As I have alluded to what my family termed my "optical illusions," I think it as well to describe a few of them, which appeared by the context to be something more than a mere temporary disturbance of my visual organs. I will pa.s.s over such as might be traced, truly or otherwise, to physical causes, and confine myself to those which were subsequently proved to be the reflection of something that, unknown to me, had gone before. In 1875 I was much engaged in giving dramatic readings in different parts of the country, and I visited Dublin for the first time in my life, for that purpose, and put up at the largest and best-frequented hotel there. Through the hospitality of the residents and the duties of my professional business, I was engaged both day and night, and when I _did_ get to bed, I had every disposition to sleep, as the saying is, like a "top." But there was something in the hotel that would not let me do so. I had a charming bedroom, cheerful, bright and pretty, and replete with every comfort, and I would retire to rest "dead beat," and fall off to sleep at once, to be waked perhaps half-a-dozen times a night by that inexplicable something (or nothing) that rouses me whenever I am about to enjoy an "optical illusion," and to see figures, sometimes one, sometimes two or three, sometimes a whole group standing by my bedside and gazing at me with looks of the greatest astonishment, as much as to ask what right I had to be there. But the most remarkable part of the matter to me was, that all the figures were those of men, and military men, to whom I was too well accustomed to be able to mistake. Some were officers and others soldiers, some were in uniform, others in undress, but they all belonged to the army, and they all seemed to labor under the same feeling of intense surprise at seeing _me_ in the hotel. These apparitions were so life-like and appeared so frequently, that I grew quite uncomfortable about them, for however much one may be used to see "optical illusions," it is not pleasant to fancy there are about twenty strangers gazing at one every night as one lies asleep. Spiritualism is, or was, a tabooed subject in Dublin, and I had been expressly cautioned not to mention it before my new acquaintances. However, I could not keep entire silence on this subject, and dining _en famille_ one day, with a hospitable family of the name of Robinson, I related to them my nightly experiences at the hotel. Father, mother, and son exclaimed simultaneously. "Good gracious," they said, "don"t you know that that hotel was built on the site of the old barracks? The house immediately behind it, which formed part of the old building, was vacated by its last tenants on account of its being haunted. Every evening at the hour the soldiers used to be marched up to bed, they heard the tramp, tramp, tramp of the feet ascending the staircase."
"That may be," I replied, "but they _knew_ their house stood on the site of the barracks, and _I didn"t_."
My eldest daughter was spending a holiday with me once after my second marriage, and during the month of August. She had been very much overworked, and I made her lie in bed till noon. One morning I had been to her room at that hour to wake her, and on turning to leave it (in the broad daylight, remember), I encountered a man on the landing outside her door. He was dressed in a white shirt with black studs down the front, and a pair of black cloth trousers. He had dark hair and eyes, and small features; altogether, he struck me as having rather a sinister and unpleasant appearance. I stood still, with the open door in my hand, and gazed at him. He looked at me also for a minute, and then turned and walked upstairs to an upper storey where the nursery was situated, beckoning me, with a jerk of his hand, to follow him. My daughter (remarking a peculiar expression in my eyes, which I am told they a.s.sume on such occasions) said, "Mother! what do you see?"
"Only a spirit," I answered, "and he has gone upstairs."
"Now, what _is_ the good of seeing them in that way," said Eva, rather impatiently (for this dear child always disliked and avoided Spiritualism), and I was fain to confess that I really did _not_ know the especial good of encountering a sinister-looking gentleman in shirt and trousers, on a blazing noon in August. After which the circ.u.mstance pa.s.sed from my mind, until recalled again.
A few months later I had occasion to change the children"s nurse, and the woman who took her place was an Icelandic girl named Margaret Thomma.s.sen, who had only been in England for three weeks. I found that she had been educated far above the average run of domestic servants, and was well acquainted with the writings of Swedenborg and other authors. One day as I walked up the nursery stairs to visit the children in bed, I encountered the same man I had seen outside my daughter"s room, standing on the upper landing, as though waiting my approach. He was dressed as before, but this time his arms were folded across his breast and his face downcast, as though he were unhappy about something.
He disappeared as I reached the landing, and I mentioned the circ.u.mstance to no one. A few days later, Margaret Thomma.s.sen asked me timidly if I believed in the possibility of the spirits of the departed returning to this earth. When I replied that I did, she appeared overjoyed, and said she had never hoped to find anyone in England to whom she could speak about it. She then gave me a ma.s.s of evidence on the subject which forms a large part of the religion of the Icelanders.
