The Missing Link In Modern Spiritualism Part 25

"Washington is a mean city. I despise nearly everything I meet here.

Gov. Tallmadge and Waddy Thompson are honorable gentlemen. They bring their friends during our private hours."

I have written these extracts from my child-sister's letter, to more fully ill.u.s.trate the dreadful position we held at that time. Still, some wondered how it was that the "Fox Family" should have been the chosen ones, through whom Spirits could communicate; and one little incident, which I can never forget, transpired when we were at Barnum's Hotel, corner of Maiden Lane and Broadway, 1850.

Dr. Scott, a tall, wiry, wriggling old consequence, walked up to mother with his smirking smile (the rooms were filled with investigators, and he wished to appear to great advantage), and said, bending low, "Mrs.

Fox, can you explain why your children should be mediums? Is it because your family are better than other folk?"

Mother replied, "Dr. Scott, can you explain to me why fresh fish swim in salt water?" They looked at each other in silence, while the company roared with laughter.

Experience taught me to adopt a rule not to give private seances to single strangers, but rather to only two or more at a time. This was not so much as a safeguard against personal impertinences (for such things were of rare occurrence, and never repeated), but under the advice of my Spirit friends, to afford some protection against malignant enemies who might come (as had happened) under a mask of friendly interest and honest investigation, and then, when unchecked by the presence of another witness, give calumnious accounts of their private seances. I might cite some curious instances of this.

But I should have but few instances to tell of personal impertinence ever having been addressed to me, though thus living a life which constantly afforded to promiscuous strangers the free admission to the presence of myself and my young sisters, protected only by their dignity and their n.o.ble mother's presence. I will mention but one, which occurred in an Eastern city, in 1857, the hero of which was an important man who had inherited from a far n.o.bler father one of the greatest names known to our history. The incident occurred neither in New York nor in Washington, but to name the city would go far to identify the person.

Five gentlemen were announced at one of my public hours, of whom one was evidently the most prominent man, and a sort of leader of the company. A glance sufficed to show that he was considerably intoxicated, and that some of his companions had had more or less share in the conviviality which had preceded their visits to the "Spirits" of a different kind. He is no longer in this life, but some of the rest doubtless survive, and are not likely to have forgotten the occasion when they had to retire ignominiously from my rooms at a hotel.

Naturally during the years thus spent in the exercise of my mediumship in New York, I became acquainted with no small number of domestic and family affairs of the most delicate--sometimes the most painful--character. In the private seances so often solicited by visitors there would arise, in their communication with Spirits, revelations of secrets the existence of which was little suspected by the outside world, and which, with me, were under no less absolute and sacred a sanction of secresy than in the Catholic confessional, or the confidential relations of the medical man. And it is a happiness for me to know that, apart from the communications received by visitors from their Spirit friends, I have many a time and oft had the opportunity of exerting useful influences on the minds of some whose inmost hearts and lives have thus been laid open before a sympathetic and sisterly eye.

DISCOMFITURE OF ANDERSON, "THE WIZARD OF THE NORTH."

I am tempted to relate one occurrence of this period, though I do not remember its exact date. The newspapers will supply it to anybody desirous of chronological accuracy (it must have been about the middle of 1853). The famous conjurer Anderson, "The Wizard of the North," was exhibiting in New York, I believe in the large building called Tripler Hall, in the rear of a hotel on Broadway, near Bond Street. He had advertised a challenge to any "poverty-stricken medium" to come to his hall and attempt to produce their "knockings" if they could, with the offer of a thousand dollars if they should do so. Possibly he had expected to crowd his hall for several evenings by this clap-trap, as he was himself a conjuring trickster by trade, he supposed that we were of the same kidney, or cla.s.s, and that we would not venture to accept such a challenge from him. It happened that we (Katy and I) arrived one evening at home from a week's absence in Rochester, and were told at the door by Susie that Judge Edmonds, Dr. Gray, and one or two friends more were waiting in the parlor to see us. They had known of our expected arrival at that hour.

