I think those people who desire to gain the utmost good they can out of clairvoyance should be more ready to listen and learn, and less to cavil and to question. Many who have heard me relate the results of my experience have rushed off pell-mell to the same medium, perhaps, and came away woefully disappointed. Were they to review the interview they would probably find they had done all the talking, and supplied all the information, leaving the clairvoyant no work to do whatever. To such I always say, whether their aim is to obtain advice in their business, or news of a lost friend, Be perfectly passive, until the medium has said all he or she may have to say. Give them time to become en rapport with you, and quietude, that he may commune with the spirits you bring with you; for it is they, and not his controls, that furnish him with the history of your life, or point out the dangers that are threatening. When he has finished speaking, he will probably ask if you have any questions to put to him, and then is your turn for talking, and for gaining any particular information you may wish to acquire. If these directions are carried out, you are likely to have a much more satisfactory séance than otherwise.
[CHAPTER XXI.]
PRIVATE MEDIA.
People who wish to argue against Spiritualism are quite sure, as a rule, that media will descend to any trickery and cheating for the sake of gain. If you reply, as in my own case, that the séances have been given as a free-will offering, they say that they expected introductions or popularity or advertisement in exchange. But what can be adduced against the medium who lends his or her powers to a person whom he has never seen, and probably never will see, and for no reason, excepting that his controls urge him to the deed? Such a man is Mr. George Plummer of Massachusetts, America. In December, 1887, when my mind was very unsettled, my friend Miss Schonberg advised me to write to this medium and ask his advice. She told me I must not expect an immediate reply, as Mr. Plummer kept a box into which he threw all the letters he received from strangers on spiritualistic subjects, and when he felt impressed to do so, he went and took out one, haphazard, and wrote the answer that was dictated to him. All I had to do was to enclose an addressed envelope, not a stamped one, in my letter, to convey the answer back again. Accordingly, I prepared a diplomatic epistle to this effect. "Dear sir,—Hearing that you are good enough to sit for strangers, I shall be much obliged if you will let me know what you see for me.—Yours truly, F. Lane." It will be seen that I transposed the letters of my name "Lean." I addressed the return envelope in the same manner to the house in Regent's Park, which I then occupied, and I wrote it all in a feigned hand to conceal my identity as much as possible. The time went on and I heard nothing from Mr. Plummer. I was touring in the provinces for the whole of 1888, and at the end of the year I came back to London and settled down in a new house in a different quarter of the town. By this time I had almost forgotten Mr. Plummer and my letter to him, and when in December, 1889, two years after I had sent it, my own envelope in my own handwriting, forwarded by the postal authorities from Regent's Park, was brought to me, I did not at first recognize it. I kept twisting it about, and thinking how like it was to my own writing, when the truth suddenly flashed on me. I opened it and read as follows:
"Georgetown, November 28th, 1889.
"Mrs. Lane,—Dear Madam,—Please pardon me for seeming neglect in answering your request. At the time of receiving your letter I could not write, and it got mislaid. Coming across it now, even at the eleventh hour, I place myself in condition to answer. I see a lady with dark blue eyes before me, of a very nervous life—warm-hearted—impulsive—tropical in her nature. A woman of intense feeling—a woman whose life has been one of constant disappointment. To-day the current of life flows on smoothly but monotonous. I sense from the sphere of this lady, a weariness of life—should think she felt like Alexander, because there are no more worlds for her to conquer. She is her own worst enemy. Naturally generous, she radiates her refined magnetic sphere to others, and does not get back that which she can utilize. I see a bright-complexioned gentleman in earth life—brave, generous, and kind—but does not comprehend your interior life. And yet thinks the world of you to-day. I feel from you talent of a marked order. And yet life is a disappointment. Not but what you have been successful in a refined, worldly sense, but your spiritual nature has been repressed. The society you move in is one of intellectual culture; that is not of the soul. And it is soul food that you are hungering for to-day. You are an inspired woman. Thought seems to you, all prepared, so to speak. But it does not seem to free the tiny little messengers of your soul life. Somehow I don't feel that confidence in myself in writing to you. The best kind of a reading is usually obtained in reading to a person direct. But if I don't meet your case we will call it a failure and let it go. The year of 1890 is going to be more favorable to you than for the last ten years. I think in some way you are to meet with more reciprocity of soul. As the divining rod points to the stream of water in the earth, so I find my intuitive eye takes cognizance of your interior life. You will in a degree catch my meaning through this, and it will come clearer, more through your intuition than through your intellect. I should say to you, follow your instincts and intuitions always through life. If this throws any light over your path I am glad.—I remain, most respectfully yours,
George Plummer."
Now there are two noticeable things in this letter. First, Mr. Plummer's estimate of my interior life almost coincides with Mr. Fletcher's given in 1879, ten years before. Next, although he read it through the medium of a letter written in 1887, he draws a picture of my position and surroundings in 1889. Both these things appeared to me very curious as coming from a stranger across the Atlantic, and I answered his letter at once, still preserving my slight incognita, and telling him that as he had read so much of my life from my handwriting of so long ago, I wished he would try to read more from words which went fresh from me to him. I also enclosed a piece of the handwriting of a friend. Mr. Plummer did not keep me waiting this time. His next letter was dated February 8th, 1890.
