My Life as an Author

by Martin Farquhar Tupper

The little I have seen and heard shall, however, now, upon a reasonable call, be related simply and honestly, without any theory beyond what is parenthetically alluded to in my last sentence, and with no attempt at explanation, but only the expression of this truth, viz., that no collusion apparently was possible (according to my judgment) in any of the following manifestations, and that I promise only to state plain facts, however, others may seek to expound them. Of course, where cunning and dishonesty may contrive conjuring tricks it is not worth while to treat such "manifestations" seriously, but I speak of what seemed to be genuine, if trifling, marvels.

To begin, then, with my earliest experience, written down the same evening, and sent to the Brighton Gazette, from which I give an extract. The date is Thursday, January 25th, 1849; the host, the late Mr. Howell, of Hove; the performer, Alexis, pupil of M. Marcillet, who accompanied him. After clairvoyance, induced by passes, Alexis is blindfolded carefully, and then, with the host's own pack of cards, wins blindfolded at games of écarté with myself. Next, a French book, brought by an incredulous physician, was placed open upon the forehead of Alexis, who read aloud some lines of it. This experiment, with variations, was several times repeated. The third was my own test. I had sealed up something unknown to all the world but myself in twelve envelopes of white paper. Alexis, placing the parcel on his forehead, in broken and difficult enunciation, said "it was writing, two names, both commencing with M; one of them an English name, the other French, or some language not English; that the first contained four letters, the second six (being really nine)," but he failed to give the names, which were Mary Magdalene. It was suggested that if they had been written in French his mind might have more easily discerned them. After this, several locks of hair and sealed-up parcels, watches, and lockets, were (with some unsuccessful attempts) guessed at, seemingly to the satisfaction of the ladies and gentlemen who had respectively brought them for explanation. The last experiment regarded a large bon-bon box covered up, in which the host himself had concealed a mystery. Alexis described it as wrapped in several folds, graven all round, oval, a portrait of a young person of eighteen, but done a long time ago, set in gold, "femme habillée en blanc; elle est morte, la tête au droit." In all these respects the object was faithfully described, in particular to the "long time ago," which, by a date on the portrait, was found to be 1769. And there were some other experiments, but Alexis, as appearing to be well-nigh worn out with mental exertion, was then mercifully unmesmerised.

I may mention, by the way, that the said host at whose house Alexis attended was a firm believer in the power of the human will, and as connected therewith, in mesmerism, whereby he used to cure people of headaches and other infirmities; and, at length, through his philanthropic and energetic attraction to himself of other folks' disorders (for he fancied he imbibed for his own behoof the pains he drained ab extrâ), he unhappily became a paralytic, dying not long after. One of his less perilous attempts at the miraculous, I remember was this: he brought a street Arab into his drawing-room, and put a half-crown down on the carpet for him to pick up if he could, and keep for himself; however, this the boy found, to his wonderment, to be practically impossible, seeing that Mr. Howell had secretly willed that he could not and should not pick up the prize. But such efforts of a man's strong will are well evidenced in numerous other instances, and serve to prove that no spiritual interferences beyond our noble selves are essential to such mysteries.

Amongst other reminiscences of the marvellous, I may refer to a private exhibition in the Berners Street Hotel, to which I was invited by Mrs. Washington Phillips (of whom more anon), to investigate Mr. Vernon's influence over a little girl some twelve years old. The child's specialty was an alleged capability of reading without eyesight, the back of her head low down on the nape doing duty in the way of vision. To omit numerous other successful examples (some failing, which I thought so far evidences of the absence of collusion), I will detail my own conclusive experiment. But let me anticipate an objection relating to the exhibitor himself. Some of our party, a very distinguished one, and known to each other, kept Mr. Vernon in conversation at a distance, while the child was reading our thoughts, or the actual words of print unknown to ourselves, quite independently of his manipulations; he having first comatised her into a mesmeric state of trance. The invited guests were told, as in the Alexis case, that we might bring our own tests; and I had put into my pocket a small volume of Milton, from which she might read on the nape of her neck, if she could. We had previously bandaged her eyes, even to plaistering them up; and were only bidden to be careful not to let the handkerchief cover the place of reverted seeing on her neck. I stood behind the child, and, without knowing where I opened my little Milton, placed the expanded volume on the back of her head; and forthwith, slowly and with difficulty, as a child might, she read two lines of blank verse, which I and all immediately verified! Now, I state a fact which I cannot explain; for I myself had not seen the lines, so my own brain was not read: neither could Mr. Vernon nor any one else have been concerned in the matter. I believe this sort of thing to be well-known to spiritualists, and they may, for aught I know, refer it to angelic or necromantic interposition: whereas, what physicians tell us of hypochondria is, perhaps, a mysterious explanation nearer the mark.

The same child, refreshed into an abnormal ecstasy, taking the hands of several of our party professed to read their thoughts, with admitted success in some instances. With me she failed, but then I was not considered en rapport. Female believers are always much more susceptible than masculine sceptics. However, I certainly had proof of the child's marvellous power in this slight matter following. Two young ladies had successfully brought her in spirit, into their mother's drawing-room in Berkeley Square, the child graphically explaining all she saw as she was mentally led along, and on being asked if she noticed anything new and pretty on the mantel-piece, she got up and placed herself in an attitude of dancing, and she said there was a figure and it was clothed in lace. This was true; it was a bisque statuette of Taglioni. On being led round the room, still in spirit and clairvoyante, the child strangely described wax-flowers under a glass, and laughed heartily at "Taffy riding his goat,"—a china ornament which she could have known nothing of.

