Quite recently Mr. Sidney Hamilton described in Pearson's Weekly (February 28, 1920) an "illustrated printed catalogue of forty pages" which he had with great difficulty secured. It was the secret catalogue of a firm which supplies apparatus to mediums. The outfit includes "a self-playing guitar," a telescopic aluminium trumpet (for direct voice), magic tables, luminous objects, and even "a fully materialized female form (with face that convinces) ... floats about the room and disappears ... Price £10." For eight shillings this firm supplies the secret how to turn one's vest inside out, without changing coat, while one is bound, and the knots sealed, in the cabinet. For two pounds ten you get an apparatus which will levitate a table so effectively that "two or three persons cannot hold the table down." In short, there is, and has been for decades, a trade supply of apparatus and instructions for producing the whole range of "physical phenomena," and any person who pays serious attention to such things is not very particular whether he is deceived or not.
I may close the chapter with a case of spirit sculpture, which is recorded by Truesdell in his Bottom Facts of Spiritualism. By this trick, he says, Mrs. Mary Hardy converted one of those professors whose names adorn the Spiritualist list. A pail of warm water, with several inches of paraffin floating on its surface, was weighed and put under the table. After a time a hand moulded most accurately in wax was found on the floor beside the pail, and it was found that the weight of the contents of the pail had decreased by precisely the weight of the hand. A convincing test, surely! But the professor had forgotten to allow for the evaporation of the warm water. The hand had been made in advance, by moulding the soft paraffin on the medium's hand, and hidden under Mrs. Hardy's skirt. It was transferred by her toes to the floor under the table.
Chapter VI THE SUBTLE ART OF CLAIRVOYANCE
Spiritualists distinguish between physical phenomena and psychic phenomena. The use of this distinction is obvious. When a man reads some such history of the movement as Podmore's, and then the works of Truesdell, Robinson, Maskelyne, Carrington, and others who have time after time exposed the ways of mediums, he is very ill-disposed to listen to stories of materialization, levitation, spirit photographs, spirit messages, spirit music, spirit voices, or anything of the kind. He knows that each single trick has been exposed over and over again. So the liberal Spiritualist urges him to leave out "physical" phenomena and concentrate on the "psychic." It is a word with an aroma of refinement, spirituality, even intellect. It indicates the sort of thing that respectable spirits ought to do. So we will turn to the psychic phenomenon of clairvoyance.
Here at once the reader's resolution to approach the subject gravely is disturbed by the recollection of a recent event. Many a reader would, quite apart from the question of consolation, like to find something true in Spiritualism. He may feel, as Professor William James did, that the mass of fraud is so appalling that, for the credit of humanity, we should like to think that it is the citizens of another world, not of ours, who are responsible. He may feel that, if it is all fraud, a number of quite distinguished people occupy a very painful position in modern times. He would like to find at least something serious; something that is reasonably capable of a Spiritualist interpretation. But as soon as he approaches any class of phenomena some startling instance of fraud rises in his memory and tries to prejudice him. In this case it is the "Masked Medium."
A recent case in the law courts has brought this to mind. In 1919, when the Sunday Express was making its grave search for ghosts, in order to rebuke the materialism of our age, it offered £500 for a materialization. A gentleman, who (with an eye on the police) genially waived the money offer aside, offered to bring an unknown lady and present a materialization, and some startling feats of clairvoyance in addition. A sitting was arranged, and the lady, who wore a mask, gave a clairvoyant demonstration that could not be surpassed in all the annals of Spiritualism. Her ghost was rather a failure; though Lady Glenconnor, who has the true Spiritualist temperament, recognized in it an "initial stage of materialization." But the clairvoyance was great. The sitters, while the lady was still out of the room, put various objects connected with the dead (a ring, a stud, a sealed letter, etc.) in a bag. The bag was closed, and was put inside a box; and the lady, who was then introduced, described every object with marvellous accuracy. Sir A. C. Doyle said that the medium gave "a clear proof of clairvoyance." Mr. Gow said that he saw "no normal explanation."
And it was fraud from beginning to end, as everybody now knows. Clairvoyance must be distinguished from prophecy, which Spiritualists sometimes claim. Prediction means the art of seeing things which do not exist, and it is therefore not even mentioned in this book. Clairvoyance means the art of seeing things through a brick wall (or any other opaque covering). Now this was an admirable piece of clairvoyance. Even Spiritualists present were suspicious, because the lady was quite unknown. Yet they could not see any suggestion of fraud or any "normal explanation." Did they turn back upon their earlier experiences of clairvoyance, when the fraud was confessed, and ask if those also may not have been due to trickery? Not in the least. Everything is genuine until it is found out—and, sometimes, even afterwards.
Mr. Selbit, the conjurer who really conducted the performance, is naturally unwilling to give away his secret. He acknowledged immediately after the performance, as Mr. Moseley describes in his Amazing Séance, that he had fooled the audience. The masked lady was an actress with no more abnormal power than Sir Oliver Lodge has. Mr. Stuart Cumberland suggested at the time that, when the assistant went to the door to call the medium, he handed the box to a confederate and received a dummy box. He thought that the medium would then have time to study and memorize the contents of the real box (including a sealed letter in dog-German) before she entered the room. From the account, which is not precise enough, I can hardly see how she would have time for this. But Mr. Selbit acknowledged that a dummy box was substituted. He says that a person entered the room in the dark, took the box from the table and substituted a dummy, and afterwards impersonated the ghost. This is most important for us. The room had been searched, and such acute observers as Mr. Stuart Cumberland and Superintendent Thomas, of Scotland Yard, were on the watch; yet a confederate got into the room. After this an ordinary Spiritualist séance is child's play. A long and minute description of the objects in the bag, which must have been spelled letter by letter in parts, on account of the difficult wording of the sealed letter, was in some way telegraphed or communicated to the girl under the eyes of this watchful group. It would be scarcely more marvellous to suppose that Mr. Selbit, after studying the contents of the box, took her place before their faces and they never knew it!