Maud Blount, Medium. A story of modern spiritualism

Front matter

% 3taxio OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM. " Say ye, ' The spirit of man hath found new roads, And we must leave the old faiths and walk therein ?' " Matthew Arnold, LONDON : TINSLEY BROTHERS, 8, CATHERINE STEEET, STRAND. 1876. [Bight of Translation reserved hy the Author.'] LONE oi. : SAVILL, EDWARDS AND CO., PEINTEKS, CHANDOS STREET, OOVENI GARDEN. CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGE I. Mother and Daughter .... 1 II. Afternoon Tea ....... 18 III. A Dark Seance 36 IV. Sunday Spirits 54 V. Aerial Flights 71 VI. The Sweetest Spirit of All . . 89 VII. Professor Buncombe 105 VIII. Briarwood 122 IX. Communing with the Dead . . . 139 X. A New Immortal ...... 156 XI. Widow Hunting 173 XII. Mrs. Pugsbt's Kevelations . . . 191 XIII. Wife and Husband 208 XIV. Science versus Ghosts .... Contents. VI CHAP. PAGE XV. Two Charlatans 241 XVI.

Beyond the Voices 257 XVII. An Ignoble Army of Martyrs . 275 XVIII. The Collapse of the Supernatural 292 XIX. Comforting the Widow .... 308 XX. Exorcising the Spirits ....

Chapter I. Mother And Daughter

O matre pulcra filia pulcrior ! — Hokat. LL very well, my dear mother; only tliere are no such things as spirits." " My dear Maud," replied the lady thus addressed, " say, if you like, that you don't believe in spirits, or that you do not think there are any such things. Don't say there are no such things. It is very dogmatic, and — allow me to add — slightly absurd. There may be a few more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of even in your phi losophy." "Possibly; only spirits are not among them. I can believe lots of things; but, B with Sir David Brewster, I say, Spirit is the last thing I will give in to." " The last, perhaps ; but you will give in, as you term it, nevertheless." "Never." " We shall see." " We shall." Miss Maud Blount, between whom and her mother this colloquy took place, was a young lady just emerging from her teens, and there fore as a philosopher of course infallible.

She asserted her opinions, not as opinions at all, but as the axioms of one who has exhausted truth. It is a phase of intellectual existence we all go through as inevitably as we have the physical measles or chicken-pox. Elderly people, or those whose experience has been precocious, smile tenderly at us, as we smile at foreigners who speak broken English. It is only to boors or very superficial people that such youthful self-assertion is irritating. To the really wise this assumption of infallibility is amusing as an evidence of immaturity. The seventeenth year is about the period when most young persons suffer from this disease. Maud Blount deferred it until she was, as we have said, standing on the mystic verge of her twentieth year, and consequently she had it more severely than some who were her juniors.

Maud was a splendid specimen of a spoiled child. She was a splendid specimen of woman hood too, and a marvellous miniature of her mother, whose widow's weeds sat gracefully on what we should scarcely yet be justified in calling the remains of a very fine woman indeed. Both mother and daughter were dark, and though a few silver threads streaked the mother's raven locks, while the daughter's were glossy and luxuriant, there were some sly old critics who opined that the widow might be tempted to change her condition yet, and who even regarded the snowy cap and dress of deep mourning as a sort of notification of that fact to all whom it might concern. Mr. Blount had been a provincial banker of repute and substance, and scarcely a year had b2 elapsed since his death. His widow and daughter left the little country town of Caver field as soon as affairs were arranged, and settled down very comfortably in one of those numerous terraces forming the suburb called Maida Hill.

In every detail of the house there was evident the fact that Mrs. Blount knew how to make things comfortable, and had ample means for carrying out her ideas. She did not keep a great deal of company ; her loss was too recent to allow her to do that as yet ; but she had already gathered round her a small select circle of friends. It is astonishing" c_> what an excellent centre of such a circle a cosy widow forms with a rich heiress to dispose of. The old men were lured by the widow herself, the young ones by the daughter; and Mrs. Blount had a comparatively small nucleus of lady friends whom she gathered round her by another kind of fascination to be described by-and-by. " You yourself, mamma," said Maud resuming the conversation, after a lono-ish interval, during which she had been holdinoa magazine before her, and gazing right above it into vacancy, " say you do not understand what is meant by belief, except conviction upon reasonable evidence."

