Oscar Wilde and the Nest of Vipers

by Gyles Brandreth

  The nun accepted her dismissal, bobbed a curtsy and went on her way.

  ‘Welcome, Dr Doyle,’ said Lord Yarborough affably. ‘I am grateful to you for coming. You are our only visitor today.’

  He did not rise from his desk, nor did he shake my hand. He simply indicated that I should take the seat facing him. I did so.

  ‘I own the whole of Muswell Manor,’ he went on at once, ‘but I do not concern myself with the asylum. The patients there are beyond recall. I can do nothing for them. The asylum is Sister Agnes’s domain. My work is all here in the clinic. This is what I want you to see.’

  For almost an hour I sat listening to Lord Yarborough. He spoke swiftly, fluently, with passion and without pause. He is, he explained, both a physician and a psychiatrist, but, above all, he sees himself as a disciple of Jean-Martin Charcot.

  ‘Of all men, he is the one I most admire. I was born to position and privilege. Charcot was not.’

  He told me Charcot’s story: how he had been born in Paris in 1825, the son of a wagon-maker; how all that he had achieved had been through his own endeavours; how, as a young man, he had secured himself a position at the notorious, sprawling Salpêtrière Hospital on the outskirts of Paris, ‘the Versailles of pain’, ‘the great emporium of human misery’, where the lame and the halt, the lunatic and the senile, the demented and the depraved provided what Charcot called ‘une sorte de musée pathologique vivant’ – a kind of living pathological museum.

  Charcot, for over more than thirty years, found his specimens in that museum and did what no one in the field of neurology had done before: he studied them minutely, organ by organ, limb by limb, alive and dead. Ante mortem, he observed them in the closest detail, recording every symptom, noting every tic and twitch, every tremor and spasm; post mortem, he dissected them – without let or hindrance: the inmates of the Salpêtrière are society’s detritus, so a doctor may do with them as he pleases. Through precise clinical observation and ruthless autopsy, Charcot made his great discoveries – anatomising upwards of a dozen significant conditions and diseases, from multiple sclerosis to cerebral haemorrhage.

  ‘Charcot is a genius,’ said Lord Yarborough, directing my eye to a framed photograph of the great man that stood upon his desk.

  In the picture, Charcot was posed, like Bonaparte, with his right hand placed inside the front fold of his frock-coat.

  ‘He is indeed the Napoleon of the neuroses. He understands the nervous system as no man has before him. Charcot can correlate plaques found on the brain to disorders of vision, speech and intellect. He can relate patterns of pathological behaviour to sclerotic patches on the spinal cord. And now, at the height of his powers, he is turning his attention to the study and treatment of hysteria – and it is with this work that we can help him.’

  ‘Charcot is convinced that hysteria is a disease of the body as much as the mind?’ I asked.

  ‘He is. And so am I. Thus far the physical roots of hysteria have proved elusive, but we will discover them. In time. With patience.’

  ‘And patients,’ I added.

  Lord Yarborough laughed. ‘Indeed, Dr Doyle, we need patients. We have only four patients at present. We need many more. We need them alive and, alas, we also need them dead. We need to observe their hysterical behaviour with our own eyes and then explore their mortal remains beneath the microscope. There is no other way.’

  ‘Your patients are all young females, I take it?’

  ‘They are.’

  ‘And they remain stubbornly alive?’

  Lord Yarborough smiled. ‘They do.’

  ‘For their sakes,’ I said, ‘I am happy to hear it.’

  ‘One of our patients did die recently. She took her own life. It was a tragedy, of course, but we were grateful to her.’

  ‘You were able to conduct an autopsy?’

  ‘With her family’s permission. Professor Charcot undertook the autopsy. He came over from France. We did it here. I assisted. We have our own operating theatre and dissecting room.’

  ‘And did the cadaver yield up any secrets?’

  ‘None – none whatsoever – so the work goes on.’

  Lord Yarborough got to his feet. He has the sheen of a man accustomed to command.

  ‘Let me show you what we are doing, Doctor. We have not yet found the organic lesions we are looking for, but we are making progress, nonetheless. Come with me.’

