Sidetracks. Richard Holmes

I followed them. The cobbles were covered in thick ice, and the iron banisters were loose in several places. At the bottom of the staircase I witnessed a grim scene. A man’s body was stretched out in the alley, his head resting on the last step, and his feet sticking into the gutter of a sewage pipe that came out of the alley-wall beneath the iron landing. They had just cut him down from the bars of a low window, in the cellar-wall above the bottom steps, from which he had hanged himself … The man in black turned out to be the commissioner of police. (water, echoing footsteps and voices, the slap of wet clothes on marble …) MORTUARY Slab number 14. Twenty-sixth January 1855. ASSISTANT Reception time: nine-thirty a.m. Sex: masculine. Age: forty-seven. Place of birth: Paris, Seine. Civil status: bachelor. Clothes and possessions: one black jacket; two calico shirts; two flannel waistcoats; one pair pale-grey trousers; one pair patent-leather shoes; one pair socks – red cotton (fade) … (fade in radiophonic music) POLICECOMMISSIONER Labrunie, Gérard. Also known as Gérard de Nerval, man of letters. Temporary address at the Hotel de Normandie, 13 rue des Bons-Enfants. A case of suicide by strangulation. This morning at approximately seven-thirty a.m. the deceased was found hanging from the bars of a locksmith’s shop in the rue de la Vieille-Lanterne. He had hanged himself with a length of sash-cord; the body was attached to the bars by means of the said cord. There were no signs of violence on the corpse. MAXIME DU CAMP Very early on Friday morning I received a message from Théophile Gautier informing me that Gérard de Nerval had been found hung … They’d sent for Gautier and Arsène Houssaye to confirm the identification. Gautier was apparently moved to tears; he had a long-standing affection for Gérard. It was easy for me to see the body in the mortuary. Poor Gérard was laid out flat on his back, his eyes shut, and his tongue just slightly protruding between parted lips. His fingers were clenched inwards on his palms, but his face was calm. His head was fractionally twisted on to his left shoulder-blade, and the tips of his feet were turned abnormally outwards. There was no trace of violence, no bruising, no contusions. Only, around the neck, there ran a thin line – more brown, as I remember, than red – which bore witness to the pressure of the cord, that piece of kitchen-cord which Gérard had shown me but six days previously – and which in his madness, he took for a seventeenth-century ladies’ dress-cord, no less than the actual dress-cord of Madame de Maintenon! (tolling bell effect: radiophonics) HOLMES Gérard’s funeral took place on the 30th January, and a mass was said for him in a side chapel of Notre Dame. In order to obtain permission for him to be buried in consecrated ground at Père Lachaise cemetery, a special application was made to the Archbishop of Paris. Suicide, when committed while ‘of unsound mind’, does not cut the victim off from the consolations of Mother Church. (monks’ choir singing the ‘Dies Irae’ in Gregorian chant. In the background the sound of digging, and wind blowing. Over this the scrape of a quill pen on paper and the voice of …) DR EMILE My Lord Bishop: M. Labrunie, Gérard de BLANCHE Nerval, was suffering from extreme fits of mental alienation, which seized him on repeated occasions during these last few years, and for which he received treatment from both my father and myself, Dr Emile Blanche, in this institution … Though M. de Nerval was not ill enough to be confined in a mental asylum against his will, yet in my considered opinion his state of mind had not been healthy or normal for a long time previously. He believed he had the same powers of imagination, and the same aptitude for work, as he had in the old days, and he expected to support himself as before on the income from his writing. Certainly he worked harder than ever, but one may feel that he was disappointed in his hopes, perhaps. His natural independence and pride of character prevented him from accepting anything in the way of aid, from even his best-tried friends. As a result of these mental – or moral – pressures, his reason was driven further and further astray; and above all this was because he now saw his madness face to face. I therefore have no hesitation in declaring, my Lord Bishop, that it was certainly in an extreme fit of madness that M. Gérard de Nerval put an end to his days. (gradually fade out sound of the plainchant, the digging, and finally the wind, during the next voice-over. Towards the end, radiophonics reappear)