Nathaniel Hawthorne
Dr. Heidegger's Experiment
From Twice-Told Tales
That very singular man, old Dr. Heidegger, once invited four venerable friends
to meet him in his study. There were three white-bearded gentlemen, Mr. Medbourne,
Colonel Killigrew, and Mr. Gascoigne, and a withered gentlewoman, whose name was
the Widow Wycherly. They were all melancholy old creatures, who had been
unfortunate in life, and whose greatest misfortune it was that they were not long
ago in their graves. Mr. Medbourne, in the vigor of his age, had been a prosperous
merchant, but had lost his all by a frantic speculation, and was now little better
than a mendicant. Colonel Killigrew had wasted his best years, and his health and
substance, in the pursuit of sinful pleasures, which had given birth to a brood of
pains, such as the gout, and divers other torments of soul and body. Mr. Gascoigne
was a ruined politician, a man of evil fame, or at least had been so till time had
buried him from the knowledge of the present generation, and made him obscure
instead of infamous. As for the Widow Wycherly, tradition tells us that she was a
great beauty in her day; but, for a long while past, she had lived in deep
seclusion, on account of certain scandalous stories which had prejudiced the
gentry of the town against her. It is a circumstance worth mentioning that each of
these three old gentlemen, Mr. Medbourne, Colonel Killigrew, and Mr. Gascoigne,
were early lovers of the Widow Wycherly, and had once been on the point of cutting
each other's throats for her sake. And, before proceeding further, I will merely
hint that Dr. Heidegger and all his foul guests were sometimes thought to be a
little beside themselves, - as is not unfrequently the case with old people, when
worried either by present troubles or woful recollections.
"My dear old friends," said Dr. Heidegger, motioning them to be seated, "I am
desirous of your assistance in one of those little experiments with which I amuse
myself here in my study."
If all stories were true, Dr. Heidegger's study must have been a very curious
place. It was a dim, old-fashioned chamber, festooned with cobwebs, and
besprinkled with antique dust. Around the walls stood several oaken bookcases, the
lower shelves of which were filled with rows of gigantic folios and black-letter
quartos, and the upper with little parchment-covered duodecimos. Over the central
bookcase was a bronze bust of Hippocrates, with which, according to some
authorities, Dr. Heidegger was accustomed to hold consultations in all difficult
cases of his practice. In the obscurest corner of the room stood a tall and narrow
oaken closet, with its door ajar, within which doubtfully appeared a skeleton.
Between two of the bookcases hung a looking-glass, presenting its high and dusty
plate within a tarnished gilt frame. Among many wonderful stories related of this
mirror, it was fabled that the spirits of all the doctor's deceased patients dwelt
within its verge, and would stare him in the face whenever he looked thitherward.
The opposite side of the chamber was ornamented with the full-length portrait of a
young lady, arrayed in the faded magnificence of silk, satin, and brocade, and
with a visage as faded as her dress. Above half a century ago, Dr. Heidegger had
been on the point of marriage with this young lady; but, being affected with some
slight disorder, she had swallowed one of her lover's prescriptions, and died on
the bridal evening. The greatest curiosity of the study remains to be mentioned;
it was a ponderous folio volume, bound in black leather, with massive silver
clasps. There were no letters on the back, and nobody could tell the title of the
book. But it was well known to be a book of magic; and once, when a chambermaid
had lifted it, merely to brush away the dust, the skeleton had rattled in its
closet, the picture of the young lady had stepped one foot upon the floor, and
several ghastly faces had peeped forth from the mirror; while the brazen head of
Hippocrates frowned, and said, - "Forbear!"
Such was Dr. Heidegger's study. On the summer afternoon of our tale a small
round table, as black as ebony, stood in the centre of the room, sustaining a cut-
glass vase of beautiful form and elaborate workmanship. The sunshine came through
the window, between the heavy festoons of two faded damask curtains, and fell
directly across this vase; so that a mild splendor was reflected from it on the
ashen visages of the five old people who sat around. Four champagne glasses were
also on the table.
"My dear old friends," repeated Dr. Heidegger, "may I reckon on your aid in
performing an exceedingly curious experiment?"
Now Dr. Heidegger was a very strange old gentleman, whose eccentricity had
become the nucleus for a thousand fantastic stories. Some of these fables, to my
shame be it spoken, might possibly be traced back to my own veracious self; and if
any passages of the present tale should startle the reader's faith, I must be
content to bear the stigma of a fiction monger.
