ON LAYING THE CARDS.
At the risk of being laughed at, I cannot refrain, in the course of this
narrative of my spiritualistic experiences, from saying a few words
about what is called "laying the cards." "Imagine!" I fancy I hear some
dear creature with nose "tip-tilted like a flower" exclaim, "any
sensible woman believing in cards." And yet Napoleon believed in them,
and regulated the fate of nations by them; and the only times he
neglected their admonitions were followed by the retreat from Moscow and
the defeat at Waterloo. Still I did not believe in card-telling till the
belief was forced upon me. I always thought it rather cruel to give
imprisonment and hard labor to old women who laid the cards for servant
girls. Who can tell whether or no it is obtaining money upon false
pretences; and if it is, why not inflict the same penalty on every
cheating tradesman who sells inferior articles or gives short weight?
Women would be told they should look after their own interests in the
one case--so why not in the other? But all the difference lies in _who_
lays the cards. Very few people can do it successfully, and my belief is
that it must be done by a person with mediumistic power, which, in some
mysterious manner, influences the disposition of the pack. I have seen
cards shuffled and cut twenty times in the hope of getting rid of some
number antagonistic to the inquirer's good fortune, and yet each time
the same card would turn up in the juxtaposition least to be desired.
However, to narrate my own experience. When I was living in Brussels,
years before I heard of modern Spiritualism, I made the acquaintance of
an Irish lady called Mrs. Thorpe, a widow who was engaged as a
_chaperon_ for some young Belgian ladies of high birth, who had lost
their mother. We lived near each other, and she often came in to have a
chat with me. After a while I heard through some other friends that Mrs.
Thorpe was a famous hand at "laying the cards;" and one day, when we
were alone, I asked her to tell me my fortune. I didn't in the least
believe in it, but I wanted to be amused. Mrs. Thorpe begged to be
excused at once. She told me her predictions had proved so true, she was
afraid to look into futurity any more. She had seen a son and heir for a
couple who had been married twenty years without having any children,
and death for a girl just about to become a bride--and both had come
true; and, in fact, her employer, the Baron, had strictly forbidden her
doing it any more whilst in his house. However, this only fired my
curiosity, and I teased her until, on my promising to preserve the
strictest secrecy, she complied with my request. She predicted several
things in which I had little faith, but which I religiously wrote down
in case they came true--the three most important being that my husband,
Colonel Ross-Church (who was then most seriously ill in India), would
not die, but that his brother, Edward Church, would; that I should have
one more child by my first marriage--a daughter with exceedingly fair
skin and hair, who would prove to be the cleverest of all my children,
and that after her birth I should never live with my husband again. All
these events were most unlikely to come to pass at that time, and,
indeed, did not come to pass for years afterwards, yet each one was
fulfilled, and the daughter who, unlike all her brothers and sisters, is
fair as a lily, will be by no means the last in the race for talent. Yet
these cards were laid four years before her birth. Mrs. Thorpe told me
she had learnt the art from a pupil of the identical Italian countess
who used to lay the cards for the Emperor Napoleon. But it is not an
art, and it is not to be learnt. It is inspiration.
Many years after this, when I had just begun to study Spiritualism, my
sister told me of a wonderful old lady, a neighbor of hers, who had
gained quite an evil reputation in the village by her prophetical powers
with the cards. Like Mrs. Thorpe, she had become afraid of herself, and
professed to have given up the practice. The last time she had laid
them, a girl acquaintance had walked over joyously from an adjacent
village to introduce her affianced husband to her, and to beg her to
tell them what would happen in their married life. The old lady had laid
the cards, and saw the death card turn up three times with the marriage
ring, and told the young people, much to their chagrin, that they must
prepare for a disappointment, as their marriage would certainly be
postponed from some obstacle arising in the way. She told me afterwards
that she dared not tell them more than this. They left her somewhat
sobered, but still full of hope, and started on their way home. Before
they reached it the young man staggered and fell down dead. No one had
expected such a catastrophe. He had been apparently in the best of
health and spirits. _What_ was it that had made this old lady foresee
what no one else had seen?
These are no trumped-up tales after the prediction had been fulfilled.
Everyone knew it to be true, and became frightened to look into the
future for themselves. I was an exception to the general rule, however,
and persuaded Mrs. Simmonds to lay the cards for me. I had just
completed a two months' sojourn at the seaside, was in robust health,
and anticipating my return home for the sake of meeting again with a
friend who was very dear to me. I shuffled and cut the cards according
to directions. The old lady looked rather grave. "I don't like your
cards," she said, "there is a good deal of trouble before you--trouble
and sickness. You will not return home so soon as you anticipate. You
will be detained by illness, and when you do return, you will find a
letter on the table that will cut you to the heart. I am sorry you have
stayed away so long. There has been treachery in your absence, and a
woman just your opposite, with dark eyes and hair, has got the better of
you. However, it will be a sharp trouble, but not a lengthy one. You
will see the wisdom of it before long, and be thankful it has happened."
