The Argosy. Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891

An Experience in Hypnotism

We do not take to new ideas readily in Bishopsthorpe. Our fashions are always at least one season behind the times; it is only by a late innovation in Post Office regulations that we are now enabled to get our London papers on the day of their publication; and a craze, social or scientific, has almost been forgotten by the fashionable world before it manages to establish any kind of footing in our midst.

It therefore came upon us with more or less of a shock one morning a short time ago to find the walls of our sleepy little country town placarded with naming posters announcing that Professor Dmitri Sclamowsky intended to visit Bishopsthorpe on the following Friday, for the purpose of exhibiting in the Town Hall some of his marvellous powers in Thought Reading, Mesmerism, and Hypnotism.

Stray rumours from time to time, and especially of late, had visited us of strange experiments in connection with these outlandish sciences, if sciences they can be called; but we had received these with incredulity, mingled with compassion for such weak-minded persons as could be easily duped by the clever conjuring of paid charlatans.

This, at least, was very much the mental attitude of my aunt Phoebe, and it was only under strong pressure from me and one or two others of her younger and more enterprising section of Bishopsthorpe society that she at last reluctantly consented to patronise the Professor's performance in person.

Even at the last moment she almost failed us.

"I am getting too old a woman, my dear Elizabeth," she said to me as I was helping her to dress, "to leave my comfortable fireside after dinner for the sake of seeing second-rate conjuring."

"Indeed, it is good of you," I said, as I disposed a piece of soft old point lace in graceful folds round the neck of her black velvet dress; "but virtue will be its own reward, for I am sure you will enjoy it as much as any of us, and as for being too old, that is all nonsense! Just look in the glass, and then say if you have a heart to cheat Bishopsthorpe of a sight of you in all your glory."

"You are a silly girl, Elizabeth!" said my aunt, and yet she did as I suggested, and, walking up to the long pier-glass, looked at her reflection with a well pleased smile. "Indeed," she continued, turning back to me to where I stood by the dressing-table, "I think I am as silly as you are, to rig myself out like this," and she pointed to the double row of large single diamonds I had clasped round her neck, and the stars of the same precious stones which twinkled and flashed in the lace of her cap.

"Come, Aunt Phœbe," I said, drawing down her hands, which had made a movement as though she would have taken off the glittering gauds, "you don't often give the good Bishopsthorpe folk a chance of admiring the Anstruther heirlooms. They look so lovely! Don't take them off, please. What is the use of having beautiful things if they are always to be hidden away in a jewellery case? There now," I went on; "I hear the carriage at the door; here is your fur cloak: you must wrap yourself up well for it is a cold night," and so saying I muffled her up, and hustled her downstairs before she could remonstrate, even had she wished to do so.

The little Town Hall was already crowded when we arrived, but seats had been reserved for us in one of the front rows of benches. Many eyes were turned on us as we made our way to our places, for Aunt Phœbe was looked up to as one of the cornerstones of aristocracy in Bishopsthorpe, and I fancied that I caught an expression of relief on the faces of some of those present, who, until the entertainment had been sanctioned by her presence, had probably felt doubtful as to its complete orthodoxy. But of course I may have been wrong. Aunt Phœbe is always telling me I am too imaginative.

It seemed as though the Professor had awaited our arrival to begin the performance, for we had hardly taken our seats than the curtain, which had hitherto hidden the stage from our view, rolled up and discovered the Professor standing with his hand resting upon an easel, on which was placed a large blackboard.

I think the general feeling in the room was that of disappointment. I know that I, for one, had hoped to see something more interesting than the usual paraphernalia of a lecture on astronomy or geology.

Professor Sclamowsky, too, was not at all as impressive a person as his name had led me to expect. He was short and thick-set. His close-cropped hair was of the undecided colour which fair hair assumes when it is beginning to turn grey, and a heavy moustache of the same uninteresting hue hid his mouth. His jaw was heavy and slightly underhung, and his neck was thick and coarse.

Altogether his appearance was remarkably unprepossessing and commonplace.

