And no, I don’t mean me!
Once upon a time, my novel, A Fragile Thing, was a short story of 3000 words and appeared in the anthology, Gothic Tales of Terror, back in 2015. It’s title was “Leave” and centred on the unfortunate consequences of a Victorian mesmerist’s assumption of power.
The Victorian era was one which saw a growth in the fields of hypnotism, mesmerism and spiritualism. Areas which were often regarded as the work of quacks and charlatans and whose practitioners were sometimes seen as no more than entertainers of a fraudulent kind. It was, however, a field which some saw gave an answer to the neurotic and hysterical women who apparently inhabited the upper realms of society. Whenever I have researched the Victorian era (and I have studied it a lot), it is noticeable that only the more genteel and upper echelons seem to be affected in this manner. The working class women are struggling to just survive, caring for their families as well as working (oh yes, for the working class woman, they really did ‘have it all’ back then). But for those who were well off, were regarded as weak or somehow compromised because of their female nature, they were seen as needing to be ‘fixed’ and I, personally, regard this as part of the need of the husband or the father in such instances to control their child, wife, niece, mother. And if they couldn’t be ‘fixed’, quite often they were put away in some asylum or other. (I also think corsets are responsible for a lot of women’s ‘issues’ at the time, but that’s another topic.)
I came across one tale in particular, and it is his story which inspired “Leave” and A Fragile Thing and the subsequent development of the latter’s central character: Isaac Bercow.
Franz Neukomm, an Hungarian hypnotist, was attending a séance at the castle of Tódor Salamon. His twenty-two-year old daughter, Ella, had previously appeared with Neukomm and, under hypnosis, had apparently been able to solve events such as murder and theft.
On this particular occasion, however, Neukomm directed Ella’s soul to leave her body and travel a distance and enter the body of an ill man. This she did and related details of the man’s illness to the audience. But when she reported the probable outcome of the man’s disease, she collapsed and died.
An investigation was launched by the authorities to see if this was in fact a ‘death by hypnotism’. Neukomm was initially convicted of manslaughter but then cleared. She had died of heart failure which could have happened at any time. It was just an unfortunate coincidence.
A Fragile Thing
ISBN HB: 978-1-965546-27-7
ISBN PB: 978-1-965546-28-4
From Watertower Hill Publishing 17th March
Stephanie Ellis 