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Or, The Glasgow Gentleman
And The Lady
Some years ago, there
used to be pointed out, upon the streets of Glasgow, a man whose
intellect had been unsettled upon a very strange account. When a youth,
he had happened to pass a lady on a crowded throughfare—a lady whose
extreme beauty, though dimmed by the intervention of a veil, and seen
but for a moment, made an indelible impression upon his mind. This
lovely vision shot rapidly past him, and was in an instant lost amidst
the commonplace crowd through which it moved. He was so confounded by
the tumult of his feelings, that he could not pursue, or even attempt to
see it again. Yet he never afterwards forgot it.
With a mind full of
distracting thoughts, and a heart filled alternately with gushes of
pleasure and of pain, the man slowly left the spot where he had remained
for some minutes as it were thunderstruck. He soon after, without being
aware of what he wished, or what he was doing, found himself again at
the place. He came to the very spot where he had stood when the lady
passed, mused for some time about it, went to a little distance, and
then came up as he had come when he met the exquisite subject of his
reverie - unconsciously deluding himself with the idea that this might
recall her to the spot. She came not; he felt disappointed. He tried
again; still she abstained from passing. He continued to traverse the
place till the evening, when the street became deserted. By-and-by, he
was left altogether alone. He then saw that all his fond efforts were
vain, and he left the silent, lonely street at midnight, with a soul as
desolate as that gloomy terrace.
For weeks afterwards he
was never off the streets. He wandered hither and thither throughout the
town, like a forlorn ghost. In particular, he often visited the place
where he had first seen the object of his abstracted thoughts, as if he
considered that he had a better chance of seeing her there than anywhere
else. He frequented every place of public amusement to which he could
purchase admission; and he made the tour of all the churches in the
town. All was in vain. He never again placed his eyes upon that angelic
countenance. She was ever present to his mental optics, but she never
appeared in a tangible form. Without her essential presence, all the
world beside was to him as a blank-- a wilderness.
Madness invariably takes
possession of the mind which broods over much or over long upon some
engrossing idea. So did it prove with this singular lover. He grew
"innocent," as the people of this country tenderly phrase it. His
insanity, however, was little more than mere abstraction. The course of
his mind was stopped at a particular point. After this he made no
further progress in any intellectual attainment. He acquired no new
ideas. His whole soul stood still. He was like a clock stopped at a
particular hour, with some things, too, about him, which, like the
motionless indices of that machine, pointed out the date of the
interruption. As, for instance, he ever after wore a peculiarly
long-backed and high-necked coat, as well as a neck-cloth of a
particular spot—being the fashion of the year when he saw the lady.
Indeed, he was a sort of living memorial of the dress, gait, and manners
of a former day. It was evident that he clung with a degree of fondness
to every thing which bore relation to the great incident of his life.
Nor could he endure any thing that tended to cover up or screen from his
recollection that glorious yet melancholy circumstance. He had the same
feeling of veneration for that day, that circumstance, and for himself,
as he then existed, which caused the chivalrous lover of former times to
preserve upon his lips, as long as he could, the imaginary delight which
they had drawn from the touch of his mistress’s hand.
When I last saw this
unfortunate person, he was getting old, and seemed still more deranged
than formerly. Every female whom he met on the , street, especially if
at all good looking, he gazed at with an enquiring, anxious expression;
and when she had passed, he usually stood still a few moments and mused,
with his eyes cast upon the ground. It was remarkable, that he gazed
most anxiously upon women whose age and figures most nearly resembled
that of his unknown mistress at the time he had seen her, and that he
did not appear to make allowance for the years which had passed since
his eyes met that vision. This was part of his madness. Strange power of
love! Incomprehensible mechanism of the human heart!—Edinburgh Literary
Journal, 1829. |