"I do." " Well, and you must confess that a good deal of the evidence in favour of spirits is shaky to a degree." "So is a good deal of evidence in favour of Christianity. I should no more take the mad freaks of Mr. Enoch Trees " " The Reverend Enoch Trees, if you please ; and write the Reverend in full." "I should no more take the exercises of Bethabara Chapel as an instance of the civilising effects of Christianity than I should ask you to accept the idiotic freaks of some table turner in the same way as I should the higher manifestations." "I protest I have never been able to see anything at all worthy to be called higher manifestations yet. They seem all lower and no higher." "Now, if you are going to condescend to argument, I shall be very glad to enter upon the matter with you, Maud," said Mrs. Blount, putting aside some fancy work in which she had been engaged, and settling herself for a dis quisition.

" You know that, for many years, I had been curious about this so-called spiri tualism; and, since your dear father's death" — here the widow's eyes sparkled with a rising tear — "the curiosity has deepened into belief, and belief into almost a religion." " Only almost ?" '•' We may even leave out the reservation as you suggest. I own that for some time I kept my convictions a secret, and was perhaps a little ashamed of them ; but since our great sorrow, and especially since Mr. Ball has declared from the pulpit his belief in these manifestations, I have no longer any com punction in avowing myself a spiritualist, and my one only wish is that you, dear Maud, may share my happy belief." There was just a twinkle in Maud's dark eye, just the tiniest curl of her perfect mouth, and the faintest possible elevation of her pretty pug nose.

She said nothing; but her mother had been too accustomed to watch the changes of expression that flitted over her daughter's face not to be quite aware that Maud was thoroughly unconvinced, and, not only so, but dreadfully inclined to laugh at her mother's conviction, had not a sense of filial respect prevented her mirth. " Putting aside all external evidence, Maud," said Mrs. Blount, "you cannot surely think that we are juggling with one another when you and I sit alone at yonder little table and get such charming messages." "Unconscious cerebration." " But the table has no brain." "We have — or are supposed to have," rejoined Maud ; " and we do it all by involuntary muscular action." " Really, Maud, I am astonished to hear you, a girl of good common sense, talk such uncommon nonsense on this one subject."

" Thank you for a left-handed compliment, mamma." " And you so excellent a medium, too !" " My dear, good, mistaken mother, what do you mean ? I a medium ! Now there, if that were the case, if I could only get raps myself without damaging my knuckles or cracking the joints of my toes ; if I could be tied into the cupboard in the breakfast-room, and then something would come and make faces at the hole you have had cut in the door ; if I could go into trances, sing hymns, and deliver inspirational addresses, then I should " "What?" " Give in. I couldn't doubt then." "You would say it was self-delusion, just as Dr. Mason says it is only abnormal excitement of the faculties, and compares it to fever." s " Or worse." " Or any other nonsense. You would say it was all hysteria." "But hysteria could not get somebody else — Katie, or John King, or Peter — to come and play Punch and Judy out of the peephole in the corner cupboard whilst I was tied into my chair like a female Guy Fawkes down below."

" Then I can only pray that such power may be given you, Maud. Nay, I am sure you have it if you would only be developed." "There again. That is a process I never could understand. Mrs. Pugsby says I am to be developed, and all she does is to wriggle and talk copy-slips to me. Professor Buncombe says I am to be developed ; and he takes my hand — squeezing it unmistakably, let me tell you, par parenthese — and makes me write or draw in a most effervescent manner; but directly he lets me go again I stop dead." " Because you don't persevere." "I'll persevere to any extent if you will agree to accept me as a final test. If I become a medium, then, as I said, I must give in. If, on the other hand, I promise to hold myself perfectly passive, and to submit to all Mrs. Pugsby' s wriggling and Professor Buncombe's handsqueezing, and still do not become a medium, will you — I do not say give up all belief or inquiry — but will you admit the pro bability, or even the possibility, that you are mistaken ?"

