Читать книгу The Death-Blow to Spiritualism - Reuben Briggs Davenport - Страница 9

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The world of “spiritualists” and non-spiritualists was startled on the 24th of September, 1888, by the publication in the New York Herald, of an article with the following head-lines:

“GOD HAS NOT ORDERED IT.”

A Celebrated Medium Says the Spirits Never Return. CAPTAIN KANE’S WIDOW. One of the Fox Sisters Promises an Interesting Exposure of Fraud.

To many, an article of this kind seemed in a degree sensational. Not to those, however, who had previously had some inkling of the secret history of Spiritualism, and who for years had looked for the day of its inevitable confounding.

A sudden disclosure like this, by one of the “Mothers of Spiritualism,” if the term may be used, suggested a sort of reckless vagary, a species of extravagance, due, as might have been fancied, to some abnormal condition of the mind.

Yet to those who had had an intimate acquaintance with Maggie Fox Kane this step had long been foreshadowed. As will appear later, no one could have imagined the real intensity of moral pain that for years she had endured.

In recent years, both she and her sister, Catharine Fox Jencken, had been but poorly provided with this world’s goods. Obliged to depend almost wholly on themselves for support, they had dropped more and more out of sight, till the public at last hardly recognized their names, if perchance they appeared in print, as those of the principal instruments in the founding of Spiritualism. For this, there was a reason. It was a deep-seated and long increasing disgust with their fraudulent profession—the fuller realization to their minds, as their knowledge of the world grew broader, of the monstrous evil to which, innocently at first, they had given birth. So at intervals they were filled with despairing despondency and remorse. Their weaknesses, their self-indulgence, their lack of providence for themselves, are largely attributable to these causes. It could not be said of them that they were ever remarkably selfish, or cold-hearted or calculating. Such a character, however, has of right been coupled with the name of their elder sister, who by reason of the ties of blood and of her older experience ought long ago to have led them out of the by-ways of imposture, instead of persistently seeking to shut off their escape from this horrible bondage, and to plunge them deeper into the mire of guilt and infamy, so that the chance of their rising above it, and denouncing it, might grow less and less.

The impulse to set herself right on the record of the world, after years of enslavement in the hateful gyves of charlatanism, must stand to Maggie Fox’s credit alone. It sprang from her own bosom, not from the inspiration, suggestion or persuasion of any one else. Returning from Europe in September, 1888, after a peculiar experience, which had convinced her that those chiefs of spiritualistic fraud who feared her and her sister, because they held the key of the whole of the artificial mystery, were bent upon persecuting them into an abject silence, she at once put in execution the resolution which had been so long in process of growth, but until then had never been fully ripened.

This was to effect the unqualified exposure of the false system of Spiritualism. She naturally chose as a medium for her repentant message to the world, that great cosmopolitan journal, the New York Herald, which is known in every corner of the earth, and is ever ready to perform an important service to mankind. Before she started on her homeward voyage, she committed herself once and for all to this courageous and worthy step.

The disclosures regarding the notorious Madam Diss De Barr had offended Mrs. Kane more than anything which had occurred in Spiritualism in a long time, for they presented the enforced association of her name and the simple, childish origin of the “Rochester knockings,” with the gross and revolting frauds which had been their outgrowth. So imbued had she become, by this time, with the idea that the developed system of Spiritualism was something to be loathed, as Milton loathed the hideous creature who sat by the inner portals of hell, that words could not express her utter scorn and hatred of this common woman, who posed as an agent of sacred communications between the living and the dead.

The New York Herald of May 27, 1888, contained this letter, written by Mrs. Margaret Fox Kane in London:

THE CURSE OF SPIRITUALISM.

Gower Street, Bedford Square, W. C.,

London, May 14, 1888.

To the Editor of the Herald:

I read in the Herald of Saturday, May 5, an account of the sad misfortune that has befallen my dear sister Katie, Mrs. Kate Fox Jencken, and in the article it is stated that I am still a resident of New York, which is a mistake. I sailed for England on the 22d of March, and I presume my absence has added to my darling sister’s depressed state of mind. The sad news has nearly killed me. My sister’s two beautiful boys referred to are her idols.

