There is No Death

by Florence Marryat

I really didn't care if he stayed long or not. I seemed to have procured the last proof I needed of the truth of the doctrine I had held so long, that there is no such thing as Death, as we understand it in this world. Here were the two spiritual beings (for believing in the identity of whom I had called myself a credulous fool fifty times over, only to believe in them more deeply still) in prôpria personæ in New York, claiming me in a land of strangers, who had not yet found out who I was. I was more deeply affected than I had ever been under such circumstances before, and more deeply thankful. "Florence" made great friends with our American cousins even on her first appearance. Mrs. Williams' conductor told me he thought he had never heard anything more beautiful than the idea of the spirit-child crossing the ocean to guard its mother in a strange country, and particularly, as he could feel by her influence, what a pure and beautiful spirit she was. When I told him she had left this world at ten days old, he said that accounted for it, but he could see there was nothing earthly about her.

I was delighted with this séance, and hoped to sit with Mrs. Williams many times more, but fate decreed that I should leave New York sooner than I had anticipated. The perfect freedom with which it was conducted charmed me, and the spirits seemed so familiar with the sitters. There was no "Sweet Spirit, hear my prayer," business about it. No fear of being detained or handled among the spirits, and no awe, only intense tenderness on the part of their relations. It was to this cause I chiefly attributed the large number of materializations I witnessed—forty having taken place that evening. They spoke far more distinctly and audibly too than those I had seen in England, but I believe the dry atmosphere of the United States is far more favorable to the process of materialization. I perceived another difference. Although the female spirits were mostly clad in white, they wore dresses and not simply drapery, whilst the men were invariably attired in the clothes (or semblances of the clothes) they would have worn had they been still on earth. I left Mrs. Williams' rooms, determined to see as much as I possibly could of mediumship whilst I was in the United States.

[CHAPTER XXV.]

II. Mrs. Eva Hatch.

I was so disappointed at being hurried off to Boston before I had seen any more of the New York media, that I took the earliest opportunity of attending a séance there. A few words I had heard dropped about Eva Hatch made me resolve to visit her first. She was one of the Shaker sect, and I heard her spoken of as a remarkably pure and honest woman, and most reliable medium. Her first appearance quite gave me that impression. She had a fair, placid countenance, full of sweetness and serenity, and a plump matronly figure. I went incognita, as I had done to Mrs. Williams, and mingled unnoticed with the crowd. Mrs. Hatch's cabinet was quite different from Mrs. Williams'. It was built of planks like a little cottage, and the roof was pierced with numerous round holes for ventilation, like a pepper-box. There was a door in the centre, with a window on either side, all three of which were shaded by dark curtains. The windows, I was told, were for the accommodation of those spirits who had not the power to materialize more than a face, or head and bust. Mrs. Hatch's conductor was a woman, who sat near the cabinet, as in the other case.

Mrs. Eva Hatch had not entered the cabinet five minutes before she came out again, under trance, with a very old lady with silver hair clinging to her arm, and walked round the circle. As they did so, the old lady extended her withered hand, and blessed the sitters. She came quite close to each one and was distinctly visible to all. I was told that this was the spirit of Mrs. Hatch's mother, and that it was her regular custom to come first and give her blessing to the séance. I had never seen the spirit of an aged person before, and it was a beautiful sight. She was the sweetest old lady too, very small and fragile looking, and half reclining on her daughter's bosom, but smiling serenely upon every one there. When they had made the tour of the room, Mrs. Hatch re-entered the cabinet, and did not leave it again until the sitting was concluded.

There were a great many sitters present, most of whom were old patrons of Mrs. Hatch, and so, naturally, their friends came for them first. It is surprising though, when once familiarized with materialization, how little one grows to care to see the spirits who come for one's next door neighbor. They are like a lot of prisoners let out, one by one, to see their friends and relations. The few moments they have to spare are entirely devoted to home matters of no possible interest to the bystander. The first wonder and possible shock at seeing the supposed dead return in their old likeness to greet those they left on earth over, one listens with languid indifference, and perhaps a little impatience for one's own turn to come, to the whispered utterances of strangers. Mrs. Hatch's "cabinet spirits" or "controls," however, were very interesting. One, who called herself the "Spirit of Prayer," came and knelt down in the middle of the circle, and prayed with us. She had asked for the gas to be extinguished first, and as she prayed she became illuminated with flashes of light, in the shape of stars and crosses, until she was visible from head to foot, and we could see her features and dress as if she had been surrounded by electricity.

