What I Remember, Volume 1

by Thomas Adolphus Trollope

A very highly valued old female servant, who had lived in my then wife’s family since her birth, and had followed her when she married me, had some months previously died in my house. The affection which had subsisted between her and my wife was a very old and a very strong one. Now there was, it would seem, an old nursery pet name, by which this woman had been long years before in the habit of calling my wife. I had never heard it, or of it. My wife herself had never heard it for very many years. She and the old servant had never for years and years spoken on the subject. But one evening this pet name was very distinctly spelled; and my wife declared that she at the same time felt a sort of pressure at her side, as she sat in the circle, as if some person or thing had been endeavouring to find a place by her side. But for all that, my wife, though utterly mystified and incapable of suggesting any theory on the subject, was a strong disbeliever in all Mr. Hume’s pretensions. She strongly disliked the man. And were it not that, as we all know, her sex never permits their estimate of facts to be influenced by their feelings, it might be supposed possible that this biassed her mind upon the subject!

I could add dozens of cases to the above two, but they were all very similar; and it is sufficient to say that the same sort of thing occurred over and over again.

I may mention, however, that I observed that any question addressed to the supposed spirits bearing on theology and matters of creed were invariably answered according to the views of the questioner. Catholics, Protestants, materialists, were all impartially confirmed in the convictions of their diverse persuasions.

Also I should not omit to mention that my wife, taking her occasion from Mr. Hume’s complaints of his own weakness of lungs, spoke of my brother’s death in Belgium and of my life at Ostend, and at a sitting some few days afterwards asked if she could be told where I had last seen my brother on earth. The answer came promptly, “At Ostend.” But the truth is, as the reader knows, that I took my leave of him on board the Ostend steamer in the Thames.

My account of these sittings would not be as judicially accurate as I have endeavoured to make it, however, were I to omit the statement that Mr. Hume on two or three occasions offered to cause “spirit hands” to become visible to us. The room was darkened for this purpose; and at the opposite side of a rather large table from that at which the spectators were sitting, certain forms of hands did become faintly visible. To me they appeared like long kid gloves stuffed with some substance. But I am far from asserting that they were such.

On the whole, the impression left on my mind by my month-long intercourse with Mr. Hume was a disagreeable one of doubt and perplexity. I was not left with the conviction that he was an altogether trustworthy and sincere man. Nor was I fully persuaded of the reverse. I saw nothing which appeared to me to compel the conclusion that some agency unknown to the ascertained and recognised laws of nature was at work. But I did hear many communications made in Mr. Hume’s presence in the manner which has been described, which seemed to me to be wholly inexplicable by any theory I could bring to bear upon them. It may be observed that no theory of thought-reading will serve the turn, for in many cases the facts, circumstances, or names communicated were evidently not in the thoughts of the persons to whom they were so communicated. Of course it may be answered, “Ah! but however ‘evident’ that may have seemed to you, the facts were in the thoughts of the parties in question.” To this I can only reply that to me, my very complete knowledge of the persons in question, and of their veracity—one of them, as in the case above related, being my own wife—renders the explanation suggested absolutely inadmissible.

I have seen at various subsequent periods a great many professors of “mediumship,” and their performances. I was present at many sittings given by Mrs. G.——, a huge mountain of a woman, very uneducated, apparently good-natured and simple, but with a tendency to become disagreeable when her attempts at communication with the unseen world were declared to be failures.

I will give here the copy of a letter which I wrote to the secretary of “The Dialectical Society,” which had applied to me for my “experiences” on the subject. I cannot at the present day sum up any better the conclusions to which they led me.

“Florence, 27th December, 1869.

“Sir,—In reply to your letter of the 17th I can only say that I have but little to add to those previous statements of mine, of which you are in possession.