MDMD2: Magnetical Stupor

[Paul Nightingale]

Roy Porter, in Mind-Forg'd Manacles, tells the following story. In the 1790s
mesmerism would become an unlikely secret weapon for Revolutionary France in
the war with Britain. James Tilley Matthews had been briefly imprisoned by
the French Jacobins; and he it was who exposed the plot upon his return to
England in 1796. Teams of "magnetic spies" aimed to mesmerise government
ministers, he claimed: "Thus, for instance, when the Secretary of War is at
church, in the theatre, or sitting in his office and thinking on indifferent
subjects; the expert magnetist would suddenly throw into his mind the
subject of exchange of prisoners." Matthews was committed to Bethlem in
1797; this, he argued, was part of a Government/Mesmerist plot to silence
him (Penguin ed, 1990: 237-9).

Hence, mesmerism as popular science is associated with threats to the
established order, or even just order, as well as paranoia. It is part of
what Foucault called Unreason in the Age of Reason. From Dixon's point of
view Mason has taken leave of his senses, seduced (too strong a word?) by
the Learned Dog (juxtaposed to "an Actress one admires"; something
to do with his dead wife). This is all part of Dixon's introduction to the
city, a dream-world he finds baffling throughout Ch3: his "clear
Stupefaction" becomes, is transposed into, Mason's "Magnetical Stupor". And
then, if the Dog does 'stand in' for Cherrycoke in this chapter, he
transforms the observer whose story-telling is merely reactive into the kind
of narrator who is more manipulative, ie a writer.