Assumptions, hasty, crude, and vain
Full oft to use will Science deign
The corks the novice plies today
The swimmer soon shall cast away.
A. H. Clough, Poem
Again I spring to make my choice
Again in tones of ire
I hear a God’s tremendous voice
Be counsel’d, and retire
Matthew Arnold, “The Lake
The trial of Lieutenant Emile de La Ronciere in 1835 is psychiatrically one of the most interesting of early nine-teenth-century cases. The son of the martinet Count de La Ronciere, Emile was evidently a rather frivolous—he had a mistress and got badly into debt—yet not unusual young man for his country, period and profession. In 1834 he was attached to the famous cavalry school at Saumur in the Loire valley. His commanding officer was the Baron de Morell, who had a highly strung daughter of sixteen, named Marie. In those days commanding officers’ houses served in garrison as a kind of mess for their subordinates. One evening the Baron, as stiffnecked as Emile’s father, but a good deal more influential, called the lieutenant up to him and, in the presence of his brother officers and several ladies, furiously ordered him to leave the house. The next day La Ronciere was presented with a vicious series of poison-pen letters threatening the Morell family. All displayed an uncanny knowledge of the most intimate details of the life of the household, and all—the first absurd flaw in the prosecution case—were signed with the lieutenant’s initials.
Worse was to come. On the night of September 24th, 1834, Marie’s English governess, a Miss Allen, was woken by her sixteen-year-old charge, who told in tears how La Ronci-ere, in full uniform, had just forced his way through the window into her adjacent bedroom, bolted the door, made obscene threats, struck her across the breasts and bitten her hand, then forced her to raise her night-chemise and wound-ed her in the upper thigh. He had then escaped by the way he had come.
The very next morning another lieutenant supposedly fa-vored by Marie de Morell received a highly insulting letter, again apparently from La Ronciere. A duel was fought. La Ronciere won, but the severely wounded adversary and his second refused to concede the falsity of the poison-pen charge. They threatened La Ronciere that his father would be told if he did not sign a confession of guilt; once that was done, the matter would be buried. After a night of agonized indecision, La Ronciere foolishly agreed to sign.
He then asked for leave and went to Paris, in the belief that the affair would be hushed up. But signed letters contin-ued to appear in the Morells’ house. Some claimed that Marie was pregnant, others that her parents would soon both be murdered, and so on. The Baron had had enough. La Ronciere was arrested.
The number of circumstances in the accused’s favor was so large that we can hardly believe today that he should have been brought to trial, let alone convicted. To begin with, it was common knowledge in Saumur that Marie had been piqued by La Ronciere’s obvious admiration for her hand-some mother, of whom the daughter was extremely envious. Then the Morell mansion was surrounded by sentries on the night of the attempted rape; not one had noticed anything untoward, even though the bedroom concerned was on the top floor and reachable only by a ladder it would have required at least three men to carry and “mount”—therefore a ladder that would have left traces in the soft soil beneath the window ... and the defense established that there had been none. Furthermore, the glazier brought in to mend the pane broken by the intruder testified that all the broken glass had fallen outside the house and that it was in any case impossible to reach the window catch through the small aperture made. Then the defense asked why during the as-sault Marie had never once cried for help; why the light-sleeping Miss Allen had not been woken by the scuffling; why she and Marie then went back to sleep without waking Madame de Morell, who slept through the whole incident on the floor below; why the thigh wound was not examined until months after the incident (and was then pronounced to be a light scratch, now fully healed); why Marie went to a ball only two evenings later and led a perfectly normal life until the arrest was finally made—when she promptly had a ner-vous breakdown (again, the defense showed that it was far from the first in her young life); how the letters could still appear in the house, even when the penniless La Ronciere was in jail awaiting trial; why any poison-pen letter-writer in his senses should not only not disguise his writing (which was easily copiable) but sign his name; why the letters showed an accuracy of spelling and grammar (students of French will be pleased to know that La Ronciere invariably forgot to make his past participles agree) conspicuously absent from genuine correspondence produced for comparison; why twice he even failed to spell his own name correctly; why the incriminating letters appeared to be written on paper—the greatest contemporary authority witnessed as much— identical to a sheaf found in Marie’s escritoire. Why and why and why, in short. As a final doubt, the defense also pointed out that a similar series of letters had been found previously in the Morells’ Paris house, and at a time when La Ronciere was on the other side of the world, doing service in Cayenne.
But the ultimate injustice at the trial (attended by Hugo, Balzac and George Sand among many other celebrities) was the court’s refusal to allow any cross-examination of the prosecution’s principal witness: Marie de Morell. She gave her evidence in a cool and composed manner; but the pres-ident of the court, under the cannon-muzzle eyes of the Baron and an imposing phalanx of distinguished relations, decided that her “modesty” and her “weak nervous state” forbade further interrogation.