She told me that she felt uneasy about her eldest brother, to whom she was strongly attached. He had left Iceland a year before to become a waiter in Germany, and had promised faithfully that so long as he lived she should hear from him every month, and when he failed to write she must conclude he was dead. Margaret told me she had heard nothing from him now for three months, and each night when the nursery light was put out, someone came and sat at the foot of her bed and sighed. She then produced his photograph, and to my astonishment I recognized at once the man who had appeared to me some months before I knew that such a woman as Margaret Thomma.s.sen existed. He was taken in a shirt and trousers, just as I had seen him, and wore the same repulsive (to me) and sinister expression. I then told his sister that I had already seen him twice in that house, and she grew very excited and anxious to learn the truth. In consequence I sat with her in hopes of obtaining some news of her brother, who immediately came to the table, and told her that he was dead, with the circ.u.mstances under which he had died, and the address where she was to write to obtain particulars. And on Margaret Thomma.s.sen writing as she was directed, she obtained the practical proofs of her brother"s death, without which this story would be worthless.
My sister Cecil lives with her family in Somerset, and many years ago I went down there to visit her for the first time since she had moved into a new house which I had never seen before. She put me to sleep in the guest chamber, a large, handsome room, just newly furnished by Oetzmann.
But I could not sleep in it. The very first night some one walked up and down the room, groaning and sighing close to my ears, and he, she, or it especially annoyed me by continually touching the new stiff counterpane with a "scrooping" sound that set my teeth on edge, and sent my heart up into my mouth. I kept on saying, "Go away! Don"t come near me!" for its proximity inspired me with a horror and repugnance which I have seldom felt under similar circ.u.mstances. I did not say anything at first to my sister, who is rather nervous on the subject of "bogies," but on the third night I could stand it no longer, and told her plainly the room was haunted, and I wished she would put me in her dressing-room, or with her servants, sooner than let me remain there, as I could get no rest.
Then the truth came out, and she confessed that the last owner of the house had committed suicide in that very room, and showed me the place on the boards, underneath the carpet, where the stain of his blood still remained. A lively sort of room to sleep all alone in.
Another sister of mine, Blanche, used to live in a haunted house in Bruges, of which a description will be found in the chapter headed, "The Story of the Monk." Long, however, before the monk was heard of, I could not sleep in her house on account of the disturbances in my room, for which my sister used to laugh at me. But even when my husband, Colonel Lean, and I stayed there together, it was much the same. One night I waked him to see the figure of a woman, who had often visited me, standing at the foot of the bed. She was quaintly attired in a sort of leathern boddice or jerkin, laced up the front over a woollen petticoat of some dark color. She wore a cap of Mechlin lace, with the large flaps at the side, adopted by Flemish women to this day; her hair was combed tightly off her forehead, and she wore a profusion of gold ornaments.
My husband could describe her as vividly as I did, which proves how plainly the apparition must have shown itself. I waked on several occasions to see this woman busy (apparently) with the contents of an old carved oak armoir which stood in a corner of the room, and which, I suppose, must have had something to do with herself. My eldest son joined me at Bruges on this occasion. He was a young fellow of twenty, who had never practised, nor even enquired into Spiritualism--fresh from sea, and about as free from fear or superst.i.tious fancies as a mortal could be. He was put to sleep in a room on the other side of the house, and I saw from the first that he was grave about it, but I did not ask him the reason, though I felt sure, from personal experience, that he would hear or see something before long. In a few days he came to me and said--
"Mother! I"m going to take my mattress into the colonel"s dressing-room to-night and sleep there." I asked him why. He replied, "It"s impossible to stay in that room any longer. I wouldn"t mind if they"d let me sleep, but they won"t. There"s something walks about half the night, whispering and muttering, and touching the bed-clothes, and though I don"t believe in any of your rubbishy spirits, I"ll be "jiggered" if I sleep there any longer." So he was not "jiggered" (whatever that may be), as he refused to enter the room again.
I cannot end this chapter more appropriately than by relating a very remarkable case of "optical illusion" which was seen by myself alone. It was in the month of July, 1880, and I had gone down alone to Brighton for a week"s quiet. I had some important literary work to finish, and the exigencies of the London season made too many demands upon my time.
So I packed up my writing materials, and took a lodging all to myself, and set hard to work. I used to write all day and walk in the evening.