"Dear Madam,—I received yours of January 3rd, and would have answered before, but the spirit did not move. I have been tied to a sick room going on three months, with its cares and anxieties. Not the best condition for writing. The best condition to reflect your life, to give your soul strength, is to be at rest and have all earth conditions nullified. But that cannot be to-day. So I will try to penetrate the mystery of your life as best I can, and radiate to you at least some strength. The relation of soul is the difficulty of your life, and you are so perfectly inspirational that it makes the condition worse. Grand types of Manhood and Womanhood come to you from the higher life, and your spirit and soul catch the reflection, and are disappointed because they cannot live that life. But you are getting a development out of all this friction. Now if you would come in contact with that nature that could radiate to you just what you could give to it, you would be happy. Love is absolute, you well know. Often in the exchange of thought we give each other strength. And then every letter we write, every time we shake hands, we give some of our own personality out. You are too sensitive to the spheres of people. You have such a strong personality of life that the power that inspires you could not make the perfect junction until you get so, you had rather die than live. That was a condition of negation. Now you have been running on a dead level of nothingness for two years and a half." (This was exactly the time since my daughter had been taken from me). "I mean it seems so to you. Such a sameness of things. I get from the writing of the gentleman. A good sphere—warm hearted—true to his understanding of things. He seems to be a sort of a half-way house to you. That is, you roam in the sea of Ideality, down deep, you know. And he rather holds on to matter-of-fact—sort of ballast for you. You need it. For you are, in fact, ripe for the other life, though it is not time to go yet. Although a writer, yet you are a disappointed one. No mortal but yourself knows this. You have winged your way in flights, grand and lofty, and cannot pen it, is what is the matter. Now, in time you will, more perfectly than to-day, by the touch of your pen, portray your soul and its flights. Then I see you happy. This gentleman is an auxiliary power, whether the power in full of your life I do not to-day get. You are emphatically a woman of Destiny, and should follow your impressions, for through that intuitive law you will be saved. I mean by 'saved,' leap, as it were, across difficulties instead of going round. For your soul is more positive and awake to its necessities to-day than ever before in your life, particularly in the last six months. Body marriages are good under the physical law—bring certain unfoldments. But when mortal man and woman reach a certain condition of development, they become dissatisfied, and yearn for the full fruition of love. And there is no limitation of this law. Women usually bow to the heart-love law, that sometimes brings great joy and misery. The time is ripe for rulers. There will be put into the field men, and more specifically women, who have exemplified love divine. They will teach the law so plainly that they who run can read. And it can only be taught by those who have embodied it. Some years ago, in this country, there was a stir-up. It did its work in fermentation. The next must be humanization. The material world must come under the spiritual. Women will come to the front as inspired powers. This is what comes to me to write to you to-day. If it brings strength, or one ray of sun-shine to you, I am glad.—I remain, most respectfully yours,
George Plummer."
Mr. Plummer is not occupying a high position in the world, nor is he a rich man. He gains no popularity by his letters—he hears no applause—he reaps no personal benefit, nor will he take any money. It would be difficult, with any degree of reason, to charge him with cheating the public for the sake of emptying their pockets. I fail to see, therefore, how he can obtain his insight to one's interior life by mortal means, nor, unless compelled by a power superior to his own, why he should take the trouble to obtain it.
Another medium, whose health paid the sacrifice demanded of her for the exhibition of a power over which, at one time, she had no control, and which never brought her in anything but the thanks of her friends, is Mrs. Keningale Cook (Mabel Collins), whom I have mentioned in the "Story of my Spirit Child." There was a photographer in London, named Hudson, who had been very successful in developing spirit photographs. He would prepare to take an ordinary photograph, and on developing the plate, one or more spirit forms would be found standing by the sitter, in which forms were recognized the faces of deceased friends. Of course, the generality of people said that the plates were prepared beforehand with vague misty figures, and the imagination of the sitter did the rest. I had been for some time anxious to test Mr. Hudson's powers for myself, and one morning very early, between nine and ten o'clock, I asked Mrs. Cook, as a medium, to accompany me to his studio. He was not personally acquainted with either of us, and we went so early that we found him rather unwilling to set to work. Indeed, at first he declined. We disturbed him at breakfast and in his shirt sleeves, and he told us his studio had been freshly painted, and it was quite impossible to use it until dry. But we pressed him to take our photographs until he consented, and we ascended to the studio. It was certainly very difficult to avoid painting ourselves, and the screen placed behind was perfectly wet. We had not mentioned a word to Mr. Hudson about spirit photographs, and the first plate he took out and held up to the light, we saw him draw his coat sleeve across. When we asked him what he was doing, he turned to us and said, "Are you ladies Spiritualists?" When we answered in the affirmative, he continued, "I rubbed out the plate because I thought there was something on it, and most sitters would object. I often have to destroy three or four negatives before I get a clear picture." We begged him not to rub out any more as we were curious to see the results. He, consequently, developed three photographs of us, sitting side by side. The first was too indistinct to be of any use. It represented us, with a third form, merely a patch of white, lying on the ground, whilst a mass of hair was over my knee. "Florence" afterwards informed me that this was an attempt to depict herself. The second picture showed Mrs. Cook and myself as before, with "Charlie" standing behind me. I have spoken of "Charlie" (Stephen Charles Bernard Abbott) in "Curious Coincidences," and how much he was attached to me and mine. In the photograph he is represented in his cowl and monk's frock—with ropes round his waist, and his face looking down. In the third picture, an old lady in a net cap and white shawl was standing with her two hands on Mrs. Cook's shoulders. This was her grandmother, and the profile was so distinctly delineated, that her father, Mr. Mortimer Collins, recognized it at once as the portrait of his mother. The old lady had been a member of the Plymouth Brethren sect, and wore the identical shawl of white silk with an embroidered border which she used to wear during her last years on earth. I have seen many other spirit photographs taken by Mr. Hudson, but I adhere to my resolution to speak only of that which I have proved by the exercise of my own senses. I have the two photographs I mention to this day, and have often wished that Mr. Hudson's removal from town had not prevented my sitting again to him in order to procure the likenesses of other friends.