When the doctor's four guests heard him talk of his proposed experiment, they
anticipated nothing more wonderful than the murder of a mouse in an air pump, or
the examination of a cobweb by the microscope, or some similar nonsense, with
which he was constantly in the habit of pestering his intimates. But without
waiting for a reply, Dr. Heidegger hobbled across the chamber, and returned with
the same ponderous folio, bound in black leather, which common report affirmed to
be a book of magic. Undoing the silver clasps, he opened the volume, and took from
among its black-letter pages a rose, or what was once a rose, though now the green
leaves and crimson petals had assumed one brownish hue, and the ancient flower
seemed ready to crumble to dust in the doctor's hands.
"This rose," said Dr. Heidegger, with a sigh, "this same withered and
crumbling flower, blossomed five and fifty years ago. It was given me by Sylvia
Ward, whose portrait hangs yonder; and I meant to wear it in my bosom at our
wedding. Five and fifty years it has been treasured between the leaves of this old
volume. Now, would you deem it possible that this rose of half a century could
ever bloom again?"
"Nonsense!" said the Widow Wycherly, with a peevish toss of her head. "You
might as well ask whether an old woman's wrinkled face could ever bloom again."
"See!" answered Dr. Heidegger.
He uncovered the vase, and threw the faded rose into the water which it
contained. At first, it lay lightly on the surface of the fluid, appearing to
imbibe none of its moisture. Soon, however, a singular change began to be visible.
The crushed and dried petals stirred, and assumed a deepening tinge of crimson, as
if the flower were reviving from a deathlike slumber; the slender stalk and twigs
of foliage became green; and there was the rose of half a century, looking as
fresh as when Sylvia Ward had first given it to her lover. It was scarcely full
blown; for some of its delicate red leaves curled modestly around its moist bosom,
within which two or three dewdrops were sparkling.
"That is certainly a very pretty deception," said the doctor's friends;
carelessly, however, for they had witnessed greater miracles at a conjurer's show;
"pray how was it effected?"
"Did you never hear of the 'Fountain of Youth?' " asked Dr. Heidegger, "which
Ponce De Leon, the Spanish adventurer, went in search of two or three centuries
ago?"
"But did Ponce De Leon ever find it?" said the Widow Wycherly.
"No," answered Dr. Heidegger, "for he never sought it in the right place. The
famous Fountain of Youth, if I am rightly informed, is situated in the southern
part of the Floridian peninsula, not far from Lake Macaco. Its source is
overshadowed by several gigantic magnolias, which, though numberless centuries
old, have been kept as fresh as violets by the virtues of this wonderful water. An
acquaintance of mine, knowing my curiosity in such matters, has sent me what you
see in the vase."
"Ahem!" said Colonel Killigrew, who believed not a word of the doctor's story;
"and what may be the effect of this fluid on the human frame?"
"You shall judge for yourself, my dear colonel," replied Dr. Heidegger; "and
all of you, my respected friends, are welcome to so much of this admirable fluid
as may restore to you the bloom of youth. For my own part, having had much trouble
in growing old, I am in no hurry to grow young again. With your permission,
therefore, I will merely watch the progress of the experiment."
While he spoke, Dr. Heidegger had been filling the four champagne glasses with
the water of the Fountain of Youth. It was apparently impregnated with an
effervescent gas, for little bubbles were continually ascending from the depths of
the glasses, and bursting in silvery spray at the surface. As the liquor diffused
a pleasant perfume, the old people doubted not that it possessed cordial and
comfortable properties; and though utter sceptics as to its rejuvenescent power,
they were inclined to swallow it at once. But Dr. Heidegger besought them to stay
a moment.
"Before you drink, my respectable old friends," said he, "it would be well
that, with the experience of a lifetime to direct you, you should draw up a few
general rules for your guidance, in passing a second time through the perils of
youth. Think what a sin and shame it would be, if, with your peculiar advantages,
you should not become patterns of virtue and wisdom to all the young people of the
age!"
The doctor's four venerable friends made him no answer, except by a feeble and
tremulous laugh; so very ridiculous was the idea that, knowing how closely
repentance treads behind the steps of error, they should ever go astray again.
"Drink, then," said the doctor, bowing: "I rejoice that I have so well
selected the subjects of my experiment."
With palsied hands, they raised the glasses to their lips. The liquor, if it
really possessed such virtues as Dr. Heidegger imputed to it, could not have been
bestowed on four human beings who needed it more wofully. They looked as if they
had never known what youth or pleasure was, but had been the offspring of Nature's
dotage, and always the gray, decrepit, sapless, miserable creatures, who now sat
stooping round the doctor's table, without life enough in their souls or bodies to
be animated even by the prospect of growing young again. They drank off the water,
and replaced their glasses on the table.
