The Elephant Man and Other Reminiscences

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Sir Frederick Treves. The Elephant Man and Other Reminiscences

The Elephant Man and Other Reminiscences

Table of Contents

I. THE ELEPHANT MAN

II. THE OLD RECEIVING ROOM

III. THE TWENTY-KRONE PIECE

IV. A CURE FOR NERVES

V. TWO WOMEN

VI. A SEA LOVER

VII. A CASE OF “HEART FAILURE”

VIII. A RESTLESS NIGHT

IX. IN ARTICULO MORTIS

“When something like a white wave of the sea. Breaks o’er the brain and buries us in sleep.”

X. THE IDOL WITH HANDS OF CLAY

XI. BREAKING THE NEWS

XII. A QUESTION OF HATS

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Sir Frederick Treves

Published by Good Press, 2021

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I had no great difficulty in ridding Merrick’s mind of these ideas. I wanted him to get accustomed to his fellow-men, to become a human being himself and to be admitted to the communion of his kind. He appeared day by day less frightened, less haunted looking, less anxious to hide, less alarmed when he saw his door being opened. He got to know most of the people about the place, to be accustomed to their comings and goings, and to realize that they took no more than a friendly notice of him. He could only go out after dark, and on fine nights ventured to take a walk in Bedstead Square clad in his black cloak and his cap. His greatest adventure was on one moonless evening when he walked alone as far as the hospital garden and back again.

To secure Merrick’s recovery and to bring him, as it were, to life once more, it was necessary that he should make the acquaintance of men and women who would treat him as a normal and intelligent young man and not as a monster of deformity. Women I felt to be more important than men in bringing about his transformation. Women were the more frightened of him, the more disgusted at his appearance and the more apt to give way to irrepressible expressions of aversion when they came into his presence. Moreover, Merrick had an admiration of women of such a kind that it attained almost to adoration. This was not the outcome of his personal experience. They were not real women but the products of his imagination. Among them was the beautiful mother surrounded, at a respectful distance, by heroines from the many romances he had read.

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