Now, the object of our visit to Rochester had been this: I had conveyed there for burial the body of a beloved member of my family. After that interment, I was further detained by the death of a nephew, and the same undertaker remained to conduct this second ceremony. The friends who were awaiting us at home hastily explained the situation, Anderson's challenge, etc., and said that we ought to be already at Tripler Hall, and urged our instant starting. I pleaded the impossibility (physical and moral), but they insisted that we must not leave that triumph to our adversaries--for the sake of our cause as well as for our own or that of our friends. They said that a cup of tea could be prepared and swallowed in fifteen minutes, and the upshot was that Judge Edmonds drafted a short note to Mr. Anderson, which I copied and signed, announcing our acceptance of his challenge and our speedy following after our missive, with the sole variation from his terms that the one thousand dollars were to go to some public charity (I forget which), as we would not accept it. A reliable messenger rushed off to place it in Anderson's hands. We reached the hall with all possible speed and found it crowded to its utmost capacity. I had the arm of Judge Edmonds, and Kate that of Dr. Gray. We arrived in time to hear Anderson reading aloud, at the front of his stage, the concluding lines of the letter he had received.

He was in a perfect rage, gesticulating in the most violent manner, denouncing the suddenness with which this had been sprung upon him, etc., etc., and refusing us admission to his stage. All know that conjurers usually extend forward a long bridge from their stage over the pit of the theatre, along which they travel to and fro in the course of their dealings, and "patter" with the audience. We and our respective escorts (we, of course, in deepest of c.r.a.pes, and dropping with fatigue[11]) ascended the outer steps of this bridge, and moved forward toward the stage, to which we came very near. But the violence of speech and action by Anderson, who barred the way at the other end, held us back. Mr. Partridge spoke from the stage, and Judge Edmonds and Dr. Gray from their places, relating the facts, how we had that moment returned from burying our dead, exhausted with fatigue and hunger, and heart-broken with grief, but had yielded to their appeals to us to come instantly to meet the challenge which had been addressed to us and to Spiritualism, with the simple condition that the money staked by Anderson should go not to us but to a public charity. It may be imagined what effect all this produced upon the audience. "Fair play to the Rochester knockings!" "Fair play to the sisters!" etc., etc., mingled with hisses, seemed to come from every throat. A very little more, and I believe the "Wizard of the North" would have been mobbed on his own stage. But finding that we could not gain admission to it while he thus barred the way, and it being plain and patent to everybody that he had backed down, and that we and Spiritualism were incontestably triumphant, the c.r.a.pe-draped figures, with their highly honorable escort, withdrew as they had come, and glad were we to get back home and to disrobe ourselves of our travelling dresses. The next day the papers told how Anderson had backed down, and for a week following redoubled crowds flocked to our receptions with their congratulations.

[11] In this I but followed in the rut of custom. I do not now approve of c.r.a.pes and lugubrious mourning. Why thus parade insignia of mourning for the mere disappearance of those whom we know to be now more alive than when they were fettered by the bonds of sublunary life--far, far happier and higher--and not less near and loving to us than they had been when we could see, hear, and feel them with our natural senses? Our immoderate grief only grieves them. Spiritualism will, one day, put an end to the trade in c.r.a.pe, "and," the scribe might well add, "the enormous exactions of the undertaker, which often impoverish the living but sincere mourners."

The conjurer might, of course, have been sued by us for his $1,000, for the benefit of a charity; but we were satisfied, and cared no further for that or for him. He never renewed the challenge, or if he ever did, in any distant place when we were not there to respond (as is likely enough, for such is a conjurer's trick), we never heard of it.

The "Wizard" had met with about as bad a fate as the Buffalo doctors, with their knee theory, the Rev. C. C. Burr, with his toe-ology, and the Harvard professors, with their unknown theory--promised, but never put forth. Anderson had, no doubt, never examined the numerous "investigations" through which we had pa.s.sed triumphant, and had taken for granted that we were tricksters, like himself, who needed our own stage, machinery, etc., and was probably the most astonished of men and conjurers when he received my unostentatious acceptance of his challenge, followed up by the _de facto_ appearance of two black-draped and travel-worn young ladies with their escorts, bearding the lion in his den, and vainly applying for impromptu admission to his own stage.

REMARKABLE EXPERIENCE WITH A ONCE VERY NOTORIOUS PERSON.

