Part 19

The sale of his effects by public auction took place soon after his death, at his elegantly-furnished villa, Hermes Hill,[29] Pentonville, and lasted four days. His friends and admirers, anxious to secure some memorial of Huntington, paid most fabulous sums of money for articles of no intrinsic value in the excess of their veneration. A mahogany easy-chair, with hair seat and back cushion in canvas, on brass-wheel castors, with two sets of flowered calico cases, sold for 63_l._; an ordinary pair of spectacles sold for seven guineas; a common silver snuff-box, five guineas; every article of plate at from 23_s._ to 26_s._ per ounce; his library sold for 252_l._ 19_s._; a handsome modern town coach for 49_l._ 7_s._ The aggregate of the four days' sale was 1,800_l._ 11_s._ 2-1/2_d._ In a newspaper, October, 1813, we read:--"At the sale of the effects of the Rev. Mr. Huntington, at Pentonville, an old arm-chair, intrinsically worth fifty shillings, actually sold for sixty guineas; and many other articles fetched equally high prices, so anxious were his besotted admirers to obtain some precious memorial of that artful fanatic." One of his steady followers purchased a barrel of ale, which had been brewed for Christmas, "because he would have something to remember him by."

[29] Huntington resided in the house built by the Swiss doctor De Valangin, who had been a pupil of Boerhaave, and practised in Soho Square. He removed thence to Cripplegate, and about 1772 he purchased ground at Pentonville, and there built himself a villa, which he named, from the discoverer of chemistry, Hermes Hill, then almost the only house on or near the spot, except White Conduit House. One of his medicines, _The Balsam of Life_, he presented to the Apothecaries' Company. He had, by his first wife, a daughter, who, dying at nine years of age, was buried in the garden at Hermes Hill, in a very costly tomb.

Huntington is described as having been, towards the close of his career, a fat, burly man, with a red face, which rose just above the pulpit cushion; and a thick, guttural, and rather indistinct voice. A contemporary says:--"His pulpit prayers are remarkable for omitting all for the King and his country. He excels in extempore eloquence. Having formally announced his text, he lays his Bible at once aside, and never refers to it again. He has every possible text and quotation at his fingers' end. He proceeds directly to his object, and except such incidental digressions as 'Take care of your pockets! Wake that snoring sinner! Silence that noisy numskull! Turn out that drunken dog!' he never deviates from his course. Nothing can exceed his dictatorial dogmatism. Believe him, none but him--that's enough. When he wishes to bind the faith of his congregation, he will say, over and over, 'As sure as I am born, 'tis so;' or, 'I believe the plain English of it to be this.' And then he will add, by way of clenching his point, 'Now you can't help it,' or, 'It must be so, in spite of you.' He does this with a most significant shake of the head, and with a sort of Bedlam hauteur, with all the dignity of defiance. He will then sometimes observe, softening his deportment, 'I don't know whether I make you understand these things, but I understand them well.' He rambles sadly and strays so completely from his text, that you often lose sight of it. The divisions of his sermons are so numerous that one of his discourses might be divided into three. Preaching is with him talking; his discourses, story-telling. Action he has none, except that of shifting his handkerchief from hand to hand and hugging his cushion. Nature has bestowed on him a vigorous original mind, and he employs it in everything. Survey him when you will, he seems to have rubbed off none of his native rudeness or blackness. All his notions are his own, as well as his mode of imparting them. Religion has not been discovered by him through the telescopes of commentators."

Huntington's portrait is in the National Portrait Gallery, in South Kensington. He "might pass, as far as appearances go, for a convict, but he looks too conceited. The vitality and strength of his constitution are fearful to behold, and it is certain that he looks better fitted for coal-heaving than for religious oratory."--_History of Clerkenwell_, 1865, pp. 529-531.

Amen.

