This Baron Schrenck, you think, was a terrible fellow at exposures. Unhappily, our last instance must be the exposure of his own medium, Eva C. This will fitly crown the chapter for two reasons. First, because Sir A. C. Doyle recommends her to us as a genuine materializing medium of our own times. He says in the Debate that, while Spiritualists have been much "derided" for claiming that spirits build up temporary forms out of the medium's body, "recent scientific investigation shows that their assertion was absolutely true. (Cheers.)" I quote the printed Debate (p. 32), and it will be recognized that here at least I am not shirking my opponent's strongest evidence, for Sir A. C. Doyle at once explains that he means the case of Eva C. He gave his own (quite inaccurate) version of the facts, and, to the delight of his supporters, he went on:—
Don't you think it is simply the insanity of incredulity to waive that aside? Imagine discussing what happened in 1866 ... when you have scientific facts of this sort remaining unanswered.
So, you see, I was very heavily punished in that contest, and I have to try to redeem my "insanity"; but perhaps the reader will remember what Sir A. C. Doyle forgot, that he had stipulated that I should open the debate and deal with his books. No doubt I was quite free to take other evidence also, but I had an idea that, since this evidence was published in 1914 and Sir Arthur's books were published in 1918 and 1919, he had not mentioned it because he disdained it.
The other reason why the case of Eva C. is important is because it shows us modern scientific men at work. In the earlier days of the movement faking was easy. No one searched a medium, especially a lady medium. She could have yards of butter-cloth or muslin and even dolls or masks under her skirts. Even now the ordinary medium is not searched, as a rule. A friend of mine went recently to a materializing medium near London—it is all going on still—and was allowed to feel the medium over his clothes. He could easily tell that the man had yards of muslin wrapped round his body, but he said nothing, and he got his money's worth; a man dressed in muslin, in a bad light, being recognized by Spiritualists as a deceased relative. Most materializations are still the medium in a mask or beard and muslin. In some cases, in very poor light, the ghost is merely a white rag, a picture, or even a faint patch of light from a lantern, or a phosphorized streak.
Now we come to the "scientific facts." Half the professors and other scientific men quoted as adherents by modern Spiritualist writers and speakers are not Spiritualists at all. Flammarion, Ochorowicz, Foa, Bottazzi, Richet, de Vesme, Schrenck-Notzing, Morselli, Flournoy, Maxwell, Ostwald, etc., are not, and never were, Spiritualists. Most of them regard Spiritualism as childish and mischievous. But they believe that mediums have remarkable psychic powers, and they admit levitations and (in many cases) materializations. They think that a mysterious force of the living medium, not spirits, does these things, and they talk of a "new science." I agree with them that the idea of spirits strolling along from the Elysian fields to play banjoes and lift tables and make ghosts for us is rather peculiar, but I am not sure that their idea is much less peculiar. However, they promise us research under scientific conditions, and they say that they have got materializations under such conditions. "Eva C." is the grand example.
Who is this mysterious lady? I have already let the reader into the secret. Sir A. C. Doyle may justly plead that he does not read German; and the French version of her exploits is, he may be surprised to hear, very different from Baron Schrenck's fuller version in German, and very wrong and misleading. But does Sir Arthur never read the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research?
As long ago as July, 1914, it contained a very good article on Marthe Beraud, which tells most of the facts (except about her morals), and quite openly disdains these wonderful photographs which have made such an impression on Sir A. C. Doyle. From that article, which betrays, in the official organ of the Society, almost the same "insanity of incredulity" as I did, he would have learned things that might have saved him from the worst "howler" of the Debate. It tells that "Eva C.," as was well known all over the continent in 1914, was Marthe Beraud, the medium of the "Villa Carmen materializations" in Algiers in 1905. It gives a lengthy report on the case by an Algiers lawyer, M. Marsault, who knew the family at the Villa Carmen intimately, and often saw the performances; and this report contains an explicit confession by Marthe that she had no abnormal powers whatever. To excuse herself she said that there was a trap-door in the room, and "ghosts" were introduced by others. That was a lie, for there was no trap-door; and those who obstinately wished to believe in the ghosts rejected the whole of Marsault's weighty evidence on the ground that he said there was a trap-door!
I have before me photographs of the Algiers ghost and of Eva C.'s ghost. They plainly show Marthe dressed up as a ghost, in the familiar old way, while Professor Richet gravely photographs her, and Sir Oliver Lodge recommends these things to our serious notice. However, Marthe found Algiers unhealthy after this, and she returned to France and set up in the materializing trade. Mme. Bisson found her and adopted her, and changed her name; and Baron von Schrenck-Notzing settled down to a three years' study of her marvellous performances. It was on the strength of his book and photographs that Miss Verrall in 1914 (in the Proceedings S. P. R.) gave a verdict not much different from my own. She found some evidence of abnormal power, and a great deal of fraud. I see no evidence whatever of abnormal psychic power if—it is not clear—this is what Miss Verrall means. Yet Sir A. C. Doyle, who seems to know nothing about the matter beyond Mme. Bisson's worthless work, puts the facts before a London audience in the year 1920 in the language I have quoted.
In the beginning Marthe plainly impersonated the ghost, as Baron Schrenck admits. He believes that she did it unconsciously. The sooner that excuse for fraudulent mediums is abandoned the better. She was quite obviously not in a trance, though she pretended to be, throughout the whole three years. For smaller "ghosts" (white patches, streaks, arms, etc.) she used muslin, gloves, rubber—all sorts of things. As a rule, she knew when they were going to let off the magnesium-flare and photograph her. She had had ample time behind the curtain to arrange her effects. In one photograph, taken too suddenly, she has a white rag on her knee, which would look like a hand in the red light, and her real hand is holding the "ghost" over her head! After that Baron Schrenck sadly admitted that she used her hands. Mme. Bisson does not; so Sir Arthur does not know this. In another photograph she is supposed to accept a cigarette in a materialized third hand. It is obviously her bare foot, and, if you look closely, you see that her "face" is a piece of white stuff pinned to the curtain. She is really leaning back and stretching up her foot. The book reeks with cheating.
After a time she began to stick or paste on the cabinet or the curtain pictures cut out of the current illustrated papers, and daubed with paint, provided with false noses, or adorned with beards and moustaches. President Wilson has a heavy cavalry moustache and a black eye; but the glasses, collar, tie, and tie-pin, and even the marks of the scissors, are unmistakable. Baron Schrenck was forced to admit that dozens of pinholes were found (not by him) on the cabinet-wall, and that the pins must have been smuggled in, deceptively, in spite of a control which he claimed to be perfect. In fact, poor Baron Schrenck was driven from concession to concession until his case was very limp. Of all these things Sir A. C. Doyle knew nothing; and, although he had the portrait of President Wilson in his hands at the Queen's Hall, only disguised by a moustache and a few daubs of paint, he assured the audience he believed that it was the ectoplasm of the medium's body moulded by spirit forces into a human form!