condition, it is alleged, he would rise and float about the room. This in
Spiritualistic parlance is termed "levitation". At Knebworth and other
places, some of the most prominent people of the day claim to have seen
Home lift himself up and sail tranquilly out of a window, around the
house, and come in by another window.
The Earl of Dunraven told many stories equally strange of performances
that were given in his presence. The Earl declared that he had many times
seen Home elongate and shorten his body, and cause the closed piano to
play by putting his fingers on the lid.
[Illustration: FIG. 7--HOME AT THE TUILERIES.]
In the autumn of 1855 the famous medium went to Florence; there, also, the
spirit manifestations secured him the _entree_ into the best society of
the old Italian city. In his memoirs he speaks of an incident occurring
through his mediumship, at a séance given in Florence: "Upon one occasion,
while the Countess C-- was seated at one of Erard's grand-action pianos,
it rose and balanced itself in the air, during the whole time she was
playing." An English lady, resident at Florence, in a supposed haunted
house, procured the services of Home to exorcise the ghost. They sat at a
table in the sitting-room, and raps were heard proceeding from that piece
of furniture, and rustling sounds in the room as of a person moving about
in a heavy garment. The spirit being adjured in the name of the "Holy
Trinity" to leave the premises, the demonstrations ceased.
In February, 1856, the medium joined the retinue of Count B--, a Polish
nobleman, and went to Naples with his patron. From Naples to Rome was the
next step, and, in the Eternal City, the medium joined the Romish Church,
and was adjured by the Pope to abandon spirit séances forever. In 1858 we
find Home in St. Petersburg, where he married the youngest daughter of
General Count de Kroll, of Russia, and a goddaughter of the Emperor
Nicholas, the marriage taking place on Sunday, August 1, 1858, in the
private chapel attached to the house of the lady's brother-in-law, the
Count Gregoire Koucheleff-Besborodko. It was a very notable affair, and
Alexander Dumas came from Paris to attend the ceremony. Home's spirit
power which had left him since his conversion to the Roman Catholic faith
now returned in full force, it is said, and he saw standing near him at
the wedding the spirit form of his mother. In 1862 his wife died at the
Chateau Laroche, near Perigneux, France, and the medium repaired to Rome
for the purpose of studying sculpture. The reports of the spirit phenomena
constantly attending Home's presence reached the ears of the Papal
authorities and he was compelled to leave the city, notwithstanding the
fact that he gave positive assurance that he would give no séance. He was
actually charged with being a sorcerer, like Cagliostro, an accusation
that reads very strange in the Nineteenth Century. This affair embittered
Home against the Church, and he abandoned Roman Catholicism for the Greek
Church.
After the Roman fiasco, the famous medium returned to England to give
Spiritualistic lectures and séances. A writer in "_All the Year Round_",
gives the following pen picture of the medium, as he appeared in 1866:
"He is a tall, thin man, with broad square shoulders, suggestive of a suit
of clothes hung upon an iron cross. His hair is long and yellow; his teeth
are large, glittering and sharp; his eyes are a pale grey, with a redness
about the eye-lids, which comes and goes in a ghastly manner, as he talks.
When he shows his glittering sharp teeth, and that red line comes round
his slowly rolling eyes, he is not a pleasant sight to look upon. His
hands are long, white and bony, and on taking them you discover that they
are icy cold." A _suit of clothes hung upon an iron cross_ is a weird
touch in this pen picture.
Home about this time intended going upon the stage, but abandoned the idea
to become the secretary of the "Spiritual Atheneum", a society formed for
the investigation of psychic phenomena.
One of the most notable passages in the life of the great medium was the
famous law suit in which he was concerned in England. In 1866 he became
acquainted with a wealthy lady, Mrs. Jane Lyons. In his role of medium she
consulted him constantly about the welfare of her husband in the spirit
world, and her business affairs. She gave him £33,000 for his services.
Relatives and friends of Mrs. Lyons, however, saw in Home a cunning
adventurer who was preying upon a weak-minded woman. A suit was instituted
against the medium to recover the money, and the case became a _cause
celebre_ in the annals of the English courts.
