He Wanted the Moon

by Mimi Baird,Eve Claxton

  “Dr. Lang wants you to call him,” Gretta informed me.

  At this point I should have had every reason to realize the hazardous nature of my position. A call from Dr. Lang—the superintendent of Westborough State Hospital—should have indicated the possibility of my return to that psychiatric institution, a prospect that had long filled me with a sense of miserable apprehension.

  In my wallet, I had about six hundred dollars. I could have walked out of my room on the pretext of going to the drug store and could have managed to get out of the state. If I had done so, I might have saved myself months of grief and despair. But—by some cruel stroke of fate, by some strange absence of any sense of caution—I went right on with what I was doing, paying slight heed to the dark cloud hanging low over me.

  At my request, Charlotte called Dr. Reg Smithwick and asked him to see whether he could get a room at Massachusetts General Hospital for a few days of careful chemical studies of blood and urine. There were no rooms available.

  As I dictated to Charlotte, I began collecting urine specimens in empty Coca Cola bottles, placing the specimens on the window ledge to keep them cool. I recall that the output of urine was quite large and seemed to be controlled by thought and emotion. When pleasurable ideas came to mind, I could seem to feel my bladder filling up. But when I felt anxiety, the flow of urine seemed to cease. I wonder whether the renal arteries and arterioles were expanding and contracting under the influence of nervous stress and nervous relaxation.

  During these activities I made occasional trips to the bathroom and rubbed olive oil into my skin and hair. For some weeks my hair had been exceedingly dry, so much so that it would not stay in place after being combed and showed a tendency to stick up in all directions. It looked and felt like straw. This condition had developed at the end of a three- or four-month period of time during which I had followed a successful weight-reducing program cutting out all butter. Though I had continued to consume cod liver oil capsules containing vitamin A, this source did not evidently replace the loss from omission of butter. I feel sure that I was suffering from real vitamin A deficiency.

  My food arrived. I had ordered an enormous meal consisting of about six eggs, two steaks and other items. My behavior was certainly unrestrained, to say the least. Charlotte left.

  Soon after, my wife Gretta arrived with the children. She remained standing and began to make preparation to leave almost immediately after arriving.

  Our eldest daughter, Mimi, was standing near me.

  “I want to stay with Daddy,” she said.

  Instantly, Gretta found some excuse for taking Mimi with her and they left. Gretta’s final remark was that they were going to The Country Club to skate.

  I went to the bar, consuming another Coca Cola. I decided to follow Gretta to The Country Club and went out to get a taxi. At The Country Club, I walked towards the skating pond, but I couldn’t find Gretta and the children and so returned to the clubhouse. As I came to the door, they were just leaving.

  “I’ll come back for you,” Gretta said.

  “Don’t bother,” I replied.

  Gretta left to go home; I remained to face the tragedy of a lifetime.

  Inside the clubhouse, I sat on the large divan looking out over the racetrack and golf course, and ordered a Coca Cola. The large old majestic trees and vast expanse of snow-covered lawn that can be seen from the side of the clubhouse form a beautiful and restful view. Very few people were around. I went over and spoke to a few friends. One of them refused to have a drink with me. (Could he have known that I was trying to keep my promise to my psychiatrist not to drink?) He acted a little strangely. Later he departed.

  I ordered a martini that I sipped slowly. At this stage of events other friends began to file in, including Storer Baldwin, who walked up to me in a friendly manner, shaking my hand.

  “Hello,” he said.

  I rose and spoke to him.

  “I hate you!” I added softly.

  Storer looked at me in rather a strange manner.

  “That’s pleasant,” he said.

  I heard someone say that Storer had ordered tea. I looked over his way, and to my astonishment, he was sitting before the fireplace with a tray of tea and sandwiches before him and surrounded by his customary group of friends and their children.

  As if in a trance, I walked over to Storer, and watched him drink tea. I looked around and said hello to some of my friends. I laid my half empty martini glass on Storer’s tray and walked away.

