE observation of the onlookers could detect [underlining in original], saw the colours of objects, &c., with her eyes closed. This, however, is evidence of a nature easily deceptive. When waked from her magnetic trance, she forgot, or professed to have forgotten, all that she had said or done when in it. But when again put into a state of trance or somnambulism, she again remembered and spoke of what had occurred in the former trance.

“After these patients were disposed of, two young men of the spectators offered themselves as subjects to the magnetiser. He said that they were not good subjects for it, and that it would be difficult to affect them, and would take a long time. He then tried me, and after a short space of time, I think not more than half a minute, he said that I was very sensitive to the magnetic influence, and that in two or three sittings he could produce ‘des effets extraordinaires’ on me; but that he was then tired, and that ‘rien ne coule plus’ from his fingers.”

It is not so stated in my diary, but I remember perfectly well that the general impression left on my mind by the Baron was not a favourable one. I find by my diary that I read his book, translated from the French by Miss Skerret, a few days afterwards, and the result was to increase the above impression. But I was far from coming to the conclusion that his pretensions were all chimerical. As regards his dictum about my own impressionability, I may observe, that on various occasions at long distant times, I have been subjected to the experiments of several professing magnetisers of reputed first-rate power, but that never has the slightest effect of any kind whatever been produced upon me. Sometimes I was pronounced to be physically a bad subject; sometimes I was accused of spoiling the experiment by wilfully resisting the influence; sometimes the magnetiser was too tired.

I think I may as well throw together here the rest of my experiences and reminiscences in connection with this subject—or rather some selections from them, for I have at different times and places seen so much of it, that I might fill volumes with the reports of my observations.

On the 13th of February, 1839, my mother and I dined with Mr. Grattan to meet Dr. Elliotson, and on the following day we went by appointment to meet him at the house of a patient of his, a little boy in Red Lion Street. I saw subsequently a great deal of Dr. Elliotson, and I may say became intimate with him. It needed but little intercourse with him to perceive that here was a man of a very different calibre from Baron Dupotet. Without at all coming to the conclusion that the latter was a charlatan, it was abundantly evident to me that Elliotson was in no degree such. He was a gentleman, a highly educated and accomplished man, and so genuinely in earnest on this subject of “animal magnetism,” as it was the fashion then to call it, that he was ready to spend and be spent in his efforts to establish the truthfulness and therapeutic usefulness of its pretensions.

Here is the account of what we—my mother and I—witnessed on that 14th of February, as given in my diary written the same day:—

“He put the little boy to sleep very shortly, then drew him by magnetic passes out of his chair, and caused him while evidently all the time asleep, to imitate him [Dr. Elliotson] in all his attitudes and movements. We both firmly believed that the boy was asleep. We then went to the house of another patient, Emma Melhuish, the daughter of a glazier, sixteen years old, and ill in bed from cataleptic fits.”

This was a very remarkable case, and had attracted considerable attention. Emma Melhuish was a very beautiful girl, and she was perhaps the most remarkable instance I ever witnessed of a singular phenomenon resulting from magnetic sleep, which has been often spoken of in relation to other cases—the truly wonderful spiritual beauty assumed by the features and expression of the patient during superinduced cataleptic trance, which has never, I believe, been observed in cases of natural catalepsy. I have seen this girl, Emma Melhuish (doubtless a very pretty girl in her normal state of health, but with nothing intellectually or morally special about her), throw herself during her magnetic trance into attitudes of adoration, the grace and expressiveness of which no painter could hope to find in the best model he ever saw or heard of, while her face and features, eyes especially, assumed a rapt and ecstatic expressiveness which no Saint Theresa could have equalled. It was a conception of Fra Angelico spiritualised by the presence of the breath of life. Never shall I forget the look of the girl as I saw her in that condition! I can see her now! and can remember, as I felt it then, the painfulness of the suggestion that such an apparent outlook of the soul was in truth nothing more than the result of certain purely material conditions of the body. But was it such?

Here is my diary’s account of what I saw that first day:—

“We found her in mesmeric sleep, she having been so since left by Dr. Elliotson in that condition the day before. We heard her predict the time when her fits would recur, and saw the prediction verified with the utmost exactitude. We heard her declare in what part of the house her various sisters were at the moment, saying that one had just left the counting-house and had come into the next room, all which statements we carefully verified. My mother and myself came home fully persuaded that, let the explanatory theory of the matter be what it might, there had been no taint of imposture in what we had witnessed.”