Assuredly there was an almost immediate improvement in the aspect of the
party, not unlike what might have been produced by a glass of generous wine,
together with a sudden glow of cheerful sunshine brightening over all their
visages at once. There was a healthful suffusion on their cheeks, instead of the
ashen hue that had made them look so corpse-like. They gazed at one another, and
fancied that some magic power had really begun to smooth away the deep and sad
inscriptions which Father Time had been so long engraving on their brows. The
Widow Wycherly adjusted her cap, for she felt almost like a woman again.
"Give us more of this wondrous water!" cried they, eagerly. "We are younger -
but we are still too old! Quick - give us more!"
"Patience, patience!" quoth Dr. Heidegger, who sat watching the experiment
with philosophic coolness. "You have been a long time growing old. Surely, you
might be content to grow young in half an hour! But the water is at your service."
Again he filled their glasses with the liquor of youth, enough of which still
remained in the vase to turn half the old people in the city to the age of their
own grandchildren. While the bubbles were yet sparkling on the brim, the doctor's
four guests snatched their glasses from the table, and swallowed the contents at a
single gulp. Was it delusion? even while the draught was passing down their
throats, it seemed to have wrought a change on their whole systems. Their eyes
grew clear and bright; a dark shade deepened among their silvery locks, they sat
around the table, three gentlemen of middle age, and a woman, hardly beyond her
buxom prime.
"My dear widow, you are charming!" cried Colonel Killigrew, whose eyes had
been fixed upon her face, while the shadows of age were flitting from it like
darkness from the crimson daybreak.
The fair widow knew, of old, that Colonel Killigrew's compliments were not
always measured by sober truth; so she started up and ran to the mirror, still
dreading that the ugly visage of an old woman would meet her gaze. Meanwhile, the
three gentlemen behaved in such a manner as proved that the water of the Fountain
of Youth possessed some intoxicating qualities; unless, indeed, their exhilaration
of spirits were merely a lightsome dizziness caused by the sudden removal of the
weight of years. Mr. Gascoigne's mind seemed to run on political topics, but
whether relating to the past, present, or future, could not easily be determined,
since the same ideas and phrases have been in vogue these fifty years. Now he
rattled forth full-throated sentences about patriotism, national glory, and the
people's right; now he muttered some perilous stuff or other, in a sly and
doubtful whisper, so cautiously that even his own conscience could scarcely catch
the secret; and now, again, he spoke in measured accents, and a deeply deferential
tone, as if a royal ear were listening to his wellturned periods. Colonel
Killigrew all this time had been trolling forth a jolly bottle song, and ringing
his glass in symphony with the chorus, while his eyes wandered toward the buxom
figure of the Widow Wycherly. On the other side of the table, Mr. Medbourne was
involved in a calculation of dollars and cents, with which was strangely
intermingled a project for supplying the East Indies with ice, by harnessing a
team of whales to the polar icebergs.
As for the Widow Wycherly, she stood before the mirror courtesying and
simpering to her own image, and greeting it as the friend whom she loved better
than all the world beside. She thrust her face close to the glass, to see whether
some long-remembered wrinkle or crow's foot had indeed vanished. She examined
whether the snow had so entirely melted from her hair that the venerable cap could
be safely thrown aside. At last, turning briskly away, she came with a sort of
dancing step to the table.
"My dear old doctor," cried she, "pray favor me with another glass!"
"Certainly, my dear madam, certainly!" replied the complaisant doctor; "see!
I have already filled the glasses."
There, in fact, stood the four glasses, brimful of this wonderful water, the
delicate spray of which, as it effervesced from the surface, resembled the
tremulous glitter of diamonds. It was now so nearly sunset that the chamber had
grown duskier than ever; but a mild and moonlike splendor gleamed from within the
vase, and rested alike on the four guests and on the doctor's venerable figure. He
sat in a high-backed, elaborately-carved, oaken arm-chair, with a gray dignity of
aspect that might have well befitted that very Father Time, whose power had never
been disputed, save by this fortunate company. Even while quaffing the third
draught of the Fountain of Youth, they were almost awed by the expression of his
mysterious visage.
But, the next moment, the exhilarating gush of young life shot through their
veins. They were now in the happy prime of youth. Age, with its miserable train of
cares and sorrows and diseases, was remembered only as the trouble of a dream,
from which they had joyously awoke. The fresh gloss of the soul, so early lost,
and without which the world's successive scenes had been but a gallery of faded
pictures, again threw its enchantment over all their prospects. They felt like
new-created beings in a new-created universe.
"We are young! We are young!" they cried exultingly.
Youth, like the extremity of age, had effaced the strongly-marked
characteristics of middle life, and mutually assimilated them all. They were a
group of merry youngsters, almost maddened with the exuberant frolicsomeness of
their years. The most singular effect of their gayety was an impulse to mock the
infirmity and decrepitude of which they had so lately been the victims. They
laughed loudly at their old-fashioned attire, the wide-skirted coats and flapped
waistcoats of the young men, and the ancient cap and gown of the blooming girl.