Two more cabinet spirits were a negro and negress, who appeared together, chanting some of their native hymns and melodies. When I saw these apparitions, I thought to myself: "Here is a good opportunity to discover trickery, if trickery there is." The pair were undoubtedly of the negro race. There was no mistaking their thick lips and noses and yellow-white eyes, nor their polished brown skins, which no charcoal can properly imitate. They were negroes without doubt; but how about the negro bouquet? Everyone who has mixed with colored people in the East or the West knows what that is, though it is very difficult to describe, being something like warm rancid oil mingled with the fumes of charcoal, with a little worse thrown in. "Now," I thought, "if these forms are human, there will be some odor attached to them, and that I am determined to find out." I caught, therefore, at the dress of the young woman as she passed, and asked her if she would kiss me. She left her companion directly, and put her arms (which were bare) round my neck, and embraced me several times; and I can declare, on my oath, that she was as completely free from anything like the smell of a colored woman as it was possible for her to be. She felt as fresh and sweet and pure as a little child.

Many other forms appeared and were recognized by the circle, notably a very handsome one who called herself the Empress Josephine; but as they could not add a grain's weight to my testimony I pass them over. I had begun to think that "Florence" was not going to visit me that evening, when the conductor of the séance asked if there was anybody in the room who answered to the name of "Bluebell." I must indulge in a little retrospect here, and tell my readers that ten years previous to the time I am writing of, I had lost my brother-in-law, Edward Church, under very painful circumstances. He had been left an orphan and in control of his fortune at a very early age, and had lived with my husband, Colonel Ross-Church, and myself. But poor "Ted" had been his own worst enemy. He had possessed a most generous heart and affectionate disposition, but these had led him into extravagances that swallowed up his fortune, and then he had taken to drinking and killed himself by it. I and my children had loved him dearly, but all our prayers and entreaties had had no avail, and in the end he had become so bad that the doctors had insisted upon our separation. Poor "Ted" had consequently died in exile, and this had been a further aggravation of our grief. For ten years I had been trying to procure communication with him in vain, and I had quite given up expecting to see him again. Only once had I heard "Bluebell" (his pet name for me) gasped out by an entranced clairvoyant, but nothing further had come of it. Now, as I heard it for the second time, from a stranger's lips in a foreign country, it naturally roused my expectations, but I thought it might be only a message for me from "Ted."

"Is there anyone here who recognizes the name of 'Bluebell'?" repeated the conductor. "I was once called so by a friend," I said. "Someone is asking for that name. You had better come up to the cabinet," she replied. I rose at once and did as she told me, but when I reached the curtain I encountered "Florence." "My darling child," I said, as I embraced her, "why did you ask for 'Bluebell'?" She did not answer me, except by shaking her head, placing her finger on her lips, and pointing downwards to the carpet. I did not know what to make of it. I had never known her unable to articulate before. "What is the matter, dear?" I said; "can't you speak to me to-night?" Still she shook her head, and tapped my arm with her hand, to attract my attention to the fact that she was pointing vigorously downwards. I looked down, too, when, to my astonishment, I saw rise through the carpet what looked to me like the bald head of a baby or an old man, and a little figure, not more than three feet in height, with Edward Church's features, but no hair on its head, came gradually into view, and looked up in my face with a pitiful, deprecating expression, as if he were afraid I should strike him. The face, however, was so unmistakably Ted's, though the figure was so ludicrously insignificant, that I could not fail to recognize him. "Why, Ted!" I exclaimed, "have you come back to see me at last?" and held out my hand. The little figure seized it, tried to convey it to his lips, burst into tears, and sank down through the carpet much more rapidly than he had come up.