G.W.M. Reynolds, Psychology, Pickwick And A Link To Edgar Allan Poe

G.W.M. Reynolds, Psychology, Pickwick And A Link To Edgar Allan Poe by R.E. Prindle Texts: Pickwick Abroad, Teggs Edition.1839 The Youthful Impostor, reprint, original 1832, rewritten in 1835. As I’ve said, I’ve read Pickwick Abroad three times. I think the book is slighted the first reading because of its appropriation of Charles Dickens’ characters and story idea. The shock to one’s proprieties is quite strong. Bedazzled by the daring of Reynolds one tends to be critical of the novel compared to the original. Time passes, a deeper understanding of Reynolds is acquired and a finer understanding of Pickwick Abroad begins. Reynolds was quite young when he wrote the book, a mere twenty-three. Forced out onto the world at the tender age of sixteen, the book fictionalizes his experience in the land of his exile, France. All the memories are raw from just having been experienced, while his future was very uncertain. Reynolds left England in 1830 some few months after the July Revolution in France. The revolution would have a profound effect on the boy, turning him into what was called a Red Republican, that is one who endorsed the violence of the First French Revolution and the bloody three days of the second, or July Revolution. He would carry this attitude with him back to England. At the age of eighteen he married a girl his age by the name of Susannah Pierson. Her death only, in 1858, ended the marriage. She was apparently the perfect help mate for him, being herself an author of several books their interests meshed. Little is known of her but if Reynolds remembrance is factual he probably met her father on his arrival in the French port of Calais. This man unidentified by name opened Reynolds’ perception to the criminal side of human behavior. He showed young Reynolds how to see the world. Indicating to him the methods of criminals thus broadening young Reynolds perspectives by double. Pickwick Abroad thus becomes a history of petty criminals, con men and sponges, that is parasites. This was recorded in The Youthful Impostor. Little is directly known of Reynolds’ doings in France other than what he tells us of his explorations. To see and do what he describes must have occupied the bulk of his time. Would that we knew more of his associates. He moved in literary circles acquiring a sound background in editing and publishing that was of use to him on returning to England. He immersed himself in French culture and history as will begin to be evident later in this essay when he displays his knowledge of activities in psychology and its center at the Salpetriere Asylum in Paris. Thus he viewed the major attractions in and around Paris becoming familiar with the police and judiciary. A constant grey presence throughout the length of novel is the gendarme Msieu Dumont. The presence is beneficial while Reynolds expresses great admiration of him and actually of the police and the gendarmerie. Here one wonders if the model for Dumont might be the father of Susannah and hence Reynolds’ father in law. Pickwick met Dumont in Calais and It was in that town that Reynolds had his eyes opened. Ah, but that might be too convenient. The chapters of XXXII, XXXIII and XXXIV held special interest to me. These are Reynolds at his best. In chapter XXXII Pickwick and his entourage of conmen, spongers and hanger ons along with his club members and the irrepressible Samuel Weller go out for the evening. They enter what appears to be a restaurant but as the evening progresses many women at the table d’hote begin acting zany and get madder and madder when a woman jumps up jumps up on the table to do an obscene dance. The entourage realize that they are in a madhouse. The proprietor is a Doctor. This introduces the subject of the Salpetriere. The women’s asylum. Later in the novel. Reynolds will introduce us to the men’s asylum the Bicetre, another very interesting episode. This now brings us to the connection of Reynolds and Edgar Allan Poe. Poe was of course a profound psychologist, much more than Reynolds although in many ways whatever the latter learned in France put him well ahead of anyone in England. The French themselves were the psychological leaders of Europe. While Freud preempted them in a shameful way he owed nearly everything to Jean Martin Charcot, Pierre Janet and the doctors around Charcot at the Salpetriere. One might say that without his French connection there would have been no Sigmund Freud. Of course Charcot was just beginning his career when Reynolds wrote Pickwick Abroad. We have to know a lot more about what circles Reynolds ran in. We do know that he once bought a story from William Makepeace Thackeray and actually paid him. Most magazines either refused to pay or put it off as long as they could. Nevertheless Reynolds must have actually visited the Salpetriere and Bicetre as these chapters around the institutions are actually quite intense and heart rending. The question then is did Reynolds’ story influence Edgar Allan Poe. Reynolds published in 1839 and Poe in 1845. Poe was certainly well known in English literary circles by 1845 as Poe more or less took them by storm. Reynolds was known in the US by 1836 when his rewritten story The Youthful Impostor was published in the US. It is not unreasonable then to think that Pickwick Abroad was also published in the US shortly after 1839 and that Poe at sometime between say, 1840 and 1844 read the book and was impressed by the named chapters under discussion. He took the hint and