With respect to the lady who invited us, I can relate a strange story wherewith the Brighton doctors in 1848 were familiar. Mrs. P. had an invalid daughter subject to violent headaches, and as she had read of the remedial powers of mesmerism from Chauncey Townsend's book, privately resolved to try and cure her, and soon set her to sleep by the usual "passes." However, when after twelve and even eighteen hours the girl could not be awakened, Mrs. P. and her husband (a clergyman, who knew nothing of the cause) were alarmed and summoned doctor after doctor, to wake her, if they could. But all was in vain, until some one turning to the peccant and magical volume found that by the simple process of reversing the passes the abnormal slumber might be made to cease. This was done at once, and all came more than right, for the girl woke up without her usual headache, and was cured from that hour. At this time of day, after thirty years and more, society having become wiser, and bur medical men more physiologically hygienic, we all now wot of mesmerism, and innumerable cases of cure through that mysterious form of catalepsy.

For another small experience, I have several times been among a crowd of others at public exhibitions of those who speak off-hand in prose or verse, "inspirationally" as they call it, but as the outer world prefer to believe, improvisatorially, and certainly amid such gifted persons Mrs. Cora Tappan stands out prominently in my memory. At the Brighton Pavilion I gave her for a theme to be versified on the spot extempore my own heraldic motto, "L'espoir est ma force," and to my astonishment, in a burst of rhymed eloquence she rolled off at least a dozen four-line stanzas on Hope and its spiritual power. Some one else among the audience gave the subject of cremation, and forthwith the lady descanted with terrific force on funeral pyres and the horrors of Gehenna; whilst a male performer affected to personate sundry well-known dead orators of past days (for as the inspirers were supposed to be disembodied spirits no living orators were allowable), and he certainly imitated both voices and topics with singular success. But everybody has heard of this sort of thing, sufficiently remarkable as a mental effort; and we have all similarly witnessed the more material marvels of Maskelyne and Cook, known to be mechanical contrivances which are still riddles to the world.

Again, there are those who draw and paint in a condition of spiritual ecstasy; and I remember visiting a public exhibition in Bond Street, exclusively of most curious and intricate pictures, asserted to have been inspired by dead artists, some being elaborate flourishings of scenes and figures, said to be thus depicted as with lightning speed. As to living artists, there are in existence several excitable youths and damsels who write and draw very rapidly in an ecstatic state; and I myself possess a dreamy conglomerate of microscopic faces crowded together, and stated to have been drawn thus instantaneously to prove to us "the cloud of witnesses," "the innumerable company of angels," by whom we are continually surrounded.

I pretermit with brief mention sundry inexplicable wonders, such as those wherewith the spiritualistic papers are frequently full, only stating that I was one of those who investigated the case of the Rev. Mr. Vaughan's pew-opener, at St. James's, Brighton, whose daughter was thought to be "bewitched." Certainly, strange knockings accompanied her when she came in at my call, much like those I heard many years ago at Rochester, U.S.; and her mother (a pious and credible widow) assured me, with tears of unfeigned anxiety, that the chairs and stools followed her about!—a statement only half credible, when we reflect that there is an animal magnetism as well as a mineral one, and that we know nothing of the reasons of either. Our ignorance on such matters is so profound that we may fairly be credulous unless we obstinately refuse altogether our belief in human testimony; but if we dare to do this, higher interests are endangered than spiritualistics. Our religion is mainly based upon credible evidence.

There is certainly much that is mysterious in the toy they call "Planchette," a triangular thin slab of polished wood on a couple of small wheels, with a pencil at the apex. Hands laids upon this by two persons properly conditioned, will give apparent vitality and volition to the small machine, and make the pencil seem to write of itself in answer to expressed (or meditated) questions. At a wealthy mansion in South Kensington, for instance, I saw two charming young Italian ladies, sisters, covering rapidly sheet after sheet with the abstrusest essays on occult subjects, given to them to write upon inspirationally; and the chief wonder was (as a learned friend by me well observed) where the knowledge came from, so seemingly infused into two unscientific young girls. Afterwards the said learned friend tried Planchette with me, and we were considerably startled to find that when I asked of the so-called spirits, "What think ye of Christ?" the pencil under our unconsciously-guided hands made answer, "With the utmost reverence!" I need not assure mankind that neither my friend nor I (both incredulous and unwilling witnesses) lent ourselves or one another to any deception, and were mentally inclined, if at all, to the expectation that the "spirits" might rather blaspheme than bless. It is right to mention that, beyond the pair of young ladies and our two selves, only the host and hostess were in the room; of whom I have this further wonder to report, viz., that the host, whom I must not specify by name without his leave, is afflicted with blindness, notwithstanding which and his alleged incompetence towards poetry as an old naval officer, his wife showed me several copybooks full of blank verse written by him in a hand unlike his own, and supposed by them to be inspired by Young, as a continuation of his "Night Thoughts." The captain and his lady also told us how frequently flowers and sweetmeats (!) were showered on them from the ceiling at their domestic dual séances: and on another occasion a lady showed my wife and me a paper of seed pearls, alleged to have been flung into her lap from the heavens—through the ceiling—by her departed lord and master! Similarly, a lady well known in the professedly spiritualistic circles, deposited round her chair, in the dark, at Mr. S. C. Hall's, a profusion of bouquets—probably from Covent Garden;—and that, notwithstanding the hostess had herself searched the lady before the séance, as it was known that Mrs. G's special gift from the spirits was the multitudinous creation of flowers! Really, there must be a stand somewhere made to credulity; but, at all events, the venerable host and hostess believed this, on what seemed to them reasonable evidence, and quite forgave me for not believing it too.