What do you think?
Rate this book
Dickens and Mesmerism: The Hidden Springs of Fiction
Drawing on fresh source material, Fred Kaplan considers the importance From Dickens and Mesmerism of Dickens' involvement with mesmerism for his work and his personality. In so doing he describes a significant intellectual and spiritual movement and provides new and controversial insights into Dickens' fiction.
The mesmeric movement in England, particularly its controversial activities during the late 1830s and the 1840s, intensified Dickens' concern with the ways in which people discover and exert their energies and will to control each other. Dickens' own activities as a mesmerist provide the biographical touchstone for his image of himself as a doctor of the mind. Fred Kaplan examines the author's entire oeuvre in a synoptic, thematic fashion, exploring the attitudes shaped by the mesmerists that are reflected in the novels' psychological tensions. The final chapter provides an overview of the Romantic, Victorian, and Modern currents that may be found in Dickens' fascination with mesmeric power.
Originally published in 1975.
The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
The mesmeric movement in England, particularly its controversial activities during the late 1830s and the 1840s, intensified Dickens' concern with the ways in which people discover and exert their energies and will to control each other. Dickens' own activities as a mesmerist provide the biographical touchstone for his image of himself as a doctor of the mind. Fred Kaplan examines the author's entire oeuvre in a synoptic, thematic fashion, exploring the attitudes shaped by the mesmerists that are reflected in the novels' psychological tensions. The final chapter provides an overview of the Romantic, Victorian, and Modern currents that may be found in Dickens' fascination with mesmeric power.
Originally published in 1975.
The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
276 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1975
29 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
September 13, 2023
The title of this book may have many readers scratching their heads. Dickens and … what? Dickens and Mesmerism? Surely this is not about the down-to-earth author who wrote such great stories, and created so many memorable characters? Not the one who tirelessly campaigned for a fairer deal for so many who were suffering, and who was determined to make social conditions better? The popular author Charles Dickens was a writer whose stories were rooted in realism, wasn’t he?
Well yes he was, in a sense, but Charles Dickens also wrote ghost stories, and was fascinated by the supernatural. Plus he was profoundly interested in exploring the unknown, and keenly followed all the scientific discoveries exploding around him at that time. In fact his interest in mesmerism, far from our 21st century tendency to scoff, was more to do with the latter scientific discoveries than the former fanciful imaginings he indulged in.
In Dickens and Mesmerism: The Hidden Springs of Fiction, the academic Fred Kaplan explores the significance of mesmerism both in Dickens’s own life, and in his works. He demonstrates that there is hardly a work of fiction Dickens wrote, which is not underpinned by these convictions.
From the earliest “Sketches by Boz”, before Charles Dickens had even announced his real name to the reading public, he was aware of the research into mesmerism, and had written about “magnetism”. Instances of dreams and visions continued all through his writing life, climaxing in ”The Mystery of Edwin Drood” which may well have a more intriguing solution than any yet postulated. Dickens was fascinated by the will, and the mind’s powers, both known and unknown. When we learn that during the late 1830s and 1840s the mesmeric movement in England had intensified dramatically, these mentions all fall into place.
After many early publication troubles, Oliver Twist was the first fully blown novel to describe major mesmeric episodes in detail. It was written between 1837 and 1839, at the height of “The Mesmeric Mania” in London, and Dickens was a close friend of Dr. John Elliotson, who experimented with “animal magnetism” and was at the movement's forefront. The two were to remain staunch friends all their lives, with Dickens dying just two years later than his friend. Afterwards, it was discovered that his huge library contained 14 well-thumbed volumes on mesmerism, including one personally inscribed to him by John Elliotson.
Dr. John Elliotson was an outspoken senior physician, and Professor of the Principles and Practice of Medicine at the University of London. He worked out of the new University College Hospital, which is still a leading London Hospital. His demonstrations of the “mighty curative powers of animal magnetism” (or therapeutic effects of mesmerism) on patients with nervous conditions, and those we now know to be suffering from epilepsy, were astonishing. By 1849, John Elliotson was also performing surgical operations without chloroform; neither did he use ether, which had been introduced in 1847. Instead he used mesmerism to relax the patient and keep them free from pain, well before modern anaesthesia.
