 Chapter 5 of The Elephant Man and Other Reminescences This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Mike Botez The Elephant Man and Other Reminescences by Frederick Treves Chapter 5 Two Women In the course of his experience, the medical man acquires probably a more intimate knowledge of human nature than is attained by most. He gains an undistorted insight into character. He witnesses the display of elemental passions and emotions. He sees his subject, as it were, unclothed and in the state of a primitive being. There is no camouflage feeling, no assumption of a part, no finesse. There is merely a man or a woman faced by simple rudimentary conditions. He notes how they act under strain and stress, under the threat of danger or when menaced by death. He observes their behavior both during suffering and after relief from pain, the manner in which they bear losses and alarms and how they express the consciousness of joy. These are the common emotional experiences of life, common alike to the caveman and the man of the 20th century. Among the matters of interest in this purview is the comparative bearing of men and women when subject to the hand of the surgeon. As to which of the two makes the better patient is a question that cannot be answered in a word. Speaking generally, women bear pain better than men. They endure a long illness better both physically and morally. They are more patient and submissive, less defiant of fate and I think I may add more logical. There are exceptions of course, but then there are exceptions in all things. Perhaps what the critic of gold calls the acid test is provided by the test of an operation. Here is something very definite to be faced. A man usually credited with more courage than a woman. This is no doubt a just estimate in situations of panic and violence where less is expected of a woman, but in cold deliberate presence of an operation she stands out well. A display of courage in a man is instinctive, a feature of his upbringing a matter of tradition. With women is associated a rather attractive element of timidity. It is considered to be a not in decorous attribute of her sex. It is apt to be exaggerated and to become often somewhat of a pose. A woman may be terrified at a mouse in her bedroom and yet will view the entrance into that room with two white cloud inquisitors, the anesthetist and the surgeon with composure. A woman will frankly allow under certain conditions that she is frightened to death. The man will not permit himself that expression although he is nonetheless alarmed. A woman seldom displays bravado, a man often does. To sum up the matter, a woman before the tribunal of the operating theater is, in my experience, as courageous as a man. Although she may show less resolve in concealing her emotions. In the determination to live, which plays no little part in the success of a grave operation, a woman is, I think, the more resolute. Her powers of endurance are often amazing. Life may hang by a thread, but to that thread she will cling as if it were a straining rope. I recall the case of a lady who had undergone an operation of unusual duration and severity. She was a small fragile woman, pale and delicate looking. The blow she had received would have felt a giant. I stood by her side some hours after the operation. She was a mere gray shadow of a woman in whom the signs of life seemed to be growing fainter and fainter. The heat of the body was maintained by artificial means. She was still pulseless in her breathing but a succession of low size. She evidently read anxiety and alarm in the faces of those around her for, by a movement of her lips, she indicated that she wished to speak to me. I bent down and heard in the faintest whisper the words, I am not going to die. She did not die, yet her recovery was a thing incredible. Although 28 years have elapsed since that memorable occasion, I am happy to say that she is still alive and well. There are other traits in women that the surgeon comes up on which, if not actually peculiar to their sex, are at least displayed by them in the highest degree of perfection. Two of these characteristics, or it may be that the two are one, are illustrated by the incidents which follow. The first episode may appear to be trivial, although an eminent novelist to whom I told the story thought otherwise and included it much modified in one of his books. The subject was a woman nearing 40. She was plain to look at, commonplace and totally uninteresting. Her husband was of the same pattern and type, a type that embraces the majority of the people in these islands. He was engaged in some humdrum business in the city of London. His means were small and his life as monotonous as a downpour of rain. The couple lived in a small red brick house in the suburbs. The house was one of the 20 in a row. The 20 were all exactly alike. Each was marked by a pathetic pretence to be a place in the country. Each was occupied by a family of a uniform and varying respectability. These houses were like a row of chubby inmates from an institution all wearing white cotton gloves and all dressed alike in their best. The street in which the house stood was called The Avenue. And the house occupied by the couple in question was named The Limes. It was difficult to imagine that anything of real interest could ever occur in The Avenue. It was impossible to associate that decorous road with a murder or even a burglary, much less with an allotment. The only event that had disturbed its peace for long was an occasion when the husband of one of the respected residents had returned home at night in a state of noisy intoxication. Four months afterwards the dwellers in The Avenue, as they passed that house, looked at it as cans. It may be said in brief that all the villas were genteel and that all those who lived in them were worthy. The plain lady of whom I am speaking had no children. She had been happy in a stagnant, unambitious way. Everything went well with her and her household until one horrifying day when it was discovered that she had developed a malignant tumor of the breast. The growth was operated upon by a competent surgeon and for a while the specter was banished. The event, of course, greatly troubled her, but it caused even more anxiety to her husband. The two were very deeply attached. Having few outside interests or diversions, their pleasuring life was bound up with themselves and their small home. The husband was a nervous and imaginative man. He brooded over the calamity that had befallen his cherished mate. He was haunted by the dread that the horrid thing would come back again. When he was busy at his office he forgot it and when he was at home and with his wife who seemed in such beaming health it left his mind. In his leisure moments, however, in his journeyings to London and back and in sleepless hours of the night the terror would come upon him again. It followed him like a shadow. Time passed. The overhanging cloud became less black and the hope arose that it would fade away altogether. This, however, was not to be. The patient began to be aware of changes at the site of the operation. Unpleasant nodules appeared. They grew and grew and every day looked angrier and more vicious. She had little doubt that it, the awful, unmentionable thing, had come back. She dare not tell her husband. He was happy again. The look of anxiety had left his face and everything was as it had been. To save him from distress she kept the dread secret and although the loathsome thing was knowing her vitals she smiled and maintained her wanted cheerfulness when he and she were together. She kept the secret too long. In time she began to look ill to become pallid and feeble and very thin. She struggled on and laughed and joked as in the old days. Her husband was soon aware that something was amiss. Although he dared not express thought the presentment arose in his mind that the thing of terror was coming