  The President of the Massachusetts Medical Society, Dr. Channing Frothingham, and his wife came into the room.

  I sat down with Dr. and Mrs. Frothingham and talked with them for a few minutes. Dr. Frothingham invited me to have a drink with them and to eat with them. I felt greatly honored because I have always admired Dr. Frothingham. I recall discussing court tennis, at which Dr. Frothingham had been a world champion. I made some sort of a boast that I thought I could beat him (manic overconfidence). I hope the remark sounded humorous.

  A boy came along and said that someone wanted me at the front. Completely innocent of the nature of this call, I walked out of the living room and down the corridor. I recognized plain-clothes policemen—three of them standing at the front desk near the telephone operator. By now, it was too late to retrace my steps. I walked into the midst of them and soon verified my suspicions: they had come to take me to Westborough State Hospital.

  I knew that I needed help. I felt a desperate desire to escape the horror of returning to a psychiatric institution. I went to the club telephone booth and began to call my psychiatrist friends but they were not at home. I reached our family physician, Dr. Porter, and told him what was about to happen. I asked him to help me.

  “It’s up to you, my boy,” he said.

  What could he have meant by this statement?

  I might have thought to call my lawyer, but I didn’t. Finally I called Dr. Lang, Superintendent of Westborough Hospital.

  “I think you’d better come on out,” Lang said dryly.

  I left the telephone booth.

  “There’s no hurry, Doctor,” said the policeman in charge.

  “Please excuse me,” I replied. “I’d like to go back and speak to my friend, Dr. Frothingham.”

  I went back into the living room and found that Dr. and Mrs. Frothingham had gone into the dining room. I went to their table and drew up a chair.

  “They have come to take me back to Westborough,” I said in a voice that was soft but which must have betrayed my despair.

  Mrs. Frothingham sat very quietly, saying nothing, but looking very tense.

  I walked into the living room and found our Chestnut Hill neighbor, Helen Webster, sitting with a group of guests. To my own surprise I went over and sat close to her, placing my head on her shoulder. Her friends looked surprised. She rose immediately and took me by the arm.

  Helen and I walked to the entrance to the men’s bar and stood there alone for a moment.

  “Will you kiss me, Helen?” I asked.

  Helen came up to me and kissed me very softly on the cheek and left.

  Dr. Frothingham and a group of Club members came down the hallway with the policemen.

  “All of Perry’s troubles are sexual,” said Dr. Frothingham as he walked into the bar.

  I looked around at the many people surrounding me. Suddenly three state troopers came into the room and stood at the edge of the crowd.

  I was standing with my hands behind my back. The plain-clothes policeman slipped a pair of handcuffs on my wrists. I felt him doing it. I did not resist. Suddenly, two policemen raised me into the air, assisted by two club members. I held my body stiff. I closed my eyes. I was lowered to my feet at the door of a state police patrol car and slipped into the backseat. Two state police officers stepped in and sat down, one on each side of me. Two other state policemen sat in the front seat. We drove away.

  And so the wheel of fortune turns slowly round and round and stops here for
a bit of success or happiness and again for other dictates of circumstance.

  I am caught, caught, caught.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The state troopers who apprehended my father at The Country Club drove him immediately to Westborough State Hospital, a thirty-mile distance. This was not my father’s first visit to a mental institution. By 1944, he had already been held at three other hospitals during past manic breaks, in addition to a stay at Westborough the previous year. In the course of each hospital visit, his doctors kept detailed medical records, so that on his readmittance in February of 1944, the following notes on his life and medical history were readily available:

  Westborough State Hospital,

  Massachusetts, 1944

  The patient was born in Mexia, Texas, July 8, 1903, after a very difficult labor by forceps. Early development seemed entirely normal. He began life as an extremely energetic, self-confident, rather aggressive child. He bit his nails and was afraid of dogs, but no other neurotic traits were ascertained.

