SPIRITUALISM IN EXTREMIS.

Press, Volume VII, Issue 686, 10 January 1865, Page 5

SPIRITUALISM IN EXTREMIS.

[From the Saturday Review.} One day last week, the Times contained a semi-official narrative, as " From a Correspondent," of certain wonderful performances oftwo youngmen called the Brothers Davenport learned, probably, by the miadiance which & year or two ago it goffered in hastily adopting the " spiritual xoanifestetioiis" of a very vulgar performer, ■tAo was soon hunted out of the country — __c Porster—the Times was, on this last occasion, sufficiently cautious. To be sure, ha»beenopenlya_serted to be the "gentleman who is well known to _c the accredited representative of the dramatic department of the Times." There is certainly nothing to prevent a regular reporter being "A Correspondent; but it wonld have been iust as candid for a newspaper occupying the position of the Times to undertake some direct responsibihty in reporting such a matter. The seance, it aesi_7vras a sort of public private one, and the nowspaper reporters were invited, Other dafly newspapers were represented as well as the Times, and the report was in all cases equally authentic, and was authoritatively adopted, except by the Times. The distinction is not very important, except as iUustraiang what amounts to a special form of morals. It is not the first time that we have seen the feather cautiously poised, waiting for the impulse of the popular breath, and then a claim put in for rousing the wind, when, in fact, opinion was all along followed rather than led. As to the narrative in the Times, it -was fiurenough, and said little enough. Two American lads were shut up in a sort of packing-case, after being tied hand and foot with strong cords; and whilst so enclosed two bodiless hands were seen waving about (this incident is not mentioned in the Times), musical instruments were played upon, or at least a hideous noise was made with them, and on the doors being opened, after a certain, or imeertain, interval, the lads were found corded up as before. This is the first part of the performance, and occurs m aeim-S-rtaiess as fiur as the spectators are concerned, the brothers being shut up in the cupboard, from which all light is excluded. Act the second takes place in total darkness. The brothers —or rather one brother, and another member of the party, Mr. Fayare, as before, tightly corded and tied to chairs; and the spectators, if the term can he used of people in a room in which there is not the fiantest ray of light, form a circle with joined hands. All sorts of so-called musical noises are heard; guitars and -nouns, bells and trumpets, and most of the forniture of Webuchadnez-ars baod, fly about the room, and the Times' reporter got a bloody nose from one jmitefal fiddle; rings and watches depart fiom their owners, and are found m unconsciously surreptitious possessore 1 lands Knees are patted and pinched, and cheekf slapped or stroked, according to orctun; stances, or perhaps sex; ft candle is lightec •by a Dr. Ferguson, who m one of tbe .. Davenport company, and the young gentle man and Mr. Fay are once more discover* manaded and glued, like the Lady in Comus to their chairs. Act the third consists of i single but more imposing scene, Oneofthi Davenports, it need scarcely be said in iota darkness, still bound hand and foot, v denuded of his coat and invested with tha of an assenting gentiman—perhap acci denfcally, and perhaps "Thes are," says the Times* reporter, "the chic rJ--»n»-**n aj which are, of course, referred b] the operators to epir-tual agency."

' Next day, however, the Dromio Davenports disavow this imputation of claims to unearthly powers. " We do not assert that our experiments are attributable to spiritual agency. We cannot tell how they are produced. .... We profess to exercise a power of the nature and extent of which we know nothing beyond the fact that we have it." That is, tnej are mere passive receptivities,ignorant of the nature, conscious only of tho possession, of strange powers. To which it has been very properly replied, that if the Davenport young gentlemen deny the critical character of their manifestations, it is a pity that they address themselves to a familiar who is known by the name of " John " ; and that they adopt the common spiritual technology of "electrical chains," "positive" and " negative " conditions, and so forth. But we can say a good deal more than this. The coming of the Brothers Davenport was announced in the Spiritual Magazine ; and in that remarkable publication for September last was contained a long report on the American manifestations of these interesting brethren, drawn up by a Dr. Loomis of Georgetown, who professes himself' to be a disbeliever in spiritualism, though a believer in the Davenport phenomena, and indisposed to connect them with spiritualism. But to this conclusion Mr. Newton, in the Herald of Progress, a New York spiritual publication, demurs; and enlarges upon "the necessity of referring the phenomena to the active participancy of visible intelligences." He claims for the Davenport case, " beyond [ question, the interference of invisible I beings," and the Spiritual Magazine goes on to speak of " the mediumship of the Davenport brothers " ; while in the October number of this truly comic miscellany, Mr. Benjamin Coleman, the monthly annalist of the progress of the spiritual cause, announces the I Davenport manifestations as the last and crowning triumph of spiritualism. It is therefore beyond question that, whatever the Davenport Brothers may now think proper to assert about their spiritual claims, their friends and advocates, and the highest authorities in "spiritualism," claim them, and speak of them as they do of Mr. Home and the ordinary run of "mediums." But it is perhaps judicious in persons who have their bread to get to hunt with the hounds and run with the hare. The Brothers Davenport, having their money to make, are all things to all men; cautious inquirers with the sceptical, but adepts with the initiated ; candid as to fact, but hesitating as to theory, in the Times, though accomplished mediums in the congenial pages of the Spiritual Magazine. We will follow the Times' example, and present these enterprising artists with an advertisement by informing our readers, on the authority of the Spiritual Magazine, that "arrangements for private seance with the Davenport Brothers can be made on application to Mr. Palmer, i Tavistock Square" ; that is to say, anybody who wishes .... to terrify the ladies, May hire at once the horned fiend for twenty maravedies, like any other professor of parlor magic at a child's party engaged for the night. As to the phenomena themselves, anything so grotesquely absurd and stupidly meaningless has not yet been produced even in the dreary annals of spiritualism. A well-known professional conjuror, who gives his name and address, Mr. Tolmaque, claims to be able to do the same things, and asserts that it is only a very common trick of charlatanism. Mr. Anderson, the Wizard of the North, goes further, and says that the Brothers Davenport have been brought over " by a speculator, a Mr. Palmer, formerly in his employment;" and the thing most remarkable about the whole entertainment seems to be that the Times should have treated it with so much gravity, if not credulity, as to advertise it in tnis* unusual way. On the face of it what can be more commonplace ? A large party of Yankees, the country of Barnum, arrived after the usual mysterious announcements, and gives a private view. The Brothers Davenport, a Mr. Fay, one Dr. Ferguson, and Mr. Palmer —that is, the three actors, the entrepreneur Palmer, and "the thoughtful, philosophical, and spiritual, tall, thin, and American-looking person, Dr. Fer - oson," who holds the candle, not to the Devil in this case, but to the clever conjurors with whom he isfassociated—form a strolling company. These people bring their ownapparatus with them—their cabinet,their fiddles,bells, and all their tackle. The binding of the performers is performed by somebody accidentally present; but it is curious to remark that the English narrator speaks of "the volunteer who presented liimself for this ofiice as nautical," and that in the American report we find that the pinioner is "professionally a sea-captain." Then, of course, every manifestation occurs in complete and total darkness. The performers are invisible, while the spectators are compelled to be motionless by the formation which linked hands of a magnetic circle. Eye must not see, nor hand touch, the secrets of the unseen world. If the circle is broke, Dr Ferguson announced that the head of the person breaking the ring would also be broken by a very solid brazen trumpet, reserved, as it seemsjfor special gyrations on any inquisitive offender's skull. The only possiblUty of throwing a light on the scene £ prevented by Dr. keeping possession of the one " candle and lucifer in the room, which he held constantly ready during the performance." All this seems to us rather to indicate a clumsy gang of wizards and an imperfect acquaintance with the con-jiifo-'s common tricks. Very likely, if it is worth while, anybody might find out the tricks; but it is generally not worth a reasonable being's time to detect a conjuror's modus operandi. Yet this has been aWy done, and if we are to believe a minute and circumstantial article extracted , mto the London newspapers from the 2om«to r Globe, a Mr. Dobbs confronted t\m very man Fay at Cleveland in Canada, performed every one of his tricks in Fay's own pres-