back. He suggested that she could see her surgeon again but she poo-hooed the idea. Why should a healthy woman see a surgeon? At last her husband gravely alarmed, insisted and she did as he wished. The surgeon of course saw the position at a glance. The disease had returned and during the long weeks of concealment had made such progress that any operation or indeed any curative measure was entirely out of the question. Should he tell her? If he told her what would be gained thereby nothing could be done to hinder the progress of the melody. To tell her would plunge her and her husband into the direst distress the worry that would be occasioned could only do her harm. Her days were numbered. Why not make what remained of her life as free from unhappiness as possible? It was sheer cruelty to tell her. Influenced by these humane arguments he assured her it was all right patted her on the back and told her to run away home. For a while both she and her husband were content. She was ready to believe that she had deceived herself and regretted the anxiety she had occasioned. But the unfortunate man did not remain long at ease. His wife was getting weaker and weaker. He wondered why. The surgeon said she was all right. She herself maintained that she was well. But why was she changing so quickly? The doubt and the uncertainty troubled both of them. So it was resolved that a second opinion should be obtained with the result that she came to see me in London. A mere glimpse was enough to reveal the condition of affairs. The case was absolutely hopeless as her surgeon in a letter had already told me. I was wondering how I should put the matter to her but she made the decision herself. She begged me to tell her the absolute truth. She was not afraid to hear it. She had plans to make. She had already more than a suspicion in her mind and for every reason she must know honestly and openly the real state of affairs. I felt that matters were too far gone to justify any further concealment. I told her. She asked if any treatment was possible. I was obliged to answer no. She asked if she would leave six months and again. I was compelled to answer no. What happened when she left my house I learned later. It was on a Saturday morning in June that she came to see me. For her husband Saturday was a half holiday and the day that he looked forward to with eager anticipation. So anxious was he as to my verdict that he had not gone to his business on this particular day. He had not the courage to accompany his wife to London and indeed she had begged him not to be present at the consultation. He had seen his wife into the train and spent the rest of the morning wondering listlessly about traversing every street, road and lane in the neighborhood in a condition of misery and apprehension. He knew by what train she would return but he had not the courage to meet it. He would know the verdict as she stepped out of the carriage and as he caught a glimpse of her face. The platform would be crowded with city friends of his and whatever the news good or bad he felt that he would be unable to control himself. He resolved to wait for her at the top of the avenue a quiet and secluded road. He could not however stand still. He continued to roam about aimlessly. He tried to distract his thoughts. He counted the railings on one side of the street assuring himself that if the last railing proved to be an even number his wife would be alright. It proved to be uneven. He jangled the coins in his pocket and decided that if the first coin he drew up came up heads it would be a sign that his wife was well. It came up heads. Once he found that he had wandered some way from the avenue and was seized by the panic that he would not get back there in time. He ran back all the way to find when he drew up breathless that he had still 25 minutes to wait. He thought the train would never arrive. It seemed hours and hours late. He looked at his watch a dozen times. At last he heard the train rumble in and pull up at the station. The moment had come. He paced the road to and fro like a caged beast. He opened his coat the better to breathe. He took off his hat to wipe his streaming forehead. He watched the corner at which he would appear. She came suddenly inside. He saw that she was skipping along, that she was waving her hand and that her face was beaming with smiles. As she approached she called out. It is alright. He rushed to her. She told me with a yell threw his arm around her and hugged her until she thought she would have fainted. On the way to the house he almost danced around her. He waved his hat to everybody he saw hand. When entering the house shook the astonished maid servant so violently by the hand that she thought he was mad. That afternoon he enjoyed himself as he had never done before. The cloud was removed. His world was ablaze of sunshine again. His wife was saved. She took him to the golf lengths and went round with him as he played. Although she was so weak she could hardly crawl long. His game was a series of ridiculous antics. He used the handle of his club on the tee, did his spotting with a driver and finished up by giving the caddy half a sovereign. In the evening his wife hurriedly invited a few of his choice's friends to supper. It was such a supper as never was known in the avenue either before or since. He laughed and joked, was generally uproarious and finished by proposing the health of his wife in a rupturous speech. It was the day of his life. Next morning she told him the truth. I asked her why she had not told him at once. She replied it was his half holiday and I wished to give him just one more happy day. The second episode belongs to the days of my youth when I was a house surgeon. The affair was known in the hospital as The Lump Murder Case. It concerned a family of three, husband, wife and grown-up daughter. They lived in an ill-smelling slum in the most-object quarter of White Chapel. The conditions under which this family existed were very evil, although not exceptional in the dark places of any town. The husband was just a drunken loafer, vicious and brutal, in his most fitting place when he was lying in the filth of the gutter. He had probably never done a day's work in his life. He lived on the earnings of his wife and daughter. They were simstresses and those were the doleful days of the song of the shirt. As the girl was delicate, most of the work fell upon the mother. The wretched woman toiled day by day from year's end to year's end to keep this unholy family together. She had neither rest nor relaxation, never a gleam of joy, nor a respite from unhappiness. The money gained by fifteen hours continuous work with her needle might vanish in one uproarious drinking bout. Her husband beat her and kicked her as the fancy pleased him. He did not disable her since he must have money for drink and she alone could provide it. She could work just as well with a black eye and a bruised body as without those marks of her Lord's pleasure. As she had to work late at night, she kept a lamp for her table. One evening the sodom brute as he staggered into the room said that he also must have a lamp, must have a lamp of his own. What he wanted it for did not matter. He would have it. He was, as a rule, too muddled to read even if he had ever learned to read. Possibly he wanted the lamp to curse by. Anyhow, if she did not give him a lamp tomorrow, he would give her hell and the poor woman had already seen enough of hell. Next day she bought a lamp, lit it and placed it on the table with some hope, no doubt, in her heart that it would please him and bring a ray of peace. He came home at night, not only drunk, but quarrelsome. The two lamps were shining together on the table. The room was quite bright and indeed almost cheerful, but the spectacle drove him to fury. He cursed the shrinking tired woman. He cursed the room. He cursed the lamp. It was not the kind of lamp he wanted. It