A LADY MESMERIST.
When a man's whole existence has resolved itself into hunting up strange
people and poking his nose into queer nooks and corners, he has a sorry
time of it in London during August; for, as a rule, all the funny folks
have gone out of town, and the queer nooks and corners are howling
wildernesses. There is always, of course, a sort of borderland, if he
can only find it out, some peculiar people who never go out of town,
some strange localities which are still haunted by them; only he has to
find them out--people and places--for it is so universally allowed
now-a-days that all genteel people must be out of London in August, and
all respectable places must be covered up in old newspapers, that it is
difficult to get them to own the soft impeachment.
However, there is one queer place that is never shut up, the Progressive
Library in Southampton Row; and Mr. Burns and the Spiritualists, as a
rule, do not shut up shop even in August. Their Summerland lies
elsewhere than Margate or the Moors; and a valse with a pirouetting
table or a little gentle levitation or elongation delights them more
than all the revels of the countryside. I was getting a little blasé, I
own, on the subject of Spiritualism after my protracted experiences
during the Conference, and I do not think I should have turned my steps
in the direction of the Progressive Institution that week had not the
following announcement caught my eye as I scanned the ghostly pages of
the _Medium and Daybreak_:--
"A MESMERIC SÉANCE.
"We have been authorized to announce that Miss Chandos,
whose advertisement appears in another part of this paper,
will give a mesmeric séance at the Spiritual Institution,
15, Southampton Row, on Wednesday evening, August 19th, at
eight o'clock. Admission will be free by ticket, which may
be obtained at the Institution. The object which Miss
Chandos has in view is to interest a few truth-seekers who
could aid her in promoting a knowledge of psychological
phenomena. As a crowded meeting is not desired, an early
application should be made for tickets."
I do not know that I said "Eureka!" Indeed I have considerable historic
doubts as to whether anybody ever did, but I felt it. I was a
truth-seeker forthwith. I resolved to sit at the feet of Miss Chandos,
and, should her mesmeric efforts prove satisfactory, "aid her in
promoting a knowledge of psychological phenomena." I did not go through
the prescribed process of getting a ticket beforehand, because I
thought in my innocence that everybody would be out of town, or that the
Hall of the Progressive Institute would certainly accommodate those who
remained. Never was a more fatal mistake. The psychological folks were
all in London, and the capacities of the Progressive Library are not
palatial. Miss Chandos had a crowded meeting whether she desired it or
not. Genius will not be concealed; and Miss Chandos was learning that
lesson in a very satisfactory way. It was a sultry evening when a small
boy opened the back door of the little first floor apartment in
Southampton Row, and squeezed me in like the thirteenth in an omnibus,
and I found myself walking on people's toes, and sitting down on their
hats in the most reckless manner. At length, however, I struggled to a
vacant corner, and deposited myself perspiring and expectant.
Mr. Burns was "orating" on the revival mesmerism was destined to make,
and telling us how, like the Plumstead Peculiars, we should be able to
do without doctors as soon as the healing powers of animal magnetism
were properly recognised and diffused. I did not listen very carefully,
I fear, for I was nervously looking about for Miss Chandos. Nervously, I
say, because lady mediums and mesmerizers are so apt to run to eighteen
stone, or be old and frumpish, that I had terrible fears lest I should
be scared when I met Miss Chandos in the flesh. I was very agreeably
surprised, however, for when Mr. Burns resumed--not his chair but his
table, since he sat on that article of furniture, a very pretty young
lady indeed, of not more than eighteen or twenty years of age, took his
place, and, in a few well-chosen words, said this was her first
appearance as a public mesmerist, and claimed indulgence should any
failure in the phenomena result. She also drew attention to the fact
that the apartment was "pernicious snug" (she put it, of course, in more
scientific language), and straightway proceeded to business.
When Miss Chandos invited patients to put themselves in her hands I
thought the room had risen en masse. Everybody wanted to be mesmerized.
I had no chance in my retired position; but she soon got a front row of
likely people, and I sat down once more disappointed and exuding.
She was a tall active young lady was Miss Chandos, and had a mystic crop
of long black curls, which waved about like the locks of a sibyl when
she made a lunge at an innocent looking young man who sat No. 1--and
whom, with the other patients, I shall designate thus numerically. He
seemed to like it immensely, and smiled a fatuous smile as those taper
fingers lighted on his head, while the other hand rested on the frontal
portion of his face, as though Miss Chandos were going to pull his nose.
He was off in a moment, and sat facing the audience in his magnetic
trance, looking like a figure at a waxwork show. Miss Chandos then
passed on to a gentleman, No. 2, who never succumbed during the entire
evening, though she made several onslaughts upon him. Consequently I
dismiss No. 2 as incorrigible forthwith. No. 3 was a lady who only gave
way after a lengthened attack, and did not seem to appreciate the effect
of Miss Chandos' lustrous eyes so much as No. 1 did. He gave signs of
"coming to," but Miss Chandos kept looking round at him and No. 2, while
she was attending to No. 3, and directly she did this No. 1 closed his
eyes, and slept the sleep of innocence again.
