The Elixir of Love by Edgar Saltus

Name: The Elixir of Love
Author: Edgar Saltus

Aboard a transatlantic liner bound from Cherbourg to New York, the narrator encounters Lord Silverbridge, whom he had known years earlier at Heidelberg under the name Jones before a chain of deaths made him a peer. Silverbridge startles him by announcing, "I am married to a woman who is not my wife," and that although married to her, he is not her husband. The narrator first suspects bigamy or an earlier entanglement, but Silverbridge insists it is something worse: he has only ever married once, yet does not know where his wife actually is. The passenger list shows a "Gräfin" traveling with him under the name Miss Fanny Bunker, the woman he married, but Silverbridge maintains that the woman aboard, though calling herself Fanny Bunker, is not the same Fanny Bunker he wed. Pressed for details, Silverbridge explains that he met and married Fanny Bunker in London in a whirlwind courtship of scarcely four weeks, marrying by special license soon after meeting her. Their happiness was intense but brief: one morning he was woken by her crouching across the room, crying "Where am I? Where am I?" and "Who are you? Who are you?" She denied knowing him, denied being his wife, and at first would not even accept that she was in England, though she was otherwise entirely rational. Her manner, speech, and whole bearing had changed. Silverbridge summoned the physician Simpson, who advised writing to her family. Her father's reply revealed that, had the marriage not been so hasty, he would have warned Silverbridge that his daughter possesses two souls within her — a condition the narrator identifies with Goethe's line about two souls residing within one breast, and which he terms dual personality: the two hemispheres of her brain functioning independently rather than in concert, one dormant while the other wakes. At her own insistence and her father's request, Silverbridge is taking her to Boston, though she will not acknowledge being Lady Silverbridge and insists she is simply Miss Bunker; toward him she is civil but cold, and he believes she hates him. He asks the narrator, a former student of psychology at Heidelberg, for advice. The narrator argues that no one is truly normal, that all people change personality abruptly or gradually, and that Lady Silverbridge's condition, though sudden, is not therefore abnormal. He asserts that an "elixir of love" does exist: given tact, opportunity, propinquity, and desire, any man can turn hate into love, provided the ingredients are fused. He compares a young, sensitive woman to a Cremona violin, capable of harmony only in the hands of a virtuoso. The narrator then prescribes an unconventional remedy: Silverbridge should go to her stateroom while she sleeps, whisper his name and the suggestion that she loves him in her ear without waking her, withdraw, and return an hour later to repeat it. He explains that this may cause the two hemispheres of her brain to work in unison, or cause the personality that knows him to be aroused and the other submerged, so that whichever Fanny Bunker wakes will be his. Silverbridge, transformed from melancholy to eagerness, resolves to try it, asking whether the remedy is proven; the narrator assures him it always works. The next day Silverbridge is absent, but on the following day the narrator meets him on the promenade deck with a beauty at his side, whom Silverbridge introduces. Their mutual smiles confirm the prescription succeeded. In the smoking-room afterward, Silverbridge reports it worked "like an essence of bonbons" and that he is now married to a woman who is his wife — to both of her, in fact. When the narrator warns that, being a sensitive "Cremona," she might change again, Silverbridge answers confidently that he now possesses the psychologist's stone in this elixir, and the narrator concludes that he has something even better: love's writ of habeas corpus.

By Edgar Saltus · First published 1921 · Genre: Psychological Fiction, Romance, Literary Fiction · 3,387 words

First lines

"I am married to a woman who is not my wife."

It was on a liner, after dinner. The big ship had lurched. Into the smoking-room where I sat Lord Silverbridge had lurched with it. He had dropped into a seat beside me. I had asked how he did. It was in answer to that question that he made this curious remark.

As he spoke he looked down and away and ran his long, thin fingers through his bright, thick hair.

"What! " I exclaimed.

Open reader

What this Textopian page supports

The Elixir of Love is listed on Textopian as a short story by Edgar Saltus, dated 1921 CE.

This source record anchors work identity, reading entry points, and catalog context for checking claims about the work.

Work type: Short story
Author: Edgar Saltus
Date: 1921 CE
Language: English
Genres: Psychological Fiction, Romance, Literary Fiction, Short Story, Victorian/Edwardian Literature
Length: 3,387 words
Structure: 1 section, 97 paragraphs
Reading fit: Fairly Easy (7th Grade)

Good citation fit

Work identity for The Elixir of Love by Edgar Saltus
Canonical title URL and first readable passage URL
Genre and topic classification from the Textopian catalog
Readability and classroom-planning context
Passage-specific claims should cite the exact /read/ URL for the relevant chapter or paragraph

Similar titles

Genres

Psychological Fiction — The narrative centers entirely on dual personality disorder and psychological treatment; the plot mechanism is a psychological intervention designed to reconcile the two personalities within the protagonist's wife.
Romance — The core conflict concerns a marriage fractured by psychological dissociation and the narrator's advice to restore romantic connection through suggestive techniques and emotional attunement.
Literary Fiction — The work employs sophisticated dialogue, philosophical discourse about identity and consciousness, and elevated prose style characteristic of late 19th-century literary fiction.
Short Story — The work is a concise narrative complete in a single sitting, employing the compression and unity of effect typical of short fiction rather than novel form.