For their dollar, our clients received words of gentle wisdom and, hopefully, solace for their grief. Our spirits were always kind and forgiving, promising an eternity of joy to the well deserving, and in their mercy, almost every person was deserving of heaven. As for those visitors more interested in the mysterious side of spirit communication, we could provide that as well. We kept Calvin’s ingenuity busy all summer with our requests for ghostly manifestations.
The window curtain rolled up and down by itself. An unoccupied rocking chair began to rock on its own. A vase untouched by any hand tipped over the edge of a table and smashed on the floor, although Leah was quite vexed by that, and the spirits left her breakables alone thereafter.
It occurred to Kate that we could accomplish even more tricks if the room were darker, and so she asked Calvin if he could contrive a way to make the candles go out by themselves. After some consideration, Calvin hit upon a simple but effective solution. He snapped a candle and cut out the wick in the broken place. Then, by lighting the candle and using the dripping wax to conceal and repair the break, he made his tampering undetectable. Candles so treated burned normally until the breach in the wick was reached. After some experimentation, Calvin became expert at timing the failure of each candle, and so it was arranged that two separate candles, on opposite sides of the room, would sputter and go out within moments of each other, plunging the spirit circle into darkness.
Thus our summer progressed, and a core group of devoted spiritualists soon became the bulwark of our new enterprise. A newcomer to our circle of favorites was Mr. Eliab Capron, who, like my old friend E. E. Lewis, was a journalist, though a novice. Mr. Capron had read the Hydesville pamphlet written by the esteemed Mr. Lewis and was eager to learn more about our communication with the spirits.
The one person who continued to puzzle me was Amy Post. Originally, I had quailed at the thought of deceiving this formidable woman, whom I admired and respected for her advocacy of those who could not defend themselves. I admit to being somewhat disappointed that she was taken in so easily while conversely relieved that she did not expose our deception. As the months passed, I continued to observe her closely, for I was unable to classify her interest in spirit matters.
Once, when feeling brave, I broached the subject with Leah, who had spent the afternoon in private discussion with Mrs. Post. “Does Mrs. Post believe in our spirit rapping?” I asked tentatively, almost afraid of bursting a bubble that no one else had noticed floating among us.
Leah looked up from the letter she had been writing and gave me a sharp glance before asking, “Why do you ask such a thing? She is here nearly daily, and she has brought many important people to our circles.”
“Yes, she has,” I agreed. “Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Mott seemed very pleased that the spirits shared their convictions on women’s suffrage. Some of the other people at the table were surprised that the spirits were so socially minded that night, but Amy Post and her friends took it very much in stride.”
“The spirits are very wise, of course,” murmured Leah, who had turned back to her letter.
“Mrs. Mott went so far as to ask me,” I continued, “if I couldn’t manage to contact a spirit of some historical fame and acquire a testimonial from him regarding women’s rights.”
Leah’s pen faltered and dropped a blob of ink at this news, and she had to reach for a blotter. “What is your point, Margaretta?” she asked in annoyance.
“Do they actually believe, or are they using—”
“They have chosen to publicly state that they believe,” Leah said, fixing me with her no-nonsense eye. “That is good enough for me, and it should be good enough for you.”
Upon those words I had to be content. Amy Post believed in the spirits, or claimed that she believed, and because I shared most of Mrs. Post’s views regarding the abolition of slavery and the rights of women, I was not averse to including support for these progressive issues in our spirits’ messages. Part of me wondered whether the feminist portion of Mrs. Post’s nature did not admire Leah’s gumption at making a living at tricks worthy of Mr. P. T. Barnum himself.
***
One event marred our triumphant conquest of the Rochester social scene.
In the early fall, it happened that Kate challenged Calvin to make Leah’s piano play by itself. We did not make much of this proposed trick at the time, because it was typical that Kate and I conceived the impossible, and quiet, unassuming Calvin proceeded to make it possible. After a few days of deliberation and examination of the piano mechanism, Calvin began to create his miracle.
He waited until Leah was out of the house, so that she could not prevent him from working on her beloved instrument. Then, selecting a low bass note because of its position farthest from an observer, he attached a dark thread to the hammer, ran it down through the bottom of the piano, along the side of one of the legs facing the wall, and into the floorboards. Under this floorboard, Calvin constructed a clever device that would pull the thread whenever the far end of the board was trod upon. One step on this rigged section of floor, and the thread would pull down the hammer, which also caused the key on the outside of the piano to depress as though by an invisible finger. No matter how I stuck my head inside the piano, I could not discern the guilty thread, even knowing that it was there.
When Leah returned, she screamed something awful, but no damage was done to the piano, and after she calmed down, she had to admit that the effect was very mysterious.
The piano began to toll its lone bass note soon after our first visitors arrived that afternoon. The first person to innocently walk past the piano leapt backward with a cry of alarm when the note rang out by itself. Quickly, others hurried over to investigate, and at seemingly random intervals, the same low note tolled again and again.
The beauty of the device was that none of the Fox family needed to approach the piano; in fact, my sisters and I made a point of keeping our distance. If too long a period went by without a sound from our invisible pianist, Calvin would stroll past, tread upon the board, and leap back convincingly at the consequential bong!
Visitors came and went that long evening, some deliciously mystified by the one-note tune, and others frightened. A woman named Abigail Bush wrung her hands together and cried, “’Tis a death knell! It heralds a death! Somebody dear to this family is going to die!”