It was light then till eight or nine o"clock, and the Esplanade used to be crowded till a late hour. I was pushing my way, on the evening of the 9th of July, through the crowd, thinking of my work more than anything else, when I saw, as I fully thought, my step-son, Francis Lean, leaning with his back against the palings at the edge of the cliff and smiling at me. He was a handsome lad of eighteen who was supposed to have sailed in his ship for the Brazils five months before. But he had been a wild young fellow, causing his father much trouble and anxiety, and my first impression was one of great annoyance, thinking naturally that, since I saw him there, he had never sailed at all, but run away from his ship at the last moment. I hastened up to him, therefore, but as I reached his side, he turned round quite methodically, and walked quickly down a flight of steps that led to the beach. I followed him, and found myself amongst a group of ordinary seamen mending their nets, but I could see Francis nowhere. I did not know what to make of the occurrence, but it never struck me that it was not either the lad himself or some one remarkably like him. The same night, however, after I had retired to bed in a room that was unpleasantly brilliant with the moonlight streaming in at the window, I was roused from my sleep by someone turning the handle of my door, and there stood Francis in his naval uniform, with the peaked cap on his head, smiling at me as he had done upon the cliff.
I started up in bed intending to speak to him, when he laid his finger on his lips and faded away. This second vision made me think something must have happened to the boy, but I determined not to say anything to my husband about it until it was verified. Shortly after my return to London, we were going, in company with my own son (also a sailor), to see his ship which was lying in the docks, when, as we were driving through Poplar, I again saw my stepson Francis standing on the pavement, and smiling at me. That time I spoke. I said to Colonel Lean, "I am sure I saw Francis standing there. Do you think it is possible he may not have sailed after all?" But Colonel Lean laughed at the idea. He believed it to be a chance likeness I had seen. Only the lad was too good-looking to have many duplicates in this world. We visited the seaside after that, and in September, whilst we were staying at Folkestone, Colonel Lean received a letter to say that his son Francis had been drowned by the upsetting of a boat in the surf of the Bay of Callao, in the Brazils, _on the 9th of July_--the day I had seen him twice in Brighton, two months before we heard that he was gone.
CHAPTER VI.
ON SCEPTICISM.
There are two cla.s.ses of people who have done more harm to the cause of Spiritualism than the testimony of all the scientists has done good, and those are the enthusiasts and the sceptics. The first believe everything they see or hear. Without giving themselves the trouble to obtain proofs of the genuineness of the manifestations, they rush impetuously from one acquaintance to the other, detailing their experience with so much exaggeration and such unbounded faith, that they make the absurdity of it patent to all. They are generally people of low intellect, credulous dispositions, and weak nerves. They bow down before the influences as if they were so many little G.o.ds descended from heaven, instead of being, as in the majority of instances, spirits a shade less holy than our own, who, for their very shortcomings, are unable to rise above the atmosphere that surrounds this gross and material world. These are the sort of spiritualists whom _Punch_ and other comic papers have very justly ridiculed. Who does not remember the picture of the afflicted widow, for whom the medium has just called up the departed Jones?
"Jones," she falters, "are you happy?"
"Much happier than I was down here," growls Jones.
"O! then you _must_ be in heaven!"
"On the contrary, quite the reverse," is the reply.
Who also has not sat a _seance_ where such people have not made themselves so ridiculous as to bring the cause they profess to adore into contempt and ignominy. Yet to allow the words and deeds of fools to affect one"s inward and private conviction of a matter would be tantamount to giving up the pursuit of everything in which one"s fellow creatures can take a part.
The second cla.s.s to which I alluded--the sceptics--have not done so much injury to Spiritualism as the enthusiasts, because they are as a rule, so intensely bigoted and hard-headed, and narrow-minded, that they overdo their protestations, and render them harmless. The sceptic refuses to believe _anything_, because he has found out _one_ thing to be a fraud. If one medium deceives, all the mediums must deceive. If one _seance_ is a failure, none can be successful. If he gains no satisfactory test of the presence of the spirits of the departed, no one has ever gained such a test. Now, such reason is neither just nor logical. Again, a sceptic fully expects _his_ testimony to be accepted and believed, yet he will never believe any truth on the testimony of another person. And if he is told that, given certain conditions, he can see this or hear the other, he says, "No! I will see it and hear it without any conditions, or else I will proclaim it all a fraud." In like manner, we might say to a savage, on showing him a watch, "If you will keep your eye on those hands, you will see them move round to tell the hours and minutes," and he should reply, "I must put the watch into boiling water--those are my conditions--and if it won"t go then, I will not believe it can go at all."