turned it into the brilliant story of The System Of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether. There may be a clue to Reynolds in the use of the word ‘system’ by Poe. Reynolds has a running joke about his character Hook Walker, Hamas Ambulator as another character translates the name into Latin. Walker has a system for every thing his systems becoming somewhat a tiring joke. Actually the name Hook Walker is a joke that would have been funny to many readers. A book published in 1841, still de riguer for the cognoscenti, Chales Mackay’s Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness Of Crowds, explains the meaning of the name Hook Walker to Renolds. I quote from the chapter titled Popular Follies Of Great Cities: Quote. ‘Hookey Walker’ derived from the chorus of a popular ballad, was also in high favor at one time and served like its predecessor ‘Quoz’, to answer all questions. In the course of time the latter word (Walker) alone became the favorite, and was uttered with a peculiar drawl upon the first syllable, a sharp turn upon the last. If a lively servant girl was importuned for a kiss by a fellow she did not care about…the probable answer he would receive was, ‘Walker!’ If a dustman asked his friend for the loan of a shilling and his friend was unwilling to accommodate him the probable answer he would receive was ‘Walker!’ Unquote. So I suppose the meaning was something like ‘Fat Chance.’ Hookey Walker was a ballad popular some time earlier. The character of Hook Walker would have provided hilarity throughout PA. The book itself, which is very comedic, must have been thought hilariously funny, or Reynolds hoped so. Poe being an honest writer, while he doesn’t directly indicate Reynolds as the source for the idea, Poe’s narrator and a companion are riding down the road discussing insanity and his friend point’s out the famous asylum of Dr. Tarr The narrator turns off to investigate while his friend rides on. I interpret that as Poe indicating he got the story idea from Reynolds (or someone as Reynolds isn’t named) but his own story is quite different being more highly developed. Poe, then, as I interpret had read PA and borrowed the idea. Thus Reynolds for at least one story had an influence on Poe. At the end of chapter XXXII one of the madwomen slips a letter to Pickwick that he pockets. Carrying on the looniness of the times Reynolds shifts from the ladies to the men in a parody of Craniology in chapter XXXIII. He portrays a different kind of lunacy, that of Prof. Franz Gall’s Phrenology, or the reading of the contours of the head. Phrenology was misunderstood at the time and roundly ridiculed, but Gall was vindicated in later times as the functions of the different areas of the brain have been understood. A number of good horror films from the thirties to today deal with the issue, an excellent one being ‘The Black Death’. Another mad doctor. Everybody gets a good laugh at the joke played on the craniologist and then we get on with the story. Pickwick finds time in his busy schedule to open the letter written by the madwoman that details the descent into madness off herself and her lover and would be husband. From my point of view Reynolds really turns on the juice to rival Poe in his understanding of psychology. The psychologist Dr. Jean Martin Charcot working in the sixties, seventies and eighties in the Salpetriere on what was then called hysteria initially believed that hysteria had a physical origin while others contended it was a psychological reaction to a traumatic event or events. Writing in the late thirties Reynolds was already certain of the latter. Women during the nineteenth century were treated very badly. The burdens placed on their psychological well being were horrendous, especially in the lower economic classes. One would think that this would have been immediately clear to Charcot where he had an asylum full of mistreated women. Reynolds presents two sides to the problem. Another point of view was that insanity was inherited, a family characteristic. I’m not sure which side Reynolds took on this issue, he may have been ambivalent or believed both. Pickwick’s letter gives the woman’s side of what happened. This is a very tragic story, detailed in chapters XXXIV and XXXV. The woman and a man fall in love. Both are ardent. The woman’s problem is that she thinks insanity is inherited in her family line. She therefore believes that she is destined to go insane at some future time while at the same time she doesn’t want to bring any children into the world who will inevitably carry what we would call today, a gene of insanity. While she is in love with her future husband she refuses to marry him without saying why; the deeper reason being that her children will have the insanity propensity or gene. This refusal to marry drives her lover to distraction. Thus we have a traumatic cause of insanity on both sides without any neurological damages. Her prospective husband has a reaction to disappointed expectations traversing through depression to insanity. There is a great deal of depth to Reynolds that is easily overlooked by a casual reading. This first story in Pickwick of the horrors of Madness comes from deep down. In his five year residence in France with visits to almost all significant sites, the next will be the prison and insane asylum of the Bicetre at which Dr. Pinel worked. Reynolds seems to have been inside each as well as nearly every prison in France. And he is going to take all of this profound experience back to England to be digested