"I am so convinced of your mediumship that should a fair course of development fail to certify you a medium, I must feel that there was a good deal to think about " " That there was a screw loose somewhere ?" " I hate slang, as you know, and wish you would give it up — not only on this, but on all topics." " I will try ; though I love it as much as you do a dark seance. Is that a bargain, then ? I submit myself to the manipulations of the developer; you are to be swayed in your judgment by the result?" " Yes." " You do not answer as heartily as I should like, and I have half a suspicion that you are Jesuitical, you dear old soul ; but I do believe that the result will be I shall convert you to common sense." " Exactly what I want to do with you." " Only that — and nothing more," said Maud, mimicking the refrain of Edgar Allan Poe's poem.

"Now let us sit down and have a cosy tete-a-tete seance," said Mrs. Blount. " You know there is nothing I enjoy more. We can certainly trust one another." " But can we trust ourselves ?" asked Maud, as she laid aside her magazine and drew a Httle round table up to the sofa on which Mrs. Blount was sitting. The widow had already disposed of her work, and laid her plump white hands on the table, like a very prepossessing nineteenth-century version of the Delphian priestess presiding at the sacred tripod. Then Maud placed her slender palms upon the table too, with just the tips of each fourth finger touching those of her mamma. While they are " waiting for the spirits to come" is a good opportunity for us to sketch the portraits of the fair mother and fairer daughter. Mrs. Blount was past the heyday of life, of course ; but her charms had only mellowed into mature beauty.

She was above the middle height, somewhat slenderly built, and almost as swarthy as a gipsy. Maud was slight too ; and her eyes were sloe-black as her mother's, her complexion nearly as dark ; though, as we have said, just emerging from her teens, she was a model of rare, ripe womanhood. Her mind, perhaps, had scarcely kept pace with her physical growth. She was an only child, and had been treated so literally as a child by her mother, and also by her father in his lifetime, that she was just the least bit hoydenish in her ways. She loved slang, as she had con fessed, and altogether needed a little fining down, as the phrase goes. She was heart whole as yet. Wait, dear friend, until the soft passion comes to suffuse with its chasten ing influence the now somewhat incongruous elements in that warm heart of yours.

As yet she knew no love but for her mother. She had had her affaires of course, and never went to a ball without being " desperate" for some one ; but none had ever gained more than a twenty-four hours' hold on her fancy. If the destined cavalier was saving up somewhere, he would, as far as present appearances went, find a clear stage and no< favour — that is, no favour on Maud's part for any possible rival. Presently the table began to gyrate under the manipulations of the two ladies ; and Mrs. Blount said — " They are here. Dear spirits, can you answer our questions ?" The table gave three tilts or lifts to signify assent ; and Maud laughed, and such a queer significant laugh, as she re-echoed her mamma's assertion. " Yes ; they are here." As she so spoke, anybody who looked at Maud would have been inclined to endorse her mother's opinion as to the girl's mediumship — whatever that may mean.

Her always bright eye flashed with a new light ; her face, which seldom admitted any but its down warm olive tint, was flushed with a deep rich crimson, and the veins in her forehead stood out prominently, showing intense cere bral excitement. Whatever the Sibylline enthusiasm was, clearly Maud was one of the initiated. " Dear spirit," continued Mrs. Blount, " will you give your name?" Three tilts. She ran quickly through the alphabet, and the table lifted at each of the letters— R 0 B E R T. " Do you hear, Maud ?" "What?" " Your dear papa's name. Robert Blount, of course, is it not?" Three violent tilts. " See how you beg the question, mamma," said Maud almost angrily. "Now of what use, let me ask you, would this be as evidence, when you put a leading question like that ?" " I was not seeking evidence, Maud," answered Mrs. Blount, sadly.