The first demonstration by John Elliotson on record which Dickens attended, was in January 1838. Charles Dickens’s letters show that he was regularly to view such demonstrations, despite the enormous pressure of his writing and editing work. He and his illustrator George Cruikshank were also personally invited to attend private treatments, with a small group of up to half a dozen viewers; other leading figures of the day from both the medical, scientific and the literary world. They included the writers Robert Browning, the historian John Forster, the great actor and Charles Dickens’s friend William Macready and many others, who all attended the lectures or demonstrations. William Makepeace Thackeray and Alfred, Lord Tennyson were also greatly interested in mesmerism.
The demonstrations were reported in the medical professional magazine “The Lancet”; a weekly magazine which had been created by Thomas Wakley in 1823 to deter charlatans, and to disseminate the best original medical research. “The Lancet” remains the world’s leading general medical journal. This was cutting edge research for sure, but it was in its early stages, and as with so many other theories, some aspects now seem bizarre.
John Elliotson’s basic two principles in 1838 were that:
1. Mechanical laws working in an alternate ebb and flow: “control a mutual influence between the Heavenly bodies, the Earth and animate bodies which exists as a universally distributed and continuous fluid … of a rarified nature.”
2. Since all the properties of matter depended on this operation, its influence or force could be communicated to both animate and inanimate bodies. It was therefore possible he believed, to create a new theory about the nature of influence and power relationships between people, and also between people and the objects in their environment. If such were proved to be true, then he said “the art of healing will reach its final stage of perfection”.
Magnets were thought to be especially good conductors of the force or influence, so to distinguish it from mineral magnetism, he called it “animal magnetism”. It became known as Mesmerism after the doctor who conceptualised this first, in the 18th century: the Viennese doctor Franz Mesmer. Interestingly, it was a small circle of wealthy Jewish merchants who first paid for the private publication of an 1822 text by the German M. Loewe, which originally sparked interest in London.
Dickens read widely, including the works of Franz Mesmer. His belief in a mesmeric fluid was already established, and he had already written 2 key passages in “Oliver Twist”. In July of the previous year (1837) he wrote a long passage in chapter 9 about Oliver :
“There is a drowsy state, between sleeping and waking, when you dream more in five minutes with your eyes half open, and yourself half conscious of everything that is passing around you, than you would in five nights with your eyes fast closed …”
It carries on at some length, and is clearly a description of what mesmerists called “sleepwaking” (waking dreams). Dickens was to write another very similar passage almost a year later, for chapter 34 in June 1838, beginning:
“There is a kind of sleep that steals upon us sometimes, which, while it holds the body prisoner, does not free the mind from a sense of things about it, and enable it to ramble at its pleasure … ”
This is at the point where Eyes, or staring, or a strong irresistible gaze are mentioned numerous times both in “Oliver Twist” and Dickens’s other novels. Also, suffers from fits, as did most of John Elliotson’s patients. The practitioners of mesmerism themselves too were also said to sometimes writhe and foam at the mouth.
These are clearly descriptions of mesmeric trances, although retellings and dramatisation of the story simplify and distort such episodes into mere daydreaming. In an earlier chapter 28, Oliver seems to be half dreaming. Dickens mentions Oliver’s “rapid visions”: memories or partial hallucinations , in this long paragraph:
“He seemed to be still walking between Sikes and Crackit … when he caught his own attention, as it were, by making some violent effort to save himself from falling, he found that he was talking to them. Then, he was alone with Sikes, plodding on as on the previous day; and as shadowy people passed them, he felt the robber’s grasp upon his wrist” and so on.
There are numerous instances in all the novels: Amy Dorrit, Lady Dedlock, Sydney Carton, Jenny Wren or Affery’s dreaming for instance. Fred Kaplan references literally dozens of instances, but to share them would mean using far too many spoiler tags! Once you recognise the scenarios and type of language, it is possible to find examples quite easily.
As well as his interest in animal magnetism John Elliotson also funded and became the first president of the London Phrenological society in 1824, and this is where some of the managers of the hospital began to have reservations about his theories. Earlier Charles Dickens himself had poked fun at phrenology in one of his Sketches by Boz “Our Parish”. From around 1842 the supporters of “Phreno-magnetism” or “Phrenomesmerism” were divided from the more scientific investigations; the transcendentalists versus the mesmeric scientists, and various factions began to be set up, some with a more spiritual view of reality. Dr. John Elliotson’s reputation as a scientist was solidly secure in 1837, but mesmerism was about to become deeply suspect.
