The Painted Bridge A Novel

THIRTY-SIX





At the Pall Mall Club, Lucas St. Clair stood at a podium in front of the members of the Alienists’ Association. More had turned up than had been expected. The organizers had brought in extra chairs and still a line of men were standing at the back leaning on the wall. Lucas rested his hands on either side of the lecture stand and breathed in the clubroom smell of leather and beeswax, a smoldering ash log.

“Good evening, gentlemen. Some time ago, a distinguished doctor proposed that the new art and science of photography had application in the diagnosis of madness. I became interested in this idea. We all agree that we stand in grave need of tools to improve our capacity to diagnose mental distress.

“I have devoted myself to researching the theory for the last year. And I would like to propose that you join me now for the final stage of my inquiries. I have drawn my own conclusions but I do not expect that you take my word for it. I invite you to make your own experiment this evening, in this room.

“What you see on the walls here are photographic portraits of women. As you can see, all are devoid of the badges of wealth and beauty, even of industry. Any one of them might appear to be a patient. But not all of the sitters are patients. Some are inmates at private asylums. Others are healthy women of sound mind—members of my own family and household and of friends’ families and households.

“I am asking you, as experienced doctors of the mind, to assess which is which. But before you start, I want to raise a further question. Is it possible that some of the women pictured here fall into both categories? I mean to say, is it possible that any are both inmates of asylums and in sound mind? Or vice versa?

“I have numbered each one but left them otherwise unmarked. Please note which individuals you believe to be the lunatics. And which are as sane as you and I.”

The photographs were ranged in two long lines along one wall of the stately drawing room. Anna Palmer was there, twice. Violet Valentine. Lizzie Button. Talitha Batt, in life and in death. In between were photographs of the artist, Mrs. Mallinson. Stickles. Of his mother, her face shadowed with the grief that had afflicted her since Archie was cut down. Of Beth. Sunday. Catherine Abse. The identical twins, Melissa and Melody.

Every man in the audience took up his invitation to study the portraits more closely. They got to their feet with a prolonged shifting of chair legs, some protesting that they’d come for answers not more questions, others eager to prove their faith in the technique. The atmosphere changed as they began to look at the images. A hushed tone entered the discussions as the alienists found themselves looking at people, at individuals, and as the burden they carried—the responsibility and difficulty of making judgments about a fellow human—descended on them.

Several clustered around the second, retouched picture of Anna Palmer from which she gazed out clear-skinned and clear-eyed. Others crowded around them, believing that they must be missing the image that was the key to the whole experiment. Few lingered in front of the first, unretouched image of Mrs. Palmer in which the dark scabs and bruises dominated her face.

It was an hour before they were back in their seats, comparing notes, holding sheets of paper annotated with numbers and potential conditions. After an initial quarrelsome discussion, it became clear that there was no agreement among the doctors about who was suffering from mental disease and who was not. Only on two pictures had the gentlemen been unanimous. Mrs. Anna Palmer, in the unretouched image, was a lunatic. Mrs. Anna Palmer, free of scabs and bruises, was not. They disagreed only over whether she was one woman, photographed at intervals, or two different women. They similarly disagreed on the question of the twins.

By the time Lucas took the podium again, the mood was unsettled.

“Gentlemen. I began my inquiries with a firm belief in the potential of photography to take us farther down our path of helping the sufferers of mental distress. As some of you know, I’ve staked my professional reputation on this point—no one wished for its truth more than I. But the evidence does not bear out the theory. My research shows that although the photographic portrait can bring amusement, diversion and solace to those suffering from mental disquiet—as it can to any other member of the public—the hope that it can be used as a diagnostic tool is unproven.”

A belligerent roar broke out among the bearded and black-jacketed audience; sounds of disapproval, mingled with disappointment, rose to the tobacco-colored ceiling. St. Clair waited until the hubbub died away. He felt anger too. No one could have tried harder than he to make the idea work. But it did not. The theory he had cherished for so long, had tried to uphold and enlarge, had perished. Perished on his own dining room table as surely as if it had never lived.

“Our aim tonight is not to prove one man or another right or wrong, but simply to shoulder our burden of pushing on with research, with widening our small circle of understanding of the human mind—in health and in sickness. Our quest is worthwhile and wrong turnings must lead us in the end to right ones.

“Gentlemen, I have one further point to make. I firmly believe that photography might yet prove its worth—in treatment. The discussions prompted by the images, the opportunity for patients to define themselves by them, or to contradict them, the potential for these ideas will inform my further investigations.”

Maddox was sitting in the front row. He stood up and began to applaud; one or two others followed. The noise sounded like hammering from far away. Like demolition. Lucas gathered his notes and stepped down from the podium, began to take down the photographs from the walls, starting with Mrs. Palmer. The alienists were shrugging on their coats with the help of the cloakroom attendants, their voices lively with the fact of the evening being over, with waiting carriages. Harry Grieve was there, Lucas saw with some surprise. Two of the younger alienists argued still about whether or not Lucas’s mother was deranged, standing between the fire bowls that lit the entrance to the club. It was snowing heavily outside.

Before leaving, Lucas stopped by the book of questions in the entrance hall. On the page where a year earlier he had posed a question—Can photographs be effective in diagnosing disorders of the mind?—he wrote his own answer, in a neat italic hand.

Fallaces sunt rerum species. The appearances of things are deceptive.

* * *

Lucas walked back to Popham Street, carrying the photographs in a portfolio under his coat. He put them down on the table in the dining room. Stickles had left out a tray of ham sandwiches, some pickled cucumbers. He climbed the stairs to the dark chamber. He’d left the collodion unstoppered, he saw. The air was full of the smell of ether. The solution was exhausted, thin and dark red. He emptied the bottle down the drain. On an impulse, he lifted the yellow shade off the lamp and turned up the wick. The dark chamber, by ordinary light, was dusty and the walls marked with black fingerprints. Rectangles of zinc—where he had patched the boards to prevent light leaking in from below—shone under his feet.

He set about rinsing and drying the measuring cylinders, empty bottles, and developing dishes. He put away the thermometer, the scales and the printing frame, swept the floor and hung on the line the last couple of prints from the wash. He spent a long time emptying and discarding and rinsing and when he’d finished, he dried his hands, sat on the stool, hooked his feet up under him and did nothing at all.

The theory had failed. It had failed utterly. The proposition to which he had devoted a year of his life was null and void. He felt flat. Relieved, as well. He could let go of it, and have time to consider other things. He would leave St. Mark’s anyway. He could not stay. He’d find a new job—perhaps out of London. The lamp flared and died, the reservoir of oil empty.

The moon cast a shadow of the plane tree onto the wall. For an instant, Lucas desired to set up the tripod and make a photograph of the stark, reaching limbs, the complication of embracing arms reaching into the room. He didn’t move. He watched as the moon was enveloped in cloud and the shadows softened and disappeared. Sitting in the darkness, he saw something else. It wasn’t Maddox who wanted to get married. It was he.

Lighting a candle, he took the photograph of Mrs. Palmer, the second one, into his bedroom. He set it on the table by his bed, where he would see it for as long as his eyes remained open, would see it again when he woke. In the morning, he would go to Lake House. He would go and visit her. He owed her an apology. He might yet be able to help her.