Spiritualism is a curse. God has set His seal against it! I call it a curse, for it is made use of as a covering for heartless persons like the Diss De Barrs, and the vilest miscreants make use of it to cloak their evil doings. Fanatics like Mr. Luther R. Marsh, Mr. John L. O’Sullivan, ex-Minister to Portugal, and hundreds equally as learned, ignore the “rappings” (which is the only part of the phenomena that is worthy of notice) and rush madly after the glaring humbugs that flood New York. But a harmless “message” that is given through the “rappings” is of little account to them; they want the “spirit” to come to them in full form, to walk before them, talk to them, to embrace them, and all such nonsense, and what is the result? Like old Judge Edmonds and Mr. Seybert, of Philadelphia, they become crazed, and at the direction of their fraud “mediums” they are induced to part with all their worldly possessions as well as their common sense, which God intended they should hold sacred. Mr. Marsh’s experience is but another example of hundreds who have preceded him.

No matter in what form Spiritualism may be presented, it is, has been and always will be a curse and a snare to all who meddle with it. No right minded man or woman can think otherwise.

I have found that fanatics are as plentiful among “inferior men and women” as they are among the more learned. They are all alike. They cannot hold their fanaticism in check, and it increases as their years increase. All they will ever achieve for their foolish fanaticism will be loss of money, softening of the brain and a lingering death.

MARGARET F. KANE.

This anathema dismayed those who had basely profited by Spiritualism, and it brought a deeper shock to the hearts of many who were sincere believers. The publication, however, in the Herald, three months later, of an interview with Mrs. Kane on her arrival in this city, the striking head-lines of which I have cited above, capped the climax of consternation. This article is well worthy of reproduction.

The eccentric circles wherein “isms” reign in discordant supremacy will be probably as deeply exercised over an approaching exposure of the tricks and illusions of Spiritualism, as they were over the rude logic of common sense and justice which drew aside the thin veil of fraud in the case of Madam Diss De Barr, and revealed the real nature of her flimsy system of deception in all its vulgar absurdity.

I called yesterday at a modest little house in West Forty-fourth street, and was received by a small, magnetic woman of middle age, whose face bears the traces of much sorrow and of a world-wide experience. She was negligently dressed, and she was not in the calmest possible mood. But she knew what she was talking about when, in response to my questions, she told a story of as strange and fantastic a life as has ever been recorded, and declared over and over again her intention of balancing the account which the world of humbug-loving mortals held against her, by making a clean breast of all her former miracles and wonders. In intervals of her talk, when she had risen from her chair, and paced the room, or had covered her face with her hands and almost sobbed with emotion, she would seat herself suddenly at a piano and pour forth fitful floods of wild, incoherent melody, which coincided strangely with that reminiscent weirdness which, despite its cynical reality, still characterized the scene.

This woman, albeit a notorious career has classed her with mountebanks and worse in the minds of reasonable beings, had yet by some element or other in her character retained a degree of public respect. Perhaps it is because months ago she abandoned the art of deception and has since to her intimate friends evinced no ordinary measure of contempt for all who still pursue it. She is known on both sides of the Atlantic, and when in London, is entertained by some of the best-to-do of the great and comprehensive middle class.

Circumstances had brought me to this house, and I did not at first know her. I soon found, however, that this was the most famous of the celebrated trio of witches, the Fox sisters, among the earliest spiritualistic mediums in this country. She is also the widow of Dr. Elisha Kent Kane, the heroic Arctic explorer, who died of the effects of his exposure in searching for Sir John Franklin and his ill-fated party. Mrs. Margaret Fox Kane has lately returned from England for a brief visit here, and she purposes in a very short time to deliver just one lecture, and no more, which shall shame and dumfound all the spiritualistic frauds who have not yet repented into poverty or exile of their nebulous ways. She will reveal one after another of the methods by which willing believers have been so briskly duped and robbed, and will herself demonstrate how simple, natural and easy are most of those methods.

Brooding upon the troubles that had been brought upon her by Spiritualism and on her personal guilt in connection with it, it is hardly strange that Mrs. Kane, even when bent upon making a sweeping confession of the whole imposture, should in intervals of nervous excitement have turned to the thought of suicide.