A Correspondent of the _Athenæum_, 1865, writes:--"While some philosophers seek information in the Far West, and others in the not-much-nearer East--one, perchance, reducing eccentric arrow heads to a civilised alphabet; another metamorphosing emblematic pitch-forks, tom-cats, &c., of 2,000 A.M. into sensation novels of the period; a third studying the customs and annals of pre-historic America by the aid of Aztec pots and pipkins--it has been the happy lot of the undersigned, with no greater effort than a short railway journey and a pleasant walk, to light upon a treasure of antiquity, which may not be without interest to some of your readers. The internal evidence of the following lines is sufficient to show what they purport to be--_viz._ the epitaph of an accomplished parish officer at Crayford, in Kent. They run as follows:--

"Here lieth the body of Peter Isnell (30 years Clerk of this Parish.)

"He lived respected as a pious and mirthful man, and died on his way to church to assist at a wedding on the 31st day of March, 1811; aged seventy years.

"The inhabitants of Crayford have raised this stone to his cheerful memory and as a tribute to his long and faithful services.

"The Life of this _Clerk_ was just threescore and ten, Nearly half of which time he had sung out _Amen_; In his Youth, he was married, like other young men, But his wife died one day, so he chanted _Amen_. A second he took, she departed, what then? He married and buried a third with _Amen_. Thus his joys and his sorrows were _Trebled_, but then His voice was deep _Bass_ as he sung out _Amen_. On the _horn_ he could blow as well as most men, So his _horn_ was exalted in blowing _Amen_; But he lost all his _Wind_ after threescore and ten, And here with three Wives he waits till again The trumpet shall rouse him to sing out _Amen_."

Strangely Eccentric, yet Sane.

The study of psychology proves that hallucinations, or illusions, may exist in man without the intellect being disordered. In some instances, they can be produced, by effort of the will. Dr. Wigan, in his able work, _Duality of the Mind_, relates:--"A painter who succeeded to a large portion of the practice, and (as he thought) to more than all the talent of Sir Joshua Reynolds, was so extensively employed, that he informed me he had once painted (large and small) three hundred portraits in one year. This would seem physically impossible, but the secret of his rapidity and of his astonishing success was this: He required but one sitting, and painted with miraculous facility. I myself saw him execute a Kit-Kat portrait of a gentleman well known to me in little more than eight hours; it was minutely finished, and a most striking likeness. On asking him to explain it, he said, 'When a sitter came, I looked at him attentively for half-an-hour, sketching from time to time on the canvas. I wanted no more--I put away my canvas, and took another sitter. When I wished to resume my first portrait, _I took the man and sat him in the chair, where I saw him as distinctly as if he had been before me in his own proper person_--I may almost say more vividly. I looked from time to time at the imaginary figure, then worked with my pencil, then referred to the countenance, and so on, just as I should have done had the sitter been there. _When I looked at the chair, I saw the man!_ This made me very popular; and, as I always succeeded in the likeness, people were very glad to be spared the tedious sittings of other painters. I gained a great deal of money, and was very careful of it. Well for me and my children that it was so. Gradually I began to lose the distinction between the imaginary figure and the real person, and sometimes disputed with sitters that they had been with me the day before. At last I was sure of it, and then--and then--all is confusion. I suppose they took the alarm. I recollect nothing more--I lost my senses--was thirty years in an asylum. The whole period, except the last six months of my confinement, is a dead blank in my memory, though sometimes, when people describe their visits, I have a sort of imperfect remembrance of them; but I must not dwell on these subjects.'"

It is an extraordinary fact that, when this gentleman resumed his pencil, after a lapse of thirty years, he painted nearly as well as when insanity compelled him to discontinue it. His imagination was still exceedingly vivid, as was proved by a portrait, for he had only two sittings of half-an-hour each; the latter solely for the dress and for the _eyebrows_, which he could not fix in his memory.

It was found that the excitement threatened danger, and he was persuaded to discontinue the exercise of his art. He lived but a short time afterwards.