I don"t mind a man being a sceptic in Spiritualism. I don"t see how he can help (considering the belief in which we are reared) being a sceptic, until he has proved so strange a matter for himself. But I _do_ object to a man or a woman taking part in a _seance_ with the sole intention of detecting deceit, not _when_ it has happened, but before it has happened--of bringing an argumentative, disputatious mind, full of the idea that it is going to be tricked and humbugged into (perhaps) a private circle who are sitting (like Rosa Dartle) "simply for information," and scattering all the harmony and good-will about him broadcast. He couldn"t do it to a human a.s.sembly without breaking up the party. Why should he expect to be more kindly welcomed by a spiritual one? I have seen an immense deal of courtesy shown under such circ.u.mstances to men whom I should have liked to see kicked downstairs.
I have seen them enter a lady"s private drawing-room, by invitation, to witness manifestations which were never, under any circ.u.mstances, made a means of gain, and have heard them argue, and doubt, and contradict, until they have given their hostess and her friends the lie to their faces. And the world in general would be quite ready to side with these (so-called) gentlemen, not because their word or their wisdom was better worth than that of their fellow guests, but because they protested against the truth of a thing which it had made up its mind to be impossible. I don"t mind a sceptic myself, as I said before, but he must be unbia.s.sed, which few sceptics are. As a rule, they have decided the question at issue for themselves before they commence to investigate it.
I find that few people outside the pale of Spiritualism have heard of the Dialectical Society, which was a scientific society a.s.sembled a few years ago for the sole purpose of enquiring into the truth of the matter. It was composed of forty members,--ten lawyers, ten scientists, ten clergymen, and ten chemists (I think that was the arrangement), and they held forty _seances_, and the published report at the close of them was, that not one of these men of learning and repute could find any natural cause for the wonders he had witnessed. I know that there are a thousand obstacles in the way of belief. The extraordinarily contradictory manner in which Protestants are brought up, to believe in one and the same breath that spirits were common visitants to earth at the periods of which the Bible treats, but that it is impossible they can return to it now, although the Lord is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. The conditions of darkness for the creation of materialized spirits, and the resemblance they sometimes bear to the medium, are two fearful stumbling-blocks. Yet one must know that _all_ things are created in the dark, and that even a seed cannot sprout if you let the light in upon it, while as for the resemblance between the spirit and the medium, from whom it takes the material being that enables it to appear, if investigators would only persevere with their enquiries, they would find, as I have, that that is a disappointment which has its remedy in Time. When people call on me to explain such things, I can only say that I know no more how they come than they do, or that I know how _I_ came, a living, sentient creature, into the world. Besides (as I have said before), I write these pages to tell only _what I have seen_, and not to argue how it came to pa.s.s that I saw it.
I have a little story to tell here which powerfully ill.u.s.trates the foregoing remarks. The lines,
"A woman convinced against her will Is of the same opinion still,"
might have been penned with as much truth of sceptics. Men who are sceptical, _i.e._, so thoroughly wrapt up in conceit of their powers of judgment and determination that it becomes impossible for them to believe themselves mistaken, will deny the evidence of all their senses sooner than confess they may be in the wrong. Such an one may be a clever scientist or a shrewd man of business, but he can never be a genius. For genius is invariably humble of its own powers, and, therefore, open to conviction. But the lesser minds, who are only equal to grasping such details as may have been drummed into them by sheer force of study, appear to have no capability of stretching beyond a certain limit. They are hedged in and cramped by the opinions in which they have been reared, or that they have built up for themselves out of the petty material their brain affords them, and have lost their powers of elasticity. "Thus far shalt thou go and no further," seems to be the fiat p.r.o.nounced on too many men"s reasoning faculties. Instead of believing the power of G.o.d and the resources of nature to be illimitable, they want to keep them within the little circle that encompa.s.ses their own brains. "I can"t see it, and therefore it cannot be." There was a time when I used to take the trouble to try and convince such men, but I have long ceased to do so. It is quite indifferent to me what they believe or don"t believe. And with such minds, even if they _were_ convinced of its possibility, they would probably make no good use of spiritual intercourse. For there is no doubt it can be turned to evil uses as well as to good.
Some years ago I was on friendly terms with a man of this sort. He was a doctor, accounted clever in his profession, and I knew him to be an able arguist, and thought he had common sense enough not to eat his own words, but the sequel proved that I was mistaken. We had several conversations together on Spiritualism, and as Dr. H---- was a complete disbeliever in the existence of a G.o.d and a future life, I was naturally not surprised to find that he did not place any credence in the account I gave him of my spiritualistic experiences. Many medical men attribute such experiences entirely to a diseased condition of mind or body.
