The French Lieutenant's Woman - John Fowles (33 page)

If I glance back over my
long career as a doctor, I recall many incidents of which girls have been
the heroines, although their participation 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 discovered,
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 imprisonment 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 inflicted 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 applied
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 newspapers, 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 admiration 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 perfectly healthy. Some
years later, when sympathy for her had lessened, 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 desired 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 adding that in 1848, some years after
the lieutenant had finished his time, one of the original prosecuting counsel
had the belated honesty to suspect 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 completely 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 military
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 having 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 Judiciaires,
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 sinister 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 account 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.
 
 

For a breeze of
morning moves,
And the planet of Love is
on high . . .
--
Tennyson, Maud (1855)

It is a part of
special prudence never to do anything because one has an inclination to
do it; but because it is one's duty, or is reasonable.
--
Matthew Arnold, Notebooks
(1868)

But his gloom (and a self-suspicion
I have concealed, that his decision was really based more on the old sheepstealer's
adage, on a dangerous despair, than on the nobler movings of his conscience)
had an even poorer time of it there; the quick walking sent a flood of
warmth through him, a warmth from inside complemented by the warmth from
without brought by the sun's rays. It seemed strangely distinct, this undefiled
dawn sun. It had almost a smell, as of warm stone, a sharp dust of photons
streaming down through space. Each grass-blade was pearled with vapor.
On the slopes above his path the trunks of the ashes and sycamores, a honey
gold in the oblique sunlight, erected their dewy green vaults of young
leaves; there was something mysteriously religious about them, but of a
religion before religion; a druid balm, a green sweetness over all ...
and such an infinity of greens, some almost black in the further recesses
of the foliage; from the most intense emerald to the palest pomona. A fox
crossed his path and strangely for a moment stared, as if Charles was the
intruder; and then a little later, with an uncanny similarity, with the
same divine assumption of possession, a roe deer looked up from its browsing;
and stared in its small majesty before quietly turning tail and slipping
away into the thickets. There is a painting by Pisanello in the National
Gallery that catches exactly such a moment: St. Hubert in an early Renaissance
forest, confronted by birds and beasts. The saint is shocked, almost as
if the victim of a practical joke, all his arrogance dowsed by a sudden
drench of Nature's profound-est secret: the universal parity of existence.