THE STORY OF JOHN POWLES.
On the 4th of April, 1860, there died in India a young officer in the
12th Regiment M.N.I., of the name of John Powles. He was an intimate
friend of my first husband for several years before his death, and had
consequently become intimate with me; indeed, on several occasions he
shared our house and lived with us on the terms of a brother. I was very
young at that time and susceptible to influence of all sorts--extremely
nervous, moreover, on the subject of "ghosts," and yet burning with
curiosity to learn something of the other world--a topic which it is
most difficult to induce anybody to discuss with you. People will talk
of dress, or dinner, or their friend's private affairs--of anything, in
fact, sooner than Death and Immortality and the world to come which we
must all inevitably enter. Even parsons--the legalized exponents of what
lies beyond the grave--are no exceptions to the rule. When the bereaved
sufferer goes to them for comfort, they shake their heads and "hope" and
"trust," and say "God's mercy has no limits," but they cannot give him
one reasonable proof to rest upon that Death is but a name. John Powles,
however, though a careless and irreligious man, liked to discuss the
Unseen. We talked continually on the subject, even when he was
apparently in perfect health, and he often ended our conversation by
assuring me that should he die first (and he always prophesied truly
that he should not reach the age of thirty) he would (were such a thing
possible) come back to me. I used to laugh at the absurdity of the idea,
and remind him how many friends had made the same promise to each other
and never fulfilled it. For though I firmly believed that such things
_had_ been, I could not realize that they would ever happen to me, or
that I should survive the shock if they did. John Powles' death at the
last was very sudden, although the disease he died of was of long
standing. He had been under the doctor's hands for a few days when he
took an unexpected turn for the worse, and my husband and myself, with
other friends, were summoned to his bedside to say good-bye to him. When
I entered the room he said to me, "So you see it has come at last. Don't
forget what I said to you about it." They were his last intelligible
words to me, though for several hours he grasped my dress with his hand
to prevent my leaving him, and became violent and unmanageable if I
attempted to quit his side. During this time, in the intervals of his
delirium, he kept on entreating me to sing a certain old ballad, which
had always been a great favorite with him, entitled "Thou art gone from
my gaze." I am sure if I sung that song once during that miserable day,
I must have sung it a dozen times. At last our poor friend fell into
convulsions which recurred with little intermission until his death,
which took place the same evening.
His death and the manner of it caused me a great shock. He had been a
true friend to my husband and myself for years, and we both mourned his
loss very sincerely. That, and other troubles combined, had a serious
effect upon my health, and the doctors advised my immediate return to
England. When an officer dies in India, it is the custom to sell all his
minor effects by auction. Before this took place, my husband asked me if
there was anything belonging to John Powles that I should like to keep
in remembrance of him. The choice I made was a curious one. He had
possessed a dark green silk necktie, which was a favorite of his, and
when it became soiled I offered to turn it for him, when it looked as
good as new. Whereupon he had worn it so long that it was twice as dirty
as before, so I turned it for him the second time, much to the amusement
of the regiment. When I was asked to choose a keepsake of him, I said,
"Give me the green tie," and I brought it to England with me.
The voyage home was a terrible affair. I was suffering mentally and
physically, to such a degree that I cannot think of the time without a
shudder. John Powles' death, of course, added to my distress, and during
the many months that occupied a voyage "by long sea," I hoped and
expected that his spirit would appear to me. With the very strong belief
in the possibility of the return to earth of the departed--or rather, I
should say, with my strong belief _in_ my belief--I lay awake night
after night, thinking to see my lost friend, who had so often promised
to come back to me. I even cried aloud to him to appear and tell me
where he was, or what he was doing, but I never heard or saw a single
thing. There was silence on every side of me. Ten days only after I
landed in England I was delivered of a daughter, and when I had somewhat
recovered my health and spirits--when I had lost the physical weakness
and nervous excitability, to which most medical men would have
attributed any mysterious sights or sounds I might have experienced
before--then I commenced to _know_ and to _feel_ that John Powles was
with me again. I did not see him, but I felt his presence. I used to lie
awake at night, trembling under the consciousness that he was sitting at
my bedside, and I had no means of penetrating the silence between us.
Often I entreated him to speak, but when a low, hissing sound came close
to my ear, I would scream with terror and rush from my room. All my
desire to see or communicate with my lost friend had deserted me. The
very idea was a terror. I was horror-struck to think he had returned,
and I would neither sleep alone nor remain alone. I was advised to try a
livelier place than Winchester (where I then resided), and a house was
taken for me at Sydenham. But there, the sense of the presence of John
Powles was as keen as before, and so, at intervals, I continued to feel
it for the space of several years--until, indeed, I became an inquirer
into Spiritualism as a science.