was not so good as her lamp and it was like her meanness to get it. As she stood up to show him how nice a lamp it really was, he hit her in the face with such violence that he knocked her into a corner of the room. She was wedged in and unable to rise. He then took up his lamp and, with a yell of profanity, threw it at her as she lay on the ground. But once her apron and cotton dress were ablaze and as she lay there burning and screaming for mercy, he hurdled the other lamp at her. The place was now lit only by the horrible dancing flames that rose from the burning woman. The daughter was hiding in terror in the adjoining room. The partition which separated it from her mother's was so thin that she had heard everything that passed. She rushed in and endeavored to quench the flames. But streams of burning oil were trickling all over the floor while the saturated clothes on her mother's body flared like a wick. Her father was rolling about laughing. He might have been a demon out of the pit. Neighbors poured in and by means of snatched up fragments of carpet, bits of sacking and odd clothes the fire was smothered, but it was too late. There followed a period of commotion. A crowd gathered in the dingy lane with faces upturned to the window from the broken panes of which smoke was escaping. People pressed up the stair, now thick with the smell of paraffin and of burning flesh. The room utterly wrecked was in darkness, but by the light of an unsteady candle stuck in a bottle the body of the woman moaning with pain was dragged out. An improvised stretcher was obtained and on it the poor seamstress wrapped up in a dirty quilt was marched off to the hospital followed by a mob. The police had appeared early on the scene and acting on the evidence of the daughter had arrested the now terrified drunkard. When the woman reached the hospital she was still alive but in acute suffering. She was placed into the female accident ward and placed on a bed in a corner by the door. The hour was very late and the ward had been long closed down for the night. It was almost in darkness. The gas jets were lowered and the little light they shed fell upon the white figures of alarmed patients sitting up in bed to watch this sudden company with something dreadful on a stretcher. A screen was drawn round the burnt woman's bed and in this little enclosure full of shadow a strange and moving spectacle came to pass. The miserable patient was burned to death. Her clothes were reduced to a dark adhesive crust in the layers of cinder that marked the front of her dress. I noticed two needles that had evidently been stuck there when she seized her work. Her face was hideously disfigured the eyes closed the lips swollen and bladder-like and the cheeks charred in patches to a shiny brown. All her hair was burned off and was represented by little greasy ash on the pillow. Her eyebrows were streaks of black while her eyelashes were marked by a line of charcoal at the edge of the lids. She might have been burned at the stake at Smithfield. As she was sinking it was necessary that her dying depositions should be taken for this purpose a magistrate was summoned. With him came two policemen supporting between them the shaking form of the now partly sobered husband. The scene was one of the most memorable I have witnessed. I can still see the darkened ward the whispering patients sitting bolt upright in their night dresses the darker corner behind the screen lit only by the light of the handlamp the motionless figure the tray of dressing no longer needed the half emptied feeding cup. I can recall too the ward cat rudely disturbed stalking away the air of cynical unconcern the patient's face was in the shadow the nurse and I stood on one side of the bed the magistrate was seated on the other at the foot of the bed were the two policemen and the prisoner the man who was in the full light of the lamp was a disgustful object he could barely stand his knees shook under him his hair was wild his eyes bloodshot his face bloated and bestial from time to time he blubbered hysterically rocking to and fro whenever he looked at his wife he blubbered and seemed in a daze until a tug at his arm by the policeman walking up the magistrate called upon me to inform the woman that she was dying I did so she nodded the magistrate then said to her having warned her of the import of her evidence tell me how this happened she replied as clearly as her swollen lips would allow it was a pure accident these were the last words she uttered for she soon became unconscious and in a little while was dead she died with a lie on her lips to save the life of the brute who had murdered her who had burned her life she had lied and yet her words expressed a dominating truth they expressed her faithfulness to the man who had called her wife her forgiveness for his deeds of fiendish cruelty and a mercy so magnificent as to be almost divine End of Chapter 5 Recording by Mike Botez Chapter 6 of The Elephant Man and Other Reminescences This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Mike Botez The Elephant Man and Other Reminescences by Frederick Treves a sea lover The man I would tell about was a mining engineer some 40 and odd years of age most of his active life had been spent in Africa once he had returned home to England with some gnawing illness and with a shadow of death upon him he was tall and gaunt the tropical sun had tanned his face an unwholesome brown while the fever-laden wind of the swamp had blanched the color from his hair he was a tired-looking man who gave one the idea that he had been long sleepless he was taciturn for he had lived much alone and but for his sister had no relatives and a few friends for many years he had wandered to and fro surveying and prospecting and when he turned to look back upon the trail of his life there was little to see but the ever-stretching track the file of black porters the solitary camp the one thing that struck me most about him was his love of the sea if he was ill he said it was a boyish love evidently which had never died out of his heart it seemed to be his soul fondness and the only thing of which he spoke tenderly he was born I found at Salcom in Devonshire at that place, as many know the sea rushes in between two headlands and pouring over the rocky terraces and around sandy bays flows by the little town and thence away up the estuary at the last it creeps tingly among meadows and corn fields to the tottering key at the foot of Kingsbridge on the estuary he had spent his early days and here he and a boy after his own heart had made gracious quaintance with the sea when school was done the boys were ever busy among the creeks playing at smugglers or at treasure seekers so long as the light lasted or they hung about the wharf among the boats and the picturesque litter of the sea were very cold and ineffable colors the tales of pirates and the Spanish Maine which they had read by the winter fire the reality of the visions was made keener when they strutted about the deck of the poor semi-domestic cooling brick which leaned warily against the harbour side or climbed over the bulwarks of the old schooner which had been wrecked on the beach before they were born with all the dash of buccaneers in their hearts they were both resolved to follow the sea but fate turned their footsteps elsewhere for one became a mining engineer in the colonies and the other a clerk in a stockbroker's office in London in spite of years of uncongenial work and of circumstances which took them far beyond the paradise of tides and salt winds the two boys as men ever kept green the memory of romance abounding sea he who was to be a clerk became a pale-faced man who wore spectacles and whose back was bent from much stooping over books I can think of him at his desk in the city on some day in June gazing through a dingy window the palisade of walls and roofs the clerk's pen is still for the light on the