Rensselaer Union, Volume 6, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 September 1874 — Singular Antipathies. [ARTICLE]

Singular Antipathies.

Some antipathies are so irrational that they look very much like a kind of monomania. Mr. William Matthew, son of a Governor of Barbadocs, Was troubled with an unreasonable dislike of spiders, which some of his friends thought was more affected than real. One of the doubters, Mr. John Murray, afterward Duke of Athole, meeting Mr. Matthew in company, and desiring to raise a laugh at his expense, left the room for a few minutes. On returning he walked up to his victim with one hand closed. Believing the clenched fingers held a spider, Mr. Matthew became furious, drew his sword, and but for timely interposition would have done a mischief to himself or his tormentor. He was only quieted on being satisfied that Murray’s hand was empty. A prisoner in the Bastile, who detested mice and hated spiders, had his feelings under better control. Having obtained permission to solace himself \yith a lute, he was horrified to find his music attracted crowds of long-legged spinners and bright-eyed mice, who formed a circle round him as long as he continued playing. Loth to deprive himself of his amusement, but unable to enjoy it in the presence of such an audience, the musician borrowed the keeper’s cat, which he put in a cage, and let loose upon his uninvited visitors when they were most entranced with the lute. The cat went in for the mice, the spiders staid not for ceremonial leave-taking, and the soloist’s future audiences were as select as he could wish. Everybody knows what those who love not the concord of sweet sounds are fit, for, and Pepys might well be astonished to hear Lord Lauderdale vow he had rather hear a cat mew than listen to the best music in the world; that the better the music the more sick it made him, his especial aversion being the lute and the bagpipes. Oddly enough, Pepys, much as he loved it, found exquisite music affect him unpleasantly too, at least upon one occasion. Going to see the Virgin Martyr he was ravished by the wind-music when the angel came down; “ Indeed,” says he, “I did wrap up my soul so that it made me really sick, just as I have formerly been when in love with my wife; that neither then nor all the evening going home and at home I was able to think of anything, but remained all night transported so as I could not believe that ever any music —bath—command over Ike. so ill of_ a. man as this did upon me.” Music had no charms for thunder-loving La Motte de Vayer, who hated all musical sounds as thoroughly as a certain French officer hated the martial roll of the drum; this latter gentleman, who had clearly no business to be in the army, soon took his discharge by falling dead at the sound of the tattoo. The ringing of a bell sufficed to send a sensitive fair one into a fit; Boyle’s philosophy was not proof against the sound of splashing water; Augustus and Caligula forgot their dignity when thunder was about; Lamartine was horrified if Dclpliinc Gay laughed, although the lady laughed well. He was as much shocked us Byron pretended to be if he saw a woman eat; and —oddest of all aural antipathies—the utterance of the word “ lame” sent a Spanish gentleman into a syncope and an Englishman nearly gave up the ghost if he heard the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah read aloud! The secretary of Francis I. used to stop up his nostrils with bread if lie saw a dish of apples, to prevent an otherwise inevitable bleeding at the nose. A Polish king had an antipathy to both the smell and sight of this wholesome fruit, and a family of Aquitaine had a hereditary hatred of it. A , Flemish’ damsel was sadly troubled by an unconquerable aversion to the smell of bread. Cheese, mutton, musk and ambergris have been so repugnant to some nasal organs as to send their owners into convulsions. Gretry, the composer, could not endure the scent of the rose; neither could Anne of Austria. The mere sight of the queen of flowers was too much for Lady Heneage, bedchamber-woman to Queen Bess; indeed, Kenelm Digby records that her cheek became blistered when some one laid a white rose upon it as she slept. Her ladyship’s antipathy was almost as strong as that of the dame who fainted when her lover approached her wearing an artificial rose in his button-hole. A violet was a thing of horror to the eyes of the Princess du Lathbelle; tansy was abominable to the Earl of Barrymore; Sealiger grew pale before the watercress; and a soldier who would have scorned to turn his back on a foe fled without shame from a sprig of rue. A poor Neapolitan was always seized with a fit upon attempting to swallow u morsel of flesli-mcat of any kind, and nature thus condemned him to vegetarianism : a sorer infliction than that sufleredby Guianerius, whose heart palpitated violently if he indulged in a pork dinner. Dr. Prout had a patient who declared honest mutton was as bad as poison to him. Thinking this was all fancy, the doctor administered the obnoxious meat under various disguises, but every experiment ended in a severe vomiting fit. Another unlucky individual always had n tit of the gout a felw hours after eating fish; and a Count d'Armstadt never failed to go off in a fit if he knowingly or unknowingly partook of any dish" containing the slightest modicum of olive oil. A still, worse penalty attached to lobster salad in the case of a lady, "for if she ventured to taste it at a dancing party her neck, before she returned to the ball-room, would he covered with ugly blotches and her peace Of mind destroyed for that evening. Montaigne rather plumed himself upon his antipathy to physic and physicians, an inherited antipathy of two centuries’ standing, springing out of a secret and natural family instinct. He boasted that his great-grandfather lived almost fourscore years, his grandfather sixty-nine, ami his father seventy-five years without tasting physic, flie sight of a potion being loathsome to their eyes. An uncle, a valetudinarian from birth, made liis crazy life hold On for sixty-seven years by steadfastly keeping the doctors at hay. He would not have shown the complaisance of the jnan in the play, who once in his life took a dose of physic in compliment to a cousin who had set up as an apothecary; for, when attacked by a serious fever, and warned by the physicians his alarmed servants had summoned that if he would not allow them to help him he would surely die, the obstinate old fellow replied: “I am a dead man then!” Fortunately he lived to laugh at their prophecy. Equally determined, if not so clever at defending her determination, was a bricklayer's wife, who died not long ago at the age of eighty-four. Whatever ailed her she never would have the doctor called in, believing if onee she swallowed any doctor’s stuff there would be an end of her, and the old lady went out of the world in the faith.that she had remained in it so long only because she had never allowed a doctor to have anything to do with her. According to Burton, a melancholy Duke of Muscovy fell instantly ill if he but looked upon a woman, and another anchorite was seized with a Cold palsy underiMmLlar provocation ; while Weinrlehur tells of a nobleman who drew the line at old ladles, which did not prevent him losing his life in consequence of Ids strange prejudice, for, being called from the supper table by some mischievous friends to speak to an old'woman, he fell down directly he beheld her, and died then and there. What an old woman dKJfor tW«*ddlutter an eclipse