" I wished only to enjoy the knowledge that your dear father was near me." " But does it make him a bit nearer to you, or certify his nearness any the more clearly, because a little stupid table that a child could influence tips up and tells you so? Mamma, it really does seem to me sacrilege to connect the spirits of the departed with such nonsense as this." " You said there were no spirits just now, Maud. But do not let us quarrel over this. We will leave off at once. It annoys you." Then the table lifted beneath their hands, and gave one violent thump, which was in tended to signify " No," according to the telegraphic code of signals used at sittings. "Mamma! Did not you do that?" cried Maud. " Most certainly not, my dear. Do you suspect me of playing tricks under such circumstances as these ?"

" I don't know what to suspect ; don't know whom or what to believe or disbelieve," rejoined poor Maud; and then, as if by way of solving the difficulty, she cried : " Oh, if I only could believe dear papa was near me !" and then threw herself on her mother's bosom and sobbed hysterically. This brought the seance to an end abruptly. The widow was annoyed, and clearly thought Maud's inter ruption was intentional. Any unprejudiced person would have understood that the poor girl's feelings were overtaxed, and that it would have been cruel to' prolong the cause of her excitement. Mrs. Blount placed her daughter kindly on the sofa, restored the little table to its place, and resumed her make-believe work. " Come, darling," she said, " whatever else we do, let us refrain from letting this matter cause even the shadow of difference between you and me.

It would, as I have told you, and as you knew perfectly well before, be the greatest comfort to me if you could share mv belief on this point ; but belief is not a matter of will " " It is not, indeed, mamma." " I am sure it would be a comfort to you too if you could — I will not say believe, but know as I do — that the dear dead saint your father is by and communicating with us almost as of old." Maud's tears had dried now, and she looked up with really almost a waggish ex pression on that changeful face of hers as she said — " Oh no, not as of old, mamma. Dear papa never knocked the furniture about, or rapped like an auctioneer " "Let us change the subject at once, Maud," said Mrs. Blount. " Not another word in that strain, if you please. Go upstairs and cool your eyes, dear," she continued.

" Dr. Mason, Mr. Ball, and Mr. Campbell have promised to come in to afternoon tea ; and, dear me ! it's close upon five o'clock. It does not seem an hour ago we had luncheon." " Mr. Campbell ! Is Mr. Campbell coming ?" " Yes, darling. Why?" " Oh, nothing. Only — I'll go up and cool my eyes." c

Chapter II. Afternoon Tea

He that complies against his ■will Is of the same opinion still. — Hudibras. HEN Maud descended to five o'clock tea, all signs of her recent emotion had disappeared, and she received her mamma's visitors with her accustomed girlish vivacity. "Miss Blount," said the Rev. William Ball, the Broad Church clergyman under whom Maud and her mother " sat," " let me introduce to you my friend and former pupil, Campbell, who is going to help me at St. Thomas's. Campbell, Miss Blount." The two clergymen were broad in every sense of the word. They were muscular Christians, physically as well as in their theology ; and Maud Blount at once decided that William Campbell was the finest man she had ever seen. She had thought the same of a hundred Herculean sons of Mars ; so there was nothing very exceptional in the long, steady glance she gave at the big bearded parson who handed her to a chair and sat next her.

" Another sceptic joining the shrine of St. Thomas, surnamed Didymus," he said. " And a pretty nest of sceptics and heretics you are there," said Dr. Mason, an old medical man that looked as though he belonged to the last century ; one of those regular property old men they put on the stage in modern comedies like Still Waters Mun Deep. " Heretics, but not sceptics, I hope," sniggled somebody or something from a chair far out in the distance. " Heretics, but not sceptics, I hope. He ! he ! he !" cackled the still small voice once more, finding nobody paid any heed to it the first time. Then everybody looked round and were made aware of a remarkable phenomenon in c2 the background. A youngish, pale-faced man, seated on the very edge of an easy-chair, with his coloured cotton pocket-handkerchief spread over his knees, was eating violently of muffin ancl imbibing cup after cup of tea.

