The following paragraphs were part of the original manuscript of Edith Wharton’s autobiography, A Backward Glance, and are published here for the first time.
When I was nine years old I fell ill of typhoid fever, and lay for weeks at the point of death. We were at Mildbad in the Black Forest, then a small unfashionable “Bad,” where my mother was taking the cure. The leading physician of the place (the only one, perhaps) had never seen a case of typhoid, and was obliged to write daily for advice to his son, also a physician, who was with the German army (it was just before the close of the Franco-Prussian war).
This method of “absent treatment” was not successful, and at last the Doctor told my parents that I was dying. That very day they happened to hear that the physician of the Czar of Russia was passing through Mildbad. In their despair they appealed to him, and on his way to the train he stopped at our hotel for five minutes, looked at me, changed the treatment—and saved my life.
This illness formed the dividing line between my littlechildhood and the next stage. It obliterated—as far as I can recall—the torturing moral scruples which had darkened my life hitherto, but left me the prey to an internal and unreasoning physical timidity. During my convalescence, my one prayer was to be allowed to read, and among the books given me was one of the detestable “children’s books” which poison the youthful mind when they do not hopelessly weaken it. I must do my mother the justice to say that, though wholly indifferent to literature, she had a wholesome horror of what she called “silly books,” and always kept them from me; but the volume in question was lent by two little playmates, a brother and sister, who were very “nicely” brought up, and of whom it was to be assumed that they would have only “nice” stories in their possession. To an unimaginative child the tale would no doubt have been harmless; but it was a “robberstory,” and with my intense Celtic sense of the supernatural, tales of robbers and ghosts were perilous reading. This one brought on a serious relapse, and again my life was in danger; and when I came to myself, it was to enter a world haunted by formless horrors. I had been naturally a fearless child; now I lived in a state of chronic fear. Fear of what? I cannot say—and even at the time, I was never able to formulate my terror. It was like some dark undefinable menace, forever dogging my steps, lurking, and threatening; I was conscious of it wherever I went by day, and at night it made sleep impossible, unless a light and a nurse-maid were in the room. But, whatever it was, it was most formidable and pressing when I was returning from my daily walk (which I always took with a maid or governess, or with my father). During the last few yards, and while I waited on the door-step for the door to be opened, I could feel it behind me, upon me; and if there was any delay in the opening of the door I was seized by a choking agony of terror. It did not matter who was with me, for no one could protect me; but, oh, the rapture of relief if my companion had a latchkey, and we could get in at once, before It caught me!
This species of hallucination lasted seven or eight years, and I was a “young lady” with long skirts and my hair up before my heart ceased to beat with fear if I had to stand for half a minute on a door-step! I am often inclined—like most people—to think my parents might have brought me up in a manner more suited to my tastes and disposition; but I owe them the deepest gratitude for their treatment of me during this difficult phase. They made as light of my fears as they could, without hurting my feelings; but they never scolded or ridiculed me for them, or tried to “harden” me by making me sleep in the dark, or doing any of the things which are supposed to give courage to timid children. I believe it is owing to this kindness and forbearance that my terror gradually wore off, and that I became what I am now—a woman hardly conscious of physical fear. But how long the traces of my illness lasted may be judged from the fact that, till I was twentyseven or-eight, I could not sleep in the room with a book containing a ghost story, and that I have frequently had to burn books of this kind, because it frightened me to know that they were downstairs in the library!