Dickens now developed an abiding belief in phrenology. Ten years later, in 1847 he refused to admit one woman as an inmate to his reformatory at Urania Cottage, on the grounds of her phrenology, stating that: “she had a singularly bad head, and looked discouragingly secret and moody”. And in 1868, nearing the end of his own life and receiving news of his friend John Elliotson’s death, he still said: ”I hold phrenology, within certain limits to be true.”
Charles Dickens remained a staunch friend and believer. When “The Lancet” began to turn against mesmerism, Dickens wrote with great anger:
“When I think that every rotten-hearted pander who has been beaten, kicked and rolled in the kennel yet struts it in the Editorial We once a week - every vagabond that a man’s gorge must rise at—every live emetic in that nauseous drugshop the Press—can have his fling at such men [Elliotson] and call them knaves and fools and thieves, I grow so vicious that with bearing hard upon my pen, I break the nib down and with keeping my teeth set, make my jaw ache.”
At 25 Charles Dickens was a very angry young man indeed!
However the terminology was changing, along with the discoveries. Gradually the concept of a mesmeric “fluid” began to be set aside, as was the clairvoyance aspect, and the power called “animal magnetism” was seen to be within the person, thus paving the way for the definition “hypnotism”.
Seventy years after the concept had first been suggested, it was established that there was no invisible all-pervasive fluid or force. Any metaphorical language was abandoned, but mesmeric effects were agreed to be effective. The observed results were seen to be due to powerful imaginations working in congruence; mental forces not separate from the mind. What the mesmeric operator did to their subject had a new name. It was called “hypnosis”, a term invented by the Scottish surgeon James Braid, and it was seen that such “hypnosis” could indeed play an important role as a curative agent. Modern science now accepts part, but not the whole idea of animal magnetism. Most of the aspects have been debunked by the establishment, but we are left with hypnotism, which is established as a genuine therapeutic tool, as John Elliotson maintained—but without the strange “fluid”—and addition of magnets or mirrors to strengthen the bond (although possibly some hypnotists choose to use these).
Charles Dickens himself practised mesmerism both as entertainment and therapeutically. His first subject was his wife Catherine, and also his friend John Forster. Dickens became adept as a mesmeriser, most notably in 1844 with a Madame Augusta de la Rue. She suffered from extreme anxiety, spasms, hallucinations and strange thoughts in which she spoke of being pursued by a “phantom”. She improved greatly after a month, although Dickens was to treat her on a daily basis for a long time. Chapter 4 records in great detail the interdependence between the de la Rues and Dickens, and also how jealous Catherine became of the time her husband would spend with Mme. de la Rue. He would rush to be with his patient, and over time their bond became so close that Dickens sometimes mesmerised her remotely.
Once, Dickens records, he was travelling inside a coach, fully absorbed in mesmerising Mme. de la Rue remotely by prior arrangement, as she was in a different country. But he found that he had mesmerised Catherine, who was seated outside, on top of the coach, and dropped her muff. When he investigated, she was in a trance. (I cannot explain this, but then neither can I explain why if I stare at the back of someone’s head they turn around and look at me!)
Charles Dickens firmly believed that this procedure would help relieve pain, and relax the patient. He helped his friend and illustrator John Leech (the illustrator of “A Christmas Carol” six years before) in 1849, after a bad fall. The accident had left the artist with concussion-like symptoms which would not disappear, despite all the best efforts of his doctors. He was in a great deal of pain and unable to rest. Dickens rushed to help his friend, and within a few days John Leech’s condition had improved. Others of his “patients” were also notable figures, and he gained quite a reputation, half-joking once that he could make a reasonable living from this practice alone.
There are two more key words in the terminology of mesmerism, “will” and “willpower”. It was thought that operators fed into the mesmeric fluid in the universe, and that their own strength of will was the conduit. Dickens himself was possessed of a strong will, and reports of his public readings frequently referred to his ”hypnotic gaze”. In his fiction, we often find his villains have an inordinately strong will, and a commanding or mesmeric gaze. Fagin has this, as does Quilp, and strong characters such as Rosa Dartle, Miss Wade, Mr. Tulkinghorn, John Jasper and others, all have this penetrating gaze.
