Part 63

To avert this awful catastrophe it was the custom, in the provinces of Germany, to place a bell-rope in the hand of a corpse for twenty-four hours before burial. We may look on this, perhaps, as one natural source of romance and mystery; for the ringing of bells by the dead has been a favourite omen of the ghostly legends.

EV. Alas! even my own professional study and duties have not been free from these melancholy scenes; and if I make not your gentle heart to tremble, fair Castaly, I will recount some of those unhappy instances of fatality, to which the errors and neglect of man may doom his fellow-mortal.

Miss C—— (of C—— Hall, in Warwickshire,) and her brother were the subjects of typhoid fever. She seemed to die, and her bier was placed in the family vault. In a week her brother died also, and when he was taken to the tomb, the lady was found sitting in her grave-clothes on the steps of the vault; having, after her waking from the trance, died of terror or exhaustion.

A girl, after repeated faintings, was apparently dead, and was taken, as a subject, into the anatomical theatre of the “Salpetrière,” at Paris. During the night, faint groans were heard in the theatre, but no search was made. In the morning, it was evident that the girl had attempted to disengage herself from the winding-sheet, one leg being thrust from off the trestles, and an arm resting on an adjoining table.

A slave girl of Canton, named Leaning, apparently died. She was placed in a coffin, the lid of which remained unfastened, that her parents might come and see the corpse. Three days after the apparent death, while the remains were being conveyed to the grave, a noise or voice was heard proceeding from the coffin, and on removing the covering, it was found the woman had come to life again.

In 1838, at Tonnieus, in the Lower Garonne, as the graveman threw earth on a coffin he also heard groans. Much terrified, he ran away, and a crowd assembled. On opening the coffin, the face of the buried man was distorted, and he had disengaged his arms from the folds of his winding sheet.

The Emperor Zeno was, as it is written, prematurely buried; and, when the body was soon after casually discovered, it was found that he had, to satisfy acute hunger, eaten some flesh from his arm.

ASTR. One might think that Master Ainsworth, from this record, sketched the episode of the sexton and the old coffin in his “Rookwood.” The truth is equal to the fiction.

CAST. When I was at Breslau, in 1835, (and this is not one of Astrophel’s fictions,) a nun of the Ursuline Convent was placed in her coffin in the church. At midnight, the sisters assembled to chaunt the vigils over the body of their sainted sister. While the holy hymn was echoing through the oratory, the nun arose, tottered to the altar, knelt before the cross, and prayed. The sisters with a cry of horror awoke the abbess; and on her arrival, the nun again arose, and lay down in her coffin. The physician of the convent was speedily summoned, but, on his arrival, he found her dead.

There can scarcely be drawn a scene, combining the sublime and beautiful of romance, in higher intensity than this. It was the spectral visitation of a seraph.

IDA. Like many sublimities of nature, these mysteries have been profaned by unholy imitation; as for instance, the reanimation of the nuns in the opera of “Robert le Diable.” But there is an awful romance mingled with the history of those melancholy creatures, from whose inanimate clay the immortal spirit was thought to have parted, still more impressive. That instinctive, that inexpressible dread, with which we contemplate a corpse, is nothing in comparison with that thrill of astonishment which overwhelms us, when a body becomes (as in the miraculous recall of Lazarus) reanimated; when a spirit appears to visit us from the dead. Yet this is not fear, for we know it cannot injure us; it is a feeling that we are with something beyond ourselves spiritual, which had seemed to have endured a transfiguration, and been admitted into the order of angelic beings. There must be something of the supernatural which creates this fearful wonder; an impression on the heart that is an especial influence of the Deity. Else should we not behold with dread, instead of a sacred pleasure, the success of our efforts in cases of suspended animation?

This visitation from another world is one of the surest indications of our spirituality; and like the reanimation of soul and mind, and consciousness, from deep and undreaming sleep, lighting up the body into brilliancy and beauty, might drown a sceptic’s reasoning in a flood of holy faith, and overwhelm him with the belief of immortality.

CAST. It is this combination of vitality and death—so seemingly a paradox—that forms the basis of many of our deepest romances; as the “Spectre Life in Death,” in the Ancient Mariner, of the melancholy Coleridge,—himself a wild visionary of the first order. If I remember, he is writing of a spectre ship.—

——“Betwixt us and the sun.

And straight the sun was fleck’d with bars— (Heaven’s mother send us grace!) As if through a dungeon-grate he peer’d With broad and burning face. Alas! (thought I, and my heart beat loud,) How fast she neers and neers. Are those her sails that glance in the sun, Like restless gossameres?