I have related in the chapter that contains an account of my first
_seance_, that the only face I recognized as belonging to me was that of
my friend John Powles, and how excited I became on seeing it. It was
that recognition that brought back all my old longing and curiosity to
communicate with the inhabitants of the Unseen World. As soon as I
commenced investigations in my home circle, John Powles was the very
first spirit who spoke to me through the table, and from that time until
the present I have never ceased to hold communion with him. He is very
shy, however, (as he was, whilst with us) of conversing before
strangers, and seldom intimates his presence except I am alone. At such
times, however, he will talk by the hour of all such topics as
interested him during his earth life.
Soon after it became generally known that I was attending _seances_, I
was introduced to Miss Showers, the daughter of General Showers of the
Bombay Army. This young lady, besides being little more than a child--I
think she was about sixteen when we met--was not a professional medium.
The _seances_ to which her friends were invited to witness the
extraordinary manifestations that took place in her presence were
strictly private. They offered therefore an enormous advantage to
investigators, as the occurrences were all above suspicion, whilst Miss
Showers was good enough to allow herself to be tested in every possible
way. I shall have occasion to refer more particularly to Miss Showers'
mediumship further on--at present, therefore, I will confine myself to
those occasions which afforded proofs of John Powles' presence.
Mrs. and Miss Showers were living in apartments when I visited them, and
there was no means nor opportunity of deceiving their friends, even had
they had any object in doing so. I must add also, that they knew nothing
of my Indian life nor experiences, which were things of the past long
before I met them. At the first sitting Miss Showers gave me for "spirit
faces," she merely sat on a chair behind the window curtains, which were
pinned together half-way up, so as to leave a V-shaped opening at the
top. The voice of "Peter" (Miss Showers' principal control) kept talking
to us and the medium from behind the curtains all the time, and making
remarks on the faces as they appeared at the opening. Presently he said
to me, "Mrs. Ross-Church, here's a fellow says his name is Powles, and
he wants to speak to you, only he doesn't like to show himself because
he's not a bit like what he used to be." "Tell him not to mind that," I
answered, "I shall know him under any circumstances." "Well! if he was
anything like that, he was a beauty," exclaimed Peter; and presently a
face appeared which I could not, by any stretch of imagination, decide
to resemble in the slightest degree my old friend. It was hard, stiff
and unlifelike. After it had disappeared, Peter said, "Powles says if
you'll come and sit with Rosie (Miss Showers) often, he'll look quite
like himself by-and-by," and of course I was only too anxious to accept
the invitation.
As I was setting out another evening to sit with Miss Showers, the
thought suddenly occurred to me to put the green necktie in my pocket.
My two daughters accompanied me on that occasion, but I said nothing to
them about the necktie. As soon as we had commenced, however, Peter
called out, "Now, Mrs. Ross-Church, hand over that necktie. Powles is
coming." "What necktie?" I asked, and he answered, "Why Powles' necktie,
of course, that you've got in your pocket. He wants you to put it round
his neck." The assembled party looked at me inquisitively as I produced
the tie. The face of John Powles appeared, very different from the time
before, as he had his own features and complexion, but his hair and
beard (which were auburn during life) appeared phosphoric, as though
made of living fire. I mounted on a chair and tied the necktie round his
throat, and asked him if he would kiss me. He shook his head. Peter
called out, "Give him your hand." I did so, and as he kissed it, his
moustaches _burned_ me. I cannot account for it. I can only relate the
fact. After which he disappeared with the necktie, which I have never
seen since, though we searched the little room for it thoroughly.
The next thing I have to relate about John Powles is so startling that I
dread the criticism it will evoke; but if I had not startling stories to
tell, I should not consider them worth writing down. I left my house in
Bayswater one Sunday evening to dine with Mr. and Mrs. George Neville in
Regent's Park Terrace, to have a _seance_ afterwards with Miss Showers.
There was a large company present, and I was placed next to Miss Showers
at table. During dinner she told me complainingly that her mother had
gone to Norwood to spend the night, and she (Rosie) was afraid of
sleeping alone, as the spirits worried her so. In a moment it flashed
across me to ask her to return to Bayswater and sleep with me, for I was
most desirous of testing her powers when we were alone together. Miss
Showers accepted my invitation, and we arranged that she should go home
with me. After dinner, the guests sat for a _seance_, but to everybody's
surprise and disappointment, nothing occurred. It was one o'clock in the
morning when Miss Showers and I entered a cab to return to Bayswater. We
had hardly started when we were greeted with a loud peal of laughter
close to our ears. "What's the matter, Peter?" demanded Miss Showers.
"I can't help laughing," he replied, "to think of their faces when no
one appeared! Did you suppose I was going to let you waste all your
power with them, when I knew I was going home with you and Mrs.
Ross-Church? I mean to show you what a real good _seance_ is to-night."