Dickens’s heroes and heroines also use their mesmeric powers. They start neutrally, but succeed when they discover their will to be energetic, and use that energy for beneficial purposes. Sometimes they will be overcome by a sudden surge of energy, and not know where it has come from. Their choice is whether to use this new found power for good or evil. His villains on the other hand, use their will for self-interest. There are frequent instances in the text detailed by Fred Kaplan, in the chapters “The Discovery of Self”, “The Past Illuminated” and “The Sources of Evil”. Another chapter, “The Sexuality of Power” goes into the reasons why mesmerism fell into disrepute in the scientific community. By and large the practitioners were middle-aged men, and the patients were often young girls. There were some scandalous cases of sexual misdemeanours by fraudulant doctors, and thus the press also dismissed all those who practised with genuine intentions of healing, as depraved charlatans.
Prior to this, Dr. John Elliotson had made many ongoing investigations on two sisters called Elizabeth and Jane O’key, who were long-term patients at the University College Hospital in London. The experiments were often reported in “The Lancet”, while his reputation held good. They led Dickens to believe that the mesmeric fluid flowed very strongly between blood relatives. In most of Dickens’s novels we have examples of this: many brothers and sisters, twins, lookalikes, or disguises, or doppelgängers, and it is noticeable that often their actions seem uncanny or inexplicable in some places.
Dickens believed the current scientific theory at the time: that in mesmeric trance the order of human experience is distinctly different from that of ordinary consciousness. But there were believed to be varied possibilities of reaction from instance to instance, and from subject to subject.
Dickens thought that this served his needs as a novelist perfectly; the possibilities seemed endless! He need not feel his credibility questionable if he changed the details from instance to instance, as the particular fictional situation demanded. This is what he is describing with the kind of sleep which “frees the mind and enables it to ramble at its pleasure” and the “mighty powers bounding from the earth, and a consciousness of all that is going on about us”. In this mesmeric state, he thought, one is in a receptive state of consciousness in which communication can be effected through means other than physical organs. Sometimes, such as in Oliver Twist ), it is an instance of double consciousness, but sometimes the physical location is immaterial, such as when Monks says Fred Kaplan argues that this is not mere hyperbole, but another aspect of mesmerism.
Charles Dickens’s novels are all peppered with his mesmeric beliefs, interpreted variously as esoteric, spiritual, gothic or allegorical. Also characters demonstrate the mesmeric power of their will in every story. Often we see characters overcome by the strength of another character, such as in “Our Mutual Friend” . This is his final completed novel and the mesmeric beliefs are still there, waiting to reach their climax in the extraordinary “The Mystery of Edwin Drood”. He had refined the use of them in fiction to an exceptional degree. Clairvoyance is part of many strange experiences which readers sometimes categorise (or even dismiss) as gothic, but almost certainly have Dickens’s belief in mesmerism at their root. Clairvoyance and “the ability to project one’s mind to another time and place” was at this time believed by some to be another aspect of mesmerism.
A broad view of mesmerism at the time is intrinsic to a full understanding of some of the most baffling passages in Charles Dickens’s writing, and Fred Kaplan’s book, although quite hard to obtain, presents a compelling case.
Well yes he was, in a sense, but Charles Dickens also wrote ghost stories, and was fascinated by the supernatural. Plus he was profoundly interested in exploring the unknown, and keenly followed all the scientific discoveries exploding around him at that time. In fact his interest in mesmerism, far from our 21st century tendency to scoff, was more to do with the latter scientific discoveries than the former fanciful imaginings he indulged in.
In Dickens and Mesmerism: The Hidden Springs of Fiction, the academic Fred Kaplan explores the significance of mesmerism both in Dickens’s own life, and in his works. He demonstrates that there is hardly a work of fiction Dickens wrote, which is not underpinned by these convictions.
From the earliest “Sketches by Boz”, before Charles Dickens had even announced his real name to the reading public, he was aware of the research into mesmerism, and had written about “magnetism”. Instances of dreams and visions continued all through his writing life, climaxing in ”The Mystery of Edwin Drood” which may well have a more intriguing solution than any yet postulated. Dickens was fascinated by the will, and the mind’s powers, both known and unknown. When we learn that during the late 1830s and 1840s the mesmeric movement in England had intensified dramatically, these mentions all fall into place.