His mouth was so full that it was with difficulty he could manage a final " He ! he ! he !" when he saw everybody looking at him. " I beg your pardon, Mr. Blathersby, I'm sure," said the hostess, introducing her in congruous guest severally to each of the others. " Mr. Blathersby," she continued, " is the editor of the An si- Christian, and proprietor of the Supernatural Lyceum. You had got into such a corner, that I did not see you, Mr. Blathersby." " I've been uncommonly well employed," answered the editor. " He ! he ! he !" And so he had. He then rose, and wiping the superfluous muffin from his face with the cotton pocket handkerchief, joined the circle of guests as quickly as his weak knees would enable him to cross the spacious drawing-room. " Always ready to combine business with pleasure.

He ! he ! he !" And he handed to each of those present, except Mrs. Blount and Maud, a copy of the Anti-Christian, and a programme of the Supernatural Lyceum. The way in which they received the little donations was characteristic. Old Dr. Mason threw them from him as though they had been some venomous animal. Mr. Ball looked at them decorously for a moment, then put them aside, and continued a conversation in which he was engaged with Mrs. Blount; while Mr. Camp bell-held his at arm's length, and looked inquiringly at Maud. " I cannot think why mamma asks that creature, I am sure," she said, reddening, and answering the silent appeal. " Isn't he odious ?" " He seems a little eccentric," answered the new curate. Before he had well got the sentence finished, Blathersby made a dive at him, and, destroying all Maud's hopes of a comfortable tete-a-tete, said — " I see you are mtev-est-ed. in that periodical, sir ; and though you are, I regret to hear, a sceptic, you will, I think, like the account on page 4 of a seance with Red Indian spirits and lots of genuine war-whoops."

" Thank you, I will read it," replied the curate, and buried his face in the periodical. " And how is Miss Blount ? He ! he ! he I" said the editor. " Are we less sceptical, too ?" " Not a whit, Mr. Blathersby. I never did believe in your sort of spirits, as you know." " What ! the Red Indians ? Oh, you only believe in black spirits and white, blue spirits and grey. Is that it ?" " I don't believe in spirits that never mani fest until they have sent the hat round. It is not red, blue, or black I care about ; but I hate the £. s. d. sort." " But mediums must live, Miss Blount." " So must editors, I suppose," retorted Maud ; and turning upon her heel walked straight to the other end of the room, and flounced down on a chair, scowling. Mr. Blathersby was not in the least discomposed, and only answered Maud with his wonted sniggle.

This stood him in stead on all occasions. "Why, you've driven Miss Blount to the extreme edge of civilisation, Mr. Blathersby," said the incumbent of St. Thomas Didymus. " I must go and reclaim her. I had left her to Campbell, hoping he would be able to tone down some of her terrible heresies." Mr. Ball crossed to where Maud was still pouting, and taking the chair beside her, said, tenderly — "Maud, dear Maud — I may call you so, being an old grey-headed man — have you thought over what I said at our last conversation ? Are you more settled in your mind ?" " Only so far more settled that I now be lieve nothing at all, Mr. Ball. Do not stare at me, or reproach me. You are largely responsible for it." "I!" " You preached over and over again from your pulpit that we were to pin our faith to this wretched misnamed spiritualism.

You told us, did you not, that the Sacrament was simply a magnetic process ? You " " Stay, stay, Maud ; but you believed in none of these matters before." "I believed little enough then, but less since — nothing now." " You pain me, really you do. If I thought that any of these theories of mine were calcu lated to disturb the mind of one person to whom they are imparted, believe me I would keep them to myself." " Take my advice, then, and keep them. They are most disturbing." " But it seems to me, especially in a case like yours, where some strong tangible evidence is so clearly wanted, that it would be most desirable to reduce the Christian evidences to matter of demonstration." " Decidedly, if- " If what ? Do we not, by these manifestations, always supposing them genuine, really rest on experiment as much as any positive science does?"