When we reached home I let myself in with a latchkey. The house was
full, for I had seven children, four servants, and a married sister
staying with me; but they were all in bed and asleep. It was cold
weather, and when I took Miss Showers into my bedroom a fire was burning
in the grate. My sister was occupying a room which opened into mine; but
I locked her door and my own, and put the keys under my pillow. Miss
Showers and I then undressed and got into bed. When we had extinguished
the gas, we found the room was, comparatively speaking, light, for I had
stirred the fire into a blaze, and a street lamp just opposite the
window threw bars of light through the venetian blinds, right across the
ceiling. As soon as Miss Showers had settled herself in bed, she said,
"I wonder what Peter is going to do," and I replied, "I hope he won't
strip off the bed-clothes." We were lying under four blankets, a
counterpane, and an eider-down _duvet_, and as I spoke, the whole mass
rose in the air, and fell over the end of the bed, leaving us quite
unprotected. We got up, lit a candle, and made the bed again, tucking
the clothes well in all round, but the minute we laid down the same
thing was repeated. We were rather cross the second time, and abused
Peter for being so disagreeable, upon which the voice declared he
wouldn't do it any more, but we shouldn't have provoked him to try. I
said, "You had much better shew yourself to us, Peter. That is what I
want you to do." He replied, "Here I am, my dear, close to you!" I
turned my head, and there stood a dark figure beside the bed, whilst
another could be plainly distinguished walking about the room. I said,
"I can't see your face," and he replied, "I'll come nearer to you!" Upon
this the figure rose in the air until it hung suspended, face downward,
over the bed. In this position it looked like a huge bat with outspread
wings. It was still indistinct, except as to substance, but Peter said
we had exhausted all the phosphorus in our bodies by the long evening we
had spent, and left him nothing to light himself up with. After a while
he lowered himself on to the bed, and lay between Miss Showers and
myself on the outside of the _duvet_. To this we greatly objected, as he
was very heavy and took up a great deal of room; but it was some time
before he would go away.
During this manifestation, the other spirit, whom Peter called the
"Pope," kept walking about and touching everything in the room, which
was full of ornaments; and Peter called out several times, "Take care,
Pope! take care! Don't break Mrs. Ross-Church's things." The two made so
much noise that they waked my sister in the adjoining room, and she
knocked at the door, asking in an alarmed voice, "Florence! _whom_ have
you there? You will wake the whole house." When I replied, "Never mind,
it's only spirits," she gave one fell shriek and dived under her
bed-clothes. She maintains to this day that she fully believed the steps
and voices to be human. At last the manifestations became so rapid, as
many as eight and ten hands touching us at once, that I asked Miss
Showers if she would mind my tying hers together. She was very amiable
and consented willingly. I therefore got out of bed again, and having
securely fastened her hands in the sleeves of the nightdress she wore, I
sewed them with needle and thread to the mattress. Miss Showers then
said she felt sleepy, and with her back to me--a position she was
obliged to maintain on account of her hands being sewn down--she
apparently dropt off to sleep, though I knew subsequently she was in a
trance.
For some time afterwards nothing occurred, the figures had disappeared,
the voices ceased, and I thought the _seance_ was over. Presently,
however, I felt a hand laid on my head and the fingers began to gently
stroke and pull the short curls upon my forehead. I whispered, "Who is
this?" and the answer came back, "Don't you know me? I am Powles! At
last--at last--after a silence of ten years I see you and speak with you
again, face to face." "How can I tell this is _your_ hand?" I said.
"Peter might be materializing a hand in order to deceive me." The hand
immediately left my head and the _back_ of it passed over my mouth, when
I felt it was covered with short hair. I then remembered how hairy John
Powles' hands had become from exposure to the Indian sun whilst
shooting, and how I had nicknamed him "Esau" in consequence. I
recollected also that he had dislocated the left wrist with a cricket
ball. "Let me feel your wrist," I said, and my hand was at once placed
on the enlarged bone. "I want to trace your hand to where it springs
from," I next suggested; and on receiving permission I felt from the
fingers and wrist to the elbow and shoulder, where it terminated _in the
middle of Miss Showers' back_. Still I was not quite satisfied, for I
used to find it very hard to believe in the identity of a person I had
cared for. I was so terribly afraid of being deceived. "I want to see
your face," I continued. "I cannot show you my face to-night," the voice
replied, "but you shall feel it;" and the face, with beard and
moustaches, was laid for a moment against my own. Then the hand was
replaced on my hair, and whilst it kept on pulling and stroking my
curls, John Powles' own voice spoke to me of everything that had
occurred of importance when he and I were friends on earth. Fancy, two
people who were intimately associated for years, meeting alone after a
long and painful separation, think of all the private things they would
talk about together, and you will understand why I cannot write down the
conversation that took place between us that night here. In order to
convince me of his identity, John Powles spoke of all the troubles I had
passed through and was then enduring--he mentioned scenes, both sad and
merry, which we had witnessed together; he recalled incidents which had
slipped my memory, and named places and people known only to ourselves.
