Alias Grace

  As a result of this session and the astonishing revelations it produced, Dr. Jordan gave it as his opinion that Grace Marks' loss of memory was genuine, not feigned - that on the fatal day she was suffering from the effects of an hysterical seizure brought on by fright, which resulted in a form of auto-hypnotic somnambulism, not much studied twenty-five years ago but well documented since; and that this fact explains her subsequent amnesia. In the course of the neuro-hypnotic trance, which several of our own Committee members witnessed, Grace Marks displayed not only a fully recovered memory of these past events, but also pronounced evidence of a somnambulistic double consciousness, with a distinct secondary personality, capable of acting without the knowledge of the first. It was Dr. Jordan's conclusion, in view of the evidence, that the woman known to us as "Grace Marks" was neither conscious at the time of the murder of Nancy Montgomery, nor responsible for her actions therein - the memories of these actions being retained only by her secondary and hidden self. Dr. Jordan was of the added opinion that this other self gave strong manifestations of its continued existence during her period of mental derangement in 1852, if the eyewitness reports of Mrs. Moodie and others are any indication.

  I had hoped to have a written report to set before you, and our Committee has delayed the submission of its Petition from year to year, in expectation of it. Dr. Jordan had indeed fully intended to prepare such a report; but he was called away suddenly by a family illness, followed by urgent business on the Continent; after which the outbreak of the Civil War, in which he served in the capacity of a military surgeon, was a serious impediment to his efforts. I understand he was wounded in the course of the hostilities, and although providentially now making a recovery, has not yet regained sufficient strength to be able to complete his task. Otherwise I have no doubt that he would have added his earnest and heartfelt entreaties, to ours.

  I myself was present at the neuro-hypnotic session referred to, as was the lady who has since consented to become my dear wife; and both of us were most profoundly affected by what we saw and heard. It moves me to tears to think how this poor woman has been wronged through lack of scientific understanding. The human soul is a profound and awe-inspiring mystery, the depths of which are only now beginning to be sounded. Well may St. Paul have said, "Now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face." One can only guess at the purposes of our Creator, in fashioning of Humanity such a complex and Gordian knot.

  But whatever you may think of Dr. Jordan's professional opinion - and I am well aware that his conclusions may be difficult to credit, for one not familiar with the practice of Neuro-hypnosis, and who was not present at the events to which I allude - surely Grace Marks has been incarcerated for a great many years, more than sufficient to atone for her misdeeds. She has suffered untold mental agony, and agony of body as well; and she has bitterly repented whatever part she may have taken in this great crime, whether conscious of having taken it or not. She is by no means any longer a young woman, and is in but indifferent health. If she were at liberty, something might surely be done for her temporal, as well as her spiritual weal, and she might have an opportunity of meditating on the past, and of preparing for a future life.

  Will you - can you, in the name of charity - still persist in refusing to join your name to the Petition for her release, and thereby perchance close the gates of Paradise to a repentant sinner? Surely not!

  I invite you - I beg you once again - to aid us in this most praiseworthy endeavour.

  Yours very truly,

  Enoch Verringer, M.A., D. Div.

  From Dr. Samuel Bannerling, M.D., The Maples, Front Street,

  Toronto; to the Reverend Enoch Verringer, Sydenham Street

  Methodist Church, Kingston, Ontario.

  November 1st, 1867.

  Dear Sir:

  I acknowledge receipt of your letter of the 15th of October, and its account of your puerile antics in regards to Grace Marks. I am disappointed in Dr. Jordan; I had some previous correspondence with him, in which I warned him explicitly against this cunning woman. They say there is no fool like an old fool, but I say there is no fool like a young one; and I am astonished that anyone with a medical degree would allow himself to be imposed upon by such a blatant piece of charlatanism and preposterous tomfoolery as a "Neuro-hypnotic trance," which is second in imbecility only to Spiritism, Universal Suffrage, and similar drivel. This rubbishy "Neuro-hypnotism," however beribboned with new terminologies, is only Mesmerism, or Animal Magnetism, re-writ; and that sickly nonsense was discredited long ago, as being merely a solemn-sounding blind, behind which men of questionable antecedents and salacious natures might obtain power over young women of the same, asking them impertinent and offensive questions and ordering them to perform immodest acts, without the latter appearing to consent to it.

  So I fear that your Dr. Jordan is either credulous to an infantile degree, or himself a great scoundrel; and that, should he have composed his self-styled "report," it would not have been worth the paper it was written on. I suspect that the wound of which you speak, was incurred, not during the war, but before it; and that it consisted of a sharp blow to the head, which is the only thing that would account for such idiocy. If Dr. Jordan keeps on with this disorderly course of thought, he will soon belong in the private asylum for lunatics, which, if I recall aright, he was once so set upon establishing.

  I have read the so-called "testimony" of Mrs. Moodie, as well as some of her other scribblings, which I consigned to the fire where they belong - and where they for once cast a little light, which they certainly would not have done otherwise. Like the rest of her ilk, Mrs. Moodie is prone to overwrought effusions, and to the concoction of convenient fairy tales; and for the purposes of truth, one might as well rely on the "eyewitness reports" of a goose.