La Ronciere was found guilty and sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment. Almost every eminent jurist in Europe pro-tested, but in vain. We can see why he was condemned, or rather, by what he was condemned: by social prestige, by the myth of the pure-minded virgin, by psychological ignorance, by a society in full reaction from the pernicious notions of freedom disseminated by the French Revolution.
But now let me translate the pages that the doctor had marked. They come from the Observations Medico-psychologiques of a Dr. Karl Matthaei, a well-known Ger-man physician of his time, written in support of an abortive appeal against the La Ronciere verdict. Matthaei had al-ready had the intelligence to write down the dates on which the more obscene letters, culminating in the attempted rape, had occurred. They fell into a clear monthly—or menstrual— pattern. After analyzing the evidence brought before the court, the Herr Doktor proceeds, in a somewhat moralistic tone, to explain the mental illness we today call hysteria—the assumption, that is, of symptoms of disease or disability in order to gain the attention and sympathy of others: a neuro-sis or psychosis almost invariably caused, as we now know, by sexual repression.
If I glance back over my long career as a doctor, I recall many incidents of which girls have been the heroines, although their par-ticipation seemed for long impossible . . .
Some forty years ago, I had among my patients the family of a lieutenant-general of cavalry. He had a small property some six miles from the town where he was in garrison, and he lived there, riding into town when his duties called. He had an exceptionally pretty daughter of sixteen years’ age. She wished fervently that her father lived in the town. Her exact reasons were never discov-ered, but no doubt she wished to have the company of the officers and the pleasures of society there. To get her way, she chose a highly criminal procedure: she set fire to the country home. A wing of it was burned to the ground. It was rebuilt. New attempts at arson were made: and one day once again part of the house went up in flames. No less than thirty attempts at arson were committed subsequently. However nearly one came upon the arsonist, his identity was never discovered. Many people were apprehended and interrogated. The one person who was never suspected was that beautiful young innocent daughter. Several years passed; and then finally she was caught in the act; and condemned to life im-prisonment in a house of correction.
In a large German city, a charming young girl of a distinguished family found her pleasure in sending anonymous letters whose purpose was to break up a recent happy marriage. She also spread vicious scandals concerning another young lady, widely admired for her talents and therefore an object of envy. These letters continued for several years. No shadow of suspicion fell on the authoress, though many other people were accused. At last she gave herself away, and was accused, and confessed to her crime ... She served a long sentence in prison for her evil.
Again, at the very time and in this very place where I write,* the police are investigating a similar affair . . .
Hanover, 1836.
It may be objected that Marie de Morell would not have in-flicted pain on herself to attain her ends. But her suffering was very slight compared to that in other cases from the annals of medicine. Here are some very remarkable instances.
Professor Herholdt of Copenhagen knew an attractive young woman of excellent education and well-to-do parents. He, like many of his colleagues, was completely deceived by her. She ap-plied the greatest skill and perseverance to her deceits, and over a course of several years. She even tortured herself in the most atrocious manner. She plunged some hundreds of needles into the flesh of various parts of her body: and when inflammation or suppuration had set in she had them removed by incision. She refused to urinate and had her urine removed each morning by means of a catheter. She herself introduced air into her bladder, which escaped when the instrument was inserted. For a year and a half she rested dumb and without movement, refused food, pretended spasms, fainting fits, and so on. Before her tricks were discovered, several famous doctors, some from abroad, examined her and were horror-struck to see such suffering. Her unhappy story was in all the news-papers, and no one doubted the authenticity of her case. Finally, in 1826, the truth was discovered. The sole motives of this clever fraud (cette adroite trompeuse) were to become an object of ad-miration and astonishment to men, and to make a fool of the most learned, famous and perceptive of them. The history of this case, so important from the psychological point of view, may be found in Herholdt: Notes on the illness of Rachel Hertz between 1807 and 1826.
At Luneburg, a mother and daughter hit on a scheme whose aim was to draw a lucrative sympathy upon themselves—a scheme they pursued to the end with an appalling determination. The daughter complained of unbearable pain in one breast, lamented and wept, sought the help of the professions, tried all their remedies. The pain continued; a cancer was suspected. She herself elected without hesitation to have the breast extirpated; it was found to be per-fectly healthy. Some years later, when sympathy for her had less-ened, she took up her old role. The other breast was removed, and was found to be as healthy as the first. When once again sympathy began to dry up, she complained of pain in the hand. She wanted that too to be amputated. But suspicion was aroused. She was sent to hospital, accused of false pretenses, and finally dispatched to prison.
Lentin, in his Supplement to a practical knowledge of medicine (Hanover, 1798) tells this story, of which he was a witness. From a girl of no great age were drawn, by the medium of forceps after previous incision of the bladder and its neck, no less than one hundred and four stones in ten months. The girl herself introduced the stones into her bladder, even though the subsequent operations caused her great loss of blood and atrocious pain. Before this, she had had vomiting, convulsions and violent symptoms of many kinds. She showed a rare skill in her deceptions.