chimney pots has changed to a flood of sun upon the devon cliffs and the noise of the streets to the sound of the waves tumbling among the rocks or bubbling over pebbles there are seagulls in the air while far away a grey bark is blown along before the freshening breeze and the only roofs in view belong to the white cottages about the beach then comes the ring of a telephone bell and the dream vanishes so with a man whose life was cast in unkindly lands he would recall times when the heat in the camp was stifling when the heartless plain shimmered as if it burned when the water was scarce and what there was of it was warm while the torment of insects was beyond bearing at such times he would wonder how the tide stood in the estuary at home was the flood swirling up from the channel bringing with its clear eddies the smell of the ocean as it hurried in and out among the piles of old pier or was it the time of the ebb when stretches of damp sand come out at the foot of the cliffs and when ridges of rock dripping with cool weed emerge once more into the sun what a moment for a swim yet here on the veld there was but half pint of water in his can and the land stretching before him that was scorched to cracking dusty and shadowless it was in connection with his illness that I came across him his trouble was obscure but after much consideration it was decided that an operation although a forlorn hope should be attempted if the disease proved to be benign there was prospect for a cure if a cancer was discovered the outlook was hopeless he settled that he would have the operation performed at the seaside at a town on the south coast within easy reach of London rooms were secured for him in a house on the cliffs from the windows stretched the fine prospect of the channel while from them also could be seen the little harbour of the place the surgeon and his assistant came down from London and I with them the room in which the operation was to be performed was hard and unsympathetic it had been cleared of all its accustomed furniture on the bare floor a white sheet had been placed and in the middle of this square stood the operation table like a machine of torture beyond the small bed the patient was to occupy and the tables set out for the instruments the room was empty two nurses were busy with the preparations for the operation and were gossiping genially in whispers there was a large bow window in the room of the type much favoured at seaside resorts the window was stripped of its curtains so that the sunlight poured in the uncovered floor it was a cloudless morning in July the hard-worked surgeon from London had a passion for sailing and had come with the hope that he might spend some hours on the sea after his work was done his assistant and I were to go with him when all the preparations for the operation were completed the patient walked into the room erect and unconcerned he stepped to the table and, mounting it jointly sat on it, bolt upright and gazed out earnestly at the sea following his eyes I could see that in the harbor the men were already hoisting the mainsail of the little yule in which we were to sail the patient still sat up rigidly and for so long that the surgeon placed a hand upon his shoulder to motion him to lie down but he kept fixedly gazing out to sea minutes elapsed and yet he moved not the surgeon with some expression of anxiety once more motioned him to lie down but still he kept his look seawards at last the rigid muscles relaxed as he let his head drop upon the pillow he said I have seen the last of it the last of the sea you can do what you like with me now he had indeed taken as he thought farewell of his old love of the sea of his boyhood and of many happy memories the eyes of the patient closed upon the sight of the English channel and in the sun and as the mask of the anesthetist was placed over his face he muttered I have said goodbye the trouble revealed by the surgeon proved to be cancer and when some few days after the operation the weary man was told the nature of his melody he said with a smile he would take no more trouble to live in 14 days he died every day his bed was brought close to the window so that the sun could fall upon him so that his eye could rest upon the stretch of water and the sound of waves could fall upon his tired ears the friend of his boyhood the clerk came down from London to see him they had very little to say to one another when they met after the simplest greeting was over the sick man turned his face towards the sea and for long he and his old companion gazed at the blue channel in silence there was no need for speech it was the sea that spoke for them it was evident that they were both back again at Salkham at some beloved creek and that they were boys once more playing by the sea the sick man's hand moved across the coverlet to search for the hand of his friend and when the fingers met they closed in a grip of gratitude for the most gracious memory of their lives the failing man's last sight of the sea was one evening at sundown when the tide was swinging away to the west his look lingered upon the fading waves until the night set in then the blind of the window was drawn down next morning at sunrise it was not drawn up for the lover of the sea was dead end of chapter 6 recording by Mike Botez chapter 7 of the Elephant Man and other Reminassencies this is a Libruvox recording all Libruvox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit Libruvox.org recording by Mike Botez The Elephant Man and other influences by Friedrich Trief of heart failure. What a strange company they are, these old patients who crowd into the surgeon's memory after a lifetime of busy practice. There they stand, a confused impersonal assembly, so elusive and indistinct, as to be little more than shadows. Behind them is a dim background of the past, a long building with many windows that I recognize as my old hospital, a consulting room with familiar furniture, an operating theater, certain indefinite sick rooms, as well as a ward in which are marshalled a double row of beds with blue and white coverlets. Turning over the pages of old casebooks, as one would idle with the sheets of an inventory, some of these long departed folk appear clearly enough, both as to their faces and the details of their histories. But the majority are mere ghosts with neither remembered names nor features, neither age nor sex. They are just fragments of anatomy, the last visible portions of figures that are fading out of sight. Here, among the crowd, are the cheeks of a pretty girl encircled by white bandages and the visage of a toothless old man with only one ear. I cannot recollect nothing but their looks. They belong to people I have known somewhere and somehow in the consulting room or the ward. Here a light falls upon that knee, that curious skull, that puzzling growth. Here is a much distorted back, bare and pitiable, surmounted by coils of beautiful brown hair. If the lady turn round I should probably not recognize her face, but I remember the back and the coils of the hair. This is a gathering, indeed not of people, but of cases recalled by portions of their bodies. The collection is not unlike a medley of fragments of stained glass, with isolated pieces of the human figure painted upon them, or it may be comparable to a faded fresco in a cloister where the portions that survive, although complete in themselves, fail to recall the story they once have told. It is curious when so much is indefinite how vividly certain trivial items stand forth as the soul remains of a once complete personality. All I can recall of one lady, elderly, but sane, was the fact that she always received me during a long illness, sitting up in bed with a large hat on her head, trimmed with red poppies. She also wore a veil, which she had to lift in order that I might see her tongue. She was further distinguished by a rose pinned to her night dress, but I recall