A hallucination, although recognized and appreciated as such by the person who is the subject of it, may, by its vividness and long continuance, produce so depressing an influence on the mind as to be the cause of suicide. "I knew," says Wigan, "a very intelligent and amiable man, who had the power of this placing before his own eyes _himself_, and often laughed heartily at _his double_, who always seemed to laugh in turn. This was long a subject of amusement and joke; but the ultimate result was lamentable. He became gradually convinced that he was haunted by himself, or (to violate grammar for the sake of clearly expressing his idea) by his _self_. This other self would argue with him pertinaciously, and, to his great mortification, sometimes refute him, which, as he was very proud of his logical powers, humiliated him exceedingly. He was eccentric, but was never placed in confinement or subjected to the slightest restraint. At length, worn out by the annoyance, he deliberately resolved not to enter on another year of existence--paid all his debts--wrapped up in separate papers the amount of the weekly demands--waited pistol in hand, the night of the 31st of December, and as the clock struck twelve, fired it into his mouth."

We read in Dr. de Boismont's very able treatise on Hallucinations (translated by Hulme):--"All mental labour, by over-exciting the brain, is liable to give rise to hallucinations. We have known many persons, and amongst others a medical man, who, when it was night, distinctly heard voices calling to them; some would stop to reply, or would go to the door, believing they heard the bell ring. This disposition seems to us not uncommon in persons who are in the habit of talking aloud to themselves."

We find in Abercrombie's work the case of a gentleman "who has been all his life affected by the appearance of spectral figures. To such an extent does this peculiarity exist, that, if he meets a friend in the street, he cannot at first satisfy himself whether he really sees the individual or a spectral figure. By close attention he can remark a difference between them, in the outline of the real figure being more distinctly defined than that of the spectral; but in general he takes means for correcting his visual impression by touching the figure, or by listening to the sound of his footsteps. He has also the power of calling up spectral figures at his will, by directing his attention steadily to the conception of his own mind; and this may consist either of a figure or a scene which he has seen, or it may be a composition created by his imagination. But, though he has the faculty of producing the illusion he has no power of vanishing it; and, when he has called up any particular spectral figure or scene, he never can say how long it may continue to haunt him. The gentleman is in the prime of life, of sound mind, in good health, and engaged in business. Another of his family has been affected in the same manner, though in a slight degree."

It would be easy to mention many examples of illustrious men who have been subject to hallucinations, without their having in any way influenced their conduct.

Thus, Malebranche declared he heard the voice of God distinctly within him. Descartes, after long confinement, was followed by an invisible person, calling upon him to pursue the search of truth.

Byron occasionally fancied he was visited by a spectre, which he confesses was but the effect of an over-stimulated brain.

Dr. Johnson said that he distinctly heard his mother's voice call "Samuel." This was at a time when she was residing a long way off.

Pope, who suffered much from intestinal disease, one day asked his medical man what the arm was which seemed to come out of the wall.

Goethe positively asserts that he one day saw the exact counterpart of himself coming towards him. The German psychologists give the name of _Deuteroscopia_ to this species of illusion.

Strange Hallucination.

On the 25th of November, 1840, Mr. Pearce, the author of several medical works, was tried at the Central Criminal Court for shooting at his wife with intent to murder, and acquitted on the ground of insanity. He entertained the peculiar notion that his wife wished to destroy him, and that she had bribed persons to effect his death in various ways, the principal of which was that his bed was constantly damped or wetted. This idea seems to have haunted him continually. He was shortly after his acquittal taken to Bethlem Hospital. For some time he refused to leave the gallery in which his cell was situated, and go into the airing-ground; in order, as it appeared, that he might watch his cell door to prevent anything "villanous" being done.

In a letter addressed to the Governors of the Hospital, Pearce argued the point in a very serious and connected manner. "If," said he, in allusion to some of the witnesses, who at various times had stated they felt his bedding and found it dry, "the simple act of placing one's hand upon a damp bed, or even the immediate impression on a man's body when he gets into it, was infallible, how could it occur so frequently that travellers at times are crippled with rheumatism, or lose their lives by remaining all night in damp bedding? If the thing was so easily discoverable, no man of common understanding could be injured by such a proceeding or accident at inns.