Having reduced No. 3 to a comatose condition Miss Chandos reverted to
No. 1, and by attractive passes got him on his legs and made him follow
her up and down the limited space at her disposal. She looked then like
a pretty Vivien manipulating a youthful Merlin; and I was not at all
surprised at the effect of her "woven paces and her waving hands." She
asked him his name, and he told her. It was W----. "No," she said, "it's
Jones. Mary Jones. What's your name?" But the youth was not quite so far
gone as to rebaptize himself with a female cognomen just yet. He stuck
to his W., and Miss Chandos put him into his waxwork position again, and
got No. 3 on her legs at last, but did nothing more with her than make
her walk up and down. Presently No. 3 woke up, and was put to air at the
window.
No. 4 was now selected, in the person of a big burly man; and I could
not help thinking, as she manipulated him, what a capital pose it would
have been for Hercules and Omphale. He seemed to like it exceedingly,
and I thought was dropping comfortably off when he whispered something
to his operator (I have no notion what the feminine of that word is),
who fixed her brilliant eyes on somebody near me--I feared it was
actually on me--and said, "Somebody at the back of the room is
exercising control. I shall be glad if they will refrain." I was quite
innocent of exercising conscious control, and did not quite know what
the phrase meant. I certainly had once or twice thought it must be much
pleasanter to be operated upon by so pretty a young lady than by some
bull-necked male mesmerist or aged spinster above-mentioned, but I could
scarcely believe that such a mild sentiment could affect that colossal
man. However, I recollected the delicacy of these psychological
relations, and sat down conscience-stricken and warmer than ever.
Miss Chandos selected No. 5 in the person of a young man with a nascent
moustache, who had successfully struggled into the front row at the
outset. He promised well at first; but, like other young men with
incipient moustaches, disappointed us afterwards. Then came No. 6 upon
the scene.
No. 6 was a lady who came late, and at once pushed to the front with the
air of a person who was not doing so for the first time. She went off in
a moment--far too suddenly, in fact, and then did everything she was
told in a very obedient way. Being told that she was in a beautiful
garden, she stooped down on the floral carpet and proceeded to gather
materials for a bouquet. I confess I did not care about No. 6, and was
proceeding to read Professor Tyndall's Belfast Address, which I had in
my pocket, when Miss Chandos looked up No. 1 again.
Reduced to a proper frame of mind, either by Miss Chandos' continued
attentions or the contagion of No. 6's docility, the youth was now all
submission. He walked up and down any number of times like a tame animal
at the Zoological Gardens, and now quite agreed that his name was Mary
Jones. He sang "Tom Bowling" at command, and No. 6, not to be outdone,
warbled a ditty called, I think, "The Slave Girl's Love," the refrain of
which, according to her version, was, "I cannot love, because I _ham_ a
slave." She broke down in the middle of this aspiring ditty, and then
personated a Jew old clo' man, a woman selling "ornaments for your
firestoves," and various other characters, all of which she overacted
considerably. I may be wrong, of course, but I fancied the fair
lecturess was as dissatisfied with No. 6 as I was. The audience was an
indulgent one, and thought it splendid. Mr. Burns sat on the table and
yawned. I relapsed into Tyndall, and wondered what he would have said
about it all; or, at least, I did not wonder, for I knew he would have
consigned us all to the nearest lunatic asylum as exceptions to the rule
that the European has so many more cubic inches of cerebral development
than the Papuan.
When it was drawing near ten, Miss Chandos brought the proceedings to a
close by animating--like Pygmalion--her waxwork statues. She apologized
once more, in a few well-chosen sentences, for what she was pleased to
call her "failure," but the audience would not hear of the term, and
applauded to the echo, only there was no room for an echo in the
Progressive Institute. The young man, No. 1, who I found was a spirit
medium, wound up by an address from his Indian guide on the subject of
"control."
I confess I failed to gather from the perambulating youth and maidens
No. 1 and 3, or the impersonations of No. 6, any signs of the revival
alluded to by Mr. Burns at the outset; and there was not the remotest
connexion with the healing art. In fact, nobody seemed suffering from
anything except heat.
Miss Chandos said to me, however, in a sensible conversation with which
she favoured me in private, that all she had attempted to show was but
the lowest manifestation of a power which had far higher ends in view.
She doubted almost whether it was not something like sacrilege to use
such a power for playing tricks and gratifying curiosity.
She was thoroughly in earnest; and laboured both physically during the
evening and logically in her after-discourse, with an energy which some
persons would have said was worthy of a better cause.
It was nearly eleven when I left the miniature hall of the Progressive
Institute, and as I passed along the streets, digesting what I had seen
and heard during the evening, I took myself to task severely--as it is
always well to do, if only to prevent somebody else doing it for me--and
asked whether, if the lecturess had not been a lecturess but a
lecturer--if being a lecturess she weighed eighteen stone, or was old
and wizen, or dropped her h's--whether I should have stayed three mortal
hours in that stuffy room, and I frankly own I came to the conclusion I
should _not_.