with relief that she did not wear gloves. Of one jolly boy, the only particular that survived in my mind is a hair's foot, which was found under his pillow when he was waiting an operation. It had been a talisman to coax him to sleep in his baby days, when his small hand would close upon it as the world faded. His old nanny had brought it to the nursing home and had placed it secretly under his pillow, knowing that he would search for it in the unhappy days of awakening from chloroform. He wept with shame when it was discovered, but I am sure it was put back again under the pillow, although he called his nanny a silly old thing. Then again there was the whistling girl. She was about 16 and has recently learned whistling from a brother. Her operation had been serious, but she was evidently determined to face it sturdily and never to give way. She expressed herself by whistling and the expression was even more realistic than speech. Thus, as I came upstairs, the tone of her whistling was defiant and was intended to show that she was not the least afraid. During the dressing of the wound, the whistling was subdued and uncertain, a rippling accompaniment that conveyed content when she was not hurt, but that was interrupted by a staccato, when there was a dart of pain. As soon as my visit was over, the music became debonair and triumphant so that I often left the room to the tune of Mendelssohn's Wedding March. On the other hand, among the phantoms of the casebook are some who are remembered with a completeness which appears never to have grown dim. The figures are entire, while the inscription that records their story is as clear as it was when it was written. In the company of these well remembered people is the lady whose story is here set forth. More than 30 years have passed since I saw her, and yet I can recall her features almost as well as if I had met her yesterday, can note again her little tricks of manner in the very words she uttered in our brief conferences. She was a woman of about 28, small and fragile and very pretty. Her face was oval, her complexion exquisite, while her gray blue eyes had in them the look of solemn wonder so often seen in the eyes of a child. Her hair came down low on either side of her face and was so arranged as to remind me of the face of some solemn lady in an old Italian picture. Her mouth was small and sensitive but determined and she kept her lips a little apart when listening. She was quiet and self-possessed while her movements and her speech were slow as if she were wary. She was shown into my room as an hour when I did not, as a rule, receive patience. She came without appointment and without any letter of introduction from her doctor. She said that she had no doctor, that she came from a remote place in the north of England, that she had an idea what was the matter with her and that she wanted me to carry out the necessary operation. On investigation I found that she had an internal growth which would soon imperil her life. I explained to her that an operation would be dangerous and possibly uncertain but that if it proved successful her cure would be complete. She said she would have the operation carried out at once and asked me to direct her to a nursing home. She displayed neither anxiety nor reasonable interest. Her mind was made up as to any danger to her life. The point was not worth discussing. She had informed me that she was married but had no children. I inquired as to her parents but she replied that she was an orphan. I told her that I must write fully both to her doctor and to her husband. She replied as before that she had no doctor and that it seemed a pity to worry a strange medical man with details about a patient who was not under his care. As to her husband she asked if I had told her all and if there would be anything in my letter to him that I had not communicated to her. I said that she knew the utmost I had to tell. In that case she replied a note from you is necessary. I said of course your husband will come up to London to which she remarked I cannot see the need. He has his own affairs to tend to. Why should any fuss be made? The operation concerns no one but myself. I asked her then what relative or friend would look after her during the operation. She said no one. I have no relatives I care about and as to friends I do not propose to make my operation a subject for gossip. I explained to her that under such circumstances no surgeon would undertake the operation. It was a hazardous measure and it was essential that she should have someone near her during a period of such anxiety. She finally agreed to ask an elderly lady a remote connection of hers to be with her during her stay in the nursing home. Still there was some mystery about the lady that I could not fathom something evidently that I did not know. There was a suggestion of recklessness and even of desperation in her attitude that it was difficult to account for. As she sat in the chair by the side of my desk with her hands folded in her lap and her very dainty feet crossed in front of her her appearance of indifference was so pronounced that no onlooker would imagine that the purport of our converse was a matter of life and death. One little movement of hers during our unemotional talk was recalled to my mind some days later. She now and then put her hand to her neck to finger a brooch in the collar of her dress. It was a simple gold brooch but she appeared to derive some comfort or it may be some confidence from the mere touching of it. The operation was affected without untoward incident of any kind. It was entirely successful. The wound healed by what is known as first intention. There was no rise of temperature and no surgical complications but the condition of the patient caused an uneasiness that deepened day by day. She became restless and apathetic and at the same time very silent answering questions only in monosyllables. She resisted no detail of treatment but accepted everything with a lethargic complacency impossible to overcome. That however was not all. She appeared to be possessed by an indefinite anxiety which was partly expressed by an intense attitude of expectation. She was expecting a letter looking out for it day after day and hour after hour. She listened to the door and to any sound on the stair as an imprisoned dog might listen for the steps of its master. The terrible vigil began on the second or third day after the operation. When I made my visit about the time she asked me if I had given orders that she was to have no letters. I assured her I had not done so and that she should have every letter the moment it arrived but no letter came. Whenever I made my appearance her first question was did you see a letter for me in the hall? I could only answer no. Then she would press me with other inquiries. How often does the postman come? Is he not sometimes late? Has there been any accident on the railway? Do letters get occasionally lost in the post and so on interminably? If anyone came into the room there was always a look of expectation on her face. An eager searching for a letter in the hand or on the tray. If a knock was heard at the front door she at once inquired if it was the postman and very usually asked me to go to the top of the stair to ascertain. The sisters, the nurses and the patient's friend could tell me nothing. No letter of any kind arrived. The poor tormented creatures yearning for a letter had become a possession. I inquired if she had written any letters herself. The sister said that as far as was known she had written but one and that was on the eve of her operation. Although she should have been in bed at the time she insisted on going out for the purpose of posting the letter herself. She rapidly became weaker, more restless, more harassed by despair. She was unable to sleep without drugs and took scarcely any food. Feeble and failing as she was her anxiety about the coming of a letter