Had I been a disbeliever in Spiritualism, that night must have made a
convert of me. Whilst the voice, in the well-remembered tones of my old
friend, was speaking, and his hand wandered through my hair, Miss
Showers continued to sleep, or to appear to sleep, with her back towards
me, and her hands sewn into her nightdress sleeves, and the sleeves sewn
down to the bed. But had she been wide awake and with both hands free,
she could not have spoken to me in John Powles' unforgotten voice of
things that had occurred when she was an infant and thousands of miles
away. And I affirm that the voice spoke to me of things that no one but
John Powles could possibly have known. He did not fail to remind me of
the promise he had made, and the many times he had tried to fulfil it
before, and he assured me he should be constantly with me from that
time. It was daylight before the voice ceased speaking, and then both
Miss Showers and I were so exhausted, we could hardly raise our heads
from the pillows. I must not forget to add that when we _did_ open our
eyes again upon this work-a-day world, we found there was hardly an
article in the room that had not changed places. The pictures were all
turned with their faces to the wall--the crockery from the washstand was
piled in the fender--the ornaments from the mantel-piece were on the
dressing-table--in fact, the whole room was topsy-turvy.
When Mr. William Fletcher gave his first lecture in England, in the
Steinway Hall, my husband, Colonel Lean, and I, went to hear him. We had
never seen Mr. Fletcher before, nor any of his family, nor did he know
we were amongst the audience. Our first view of him was when he stepped
upon the platform, and we were seated quite in the body of the hall,
which was full. It was Mr. Fletcher's custom, after his lecture was
concluded, to describe such visions as were presented to him, and he
only asked in return that if the people and places were recognized,
those who recognized them would be brave enough to say so, for the sake
of the audience and himself. I can understand that strangers who went
there and heard nothing that concerned themselves would be very apt to
imagine it was all humbug, and that those who claimed a knowledge of the
visions were simply confederates of Mr. Fletcher. But there is nothing
more true than that circumstances alter cases. I entered Steinway Hall
as a perfect stranger, and as a press-writer, quite prepared to expose
trickery if I detected it. And this is what I heard. After Mr. Fletcher
had described several persons and scenes unknown to me, he took out a
handkerchief and began to wipe his face, as though he were very warm.
"I am no longer in England, now," he said. "The scene has quite changed,
and I am taken over the sea, thousands of miles away, and I am in a
chamber with all the doors and windows open. Oh! how hot it is! I think
I am somewhere in the tropics. O! I see why I have been brought here! It
is to see a young man die! This is a death chamber. He is lying on a
bed. He looks very pale, and he is very near death, but he has only been
ill a short time. His hair is a kind of golden chestnut color, and he
has blue eyes. He is an Englishman, and I can see the letter 'P' above
his head. He has not been happy on earth, and he is quite content to
die. He pushes all the influences that are round his bed away from him.
Now I see a lady come and sit down beside him. He holds her hand, and
appears to ask her to do something, and I hear a strain of sweet music.
It is a song he has heard in happier times, and on the breath of it his
spirit passes away. It is to this lady he seems to come now. She is
sitting on my left about half way down the hall. A little girl, with her
hands full of blue flowers, points her out to me. The little girl holds
up the flowers, and I see they are woven into a resemblance of the
letter F. She tells me that is the initial letter of her mother's name
and her own. And I see this message written.
"'To my dearest friend, for such you ever were to me from the beginning.
I have been with you through all your time of trial and sorrow, and I am
rejoiced to see that a happier era is beginning for you. I am always
near you. The darkness is fast rolling away, and happiness will succeed
it. Pray for me, and I shall be near you in your prayers. I pray God to
bless you and to bless me, and to bring us together again in the summer
land.'
"And I see the spirit pointing with his hand far away, as though to
intimate that the happiness he speaks of is only the beginning of some
that will extend to a long distance of time. I see this scene more
plainly than any I have ever seen before."
These words were written down at the time they were spoken. Colonel Lean
and I were sitting in the very spot indicated by Mr. Fletcher, and the
little girl with the blue flowers was my spirit child, "Florence," whose
history I shall give in the next chapter. But my communications with
John Powles, though very extraordinary, were not satisfactory to me. I
am the "Thomas, surnamed Didymus," of the spiritualistic world, who
wants to see and touch and handle before I can altogether believe. I
wanted to meet John Powles and talk with him face to face, and it seemed
such an impossibility for him to materialize in the light that, after
his two failures with Miss Showers, he refused to try. I was always
worrying him to tell me if we should meet in the body before I left this
world, and his answer was always, "Yes! but not just yet!" I had no idea
then that I should have to cross the Atlantic before I saw my dear old
friend again.