  As for the gates of Paradise to which you refer, I have no control whatever over them, and if Grace Marks is worthy to enter there she will doubtless be admitted without any interference on my part. But certainly the gates of the Penitentiary will never be opened to her through any act of mine. I have studied her carefully, and know her character and disposition better than you can possibly do. She is a creature devoid of moral faculties, and with the propensity to murder strongly developed. She is not safe to be entrusted with the ordinary privileges of society, and if her liberty were restored to her the chances are that sooner or later other lives would be sacrificed.

  In closing, Sir, allow me to remark that it ill becomes you, as a man of the cloth, to pepper your screeds with allusions to "modern science." A little learning is a dangerous thing, as I believe Pope once observed. Busy yourself with the care of consciences, and with the delivery of edifying sermons for the improvement of public life and private morals, which God knows the country is in need of, and leave the brains of the degenerate to the authorities who specialize in them. Above all, in future, be pleased to desist from pestering with these importunate and ridiculous appeals,

  Your most humble and obedient servant.

  (Dr.) Samuel Bannerling, M.D.

  XV.

  THE TREE OF PARADISE

  But persistence at last met with its reward. One petition after another went into the Government, and doubtless other influences were brought to bear. This almost unique malefactor received a pardon, and was conveyed to New York, where she changed her name, and soon afterwards married. For all the writer of these lines knows to the contrary, she is living still. Whether her appetite for murder has ever strongly asserted itself in the interval is not known, as she probably guards her identity by more than one alias.

  - Author Unknown,

  History of Toronto and the County of York,

  Ontario, 1885.

  Friday, August 2, 1872. I visited the City from 12 to 2 to see Minister of Justice about Grace Marks whose pardon I received this morning. It was Sir John's request that I and one of my daughters should accompany this woman to a home provided for her in New York.

  Tuesday, August 7, 18
72. Examined and discharged Grace Marks, pardoned after being imprisoned in this Penitentiary 28 years and ten months. Started with her and my daughter for New York at 1.00 P.M. by order of the Minister of Justice....

  - Notes from the Warden's Daily Journal,

  Provincial Penitentiary, Kingston, Ontario,

  The Dominion of Canada.

  So with this Earthly Paradise it is,

  If ye will read aright, and pardon me,

  Who strive to build a shadowy isle of bliss

  Midmost the beating of the steely sea,

  Where tossed about all hearts of men must be....

  - William Morris,

  The Earthly Paradise, 1868.

  The imperfect is our paradise.

  - Wallace Stevens,

  "The Poems of Our Climate," 1938.

  51.

  I have often thought of writing to you and informing you of my good fortune, and I've written many letters to you in my head; and when I've arrived at the right way of saying things I will set pen to paper, and thus you will have news of me, if you are still in the land of the living. And if you are not, you will have learnt about all of this anyway.

  Perhaps you heard of my Pardon, but perhaps you did not. I didn't see it in any of the newspapers, which isn't strange, as by the time I was finally set free it was an old worn-out story, and nobody would have wanted to read about it. But no doubt that was just as well. When I learnt of it, I knew for certain that you must have sent the letter to the Government after all, because it got the results in the end, along with all the petitions; although I must say they took a good long time about it, and said nothing about your letter, but only that it was a general amnesty.

  The first I heard of the Pardon was from the Warden's oldest daughter, whose name was Janet. This would not be a Warden you ever saw, Sir, as there were many changes since you went away, and a new Warden was one of them, and there had been two or three new Governors as well, and so many new guards and keepers and matrons I could scarcely keep track of them. I was sitting in the sewing room, where you and I used to have our afternoon talks, mending stockings - for I continued to serve in a household capacity under the new Governors, as I'd done before - when Janet came in. She had a kind manner and always gave me a smile, unlike some, and although never a beauty, she'd managed to become engaged to a respectable young farmer, for which she had my heartfelt good wishes. There are some men, especially of the simpler kind, that prefer their wives to be plain rather than handsome, as that sort buckles down to the work and complains less, and there is not a great chance of their running off with another man, as what other man would go to the bother of stealing them?

  On this day Janet hurried into the room, and she seemed very excited. Grace, she said, I have the most astonishing news.

  I did not even bother to stop sewing, as when people told me they had astonishing news it always concerned somebody else. I was ready to hear it of course, but not ready to miss a stitch over it, if you see what I mean, Sir. Oh? I said.

  Your Pardon has come through, she said. From Sir John Macdonald, and the Minister of Justice, in Ottawa. Isn't that wonderful? She clasped her hands, and at that moment she looked like a child, although a large and ugly one, gazing at a beautiful gift. She was one of those who never did believe me to be guilty, being soft-hearted and of a sentimental nature.

  At this news I put down my sewing. I felt very cold all at once, as if I was about to faint, which I hadn't done for a long time, ever since you left, Sir. Can it be true? I said. If it was another person I would have thought she might be playing a cruel joke on me, but Janet did not relish jokes of any kind.

  Yes, she said, it is really true. You are pardoned! I am so happy for you!

  I could see that she felt some tears were in order, and I shed several.