  The patient started school at six. He always seemed rather precocious mentally, but because of his extreme energy and over-activity, he was not particularly studious as a child. It was difficult to make him understand that he had to study and he failed in the First Grade. He was chastised by his father, which consisted one night of an almost continuous two-hour beating. After this, he became a good student.

  The patient’s father was a brilliant, domineering and powerful character who was easily angered and susceptible to mood swings. He was not liked but respected by everyone. The father had had a nervous breakdown as a young man, type unknown. The father’s profession was dentist. The mother was described as a sensitive, stable, self-sacrificing, sweet and lovable person.

  When the boy was ten, the father felt he had broken his spirit so he changed his tactics and encouraged him to fight back and show spirit. The patient rapidly developed into an aggressive and self-reliant person and became a natural leader. He also became conscious of mood fluctuations.

  In high school, the patient was head of the class and graduated an honor man. He graduated from the University of Texas at the age of 21 in 1924 a Phi Beta Kappa. He entered Harvard Medical School that fall. At Harvard, he never did anything socially but spent all his time in study. He slept little and worked much. His associates and classmates admired him for his outstanding brilliance.

  He never underestimated himself. He published a paper while still an undergraduate and, during his last year, he taught freshman physiology. In 1928 he had the distinction of graduating from Harvard Medical School, magna cum laude. He had his internship at Ann Arbor for two years, where he was an instructor. Following this he was a resident for two years at Massachusetts General Hospital. He did unusually well in both positions.

  The patient met his wife in January 1931 and married her after a ten-month courtship. At the time, he was 29 and she was 21. He described his wife as a beautiful woman, with a natural endowment of personality and character. His married life was very happy except that his wife initially did not wish to have children for fear there would be insanity, since her father had had several depressive attacks. The patient and his wife were sexually well adjusted.

  In 1932 he accepted a Harvard Fellowship to study skin diseases with Dr. John Stokes in Philadelphia. He was doing exceedingly well until he had his first manic attack in December 1932. He had been working on a paper and sent it to his associates in Boston for their comment. When the manuscript was returned and many changes were made, the patient felt indignant. He decided to write a fictional short story that he talked about incessantly and could not keep off his mind. He wrote the whole story, except for details, within 24 hours. He was so sure that he could sell this story, that on receiving his salary, he spent the entire amount. He thought that he had cures for various ailments, refused to eat anything, and would only drink milk. He could not sleep, became extremely irritable, threatening and pugnacious. He begged his wife not to cross him in any way.

  After a whole week without sleep, he left Philadelphia for New York City to see about publishing this story. While in New York he had bought many clothes, which he did not need, rode about in taxis, which was most unusual for him. While in New York he met a physician friend whom he had known in Boston, who recognized the patient’s excited condition and had him return to Philadelphia.

  The patient was sent to the Philadelphia Hospital for Mental and Nervous Diseases and remained there twenty-five days. Here he showed extreme mental over-activity. His speech was rapid but distinct, as was his mood. He was voluble and over-productive. He made many gestures and with some facial grimacing. He climbed over the furniture and jumped on the piano to examine a clock. He insisted on climbing several trees and a flagpole while out on a walk. On another occasion, he picked up a table and threw it away from him in a burst of energy.

  At first, he was fairly coherent. He talked principally about his paper and occasionally got fairly far afield and often did not pursue the discussion through to its completion. Several days later, he was far more distractible and broke off in the midst of explaining some matter and spoke about something he noticed on the wall. He played one piece on the piano over and over again, explaining that he was using the music to interpret his past activities.

  At times he was very irritable and threatening to anyone’s interfering with what he wanted to do. He felt that there were crowds of people about the hospital who had heard that he was there and were trying to get in to look at the person who had made such wonderful discoveries. He showed considerable insight into his condition and said that he knew that he was “manic.” He said he recognized the hospital was the best place for him. At other times, he denied this. He said that at one time when he became very much excited he had had delusions and hallucinations, but that these were just a product of his excited and confused states at these times.

