Mystic London Part 10

Ramsey there demolish the very system which, for many years, it has been my mission to preach. I did not find, and I hope my congregation did not find, that I faltered in my message that evening. I even venture to think that Mr. Ramsey's statements, which I shall repeat as faithfully as possible, will scarcely seem as convincing here as they did when he poured them forth so fluently to the costermongers and navvies of the Bethnal Green Road; and if this be true of Mr. Ramsey it is certainly so of the smaller men; for he is a master in his craft, and certainly a creditable antagonist for a Christian to meet with the mild defensive weapons we have elected to use.

When the weather proves fine, as it ought to have done in May, 1874, infidelity adjourns from its generally slummy halls to the street corners, and to fields which are often the reverse of green; thus adopting, let me remark in pa.s.sing, one of the oldest instrumentalities of Christianity itself, one, too, in which we shall do well to follow its example. Fas est ab hoste doceri--I cannot repeat too often.

Scorning the attractions of the railway arches in the St. Pancras Road, where I hope soon to be a listener, I sped via the Metropolitan Railway and tram to Sh.o.r.editch Church, not far from which, past the Columbia Market and palatial Model Lodging Houses, is the unpicturesque corner called Gibraltar Walk, debouching from the main road, with a triangular sc.r.a.p of very scrubby ground, flanked by a low wall, which young Bethnal Green is rapidly erasing from the face of the earth. When I got here, I found an unclerical-looking gentleman in a blue great-coat and sandy moustache erecting his rostrum in the shape of a small deal stool, from whence I could see he was preparing to pour forth the floods of his rhetoric by diligent study of some exceedingly greasy notes which he held in his hand and perused at what I feel sure must have been the windiest street corner procurable outside the cave of aeolus. I fell back into the small but very far from select crowd which had already begun to gather, and an old man, who was unmistakably a cobbler, having ascertained that I had come to hear the lecture, told me he had "listened to a good many of 'em, but did not feel much for'arder."

Undismayed by this intelligence I still elected to tarry, despite the cruel nor'-easter that was whistling round the corner of the Bethnal Green Road. In a few minutes I perceived a slight excitement in the small gathering due to the fact that the Christians had put in an appearance, so that there would be some opposition. Mr. Harrington, a young man whom I had heard once speak fluently enough on the theistic side at an infidel meeting, was unpacking his rostrum, which was a patent folding one, made of deal, like that of his adversary, but neatly folded along with a large Bible, inside a green baize case. Both gentlemen commenced proceedings at the same time; and as they had pitched their stools very close to one another, the result was very much like that of two grinding organs in the same street. Of the two, Mr. Harrington's voice was louder than Mr. Ramsey's. The latter gentleman had a sore throat, and had to be kept lubricated by means of a jug of water, which a brother heretic held ready at his elbow. Mr.

Harrington was in prime condition, but his congregation was smaller than ours; for I kept at first--I was going to say religiously, I suppose I ought to say _ir_-religiously--to the infidels.

Mr. Ramsey, who had a rooted aversion to the letter "h," except where a smooth breathing is usual, began by saying that Christianity differed from other religions in the fact of its having an eternal 'Ell. The Mahometans had their beautiful ladies; the North American Indian looked for his 'Appy 'Unting Grounds; but 'Ell was a speciality of the Christian system. On the other side was the fact that you continually had salvation inundated upon you. Tracts were put into your hand, asking--"What must I do to be saved?" We had to pay for this salvation about _11,000,000l._ a year to the Church of England, and something like an equal amount to the Dissenters. In fact every tub-thumper went about preaching and ruining servant girls, and for this we paid over twenty millions a year--more than the interest on the whole National Debt.

After this elegant exordium, Mr. Ramsey said he proposed to divide his remarks under four heads. 1. Is Salvation necessary? 2. What are we to be saved from? 3. What for? 4. How?

1. According to the Christian theory, G.o.d, after an eternity of "doin'

nothin'," created the world. He made Adam sin by making sin for him to commit; and then d.a.m.ned him for doing what He knew he would do. He predestined you--the audience--to be d.a.m.ned because of Adam's sin; but after a time G.o.d "got sick and tired of d.a.m.ning people," and sent His Son to redeem mankind.

This flower of rhetoric tickled Bethnal Green immensely; but Mr.