  That night, and even though her father the Warden didn't have the paper actually in hand, but only a letter about it, nothing would do but that I had to be moved out of my prison cell and into the spare bedroom at the Warden's house. This was the doing of Janet, the good soul, but she had the assistance of her mother, as my Pardon was indeed an unusual event in the dull routine of the prison, and people like to have some contact with events of that sort, so they can talk about them to their friends afterwards; so I was made a fuss of.

  After I'd blown out my candle I lay in the best bed, wearing one of Janet's cotton nightdresses instead of the coarse yellowy prison one, and looking up at the dark ceiling. I tossed and turned, and somehow I couldn't get comfortable, I guess comfort is what you're accustomed to, and by that time I was more accustomed to my narrow prison bed than to a spare bedroom with clean sheets. The room was so large it was almost frightening to me, and I pulled the sheet up over my head to make it darker; and then I felt as if my face was dissolving and turning into someone else's face, and I recalled my poor mother in her shroud, as they were sliding her into the sea, and how I thought that she had already changed inside the sheet, and was a different woman, and now the same thing was happening to me. Of course I wasn't dying, but it was in a way similar.

  The next day at breakfast, the Warden's whole family sat beaming at me with moist eyes, as if I was some rare and cherished thing, like a baby snatched out of a river; and the Warden said we should give thanks for the one lost lamb that had been rescued, and they all said a fervent Amen.

  That is it, I thought. I have been rescued, and now I must act like someone who has been rescued. And so I tried. It was very strange to realize that I would not be a celebrated murderess any more, but seen perhaps as an innocent woman wrongly accused and imprisoned unjustly, or at least for too long a time, and an object of pity rather than of horror and fear. It took me some days to get used to the idea; indeed, I am not quite used to it yet. It calls for a different arrangement of the face; but I suppose it will become easier in time.

  Of course to those who do not know my story I will not be anybody in particular.

  After breakfast on that day I was strangely dejected. Janet noticed it and asked me why, and I said, I've been in this prison now for almost twenty-nine years, I have no friends or family outside it, and where am I to go and what am I to do? I have no money, nor any means of earning any, and no proper clothing, and I am unlikely to obtain a situation anywhere in the vicinity, as my story is too well known - because despite the Pardon, which is all very well, a mistress in any right-thinking family would not want me in the house, as she would be afraid for the safety of her loved ones, it is only what I would do myself in their position.

  I did not say to her, And I am also too old to go on the town, as I did not wish to shock her, she having been well brought up, and a Methodist. Though I must tell you, Sir, the thought did cross my mind. But what chance would I have, at my age and with so much competition, it would be a penny a time with the worst drunken sailors up an alley somewhere, and I'd be dead of disease within a year; and it made my heart fail even to consider it.

  So now, instead of seeming my passport to liberty, the Pardon appeared to me as a death sentence. I was to be turned out into the streets, alone and friendless, to starve and freeze to death in a cold corner, with nothing but the clothes on my back, the ones I'd come into the prison with; and perhaps not even those, as I had no idea what might have become of them; for all I knew they had been sold or given away long ago.

  Oh no, dear Grace, said Janet. All has been thought of. I did not want to tell you everything at once, as we feared the shock of such happiness coming after such misery might be too much for you, it sometimes has that effect. But a good home has been provided for you, it is in the United States, and once you have gone there you may leave the sad past behind you, as no one there need ever know about it. It will be a new life.

  She did not use exactly these words, but that was the gist of it.

  But what am I to wear? said I, still in despair. Perhaps I was indeed unsettled in my wits, as a person altogether in her right mind would have asked first about the good home tha
t was being provided, and where it was, and what I was to do there. I thought later about the way she had put it, A good home provided, it is what you say of a dog or a horse that is too old to work any more, and that you don't wish to keep yourself or have put down.

  I have thought of that too, said Janet. She was really a most helpful creature. I have looked in the storage rooms, and by some miracle the box you brought with you was still in there with your name on a label, I suppose it is because of all the petitions that were got up in your favour after the trial. They may have kept your things at first because they thought you were soon to be released, and then after that they must have forgotten all about it. I will have it brought up to your room and then we will open it, shall we?

  I felt a little comforted, although I had some misgivings. And I was right to have them, for when we opened the box we found that the moths had been in and had eaten up the woollens, my mother's thick winter shawl among them, and some of the other things were much discoloured and musty-smelling from being shut up for so long in a dampish place; the threads in some were almost rotted through, and you could put your hand right through them. Any piece of cloth needs a good airing every once in a while, and these had been given none.

  We took everything out and spread the things around the room, to see what could be saved. There were Nancy's dresses, so pretty when fresh, now for the most part ruined, and the things I'd had from Mary Whitney; I'd prized them so much at the time and now they looked shoddy and outmoded. There was the dress I'd made at Mrs. Alderman Parkinson's, with the bone buttons from Jeremiah, but nothing could be saved of it except the buttons. I found the piece of Mary's hair, tied with a thread and wrapped up in a handkerchief as I'd left it, but the moths had been into that too, they will eat hair if nothing better is left and it is not stored in cedar.