Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu - In A Glass Darkly

Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

The Strangest Cases of the Occult Detective Dr. Martin Hesselius: Green Tea, The Familiar, Mr Justice Harbottle, The Room in the Dragon Volant & Carmilla

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2017 OK Publishing

ISBN 978-80-272-2129-5

Green Tea Green Tea Table of Contents Prologue. Martin Hesselius, the German Physician Chapter I. Dr. Hesselius Relates How He Met the Rev. Mr. Jennings Chapter II. The Doctor Questions Lady Mary and She Answers Chapter III. Dr. Hesselius Picks Up Something in Latin Books Chapter IV. Four Eyes Were Reading the Passage Chapter V. Dr. Hesselius is Summoned to Richmond Chapter VI. How Mr. Jennings Met His Companion Chapter VII. The Journey: First Stage Chapter VIII. The Second Stage Chapter IX. The Third Stage Chapter X. Home Conclusion

The Familiar The Familiar Table of Contents Prologue Chapter 1. Footsteps Chapter 2. The Watcher Chapter 3. An Advertisement Chapter 4. He Talks with a Clergyman Chapter 5. Mr. Barton States His Case Chapter 6. Seen Again Chapter 7. Flight Chapter 8. Softened Chapter 9. Requiescat

Mr Justice Harbottle Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

The Room in the Dragon Volant Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

Carmilla Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

Table of Contents Table of Contents Green Tea Green Tea Table of Contents Prologue. Martin Hesselius, the German Physician Chapter I. Dr. Hesselius Relates How He Met the Rev. Mr. Jennings Chapter II. The Doctor Questions Lady Mary and She Answers Chapter III. Dr. Hesselius Picks Up Something in Latin Books Chapter IV. Four Eyes Were Reading the Passage Chapter V. Dr. Hesselius is Summoned to Richmond Chapter VI. How Mr. Jennings Met His Companion Chapter VII. The Journey: First Stage Chapter VIII. The Second Stage Chapter IX. The Third Stage Chapter X. Home Conclusion The Familiar The Familiar Table of Contents Prologue Chapter 1. Footsteps Chapter 2. The Watcher Chapter 3. An Advertisement Chapter 4. He Talks with a Clergyman Chapter 5. Mr. Barton States His Case Chapter 6. Seen Again Chapter 7. Flight Chapter 8. Softened Chapter 9. Requiescat Mr Justice Harbottle Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu The Room in the Dragon Volant Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu Carmilla Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

Prologue. Martin Hesselius, the German Physician

Chapter I. Dr. Hesselius Relates How He Met the Rev. Mr. Jennings

Chapter II. The Doctor Questions Lady Mary and She Answers

Chapter III. Dr. Hesselius Picks Up Something in Latin Books

Chapter IV. Four Eyes Were Reading the Passage

Chapter V. Dr. Hesselius is Summoned to Richmond

Chapter VI. How Mr. Jennings Met His Companion

Chapter VII. The Journey: First Stage

Chapter VIII. The Second Stage

Chapter IX. The Third Stage

Chapter X. Home

Conclusion

Table of Contents

Though carefully educated in medicine and surgery, I have never practiced either. The study of each continues, nevertheless, to interest me profoundly. Neither idleness nor caprice caused my secession from the honorable calling which I had just entered. The cause was a very trifling scratch inflicted by a dissecting knife. This trifle cost me the loss of two fingers, amputated promptly, and the more painful loss of my health, for I have never been quite well since, and have seldom been twelve months together in the same place.

In my wanderings I became acquainted with Dr. Martin Hesselius, a wanderer like myself, like me a physician, and like me an enthusiast in his profession. Unlike me in this, that his wanderings were voluntary, and he a man, if not of fortune, as we estimate fortune in England, at least in what our forefathers used to term “easy circumstances.” He was an old man when I first saw him; nearly five-and-thirty years my senior.

In Dr. Martin Hesselius, I found my master. His knowledge was immense, his grasp of a case was an intuition. He was the very man to inspire a young enthusiast, like me, with awe and delight. My admiration has stood the test of time and survived the separation of death. I am sure it was well-founded.

For nearly twenty years I acted as his medical secretary. His immense collection of papers he has left in my care, to be arranged, indexed and bound. His treatment of some of these cases is curious. He writes in two distinct characters. He describes what he saw and heard as an intelligent layman might, and when in this style of narrative he had seen the patient either through his own hall-door, to the light of day, or through the gates of darkness to the caverns of the dead, he returns upon the narrative, and in the terms of his art and with all the force and originality of genius, proceeds to the work of analysis, diagnosis and illustration.

Here and there a case strikes me as of a kind to amuse or horrify a lay reader with an interest quite different from the peculiar one which it may possess for an expert. With slight modifications, chiefly of language, and of course a change of names, I copy the following. The narrator is Dr. Martin Hesselius. I find it among the voluminous notes of cases which he made during a tour in England about sixty-four years ago.

It is related in series of letters to his friend Professor Van Loo of Leyden. The professor was not a physician, but a chemist, and a man who read history and metaphysics and medicine, and had, in his day, written a play.

The narrative is therefore, if somewhat less valuable as a medical record, necessarily written in a manner more likely to interest an unlearned reader.

These letters, from a memorandum attached, appear to have been returned on the death of the professor, in 1819, to Dr. Hesselius. They are written, some in English, some in French, but the greater part in German. I am a faithful, though I am conscious, by no means a graceful translator, and although here and there I omit some passages, and shorten others, and disguise names, I have interpolated nothing.

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The Rev. Mr. Jennings is tall and thin. He is middle-aged, and dresses with a natty, old-fashioned, high-church precision. He is naturally a little stately, but not at all stiff. His features, without being handsome, are well formed, and their expression extremely kind, but also shy.

I met him one evening at Lady Mary Haddock’s. The modesty and benevolence of his countenance are extremely prepossessing.

We were but a small party, and he joined agreeably enough in the conversation, He seems to enjoy listening very much more than contributing to the talk; but what he says is always to the purpose and well said. He is a great favourite of Lady Mary’s, who, it seems, consults him upon many things, and thinks him the most happy and blessed person on earth. Little knows she about him.

The Rev. Mr. Jennings is a bachelor, and has, they say sixty thousand pounds in the funds. He is a charitable man. He is most anxious to be actively employed in his sacred profession, and yet though always tolerably well elsewhere, when he goes down to his vicarage in Warwickshire, to engage in the actual duties of his sacred calling, his health soon fails him, and in a very strange way. So says Lady Mary.