SPIRITUAL ATHLETES.
I am about for once to depart from my usual custom of narrating only personal experiences, and in this and the two following chapters print the communications of a friend who shares my interest in these matters, and has frequently accompanied me in my investigations into this mysterious Borderland. In these cases, however, he investigated on his own account, and I am not responsible for the conclusions at which he arrives:—
"Attracted," he says, "by an article in a popular journal on the subject of 'Spirit Faces,' I determined, if possible, to 'assist' at a séance. I had not hitherto taken much interest in spiritualistic matters, because in the first place, the cui bono question remained persistently unanswered; and, secondly, because most of the 'doings' were in the dark; and it appears to me that, given darkness, there are few things in the way of conjuring and ventriloquism that could not be done. Terpsichorean tables and talking hats never had any particular charm for me, because I could always make a table dance, or a hat say anything I wanted it to say. I saw the Davenports, and preferred Professor Anderson. I even went to a dark séance at the Marshalls', and noticed that when Mr. and Mrs. Marshall had perceptibly partaken of beefsteak and onions, or some equally fragrant food, for dinner, the breath which accompanied the spirit-voices was unmistakably impregnated with onions too; and hence I drew my own conclusions. I am not saying I know how Mr. and Mrs. Marshall do John King and Katie King. I don't know how Professor Anderson or Professor Pepper do their tricks. I confess Mr. Home and the Marshalls have the pull of the professors in one way—that is, they don't perform on a platform but in a private room, and they let you examine everything beforehand. Theirs is the ars celare artem. Again, I don't know how men in the street get out of the very curious knots in which I have tied them, but I know they do it; and therefore I am sure the Davenports could do it without calling in the ghost of one's deceased grandmamma as a sort of Deus—or rather Dea—ex machinâ. I have never seen Mr. Home handle fire or elongate. I have seen him 'levitate,' or float, and I candidly confess I don't know how he does it, any more than I can solve Sir David Brewster's trick by which four young ladies can lift a heavy man on the points of their fingers. It's very mysterious, and very nice for the man.
"So it happened that I had shelved spiritualism for some time, when the article on 'Spirit Faces' came under my notice. I did not care so much about the face part of the matter (at least not the spirit face), but I wanted to test it as a matter of athletics. In one respect the physiognomy did interest me, for I read that the medium was pretty—mediums, according to my experience, being generally very much the reverse—and I found that report had certainly not misrepresented the young lady in this respect. Her name is now public property, so I need not veil it under the pseudonyms of Miss Blank, or Asterisk, or anything of that sort. Miss Florence Cook, then, is a trim little lady of sweet sixteen, and dwells beneath the parental roof in an eastern suburb of London. It is quite true she does not accept payment for séances, which I strove to impress upon her was very foolish indeed, for she works almost as hard as Lulu twice in the week. However, she, or rather her parents, take high ground in the matter, which of course is very praiseworthy on their parts, and convenient for their guests if they happen to be impecunious.
"Now, I do not purpose going through the details of the séance, which was considerably irksome, being protracted by endless psalm singing. What I want to do—with Miss Cook's permission—is to calculate the chances of her being sufficiently athletic to perform the tricks herself, without the aid of spirits. Does she not underrate her unaided powers in assigning a supernatural cause for the effects produced?
"Well, then, this lithe little lady is arrayed in the ordinary garb of the nineteenth century with what is technically termed a 'pannier,' and large open sleeves, each of which, I fear, she must have found considerably in the way, as also the sundry lockets and other nick-nacks suspended from her neck. However, there they were. We put her in a cupboard, which had a single Windsor chair in it, and laid a stoutish new cord on her lap. Then came singing, which may or may not have been intended to drown any noise in the cupboard; but, after some delay, she was found tied around the waist, neck, and two wrists, and the ends of the cord fastened to the back of the chair. These knots we sealed, and consigned her to the cupboard again. Shortly after there appeared at an aperture in the upper portion of the cupboard a face which looked utterly unspiritual and precisely like that of the medium, only with some white drapery thrown over the head. The aperture was just the height that would have allowed Miss Cook to stand on the chair and peep out. I do not say she did; I am only calculating the height. The face remained some minutes in a strong light; then descended. We opened the cupboard, and found the little lady tied as before with the seals unbroken. Spiritual, or material, it was clever.
"After a pause, the same process was gone through again; only this time stout tape was substituted for rope. The cord cut the girl's wrists; and tape was almost more satisfactory. Again she was bound, and we sealed the knots; and again a face appeared—this time quite black, and not like the medium at all. I noticed that the drapery ran right round the face, and cut it off at a straight line on the lower part. This gave the idea of a mask. I am not saying it was a mask. I am only throwing out a hint that, if the 'spirits' wish to convince people they should let the neck be well seen. I am bound to say it bore a strong light for several minutes; and some people say they saw eyelids. I did not. I do not say they were not there. I know how impossible it is to prove a negative, and only say I did not see them.
"What followed possessed no special interest for any but the professed spiritualist, as it was done without any tying; Miss Cook arguing logically enough that, if the previous manifestations were clearly proved to have taken place by other agency than that of the medium herself, mere multiplication of proofs was unnecessary. I had only gone to study the matter from an athletic point of view; and I certainly came away impressed with the idea that, if Miss Florence Cook first got into and then got out of those knots, she was even more nimble and lithesome than she looked, and ought to start an Amateur Ladies' Athletic Society forthwith. As to her making faces at us through the window, I did not care sufficiently about the matter to inquire whether she did or not, because, if she got out of the ropes, it was easy enough to get on the chair and make faces.
"Of course the cui bono remains. The professors make money by it; and Miss Cook can make at most, only a little mild and scarcely enviable notoriety. A satirical old friend of mine, when I told him the above facts, chuckled, and said, 'That's quite enough for a girl of sixteen; and anything that's do-able, a girl of those years will do.' It was no use talking to him of panniers and loose sleeves, and lockets. He was an old bachelor, and knew nothing about such things. At least, he had no business to, if he did.
"I cannot forbear adding a domestic episode, though it is perhaps scarcely relevant to the subject. Certain young imps in my house, hearing what I had seen, got up an exhibition of spirit faces for my benefit. They rigged up a kind of Punch-and-Judy erection, and the cleanest of them did the spirit face, with a white pocket-handkerchief over his head. He looked as stolid and unwinking as the genuine spirit-physiognomy itself. The gas was lowered to a 'dim religious light,' and then a black coal-scuttle, with features chalked on it, deceived some of the circle into the idea that it was a nigger. But the one element which interested me was wanting; there was no rope-tying which could at all entitle the juvenile performance to be categorized under 'Spiritual Athletics.'"