One afternoon in 1852, between five and eight (my private hours), my good Susie announced a grand lady, apparently, who had come in a fine carriage with a footman, and who, when told that it was not one of my hours for receiving, begged to see me for a moment. She was admitted, in her satins and velvets, of good figure, handsome and striking, though not beautiful nor longer very young; lady-like in her deportment and general effect, though I could discover that her language was not quite up to her elegant style of dress and manner. She made on me the impression of some woman of rather inferior antecedents, who had been married by some rich man for her good looks. She wanted simply to make an engagement for a private hour, which I gave her for the next morning, and to which she was duly punctual.

She had not been long seated at the table with me, after asking some questions, when she bent her head down upon the table and wept and sobbed convulsively, and called on the Spirit of her mother, who, together with other affectionate expressions, answered in substance, "My dear child, you were left dest.i.tute, and a helpless child, and neglected and abused by those who should have taken care of you." After recovering herself, she said, "You little know how this affects me. These are words of tenderness from my mother; I do believe it, and I am sure of it. I was, indeed, left a helpless child to the cold charity of the world."

She did not remain very long, nor do I recall more details; but she wept profusely and sobbed, and took my hand, bidding me good-bye, leaving on the table the regular fee of $5. I had no reason to expect to see her again, nor any to doubt her entire respectability.

She soon after came again (my maid Susie announced her as "the rich lady") and engaged another hour for a private party of her friends.

There came with her, to that appointment, three or four nice-looking and well-behaved young women, and two little girls, sisters, of nine and eleven years, whom she presented to me as "my Gracie and my Florence;"

and whom I, at the time, presumed to be her children.

She asked, "Is so and so present?" (I do not recall the name.) "Yes,"

was answered; and she asked, "What shall I do with these dear children?"

The reply came, "You have done well by them so far." They were pretty and sweet-mannered children, evidently under good training. She said they were not her own, and that they were being brought up at a superior seminary in Albany, and that on coming of age they would inherit a good property. She turned to the children and said, "Your father and mother are here." "Oh! aunty (clinging to her), what do they say?" "They say you must continue at school." (The children loved her, and had wanted to come home to her.) The Spirits then rapped out, "We watch over you hourly. When you pray we always listen to your prayers." There was weeping and sobbing between the children and their "Aunty." Some questions then pa.s.sed respecting their property and minor matters. I afterward learned from my good friend, Dr. Wilson, who knew all about them, that the father, after the death of the mother, had fallen into relations with my visitor (who, to me, was as yet only "the rich lady"), and then, when he found his end approaching (from consumption), had given her his directions about his children, knowing her heart to be good, and reliable for conformity to them. While this sitting was going on an interruption occurred, which eventually led up to such consequences that I must introduce it.

A French woman, an importer of laces and a pedler of them, was announced by Susie, who knew that I had some business with her about the purchase of some of her goods, and I had to give her a few minutes. She was a keen and artful woman, and having noticed the style of the customary carriages at my door, she asked me if I could not introduce her to some of my friends, to whom she might sell some of her wares. I yielded to her request (such women are sometimes irresistible), and the result was that, on my showing my own lace to my elegant visitors, they examined the store in her box, and two of them engaged sets of lace from her.

Through her acquaintance thus formed with "the rich lady," at whose house she had to deliver her laces, she learned who she was, and it was easy in New York then for such a woman to learn all about her. It will be seen below that the consequences were serious for my poor visitor, "the rich lady." This French lace dealer had heard about the "manifestations" at my house, and even knew something about such things in France, and in her visits to that house, to me unknown, as was equally the name of its mistress, she took on herself the character of a clairvoyant medium, and played upon them plenty of her cunning tricks, such as pretended entrancement, etc., for which perhaps a door may have been opened through the genuine experience they had had with me.