Harrington was equal to the occasion, and thundered out his orthodoxy so successfully that Mr. Ramsey took a longer drink than usual, and complained that he was not having "a free platform"--it was so he dignified the rickety stool on which he was perched. He then meandered into a long dissection of Genesis i., appearing to feel particularly aggrieved by the fact of the moon being said to "rule the night," though I could not see how this was relevant to the Christian scheme of salvation; and a superb policeman, who had listened for a moment to Mr.

Ramsey's astronomical lucubrations, evidently shared my feelings and pa.s.sed on superciliously. I devoutly wished my duty had permitted me to do the same.

The speaker then went into a long dissertation on the primal sin; the gist of which was that though the woman had never been warned not to eat of the Forbidden Fruit, she had to bear the brunt of the punishment.

Then--though one is almost ashamed to chronicle such a triviality--he waxed very wroth because the serpent was spoken of as being cursed above all "cattle." Who ever heard of snakes being called cattle? He was condemned to go on his belly. How did he go before? Did he go on his back or "'op" along on the tip of his tail? These pleasantries drew all Mr. Harrington's audience away except a few little dirty boys on the wall. Mr. Ramsey clearly knew his audience, and "acted to the gallery."

2. But what were we to be saved from? Eternal 'Ell-fire. This 'Ell-fire was favourite sauce for sermons, and served to keep people awake. Where was 'Ell? It was said to be a bottomless pit; if so, he should be all right, because he could get out at the other end! Then, again, 'Ell was said to be a very 'ot place. When the missionaries told the Greenlanders that, everybody wanted to go to 'Ell; so they had to change their tune and say it was very cold. Mr. Ramsey omitted to mention his authority for this statement.

Into his pleasantries on the monotony of life in 'Eaven, I do not feel inclined to follow this gentleman. The Atonement, he went on to remark, if necessary at all, came 4000 years too late. It should have been--so we were to believe on his ipse dixit--contemporaneous with the Fall.

This atonement we were to avail ourselves of by means of faith. Idiots could not have faith, but were allowed to be saved. Consequently, argued Mr. Ramsey, in conclusion, the best thing for all of us would have been to have been born idiots, and, consistently enough, Christianity tried to turn us all into idiots.

Such were some of the statements. I refrain from quoting the most offensive, which were deliberately put forward at this al fresco infidels' meeting; and with what result? Though a vast population kept moving to and fro along that great highway there were never, I am sure, more than a hundred people gathered at the shrine of Mr. Ramsey. They laughed at his profanities, yes; but directly he dropped these, and grew argumentative, they talked, and had to be vigorously reduced to order.

Gallio-like they cared for none of these things, and I am quite sure a good staff of working clergy, men like Mr. Body or Mr. Steele of St.

Thomas's, who could talk to the people, would annihilate Mr. Ramsey's prestige. As for Mr. Harrington, he meant well, and had splendid lung-power, but his theology was too sectarian to suit a mixed body of listeners embracing all shades of thought and no-thought.

Supposing Mr. Ramsey to have put forth all his power that morning--and I have no reason to doubt that he did so--I deliberately say that I should not hesitate to take my own boy down to hear him, because I feel that even his immature mind would be able to realize how little there was to be said against Christianity, if that were all.

CHAPTER x.x.xII.

AN "INDESCRIBABLE PHENOMENON."

When the bulk of the London Press elects to gush over anything or anybody, there are at all events, prima facie grounds for believing that there is something to justify such a consensus. When, moreover, the object of such gush is a young lady claiming to be a spirit-medium, the unanimity is so unusual as certainly to make the matter worth the most careful inquiry, for hitherto the London Press has either denounced spiritualism altogether, or gushed singly over individual mediums, presumably according to the several proclivities of the correspondents.

Of Miss Annie Eva Fay, however--is not the very name fairy-like and fascinating?--I read in one usually sober-minded journal that "there is something not of this earth about the young lady's powers." Another averred that she was "a spirit medium of remarkable and extraordinary power." Others, more cautious, described the "mystery" as "bewildering,"

the "entertainment" as "extraordinary and incomprehensible," while yet another seemed to me to afford an index to the cause of this gush by saying that "Miss Fay is a pretty young lady of about twenty, with a delicate spirituelle face, and a profusion of light hair, frizzled on the forehead."

I made a point of attending Miss Annie Eva Fay's opening performance at the Hanover Square Rooms, and found all true enough as to the pretty face and the frizzled hair. Of the "indescribable" nature of the "phenomenon" (for by that t.i.tle is Miss Fay announced, a la Vincent Crummles) there may be two opinions, according as we regard the young lady as a kind of Delphic Priestess and c.u.maean Sibyl rolled into one, or simply a clever conjuror--conjuress, if there be such a word.