never abated. I asked a physician versed in the nervous disorders to see her but he had little to propose. She was evidently dying but of what? She was now a pitiable spectacle, emaciated and hollow-eyed with a spot of red on her cheek, an ever wrinkled brow and ever maturing lips. I can see to this day the profile of her lamentable features against the white background of the pillow. Pinned to the pillow was the brooch that I had noticed at her neck when I saw her in my consulting room. She would never allow it to be removed but gave no reason for her insistence. I have seen her hand now and then move up to touch it just as she had done during our first interview. I was with her when she died. As I entered the room there was still the same expectant glance at the door. Her lips, dry and brown, appear to be shaping the question. A letter for me? There was no need to answer, no. At the very last, with a display of strength that amazed me, she turned over with her face to the wall as if she wished to be alone. Then, in a voice louder than I had known her to be capable of four days, she cried out, oh Frank, Frank. And in a moment later she was dead. Her death was certified with unconscious accuracy as due to heart failure. Here was a mystery and with it a realization of how little we knew of this lady who had died because she wished to die. I was aware that her husband's Christian name was William, but beyond that I knew practically nothing of him. The sister of the nursing home had both written and telegraphed to the husband, but no reply had been received. It was afterwards ascertained that he was away at the time and that the house was shut up. I was determined to find out the meaning of the tragedy, but it was some months before I was possessed of the whole of the story. The poor lady's marriage had been unhappy. Her husband had neglected her and they were completely estranged. She formed a friendship with a man of middle age who lived nearby. This is he whose Christian name was Frank and who was, I imagine, the giver of the brooch. The friendship grew into something more emotional. She became indeed desperately attached to him and he to her. Their intimacy was soon so conspicuous as to lead to gossip in the neighborhood, while the state of the two lovers themselves was one of blank despair. She looked to him as Pompilia looked to Caponsacci. He was her savior, her soldier saint, the lover of her life. To him she could repeat Pompilia's words. You are ordained to call and I to come. It became evident in time that the only course the two could adopt was to run away together. She on her part counted no cost and would have followed him blindly to the world's end. He on the other hand hesitated. He did count the cost and found it crushing. His means were small. His future depended on himself. An elopement would involve ruin, poverty and squalor as well as in time fretful awakening from a glorious dream. He did the only thing possible. He told her that they must part, that he must give her up. That he must not see her again. That he must not even write to her. It was a wise and indeed inevitable decision. But to her it seemed to foretell the end of her life. He kept the compact but she had not the strength to accept it. It was something that was impossible. She endeavored to get in touch with him again and again and in many ways but without success. Hard as it was he had kept to his resolve. Then came the episode of the operation. Now she thought if she wrote to him to say that she was in London and alone and that she was about to undergo an operation that might cause her death he must come to see her or he must at least reply to her letter. She felt assured that she would hear from him at last for after all that had passed between them he could not deny her one little word of comfort in this tragic moment. She wrote to him on the eve of her operation. The rest of the story I have told. Chapter 8 of the Elephant man and other reminiscences. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Mike Botez. The Elephant man and other reminiscences by Frederick Treves. A restless night. It was in Rajputana in cold weather that we came up on the duck bungalow. I was proceeding south from a native state where I had met an officer in the Indian Medical Service. He was starting on a medical tour of inspection and for the first stage of the journey we travelled together. He was glad to have a member of his own profession to talk to. Towards the end of the day we halted at this duck bungalow. It was situated in a poor waste which was possessed of two features only dried earth and cactus bushes. So elemental was the landscape that it might have been a part of the primeval world before the green things came into being. The cactus bloated, misshaped and scarred by great age looked like some anti-diluvian growth which had preceded the familiar plants with leaves. If a psorian had been inside browsing on this ancient scrub, the monster would have been in keeping. Some way distant across the plain was a native village, simple enough to be a settlement of Neolithic man. Although it was but a splash of brown amidst the faded green, it conveyed the assurance that there were still men on the earth. The bungalow was simple as a packing case. It showed no pretense of decoration while there was in its making not a timber nor a trowel of plaster which could have been dispensed with. In the center of the miserly place was a common room with a veranda in front and a faintly suggested kitchen at the back. Leading out of the common room on either side was a bedroom and the establishment was complete. The central room was provided with one meal-stained table and two disillute-looking chairs of the kind found in a servant's attic. The walls were bare save for certain gluttonous splashes where insects had been squashed by the slipper of some tormented guest. The place smelt of grease and paraffin toned by a faint suggestion of that unclean aromatic odour which clings to Indian dwellings. The bedrooms were alike, square chambers with cement floors plain as an empty water tank. An inventory of their respective contents was completed by the following items, one low bedstead void of bedding, one chair, one table with traces of varnishing places and one looking-glass in a state of decommission. To these may be added one window and two doors. One door led into the common room, the other into a cemented bathroom containing a buttered tomb bath skinned even of its paint. We each of us had an Indian servant or bearer who with mechanical melancholy made the toilet table pretentious by placing up on it the entire contents of our respective dressing bags. After dinner of a sort we sat on the penitential chairs and smote leaning our elbows on the table for our greater comfort. The doctor was eloquent upon his medical experiences in the district, upon his conflicts with pessimistic patients and his struggles with fanaticism and ignorance. The average sick man, he told me, had more confidence in a dried frog suspended from the neck in a bag than in the whole British pharmacopia. Most of his narratives have passed out of my memory, but one incident I had reason to remember. It concerned a native from the adjacent village who was working as a stone mason and whose eye was pierced by a minute splinter of stone. As a result the eye became inflamed and sightless, save that the man retained in the damaged organ an appreciation of light. As bearing up on the case and its sequel I must explain the circumstances of sympathetic of Talmia. When an eye is damaged as this was and inflammation ensues it is not uncommon for the mischief to spread to the sound globe and destroy that also. In order to prevent such a catastrophe it is necessary to remove the injured and useless eye as promptly as possible. That was the uniform practice in my time. The operation in question was urged upon the native in order to prevent sympathetic