My still anonymous friend, "the rich lady," paid me afterward another visit, in which she still kept me ignorant of who she was. She came alone this time, and unbosomed many of her sorrows to me. (How many others have done so! some men, but chiefly women!) While she was there in the parlor a gentleman came in (Dr. Schoonmaker, a dentist, of 12th Street, a friend of mine, who I believe is still living and remembers it) and was introduced into the back room. By some accident of the opening of the door, he caught a glimpse of my visitor in the front room. He said to me, "Mrs. Brown, are you aware who that is in your front room?" I said that we knew her as "the rich lady," though she was an uneducated one. "Have you never heard of the notorious ---- ----?"

and he told me her name, of which of course I had heard. "I am so sorry you have told me this," I replied; "she has engaged me for another day."

"Well," he said, "I am her dentist; and she was in my chair a good part of yesterday. Her fee is as good as anybody's; your advertis.e.m.e.nts open the door to all investigators, and you have no right to refuse her so long as she behaves herself." "She has certainly acted like a lady thus far with me," I could not but answer.

Between then and her next engagement with me (which was her fourth visit to my house), the lace woman had played her fraudulent cards upon her.

She had palmed off upon her a fraudulent trance and Spiritualism, and had prepared her for the coming of a handsome young French officer, with et cetera, et cetera of a story. The upshot was that this young man was the lace woman's son, and an adventurer of whom the rich lady was made a prey. He pretended honorable love and marriage, at which a sinful but repentant soul clutched readily. She married him, and paid me a farewell visit on her departure.

She said, "You little know the good you have done to me;" and she threw on my neck a gold chain and handsome cross. She kissed my hand and left it wet with tears. "Oh, it won't hurt you," she said, "if I kiss your hand, though I am much worse than you think me--or at least have been."

My good friend, Professor Mapes, was present at this, and public repute had made him know all about her. After she had gone he said to me, "You have done that poor woman more good than all the preachers of New York could ever have done. You have reformed one of the vilest of women."

I afterward heard that her handsome adventurer-husband spent or got away from her all her money, and absconded, abandoning her; and that she died dest.i.tute and forlorn in a hospital in Paris. I could tell more tales than this of women who have pa.s.sed through my hands, or rather those of the Spirits, between whom and them I have humbly served as a medium.

I have thus far carried my narrative down to the time at which my public mediumship closed with my marriage in 1858. Of the five years spent in New York, I have spoken only in the general manner of the present chapter, though were I to enter upon the field of particulars I should have to weary the reader's patience with a second volume. I will only relate two episodes of that interesting period: the phosphorus affair, and the affair of the Harvard professors, for reasons which will be apparent. But I must give them each a chapter to itself.

CHAPTER XX.

PHOSPHORUS.

SPIRIT LIGHTS VISIBLE AT DARK SeANCES--PRIVATE CIRCLE IN JERSEY CITY IN 1857--SOLID GRANULES OF PHOSPHORUS APPEARING IN EARTH WHICH I HAD TOUCHED--SURPRISING AND DISTRESSING LETTER--THE GOOD SPIRITS AND DANIEL UNDERHILL TO THE RESCUE--BENJAMIN FRANKLIN--MARRIAGE TO D. UNDERHILL, NOVEMBER 2, 1858, AND CLOSE OF MY PUBLIC MEDIUMSHIP--a.n.a.lOGOUS PHENOMENA IN PRIVATE AT HOME.

I will here relate from my experiences a curious and, so far as I know, novel chapter in the records of Modern Spiritualism, namely, _the production of solid granulated phosphorus by Spirits_.

It will be seen that that phenomenon actually occurred through my mediumship, though under circ.u.mstances and appearances highly suggestive (to our enemies) of trickery on my part, and such as naturally to awaken uneasiness in the minds of friends whom long experience with me should have made, and had made, suspicion-proof in regard to me and my Spirit guides; and that for nearly nine months I was made very unhappy for the want of confirmatory evidence as to the real objective genuineness of the phenomenon sufficient to silence cavil and compel conviction. My unhappiness proceeded from the consciousness that _some_ friends had doubted more or less (though never going the length of signifying doubt to myself), while I could not know _who_, nor how far doubt had taken distinct shape in their minds. To a person of my temperament and temper, however sustained by pride and conscious innocence, I cannot easily conceive a more painful situation. But thank G.o.d (and the good Spirits who have never failed me in the long run), this invisible cloud which for months chilled the atmosphere of my life, as a distressful something keenly felt though not to be seen, cleared off like the evaporation of dew from the surface of a mirror, as will be seen below.