  One week after admission, it was decided to give him Narcosis treatment by means of sodium amytal. The matter was explained to the patient and he agreed at once and asked that it be started immediately. Half an hour later he was asleep after an intravenous injection of thirteen grains of amytal. He continued to be narcotized almost continuously. During these periods he talked a little in a drowsy way, still showing some manic tendencies. He required tube feeding.

  Eleven days later the narcosis was terminated. In the drowsy state following this termination, the patient mixed up his words a good deal, became restless and was rather noisy the following night. The next morning however he was much quieter but somewhat confused and still unsteady. A week later, his condition having remained good, he left the hospital with his wife. There was a slight question as to whether he was not still slightly hypo-manic, but those who knew him said that he was no more so than he seemed many times when in his apparently normal condition. He was discharged recovered.

  Diagnosis: Manic-Depressive Psychosis, Manic Type.

  CHAPTER THREE

  (photograph credit 3.1)

  After driving for an hour, my father and the state troopers turned through the great stone gates leading to Westborough State Hospital, following a long, snow-banked driveway uphill. They arrived at the main administrative building, a vast red-brick Victorian bastion that formed the centerpiece of the Westborough complex. Founded in 1886, the hospital remained one of the largest psychiatric institutions in Massachusetts, housing somewhere in the region of two thousand patients.

  At the time of my father’s arrival, Westborough was run by Dr. Walter E. Lang, chief psychiatrist and superintendent, a man that my father neither liked nor respected. This being 1944, it must have been extraordinarily challenging to staff the hospital and to maintain basic standards during wartime, while so many men were overseas and with rationing still in effect. My father had hoped to serve as a military doctor, but he was deemed ineligible due to his history of mental illness. Now, he found himself in the back of a police car, being transported to Westborough for his second stay in less than a ye
ar.

  THE handcuffs were fitted tightly and were cutting into my wrists. They hurt a great deal. I did not complain but as I twisted my wrists and tried to make them more comfortable, the handcuffs seemed to close more and more tightly. I found out later that these handcuffs were actually equipped with a device that made them close more securely and tightly as the wearer struggles against them.

  After admission, I was taken directly to a small cell in the upper floor of one of the violent wards. I sat on the edge of the bed. An officer had just released one of my wrists from its shackle and the key was still in the handcuffs. I toyed with these handcuffs as they dangled from my left wrist and, with the help of a few suggestions from one of the policemen, I loosened the steel shackle and handed it to him.

  The state troopers went out the door, leaving three attendants with me. They directed me to remove my clothing. As I took off my garments, the reality of being back in a psychopathic hospital swept over me with added vigor. The damage of this procedure to one’s dignity is inestimable. It takes away self-control; self-respect. As I took each article of my clothing off, I threw it to the attendants. My watch, residing in my vest pocket, took this aerial circuit, but was caught with the vest by an alert attendant and was saved from damage.

  After the undressing procedure, there is always an embarrassing period while one stands naked in the presence of strangers. This embarrassment is relieved only in part by the drab clothing which is presented: ill-fitting white cotton underwear with long tight-fitting legs, ancient slippers and a ragged cotton bathrobe of fading color. Usually the underwear and robe are shrunken, and make one look too ridiculous. When one first sees oneself in the mirror after this change of clothing one might laugh heartily, if one had the courage and humor, but I was never able to appreciate the joke of looking so clownish.

  Everyone left the room. The door was locked unceremoniously from the outside and I was alone. All was quiet. There wasn’t much to see. I stood in a small rectangular room, measuring about fifteen feet long and ten feet wide by twelve feet high. There was a bed in the room, nothing more. The floor of my room was made up of a tile surface of a peculiar black and white design. A black line circled the middle of the wall on both sides. The wall was painted yellow above the line and brown below.