"Technically speaking, the matter of which I complain is not a delusion; it is an allegation--a positive charge, susceptible of proof, if proper evidence could be brought to bear upon the fact, not warped or suborned by the man or men in whose power I hourly am. It would be a sad delusion for me to declare my bed was composed of straw instead of flocks, or that I was a prophet, or the Pope, or Sir Astley Cooper. I grant I have no such crotchets. My mind is perfectly sound, calm, and reflective; and I implore you to consider well the distinction between the things which cannot in nature physically be and the things which can physically be. It is a vital one in my sad case.

"It may be told you, I have charged persons elsewhere with this atrocity of damping my bed. I have done so. At the private madhouse, near Uxbridge, whence I was brought here, my bed was kept almost wet for three months, and I only saved my life by sleeping on a large trunk, with my daily articles of dress to cover me. Some portion of this time, the cold was eight and ten degrees below freezing-point."

He then solicited that a lock might be put upon his cell-door to protect him from this annoyance; and concluded his letter with this appeal: "I beseech you to commiserate my hard lot. I have some little claim to the title of a gentleman, and have been estimated by persons of some consideration in society; I am now, by a wretched chain of circumstances, in a great prison hospital, dragged from my children and my home, and the comforts of social life, and doomed to herd with desperadoes against the State, the destitute, and the mad."

Mr. Pearce was afterwards introduced, and answered the questions put to him in a very collected manner. He then stated that since his marriage-trip to Boulogne, he had been subjected to the greatest abuse from his present wife, and on one occasion, had been struck by her, and insulted by the vilest epithets. He complained that when first brought to Bethlem Hospital, he had been "chummed" with Oxford, and objected, but had been compelled to associate with that ruffian. He had taught Oxford the French language, and tried to improve his mind. Oxford had conveyed to him matter of importance relative to the great crime of which he had been guilty, and which he (Mr. Pearce) thought of sufficient importance to be communicated to the Secretary of State, and had accordingly written a letter in Latin, detailing the several circumstances. It had, however been taken from him, and he did not know whether it had ever been sent to Downing Street. He wished to show how Oxford boasted of having cajoled Sir A. Morrison and Dr. Monro into a belief that he was insane, and how he sent for such books as _Jack the Giant-Killer_ in order to make the jury let him off on the ground of insanity. This was what he (Mr. Pearce) wished to tell the Secretary of State, and now the letter was used against him.

After some further remarks, Mr. Pearce was questioned by the jury, and persisted in the statement that his bed was damped, that deleterious drugs were applied to his clothes, and that a conspiracy existed against him. He produced from under his clothes a small packet, which he said contained portions of the shirt of which mention had been made, and a snuff-box, in which he stated he had kept parts of the shirt, and which he "demanded" to have submitted to the test of Professor Faraday or some other eminent chemist. He announced himself to be grand-nephew of Zachariah Pearce, Bishop of Rochester, and translator of Longinus, and prayed, in conclusion, the jury to relieve him from the situation in which he was placed.

The jury returned a verdict to the effect "that Mr. Pearce was of unsound mind, and that he had been so from the 16th of October, 1840."

"Corner Memory Thompson."

