We arrived in New York City on June 4, 1850, and had engaged rooms at Barnum’s Hotel, corner of Broadway and Maiden Lane. (This proprietor must not be confounded with the great showman of that name.)
Horace Greeley was our first caller. He advised us to charge five dollars admission fee. I told him that would be altogether too much; but he feared greatly for our safety, and thought this exorbitant sum would keep the rabble away. I told him I thought it decidedly better to follow the directions of the Spirits, and trust in Providence for protection and success. He announced our arrival in the Tribune, and published our rules of order. The editors of the Tribune and many other papers were in our rooms daily. Mr. Ripley used to say to us: “Ladies, you are the lions of New York.” Mary Taylor, in a Broadway theatre, sweetly sang “The Rochester Knockings at Barnum’s Hotel,” as a popular topic of the day. Many things in stores, on sidewalks, and newspaper advertisements, were paraded and labelled with the words “Rochester Knockings.”
What a time, to be sure, we had of it during that first visit, of nearly three months, to the great metropolis! Our party was seven in number. Our parlor was a large room opposite to the main one of the hotel, from which it was separated by a wide corridor. A long table with thirty seats occupied the centre of it, and we gave three receptions each day, for which our advertised hours were: 10 to 12 A.M., 3 to 5 P.M., and 8 to 10 P.M.; but the midday meeting would often lengthen out till we had barely time to get ready for dinner, and the evening one to midnight. The public parlors served as ante-rooms, in which visitors waited their turns to be admitted by one of our attendant gentlemen. Private sittings were often extorted from us by importunity, which would begin at the earliest hours before breakfast. With what degree of exhaustion of muscles, nerves, mind and spirit, we would reach our beds (in our rooms on the floor above), where sleep was often slow to come to our over-strained systems, may be imagined by my readers. The mere pressure upon us of the three successive crowds would, alone, have been a strain hard to bear; but every individual had his or her colloquies to be held with their respective Spirit friends. The burthen of it fell upon us all, but most heavily upon our dear mother, who took it so deeply to heart when she knew we were so unjustly suspected and so severely tested. She was of course always present with us, but only as a spectator and for protection. Ministers of all denominations, members of all professions, legal, medical, literary, and commercial, were among our guests, and many of them were frequent visitors. The occasions were rare when the slightest want of courtesy, respect, and kindness occurred to wound or displease us; and the only thing approaching an indignity we had to complain of among ourselves, was the frequency with which committees of ladies would retire with us to disrobe and reclothe us, the holding of our feet, etc.
Among the thousands of strangers who streamed through our rooms, I, of course, could know or remember the names of but few individuals; and many an one had his or her designation by which we used to recognize them, as—the White Spirit, or the Black, or the Gray, the Count, the Slick Wig, the Old Oriental, the Hippopotamus, etc., etc. By the way, the Count was also an elderly gentleman with white hair and angelic eyes, a foreigner, who at parting made me a present of a set of old china of extreme rarity, for which I have since refused a dealer’s offer of a thousand dollars, and which I still employ at parties and fêtes, and particular occasions, and always with a kind thought of the dear old donor. The summer season of travel, of course, brought many Southerners to our rooms, as well as visitors from other cities of the Union.
We again passed through an ordeal of special investigation by a large committee of the first men of New York, in scientific and literary, as well as social distinction, which took place at the residence of the Rev. Rufus W. Griswold, for some account of which, and the signal triumph in which it resulted, I refer to a letter which will be found [further on], and which was extensively republished.
Only one very painful thing occurred: an anonymous present made to me of a large, superb bouquet of flowers, the smelling of which nearly cost me my life. I was thought to be at death’s door; and a week had passed before I fully recovered from the effect. Spirits told us that it had proceeded from the malignity of a hostile quarter, and that the bouquet was poisoned.
I have always had a peculiar sensitiveness to poison; and could not even now, in the open air, pass near to certain growing plants, such as poison ivy, without suffering sensibly from their vicinity.
