So I met him there next afternoon, with every expectation of a good sitting. These hopes, however, were entirely destroyed owing to the presence of a noisy, vulgar man, whom they called the "Whisky King." He made the most inane remarks, cracked stupid jokes, antagonised every respectable person in the room, I should suppose; and as all this took place without a word of protest from the lady of the house, one can only conclude that she considered it worth her while to endure his vulgarities.
Certainly the afternoon was spoilt for the rest of us, and I remarked upon this to a very pleasant, smart-looking young American lady when the sitting was over and we had retired to the reception-room to find wraps and galoshes, etc.
"Oh yes; wasn"t he just exasperating?" she said, with ready sympathy.
She looked much too young and smart and good-looking for the ordinary type of "investigator," and I could not refrain from asking how she had come into this _galere_.
She explained her position readily, and it was very interesting to me.
She was a young married lady, and had first been brought to the house, six months before, by a cousin of hers who was staying with them in New York, and thought the experience might be amusing.
"We just came in for a joke," she said; "but something happened which interested me so much that I have come again several times, and until to-day have always had an interesting time."
Then she told me about her first sitting.
I had noticed upon her ungloved hand a very beautiful _scarabaeus_, set in fine gold, and evidently by an artist in the craft. "Yes, it is a Tiffany setting," she observed, seeing my eyes drawn to it. She took off the ring, and gave it into my hands.
"That ring is really the cause of my being here to-day," she continued.
"The scarabaeus was given to me some years ago by Professor----" (she gave the name of a well-known American Egyptologist). "He made a great pet of me when I was a child, and I begged it from him. When I was going to be married last year he insisted upon having it set for me by Tiffany as a wedding present, and he then told me there was no doubt at all about its being a genuine _antique_. He had come across it many years before by a curious chance when travelling in Egypt, and had been a.s.sured that it was a genuine _Cleopatra_ relic. "I can"t answer for that," he said, laughing, "but it is certainly many centuries old. I have no doubt it is genuine so far as age goes." Well, the night my cousin and I came here together I did not take off my gloves until _after_ we had gone in to the _seance_ room, so no one could have seen my ring--and you know Mrs Gray"s sittings always begin in the dark? I took my gloves off when I found we had to sit in a circle holding hands, and one of the first materialisations was announced to be that of Cleopatra." (_I_ had seen "Cleopatra" more than once in 1886, in the same house--E. K. B.) "She rushed across the room in the complete darkness, seized my right hand, amongst all the hands in a circle of twenty people or more, almost tore this special ring from my finger, and said in a tone of indescribable grief and longing: "_Mine! Mine!_ Ah, _Chem!_ CHEM!""
This was sufficiently startling, even apart from the mention of _Chem_, as the ancient name for Egypt, in a _milieu_ of this kind!
The ring was faithfully restored later in the evening; and the young lady who owned it had been sufficiently impressed by the circ.u.mstances to confide them to her kind professor, and also to pay more than one visit to Mrs Stoddart Gray since the episode had occurred, which was just six months before our meeting there.
During this second visit to America I made the acquaintance, and, I trust I may say, gained the friendship, of Miss Lilian Whiting, so well known by many thousands of grateful readers. We saw a great deal of each other in Boston, and during one of my long chats with her in her pretty sitting-room at the Brunswick Hotel, she told me of the visit of Lady Henry Somerset and Miss Frances Willard to that city, some years before our conversation. Miss Whiting also mentioned a friend who had accompanied these two ladies, and who had been taken ill, and had died very suddenly in the hospital at Boston.
"I never met the lady," said Miss Whiting, "but Miss Willard and Lady Henry told me they had been obliged to leave their friend behind owing to an attack of influenza, and asked me to call upon her someday. I went a day or two later, carrying some fruit and newspapers with me. The matron, whom I knew well, said her patient was doing splendidly, and was likely to be leaving in a few days, but that as I was a stranger, it would perhaps be better for me not to come in and see her that afternoon. So I left my little gifts, and was shocked next day to hear of her sudden and quite unexpected death. By-the-by, I believe she was Stead"s "Julia"--I am not sure about this, but somebody told me so lately."