In the autumn of 1871, Home, who before that time, had been quite a "lion"
at the court of Napoleon III and Eugene, followed the German army from
Sedan to Versailles, and was hand-in-glove with the King of Prussia. His
second marriage took place in October, 1871, at Paris, and after a brief
honeymoon in England he visited St. Petersburg with his wife, who was a
member of the noble Russian family of Alsakoff.
On the 21st of June, 1886, the great American ghost-seer died of
consumption, at Auteuil, near Paris, France. For years he was out of
health, and he ascribed his weakness to the expenditure of vital force in
working wonders during the earlier part of his career.
He was buried at St. Germain-en-Laye, with the rites of the Russian
Church. The funeral was a very simple one, not more than twenty persons
being present, all of whom were in full evening dress. The idea was to
emphasize the Spiritualists' belief that death is not a subject for
mourning, but is liberation, an occasion for rejoicing.
The curious reader will find many accounts of Home's invulnerability to
fire while in the trance state, notably those of Prof. Crookes, contained
in the proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research. In the March,
1868, number of "_Human Nature_," Mr. H. D. Jencken writes as follows
concerning a séance given by the medium:
"Mr. Home, (after various manifestations) said, 'we have gladly shown you
our power over fluids, we will now show you our power over solids.' He
then knelt down before the hearth, and deliberately breaking up a glowing
piece of coal in the fire place, took up a largish lump of incandescent
coal and placing the same in his left hand, proceeded to explain that
caloric had been extracted by a process known to them (the spirits), and
that the heat could in part be returned. This he proved by alternately
cooling and heating the coal; and to convince us of the fact, allowed us
to handle the coal which had become cool, then suddenly resumed its heat
sufficient to burn one, as I again touched it. I examined Mr. Home's hand,
and quite satisfied myself that no artificial means had been employed to
protect the skin, which did not even retain the smell of smoke. Mr. Home
then re-seated himself, and shortly awoke from his trance quite pale and
exhausted."
Other witnesses of the above experiment were Lord Lindsay, Lord Adare,
Miss Douglas, Mr. S. C. Hall, Mr. W. H. Harrison and Prof. Wallace. Mr. H.
Nisbet, of Glasgow, relates (_Human Nature_, Feb. 1870) that in his own
home in January, 1870, Mr. Home took a red hot coal from the grate and put
it in the hands of a lady and gentleman to whom it felt only warm.
Subsequently he placed the same on a folded newspaper, the result being a
hole burnt through eight layers of paper. Taking another blazing coal he
laid it on the same journal, and carried it around the apartment for
upwards of three minutes, without scorching the paper.
Among the crowned heads and famous people before whom Mr. Home appeared
were Napoleon III and the Empress Eugénie, Queen Victoria, King Louis I
and King Maximilian of Bavaria, the Emperor of Russia, the King and Queen
of Wurtemberg, the Duchess of Hamilton, the Crown Prince of Prussia and
old Gen. Von Moltke. Alexander Dumas the elder, was a constant companion
of the medium for a long time, and wrote columns about him.
Napoleon III had two sittings with Home--and it is said Home materialized
the spirit of the first Napoleon, who appeared in his familiar cocked hat,
gray overcoat and dark green uniform with white facings. "My fate?" asked
Louis, trembling with awe. "Like mine--discrowned, and death in exile,"
replied the ghost; then it vanished. The Empress swooned and Napoleon III
fell back in his chair as if about to faint. The medium in his first
séance with the French Emperor succeeded only in materializing some
flowers and a spirit hand, which the Emperor was permitted to grasp.
Celia Logan, the journalist, in writing of one of Home's séances at a
nobleman's house in London, says:
"On this occasion the medium announced that he would produce balls of fire
and illuminated hands. Failing in the former, he declared that the spirits
were not strong enough for that to-night, and so he would have to confine
himself to showing the luminous hands.
"The house was darkened and Home groped his way alone to the head of the
broad staircase, where every few minutes a pair of luminous hands were
thrown up. The audience was satisfied generally. One lady, however, was
not, and whispered to me--she was a half-hearted Spiritualist--that it
looked to her as if he had rubbed his own hands over with lucifer
matches.
"The host stood near the mantel piece and had seen Home abstractedly place
a small bottle upon it when he left the room for the staircase. That
bottle the host quietly slipped into his pocket. Upon examination the next
day it was found to contain phosphorated olive oil or some similar
preparation.
