THE MERCENARY CAMPAIGN.
The public campaign of Spiritualism was now begun.
A sufficient hubbub had been made over it to induce attention from all sorts and conditions of people.
The mother and her daughters went again to Rochester, and there placed themselves in the hands of the first of many “committees of friends” who were used as tools or confederates, according to their character, to “humbug” the public more completely. The character and functions of these committees may be judged from the following, which is found in Leah’s book: “The names of this committee were Isaac Post, R. D. Jones, Edward Jones, John Kedzie and Andrew Clackner. They were faithful friends, who never permitted any one to visit us unattended by themselves or some reliable person.”
The so-called spirits soon urged in laborious communications that it was needful to make their demonstrations more public, and that an “investigation” of the “rappings,” ought therefore to be made by some well-known men. The “spirits” were even so kind as to spell out by means of the tentative alphabet, the names of those whom they wished to have appointed to perform this part. The desire for advertisement, indeed, was not likely to cause the rejection of the name of any available person, whose prominence would increase the public interest in the movement. We are not astonished, then, to find that Frederick Douglass was one of those present at this earliest farce of investigation. It was the forerunner of many others which were like unto it, and gradually, in their stations in various cities, the “Fox Sisters” drew to their séances nearly all of the conspicuous persons of the time, who regarded the effects exhibited to them in as many different lights as their minds and characters were different.
Naturally enough, after this compliance with their desires, the “spirits” directed that a public exhibition should be given. The largest hall in Rochester was hired for the purpose.
And here the infamy of bringing forward two little girls to do the work of base and vulgar charlatanism, appears in all its revolting character. The eldest of the children was then but nine years old. Had she been dressed in accordance with her tender age, it would have taken only very slight observation to detect the secret of the “rappings.” Those persons now living, who were present at this and at other public exhibitions of Spiritualism at that time, will easily remember that Margaret and Catherine Fox appeared on a platform in long gowns, as if they had been full-grown women. The dresses were expressly prepared by order of Mrs. Ann Leah Fox Fish, the evil genius of these unfortunate victims. Without these robes nothing whatever could have been done in the way of “spirit rappings,” under the matter-of-fact scrutiny of the public.
To carry out the delusion to the utmost, every detail touching these earliest exhibitions was directed through “spirit rappings,” even to the insertion of grandiloquent notices in the newspapers.
In all of the “investigations” of the “rappings,” at this or at any other time, the attentive student will find somewhere a loop-hole of escape from observation, an unguarded avenue of detection. In some of the principal séances, described at great length by Leah, the conditions favorable to fraud and illusion were so very obvious that they ought to have excited derision in the veriest child.
The following passage in the report of a so-called investigation, is pointed to by professional spiritualists as one of the best “evidences” of the genuineness of Spiritualism:
“One of the committee placed one of his hands on the feet of the ladies and the other on the floor, and though the feet were not moved, there was a distinct jar of the floor.”
Here, then, there were three operators and one investigator. The latter puts his hand on the feet of the ladies. How many feet, pray you? There were six feet on the platform, as we know, all of which had been carefully educated in the production of “raps.” Could one man’s hand cover them all? And if it could not, does not this pretended “evidence” fall at once to the ground?
All of the recitals made by spiritualistic writers concerning the doings of the “Fox Sisters,” contain this element of vagueness, the lack of precision and completeness, which to persons unaccustomed to analysis may possibly appear plausible enough, but to the experienced inquirer is merely a more certain proof of weakness and prevarication.
Volumes might be written to meet the statements advanced in every case, and to show how clumsily misleading they are. It is not worth while at this late day, and in that direction, to do more than I have already accomplished in this chapter.
Indeed, the actual demonstration of the fact that the far-famed “rappings” are produced in the manner described at the beginning of this work, should be quite sufficient to all logical minds, to condemn every claim that the professional mediums have advanced as being the agents of any supernatural manifestations.
The good old Latin maxim never applied with greater force than it does here: Falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus.
The operations of the eldest sister all tended to the one end: fame and money. In Rochester, fees for the first time were accepted by “mediums,” and shortly afterward a tariff of prices for admission to the séances and the “private circles” was adopted and made public. No jugglers ever drove a more prosperous business than did the “Fox family” for a number of years, when once fairly launched upon that sea of popular wonder, which somebody has said is supplied by the inherent fondness of mankind for being humbugged.
Mrs. Fish had actually the project of founding a new religion, and she tried hard to convince her younger sisters and her own child that there were really such things as spiritual communications, notwithstanding that all of those that were produced in their séances they knew to be perfectly false. She asserted that even before Maggie and Katie were born she had received messages warning her that they were destined to do great things.
“In all of our séances, while we were under her charge,” says Mrs. Kane, “we knew just when to rap ‘yes’ and when to rap ‘no’ by signals that she gave us, and which were unknown to any one but ourselves. Of course, we were too young, then, to have been successful very long in deluding people, had it not been for an arrangement such as this.
“Her own daughter, Lizzie, had no manner of patience with her transparent pretence.
“‘Ma,’ she would exclaim, when Leah attempted to impress her with a belief in some of the frauds which she perpetrated, ‘how can you ever pretend that that is done by the spirits? I am ashamed to know even that you do such things—it’s dreadfully wicked.’”
Some day it will be known that one other person beside Lizzie, who afterwards occupied a filial relation to this woman, detested even more strongly the atmosphere of hypocrisy and deceit with which the latter surrounded herself, and hated, too, the rankling obligation under which an unkind fate had placed her.
It is not so wonderful that men of learning and originality were drawn to the mysterious séances of the Fox girls, when it is considered that they became a sort of fashionable “fad,” as the receptions of Mesmer did in the last century in Paris. There were great opportunities there for studying human nature, and the period was one of a notable awakening of scientific and transcendental speculation. Such men as Greeley, Bancroft, Fenimore Cooper, Bryant, N. P. Willis, Dr. Francis, John Bigelow, Ripley, Dr. Griswold, Dr. Eliphalet Nott, Theodore Parker, William M. Thackeray, James Freeman Clarke, Thomas M. Foote and Bayard Taylor, and women of the intellectual strength of Alice Cary and Harriet Beecher Stowe became deeply interested. But nearly all of these lost their interest in Spiritualism in time, for they became morally, if not positively convinced, that the effects produced were the mere result of fraud.
There was another attraction, however, in those early days. The younger “mediums” were both very pretty and very young. Sympathy and commiseration, as much as aught else, often drew visitors to them, and caused such visitors to continue their friends. Thus, we find that Horace Greeley and Dr. Elisha Kent Kane became important factors in the lives of both of these interesting creatures, the former educating Katie, and the latter striving to form Maggie’s mind and to reform her character with the express object of making her his wife.
Mrs. Kane, in commenting upon the life which she led at that time, says:
“When I look back, I can only say in defense of my depraved calling, that I took not the slightest pleasure in it. The novelty and the excitement that had half intoxicated me as a child were fast being dissipated. The true conception of this infamous thing soon dawned upon me. The awakening was full of anguish—the anguish of hope, as well as the anguish of grief. I then first knew Dr. Kane, and with that acquaintance entered the new light into my life.”