Are those her ribs, through which the sun Doth peer, as through a grate? And is that woman all her crew? Is that a Death—and are there two? Is Death that woman’s mate?

Her lips were red, her looks were free, Her locks were yellow as gold, Her skin was as white as leprosy, The night-mare Life in Death was she, Who thicks man’s blood with cold.”

EV. It is melancholy that a noble mind should be so perverted by poppy-juice. And yet the Mahometan beats him hollow at this sort of burlesque.

There is a fiction in Sale’s notes to the “Koran.” During the building of his magnificent temple, King Solomon sleeps in death. He remains supported by his staff, on which he had been leaning, until a worm eats away the prop, and the body falls prostrate to the ground.

But we need not go to the East for our specimens. Even in the year 1839, in our Emerald Isle of superstition, they would have us believe a miracle of this kind.

In a field near Lurgan, a man, called Farland, had received money from a widow, wherewith to pay her rent;—this he failed to do. On her remonstrance and declaration, she was asked to name her witnesses. She answered,—“No one but God and herself.” “Then,” rejoined the man, “your God was asleep at the time.” The attestation of three witnesses records, that he was instantly struck in a trance as he was resting on his spade, and in that attitude he had ever since continued!

CAST. And is it not a blot on the page of science, that so many ill-fated creatures are thus, through an error, doomed to dissolution? Say, gentle Evelyn, has not your philosophy discovered some mode of discernment between life and death, which would smile the philanthropist on to patient watching?

EV. To a degree. But it were vain to offer here precepts for such discrimination, which, sooth to say, are not yet absolute. The rosy tint of complexion may remain for some time, and even perspiration may break forth, after death; or the body may assume the most deathlike aspect, and yet vitality is only in abeyance. Among our recoveries, it is true, there are many spontaneous rousings, and this especially if deep impression has been the cause of trance.

Listen to the following, from a journal of 1834:—“The wife of Thomas Benson, livery-lace maker, of Great Queen Street, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, being suddenly taken ill, to all appearance expired; and, when every symptom of life had fled, the body was duly laid out. On the following night, between nine and ten o’clock, whilst the undertaker was in the house receiving instructions for the funeral, to the astonishment and terror of the whole family, Mrs. Benson came down stairs, having been in a trance nearly thirty hours. Her situation has so terribly shocked her, that but faint hopes are entertained of her recovery.”

It is melancholy to know how often these cases are abandoned to nature; but science may do much, and should do more, to relieve them; although we possess not the wondrous phial of Renatus, nor have developed the creative mysteries of Prometheus or Frankenstein.

Yet the recovery of François de Civille, was almost as great a wonder. He was thrown, at the siege of Rouen, into insensibility. He was, in this state, carried home by his servant. During a week he became warm, but exhibited no other sign of life. He was, at this period, flung out of a window by the besiegers, and cast upon a dunghill, where he lay naked for three or four days. Yet, even after this, he was restored to life.

ASTR. You confess the wonder, Evelyn, that is some concession; you may, perchance, believe another of equal interest.

“My mother being sick to death of a fever three months after I was born, which was the occasion she nursed me no longer, her friends and servants thought, to all outward appearance, she was dead, and so almost two days and a night. But Dr. Winston coming to comfort my father, went into my mother’s room, and looking earnestly in her face, said, ‘She is so handsome, and looks so lovely, I cannot think she is dead;’ and suddenly took a lancet out of his pocket, and with it cut the sole of her foot, which bled. Upon this he immediately caused her to be laid upon the bed again, and to be rubbed, and such means, as she came to life, and opening her eyes, saw two of her kinswomen stand by her, my Lady Knolleys and my Lady Russell, both with great wide sleeves, as the fashion then was, and said, ‘Did not you promise me fifteen years, and are you come again?’ which they not understanding, persuaded her to keep her spirits quiet in that great weakness wherein she then was; but some hours after she desired my father and Dr. Howlsworth might be left alone with her, to whom she said, ‘I will acquaint you, that during the time of my trance I was in great quiet, but in a place I could neither distinguish or describe; but the sense of leaving my girl, who is dearer to me than all my children, remained a trouble upon my spirits. Suddenly I saw two by me clothed in long white garments, and methought I fell down upon my face upon the dust, and they asked me why I was so troubled in so great happiness. I replied, O let me have the same grant given to Hezekiah, that I may live fifteen years, to see my daughter a woman; to which they answered, It is done, and then at that instant I awoke out of my trance.’ And Dr. Howlsworth did then affirm that that day she died made just fifteen years from that time.”