Mesmerism continued—The Baron F. incidentⒺexplanatory note.Ⓐtextual note
OneⒶtextual note evening we dined with the C.’s,Ⓐtextual note (in Vienna, in 1897),Ⓐtextual note and after dinner a number of friends of the family dropped in to smoke and chat; among them G., who had dined with the X.’s. He brought with him an incident. It was to this effect. When dinner was announced a guest was still lacking—the Baron F., a cousin of Herr X. Ten minutes later he had not yet arrived; then he was given up, and the company went to the table. Between soup and fish the Baron arrived and was ushered inⒶtextual note—a large and strongly built man about fifty years old, with iron grayⒶtextual note hair and a harsh and hard face. With a perfunctory word of excuse for his tardiness he took his seat and began to unfold his napkin; in the midst of this function he stopped, and began to stare across the table at a Mr. B.Ⓔexplanatory note, a visiting Englishman of grave mien and middle age. As he stared his countenance darkened, and assumed an expression of hatred of the most bitter and uncompromising kind; the napkin fell from his hands, and he got up abruptly and stalked out of the room. X., astonished, left his bewildered guests and followed, to see what the matter was. He found the Baron gloving himself for departure. He was not exactly frothing at the mouth, but was near to doing it. In answer to X.’s anxious inquiries, he said—
“No, give yourself no concern, it isn’t anything that’s happened here—it dates back, away back. I can’t be mistaken,Ⓐtextual note that’s an EnglishmanⒶtextual note and his name is B. Isn’t it so?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I’ve seen him only once before, and it’s twenty-seven years ago, but I know him,Ⓐtextual note I would recognize him in Siberia, in Sahara, in hell! How fortunate that I couldn’t reach him—I don’t wish to be a murderer!”
“Why, what was the trouble? What did he do?”
“Do? Oh, oh, oh, it’s too horrible to think of! Out of my way—don’t detain me; do you want me to kill him?”
That was the incident, and that was all that G. knew. Enough to heat our curiosity to the sizzling pointⒶtextual note, and raise a world of excited wondering and guessing; and valuable to that degree in a smoking-klatch, but we had to wait several days before we got the tale’s sequel. Which was this.
In 1870 B. was living in London. He was a young fellow with an alert and inquiring mind and a sharp appetite for novelties. He had taken up mesmerism—as it was then called—andⒶtextual note was doing with it many of the strange things afterward done by Charcot [begin page 305] under its other name of hypnotismⒺexplanatory note. One evening B. was exhibiting some of these marvels in the house of an eminent man of science, and had brought with him for the purpose subjects whom he had experimented upon before. A gentleman present begged him to come to his house in Sydenham, and give a similar exhibition before friends of his. B. said—
“I will, on this condition: that you provide a dozen persons, for experiment, whom you know, but who shall be strangers to me; this in order that collusion cannot be charged. I may not be able to affect any of them, but out of the dozen I can expect to affect one or two at least.”
The condition was accepted, and the day appointed. But the day before the date chosen, the gentleman sent a note saying he had failed to get anybody to consent, and begging B. to bring subjects himself.
B. took with him a young man who was an easy subject, and whom he had often mesmerizedⒶtextual note before. The two went upon a platform which had been arranged at the end of a drawing-room, and faced a company of forty men—some young, some middle-aged; some fashionable and frivolous, some of a graver stamp; some sarcastic of aspect, the others blandly unfriendly. B. noted this unpleasant atmosphere and was sorry he had not exacted the original terms. He tried to recover that lost ground by inviting the gentlemen present to provide him with subjects from their number, and said he would regard it as a great favor if his request could be complied with. He waited, but got only silence—there was no other response.
He then mesmerized his young man, and made him mistake salt for sugar, sugar for salt, chalk for alumⒶtextual note, alumⒶtextual note for chalk, waterⒶtextual note for brandy, brandy for milk, and so on; made him see ships sailing on the sea, houses on fire, battles, horse-races, and all such things—and all through these performances the audience smiled contempt, and a group of young fashionables, one of whom was standing, and leaning indolently against the wall, uttered low-voiced ejaculations:Ⓐtextual note “Humbug!” “charlatan!” etc. It was intended that B. should hear, and he heard. He expected his host to interfere and protect him from these insults,Ⓐtextual note and glanced a hint or two at him; but evidently the host was afraid. B. recognized that if he was to have any protection he must furnish it himself. He tried to locate one of those affronts and make sure of the mouth it came from, but he was never quick enough. The dandy who leaned against the wall seemed to be the ringleaderⒶtextual note, but B. was not sure of it. He went on with his demonstrations, growing angrier and angrier all the while, and the offensive comments continued. He now said—
“I will now make this subject’s body as rigid as iron; and will ask any that doubt, to come on the platform and examine him and test him.”
He stretched the young man in the air, with his head upon one table and his heels upon another, and no support between, and invited the doubters to come and apply their tests. No one moved. There was an ejaculation: “Just a tuppennyⒶtextual note juggler and his hired pal!”Ⓐtextual note
This time B. spotted the utterer; it was the young fashionable who was leaning against the wall. He limbered up his subject with a few passes, then turned to the audience and said—
“I was invited to come here, I did not invite myself. I was invited as a gentleman, to [begin page 306] meet gentlemen; you best know why the host’s part of the contract has not been fulfilled. You lackⒶtextual note the courage to come on this platform and submit to tests in your own persons, yet you have the courage—being many—to insult me, who am but one, and—as you think—not able to resent it. You do not believe in mesmerism; you do not believe in the genuineness of my demonstrations; you shall have a test that will convince you. I require the person leaning against the wall to come here.”