After many early publication troubles, Oliver Twist was the first fully blown novel to describe major mesmeric episodes in detail. It was written between 1837 and 1839, at the height of “The Mesmeric Mania” in London, and Dickens was a close friend of Dr. John Elliotson, who experimented with “animal magnetism” and was at the movement's forefront. The two were to remain staunch friends all their lives, with Dickens dying just two years later than his friend. Afterwards, it was discovered that his huge library contained 14 well-thumbed volumes on mesmerism, including one personally inscribed to him by John Elliotson.
Dr. John Elliotson was an outspoken senior physician, and Professor of the Principles and Practice of Medicine at the University of London. He worked out of the new University College Hospital, which is still a leading London Hospital. His demonstrations of the “mighty curative powers of animal magnetism” (or therapeutic effects of mesmerism) on patients with nervous conditions, and those we now know to be suffering from epilepsy, were astonishing. By 1849, John Elliotson was also performing surgical operations without chloroform; neither did he use ether, which had been introduced in 1847. Instead he used mesmerism to relax the patient and keep them free from pain, well before modern anaesthesia.
The first demonstration by John Elliotson on record which Dickens attended, was in January 1838. Charles Dickens’s letters show that he was regularly to view such demonstrations, despite the enormous pressure of his writing and editing work. He and his illustrator George Cruikshank were also personally invited to attend private treatments, with a small group of up to half a dozen viewers; other leading figures of the day from both the medical, scientific and the literary world. They included the writers Robert Browning, the historian John Forster, the great actor and Charles Dickens’s friend William Macready and many others, who all attended the lectures or demonstrations. William Makepeace Thackeray and Alfred, Lord Tennyson were also greatly interested in mesmerism.
The demonstrations were reported in the medical professional magazine “The Lancet”; a weekly magazine which had been created by Thomas Wakley in 1823 to deter charlatans, and to disseminate the best original medical research. “The Lancet” remains the world’s leading general medical journal. This was cutting edge research for sure, but it was in its early stages, and as with so many other theories, some aspects now seem bizarre.
John Elliotson’s basic two principles in 1838 were that:
1. Mechanical laws working in an alternate ebb and flow: “control a mutual influence between the Heavenly bodies, the Earth and animate bodies which exists as a universally distributed and continuous fluid … of a rarified nature.”
2. Since all the properties of matter depended on this operation, its influence or force could be communicated to both animate and inanimate bodies. It was therefore possible he believed, to create a new theory about the nature of influence and power relationships between people, and also between people and the objects in their environment. If such were proved to be true, then he said “the art of healing will reach its final stage of perfection”.
Magnets were thought to be especially good conductors of the force or influence, so to distinguish it from mineral magnetism, he called it “animal magnetism”. It became known as Mesmerism after the doctor who conceptualised this first, in the 18th century: the Viennese doctor Franz Mesmer. Interestingly, it was a small circle of wealthy Jewish merchants who first paid for the private publication of an 1822 text by the German M. Loewe, which originally sparked interest in London.
Dickens read widely, including the works of Franz Mesmer. His belief in a mesmeric fluid was already established, and he had already written 2 key passages in “Oliver Twist”. In July of the previous year (1837) he wrote a long passage in chapter 9 about Oliver :
“There is a drowsy state, between sleeping and waking, when you dream more in five minutes with your eyes half open, and yourself half conscious of everything that is passing around you, than you would in five nights with your eyes fast closed …”
It carries on at some length, and is clearly a description of what mesmerists called “sleepwaking” (waking dreams). Dickens was to write another very similar passage almost a year later, for chapter 34 in June 1838, beginning:
“There is a kind of sleep that steals upon us sometimes, which, while it holds the body prisoner, does not free the mind from a sense of things about it, and enable it to ramble at its pleasure … ”
This is at the point where Eyes, or staring, or a strong irresistible gaze are mentioned numerous times both in “Oliver Twist” and Dickens’s other novels. Also, suffers from fits, as did most of John Elliotson’s patients. The practitioners of mesmerism themselves too were also said to sometimes writhe and foam at the mouth.
