THE MEDIUMSHIP OF FLORENCE COOK.
In writing of my own mediumship, or the mediumship of any other person,
I wish it particularly to be understood that I do not intend my
narrative to be, by any means, an account of _all seances_ held under
that control (for were I to include everything that I have seen and
heard during my researches into Spiritualism, this volume would swell to
unconscionable dimensions), but only of certain events which I believe
to be remarkable, and not enjoyed by every one in like measure. Most
people have read of the ordinary phenomena that take place at such
meetings. My readers, therefore, will find no description here of
marvels which--whether true or false--can be accounted for upon natural
grounds. Miss Florence Cook, now Mrs. Elgie Corner, is one of the media
who have been most talked of and written about. Mr. Alfred Crookes took
an immense interest in her, and published a long account of his
investigation of Spiritualism under her mediumship. Mr. Henry Dunphy, of
the _Morning Post_, wrote a series of papers for _London Society_ (of
which magazine I was then the editor), describing her powers, and the
proof she gave of them. The first time I ever met Florence Cook was in
his private house, when my little daughter appeared through her (_vide_
"The Story of my Spirit Child"). On that occasion, as we were sitting at
supper after the _seance_--a party of perhaps thirty people--the whole
dinner-table, with everything upon it, rose bodily in the air to a level
with our knees, and the dishes and glasses swayed about in a perilous
manner, without, however, coming to any permanent harm. I was so much
astonished at, and interested by, what I saw that evening, that I became
most anxious to make the personal acquaintance of Miss Cook. She was the
medium for the celebrated spirit, "Katie King," of whom so much has been
believed and disbelieved, and the _seances_ she gave at her parents'
house in Hackney for the purpose of seeing this figure alone used to be
crowded by the cleverest and most scientific men of the day, Sergeants
Cox and Ballantyne, Mr. S. C. Hall, Mr. Alfred Crookes, and many others,
being on terms of the greatest intimacy with her. Mr. William Harrison,
of the _Spiritualist_ paper, was the one to procure me an introduction
to the family and an entrance to the _seances_, for which I shall always
feel grateful to him.
For the benefit of the uninitiated, let me begin by telling _who_ "Katie
King" was supposed to be. Her account of herself was that her name was
"Annie Owens Morgan;" that she was the daughter of Sir Henry Morgan, a
famous buccaneer who lived about the time of the Commonwealth, and
suffered death upon the high seas, being, in fact, a pirate; that she
herself was about twelve years old when Charles the First was beheaded;
that she married and had two little children; that she committed more
crimes than we should like to hear of, having murdered men with her own
hands, but yet died quite young, at about two or three and twenty. To
all questions concerning the reason of her reappearance on earth, she
returned but one answer, That it was part of the work given her to do to
convince the world of the truth of Spiritualism. This was the
information I received from her own lips. She had appeared to the Cooks
some years before I saw her, and had become so much one of the family as
to walk about the house at all times without alarming the inmates. She
often materialized and got into bed with her medium at night, much to
Florrie's annoyance; and after Miss Cook's marriage to Captain Corner,
he told me himself that he used to feel at first as if he had married
two women, and was not quite sure which was his wife of the two.
The order of these _seances_ was always the same. Miss Cook retired to a
back room, divided from the audience by a thin damask curtain, and
presently the form of "Katie King" would appear dressed in white, and
walk out amongst the sitters in gaslight, and talk like one of
themselves. Florence Cook (as I mentioned before) is a very small,
slight brunette, with dark eyes and dark curly hair and a delicate
aquiline nose. Sometimes "Katie" resembled her exactly; at others, she
was totally different. Sometimes, too, she measured the same height as
her medium; at others, she was much taller. I have a large photograph
of "Katie" taken under limelight. In it she appears as the double of
Florrie Cook, yet Florrie was looking on whilst the picture was taken. I
have sat for her several times with Mr. Crookes, and seen the tests
applied which are mentioned in his book on the subject. I have seen
Florrie's dark curls _nailed down to the floor_, outside the curtain, in
view of the audience, whilst "Katie" walked about and talked with us. I
have seen Florrie placed on the scale of a weighing machine constructed
by Mr. Crookes for the purpose, behind the curtain, whilst the balance
remained in sight. I have seen under these circumstances that the medium
weighed eight stone in a normal condition, and that as soon as the
materialized form was fully developed, the balance ran up to four stone.
Moreover, I have seen both Florrie and "Katie" together on several
occasions, so I can have no doubt on the subject that they were two
separate creatures. Still, I can quite understand how difficult it must
have been for strangers to compare the strong likeness that existed
between the medium and the spirit, without suspecting they were one and
the same person. One evening "Katie" walked out and perched herself upon
my knee. I could feel she was a much plumper and heavier woman than Miss
Cook, but she wonderfully resembled her in features, and I told her so.
