The Sun.
London, England, 1858-07-08 00:00:00

MRS. ROBINSON.

Psychologiss have accurately described the men-
tal disease of Mrs. Robinson, the lady whose con-
duct has recently occupied so much of the attention
of the Divorce Court. The history of witchcraft, as
well as the annals of medicine, contain similar in-
stances. It is not therefore correct to regard the
case as unique in its medico-legal characteristics,
though it is true that in the aggregate of all its cir-
curnstmcei it stands without a parallel in judicial
annals.

Mrs. Robinson, in 1844, being then the widow
of a Mr. Densey, became the wife of Mr. Robin-
son, the petitioner in the case now before the
Divorce Court. After their marriage they resided
successively at Blackheath, Edinburgh, Boulogne,
ai;d Reading. During their residence in Edinburgh
io 1850, they b came acquainted with Dr. and Mrs.
Line, who then resided in that city, and who are
now at the head of the Moor-park klydropath'c
Establishment. In 1857 Mts. Robinson had a fever
at Boulogne, during which her husband acciden-
tally discovered in her reposAo,ies a MS. diary, in
three considerable volum,s, written by her hand.
These volumes abu,unded in elaborated sentimen-
tal eilusions regarding Dr. L►ne, the professed
• object of. her limitless love. They also contained
glowing and minutely graphic descriptions of her
yearnings for a reciprocity of affection on his part,
and (as the diary proceeded) of scenes be-
tween them. These scenes, depicted by the lady
will the most intense colouring which passion
could bestow, were associated with genuine dates
and real occurrences, as to give the diary the aspect
of a truthful narrative. Up to this moment Mr.
Robinson had not suspected his wife's chastity,
I though ho seems to have been well aware of her
aversion to him. Vndki thesearartustancias

not remarkable that be should at once have sough%
tole separated from her, and that she should not
be unwilling to promote the severance of the matri-
monial tie. Mr. Robinson instituted a process in
the Ecclesiastical Court for a divorce a memo, et
thoro. NO paramour was cited, and the lady
(anxious, apparently, to get rid of alhat,.d husband
without the exposure of a public trial) did not de-
fend. The result was a divorce as prayed for.
When the new Divorce Court wsa opened Mr.
Robinson presented a petition for divorce a vinculo
matrintonii. Dr. Lane was mentioned as the para-
mour, and cited as co-respondent. The principal
evidence relied upon was the extraordinary diary I
to which we have already referred. Copious extracts
from it, mos!, elaborately and wantonly descriptive
of guilty interviews, were submitted to the Court.
Various witnesses were brought forward to speak to
collateral circumst inces alleged to be corroborative
of the criminal actsrecorded therein. With the t.i-
ception of the evidence Musa by Warren, a late
8r...e.e. at Moor-park, not even the shadow of proof
was adduced in support of any one of the written
confessions of guilt ; and this witness's statements
were shown by the most conclusive testimony We
others to be fabrications. Scents, for example, in
an arbour, which Warren said he had seen from a
particular plsce, it was suowu by plans, and by the
evidence of an engineer, could not have been wit-
ne,sed from that point. Tee'whele of this youth's
testimony, so far as it iniplisatecl. Dr. Lane, was
evidently the clumsy lie of a tutored a i ness. The
-trongest, possible evidence was adduced in proof of
the perfect mutual confidence wiich existed be-
tween Dr. and Mrs. Lane. Lady Drysdale—Mrs.
Lane's mother—an inmate of her daughter's house
during the whole of the alleged intrigues, gave
most effective and touching testimony on this
point.
Tue position in which the rumours of the contents
of Mrs. Robinson's diary placed Dr. Lme was for
a time overwhelming. He is now acquitted, it is
true; but nufeetunstely the state of the law does
not admit of so full an absolution, in the face of the
public, as the requirements of jus ice and iujared
innocence demand. The Court have, after careful
deliberation, frankly announced that they conceive
that justice requires that Dr. Lane should be dis-
charged from the suit and rendered competent to
be examined : and they also state that as the law
no w stands this cannot bs done. It was, however,
mentioned by Sir A. Cockburn that in a bill now be-
fore Psrliainent, and likely to become law, it is in-
tended to introduce a dense which will enable the
Divorce Court to dismiss a co-respondent and make
him admissible as a witness. He also added that
should the law be Si)altered the
enable Dr. Lane
re-
joice to have it in their power to .
Court would '
to be examined. In the meantime wo are not
violating our usual rule—reserving an expression
'of opinion upon undecided cases in the courts of
law—when we say that weconcur with the judges
of the Divorce Courtin declaring our conviction
that, as regards Mr. and Mrs. Robinson, Dr. Lane
is an innocent and an injured mane
The proof of Dr.innocence is also the
proof of Mrs. Robinson s insanity. To draw the
line between the inflamed imaginings of a sane
woman and t bedelusions of a monomanaic may not
al
ways be possible. In erotomania, as in every
other form of monomania, the slidiug-scale of cases
which lead from the domains of sanity to those of
insanity is so gently graduated as to render it
difficult to say where the dividing line between the
two ought to be drawn. At the same time no one
can peruse the best observations of the best authors
on this subject without feeling satisfied that Mrs.
Robinson's diary can only be explained by believ-
ing that she was an erotoinattiac, possessed of
highly imaginative powers morbidly excited, of an
immense copiousness iu passionate eloquence, and
of au ungovernable caceethes scribertdi.
Such cases as that of this unhappy lady justify
the distinction wldcli Esquirol draws between the
cerebral and the other grosser forms of the disease.
Esquirol, in 1838, remarked :—"L'Orotomanie . .
est tine affection eerebrale chronique, caracterisee
par un amour excessif, tanOt pour un objet ima-
ginaire ; dans cette maladie, i'imagination settle est
le•ee; it y a erreur de Penteudment. C'est une
affection mentale, dans laqiielle les idees amou-
reuses soot fixes et dominantes comme les idees
religieuses sont fixes et dominantes dans la the-
°manic, on dans la, lypemanie religieuse. . . Dans
Perotomanie I'amour es; dans la tete ; les nympho-
manes, &c., sent vietimes d'un desordre physique."
This distinction it is very important to bear in
mind. Many physicians have suffered from base-
less imputations, the result of the insane imagin-
ings, of nionomauiacs of Mrs. Robinson's class.
Groups of cases often occur together. In the
days of Cervantes erotomania was epidemic, and
iu
Pon Quixote we have a victim of the disease
painted to the very life,‘--Mornittg l'ot•