These are clearly descriptions of mesmeric trances, although retellings and dramatisation of the story simplify and distort such episodes into mere daydreaming. In an earlier chapter 28, Oliver seems to be half dreaming. Dickens mentions Oliver’s “rapid visions”: memories or partial hallucinations , in this long paragraph:
“He seemed to be still walking between Sikes and Crackit … when he caught his own attention, as it were, by making some violent effort to save himself from falling, he found that he was talking to them. Then, he was alone with Sikes, plodding on as on the previous day; and as shadowy people passed them, he felt the robber’s grasp upon his wrist” and so on.
There are numerous instances in all the novels: Amy Dorrit, Lady Dedlock, Sydney Carton, Jenny Wren or Affery’s dreaming for instance. Fred Kaplan references literally dozens of instances, but to share them would mean using far too many spoiler tags! Once you recognise the scenarios and type of language, it is possible to find examples quite easily.
As well as his interest in animal magnetism John Elliotson also funded and became the first president of the London Phrenological society in 1824, and this is where some of the managers of the hospital began to have reservations about his theories. Earlier Charles Dickens himself had poked fun at phrenology in one of his Sketches by Boz “Our Parish”. From around 1842 the supporters of “Phreno-magnetism” or “Phrenomesmerism” were divided from the more scientific investigations; the transcendentalists versus the mesmeric scientists, and various factions began to be set up, some with a more spiritual view of reality. Dr. John Elliotson’s reputation as a scientist was solidly secure in 1837, but mesmerism was about to become deeply suspect.
Dickens now developed an abiding belief in phrenology. Ten years later, in 1847 he refused to admit one woman as an inmate to his reformatory at Urania Cottage, on the grounds of her phrenology, stating that: “she had a singularly bad head, and looked discouragingly secret and moody”. And in 1868, nearing the end of his own life and receiving news of his friend John Elliotson’s death, he still said: ”I hold phrenology, within certain limits to be true.”
Charles Dickens remained a staunch friend and believer. When “The Lancet” began to turn against mesmerism, Dickens wrote with great anger:
“When I think that every rotten-hearted pander who has been beaten, kicked and rolled in the kennel yet struts it in the Editorial We once a week - every vagabond that a man’s gorge must rise at—every live emetic in that nauseous drugshop the Press—can have his fling at such men [Elliotson] and call them knaves and fools and thieves, I grow so vicious that with bearing hard upon my pen, I break the nib down and with keeping my teeth set, make my jaw ache.”
At 25 Charles Dickens was a very angry young man indeed!
However the terminology was changing, along with the discoveries. Gradually the concept of a mesmeric “fluid” began to be set aside, as was the clairvoyance aspect, and the power called “animal magnetism” was seen to be within the person, thus paving the way for the definition “hypnotism”.
Seventy years after the concept had first been suggested, it was established that there was no invisible all-pervasive fluid or force. Any metaphorical language was abandoned, but mesmeric effects were agreed to be effective. The observed results were seen to be due to powerful imaginations working in congruence; mental forces not separate from the mind. What the mesmeric operator did to their subject had a new name. It was called “hypnosis”, a term invented by the Scottish surgeon James Braid, and it was seen that such “hypnosis” could indeed play an important role as a curative agent. Modern science now accepts part, but not the whole idea of animal magnetism. Most of the aspects have been debunked by the establishment, but we are left with hypnotism, which is established as a genuine therapeutic tool, as John Elliotson maintained—but without the strange “fluid”—and addition of magnets or mirrors to strengthen the bond (although possibly some hypnotists choose to use these).
Charles Dickens himself practised mesmerism both as entertainment and therapeutically. His first subject was his wife Catherine, and also his friend John Forster. Dickens became adept as a mesmeriser, most notably in 1844 with a Madame Augusta de la Rue. She suffered from extreme anxiety, spasms, hallucinations and strange thoughts in which she spoke of being pursued by a “phantom”. She improved greatly after a month, although Dickens was to treat her on a daily basis for a long time. Chapter 4 records in great detail the interdependence between the de la Rues and Dickens, and also how jealous Catherine became of the time her husband would spend with Mme. de la Rue. He would rush to be with his patient, and over time their bond became so close that Dickens sometimes mesmerised her remotely.
Once, Dickens records, he was travelling inside a coach, fully absorbed in mesmerising Mme. de la Rue remotely by prior arrangement, as she was in a different country. But he found that he had mesmerised Catherine, who was seated outside, on top of the coach, and dropped her muff. When he investigated, she was in a trance. (I cannot explain this, but then neither can I explain why if I stare at the back of someone’s head they turn around and look at me!)