In February, 1843, there died, at the age of 86, this remarkable person, whose eccentric success had become matter of public interest. John Thompson was a native of St. Giles's, where his father was a greengrocer; the boy on carrying a salad to the house of an undertaker in the neighbourhood, attracted attention by his ready and active manner, and the undertaker took him as errand-boy; then he became assistant, and next married his master's daughter, and thus obtained property. This was his _start_ in life, and enabled him to commence business as an auctioneer and brewer's valuer, by which he amassed considerable wealth. As he advanced in life, he sought retirement, and on a spot just below Hampstead Church, built for himself, without plan or order, "Frognal Priory," an assemblage of grotesque structures, but without any right of road to it, which he had to purchase at a great price. Thence, Thompson often went to town in his chariot, to collect curiosities for his house; and he might be seen pottering about among the curiosity-shops: as Horace Walpole cheapened Dicky Bateman's chairs at half-a-crown apiece for Strawberry Hill, so John Thompson collected his "items of taste and _vertu_" for Frognal Priory, and these, for a time, he would show to any person who rang at his gate. He was designated "Corner Memory," for his having, for a bet, drawn a plan of St. Giles's parish from memory, at three sittings, specifying every coach-turning, stable-yard, and public pump, and likewise the _corner shop_ of every street. He possessed a most mechanical memory; for he would, by reading a newspaper over-night, repeat the whole of it next morning. He gained some notoriety by presenting to the Queen a carved bedstead, reputed once to have belonged to Cardinal Wolsey; with this he sent some other old furniture to Windsor Castle.

Mummy of a Manchester Lady.

About the middle of the last century there died near Manchester a maiden lady, a Miss Bexwick or Beswick, who had a great horror of being _buried alive_. To avoid this, she devised an estate to her medical adviser, the late Mr. Charles White and his two children, _viz._ Miss Rosa White and her sister, and his nephew, Captain White, _on condition that the doctor paid her a morning visit for twelve months after her decease_. In order to do this, it was requisite to embalm her, which he did; she was then placed in the attic of the old mansion in which she died, and in which the doctor took up his residence. Upon his leaving it, she was removed to the house erected by him in King Street, Manchester, and which stood on the ground now occupied by the Town Hall. At the death of Mr. White, the doctor, she was sent to the Lying-in Hospital, where she remained until she was removed to her present resting-place, the Manchester Museum of Natural History, where the mummy is suspended in a case with a glass-door.

Mr. de Quincey, when a boy at Manchester School, at the beginning of the century, became acquainted with the mummy, and in one of his works mentions it being taken from the case, and the body of a notorious highwayman being substituted; but this is an embellishment or exaggeration of the already extraordinary story.

Hypochondriasis.

In the year 1827 there was living at Taunton a person who had often kept at home for several weeks under the idea of danger in going abroad. Sometimes he imagined that he was a cat, and seated himself on his hind-quarters; at other times he would fancy himself a teapot, and stand with one arm a-kimbo like the handle, and the other stretched out like the spout. At last he conceived himself to have died, and would not move or be moved till the coffin came. His wife, in serious alarm, sent for a surgeon, who addressed him with the usual salutation, "How do you do this morning?" "Do!" replied he in a low voice, "a pretty question to a dead man!" "Dead, sir; what do you mean?" "Yes; I died last Wednesday; the coffin will be here presently, and I shall be buried to-morrow." The surgeon, a man of sense and skill, immediately felt the patient's pulse, and shaking his head, said, "I find it is indeed too true; you are certainly defunct; the blood is in a state of stagnation, putrefaction is about to take place, and the sooner you are buried the better." The coffin arrived, he was carefully placed in it, and carried towards the church. The surgeon had previously given instructions to several neighbours how to proceed. The procession had scarcely moved a dozen yards, when a person stopped to inquire who they were carrying to the grave: "Mr. ----, our late worthy overseer." "What! is the old rogue gone at last? a good release, for a greater villain never lived." The imaginary deceased no sooner heard this attack on his character, than he jumped up, and in a threatening posture said, "You lying scoundrel, if I were not dead I'd make you suffer for what you say; but as it is, I am forced to submit." He then quietly laid down again; but ere they had proceeded half-way to church, another party stopped the procession with the same inquiry, and added invective and abuse. This was more than the supposed corpse could bear; and jumping from the coffin, was in the act of following his defamers, when the whole party burst into an immoderate fit of laughter. The public exposure awakened him to a sense of his folly; he fought against the weakness, and in the end conquered it.