After such examples, which it would be easy to extend, who would say that it is impossible for a girl, in order to attain a de-sired end, to inflict pain upon herself
I cannot leave the story of La Ronciere—which I have taken from the same 1835 account that Dr. Grogan handed Charles—without add-ing that in 1848, some years after the lieutenant had finished his time, one of the original prosecuting counsel had the belated honesty to sus-pect that he had helped procure a gross miscarriage of justice. He was by then in a position to have the case reopened. La Roncifere was com-pletely exonerated and rehabilitated. He resumed his military career and might, at that very hour Charles was reading the black climax of his life, have been found leading a pleasant enough existence as mili-tary governor of Tahiti. But his story has an extraordinary final twist. Only quite recently has it become known that he at least partly deserved the hysterical Mile de Morell’s revenge on him. He had indeed entered her bedroom on that September night of 1834; but not through the window. Having earlier seduced the governess Miss Allen (perfide Albion!), he made a much simpler entry from her adjoining bedroom. The purpose of his visit was not amatory, but in fulfillment of a bet he had made with some brother officers, to whom he had boasted of hav-ing slept with Marie. He was challenged to produce proof in the form of a lock of hair—but not from the girl’s head. The wound in Marie’s thigh was caused by a pair of scissors; and the wound to her self-esteem becomes a good deal more explicable. An excellent discussion of this bizarre case may be found in Rene Floriot, Les Erreurs Judic-iaires, Paris, 1968.
Those latter pages were the first Charles read. They came as a brutal shock to him, for he had no idea that such perversions existed—and in the pure and sacred sex. Nor, of course, could he see mental illness of the hysteric kind for what it is: a pitiable striving for love and security. He turned to the beginning of the account of the trial and soon found himself drawn fatally on into that. I need hardly say that he identified himself almost at once with the miserable Emile de La Ronciere; and towards the end of the trial he came upon a date that sent a shiver down his spine. The day that other French lieutenant was condemned was the very same day that Charles had come into the world. For a moment, in that silent Dorset night, reason and science dissolved; life was a dark machine, a sinister astrology, a verdict at birth and without appeal, a zero over all.
He had never felt less free.
And he had never felt less sleepy. He looked at his watch. It lacked ten minutes of four o’clock. All was peace now outside. The storm had passed. Charles opened a window and breathed in the cold but clean spring air. Stars twinkled faintly overhead, innocently, disclaiming influence, either sin-ister or beneficent. And where was she? Awake also, a mile or two away, in some dark woodland darkness.
The effects of the cobbler and Grogan’s brandy had long worn off, leaving Charles only with a profound sense of guilt. He thought he recalled a malice in the Irish doctor’s eyes, a storing-up of this fatuous London gentleman’s troubles that would soon be whispered and retailed all over Lyme. Was it not notorious that his race could not keep a secret
How puerile, how undignified his behavior had been! He had lost not only Winsyatt that previous day, but all his self-respect. Even that last phrase was a tautology; he had, quite simply, lost respect for everything he knew. Life was a pit in Bedlam. Behind the most innocent faces lurked the vilest iniquities. He was Sir Galahad shown Guinevere to be a whore.
To stop the futile brooding—if only he could act!—he picked up the fatal book and read again some of the passages in Matthaei’s paper on hysteria. He saw fewer parallels now with Sarah’s conduct. His guilt began to attach itself to its proper object. He tried to recollect her face, things she had said, the expression in her eyes as she had said them; but he could not grasp her. Yet it came to him that he knew her better, perhaps, than any other human being did. That ac-count of their meetings he had given Grogan . . . that he could remember, and almost word for word. Had he not, in his anxiety to hide his own real feelings, misled Grogan? Exaggerated her strangeness? Not honestly passed on what she had actually said
Had he not condemned her to avoid condemning himself
Endlessly he paced his sitting room, searching his soul and his hurt pride. Suppose she was what she had represented herself to be—a sinner, certainly, but also a woman of exceptional courage, refusing to turn her back on her sin? And now finally weakened in her terrible battle with her past and crying for help
Why had he allowed Grogan to judge her for him
Because he was more concerned to save appearances than his own soul. Because he had no more free will than an ammonite. Because he was a Pontius Pilate, a worse than he, not only condoning the crucifixion but encouraging, nay, even causing—did not all spring from that second meeting, when she had wanted to leave, but had had discussion of her situation forced upon her?—the events that now led to its execution.
He opened the window again. Two hours had passed since he had first done so. Now a faint light spread from the east. He stared up at the paling stars.
Destiny.
Those eyes.
Abruptly he turned.
If he met Grogan, he met him. His conscience must explain his disobedience. He went into his bedroom. And there, with an outward sour gravity reflecting the inward, self-awed and indecipherable determination he had come to, he began to change his clothes.
