I have a deep appreciation for literary scholars who aim to draw once-popular but now obscure authors out of the shadows and back into the light for a new generation of readers to discover! Donald K. Hartman does just this with The Hypnotic Tales of Rafael Sabatini, which came out last year. This is the third installment in Hartman’s series of books that highlight the role of hypnotism in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century horror, mystery, and weird fiction. I have previously reviewed Death by Suggestion and The Hypno-Ripper, and I can now say I fully share Hartman’s fascination (if you’ll excuse the pun) with this intriguing microgenre. In this latest book, Hartman collects two short novelettes by the author Rafael Sabatini along with some notes about the cultural context in which they were written.
Much like The Hypno-Ripper, this book is structured around two stories, supplemented with related material. The book opens with a brief introduction by Hartman that explains the cultural significance of the author Rafael Sabatini—widely popular in his day, mostly for his adventure tales—and outlines his biography. Next, Hartman devotes several pages to background information on Trilby—an 1894 Gothic novel by George du Maurier (grandfather of Daphne du Maurier), whose stage adaptation took London and then the wider world by storm. This background information helps to provide context for the Rafael Sabatini story that follows, “The Avenger” (1909). In this tale, seeing a production of Trilby prompts a group of friends to begin discussing the reality of hypnosis. The good doctor Roger Galliphant is moved to give a demonstration in order to convince the skeptical narrator of hypnotism’s legitimacy, but his experiment uncovers evidence of a murder committed by a much less scrupulous practitioner. Dr. Galliphant returns in the second Sabatini story, “The Dream” (1912), which also features an evil hypnotist—this time, the spendthrift relation of a virtuous man and his wealthy uncle who will use any means necessary to acquire enough money to cover his debts and continue his occult research. The story’s protagonist seeks out Dr. Galliphant to provide clarification on how he may have been hypnotized and whether he should feel responsible for actions committed while under a hypnotic trance. The book finishes off with a review from the Times of London of the film adaptation of this story, a 1922 silent production titled The Recoil adapted for the screen by Sabatini himself. The review praises its faithfulness to the text and the charming performances of the actors. While I’d have been happy just to read Sabatini’s two stories alone, these added tidbits about stage productions of Trilby and the film adaptation of “The Dream” help to really drive home how pervasive these dramatic stories of the horror of hypnotism were in the popular culture of the era.
Both tales in this collection are captivating crime stories with similar themes. In “The Avenger,” a mutual friend of the narrator and Dr. Galliphant, Frank Voysey, is grieving a double tragedy: First, the woman he loved fell for his best friend Colin Chester; then Colin Chester died in a bizarre sleepwalking incident while Frank was visiting. When Dr. Galliphant puts Frank under hypnosis, his unconscious mind reveals new information that suggests Colin may actually have been murdered by his duplicitous cousin James, who sought to inherit. Dr. Galliphant and the narrator travel to the Chester family estate of Cheynesworth to try to find proof that Colin’s death was hypnotically induced and to enact whatever justice they can for a crime that would be near-impossible to prove in a court of law. Upon their arrival, they discover an even more horrible crime in progress: James now has his late cousin’s fianceé, the beautiful Pauline Cornaby, completely under his psychic control. This tale employs two of the oldest plot tropes of the Gothic genre: a villain who seeks to or has succeeded in usurping an inheritance and a beautiful naïf who finds herself in the villain’s power. In many Gothic novels, the latter may involve legal, financial, or physical power. But there is something particularly terrifying about the hypnotic power that the villain holds over the young women in these stories. Pauline is controlled, body and mind, by James and isn’t even aware of her enslavement, appearing to all uninformed observers to be genuinely in love with him. She is so deeply connected to him, in fact, that she feels any of the physical sensations that he experiences—including the pain of his slow and excruciating death.
A usurping cousin is also at the center of “The Dream.” Stanley Bickershaw is a poor relation of the Orpington family who devotes all of his energy to researching his theories of hypnotism instead of pursuing work he could actually support himself with. He imposes on the hospitality of his cousin, Major Francis Orpington, and frequently applies to their wealthy uncle for money. When the uncle decides to cut Bickershaw off—apart from the annuity promised in his will—Bickershaw is prepared to take drastic measures. First, he ensnares Adelaide, Francis’s beautiful young ward and the object of his affections. Then he awaits the perfect opportunity to hypnotize Francis to murder their uncle, thereby knocking out both people who stand between Bickershaw and a hefty inheritance. At the end of the story, Dr. Galliphant is called in as an expert on hypnotism to weigh in on what exactly has happened and whether a hypnotized subject is morally culpable for the actions they commit while under a trance. As in the previous tale, the ensnaring of the young woman is almost incidental to the true plot of stealing an inheritance, but it is as though both Bickershaw and James Chester view these young women as property to be inherited alongside the wealth of their victims. Bickershaw’s unique research into hypnosis makes him potentially even more dangerous than the villain of “The Avenger.” All of James Chester’s victims had to willingly agree to be hypnotized by him, even if tricked into doing so by the promise of a headache cure or some other excuse. But Bickershaw has discovered that he can use the moments before someone falls into a natural sleep just as he would use the artificially induced sleep of hypnosis. This makes him a danger even to those who are already on their guard against him and skeptical of hypnosis in general. In both stories, the climax comes down to a battle of wills between the villain and the hero. The Edwardians believed that hypnosis was a matter of will power and that some people had naturally stronger wills than others. A strong will—often correlated with a certain intensity in the eyes—could allow one to resist hypnotic suggestions or even flip the tables and hypnotize the hypnotist. Ultimately, in both tales, good triumphs over evil and the beautiful young woman marries the good man she had been in love with before falling under the hypnotist’s spell.
If Rafael Sabatini’s tales of mesmerism and murder intrigue you, you can ask for it at your favorite local retailer, or order it online and support The Gothic Library in the process using this Bookshop.org affiliate link. I know I, for one, am eager for more entries in this series on hypnotism in Victorian and Edwardian literature.