"Katie" did not seem to consider it a compliment. She shrugged her
shoulders, made a grimace, and said, "I know I am; I can't help it, but
I was much prettier than that in earth life. You shall see, some
day--you shall see." After she had finally retired that evening, she put
her head out at the curtain again and said, with the strong lisp she
always had, "I want Mrs. Ross-Church." I rose and went to her, when she
pulled me inside the curtain, when I found it was so thin that the gas
shining through it from the outer room made everything in the inner
quite visible. "Katie" pulled my dress impatiently and said, "Sit down
on the ground," which I did. She then seated herself in my lap, saying,
"And now, dear, we'll have a good 'confab,' like women do on earth."
Florence Cook, meanwhile, was lying on a mattress on the ground close to
us, wrapped in a deep trance. "Katie" seemed very anxious I should
ascertain beyond doubt that it was Florrie. "Touch her," she said, "take
her hand, pull her curls. Do you see that it is Florrie lying there?"
When I assured her I was quite satisfied there was no doubt of it, the
spirit said, "Then look round this way, and see what I was like in earth
life." I turned to the form in my arms, and what was my amazement to see
a woman fair as the day, with large grey or blue eyes, a white skin, and
a profusion of golden red hair. "Katie" enjoyed my surprise, and asked
me, "Ain't I prettier than Florrie now?" She then rose and procured a
pair of scissors from the table, and cut off a lock of her own hair and
a lock of the medium's, and gave them to me. I have them safe to this
day. One is almost black, soft and silky; the other a coarse golden red.
After she had made me this present, "Katie" said, "Go back now, but
don't tell the others to-night, or they'll all want to see me." On
another very warm evening she sat on my lap amongst the audience, and I
felt perspiration on her arm. This surprised me; and I asked her if, for
the time being, she had the veins, nerves, and secretions of a human
being; if blood ran through her body, and she had a heart and lungs. Her
answer was, "I have everything that Florrie has." On that occasion also
she called me after her into the back room, and, dropping her white
garment, stood perfectly naked before me. "Now," she said "you can see
that I am a woman." Which indeed she was, and a most beautifully-made
woman too; and I examined her well, whilst Miss Cook lay beside us on
the floor. Instead of dismissing me this time, "Katie" told me to sit
down by the medium, and, having brought me a candle and matches, said I
was to strike a light as soon as she gave three knocks, as Florrie would
be hysterical on awaking, and need my assistance. She then knelt down
and kissed me, and I saw she was still naked. "Where is your dress,
Katie?" I asked. "Oh that's gone," she said; "I've sent it on before
me." As she spoke thus, kneeling beside me, she rapped three times on
the floor. I struck the match almost simultaneously with the signal; but
as it flared up, "Katie King" was gone like a flash of lightning, and
Miss Cook, as she had predicted, awoke with a burst of frightened tears,
and had to be soothed into tranquillity again. On another occasion
"Katie King" was asked at the beginning of the _seance_, by one of the
company, to say _why_ she could not appear in the light of more than one
gasburner. The question seemed to irritate her, and she replied, "I have
told you all, several times before, that I can't stay under a searching
light. I don't know _why_; but I can't, and if you want to prove the
truth of what I say, turn up all the gas and see what will happen to me.
Only remember, it you do there will be no _seance_ to-night, because I
shan't be able to come back again, and you must take your choice."
Upon this assertion it was put to the vote if the trial should be made
or not, and all present (Mr. S. C. Hall was one of the party) decided we
would prefer to witness the effect of a full glare of gas upon the
materialized form than to have the usual sitting, as it would settle the
vexed question of the necessity of gloom (if not darkness) for a
materializing _seance_ for ever. We accordingly told "Katie" of our
choice, and she consented to stand the test, though she said afterwards
we had put her to much pain. She took up her station against the
drawing-room wall, with her arms extended as if she were crucified. Then
three gas-burners were turned on to their full extent in a room about
sixteen feet square. The effect upon "Katie King" was marvellous. She
looked like herself for the space of a second only, then she began
gradually to melt away. I can compare the dematerialization of her form
to nothing but a wax doll melting before a hot fire. First, the features
became blurred and indistinct; they seemed to run into each other. The
eyes sunk in the sockets, the nose disappeared, the frontal bone fell
in. Next the limbs appeared to give way under her, and she sank lower
and lower on the carpet like a crumbling edifice. At last there was
_nothing but her head_ left above the ground--then a heap of white
drapery only, which disappeared with a whisk, as if a hand had pulled it
after her--and we were left staring by the light of three gas-burners at
the spot on which "Katie King" had stood.