of Talmia in the sound eye but he declined it, preferring to consult a magician who lived a day's journey from the village. The consultation took place and the man returned to the local dispensary. For although he still had good vision in the sound eye it was beginning to trouble him. The surgeon considered that the operation was now probably too late but he had urged it upon the ground that there was some prospect of success while on the other hand failure could make the patient's condition no more desperate. The man persuaded against his will but last consented and the useless eyeball was removed. Unfortunately the operation was too late. The sound eye became involved beyond recovery and the miserable native found himself totally blind. He ignorantly ascribed his loss of sight to the operation. Before my friend left the station the man was brought into his room for the last time and when it was explained to him that he was in the doctor's presence he threw his arm aloft and shrieking aloud cursed the man of healing with a vehemence which should have brought down fire from heaven. He called upon every deity in the Indian mythology to pour torments upon this maimer of men to blast his home and annihilate his family root and branch. He blackened the sky with curses because the darkness which engulfed him prevented him from tearing out with his nails the eyes of this murderous Englishman. Foaming and screaming and almost voiceless from the violence of his speech he was led away to stumble about his village where for weeks he ran to the air with his awful implications. Whether the poor man was now alive or dead the doctor could not say for he had heard no more of him. In the due course we agreed that the time had come to go to bed. The doctor said that he always occupied the right hand bedroom when he came to the bungalow but as it was found that my servant had deposited my bedding and effects in this particular seapulker he retired to the chamber across the hall. I did not look forward to a night in this so-called rest house. The bedroom was as comfortless as a prison cell and as desolate as the one sound room in a ruin. There was some comfort in contemplating the familiar articles displayed on the dressing table yet they looked curiously out of place. I locked the door leading to the common room but found that the door to the bathroom had no lock while there was merely a bolt to the outer door that led from the bathroom into the open. This bolt I shot but left the intermediate door ajar feeling that I should like to assure myself from time to time that the far room was empty. There was one small paraffin lamp provided but the glass shade of it had been broken so that it was only when the week was very long that it would burn without smoking. By the glimmer of this malodorous flame I undressed and blown it out got into bed. The place was as black as a pit as stifling and as silent. I lay awake a long time for the stillness was oppressive. I found myself listening to it. It seemed to be made up of some faint far off sounds of mysterious import of which I imagined I could catch the rhythm. It was possible to believe that these half imagined pulsations were produced by the rush of the earth through space and that the stillness of the night made them audible. I went to sleep in time and slept as I afterwards discovered for some hours when I was aroused by a noise in the room. I was wide awake in an instant with my head raised off the pillow listening rigidly for the sound that I must have heard in my sleep. The place was in solid darkness. I felt that there was something alive in the room, something that moved. At last the sound came again. It was the pattering of the feet of some animal. The creature was coming towards the bed. I could hear others moving along the floor always from the bathroom until the place seemed to be alive with invisible creatures. Such is the effect of imagination that I conceived these unknown animals to be about the size of retrievers. I wondered if their heads would reach the level of the couch until I was relieved to hear that many were now running about under the bed. I resolved to shout at them but fancied that the noise of my own voice would be as unpleasant to hear as the voice of another and unknown human being in the room. I noticed now a faint odor of musk and was glad to think that these pattering feet belong to musk rats in that these animals must have entered through the drain hole I had observed in the outer wall of the bathroom. I disliked rats and especially rats in a bedroom. This prejudice was not made less when I felt that some of them were climbing up onto the bed. I was certain I could hear one crawling over my clothes which lay on the chair by the bedside. I was certain that others were searching about on the dressing table and recognized or thought I did the clutter of a shoehorn that lay there. I recalled stories in which men had been attacked by hordes of rats and I wondered when they would attack me for by this time the whole room seemed to be full of rats and I could picture legions swarming in from the plane outside in a long snake-like column. In a while I was sure that a rat was on the pillow close to my head. My hair seemed to be flicked by the whiskers of one of these fitted broods. This was more than I could tolerate so I sprung up in bed and shouted. There was a general scuttle for the far door but it was some time before I ventured to pass my hand over the pillow to assure myself that a rat was not still there. I had a mind to get out of the bed and light the lamp but do this seemed to be like taking a step into a black pit. I lay down again for a while all was quiet. Then came once more the patring of feet from the direction of the bathroom, the stickly odor of musk and the conviction that at least a hundred rats were pouring into the room. They crept out to the bed and ran about beneath it with increasing boldness. I was meditating another shout when there came a sound in the room that made every vein in my body tingle. It arose from under the bed, a hollow scraping sound which I felt sure was due to the movement of a human being. I thought it was caused by the scraping of a belt buckle on the cement floor, the belt being worn by a man who was crawling on his stomach. I disliked this sound more than the rats. At this moment toward to my discomfort I felt a rat crawling across my bare foot, a beast with small cold paws and hot fur. I kicked it off so that it fell with a thud on the floor. I shouted again and driven to desperation jumped out of the bed. I had expected to tread on a massive rat but felt the hard floor instead. I went to the dressing table and struck a light. The place was empty but I could not see under the bed. The match went out and in the blackness I expected some fresh surprise to develop. I managed to strike another match and to light the lamp. I placed it on the floor and looked under the bed. What I saw there I took at first to be a piece of a human skull. I got a stick and touched it. It seemed lighter than a dried bone. I dragged it out into the room. It was a cake of unleavened bread much used by the natives, dried up into a large curled chip. The rats had been dragging this way and had so produced the scraping sound which I had exaggerated into something sinister. Having convinced myself that the room was empty I blocked up the drain hole in the outer wall by placing the bath in front of it and feeling secure from any further disturbance returned to bed leaving the lamp light on the table. For a long time I kept awake watching every now and then the bathroom door to satisfy myself that I had succeeded in keeping the beastly animals out. During this vigil I fell asleep and then at once embarked upon a dream the vividness and reality of which were certainly remarkable. The most convincing feature was this the dream without a break continued the happenings of the night. The scene