"The host had declared himself to have seen Home float through the air
from one side of the room to the other, lift a piano several feet in the
air by simply placing a finger upon it, and had seen him materialize
disembodied spirits; but after the discovery of the phosphorus trick he
dropped Home at once."
It is a significant fact that the medium while giving séances in Paris in
1857 refused to meet Houdin, the renowned prestidigitateur.
I shall now attempt an exposé of Home's physical phenomena. Home's
extraordinary feat of alternately cooling and heating a lump of coal taken
from a blazing fire, as related by Mr. H. D. Jencken and others, is easily
explained. It is a juggling trick. The "coal" is a piece of spongy
platinum which bears a close resemblance to a lump of half burnt coal, and
is palmed in the hand, as a prestidigitateur conceals a coin, a pack of
cards, an egg, or a small lemon. The medium or magician advances to the
grate and pretends to take a genuine lump of coal from the fire but brings
up instead, at the tips of his fingers, the piece of platinum. In a secret
breast pocket of his coat he has a small reservoir of hydrogen, with a
tube coming down the sleeve and terminating an inch or so above the cuff.
By means of certain mechanical arrangements, to enable him to let on and
off the gas at the proper moment, he is able to accomplish the trick; for
when a current of hydrogen is allowed to impinge upon a piece of spongy
platinum, the metal becomes incandescent, and as soon as the current is
arrested the platinum is restored to its normal condition.
The hand may be protected from burning in various ways, one method being
the repeated application of sulphuric acid to the skin, whereby it is
rendered impervious to the action of fire for a short period of time;
another, by wearing gloves of amianthus or asbestos cloth. With the
latter, worn in a badly lighted room, the medium, without much risk of
discovery, can handle red hot coals or iron with impunity. The gloves may
at the proper moment be slipped off and concealed about the person. A
small slip of amianthus cloth placed on a newspaper would protect it from
a hot coal and the same means could be used when a coal is placed in
another's hand or upon his head.
As to the marvelous "levitation", either the witnesses of the alleged feat
were under some hypnotic spell, or else they allowed their imaginations to
run riot when describing the event. In the case of Lord Lindsay and Lord
Adare, D. Carpenter in his valuable paper "On Fallacies Respecting the
Supernatural" (_Contemporary Review_, Jan., 1876) says: "A whole party of
believers affirm that they saw Mr. Home float out of one window and in at
another, while a single honest skeptic declares that Mr. Home was sitting
in his chair all the time." It seems that there were three gentlemen
present besides the medium when the alleged phenomenon took place, the two
noblemen and a "cousin". It is this unnamed hard-headed cousin to whom Dr.
Carpenter refers as the "honest skeptic."
Many of Home's admirers have declared that he possessed the power of
mesmerizing certain of his friends. These gentlemen were no doubt
hypnotized and related honestly what they believed they had seen. Again,
the expectancy of attention and the nervous tension of the average sitter
in spirit-circles tend to produce a morbidly impressible condition of
mind. Many mediums since Home's day have performed the act of levitation,
but always in a dark room. Mr. Angelo Lewis, the writer on magic, reveals
an ingenious method by which levitation is effected. When the lights are
extinguished the medium--who, by the way, must be a clever
ventriloquist--removes his boots and places them on his hands.
"I am rising, I am rising, but pay no attention", he remarks, as he goes
about the apartment, where the sitters are grouped in a circle about him,
and he lightly touches the heads of various persons. A shadowy form is
dimly seen and a smell of boot leather becomes apparent to the olfactory
senses of many present. People jump quickly to conclusions in such matters
and argue that where the feet of the medium are, his body must surely
be--namely, floating in the air. The illusion is further enhanced by the
performer's ventriloquial powers. "I am rising! I am touching the
ceiling!" he exclaims, imitating the sound of a voice high up. When the
lights are turned up, the medium is seen (this time with his boots on his
feet) standing on tip-toe, as if just descended from the ceiling.