But when I asked Dr. H---- what he should think if he saw them with his own eyes, I confess I was startled to hear him answer that he should say his eyes deceived him. "But if you heard them speak?" I continued.
"I should disbelieve my ears."
"And if you touched and handled them?"
"I should mistrust my sense of feeling."
"Then by what means," I argued, "do you know that I am Florence Marryat?
You can only see me and hear me and touch me! What is there to prevent your senses misleading you at the present moment?"
But to this argument Dr. H---- only returned a pitying smile, professing to think me, on this point at least, too feeble-minded to be worthy of reply, but in reality not knowing what on earth to say. He often, however, recurred to the subject of Spiritualism, and on several occasions told me that if I could procure him the opportunity of submitting a test which he might himself suggest, he should be very much obliged to me. It was about this time that a young medium named William Haxby, now pa.s.sed away, went to live with Mr. and Mrs. Olive in Ainger Terrace, and we were invited to attend a _seance_ given by him. Mrs.
Olive, when giving the invitation, informed me that Mr. Haxby had been very successful in procuring direct writing in sealed boxes, and she asked me, if I wished to try the experiment, to take a secured box, with writing materials in it, to the _seance_, and see what would happen to it.
Here was, I thought, an excellent opportunity for Dr. H----"s test, and I sent for him and told him what had been proposed. I urged him to prepare the test entirely by himself, and to accompany me to the _seance_ and see what occurred,--to all of which he readily consented.
Indeed, he became quite excited on the subject, being certain it would prove a failure; and in my presence he made the following preparations:--
I. Half a sheet of ordinary cream-laid note-paper and half a cedar-wood black lead pencil were placed in a jeweller"s cardwood box.
II. The lid of the box was carefully glued down all round to the bottom part.
III. The box was wrapt in white writing paper, which was gummed over it.
IV. It was tied eight times with a peculiar kind of silk made for tying up arteries, and the eight knots were knots known to (as Dr. H---- informed me) medical men only.
V. Each of the eight knots was sealed with sealing-wax, and impressed with Dr. H----"s crest seal, which he always wore on his watch-chain.
VI. The packet was again folded in brown paper, and sealed and tied to preserve the inside from injury.
When Dr. H---- had finished it, he said to me, "If the spirits (or anybody) can write on that paper without cutting the silk, _I will believe whatever you wish_." I asked, "Are you _quite_ sure that the packet could not be undone without your detecting it?" His answer was--"That silk is not to be procured except from a medical man; it is manufactured expressly for the tying of arteries; and the knots I have made are known only to medical men. They are the knots we use in tying arteries. The seal is my own crest, which never leaves my watch-chain, and I defy anyone to undo those knots without cutting them, or to tie them again, if cut. I repeat--if your friends can make, or cause to be made, the smallest mark on that paper, and return me the box in the condition it now is, _I will believe anything you choose_." And I confess I was very dubious of the result myself, and almost sorry that I had subjected the doctor"s incredulity to so severe a test.
On the evening appointed we attended the _seance_, Dr. H---- taking the prepared packet with him. He was directed to place it under his chair, but he tied a string to it and put it under his foot, retaining the other end of the string in his hand. The meeting was not one for favorably impressing an unbeliever in Spiritualism. There were too many people present, and too many strangers. The ordinary manifestations, to my mind, are worse than useless, unless they have been preceded by extraordinary ones; so that the doctor returned home more sceptical than before, and I repented that I had taken him there. One thing had occurred, however, that he could not account for. The packet which he had kept, as he thought, under his foot the whole time, was found, at the close of the meeting, to have disappeared. Another gentleman had brought a sealed box, with paper and pencil in it, to the _seance_; and at the close it was opened in the presence of all a.s.sembled, and found to contain a closely written letter from his deceased wife. But the doctor"s box had evaporated, and was nowhere to be found. The door of the room had been locked all the time, and we searched the room thoroughly, but without success. Dr. H---- was naturally triumphant.
"They couldn"t undo _my_ knots and _my_ seals," he said, exulting over me, "and so they wisely did not return the packet. Both packets were of course taken from the room during the sitting by some confederate of the medium. The other one was easily managed, and put back again--_mine_ proved unmanageable, and so they have retained it. I _knew_ it would be so!"