In a short speech, spoken with a slight foreign accent, which some way or other struck me as being assumed, he begged to disclaim all intention of conjuring. His performance was solely and entirely a series of experiments in and illustrative of the wonderful science of Hypnotism; a science still in its infancy, but destined to take its place among the most marvellous of modern discoveries.

As he spoke, his heavy, uninteresting face lit up as with a hidden enthusiasm, and my attention was attracted to his eyes, which I had not before noticed. They were of a curious bright metallic blue and are the only eyes I have ever seen, though one reads and hears so perpetually of them, which really seemed to flash as he warmed to his subject.

As he finished, I looked at Aunt Phœbe, who shrugged her shoulders and smiled incredulously. It was clear that she was not going to be imposed upon by his specious phrases.

It would be unnecessary to weary my readers by describing at length how the usual preliminary of choosing an unbiassed committee was gone through; nor how, after the doctor, the rector, Mr. Melton (the principal draper in Bishopsthorpe) and several other of the town magnates, all men of irreproachable honesty, had been induced to act in this capacity, the Professor proceeded, with eyes blindfolded and holding the doctor's hand in his, to find a carefully hidden pin, to read the number of a bank-note and to write the figures one by one on the blackboard, and to perform other experiments of the same kind amid the breathless interest of the audience.

I frankly admit that I was astonished and bewildered by what I saw, and I had a little uneasy feeling that if it were not all a piece of gigantic humbug, it was not quite canny—not quite right.

What struck me most, I think, was the unfussy, untheatrical way in which it was all done. Every one of the Professor's movements was marked by an air of calm certainty. He threaded his way through the crowded benches with such an unhesitating step that, only that I had seen the bandage fastened over his eyes by the rector and afterwards carefully examined by the doctor, neither of whom could be suspected of complicity, I should have said he must have had some little peep-hole arranged to enable him to guide his course so unfalteringly.

There were, of course, thunders of applause from the sixpenny seats when the Thought Reading part of the entertainment came to an end.

"Well, Aunt Phœbe," I said, turning to her as the Professor bowed his thanks, "what do you think?"

"Think, my dear?" she repeated. "I think the man is a very fair conjurer."

"But," I protested, "how could he know where the pin was; and you know Mr. Danby himself fastened the handkerchief?"

"My dear Elizabeth, I have seen Houdin do far more wonderful things, when I was a girl; but he had the honesty to call it by its right name—conjuring."

I had not time to carry on the discussion, for the Professor now reappeared and informed us that by far the most interesting part of the performance was still to come. Thought Reading and Mesmerism, or, as some people preferred to call it—Hypnotism—were, he believed, different parts of the same wonderful and but very partially-understood power. A power so little understood as not even to possess a distinctive name; a power which he believed to be latent in everybody, but which was capable of being brought to more or less perfection, according to the amount of care and attention bestowed upon it. "I," said the Professor, "have given my life to it." And again I fancied I saw the curious blue eyes flash with a sudden unexpected fire.

"In the experiments which I am about to show you," he went on, "I am assisted by my daughter, Anna Sclamowsky," and, drawing back a curtain at the back of the stage, he led forward a girl who looked to be between sixteen and eighteen years old.

There was no sort of family resemblance between father and daughter. She was tall and slight, with a small dark head prettily poised on a long, slender neck. Her face was pale, and her large dark eyes had a startled, frightened look as she gazed at the sea of strange faces below her. Her father placed her in a chair facing us all; and turning once more to the audience said:

"I shall now, with your kind permission, put my daughter into a mesmeric or hypnotic trance; and while she is in it, I hope to show you some particularly interesting experiments. Look at me, Anna—so—"

He placed his fingers for a moment on her eyelids, and then stood aside. Except that the girl was now perfectly motionless, and that her gaze was unnaturally fixed, I could see nothing different in her appearance from what it had been a few moments before.

The Professor now turned to Mr. Danby, who was seated beside me, and said, "If this gentleman will oblige me by stepping up on the stage, he can assure himself by any means he may choose to use, that my daughter is in a perfectly unconscious state at this moment; and if it will give the audience and himself any more confidence in the sincerity of this experiment, he is perfectly at liberty to blindfold her. Then if he will be kind enough to go through the room and touch here and there any person he may fancy, my daughter, at a word from me, will in the same order and in the same manner touch each of those already touched. I myself will, during the whole of the time, stand at the far end of the hall, so that there can be no sort of communication between us."