Let me, then, with that delightful inconsistency so often brought to bear on the so-called or self-styled "supernatural," first describe the "indescribable," and then, in the language of the unspiritual Dr. Lynn, tell how it is all done; for, of course, I found it all out, like a great many others of the enlightened and select audience which gathered at Miss Annie Eva Fay's first drawing-room reception in the Queen's Concert Rooms.

Arriving at the door half an hour too early, as I had misread the time of commencement, I found at the portal Mr. Burns, of the Progressive Library, and a gentleman with a diamond brooch in his shirt-front, whom I guessed at once, from that adornment, to be the proprietor of the indescribable phenomenon, and I was, in fact, immediately introduced to him as Colonel Fay.

Pa.s.sing in due course within the cavernous room which might have suited well a c.u.maean Sibyl on a small scale, I found the platform occupied by a tiny cabinet, unlike that of the Davenports in that it was open in front, with a green curtain, which I could see was destined to be let down during the performance of the phenomenal manifestations. There was a camp-stool inside the cabinet; a number of cane-bottomed chairs on the platform, and also the various properties of a spirit seance, familiar to me from long experience, guitar, fiddle, handbells, tambourine, &c.

One adjunct alone was new; and that was a green stable bucket, destined, I could not doubt, to figure in what my Rimmel-scented programme promised as the climax of Part I.--the "Great Pail Sensation." Presently Colonel Fay, in a brief speech, nasal but fluent, introduced the subject, and asked two gentlemen to act as a Committee of Inspection.

Two stepped forward immediately--indeed too immediately, as the result proved; one a "citizen of this city," as Colonel Fay had requested; but the other a Hindoo young gentleman, who, I believe, lost the confidence of the audience at once from his foreign face and Oriental garb.

However, they were first to the front, and so were elected, and proceeded at once to "examine" the cabinet in that obviously helpless and imperfect way common to novices who work with the gaze of an audience upon them. Then, from a side door, stage left, enter the Indescribable Phenomenon. A pretty young lady, yes, and with light frizzled hair to any extent. There was perhaps "a spirit look within her eyes;" but then I have often found this to be the case with young ladies of twenty. Her dress of light silk was beyond reproach. I had seen Florence Cook and Miss Showers lately; and,--well, I thought those two, with the a.s.sistance of Miss Annie Eva Fay, would have made a very pretty model for a statuette of the Three Graces.

Miss Fay, after being described by the Colonel vaguely enough as "of the United States," was bound on both wrists with strips of calico; the knots were sewn by the European gentleman--as distinguished from the Asiatic youth. He was not quite au fait at the needle, but got through it in time. Miss Fay was then placed on the camp-stool, her wrists fastened behind her, and her neck also secured to a ring screwed into the back of the cabinet. A rope was tied round her ankles, and pa.s.sed right to the front of the stage, where the Hindoo youth was located and bidden hold it taut, which he did conscientiously, his att.i.tude being what Colman describes "like some fat gentleman who bobbed for eels."

First of all, another strip of calico was placed loosely round Miss Fay's neck; the curtain descended. Hey, presto! it was up again, sooner than it takes to write, and this strip was knotted doubly and trebly round her neck. A tambourine hoop was put in her lap, and this, in like manner, was found encircling her neck, as far as the effervescent hair would allow it.

The audience at this point grew a little fidgety; and though they did not say anything against the Oriental young gentleman, the 'cute American colonel understood it, adding two others from the audience to the committee on the stage, and leaving the young gentleman to "bob"

down below as if to keep him out of mischief.

The other "manifestations" were really only different in detail from the first. The guitar was placed on the lap, the curtain fell and it played; so did the fiddle--out of tune, as usual--and also a little gla.s.s harmonicon with actually a soupcon of melody. A mouth-organ tootle-tooed, and what Colonel Fay described as a "shingle nail" was driven with a hammer into a piece of wood. A third of a tumbler of water laid on the lap of the Indescribable Phenomenon was drunk, and the great Pail Sensation consisted in the bucket being put on her lap and then discovered slung by the handle around her neck. The last "manifestation"

is the one to which I would draw attention; for it was by this I discovered how it was all done. A knife was put on Miss Fay's lap; the curtain lowered, the knife pitched on to the platform, and behold the Indescribable Phenomenon stepped from the cabinet with the ligature that had bound her wrists and neck severed.