I accepted my destiny with complacency, never supposing (notwithstanding
all that I had heard) that it would come true. I was within a few days
of starting for home, and had received affectionate letters from my
friend all the time I had been away. However, as Fate and the cards
would have it, I was taken ill the very day after they were laid for me,
and confined for three weeks with a kind of low fever to my bed; and
when weakened and depressed I returned to my home I found _the letter on
my table_ that Mrs. Simmonds had predicted for me, to say that my
friendship with my (supposed) friend _was over and done with for ever_.
After this I began to have more respect for cards, or rather for the
persons who successfully laid them. In 1888, when I was touring with my
company with the "Golden Goblin," I stayed for the first time in my life
in Accrington. Our sojourn there was to be only for a week, and, as may
be supposed, the accommodation in the way of lodgings was very poor.
When we had been there a few days a lady of the company said to me,
"There is such a funny old woman at my lodgings, Miss Marryat! I wish
you'd come and see her. She can tell fortunes with the cards, and I know
you believe in such things. She has told my husband and me all about
ourselves in the most wonderful manner; but you mustn't come when the
old man is at home, because he says it's devilry, and he has forbidden
her doing it." "I _am_ very much interested in that sort of thing," I
replied, "and I will certainly pay her a visit, if you will tell me when
I may come." A time was accordingly fixed for my going to the lady's
rooms, and on my arrival there I was introduced to a greasy, snuffy old
landlady, who didn't look as if she had a soul above a bottle of gin.
However, I sat down at a table with her, and the cards were cut. She
told me nothing that my friends might have told her concerning me, but
dived at once into the future. My domestic affairs were in a very
complicated state at that period, and I had no idea myself how they
would end. She saw the whole situation at a glance--described the actors
in the scene, the places they lived in, the people by whom they were
surrounded, and exactly how the whole business would end, and _did_ end.
She foretold the running of the tour, how long it would last, and which
of the company would leave before it concluded. She told me that a woman
in the company, whom I believed at that time to be attached to me, would
prove to be one of my greatest enemies, and be the cause of estrangement
between me and one of my nearest relations, and she opened my eyes to
that woman's character in a way which forced me afterwards to find out
that to which I might have been blind forever. And this information
emanated from a dirty, ignorant, old lodging keeper, who had probably
never heard of my name until it was thrust before her, and yet told me
things that my most intimate and cleverest friends had no power to tell
me. After the woman at Accrington I never looked at a card for the
purpose of divination until my attention was directed last year to a
woman in London who is very clever at the same thing, and a friend
asked me to go with her and see what she could tell us. This woman, who
is quite of the lower class, and professedly a dressmaker, received us
in a bedroom, the door of which was carefully locked. She was an elderly
woman and rather intelligent and well educated for her position, but she
could adduce no reason whatever for her facility in reading the cards.
She told me "it _came_ to her," she didn't know why or how.
It "came to her" with a vengeance for me. She rattled off my past,
present and future as if she had been reading from an open book, and she
mentioned the description of a person (which I completely recognized) so
constantly with reference to my future, that I thought I would try her
by a question. "Stop a minute," I said, "this person whom you have
alluded to so often--have I ever met him?" "Of course you have met him,"
she replied, "you know him intimately." "I don't recognize the
description," I returned, fallaciously. The woman turned round and
looked me full in the face. "_You don't recognize him?_" she repeated in
an incredulous tone, "then you must be very dull. Well! I'll tell you
how to recognize him. Next time you meet a gentleman out walking who
raises his hat, and before he shakes hands with you, draws a written or
printed paper from his pocket and presents it to you, you can remember
my words. _That_ is the man I mean."
I laughed at the quaintness of the idea and returned home. As I was
walking from the station to my own house I met the person she had
described. As he neared me he raised his hat, and then putting his hand
in his pocket he said, "Good afternoon! I have something for you! I met
Burrows this morning. He was going on to you, but as he was in a great
hurry he asked me if I was likely to see you to-day to give you this."
And he presented me with a printed paper of regulations which I had
asked the man he mentioned to procure for me.
Now, here was no stereotyped utterance of the cards--no stock
phrase--but a deliberate prophecy of an unfulfilled event. It is upon
such things that I base my opinion that, given certain persons and
certain circumstances, the cards are a very fertile source of
information. It is absurd in cases like those I have related to lay it
all down to chance, to clever guessing, or to trickery. If my readers
believe so, let me ask them to try it for themselves. If it is all
folly, and any stupid, ignorant old woman can do it, of course _they_
must be able to master the trick. Let them get a pack of cards and lay
them according to the usual directions--there are any number of books
published that will tell them how to do it--and then see if they can
foretell a single event of importance correctly. They will probably find
(as _I_ do) that the cards are a sealed book to them. I would give a
great deal to be able to lay the cards with any degree of success for
myself or my friends. But nothing "comes to me." The cards remain
painted pieces of cardboard, and nothing more. And yet an ignorant
creature who has no brains of her own can dive deep into the mysteries
of my mind, and turn my inmost thoughts and wishes inside out,--more,
can pierce futurity and tell me what _shall_ be. However, if my hearers
continue to doubt my story, I can only repeat my admonition to try it
for themselves. If they once succeed, they will not give it up again.