  I followed my host out of his office and along a series of deserted corridors. In the asylum the rooms were well appointed and comfortably furnished; there were prints and paintings hanging on the flock-papered walls and leafy plants in pots standing in corners and on windowsills. Here in the east wing there was nothing: the walls were bare, the floors uncarpeted, the gasoliers burnt low. The place felt quite empty.

  I asked Lord Yarborough: ‘Are you alone here? In your letter you spoke of “colleagues”.’

  ‘My colleagues are all in France. One of the nuns from the asylum is on the premises night and day, but I am the sole physician at the clinic and I cannot be here all the time. I have my practice in Harley Street to attend to – and, such as they are, my duties in the House of Lords. I need a junior here, but he’d have to be a specialist. Charcot promised me his assistant, Tourette, but he won’t leave Paris. Would you consider leaving Southsea?’

  I smiled but said nothing.

  ‘I’ve looked you up, Dr Doyle,’ said Lord Yarborough, pacing ahead, not looking back as he spoke. ‘You’re a Master of Surgery as well as a Bachelor of Medicine and you trained in Edinburgh – there’s nowhere better. I know Dr Bell, your old tutor. You want to specialise in hysteria and you have an enquiring mind. I sense you have the right temperament, too. This job could suit you, Doyle – and it will be well paid. You have a young family. I imagine you are short of funds. You should think about it.’

  He stopped, turned and looked at me. His eyes glittered. As he smiled, I noticed how white and sharp and pointed his canine teeth are. I thought to myself, absurdly: he has the mouth of a vampire.

  We had reached the end of the farthermost corridor.

  ‘Here we are,’ he said and searched in his waistcoat pocket for a key. Having found it, he put it in the lock of the door on our right and turned it carefully, lowering his voice to speak: ‘This is the patient I want you to see. She is already under hypnosis. I induced her before you arrived. Make no sudden movements, speak softly and speak only to me, and she will not know you are there.’

  He turned the handle slowly and quietly opened the door.

  The room we entered was much lighter than I had expected. There were curtains drawn at the window, but the fabric of them was thin and spring sunshine seeped both through and around them. The walls of the room were bare but whitewashed and clean. The only decoration was a simple wooden crucifix hanging above a plain chest of drawers. The only other furniture was an upright kitchen chair and a narrow iron bedstead.

  Seated on the edge of the bed, with her feet touching the ground and her hands upon her knees, was the patient. Her head was bent forward and she appeared to be gazing down at a square scrap of Indian carpet that partially covered the floorboards and served as a bedside mat. She was a young woman of about twenty-five years of age. Her face was half hidden by her auburn hair, which hung loose down to her shoulders, but I could see that hers was the face of a lady. She had the most delicate features and the palest of skin.

  She was also completely unclothed.

  ‘Should we not dress her?’ I whispered.

  ‘There is no need,’ replied Lord Yarborough.

  ‘She is not aware of us and, seeing her as she is, we will more easily recognise the ecstasy when it takes her. Watch her neck and breasts and belly closely.’

  ‘What am I to see?’ I asked.

  ‘The four stages of hysteria,’ answered Lord Yarborough. ‘At my command she will demonstrate each one in turn. What Charcot has discovered – and Louise will now demonstrate – is that every hysterical a
ttack follows the same pattern, obeys the same rules.’

  ‘Her name is Louise?’

  ‘It is. She has been here for five months. Her family thought that her seizures were epileptic fits, but they were not. She is a true hysteric – and her hysterical attacks are exactly like those of every other hysteric Charcot has observed. It is their uniformity, their universality, their mechanical regularity that tell us that hysteria is indeed an organic disease of the nervous system.’

  ‘And I am to witness such an attack now?’

  ‘You are. Observe it well. I shall trigger the attack with a simple command.’ Lord Yarborough stepped into the centre of the room. ‘Watch closely, Dr Doyle.’

  I stood with my back against the door as Lord Yarborough positioned himself at the bedside immediately facing the naked girl. He stood at the far edge of the square of Indian carpet, about three feet away from his patient and, raising his voice, he called her name: ‘Louise.’ He spoke firmly.

  ‘Louise, look at me.’

  The young woman lifted her head. Her eyes were wide open and huge.