“ ‘My troubles weighed upon me,’ she said, ‘and when I was coming over on the Italy, I do believe that I should have gone overboard but for the Captain and the doctor and some of the sailors. They prevented me, and when I landed, I could not express to them the gratitude I felt. I had very little English money with me, but all of that I distributed to the men.’ ”

As Mrs. Kane told of her impulse to commit suicide her manner became tragic and she clutched her listener’s arm. After a moment, however, she reverted quietly enough to the original subject.

But she speedily became much excited again, as what follows will show. It was but natural:

“Since you now despise Spiritualism, how was it that you were engaged in it so long?” I asked.

“Another sister of mine,” and she coupled the name with an injurious adjective, “made me take up with it. She’s my damnable enemy. I hate her. My God! I’d poison her! No, I wouldn’t, but I’ll lash her with my tongue. She was twenty-three years old the day I was born. I was an aunt seven years before I was born. Ha! ha!

“Yes, I am going to expose Spiritualism from its very foundation. I have had the idea in my head for many a year, but I have never come to a determination before. I’ve thought of it day and night. I loath the thing I have been. As I used to say to those who wanted me to give a séance, ‘You are driving me into hell.’ Then the next day I would drown my remorse in wine. I was too honest to remain a ‘medium.’ That’s why I gave up my exhibitions.

“When Spiritualism first began Kate and I were little children, and this old woman, my other sister, made us her tools. Mother was a silly woman. She was a fanatic. I call her that because she was honest. She believed in these things. Spiritualism started from just nothing. We were but innocent little children. What did we know? Ah, we grew to know too much! Our sister used us in her exhibitions and we made money for her. Now she turns upon us because she’s the wife of a rich man, and she opposes us both wherever she can. Oh, I am after her! You can kill sometimes without using weapons, you know.

“Dr. Kane found me when I was leading this life. [The woman’s voice trembled just here and she nearly broke down.] I was only thirteen when he took me out of it and placed me at school. I was educated in Philadelphia. When I was sixteen years old he returned from the Arctic and we were married. Now comes the sad, sad tale. He was very ill. The physicians ordered him to London, but before he arrived he had a paralytic stroke of the heart. Then he was sent back from London and to Havana. Newsboys shouted in the streets of New York the news of his critical condition. Oh, my God! it was anguish to my ears! Mother and I were to have joined him in two weeks. He died before we arrived. Then I had brain fever. No one but God can know what sorrows I have had!

“When I recovered I was driven again into Spiritualism, and I gave exhibitions with my sister Katie. I knew, of course, then, that every effect produced by us was absolute fraud. Why, I have explored the unknown as far as human will can. I have gone to the dead so that I might get from them some little token. Nothing ever came of it—nothing, nothing. I have been in graveyards at dead of night, having permission to enter from those in charge. I have sat alone on a gravestone, that the spirits of those who slept underneath might come to me. I have tried to obtain some sign. Not a thing! No, no, the dead shall not return, nor shall any that go down into hell. So says the Catholic Bible, and so say I. The spirits will not come back. God has not ordered it.

“You want to know what are the points of my coming exposé? First the ‘rappings.’ ”

Mrs. Kane paused here, and I heard first a rapping under the floor near my feet, then under the chair in which I was seated, and again under a table on which I was leaning. She led me to the door and I heard the same sound on the other side of it. Then, when she sat on the piano stool, the legs of the instrument reverberated more loudly, and the tap, tap, resounded throughout its hollow structure.

“It is all a trick?”

“Absolutely. Spirits, is he not easily fooled?”

Rap, rap, rap!

“I can always get an affirmative answer to that question,” she remarked.

Then I addressed certain suppositions to her. At last she said, “Yes, you have hit it. It is, as you say, the manner in which the joints of the foot can be used without lifting it from the floor. The power of doing this can only be acquired by practice begun in early youth. One must begin as early as twelve years. Thirteen is rather late. We children, when we were playing together, years ago, discovered it, and it was my eldest sister who first put the discovery to such an infamous use.

“I call it infamous, for it was.”