Now, all through this portion of the entertainment the audience, instead of sitting quiet, amused themselves with proposing idiotic tests, or suggesting audibly how it was all done. One man behind me pertinaciously clung to the theory of a concealed boy, and trotted him to the front after every phase of the exhibition. He must have been infinitesimally small; but that did not matter. It was "that boy again"

after every trick. One manifestation consisted in putting a piece of paper and pair of scissors on Miss Fay's lap, and having several "tender little infants" cut out, as the Colonel phrased it.

Hereupon sprang up a 'cute individual in the room, and produced a sheet of paper he had marked. Would Miss Fay cut out a tender little infant from that? Miss Fay consented, and of course did it, the 'cute individual retiring into private life for the rest of the evening.

Another wanted Miss Fay's mouth to be bound with a handkerchief, and there was no objection raised, until the common-sense and humanity of the audience protested against such a needless cruelty on a broiling night and in that c.u.maean cave. An excited gentleman in front of me, too, whose mission I fancy was simply to protest against the spiritual character of the phenomena (which was never a.s.serted) would interrupt us all from time to time by declaring his intense satisfaction with it all.

It was a splendid trick. We tried to convince him that his individual satisfaction was irrelevant to us, but it was, as Wordsworth says, "Throwing words away." It was a beautiful trick; and he was satisfied, quite satisfied.

The Dark Seance, which formed the second part of the performance, was a dreadful mistake. It was not only unsatisfactory in result, but--and no doubt this was the reason--it was so mismanaged as to threaten more than once to eventuate in a riot. Twelve or fourteen persons were to form a committee representing the audience, and to sit in a circle, with the Indescribable Phenomenon in their centre, while we remained below in Egyptian darkness and received their report. Of course we all felt that we--if not on the committee--might just as well be sitting at home or in the next parish as in the cave of c.u.mae. The method of electing the committee was briefly stated by Colonel Fay to be "first come first served," and the consequence was a rush of some fifty excited people on to the platform, with earnest requests on the part of the proprietary to be "still." There was no more stillness for the rest of the evening. The fifty were pruned down to about fifteen of the most pertinacious, who would not move at any price; in fact, the others only descended on being promised that the dark sitting should be divided into two, and another committee appointed. The Indescribable Phenomenon took her seat on the camp-stool in the centre, where she was to remain clapping her hands, to show she was not producing the manifestations. The gas was put out and darkness prevailed--darkness, but not silence. The disappointed and rejected committee men--and women--first began to grumble in the freedom which the darkness secured. The committee was a packed one. They were Spiritualists. This was vigorously denied by somebody, who said he saw a Press man in the circle, and therefore (such was his logic) he could not be a Spiritualist. All this time the Indescribable Phenomenon was clapping her hands, and now some of the more restless of the audience clapped theirs in concert. The guitar and fiddle began to thump and tw.a.n.g, and the bells to ring, and then again the more refractory lunatics amongst us began to beat accompaniment on our hats. The whole affair was worthy of Bedlam or Hanwell, or, let us add, an Indescribable Phenomenon.

The committee was changed with another rush, and those who were finally exiled from the hope of sitting took it out in the subsequent darkness by advising us to "beware of our pockets." When Colonel Fay asked for quietude he was rudely requested "not to talk through his nose." It was not to be wondered at that the seance was very brief, and the meeting adjourned.

Now to describe the indescribable. If it be a spiritual manifestation, of course there is an end of the matter; but if a mere conjuring trick, I would call attention to the following facts. The fastening of Miss Fay's neck to the back of the cabinet at first is utterly gratuitous. It offers no additional difficulty to any manifestations, and appears only intended to prevent the scrutineers seeing behind her. A very simple exercise of sleight of hand would enable the gallant Colonel to cut the one ligature that binds the two wrists, when, for instance, he goes into the cabinet with scissors to trim off the ends of the piece of calico in the opening trick. The hands being once free all else is easy. The hands are _never once seen_ during the performance. The committee can feel them, and feel the knots at the wrists; but they cannot discover whether the ligature connecting the wrists is entire.

The last trick, be it recollected, consists in the ligature being cut and Miss Fay's coming free to the front. If my theory is incorrect--and no doubt it _is_ ruinously wrong--will she consent to _omit the last trick_ and come to the front with wrists bound as she entered the cabinet? Of course, if I had suggested it, she would have done it as easily as she cut out the tender infants for the 'cute gentleman behind me; so, to adopt the language of Miss Fay's fellow-citizen, I "bit in my breath and swallered it down." I adopted the course Mr. Maskelyne told me he did with the Davenports, sat with my eyes open and my mouth shut.

