“Eusapia Palladino is dead and I have little doubt that she departed hence without forgiving me for the part I took in spoiling her business in America by assisting in the exposure of her little bag of tricks. It is an open question, however, whether the exposure of her trickery, or in fact of any of the class of sensation mongers to which she belonged, ever turned a soul from belief in Spiritism; some of the leading newspapers, in commenting on her death, show that in spite of the complete exposure of her methods, there still remains in the minds of many intelligent people the conviction that she was far from an impostor. I cannot understand how any reasonable person could see in this woman anything more than a fairly clever charlatan, whose success was due more to the credulity of her audiences than the skill of her performances. What did all her exposures amount to? Those who believed have continued to believe, and in spite of the old saw, ‘Truth is mighty and must prevail,’ the name of Eusapia Palladino will be on the lips of men long, long after her exposers are forgotten dust.”
CHAPTER V
ANN O’DELIA DISS DEBAR
The coming and going of Ann O’Delia Diss Debar are mysteries for there is no record of her birth and no trace of her death, but the “in between time” furnished material enough for an entire book rather than a single chapter, and gave her sufficient opportunity to have it said of her that she was “one of the most extraordinary fake mediums and mystery swindlers the world has ever known.” Some even have classed her among the ten most prominent and dangerous female criminals of the world, and her repertoire is claimed to have run the full gamut from petty confidence games to elaborately contrived schemes aimed at the magnates of Wall Street. According to report she did not hesitate to victimize the innocent and the mentally unsound and left behind her a trail of sorrow, depleted pocket-books, and impaired morals that has seldom been equaled. Like many master criminals she escaped punishment for a time but in the end fell into the toils of the law and served time both here and in England. The marvellous tact with which she devoted her great powers to the purposes of self aggrandizement and profit is without parallel, and for cunning knavery, Cagliostro, by comparison, seems to have been an amateur. It is alleged that her crimes ranged from the smallest to the largest with morals as low as one can imagine in a human being while, worst of all, she flaunted this viciousness openly, making no effort whatever to cloak her degeneracy.
Nevertheless her name stands among the half score or more in the front ranks of the history of Spiritualism and with Daniel Dunglas Home shares the palm for the successful manipulation of big schemes. It was not unusual for her to make deals that ran into the hundreds of thousands of dollars and though the two were early in the mediumistic field, I believe that to this day they have had no peer in this respect. Possibly all other mediums combined could not have aggregated the amount of money obtained by these two.
Whether Home outbids Diss Debar for preëminence as to gain it is hard to say but it is certain that he “could not hold a candle” to her versatility. Both appear to have had the advantage of being scholastic, and well versed in historic lore and the classics, which gave them great prestige with cultured people, opening the doors to the social life of the “upper-ten,” and bringing within their reach people of wealth as well as scholars and scientists, all of whom were apparently perfectly willing to be deceived, and to unwittingly aid in making the careers of these two adventurers “howling successes” up to the time of their undoing in the courts.
Unlike Home, who never in all the vicissitudes of his career denied his personality, Diss Debar as frequently as she changed her base of operations seems to have changed her name and her ancestry. Once in the heyday of her career she gave a series of interviews claiming to be the daughter of King Louis I of Bavaria and Lola Montez, a Spanish-Irish dancer who had a spectacular and adventurous career which covered Europe in its course, reached to the Russian Court and later America. It is supposed that Diss Debar was the daughter of a political refugee by the name of Salomen who settled in Kentucky and that she was born in 1849 although there is no documentary proof of it. According to the story she was named Editha and as she grew up became known as a wayward child bent on doing what she should not and perfectly callous to all restraining influence of parental affection. “At times her waywardness took such extraordinary turns that her parents thought she was not entirely sane and sought the advice of a doctor, who said she was really a sort of victim to an unholy passion, but that she would grow out of her failing as she grew older,” a prophecy which never came true.
When Editha Salomen became of age she left home and for several years her father lost all track of her. Later, to his great astonishment, he discovered her settled in Baltimore, moving among the best of society, and posing as a member of European aristocracy. As the “Countess Landsfeldt and Baroness Rosenthal” of the peerage of Bavaria she availed herself of all the privileges which members of nobility enjoyed in the Republic, was courted by American youth and found American women “only too delighted to be led by a Countess.”
Where the Kentucky girl with her peculiar temperament and characteristics could possibly have secured the education and knowledge which she displayed through all her exploits I am at a loss to understand. She must have inherited a liberal share of shrewdness, together with a fancy for reading ancient history, and at an early age realized that although not handsome she possessed some charm of personality which attracted attention and which enabled her to pose successfully as a member of the nobility.
It is said that in this rôle Editha had no difficulty in raising funds. It was easy to encourage a prosperous young man into a love trap and make him believe she would soon marry him. “Then one day she would find that she had to pay a large sum of money to meet a necessary obligation, that her careless bankers in Bavaria had failed to remit a few hundred thousand dollars, on account of which she most reluctantly accepted temporary relief from the rich suitor. She took as much as she dared and thereafter cut him.” In this way she managed to cheat the youth of Baltimore out of about a quarter of a million dollars. She gave herself up to luxury and extravagance; took freely to smoking cigarettes impregnated with opium and was soon landed in Bellevue Hospital suffering from “acute nervous exhaustion.”