" Genuine ! Look at that" said Maud. Mr. Blathersby was shambling across the room preparatory to making his exit. There was nothing more to eat or drink, and he had given away all his copies as adver tisements, so the proceedings ceased to in terest him. " Wait one moment, please, Mr. Blathersby," said Mrs. Blount. " I want you all — you especially, Mr. Ball, if you will cease flirting so violently with Maud — to come to me to morrow evening for a dark seance. Mr. Bla thersby thinks he can get Mrs. Pugsby " "Por a consideration. He ! he ! he !" " For a consideration, of course, and a com mission," repeated Mrs. Blount, a little snap pishly. " Will you all come, Mr. Ball ? Mr. Campbell ?" The incumbent assented, and Mr. Campbell said he had no idea what a dark seance was like, but he had no engagement, and "Do come," said Maud, " it's such fun.' " Will you come, Mr. Campbell ?"

Mr. Campbell would be most happy. Had not beautiful Maud Blount told him it was " such fun ?" Decidedly he would come. " I'll run in to supper after the hocus-pocus is over, madam, if you will have me," said old Dr. Mason ; " but I've no time to waste on the spirits " " Only the alcoholic ones at the light seance. He! he! he! Very well, HI bring Mrs. Pugsby. You will allow a cab, of course." And out went the weak-kneed editor, and drove a bargain with a Jehu on the next rank to take him and Mrs. Pugsby at a reduced fare on the following evening. " Mind, I don't ask you to dinner," con tinued Mrs. Blount, feeling, it must be con fessed, rather relieved at the absence of her eccentric guest. " Maud and I will dine early, and I advise you to do the same. The manifestations are always better when the circle have been fasting."

" I advise you all to have a good sleep in the afternoon," added old Dr. Mason, " or there will be some inevitable cases of coma before you've been sitting an hour in the dark. Take my advice, Mr. Campbell, and be fore armed as you are forewarned. Have forty winks in the afternoon." " Thanks, doctor, I don't think I shall need them. You said it was fun, didn't you, Miss Blount?" he said to Maud, who was next him again in the sorting of the guests which had followed Mr. Blathersby 's departure. "Now, I must be off and see some half dozen patients before dinner," said the energetic old doctor, " and you can talk heresy as much as you like. You are come into a fine school at St. Thomas Didymus' and here, Mr. Campbell. The lady of the house and your incumbent believe too much ; and as for this little rogue, Maud, she believes too little, I'm afraid."

" I don't know the meaning of the word belief, doctor," said Maud, making Mr. Camp bell open his eyes very wide indeed. " Maud simply means, Mr. Campbell, that, with our new revelation supplementing the old," said Mrs. Blount, " we no longer be lieve — we know." " I didn't say so, mamma." "No, dear, but you meant it;" and her mother looked so much in earnest that Maud could not find it in her heart to gainsay her. She took her revenge, however, in a mild form by returning to the attack on the subject of Mr. Blathersby. That was always a sore subject between the widow and her daughter. " Why do you tolerate that creature Bla thersby, mamma?" " The cause must use all kinds of machinery, my dear. It requires the sinews of war." " Yes ; but we don't generally have ma chinery in a drawing-room ; and as for sinews, that is exactly what Mr. Blathersby seems most to lack."

" Spiritual," suggested Mr. Bail. " No, it's not spirituality. It's flabbiness," replied Maud. " You are uncharitable, child," said the widow. "And you far too promiscuous in your charity, dear mamma. We shall want a Charity Organisation Society for drawing the line somewhere in the ranks of me diums. I verily believe if you met with an inspired knife-grinder you would ask him to tea." " Inspiration knows no distinction of rank, does it, Mr. Ball ?" " None. The original Twelve were pro bably all, more or less, men of exceedingly humble rank." "Do I understand you to say, Ball, that you put these so-called manifestations on a par with Primitive Christianity ?" asked Mr. Campbell of his colleague. " I dislike that phraseology, because every fanatic claims Primitive Christianity as his monopoly; but, in the sense I know you attach to the expression, I do."