Gull’s paper on their malign mental condition had caused a stir in small medical circles. He had given the tragic illness the name Anorexia nervosa, and it cut him another step in history. But Muybridge knew that the good surgeon’s fascination with their brains was on a much deeper level than their eating habits. After all, when half of London was locked in famine, what use could this privileged knowledge about a privileged sickness be to anyone? Gull and he had a lot in common, he thought. The doctor obviously believed this too, because three months later, the letter arrived.
Dear Mr. Muybridge,
I pen this hasty note as a disclaimer to my previously false assumption about photography and my special patients. I now think you were right in your belief about their response to images of them.
Please, the next time you are back in London, let us put your suggestion to a clinical test.
Muybridge was ecstatic. He desperately wanted to see the physician’s private wards; to be given the tour of the rank and raving females, and see the extent of the mania that Gull had merely hinted at before. He replied at once, and the necessary arrangements were swiftly underway.
He stood in the leafy suburbs of London, having been redirected from Sir Thomas Guy’s hospital by another note, this time held by a surly porter. He was in Forest Hill. The southern railway from London Bridge had deposited him there, where Gull had said his private clinic was situated. He stepped out of the station and into the overly green trees; a coachman waited for him at the roadside. Ten minutes and dozens of green turns later, they pulled in through high metal gates and stopped. He was taken inside by a custodian, or a warder, he thought, a rhino of a man dressed in a long apron over a dark uniform, with a peaked cap that accentuated the man’s hornlike nose and low, sloping forehead.
‘Thank you, Crane,’ Gull said to the departing shadow. ‘Mr Muybridge, welcome.’ He put out his square hand for his visitor to shake, looking about as if to greet another guest. ‘But where is your equipment?’ He looked towards the door; the coachman shook his head.
‘I did not bring any,’ said Muybridge, ‘I presumed our first preliminary meeting would be more theoretical than practical?’
Gull was mystified and twitched his mouth in a small movement that looked like a rehearsal for a larger one – irritation in advance of anger – before it was quickly gathered back. ‘Quite right!’ he blurted, in a boisterous and obvious lie. ‘Let me show you the business at hand, and then you can make your professional assessment.’
The good doctor took him by the arm and amiably propelled him along the corridors in Crane’s wake. Muybridge was instantly ill at ease; being touched was repugnant to him, and not something he tolerated well. He had never understood why so many people, common people, derived such pleasure from pawing each other, even in public. His treacherous wife had demanded these suffocating duties from him. She used to grab at his arm while walking, hanging from the speed of his sprightly gait, complaining about his pace, telling him to slow down, and hanging on even harder if he failed to comply. It had been embarrassing. But when they were alone, she had demanded much worse. He had never refused his husbandly duties. In fact, he quietly enjoyed them in moderation, and practice had improved him in the rigours of their physical exertions. He fulfilled all that might have been expected of him, but she always wanted more: to cling, to kiss, for him to linger inside her, long after his business was done. Some of her requests had been downright offensive, and against all modern notions of hygiene. The worst of it was that she even pawed him in front of the neighbours or the servants, and at social functions to which she had forced him to take her. It had been uncomfortable, unnatural and thoroughly time-consuming.
Shaking off the horrid recollections, he returned to the present and found that Gull had removed his hand to denote waiting. They stood outside a long, ward-like corridor. The walls were painted in a thick, heavy yellow, more marrow than flower. The same apron-clad guard stood in contrast by the doors. Gull gestured, and the guard pulled an elaborate bolt that slid levers and greased phalanges to open to the ward beyond. It all seemed highly theatrical, more like one of the new zoological gardens than a sanctum of health.
Gull caught the scent of his thoughts, and began to explain. ‘Some of the women here are very unstable, a danger to themselves and others. Their tides of mania and excessive will are beyond discipline or control. Therefore we contain them, and for good reason.’
Muybridge felt his excitement grow at the proximity of these demented creatures. The pair walked the corridor and stopped at another door, where Crane stood waiting. Gull nodded and the assistant unlocked it.
‘First,’ said Gull, ‘I will show you Abigail. She is the one I gave the picture to. She was picked up off the streets, where she was working the Penny Finger trade; she has been here now for nearly eight months.’
‘But you said this was an infliction of the affluent, not of the poor, not of street women?’
‘Quite right!’ said Gull. ‘But to understand a disease you have to find its root. To instigate it from the beginning. So we collect test subjects and create the malady in them. This is the same protocol that grew from vaccine research, but here we apply it to the mind. Those already suffering are only useful to study symptoms – not the cause, effect and cure: you can’t grow a plant from a leaf.’
‘So the subject of your lecture at Guy’s was different from this one?’
Gull looked at him in the way strangers do when they are trying to politely judge the age of a friend’s child. ‘On the surface they are different, yes, but fundamentally they are the same. The one you saw at the lecture hall came into my care with her malady already fully formed. Her family were glad to see the back of her. They would have willingly packed her off to the bedlam, to die in the filth with all those others that have caused grievous embarrassment to their parents and siblings. This one came here undernourished but in good spirits – I saved her from a life of rotting on the streets. She will take part in the experiments and then eventually be released, if she is well enough.’ Muybridge watched the doctor as he spoke, glancing at the guard every so often to gauge a reaction, but both their expressions remained impassive.
‘When she first arrived, we treated her like royalty, spoiling her with food, compliments and fine clothing. She grew fat and weak, and she was soon ready for her first encounter with the Lark Mirror.’
‘The Lark Mirror?’
‘Yes. It’s a tool we use in our hypnotic process, not unlike the peripherscope I used for your treatment.’
Muybridge did not care for the comparison.
‘Anyway, as I was saying, the problem started when we gave Abigail here the picture.’
‘What was the picture of?’ asked Muybridge.
‘It was a picture of her, taken three weeks ago. I took your advice and photographed all my special cases.’
The news took Muybridge aback. He had offered his services and been flatly turned down and now, a few years later, Gull had taken the idea and instigated his own photographic enquiries? He tried to hide his disdain as Gull continued.