  ‘Louise,’ commanded Lord Yarborough, gazing directly down at the girl, ‘when I clap my hands, the hysteria will be upon you once more and the attack will begin. Are you ready?’

  The girl made no reply. Lord Yarborough clapped his hands.

  At once her body began to shake. Her fingers twitched, her hands trembled, her knees shook. She rocked forwards and backwards on the bed. Her head turned from right to left and from left to right, at first rhythmically and, then, ever more frantically. As her head turned faster and faster, she ground her teeth, clenched her fists and began to beat one hand against her shoulder blade and the other upon her knee.

  I stood watching the spectacle in horror. I wanted to reach out and hold the girl – release her from her frenzy. Lord Yarborough held out an arm towards me lest I be tempted to intervene.

  ‘There’s nothing to be done,’ he whispered. ‘The attack will take its course. We cannot stop it now – though we can speed it on its way. This first phase is what Charcot calls the épileptoide phase. Next come the grands mouvements.’ He clapped his hands and called out loudly: ‘Louise – move on!’

  At once the girl stopped shaking and threw herself back on to the bed with a terrifying shriek. She swept her arms behind her head and lay on her back screaming, screeching, crying out with horrifying force. Suddenly she lifted her legs high into the air and, violently, repeatedly, obscenely, opened and closed them. I looked away and covered my ears as her piercing cries overwhelmed me. When I looked back I saw her body grotesquely contorted: she was bent backwards on the bed, her pelvis thrust forward, her spine arched, with only the top of her head and the base of her feet touching the mattress.

  ‘This is depraved,’ I murmured.

  ‘This is the arc-en-cercle,’ called Lord Yarborough through the girl’s screams. ‘It is what we expect. It happens every time.’

  ‘Can you not stop this now?’ I pleaded.

  ‘We cannot halt the cycle, but we can drive it forward,’ said Lord Yarborough. ‘Next we have the attitudes passionelles.’ Once more, he clapped his hands together and cried out: ‘Louise, move on!’

  Now the girl rolled on to her side and began to writhe upon the bed. She pressed the palms of her hands into the most intimate parts of her anatomy and, as she did so, yelped and moaned lasciviously.

  ‘Move on,’ I called out desperately.

  Lord Yarborough laughed. ‘Wait. Watch her torso turn scarlet first. See.’

  I watched, embarrassed and ashamed, as the girl’s skin displayed the stigmata of her ecstasy.

  Lord Yarborough clapped his hands once more. ‘Louise, move on.’

  The girl threw her head to one side and spread her arms out wide, crossing her feet at the ankles in a grotesque imitation of Christ upon the cross.

  ‘We have the final delirium now,’ murmured Lord Yarborough. ‘It will soon be over.’

  And it was. The girl rolled to one side, brought her knees up towards her chest and tucked her hands beneath her chin. Her eyes were closed and her breathing slowed. As we watched, gradually she fell asleep.

  ‘We can leave her now,’ whispered Lord Yarborough. He leant over the girl and stroked her hair. With the back of his fingers, he caressed her cheek. Softly, he spoke into her ear: ‘Well done, Louise. Sleep now, my child. Sleep.’

  When we were outside her room once more, Lord Yarborough locked the door and returned the key to his waistcoat pocket. That done, he said to me: ‘You should know that each of our patients would have demonstrated the effects of hysteria in exactly the same way.’

  ‘Why did you choose to show me Louise?’ I asked.

  ‘Because she has been with us longest. We know her best. And I am her guardian as well as her physician.’

  ‘Poor child,’ I said. ‘She is very lovely.’

  ‘Yes, it makes her condition all the more tragic.’

  ‘Somehow, I felt that I knew her. There was something familiar about her face.’

  ‘You may have met her before,’ said Lord Yarborough. ‘You have certainly met her sister.’

  ‘Her sister?’

  ‘Yes, you met her sister quite recently – last Thursday evening, in fact. Louise is the younger sister of the late Duchess of Albemarle.’

  ‘I am a Vampire’

  46

  From the notebooks of Robert Sherard

  ‘A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not even worth glancing at. A wine list that does not include a Perrier-Jouët ’84 should be dismissed out of hand.’

  Oscar was in fine form tonight.