did for Charles d’Escaro, Bishop of Langres. It was his inconvenient custom always to faint at the commencement of a lunar eclipse, and remain insensible as long as it lasted.’ When he was very old and very infirm an eclipse took place. The good Bishop went off as usual, and never came to again. James I. never overcame his horror of cold steel, -When he knighted Kenelm Digby, liis hand shook so that, had not Buckingham guided the royal blade, the new knight would have paid for the handle to his name with the loss of an eye. Peter the Great, a man of very different mettle, had ntpne time such a -terror of water t hat he could not cross a brook without being taken with strong convulsions ; but, ashamed of being the slave of an unmanly weakness, he determined to conquer it, and ultimately became as fond of the water as he had been averse to it. An antipathy must, be such a troublesome possession that one must bo enough for anybody. Exeter, however, once counted among its natives a young lady who not only had a mortal aversion to • all colors save green, yellow and white, but was thrown into a perspiration by every funeral that passed her way; and, more wonderful still, became unconscious immediately she set eyes upon a uniform. If this maiden of many antipathies was ever wooed and won, and her fancies survived marriage, her husband must have had anything hut a good time of it, and probably had reason to wish she had resembled the Taunton spinster, whose demise was chronicled sixty years ago in these words: “ Lately,ln Gray’s Alms-house, Taunton, aged eighty-two, Hannah Murton, a maiden lady. She vowed, several years ago, that no hc-fcllow should ever touch her, living or dead. In pursuance of this resolution, about ten years since, she purchased a coffin, in which, whenever she felt serious illness, she immediately deposited herself —thus securing the gratification of her peculiar .sensibility.”— Chambers' Journal.