ence, and completely exposed the whole thing as a vulgar piece of sleight of hand, or, in the very plain-spoken words of the Cleveland Herald ? of August 28, "as one of the boldest swindles and humbugs ever practiced upon a confiding community." The performances of Houdin, and Frikell, and Anderson, and other masters of the art are infinitely more clever and inexplicable than those of the Davenport fraternity, and are done in broad gaslight. But who wants to find out a conjuror? Volumus decipi et decipimur. You go to see tricks, not to learn sleight-of-hand. Professional conjurors assure us that " the rope-tying trick, bell-ringing and coat-changing experiments are exhibited at this moment in America by Anderson's son, and by natural agency alone," and they offer to do every one of the Davenport mysteries " by the science of conjuring, mixed up with no small portion of the conjuror's never failing friend—humbug." And as to the grave and pretentious narrative of "A Correspondent," .we must say that the private exhibition at the house of the well-known literary gentleman is only an ingenious, though not very ingenious, form of advertisement. Unconsciously, perhaps, but with little judgment, the Times has played into the hands of some rather vulgar practitioners of legerdemain. Merely as an advertisement Anderson has beat it hollow in that wonderful placard from an inquirer living at No. 954 (which, of course, does not exist) in the Portland road, suggesting that one of his daughter's tricks, played at this moment every night at St. James's Hall, is caused by a mysterious power which he has of expelling her soul from her body. Nor is there anything very recondite in the modern assumption, by modern conjurors, of scientific and quasimetaphysical a;. 1 spiritu;. Listic jargon. Just as, some ;_, a parchment girdle, a pentagon, a magic crystal, and a cabalistic mitre were part of the conjuror' stock-in-trade, so he now invests in od, electro-biology, psychometry, mediums, and the luminous aura. It is hard to attempt to deprive any workman of his tools. Out of this horrid slang the modern necromancer fills his tool- \ chest. He calls it, as a whole, spiritualism; and he may as well have that word, which is perfectly meaningless, as any other. And, after all, the world is much the same as it always was. People believed in Cagliostro, who was a very clever fellow; and no doubt there are now plenty of people who will, when the exhibition is open to the public, run to the Davenport Brothers aud gravely wag their heads, and hint that they fully believe in the connexion of these rampageous violins and erratic muffin bells with the awful realities of the spirit world. Nothing that we can say will disabuse them. Only let them consider this, that if anything can effectually lower all consoling conceptions of the great and mysterious world of spirits, and can completely debase, if not destroy, belief, if not in a future state, at least in the blessed condition of disembodied spirits delivered from the burden of the flesh — released, as we trust, from the weaknesses and miseries of this sinful world—it is to take up with spiritualism. For, if we believe in spiritualism, we must believe that spirits —beings infinitely above us in intelligence, happiness, and the fruition of the Divine love and Divine knowledge—have nothing better to do, and no holier ministrations to discharge, than to dash cracked violins into people's faces, to pinch their legs in the dark, to float round a room scratching the ceiling with a bit of charcoal, to write execrably bad grammar and portentous nonsense, which they call spirit messages, by fumbling over a child's toy alphabet, and, last and worst of all, by inspiring such a set of American adventurers as Davenport, Fay, and Co., and Mr. Palmer the speculator, formerly in the employment of the Wizard of the North.