He bentⒶtextual note his gaze upon the person, who gazed back—gazed and still gazed, B. beckoning—beckoning, drawing him, the audience watching.
“Now then—come!”
The new subject moved slowlyⒶtextual note forward, with his eyes fixed upon B.’s, and arrived upon the platform.
“Stop!” The man stopped. “Get up and stand in this chair.” The man obeyed. “What do you see?—the ocean?” The man nodded his head dreamily. “Is it at your feet? doⒶtextual note you see the waves washing in?” More nods. “Do you not notice how hot it is? Why do you wear such heavy clothes in such weather? Throw them off and take a plunge—it will do you good.” The man took off his coat. “Now your vest—throw it down. NowⒶtextual note your trowsersⒶtextual note—throw them down. Now your shirt. Now the underclothes. There—plunge! Stop!” B. turned to the house and continued:
“Here stands one unbeliever—a Mayfair man—a society man—a swell—a smirking lady-killer—a perfumed drawing-room dandy, contemptuous of other people’s feelings and sensitive about his own, proud of his prettiness, vain of his charms—here they all are before you, stark naked! As he is, so shall you be; so help me God I will nowⒶtextual note strip every coward of you to the skin!”
But he didn’t. There was a wild rush and scramble, and the place was vacant in a minute. The naked man was Baron F.Ⓐtextual note
Mesmerism continued—The Baron F. incident] This text, like those of 1 and 2 December, is from a 1903 manuscript inserted here in 1906.
dined with the C.’s, (in Vienna, in 1897) . . . across the table at a Mr. B.] The people mentioned in this paragraph have not been identified.
mesmerism—as it was then called . . . by Charcot under its other name of hypnotism] The term “mesmerism” derived from the name of Franz Mesmer (1734–1815), one of the earliest researchers to experiment with the phenomenon. Mesmer theorized that a force called “animal magnetism”—a transference of energy from one animate or inanimate object to another—produced the unusual effects he witnessed. In 1842 a Scottish physician, James Braid (1795–1860), concluded that the cause was instead “a peculiar condition of the nervous system, induced by a fixed and abstracted attention of the mental and visual eye, on one object, not of an exciting nature,” and he proposed the term “hypnotism” to replace the scientifically derided “mesmerism” (Braid 2008, 10, 31). Jean-Martin Charcot (1825–93), an eminent French neurologist, turned a Paris asylum for women into a renowned research and teaching hospital; he became world famous for his public lectures and demonstrations in which hypnotized patients reproduced symptoms such as temporary paralysis of the limbs, deafness and muteness, amnesia, heightened or lost sensitivity of the skin, hallucinations, somnambulism, and fits of contortions, flailing, and seizures (Hustvedt 2011, 10–12, 58–63, 90–93, 106–13).
Source documents.
MS Manuscript, leaves originally numbered 1–10 and renumbered 29–38, from a manuscript of thirty-eight leaves written in 1903.TS1 ribbon Typescript, leaves numbered 1475–82, made from the MS and revised.
TS1 carbon (incomplete) Typescript carbon, leaves numbered 1475–81 (1482 is missing), revised: ‘December 3 . . . to the’ (304 title–306.23).
NAR pf Proof sheet, pages numbered 11–14, typeset from the revised TS1 carbon.
This “dictation” and the previous two have their origins in a manuscript—actually an amalgamation of two manuscripts, both evidently written around 1903. The first (which has leaves numbered 1–28) was originally entitled ‘Scraps from my Autobiography. From Chapter IV’. The second, from which the present dictation is drawn, is headed ‘From Chapter XVII’ and has leaves originally numbered 1–10; it has been renumbered by Clemens to follow on directly from the preceding. The MS is written on sheets of buff-colored wove paper, measuring 5¾ by 9 inches. It can be dated to 1903 by Clemens’s statement that he visited Hannibal ‘a year ago’ (MS page 15, which became a part of the “AD” of 2 December 1906, 1.3). In 1906 Clemens canceled the original title and retitled it as part of his Autobiography, adding a date of ‘Dec. 1, 1906’ and arranging for Hobby to type the text as a series of three “autobiographical dictations” carrying the dates 1, 2, and 3 December 1906.
Hobby typed TS1 ribbon from MS. It was lightly revised by Clemens, who copied his revisions onto TS1 carbon and added further revisions intended for NAR. A proof printing (NAR pf), in CU-MARK, survives; it presents the entire text under the defective dateline ‘Dictated October 3, 190ö.’ The pagination of this proof seems to indicate that this dictation was at one time slated to follow those of 1 December and 2 December 1906 in the installment that eventually became NAR 9. It was removed, however, and “The Coming American Monarchy,” which had been planned as an article, was pressed into service to fill out the installment (the text of “The Coming American Monarchy” is in the “AD” of 13 December 1906). NAR pf is a single sheet, printed broadside. Presumably it was sent to Clemens to provide him with a clean printed copy for his future use. In blue pencil an NAR editor marked it: ‘Left over from last month’. NAR pf has a few unique variants in spelling and punctuation; all of them are plausibly the contributions of an NAR copy-editor, and none has been adopted.