Charles Dickens firmly believed that this procedure would help relieve pain, and relax the patient. He helped his friend and illustrator John Leech (the illustrator of “A Christmas Carol” six years before) in 1849, after a bad fall. The accident had left the artist with concussion-like symptoms which would not disappear, despite all the best efforts of his doctors. He was in a great deal of pain and unable to rest. Dickens rushed to help his friend, and within a few days John Leech’s condition had improved. Others of his “patients” were also notable figures, and he gained quite a reputation, half-joking once that he could make a reasonable living from this practice alone.
There are two more key words in the terminology of mesmerism, “will” and “willpower”. It was thought that operators fed into the mesmeric fluid in the universe, and that their own strength of will was the conduit. Dickens himself was possessed of a strong will, and reports of his public readings frequently referred to his ”hypnotic gaze”. In his fiction, we often find his villains have an inordinately strong will, and a commanding or mesmeric gaze. Fagin has this, as does Quilp, and strong characters such as Rosa Dartle, Miss Wade, Mr. Tulkinghorn, John Jasper and others, all have this penetrating gaze.
Dickens’s heroes and heroines also use their mesmeric powers. They start neutrally, but succeed when they discover their will to be energetic, and use that energy for beneficial purposes. Sometimes they will be overcome by a sudden surge of energy, and not know where it has come from. Their choice is whether to use this new found power for good or evil. His villains on the other hand, use their will for self-interest. There are frequent instances in the text detailed by Fred Kaplan, in the chapters “The Discovery of Self”, “The Past Illuminated” and “The Sources of Evil”. Another chapter, “The Sexuality of Power” goes into the reasons why mesmerism fell into disrepute in the scientific community. By and large the practitioners were middle-aged men, and the patients were often young girls. There were some scandalous cases of sexual misdemeanours by fraudulant doctors, and thus the press also dismissed all those who practised with genuine intentions of healing, as depraved charlatans.
Prior to this, Dr. John Elliotson had made many ongoing investigations on two sisters called Elizabeth and Jane O’key, who were long-term patients at the University College Hospital in London. The experiments were often reported in “The Lancet”, while his reputation held good. They led Dickens to believe that the mesmeric fluid flowed very strongly between blood relatives. In most of Dickens’s novels we have examples of this: many brothers and sisters, twins, lookalikes, or disguises, or doppelgängers, and it is noticeable that often their actions seem uncanny or inexplicable in some places.
Dickens believed the current scientific theory at the time: that in mesmeric trance the order of human experience is distinctly different from that of ordinary consciousness. But there were believed to be varied possibilities of reaction from instance to instance, and from subject to subject.
Dickens thought that this served his needs as a novelist perfectly; the possibilities seemed endless! He need not feel his credibility questionable if he changed the details from instance to instance, as the particular fictional situation demanded. This is what he is describing with the kind of sleep which “frees the mind and enables it to ramble at its pleasure” and the “mighty powers bounding from the earth, and a consciousness of all that is going on about us”. In this mesmeric state, he thought, one is in a receptive state of consciousness in which communication can be effected through means other than physical organs. Sometimes, such as in Oliver Twist ), it is an instance of double consciousness, but sometimes the physical location is immaterial, such as when Monks says Fred Kaplan argues that this is not mere hyperbole, but another aspect of mesmerism.
Charles Dickens’s novels are all peppered with his mesmeric beliefs, interpreted variously as esoteric, spiritual, gothic or allegorical. Also characters demonstrate the mesmeric power of their will in every story. Often we see characters overcome by the strength of another character, such as in “Our Mutual Friend” . This is his final completed novel and the mesmeric beliefs are still there, waiting to reach their climax in the extraordinary “The Mystery of Edwin Drood”. He had refined the use of them in fiction to an exceptional degree. Clairvoyance is part of many strange experiences which readers sometimes categorise (or even dismiss) as gothic, but almost certainly have Dickens’s belief in mesmerism at their root. Clairvoyance and “the ability to project one’s mind to another time and place” was at this time believed by some to be another aspect of mesmerism.
A broad view of mesmerism at the time is intrinsic to a full understanding of some of the most baffling passages in Charles Dickens’s writing, and Fred Kaplan’s book, although quite hard to obtain, presents a compelling case.
Displaying 1 of 1 review