was this identical bedroom at this identical moment. The dream as it were took up the story from the moment that I lost it. Owing to my close scrutiny every detail of the vile chamber had already become as clearly impressed upon my brain as if it had been fixed by a photographic plate. I had not in my dream fallen asleep again but was still wide awake and still keeping a watch over the bathroom door for the incoming of the rats. The bathroom door was just a jar but the very faint glimmer of the lamp did not enable me to penetrate the darkness that filled it. I kept my eye fixed on the entry when in a moment to my horror the door began to open. The sight was terrifying in the extreme. My heart was thumping to such a degree that I thought its beats must be audible. I felt a deadly sinking in my stomach while the skin of my back and neck seemed to be wrinkling and to be drugged up as might be assured a man is drawing over his head. There is no panic like the panic felt in a dream. A brown hand appeared on the edge of the door. It was almost a relief to see that it was a human hand. The door was then opened to its utmost. Out of the dark there crept a middle aged man, a native, lean and sinewy without a vestige of clothing on his body. His skin shone in the uncertain light and it was evident that his body from head to foot was smeared with oil. The most noticeable point about the man was that he was blind. His eyelids were closed but the sockets of his eyes were sunken as are those of a corpse. With his left hand he felt for the wall while in his right hand he carried a small stone mason's pick. His face was expressionless. This was the most terrible thing about it for his face was as the face of the dead. He crept into the room as death himself might creep into the chamber of dying. I realized at once in my dream that this was the native about whom my friend had been speaking before we had retired for the night. This man had heard of the doctor's arrival, would know my room as the one he usually occupied and had now come there to murder him. I was so fascinated by the sight of this unhuman creature moving towards me that I could not stir a muscle. I was raised up in bed and was leaning on one elbow like an image on a tomb. I was so filled with a sense of a final calamity that I felt I had ceased to breathe. There were indeed such a clutching at my throat and such bursting at my heart that the act of breathing seemed well nigh impossible. Had I been awake I should without a doubt have shouted at the uncanny intruder and attacked him but in the dream I was unable to stir and the longer I remained motionless the more impossible did it appear that I could move. My limbs might have been turned into stone. The figure crept on filling his way by the wall. There was a sense of an oncoming irresistible fate. Every time that a horrible bare foot was lifted, advanced and brought to the ground I felt that I was one step nearer to the end. The figure seemed to grow larger as it approached me. The hand without stretched fingers that groped its way along the wall was like a claw. I could hear the breathing of the creature, the breath being drawn in between the closed teeth. I could see the muscles of the arm that held a pick contract and relax. There was now in the air the loathsome smell of the unclean native mixed with the odor of oil. One more step and he was so near that I could see the faint light glimmer on his teeth and could notice that they were dry. The outstretched claw-like hand that felt its way along the wall was now nearly over my head. In another moment that awful pick would crush into my skull or plunge into my neck. I bowed my head instinctively so that I could not see the blow coming and at the same time I thought it would be less terrible if the iron were driven into my back rather than into my head or face. The evil creature was now close to the bed. The extended arm was clawing along the wall above my pillow for I had now shrunken as low as I could. With my head bent I could now see nothing of the man but his wizened thigh upon which the muscles rose and fell. A bony kneecap was advanced slowly and then I saw a shadow move on the floor. This I felt was the shadow of the arm with a pick raised a strike. I was mesmerized as would be a rabbit in corner within a foot of a snake. Suddenly the lamp flame gave a little crackle. The sound breaking the silence was intensified into an explosion. It seemed to call me to my senses. With one maddened half conscious effort I rolled gently off the bed away from the pursuer and slipped between the couch and the wall onto the floor. I made little noise in doing this. For my body was uncovered the bed was very low and the space between it and the wall so narrow that I was let slowly down to the ground. To the blind man I may merely have turned in bed. As I lay there on the floor I could see the two sinewy feet close to the couch and could hear the awful hand moving stealthily over the very pillow. I next knew that he was bending over the couch to find out what was between the bed and the wall. Turning my head I saw a shadowy hand descend on the far side of the bed. The fingers extended as if filling the air. In a moment he would reach me. His hand moved to and fro like a head of a cobra. While I felt that with a touch of his tentacle like fingers I should die. The climax of the dream was reached. I was now well under the bed. In a paroxysm of despair I seized the two skinny ankles and jerked them towards me at the same moment lifting the frail bed bodily with my back so that it turned over on its side away from the wall. The wretched feet being suddenly drawn away from him he fell heavily backwards up on the bare floor. His head striking the stone with a hollow sound. The edge of the bedstead lay across him. The feet which I still held were nervous and he made no movement to withdraw them. I crept back clear of the bed and jumping upright against the wall bolted through the bathroom and out into the plane. I had a glimpse of the man as I went by. He was motionless and his mouth hung open. I ran some way from the bungalow before I stopped. I was like a man saved from the scaffold as the very axe was about to drop. There was a gentle air blowing cool and kindly. Above was a sky of stars. While in the east the faint light of the dawn was appearing behind the Indian village. For a moment or two I watched the door leading from the bathroom expecting to see the man with a peak creep out. With the anticipation of the sight was so dread that I turned away and walked to the other side of the bungalow. Here my greatest joy was merely to breathe for I seem to have been for hours in suffocating pit. The relief did not last for long. I was seized with another panic. Had I killed a man? I felt compelled to return to the abhorred room and learn the worst. I approached it with trembling. So curious are the details of my dream that I found, as I expected, the bolt on the outer door wrenched off and hanging by a nail. I stepped into the disgusting place full of anxiety as to what further horror I had to endure. The little lamp was still alight. The bedstead was on its edge as I left it, but the man was gone. There was a small patch of blood where his head had struck the floor, but that was the sole relic of the tragedy. I awoke feeling exhausted, alarmed and very cold. I looked at once at the floor for the patch of blood and, seeing nothing, realized to my extreme relief that I had been merely dreaming. It was almost impossible to believe that the events of the latter part of the night after the departure of the rats had not been real. At breakfast, I retailed to my companion the very vivid and dramatic nightmare in which I had taken part. At the end, he expressed regret for the mistake the servants had made in allotting us our rooms overnight, but I am not sure that that regret was perfectly sincere. End of chapter 8, recording by Mike Botez