So saying, Sclamowsky left the stage, and walking down the room, placed himself with his back against the wall, and fixed his gaze upon the motionless form of his daughter.

As I looked back at him, even though separated from him by the length of the hall, I could see the strange glitter and flash of his eyes. It gave me an uncomfortable, uneasy feeling; and I turned my face again towards the stage, where the good-natured rector was following out the directions he had received.

He lifted Anna Sclamowsky's arm, which, on his relaxing his hold, fell limp and lifeless by her side; he snapped his fingers suddenly close before her wide-open eyes without producing even a quiver of a muscle in her set face. He shouted in her ear; shook her by the shoulders; but all without succeeding in making her show any sign of consciousness. He then tied a handkerchief over her eyes; and, leaving the stage, went about through the room, touching people here and there as he went, pursuing a most tortuous course, and ended at last by placing his hand upon Aunt Phœbe's diamond necklace. He then bowed to the Professor to intimate that we were ready to see the conclusion of the experiment.

Sclamowsky moved forward about a pace, beckoned with his hand, and called, not loudly but distinctly, "Anna!"

Without a moment's hesitation the girl, still blindfolded, rose, walked swiftly down the steps which led from the stage to the floor of the hall, and with startling exactness reproduced Mr. Danby's actions. In and out through the benches she passed amid a silence of breathless interest, touching each person in exactly the same spot as Mr. Danby had done a few minutes previously.

I saw Aunt Phœbe drawing herself up rigidly as Anna Sclamowsky came towards our bench and, amid deafening applause, laid her finger upon the Anstruther diamonds. The clapping and noise produced no effect upon the girl. She stood motionless as though she had been a statue, her hand still upon the necklace.

Whether Aunt Phœbe was aggravated by the complete success of the experiment or annoyed at having been obliged to take so prominent a part in it, I do not know, but she certainly was a good deal out of temper; for when Sclamowsky made his way to where his daughter was standing, she said, in tones of icy disapproval, which must have been audible for a long way down the room—

"A very clever piece of imposture, sir."

The mesmerist's face flushed and his eyes flashed angrily. He, however, bowed low.

"There's nothing so hard," he said, "to overcome, madam, as prejudice. I fear you have been inconvenienced by my daughter's hand. I will now release her—and you."

So saying, he placed his own hand for a moment over his daughter's and breathed lightly on the girl's face. Instantly the muscles relaxed, her hand fell to her side, and I could hear her give a little shuddering sigh, apparently of relief.

I noticed, too, that, whether by design or accident Sclamowsky kept his hand for a moment longer on my aunt's necklace, and as he took his finger away, I fancied that he looked at her fixedly for a second, and muttered something either to himself or her, the meaning of which I could not catch.

"What did he say to you?" I asked, as Sclamowsky, after removing the bandage from his daughter's eyes, assisted her to remount the stage.

Aunt Phœbe looked a little confused and dazed, and her hand went up to her necklace, as though to reassure herself of its safety.

"Say to me?" she repeated, rousing herself as though by an effort; "he said nothing to me. But I think, Elizabeth, if it is the same to you, we will go home; the heat of the room has made me feel a little dizzy."

We heard next day that we had missed the best part of the entertainment by leaving when we did, and that many and far more wonderful experiments were successfully attempted; but I had no time to waste in vain regrets for not having been present, for I was much taken up with Aunt Phœbe.

I was really anxious about her; she was so strangely unlike her calm, equable self. All Saturday she was restless and irritable, wandering half way upstairs, and then as though she had forgotten what she wanted, returning to the drawing-room, where she set to work opening old cabinet drawers, looking under chairs and sofas, tumbling everything out of her work-box as if in search of something, and snubbing me for my pains when I offered to help her.

This went on all day, and I had almost made up my mind to send for Dr. Perkins, when, after late dinner, she suddenly sank into an arm-chair with a look of relief.