There was another occasion on which evil was not only intended, but attempted, by some who falsely believed they were doing God service by breaking up the “pestilent Rochester knockings.” We, too, had our case of a “prophet” (Isaiah) sent to curse, but who remained to bless. Our “prophet,” of whom this was true, was none other than the famous Captain I. Rynders, well known as the Captain of the Empire Club—a Democratic party organization of “fighting men,” the counterpoise to a corresponding body on the other side of politics. These rival corps had, originally, for their business the breaking up of the meetings of the adverse party, or to defend those of their own party against similar attacks from the opposite fighting corps. Captain Rynders, though a rather slender man, was one of such pluck, energy, and resolution, that his very name came to represent a real power in New York. His politics, in which he was very zealous, made him (as most men of that day were, on both sides) very hostile to “the Abolitionists,” many a meeting of whom the Empire Club had broken up after the most summary of fashions, namely, through windows as well as doors. One day three men, one of them of Herculean proportions, with his shirt-collar wide open, sailor fashion, on a brown sunburnt neck, entered our parlor, after payment of their regular fee outside, and took their seats together; the Hercules next to me. His appearance was every way formidable. A certain slight commotion was manifest in the company on their entrance. I soon received from three different friends in the room (Mr. Greeley, George Ripley, and another) little billets warning me against “the most dangerous man in New York”—whose appearance “portended evil,” and telling me to be “extremely careful” of all I should say and do, etc. One lady bent over me from behind, handed me a bit of paper which spoke of “black danger clouds,” and a row as being imminent from “those men,” and then made her escape into one of the more remote parlors of the hotel. But they sat quietly as observers. There were several clergymen in the company, one of them being the celebrated Dr. Phelps, of Stratford, Conn. There were at the table also two elderly, tall, thin, and pale Quaker maiden ladies, a little ghostly perhaps in appearance, one of whom presently addressed to the Spirits the question, “Which is the more correct, the Bible or Andrew Jackson Davis’s Revelations?” To this came many raps, which were differently understood around the table, according to the various opinions. It made quite a sensation. I rose and said that those raps were not an answer to the question, but a call for the alphabet, which I proceeded to repeat aloud as usual. The answer returned was: “The Bible contains many true and beautiful things, and so also does Davis’s Revelations,” a reply which Dr. Phelps considered a good and wise one. I presently invited one of my three neighbors (not the Herculean one) to the door, which I opened, and he was made to hear loud rappings on the wooden panels, and also on the marble flooring.
My real object was to conciliate him as being one of the party of “danger clouds,” though he was not the one who had been the object of my terror. “What is the meaning of this?” he said. “Have you anything to do with the Rochester knockings? I thought those two white old maids were the ones. I was sent here by a religious society to break it all up, and drive it out of New York, as I did last week with Fred. Douglass and Julia Griffith, and their sets of Abolitionists.” I told him he had been very wrong in doing so, and that those ladies were strangers here, as he and his friends were. “What, are you the Rochester knockers?” “Yes.” “Why, I thought you were older. Ain’t you afraid of me? What, these children!” “No, I am not a bit afraid of you,” I repeated, though in my secret heart I was dreadfully afraid of the other man. “Well, I am Captain Rynders—haven’t you heard of me?” “Yes, I have, but I am not afraid of you.” He took a seat at the table, and I invited him to ask some questions of some friends of his in the Spirit world. He asked a brother of his where he had died—“In California,” was the correct reply. “Of what disease?” To this also he got a reply, which, with a strong blow of his fist on the table, he admitted to be correct.
Captain Rynders was now our friend, and a good and gallant one he proved. He made the Herald publish a long account of it in our favor; the only occasion of its doing anything of the kind. He said that nobody should molest us; that he saw no reason why it should be done, and he emphasized this with a strong blow upon the table. He was indeed surprised that we were the mediums; he had supposed them to be the old Quaker women over there (alas, poor good souls!). My relations soon became equally comfortable with his big friend also, of whom I had been so afraid. A letter for me was brought in and laid on the table between him and me. I noticed that he seemed to observe the direction on it somewhat closely. I presently handed the letter over to mother, saying, “Here is a letter from our dear friend Maria Rogers.” Said my big neighbor, “Why, where did you ever know Maria Rogers?” “In Albany, at the Delavan House, where her husband had some business position. She is one of the sweetest women I ever knew, and I love her dearly. She was also very beautiful.” “She is all that you say,” was his reply, “and she is my own darling sister.” The letter proved to be an invitation to spend Sunday with her at the Oceanic House. I had no further fear of her big brother, who, together with Captain Rynders, would certainly have pitched all the rest of the company out of the window in our defence, had it been necessary. Such was the conversion of our “prophet,” from the cursing for which he had been commissioned, to blessings. I have since been assured by those who knew him, that Captain Rynders was really a good man at heart, with other manly qualities besides his courage, notwithstanding his animosity against the Abolitionists of that period, and others against whom the energies of the Empire Club had been directed by his party. I have some reason to believe that he has been a happier man from that time than before. I was sincerely glad to see him a few weeks ago, when he called on me, by my request, to compare notes upon our reminiscences of this adventure, and I was indeed astonished to hear so young a looking man avow that he was now eighty years of age.