We never gave _public_ seances in darkened rooms. I do not approve of the practice. Many forms of manifestations thus obtained are calculated to prejudice the investigator and excite suspicion of the medium. I love to sit with a few friends, who are prepared to witness manifestations, whether in light or dark, and who have had sufficient evidence to understand the conditions necessary to enable Spirits to manifest themselves in form. On such occasions there should not be more than six or seven persons in the circle, and they should all be harmonious, and sit together around a table; placing their hands in such a manner that if any one shall stir, or change position, it must be at once discovered.

When Spirits appear, they come surrounded with, or luminous by, their own light. I seldom sat in a darkened room without seeing lights, which were also visible to the company.

I never used anything to conceal, or afford the Spirits a hiding-place for anything. I was never directed to do so. We (all persons present) have been told to sit in the dark and rub the palms of our hands together; when, immediately on that being done, sparks of light would appear. (I can frequently produce such lights--or, rather, they come of themselves--when entirely alone.) I suppose they are electrical or phosph.o.r.escent; but there are different lights. At times they vary in form, color, and intensity. Sometimes they will be of the size of a spark; sometimes of that of a hand, or larger; sometimes flitting or flickering about; sometimes--especially when a Spirit is communicating with you by touches, or caresses, or otherwise--fixed in front of your face, like a person looking into your eyes; sometimes a vague, luminous cloudiness, suggestive of a form or not, as the case may be. Mr. Robert Dale Owen took every precaution to lock and seal the doors; not that he doubted us, but because he was writing a book for the sceptical world to read, and in his honesty of purpose he determined to be "sure." He was right. His two books, the "Footfalls" and the "Debatable Land," can never lose their interest and value to the student of Spiritualism.

Frequently, while sitting with select friends in dark circles, lights would appear in different parts of the room; sometimes quite numerous.

These sights were no new thing to us, but very astonishing to those who had never before witnessed such manifestations. In order to convince such, the Spirits would direct them to examine the room and everything in it; lock the doors, join hands and quietly wait for manifestations.

We were sometimes directed to sing, but not to ask questions, nor to make any exclamations of wonder, or expressions of opinion, until the manifestations had ceased. Such directions must be complied with, if we would win good success.[12]

[12] The frequency of the appearance of _lights_, or luminous appearances, at seances, is suggestive of the idea that Spirits often employ, in their manifestations, phosphorus in some form or condition--phosphorus probably drawn from the atmosphere, or from the brains of the medium or sitters, or both, through their higher knowledge of the secrets and resources of the chemistry of nature.

That they should know also how to make it inodorous is easily conceivable. I have never perceived (though in this the author of "The Missing Link" thinks she has sometimes done so) any of the phosphoric odor as accompanying those exhibitions of Spirit lights, though sometimes the entire forms of Spirits appear as what I may call phosphorically luminous. That human brains are, to some extent at least, natural reservoirs, from which they draw or elaborate some basis of phosphorus, seems probable enough--or at least should be so to those philosophers who strive to approximate phosphorus to thought, and bid us eat phosphoric food to stimulate our wits, and fancy they catch a gleam of it in the brightening of the eye. It is reliably recorded that at the famous seances of Count de Bullet, at which the controlling Spirit is known by the conventional name of "John King," he constantly appeared holding what seemed a round, white, luminous stone, whose light would gradually fade out after a while, till almost invisible, when he would either withdraw for a moment or two into the cabinet, where the medium was asleep in trance, and return with his lamp re-illumined, or else apply the _stone_, called his 'lamp,' to the forehead of the Count de Bullet, when the light would be seen to rapidly resume its full brightness. The first effect of such application to the forehead, was that _dark clouds of wreathing smoke_ would seem to enter into the stone from the forehead, soon to pa.s.s into pervading light; strong in close proximity, but, like phosphoric light, not radiating to much distance. That the Spirits should be able to elaborate the cerebral, or atmospheric, or terrestrial phosphorus into the condition of solid particles of granulated phosphorus, is not difficult to conceive, but I do not know of any other instance of their having actually done it, under human observation, than that now related by Mrs. Underhill.--ED.