T. Peter Park
Tue, 26 Oct 2004 06:32:57 -0700
Dear fellow Forteans,
Charles Dickens' Spontaneous Human Combustion of the alcoholic rag and
bottle dealer Krook in _Bleak House_ (1852-1853) sparked a mid-Victorian
literary literary and scientific debate over whether SHC is possible, or
just a vulgar superstition. Dickens was widely criticized for
perpetuating a bit of unscientific folklore in his novel, originally
published in monthly installments from March 1852 to September 1853. The
English Fortean and true crime writer Michael Harrison described the
Dickens SHC controversy in _Fire From Heaven: A Study of Spontaneous
Combustion in Human Beings_ (London: Sidgwicks & Jackson, 1976; rev.
ed., Skoob Books Publishing Ltd., 1990).
_Bleak House_, Harrison, noted, had first appeared in magazine serial
form like so many of Dickens' novels, and "already a number of readers
had written to the author, complaining of something apparently
incredible in the matter of Krook's death." These letters were so
numerous, yet so similar in their complaints, that Dickens felt it
necessary to preface the bound edition of _Bleak House_ with an
overview of the scientific and medical evidence for SHC (Michael
Harrison, _Fire From Heaven_, 1990 Skoob rev. ed., p. 332).
Dickens' foremost SHC critic had been the scientific-rationalist
philosopher, critic, novelist, and journalist George Henry Lewes
(1817-1878), editor at different times of _The Leader_ and the
_Fortnightly Review_, now remembered chiefly as the unofficial "husband"
of the novelist Marian Evans ("George Eliot") [Harrison, _Fire from
Heaven_, p. 332]. In _The Leader_, Lewes "objected" to the "episode of
Krook's death by spontaneous combustion" as "overstepping the limits of
fiction and giving currency to a vulgar error" (quoted by Harrison, p.
333n.) In a letter to Dickens, he wrote with "the unsupported--and
indeed, unsupportable--dogmatism without which such seedy 'liberals' as
George Lewes cannot express an opinion" (Harrison, pp. 160-161) that "I
believe you will find no eminent organic chemist of our day who credits
Spontaneous Combustion" (quoted by Harrison, pp. 161, 333n.).
However, "there were, in fact, many such in contemporary Europe and
America" according to Harrison, notably the eminent German chemists
Justus von Liebig (1803-1873) and Theodor Bischoff (1807-1882)
[Harrison, p. 161]. A few years earlier, Liebig and Bischoff had
testified as expert witnesses affirming the real scientific possibility
of SHC in the inquest into the death of the Countess von Görlitz, a
German noblewoman who had died in that grisly manner on July 13, 1847.
Their testimony had saved the Countess' footman from the gallows on a
fatal incendiarism charge [Harrison, pp. 156-160].
In his Preface to _Bleak House_, Dickens had special words for Lewes:
"...the possibility of what is called spontaneous combustion has been
denied since the death of Mr. Krook; and my good friend Mr. Lewes (quite
mistaken, as he soon found, in supposing the thing to have been
abandoned by all authorities) published some ingenious letters to me at
the time when the event was chronicled, arguing that Spontaneous
Combustion could not possibly be. I have no need to observe that I do
not willfully or negligently mislead my readers, and that before I wrote
that description I took pains to investigate the subject" [quoted by
Harrison, pp. 332-333]. Dickens then cited some of the then more famous
SHC cases, invoking the corroborating "recorded opinions of
distinguished medical Professors, French, English, and Scotch"
[Harrison, p. 333].
Best regards,
T. Peter
T. Peter Park wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> Charles Dickens' _Bleak House_ (1852) incident of the alcoholic junk
> dealer Krook's spontaneous combustion, by the way, inspired a lively
> mid-Victorian literary and scientific controversy over the possibility
> of Spontaneous Human Combustion. The philosopher and critic George
> Henry Lewes, now remembered largely as the lover of the novelist
> Marian Evans ("George Eliot"), declared that SHC was scientifically
> impossible, and criticized Dickens for perpetuating such an uneducated
> superstition in his novel. The German chemist Justus von Liebig, who
> had been an expert witness in the SHC case of a German noblewoman,
> countered by providing arguments and evidence that SHC was possible
> and did sometimes occur. Dickens himself, in the second edition of
> _Bleak House_, made it clear that he had researched the subject and
> knew of about 30 SHC cases. The details of Krook's death, he pointed
> out, were based on those of the death of an Italian noblewoman, the
> Countess Cornelia de Bandi Cesenate.
>
> Best regards,
> T. Peter
>
> T. Peter Park wrote:
>
>> Half a century ago, the late Bergen Evans made some interesting
>> skeptical observations on "muder will out" in _The Natural History of
>> Nonsense_ (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1946; Vintage Books, 1958). In
>> Chapter 10, "Rigors of Mortis," on popular fallacies and
>> superstitions about death, murder, and suicide, Evans wrote (p. 132):
>>
>>
>> A few pages earlier, by the way, Evans expressed skepticism about
>> Spontaneous Human Combustion, dismissing it (p. 128) as a relic of
>> old-time temperance propaganda:
>>
>> <<A curious belief that had considerable currency in the days
>> of the temperance crusades and still lingwers on is that alcoholics
>> sometimes die of spontaneous combustion. Old Krook, the junk dealer
>> in Dickens' _Bleak House_, after a lifetime of soaking himself in
>> brandy, disappeated in this interesting manner, leaving merely "a
>> small burnt patch of flooring, a smouldering suffocating vapour in
>> the room, and a dark greasy coating on the walls and ceiling"
>> [_Bleak House_, Chap. XXXII].>>
>>
>> Forteans and anomalists, of course, know that the true story of
>> Spontaneous Human Combustion is a bit more complex than Bergen Evans
>> assumed!
>>
>> Pax vobiscum,
>> T. Peter
>>
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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