She was always attired in white drapery, but it varied in quality.
Sometimes it looked like long cloth; at others like mull muslin or
jaconet; oftenest it was a species of thick cotton net. The sitters were
much given to asking "Katie" for a piece of her dress to keep as a
souvenir of their visit; and when they received it, would seal it up
carefully in an envelope and convey it home; and were much surprised on
examining their treasure to find it had totally disappeared.
"Katie" used to say that nothing material about her could be made to
last without taking away some of the medium's vitality, and weakening
her in consequence. One evening, when she was cutting off pieces of her
dress rather lavishly, I remarked that it would require a great deal of
mending. She answered, "I'll show you how we mend dresses in the Spirit
World." She then doubled up the front breadth of her garment a dozen
times, and cut two or three round holes in it. I am sure when she let it
fall again there must have been thirty or forty holes, and "Katie" said,
"Isn't that a nice cullender?"
She then commenced, whilst we stood close to her, to shake her skirt
gently about, and in a minute it was as perfect as before, without a
hole to be seen. When we expressed our astonishment, she told me to take
the scissors and cut off her hair. She had a profusion of ringlets
falling to her waist that night. I obeyed religiously, hacking the hair
wherever I could, whilst she kept on saying, "Cut more! cut more! not
for yourself, you know, because you can't take it away."
So I cut off curl after curl, and as fast as they fell to the ground,
_the hair grew again upon her head_. When I had finished, "Katie" asked
me to examine her hair, to see if I could detect any place where I had
used the scissors, and I did so without any effect. Neither was the
severed hair to be found. It had vanished out of sight. "Katie" was
photographed many times, by limelight, by Mr. Alfred Crookes, but her
portraits are all too much like her medium to be of any value in
establishing her claim to a separate identity. She had always stated she
should not appear on this earth after the month of May, 1874; and
accordingly, on the 21st, she assembled her friends to say "Good-bye" to
them, and I was one of the number. "Katie" had asked Miss Cook to
provide her with a large basket of flowers and ribbons, and she sat on
the floor and made up a bouquet for each of her friends to keep in
remembrance of her.
Mine, which consists of lilies of the valley and pink geranium, looks
almost as fresh to-day, nearly seventeen years after, as it did when she
gave it to me. It was accompanied by the following words, which "Katie"
wrote on a sheet of paper in my presence:--
"From Annie Owen de Morgan (_alias_ 'Katie') to her friend Florence
Marryat Ross-Church. With love. _Pensez a moi._
"_May 21st, 1874._"
The farewell scene was as pathetic as if we had been parting with a dear
companion by death. "Katie" herself did not seem to know how to go. She
returned again and again to have a last look, especially at Mr. Alfred
Crookes, who was as attached to her as she was to him. Her prediction
has been fulfilled, and from that day, Florence Cook never saw her again
nor heard anything about her. Her place was shortly filled by another
influence, who called herself "Marie," and who danced and sung in a
truly professional style, and certainly as Miss Cook never either danced
or sung. I should not have mentioned the appearance of this spirit, whom
I only saw once or twice, excepting for the following reason. On one
occasion Miss Cook (then Mrs. Corner) was giving a public _seance_ at
the rooms of the National British Association of Spiritualists, at which
a certain Sir George Sitwell, a very young man, was present, and at
which he declared that the medium cheated, and that the spirit "Marie"
was herself, dressed up to deceive the audience. Letters appeared in the
newspapers about it, and the whole press came down upon Spiritualists,
and declared them all to be either knaves or fools. These notices were
published on the morning of a day on which Miss Cook was engaged to give
another public _seance_, at which I was present. She was naturally very
much cut up about them. Her reputation was at stake; her honor had been
called into question, and being a proud girl, she resented it bitterly.
Her present audience was chiefly composed of friends; but, before
commencing, she put it to us whether, whilst under such a stigma, she
had better not sit at all. We, who had all tested her and believed in
her, were unanimous in repudiating the vile charges brought against her,
and in begging the _seance_ should proceed. Florrie refused, however, to
sit unless some one remained in the cabinet with her, and she chose me
for the purpose. I was therefore tied to her securely with a stout rope,
and we remained thus fastened together for the whole of the evening.
Under which conditions "Marie" appeared, and sung and danced outside the
cabinet, just as she had done to Sir George Sitwell whilst her medium
remained tied to me. So much for men who decide a matter before they
have sifted it to the bottom. Mrs. Elgie Corner has long since given up
mediumship either private or public, and lives deep down in the heart
of Wales, where the babble and scandal of the city affect her no longer.
But she told me, only last year, that she would not pass through the
suffering she had endured on account of Spiritualism again for all the
good this world could give her.