It is marvellous to see how excited we phlegmatic islanders grow when either spirits are brought to the front, or we think we have found out a conjuring trick. I am not going to follow the example of my gushing brethren, but I can safely say that if anybody has an afternoon or evening to spare, he may do worse than go to the Crystal Palace or the Hanover Square Rooms, to see a very pretty and indescribable phenomenon, and to return as I did, a wiser, though perhaps a sadder man, in the proud consciousness of having "found out how it is all done."

CHAPTER x.x.xIII.

A LADY MESMERIST.

When a man's whole existence has resolved itself into hunting up strange people and poking his nose into queer nooks and corners, he has a sorry time of it in London during August; for, as a rule, all the funny folks have gone out of town, and the queer nooks and corners are howling wildernesses. There is always, of course, a sort of borderland, if he can only find it out, some peculiar people who never go out of town, some strange localities which are still haunted by them; only he has to find them out--people and places--for it is so universally allowed now-a-days that all genteel people must be out of London in August, and all respectable places must be covered up in old newspapers, that it is difficult to get them to own the soft impeachment.

However, there is one queer place that is never shut up, the Progressive Library in Southampton Row; and Mr. Burns and the Spiritualists, as a rule, do not shut up shop even in August. Their Summerland lies elsewhere than Margate or the Moors; and a valse with a pirouetting table or a little gentle levitation or elongation delights them more than all the revels of the countryside. I was getting a little blase, I own, on the subject of Spiritualism after my protracted experiences during the Conference, and I do not think I should have turned my steps in the direction of the Progressive Inst.i.tution that week had not the following announcement caught my eye as I scanned the ghostly pages of the _Medium and Daybreak_:--

"A MESMERIC SeANCE.

"We have been authorized to announce that Miss Chandos, whose advertis.e.m.e.nt appears in another part of this paper, will give a mesmeric seance at the Spiritual Inst.i.tution, 15, Southampton Row, on Wednesday evening, August 19th, at eight o'clock. Admission will be free by ticket, which may be obtained at the Inst.i.tution. The object which Miss Chandos has in view is to interest a few truth-seekers who could aid her in promoting a knowledge of psychological phenomena. As a crowded meeting is not desired, an early application should be made for tickets."

I do not know that I said "Eureka!" Indeed I have considerable historic doubts as to whether anybody ever did, but I felt it. I was a truth-seeker forthwith. I resolved to sit at the feet of Miss Chandos, and, should her mesmeric efforts prove satisfactory, "aid her in promoting a knowledge of psychological phenomena." I did not go through the prescribed process of getting a ticket beforehand, because I thought in my innocence that everybody would be out of town, or that the Hall of the Progressive Inst.i.tute would certainly accommodate those who remained. Never was a more fatal mistake. The psychological folks were all in London, and the capacities of the Progressive Library are not palatial. Miss Chandos had a crowded meeting whether she desired it or not. Genius will not be concealed; and Miss Chandos was learning that lesson in a very satisfactory way. It was a sultry evening when a small boy opened the back door of the little first floor apartment in Southampton Row, and squeezed me in like the thirteenth in an omnibus, and I found myself walking on people's toes, and sitting down on their hats in the most reckless manner. At length, however, I struggled to a vacant corner, and deposited myself perspiring and expectant.

Mr. Burns was "orating" on the revival mesmerism was destined to make, and telling us how, like the Plumstead Peculiars, we should be able to do without doctors as soon as the healing powers of animal magnetism were properly recognised and diffused. I did not listen very carefully, I fear, for I was nervously looking about for Miss Chandos. Nervously, I say, because lady mediums and mesmerizers are so apt to run to eighteen stone, or be old and frumpish, that I had terrible fears lest I should be scared when I met Miss Chandos in the flesh. I was very agreeably surprised, however, for when Mr. Burns resumed--not his chair but his table, since he sat on that article of furniture, a very pretty young lady indeed, of not more than eighteen or twenty years of age, took his place, and, in a few well-chosen words, said this was her first appearance as a public mesmerist, and claimed indulgence should any failure in the phenomena result. She also drew attention to the fact that the apartment was "pernicious snug" (she put it, of course, in more scientific language), and straightway proceeded to business.