V. _Mrs. Fay._
There was a young woman called "Annie Eva Fay," who came over from
America to London some years ago, and appeared at the Hanover Square
Rooms, in an exhibition after the manner of the Davenport Brothers and
Messrs. Maskelyne and Cook. She must not be confounded with the Mrs. Fay
who forms the subject of this chapter, because they had nothing to do
with one another. Some one in Boston advised me _not_ to go and sit at
one of this Mrs. Fay's public _seances_. They were described to me as
being too physical and unrefined; that the influences were of a low
order, and the audiences matched them. However, when I am studying a
matter, I like to see everything I can and hear everything I can
concerning it, and to form my own opinion independent of that of anybody
else. So I walked off by myself one night to Mrs. Fay's address, and sat
down in a quiet corner, watching everything that occurred. The circle
certainly numbered some members of a humble class, but I conclude we
should see that everywhere if the fees were lower. Media, like other
professional people, fix their charges according to the quarter of the
city in which they live. But every member was silent and respectful, and
evidently a believer.
One young man, in deep mourning, with a little girl also in black, of
about five or six years old, attracted my attention at once, from his
sorrowful and abstracted manner. He had evidently come there, I thought,
in the hope of seeing some one whom he had lost. Mrs. Fay (as she passed
through the room to her cabinet) appeared a very quiet, simple-looking
little woman to me, without any loudness or vulgarity about her. Her
cabinet was composed of two curtains only, made of some white material,
and hung on uprights at one angle, in a corner of the room, the most
transparent contrivance possible. Anything like a bustle or confusion
inside it, such as would be occasioned by dressing or "making up,"
would have been apparent at once to the audience outside, who were
sitting by the light of an ordinary gas-burner and globe. Yet Mrs. Fay
had not been seated there above a few minutes, when there ran out into
the _seance_ room two of the most extraordinary materializations I had
ever seen, and both of them about as opposite to Mrs. Fay in appearance
as any creatures could be.
One was an Irish charwoman or apple-woman (she might have been either)
with a brown, wrinkled face, a broken nose, tangled grey hair, a crushed
bonnet, general dirt and disorder, and a tongue that could talk broad
Irish, and call "a spade a spade" at one and the same time. "Biddy," as
she was named, was accompanied by a street newspaper boy--one of those
urchins who run after carriages and turn Catherine-wheels in the mud,
and who talked "gutter-slang" in a style that was utterly unintelligible
to the decent portion of the sitters. These two went on in a manner that
was undoubtedly funny, but not at all edifying and calculated to drive
any enquirer into Spiritualism out of the room, under the impression
that they were evil spirits bent on our destruction. That either of them
was represented by Mrs. Fay was out of the question. In the first place,
she would, in that instance, have been so clever an actress and mimic,
that she would have made her fortune on the stage--added to which the
boy "Teddy" was much too small for her, and "Biddy" was much too large.
Besides, no actress, however experienced, could have "made up" in the
time. I was quite satisfied, therefore, that neither of them was the
medium, even if I could not have seen her figure the while, through the
thin curtains, sitting in her chair. _Why_ such low, physical
manifestations are permitted I am unable to say. It was no wonder they
had shocked the sensibility of my friend. I felt half inclined myself
when they appeared to get up and run away. However, I was very glad
afterwards that I did not. They disappeared after a while, and were
succeeded by a much pleasanter person, a cabinet spirit called "Gipsy,"
who looked as if she might have belonged to one of the gipsy tribes when
on earth, she was so brown and arch and lively. Presently the young man
in black was called up, and I saw him talking to a female spirit very
earnestly. After a while he took her hand and led her outside the
curtain, and called the little girl whom he had left on his seat by her
name. The child looked up, screamed "Mamma! mamma!" and flew into the
arms of the spirit, who knelt down and kissed her, and we could hear the
child sobbing and saying, "Oh! mamma, why did you go away?--why did you
go away?" It was a very affecting scene--at least it seemed so to me.