Miss Whiting then mentioned the lady"s name, which I withhold, as Mr Stead still makes use of it as a test when strangers profess to be in communication with "Julia."
The day following the _seance_ just described as taking place in New York, Mr Knapton Thompson called at my hotel to ask me to accompany him to Mrs Stoddart Gray, as he had arranged to have a short "_writing seance_" that afternoon.
The son was the agent as usual. On this occasion he had an alphabet mounted on card, and pointed to the letters in turn, whilst his mother wrote them down as indicated. Thinking I would verify Miss Whiting"s story if possible, my first question was:
"Can Stead"s Julia give me her surname?"
"Julia O." was spelt out, and then the O was given again.
"They often do that," said Mrs Gray casually--"begin the name over again, I mean."
So it pa.s.sed at that. The rest of the letters corroborated the surname mentioned by Miss Whiting.
Then I asked: "In what country did you pa.s.s away--Europe or America, or elsewhere?"
"_America_" was spelt out at once.
"In what city?"
"_Boston._"
"Was it in a private house, a hospital, a hotel, or _where_ did you die?"
"In a hospital" was again spelt out.
"How long ago?"
"_Five years_" was the answer.
I may note here that Miss Whiting had _not_ mentioned the number of years, only having said "A few years ago" when speaking of the event.
_Five years_ proved to be true. My last question was:
"What was your age when you pa.s.sed over?"
"_Twenty-three_" was the answer.
This last, I felt sure, must be wrong. Miss Whiting had not mentioned any age, but it seemed to me unlikely that so young a woman should have been travelling round the country with two temperance lecturers.
When these answers were being given, Mrs Gray"s son, the medium, asked if he might put one hand on my wrist to come into magnetic conditions with me.
I agreed to this, but said I should turn my eyes away from the alphabet, lest my muscles should give him any unconscious indications.
When I sent these answers to Mr Stead on returning to England, I wrote down Julia O. (ignoring the repet.i.tion of the O); and in connection with the other answers, told him, of course, of my previous conversation with Miss Whiting, which reduced the whole episode to one of possible Thought Transference.
In answering me he said: "I am glad Julia was able to give her name, even if it were Thought Transference; but, as a matter of fact, it is not her whole name which you received--she always signed her letters to me "_Julia O. O...._"" This makes rather a good bit of evidence, seeing that the second O _had_ been given, but discarded by Mrs Gray and myself as a repet.i.tion of the first letter of the _surname!_
To resume my experiences with Mr Knapton Thompson.
In the evening of this writing incident Mrs Gray had another public _seance_, at which I was again present, Mr Thompson sitting on one side of me.
After some "materialisations," for other members of the circle had appeared, Mrs Gray announced that Stead"s "Julia" was present in the cabinet, and wished to speak to me.
I went up at once, and the form came out and stood in very fair light from the gas-burners. She seized my hands with every appearance of delight and eagerness, and her grasp was strong and tense. It is my peculiarity always to notice hands very accurately. They always seem to me to indicate character very closely; and apart from this, I am attracted by people who have well-shaped hands (not necessarily _small_ ones), and find it very difficult to ignore clumsy or ugly fingers, which, unfortunately, never escape my notice.
Now the medium"s hands were broad, short, and flabby, as I had had plenty of opportunities of noting in the afternoon when he held my wrist. The hands which grasped mine now were, on the contrary, well made, small, and rather narrow, the true type of the American female hand.
Mr Thompson had come up also to greet "Julia," and I whispered to him:
"Do ask Julia if there was not a mistake about her age this afternoon."
"No; you ask the question yourself, Miss Bates," he answered.
So I said rather eagerly: "Julia, do tell us, please, if there was not a mistake this afternoon in your age--the answer was twenty-three. Is that correct?"
A very emphatic shake of the head signifying "No" was the reply to this last question, but no sounds proceeded from the lips.
Disappointed by this, I asked; "Can you not speak to us?"
She made a little gesture of rather helpless dissent; and Mrs Gray, who stood by, explained that probably all her strength had gone to building up the materialised body sufficiently to make it visible to us. Julia bowed her head in a.s.sent to this, and then, still speechless, retired once more behind the curtains.