LII
SUPERSTITION
"Superstition and infidelity usually go together. Professed atheists have trafficked in augury, and men who do not believe in God will believe in ghosts." To-day I take up my parable concerning superstition, to which, time out of mind, the human spirit has betaken itself as soon as it parted company with faith.
I once asked a lady who, in her earlier life, had lived in the very heart of society, and who returned to it after a long absence, what was the change which struck her most forcibly. She promptly replied, "The growth of superstition. I hear people seriously discussing ghosts. In my day people who talked in that way would have been put in Bedlam; their relations would have required no other proof that they were mad."
My own experience entirely confirms this testimony as to the development of superstition, and I have had some peculiarly favourable opportunities of observing its moral effect upon its votaries. The only superstition tolerated in my youth was table-turning, and that was always treated as more than half a joke. To sit in a darkened room round a tea-table, secretly join hands under the mahogany, and "communicate a revolving motion" to it (as Mr. Pickwick to his fists) was not bad fun when the company was mainly young and larky, but contained one or two serious people who desired to probe the mystery to its depths. Or, perhaps, our psychic force would cause the respectable piece of furniture to rear itself upon one leg, and deal out with a ponderous foot mysterious raps, which the serious people interpreted with their own admirable solemnity. I well remember a massive gentleman with an appalling stammer who proclaimed that some lost document which we had asked the table to discover would be found in the Vatican Library, "wrapped in a ragged palimpsest of Tertullian;" and the quaintness of the utterance dissolved the tables, or at least the table-turners, in laughter. This particular form of superstition became discredited among respectable people when sharpers got hold of it and used it as an engine for robbing the weak-minded. It died, poor thing, of exposure, and its epitaph was written by Browning in "Mr. Sludge, the Medium."
It was the same with ghost-stories. People told them—partly to fill gaps when reasonable conversation failed, and partly for the fun of making credulous hearers stare and gasp. But no one, except ladies as weak-minded as Byng's Half-Aunt in "Happy Thoughts," ever thought of taking them seriously. Bishop Wilberforce invented a splendid story about a priest and a sliding panel and a concealed confession; and I believe that he habitually used it as a foolometer, to test the mental capacity of new acquaintances. But the Bishop belonged to that older generation which despised superstition, and during the last few years, twaddle of this kind has risen to the dignity of a pseudo-science.
Necromancy is a favourite substitute for religion. It supplies the element of mystery without which the human spirit cannot long subsist; and, as it does not require its adherents to practise self-denial, or get up early on Sunday, or subscribe to charities, or spend their leisure in evil-smelling slums, it is a cult particularly well adapted to a self-indulgent age. I vividly remember a scene which occurred just before the Coronation. A luxurious luncheon had been prolonged by the aid of coffee, kümmel, and cigarettes till four o'clock; and the necromancers—surfeited, flushed, and a little maudlin—were lolling round the drawing-room fire. A whispered colloquy in a corner was heard through the surrounding chatter, and the hostess saw her opportunity. "Dear Lady De Spook, do let us hear. I know you are such a wonderful medium."
Lady De Spook. Really, it was nothing at all out of the common. I had come home dead tired from the opera, and just as I was going to bed I heard that rap—you know what I mean?
Mr. Sludge (enthusiastically). Oh yes, indeed I do! No one who has ever heard it can ever forget it.