Sometimes before performing the levitation act, he will say, "In order to
convince any skeptic present, that I really float upwards, I will write
the initials of my name, or the name of some one present, on the
ceiling." When the lights are raised, the letters are seen written on the
ceiling in a bold scrawling hand. How is it done? The medium has concealed
about him a telescopic steel rod, something like those Chinese fishing
rods at one time in vogue among modern disciples of Izaak Walton. This
convenient rod when not in use folds up in a very small compass, but when
it is shoved out to its full length, some three or four feet, with a bit
of black chalk attached, the writing on the ceiling is easily produced.
The magicians of ancient Egypt displayed their mystic rods as a part of
their paraphernalia, while the modern magi bear theirs in secret. A
tambourine, a guitar, a bell, or a spirit hand, rubbed with phosphorus,
may also be fixed to this ingenious appliance, and floated over the heads
of the spectators, and even a horn may be blown, through the hollow rod.
The materialization of a spirit hand which crept from beneath a
table-cover, and showed itself to the "believers," was one of the most
startling things in the repertoire of D. D. Home, as it was in that of Dr.
Monck's, an English medium. An explanation of Monck's method of producing
the hand may, perhaps, throw some light on Home's "materialization." A
small dummy hand, artistically executed in wax, with the fingers slightly
bent, is fastened to a broad elastic band about three feet in length. This
band is attached to a belt about the performer's waist and passes down his
left trouser leg, allowing the hand to dangle within the trouser a few
inches above the ankle. I must not forget to explain that to the wrist of
the hand is appended an elastic sleeve about five inches long. The medium
and two sitters take their seats at a square table, with an over-hanging
table-cloth. No one is allowed to be seated at the same side of the table
with the medium. This is an imperative condition.
"Diminish the light, please," says the medium. Some one rises to lower the
gas to the required dim religious light necessary to all spirit séances.
"A little lower, please! Lower, lower still!" remarks the medium. Out the
light goes. "Dear, me, but this is vexatious! Somebody light it again and
be more careful!" he ejaculates. Under cover of the darkness the agile
operator crosses his left foot over his right knee, pulls down the wax
hand and fixes it to the toe of his boot by means of the elastic sleeve,
the apparatus being masked from the sitters by the table cloth until the
time comes for the spirit materialization. The three men place their
hands on the table and wait patiently for developments. Presently a rap is
heard under the table--disjointed knee of the medium,--and then _mirabile
dictu!_ the table-cloth shakes and a delicate female hand emerges and
shows itself above the edge of the table. A guitar being placed close to
the fingers, they soon strum the strings, or rather appear to do so, the
medium being the _deus ex machina_. The cleverest part of the whole
performance is the fact that the medium never takes his hands from the
table. He quietly puts his left foot down on the floor and places his
right foot heavily on the false hand--off it comes from the left foot and
shoots up the trouser leg like lightning. The sitters may look under the
table but they see nothing.
An ingenious improvement has been made to this hand-test by an American
conjurer, one that enables the medium to produce the hand although his
feet are secured by the sitter. "Be kind enough, sir," says the performer
to the investigator, "to place your feet on mine. If I should move my feet
ever so little, you would know it, would you not?" The sitter replies in
the affirmative. The medium, as soon as he feels the pressure of the
sitter's feet, withdraws his right foot from a steel shape made in
imitation of the toe of his boot, and operates the spirit hand at his
leisure. After the sitting, he of course, inserts his right foot into the
shape and carries it off with him.
The production of spirit music was one of Home's favorite experiments.
There are all sorts of ways of producing this music, the most ingenious of
which I give:
The apparatus consists of a small circular musical box, wound up by clock
work, and made to play whenever pressure is put upon a stud projecting a
quarter of an inch from its surface. This box is strapped around the right
leg of the medium just above his knee, and hidden beneath the trouser leg.
When not in use it is on the under side of the leg. On the table a musical
box is placed and covered with a soup tureen, or the top of a chafing
dish. When the spectators are seated, the medium works the concealed
musical box around to the upper part of his leg near the knee cap, and by
pressing the stud against the under surface of the table, starts the music
playing. In this way the second musical box seems to play and the acoustic
effect is perfect. Perhaps Home used a similar contrivance; Dr. Monck
did, and was caught in the act by the chief of the Detective Police.