The instant recognition by the little girl, and her perfect
unconsciousness but that her mother had returned _in propria persona_,
would have been more convincing proof of the genuineness of Spiritualism
to a sceptic, than fifty miracles of greater importance. When the spirit
mother had to leave again the child's agony at parting was very
apparent. "Take me with you," she kept on saying, and her father had
actually to carry her back to her seat. When they got there they both
wept in unison. Afterwards he said to me in an apologetic sort of
way--he was sitting next to me--"It is the first time, you see, that
Mary has seen her poor mother, but I wanted to have her testimony to her
identity, and I think she gave it pretty plainly, poor child! She'll
never be content to let me come alone now." I said, "I think it is a
pity you brought her so young," and so I did.
"Florence" did not appear (she told me afterwards the atmosphere was so
"rough" that she could not), and I began to think that no one would come
for me, when a common seaman, dressed in ordinary sailor's clothes, ran
out of the cabinet and began dancing a hornpipe in front of me. He
danced it capitally too, and with any amount of vigorous snapping his
fingers to mark the time, and when he had finished he "made a leg," as
sailors call it, and stood before me. "Have you come for me, my friend?"
I enquired. "Not exactly," he answered, "but I came with the Cap'en. I
came to pave the way for him. The Cap'en will be here directly. We was
in the _Avenger_ together." (Now all the world knows that my eldest
brother, Frederick Marryat, was drowned in the wreck of the _Avenger_ in
1847; but as I was a little child at the time, and had no remembrance of
him, I had never dreamt of seeing him again. He was a first lieutenant
when he died, so I do not know why the seaman gave him brevet rank, but
I repeat his words as he said them.) After a minute or two I was called
up to the cabinet, and saw my brother Frederick (whom I recognized from
his likeness) standing there dressed in naval uniform, but looking very
stiff and unnatural. He smiled when he saw me, but did not attempt to
kiss me. I said, "Why! Fred! is it really you? I thought you would have
forgotten all about me." He replied, "Forgotten little Flo? Why should
I? Do you think I have never seen you since that time, nor heard
anything about you? I know everything--everything!" "You must know,
then, that I have not spent a very happy life," I said. "Never mind," he
answered, "you needed it. It has done you good!" But all he said was
without any life in it, as if he spoke mechanically--perhaps because it
was the first time he had materialized.
I had said "Good-bye" to him, and dropped the curtain, when I heard my
name called twice, "Flo! Flo!" and turned to receive my sister "Emily"
in my arms. She looked like herself exactly, but she had only time to
kiss me and gasp out, "So glad, so happy to meet again," when she
appeared to faint. Her eyes closed, her head fell back on my shoulder,
and before I had time to realize what was going to happen, she had
passed _through_ the arm that supported her, and sunk down _through_ the
floor. The sensation of her weight was still making my arm tingle, but
"Emily" was gone--_clean gone_. I was very much disappointed. I had
longed to see this sister again, and speak to her confidentially; but
whether it was something antagonistic in the influence of this _seance_
room ("Florence" said afterwards that it _was_), or there was some other
cause for it, I know not, but most certainly my friends did not seem to
flourish there.
I had another horrible disappointment before I left. A voice from inside
the cabinet called out, "Here are two babies who want the lady sitting
under the picture." Now, there was only one picture hanging in the room,
and I was sitting under it. I looked eagerly towards the cabinet, and
saw issue from it the "Princess Gertie" leading a little toddler with a
flaxen poll and bare feet, and no clothing but a kind of white chemise.
This was "Joan," the "Yonnie" I had so often asked to see, and I rose in
the greatest expectation to receive the little pair. Just as they gained
the centre of the room, however, taking very short and careful steps,
like babies first set on their feet, the cabinet spirit "Gipsy"
_bounced_ out of the curtains, and saying decidedly, "Here! we don't
want any children about," she placed her hand on the heads of my little
ones, and _pressed them down_ through the floor. They seemed to crumble
to pieces before my eyes, and their place knew them no more. I couldn't
help feeling angry. I exclaimed, "O! what did you do that for? Those
were my babies, and I have been longing to see them so." "I can't help
it," replied "Gipsy," "but this isn't a _seance_ for children." I was so
vexed that I took no more interest in the proceedings. A great number of
forms appeared, thirty or forty in all, but by the time I returned to my
hotel and began to jot down my notes, I could hardly remember what they
were. I had been dreaming all the time of how much I should have liked
to hold that little flaxen-haired "Yonnie" in my arms.