  ‘Pleasure, gentlemen, is Nature’s test, her sign of approval. When a man is happy he is in harmony with himself and his environment. Let us be happy, my friends. Let us set sail for Utopia. Let us drink the best champagne and agree that no marriage should last more than seven years and no dinner should last less than three hours.’

  His putty-like cheeks were flushed; his hooded eyes were rimmed with tears. With a tremulous hand he raised his glass to us: ‘This evening, let us pursue happiness with all the indolence at our command.’

  ‘We are here to discuss murder, Oscar,’ said Arthur Conan Doyle, sucking on his moustache and tapping his side plate with an impatient forefinger.

  ‘Don’t be serious, Arthur. Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow – and you are deep.’

  ‘And you are drunk, Oscar,’ said Conan Doyle, reprovingly.

  ‘A little intoxicated, perhaps. And tired, certainly. I did not sleep a wink last night. But not “drunk”, Arthur. Never “drunk”. “Drunk” is such an ugly word – and we are called to beauty.’

  ‘We are called to business, Oscar,’ sighed Doyle, shaking his head wearily. ‘We have a case in hand. Whether you like it or not, there are serious matters to be addressed.’

  ‘And we shall address them, Arthur, I do assure you.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘–with every other course.’

  Oscar sat back and looked around the Palm Court of the Langham Hotel. It was Monday night and the restaurant was not crowded.

  ‘Man needs variety and contrast in his life – light and shade, prose and poetry, a wife and a mistress … It’s no different with dinner. With each dish we shall have a different wine and a different topic of conversation. Over the soup, Arthur, you will tell us all about your day in Muswell Hill. With the fish, we shall discuss heaven and hell, and the curious fact that nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner. When the jugged hare arrives, Robert and I will give you a detailed account of the night we spent with the prince, the priest and the page-boy. You can rest easy, Arthur. Long before the angels on horseback and iced sorbets are set before us, we shall have delved deep into every nook and cranny of this murky affair.’

  Oscar sipped at his wine. Conan Doyle seemed somewhat mollified.

  ‘Perhaps you are not so drunk after all.’

  �
�I am certainly sober enough to see that you are missing your wife quite desperately today, Arthur. I can tell you, too, that you arrived late for our dinner because you were upstairs in your room engaged in writing – and writing at speed. Probably an account of your adventures in Muswell Hill, followed by two letters – one of them, I imagine, addressed to your darling wife in Southsea, the other to Lord Yarborough.’

  Conan Doyle sat open-mouthed in amazement. ‘This is extraordinary, Oscar.’

  ‘No.’ Oscar grinned. ‘Elementary thus far, my dear Arthur. Let me offer a final thought. This might impress and excite you.’

  He ran his finger around the rim of his champagne glass and studied Conan Doyle with a beady eye.

  ‘I have a feeling, Arthur, that you have recently enjoyed an interesting encounter with Monsieur James Tissot, the artist. I read in the newspaper that he was in London. I imagine that he is staying at this hotel. I have a hunch that you have met him, that he impressed you, and that, as you entered the restaurant tonight and walked towards our table, you were thinking of him. Am I correct?’

  ‘In every particular,’ answered Conan Doyle. ‘I am utterly flabbergasted. Either you can read a man’s mind, Oscar, or you have been spying on me.’

  ‘Neither,’ breathed Oscar happily, unfurling his table napkin with a satisfied flourish, ‘but I have been reading the stories of Dr Arthur Conan Doyle and studying the methods of Mr Sherlock Holmes.’

  Conan Doyle chuckled. ‘Well then, take me through your reasoning. Where did you start?’

  ‘With your tie, Arthur. It’s hideous.’

  ‘It’s a gift from my wife.’

  ‘Exactly. And you wore it today because you are missing her so dreadfully. Love drove you to wear it. There can be no other explanation. An orange tartan tie worn with a navy-blue business suit is a sartorial abomination, Arthur.’

  ‘I apologise,’ said Conan Doyle laughing. ‘I should have changed for dinner, but as it’s only Monday night—’

  ‘You are a gentleman, Arthur. You would have changed for dinner, I know, had you not been so pressed for time. As it is, you arrived in the dining room and sat down at our table, in something of a fluster.’