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self-pity without self-consciousness—to record “a thousand despondent thoughts,” as Carter once put it, without worrying about anyone’s keeping count. But with his January 1857 entry, a dangerous shift had occurred, in my view. He was beginning to suffer a profound loss of self. As if referring to himself as “like a thing only looked at”—an object, a specimen—wasn’t a large enough tip-off, he boiled the feeling down to chilling effect in early May, a month after his mother’s death: “Am daily becoming anonymous.” No one knew him, he felt, and, worse, he no longer knew himself.

In spite of his despondency, I have never gotten the sense that suicide crossed his mind. Deep down, he was too God-fearing. What’s more, he felt a responsibility to his brother and sister, as well as to those at St. George’s who depended on him—students, instructors, and not least Henry Gray. But with Gray’s departure at the end of May, Carter was freed somehow to make a bold move of his own. Still, he made sure, first, to fulfill his last professional obligation. And sure enough, in the same July 27 entry in which he reported his severing ties to St. George’s, H. V. Carter made an equally significant announcement, speaking for himself and his collaborator: “The Book is finished.” The sentence is a sigh of relief. Though he doesn’t pat himself on the back, in the moment while the pen is still warm in his hand, he is clearly feeling up. He closes the entry with, “Health is good. I trust, I hope, and hope in trust.”

The mood does not last. Though he is no longer a slave to the anatomy book, the feelings of isolation become even more intense. Everything that had kept him tethered to the world is gone. Sounding panicky, he writes on September 3, 1857, “My situation is entirely critical and I as passive as ever in the tossing waves.” He begins to sink. However, as Carter so eloquently puts it, “At times of depression, memory always excels.” And suddenly he remembers, or so it seems, an escape plan he had once hatched: India. Dazzling, exotic India: a place where men went to make their fortunes, to reinvent themselves, to serve their country. India: a nation in the midst of a violent revolt against the Raj (British rule) that would come to be called the Indian Mutiny.

FIVE MONTHS LATER, Lily Carter of Scarborough, Yorkshire, receives in the post her brother’s diplomas, for safekeeping, and the following note:

[London, February 1858]

Dearest Lily,

I feel there is a great change of life coming, which cannot be altogether prosperous. My dear, we must be patient and enjoy the present while we can…. I pray you may ever be happy.

Goodbye, dear Lily!

Your affectionate brother,

H. V. Carter

I shall write whenever possible—tell Joe I have by no means forgotten him.

PART THREE THE ANATOMIST

No man should marry until he has studied anatomy and dissected at least one woman.

—Honoré de Balzac, The Physiology of Marriage, 1829

Fourteen

I LEAVE FOR LONDON JUST AS H. V. CARTER LEAVES IT BEHIND.

“Did at the [rail] station sharp pangs of regret,” he admits to his diary, a printout of which I have brought along to read on the eleven-hour flight.

The train takes him to Southampton, where he books his passage to India: £95, notes. The boat, a paddle steamer named the Sultan, sets sail the following day, February 24, 1858. “Left at 2 P.M. Weather fine and water smooth. Troops on board. Fast officers, slow passengers, 3 ladies and 2 children, about 30 in all. Ship full.” The thirty-five-day, sixty-two-hundred-mile voyage includes stops in Gibraltar, Malta, and Alexandria. They follow the path of the Nile south to Cairo and see the pyramids at Giza, then trek overland by train and caravan to Suez, where he and the other passengers board a second steamer, this one bound for Bombay, Carter’s final destination. “Arrive here safe and almost well,” he jots on March 29, clearly relieved to be back on terra firma.

By the time my plane lands at Heathrow, a good fifteen months have passed. It is May 15, 1859, exactly one week before Carter’s twenty-eighth