One limped across the floor like a gouty grandfather; one set a pair of spectacles
astride of his nose, and pretended to pore over the black-letter pages of the book
of magic; a third seated himself in an arm-chair, and strove to imitate the
venerable dignity of Dr. Heidegger. Then all shouted mirthfully, and leaped about
the room. The Widow Wycherly - if so fresh a damsel could be called a widow -
tripped up to the doctor's chair, with a mischievous merriment in her rosy face.
"Doctor, you dear old soul," cried she, "get up and dance with me!" And then
the four young people laughed louder than ever, to think what a queer figure the
poor old doctor would cut.
"Pray excuse me," answered the doctor quietly. "I am old and rheumatic, and my
dancing days were over long ago. But either of these gay young gentlemen will be
glad of so pretty a partner."
"Dance with me, Clara!" cried Colonel Killigrew
"No, no, I will be her partner!" shouted Mr. Gascoigne.
"She promised me her hand, fifty years ago!" exclaimed Mr. Medbourne.
They all gathered round her. One caught both her hands in his passionate grasp
another threw his arm about her waist - the third buried his hand among the glossy
curls that clustered beneath the widow's cap. Blushing, panting, struggling,
chiding, laughing, her warm breath fanning each of their faces by turns, she
strove to disengage herself, yet still remained in their triple embrace. Never was
there a livelier picture of youthful rivalship, with bewitching beauty for the
prize. Yet, by a strange deception, owing to the duskiness of the chamber, and the
antique dresses which they still wore, the tall mirror is said to have reflected
the figures of the three old, gray, withered grandsires, ridiculously contending
for the skinny ugliness of a shrivelled grandam. But they were young: their
burning passions proved them so. Inflamed to madness by the coquetry of the girl-
widow, who neither granted nor quite withheld her favors, the three rivals began
to interchange threatening glances. Still keeping hold of the fair prize, they
grappled fiercely at one another's throats. As they struggled to and fro, the
table was overturned, and the vase dashed into a thousand fragments. The precious
Water of Youth flowed in a bright stream across the floor, moistening the wings of
a butterfly, which, grown old in the decline of summer, had alighted there to die.
The insect fluttered lightly through the chamber, and settled on the snowy head of
Dr. Heidegger.
"Come, come, gentlemen! - come, Madam Wycherly," exclaimed the doctor,
"I really must protest against this riot."
They stood still and shivered; for it seemed as if gray Time were calling them
back from their sunny youth, far down into the chill and darksome vale of years.
They looked at old Dr. Heidegger, who sat in his carved arm-chair, holding the
rose of half a century, which he had rescued from among the fragments of the
shattered vase. At the motion of his hand, the four rioters resumed their seats;
the more readily, because their violent exertions had wearied them, youthful
though they were.
"My poor Sylvia's rose!" ejaculated Dr. Heidegger, holding it in the light of
the sunset clouds; "it appears to be fading again."
And so it was. Even while the party were looking at it, the flower continued
to shrivel up, till it became as dry and fragile as when the doctor had first
thrown it into the vase. He shook off the few drops of moisture which clung to its
petals.
"I love it as well thus as in its dewy freshness," observed he, pressing the
withered rose to his withered lips.
While he spoke, the butterfly fluttered down from the doctor's snowy head, and
fell upon the floor. His guests shivered again. A strange chillness, whether of
the body or spirit they could not tell, was creeping gradually over them all. They
gazed at one another, and fancied that each fleeting moment snatched away a charm,
and left a deepening furrow where none had been before. Was it an illusion? Had
the changes of a lifetime been crowded into so brief a space, and were they now
four aged people, sitting with their old friend, Dr. Heidegger?
"Are we grown old again, so soon?" cried they, dolefully.
In truth they had. The Water of Youth possessed merely a virtue more transient
than that of wine. The delirium which it created had effervesced away. Yes! they
were old again. With a shuddering impulse, that showed her a woman still, the
widow clasped her skinny hands before her face, and wished that the coffin lid
were over it, since it could be no longer beautiful.
"Yes, friends, ye are old again," said Dr. Heidegger, "and lo! the Water of
Youth is all lavished on the ground. Well - I bemoan it not; for if the fountain
gushed at my very doorstep, I would not stoop to bathe my lips in it - no, though
its delirium were for years instead of moments. Such is the lesson ye have taught
me!"
But the doctor's four friends had taught no such lesson to themselves. They
resolved forthwith to make a pilgrimage to Florida, and quaff at morning, noon,
and night, from the Fountain of Youth.
"Knickerbocker", 1837
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