Home during his séances on the Continent of Europe was accused of all
sorts of trickery. Some asserted that he had concealed about him a small
but powerful electric battery for producing certain illusions, mechanical
contrivances attached to his legs for making spirit raps, and last but not
least, as the medium states in his "Memoirs:" "they even accused me of
carrying a small monkey about with me, concealed, trained to perform all
sorts of ghostly tricks."
People also accused him of obtaining a great deal of his information about
the spirits of the departed from tombstones like an Old Mortality, and
bribing family servants. A more probable explanation may be found perhaps
in telepathy.
There is one more phase of Home's mediumship, the moving of heavy pieces
of furniture without physical contact, that must be spoken of. In
mentioning it, Dr. Max Dessoir, author of the "Psychology of
Conjuring,"[1] says: "We must admit that _a few_ feats, such as those of
Prof. Crookes with Home, concerning the possibility of setting inanimate
objects in motion without touching them, _appear_ to lie entirely outside
the sphere of jugglery." In the year 1871, Prof. William Crookes, (now Sir
William Crookes) Fellow of the Royal Society, a very eminent scientist,
subjected Home to some elaborate tests in order to prove or disprove by
means of scientific apparatus the reality of phenomena connected with
variations in the weight of bodies, with or without contact. He declared
the tests to be entirely satisfactory, but ascribed the phenomena not to
spiritual agency, but to a new force, "in some unknown manner connected
with the human organization," which for convenience he called the "Psychic
Force." He said in his "Researches in the Phenomena of Spiritualism:" "Of
all the persons endowed with a powerful development of this Psychic Force,
and who have been termed 'mediums' upon quite another theory of its
origin, Mr. Daniel Dunglas Home is the most remarkable, and it is mainly
owing to the many opportunities I have had of carrying on my
investigations in his presence that I am enabled to affirm so conclusively
the existence of this force." Prof. Crookes' experiments were conducted,
as he says, in the full light, and in the presence of witnesses, among
them being the famous English barrister, Sergeant Cox, and the
astronomer, Dr. Huggins. Heavy articles became light and light articles
heavy when the medium came near them. In some cases he lightly touched
them, in others refrained from contact.
[Illustration: FIG. 8. CROOKES' APPARATUS.]
The first piece of the apparatus constructed by Crookes to test this
psychic force consisted of a mahogany board 36 inches long by 9-1/2 inches
wide and 1 inch thick. A strip of mahogany was screwed on at one end, to
form a foot, the length being equal to the width of the board. This end of
the board was placed on a table, while the other end was upheld by a
spring balance, fastened to a strong tripod stand, as will be seen in
Fig. 8.
"Mr. Home," writes Prof. Crookes, "placed the tips of his fingers lightly
on the extreme end of the mahogany board which was resting on the support,
whilst Dr. A. B. [Dr. Huggins] and myself sat, one on each side of it,
watching for any effect which might be produced. Almost immediately the
pointer of the balance was seen to descend. After a few seconds it rose
again. This movement was repeated several times, as if by successive waves
of the psychic force. The end of the board was observed to oscillate
slowly up and down during the experiment.
"Mr. Home now, of his own accord, took a small hand-bell and a little card
match-box, which happened to be near, and placed one under each hand, to
satisfy us, as he said, that he was not producing the downward pressure.
The very slow oscillation of the spring balance became more marked, and
Dr. A. B., watching the index, said that he saw it descend to 6-1/2 lbs.
The normal weight of the board as so suspended being 3 lbs., the
additional downward pull was therefore 3-1/2 lbs. On looking immediately
afterwards at the automatic register, we saw that the index had at one
time descended as low as 9 lbs., showing a maximum pull of 6 lbs. upon a
board whose normal weight was 3 lbs.
"In order to see whether it was possible to produce much effect on the
spring balance by pressure at the place where Mr. Home's fingers had been,
I stepped upon the table and stood on one foot at the end of the board.
Dr. A. B., who was observing the index of the balance, said that the whole
weight of my body (140 lbs.) so applied only sunk the index 1-1/2 lbs., or
2 lbs. when I jerked up and down. Mr. Home had been sitting in a low
easy-chair, and could not, therefore, had he tried his utmost, have
exerted any material influence on these results. I need scarcely add that
his feet as well as his hands were closely guarded by all in the room."
The next series of experiments is thus described: