“If, on a careful review, I had found cause to believe that the tendency of my work is such as you represent, it would be little consolation to feel that it was prompted by those good intentions which you are candid and courteous enough to ascribe to me. Prudence, painstaking discrimination, severe scrutiny of evidence, especially for the novel or the extraordinary, are, in an author, duties as imperative as good faith and uprightness; nor should he escape reprehension by pleading the one, if it appear that he has neglected the others.
“But my conscience acquits me of neglecting, save by exceptional inadvertence, reasonable precautions. That these may, in some cases, have proved unavailing, is the lot of human effort. So far, however, after ten months’ probation, I have had doubts cast upon a single narrative only, out of the seventy or eighty which my volume contains; and it is to the credit of your sagacity that the story thus discredited is that of the Livonian Schoolteacher, the very one to the evidence for which you chiefly take exception. It was part of my business in visiting Europe to test a case, to the conflicting evidence regarding which, about three months after the publication of ‘Footfalls,’ my attention was called by a friend; and as my inquiries, though they showed some foundation for the story, tended to discredit its details, I did what duty required of me; I omitted in the English edition, recently issued, and in the tenth American edition, the story in question, adding an explanatory note, and substituting a narrative entitled ‘The Two Sisters,’ relative to a similar phenomenon, and of which a copy is herewith inclosed. You will find the names of the two witnesses initialized only; but I am authorized by these ladies to communicate to you, if you desire to follow up the case, their names—neither unknown nor little esteemed—and their residence, within a day’s easy journey of Cambridge.
“In two of the narratives, the ‘Wynyard apparition’ and ‘Gaspar,’ I have obtained and inserted in the latest editions important additional vouchers.
“You have not, as you inform me, the ‘slightest hesitation in rejecting the entire mass of the stories.’ Forgive me if I say, that I admire your boldness more than your discretion. Abercrombie, in his ‘Intellectual Powers,’ vouches (‘Footfalls,’ pp. 151, 163, 181, 204) for several of the most remarkable. John Wesley relates (p. 225), and Dr. Adam Clarke and the poet Southey indorse (p. 238) another; Goethe is sponsor for one (p. 197); sceptics like Mackay (p. 255) and Macnish (p. 155) for a second and third; Mrs. Senator Linn for a fourth (p. 455); Dr. Bushnell for a fifth (p. 459); William Howitt and his amiable wife for several more (pp. 170, 171, 373); Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall for two of the most interesting (pp. 447, 463). At least a dozen are attested by clergymen of unimpeached character. If all these names seem to you irresponsible, and if you refuse credit, unless men be ‘put on the stand and under the solemnity of an oath,’ that species of evidence also, the highest known to the law, I have furnished. The facts touching the Mompesson disturbances were officially proved in court (p. 221); so, before the sheriff of Edinburgh, were those which tormented Captain Molesworth (p. 254); so, above all, were the phenomena of the Cideville Parsonage, running through two months and a half. In this last case I have given (pp. 275 to 282) the sworn testimony of eleven witnesses taken down, as the French forms of law require, in writing, read over to each witness, and its accuracy attested by the signature of each. Among these witnesses were the mayor of the town, the Marquis de Mirville, well known as an author of repute, a neighboring lady of rank and her son, and three clergymen. The mayor swears that he saw the shovel and tongs move from the fireplace into the room, no one touching them or near them; that, having replaced them, the same thing happened a second time, ‘while the witness had his eyes on them, so as to detect any trick.’ The Curate of Saussy saw a ‘hammer fly, impelled by an invisible force, from the spot where it lay, and fall on the floor without more noise than if he had placed it there.’ All testify to phenomena, and especially to knockings, as marvellous as any which American Spiritualism claims. Monsieur de Saint Victor deposes that ‘he felt convinced, that if every person in the house had set to work, together, to pound with mallets on the floor, they would not have produced such a racket’ (p. 280). Not one of the witnesses, placed under such solemn responsibilities, ‘shrinks from repeating the monstrous story.’
“The Cideville wonders, thus attested by evidence strong enough to hang a dozen men, far exceed those of Hydesville. Are you prepared to pronounce these eleven witnesses (and as many more, whose testimony I have omitted, and who swear to the same incidents) to be, as you declared the Foxes, ‘wretched cheats, contemptible and dishonest’? Did they, too, palm ‘unscrupulous frauds on deluded people’? Have you not the ‘slightest hesitation’ in setting down persons of character and station as wilful perjurers?—nay, as motiveless perjurers? Or were they, one and all, deluded? Were the impressions their senses received due only to ‘ill-regulated imaginations’? What sort of imagination is it that would persuade two men that a table which they sought, by main force, to prevent from moving, did move, without conceivable cause, in spite of their efforts? (p. 280.) Do people imagine ‘such a clatter in the room that one can hardly endure it’?—or that ‘every piece of furniture there was set in vibration’?—or such a pounding that the witness ‘expected every moment that the floor of the apartment would sink beneath his feet’? (p. 280.)
“You take me to task for narrating on insufficient testimony. If the rules of evidence which I have applied in the Mompesson case, in the Wesley case, in the Cideville case, and I will add in that of the Rochester Knockings, are to be rejected as untrustworthy, then not only shall we sink back to scepticism in all history and (as far as historical evidence goes) in all religion, but proof will fail us, in all our courts of justice, alike to acquit the innocent and condemn the guilty.
“I do not allege that all the narratives in my book are equally well authenticated. The Stilling story, for example (p. 317), may be taken as apocryphal. That of the ‘Surgeon’s Assistant’ (p. 325) has not been verified by me. ‘The Rescue’ (p. 333) came to me, thirty years after it happened, at second hand. But in these and in all similar examples throughout the book, where the nature of the case did not admit of evidence at first hand, I have specially called the attention of the reader to that fact. Nor, if one or more of these stories should prove to be without foundation, would it be just, for that cause, to discredit the others. The ‘ex uno disce omnes’ argument is not applicable here. Each narrative ought to be judged independently, by its own evidence. It is a sound maxim in law, that the superfluous does not invalidate the essential.
“I may add that, if in one example I have negligently omitted corroborative inquiries, I am not in the habit of sparing pains to authenticate a narrative. You imagine that I have been satisfied with the reports in Spiritual papers about the ‘Electric girl.’ I spent a week in Paris in procuring the original documents in that case and embodying them in my narrative. A small portion only of these is contained in the ‘Comptes Rendus.’ The authentic details have never yet been given to the American public. They are of great interest in a scientific point of view.
“You assume that such men as Arago regard clairvoyance as mere trickery. Arago, in 1853, expressly said (‘Footfalls,’ p. 23) that ‘somnambulism ought not to be rejected a priori, especially by those who have kept up with the progress of modern science;’ and he admitted (‘Footfalls,’ p. 68) that ‘psychology may one day obtain a place among the exact sciences.’ Cuvier went further. He conceded (‘Footfalls,’ p. 68) the principle lying at the base of Mesmerism.
“Inasmuch as my book treats only of spontaneous phenomena, not of those that are evoked, I have therein said nothing of the Foxes, except in connection with the narrative of what, in the olden time, would have been called the ‘haunted house’ of Hydesville; one of a class of which I have given numerous other older examples. Now, however, having been afforded by the sisters ample opportunity to investigate the rappings and other manifestations alleged to occur in their presence, I am ready, after warning, to go farther, and to say that, whatever the true character of these phenomena, I see no reason whatever for ascribing them to imposture. Nothing came to light in the course of this investigation other than what bore, to my mind, the impress of an honest desire to be freed, by rigid tests of fair dealing, from all blame. I never rest my opinion of character or motive upon report when I can have opportunity of personal verification. Such opportunity, which in this case I believe you have not had, I am enabled now to offer you. I am authorized by Mrs. Underhill (formerly Leah Fox) and by her husband (a gentleman of New York who has been, for seventeen years, secretary of one of the principal insurance offices in Wall Street), to say that, though Mrs. Underhill has not for some years sat as a professional medium, and has resolved not again to do so, she is willing, in the interests of truth, to afford you, during the university vacation, or at other time when your leisure serves, all reasonable facilities for strict investigation.