Kate and I struggled to contain our amusement in the face of Mrs. Bush’s dire prediction. My mother, however, was greatly upset, and because of her agitation our guests excused themselves and dispersed. I noticed that Amy Post was one of the last to leave and that she tried to comfort Mother with a different interpretation of the evening’s events: “Perhaps it duplicates the Bell of Liberty, commemorating the document of feminine independence that was drafted this summer at Seneca Falls.” At a dubious and somewhat resentful glance from Mother, Amy smiled ruefully and said, “Or perhaps it is just a very mischievous spirit, who regrets his lost opportunity in life to learn the piano from Leah.”
Calvin was very regretful that he had so distressed his foster mother, and I heard him whisper to Leah that he would dismantle his creation as soon as Mother had gone to bed. Thus, as soon as all the guests were gone, Leah led Mother from the parlor and started her up the stairs.
It was just then that the doorbell rang—once, twice, and a third time in quick succession. Thinking that one of our visitors had left an item behind, I scampered to the door. I heard Leah behind me on the stairs, trying to discourage Mother from going down to answer it. Opening the door, I found a young delivery boy on the stoop with a telegram in hand.
“Maggie!” My mother pulled free from Leah’s grasp and came running down the stairs, nearly stumbling in her panic. “Is that a telegram? Who’s dead? Oh, dear Lord, who is dead?”
“Mother!” I exclaimed with some irritation, slitting open the envelope with my index finger. “Just because we receive
a telegram doesn’t mean someone is dead!”
But in this case, it did.
I gasped out loud and put my hand against the wall for support. Mother snatched the message from me, and in a moment she and Leah both were reading it. My mother screamed, and my sister covered her face with her hands and burst into tears.
David’s little daughter Ella had been stricken with a high fever and had died that very evening while we were holding our spirit circle with the piano tolling its death knell.
Chapter Fourteen
Maggie
The death of David’s bright-eyed little girl devastated our family, and grief brought us together briefly, all our petty disputes forgotten. My poor brother was nearly destroyed. I was shocked by his appearance, for he seemed to have aged ten years in the span of two months.
The funeral service was held shortly after our arrival in Hydesville, and my poor little niece was buried in a small coffin handmade by her father and her grandfather, working side by side. Leah was our source of strength, as always. She almost single-handedly directed affairs, guiding our grief-stricken brother and his wife through the ceremony.
By contrast, Kate was nearly prostrate with hysteria. Immediately after the funeral, she took to a bed and refused to get up. Slipping away from the company of neighbors paying condolence calls, I went upstairs and perched myself on the bed beside her, taking her hand.
“I know what you’re thinking,” I whispered, “and you need to stop it.”
“I caused Ella’s death,” Kate’s lips formed the words, but there was scarcely any breath behind them.
“You know that is nonsense,” I said fiercely.
“I predicted it, then,” she replied in a firmer voice. “I’m the one who asked Calvin to make the piano toll that note.”
“I think you asked him to make it play,” I corrected. “I am sure you did not ask him to make it sound like a death knell, and you certainly didn’t ask that idiot woman to predict that someone in our family would die! It was a coincidence. Ella had been ill for two days before!”
“I asked Calvin to rig the piano two days ago,” Kate said gloomily.
“You did not. It was only one day ago!”
“I don’t want this power!” Kate’s tear-stained face turned toward me. “I don’t want the power to see death approaching! I want to comfort people, not foresee their grief!”
“You are forgetting,” I hissed. “You don’t actually have any power at all. You crack the joints in your toes to make the rapping, and you are very good at reading people’s faces. You are a fraud, just as I am.”
Despite my best efforts, Kate remained inconsolable and probably would not have left the bed at all had Leah not barged in that evening and taken her by the ear. Kate was forced to scramble up and onto her feet, lest she lose that particular piece of her anatomy.
“That’s enough wallowing from you, you self-centered chit!” Leah scolded. “David and Betsy aren’t lying in bed. They’re behaving with dignity, and I won’t have you overshadowing their grief. She wasn’t your child!”
I gasped. Kate’s health was delicate, and one did not just order her out of bed when she was taken by a spell. However, two red circles of shame appeared on Kate’s cheeks, and she scrambled to pull on her dress before Leah could lay hands on her again.
The emotional ordeal was not yet over for us, however. We had scarcely returned to Rochester before Mother began to make us uncomfortable with requests to contact Ella’s spirit in a circle. Kate dug her fingernails into my arm each time she asked, and when Mother was not within hearing, she would hiss, “I cannot do it! I will not do it!” However, Mother would not give up the idea, and truly, there was no reason for not doing for her what we did for strangers at a dollar a head. When she asked us in front of our regular group of sitters, Leah gave a resigned sigh and nodded to us girls. Kate cast her eyes down in shame, and I returned a wide-eyed gaze to Leah. What could we do to impersonate Ella, a child less than three years old? She could not spell out any message. What did Mother expect?
Leah had the matter well in hand, however. “Dear spirits!” she cried. “We are seeking the spirit of a small child—a girl very dear to us, who passed into your realm a week ago. Please, help us to locate Ella Fox, for her aunts and her grandmama wish dearly to speak to her!”
We waited in silence. Leah closed her eyes and swayed in her seat. “Ella, are you there? Knock for us, child. Your grandmama is waiting for you.”
And there came a small gentle knocking, as if the tiny hand of a child had rapped upon the center of the table.
“Ella!” my mother gasped tearfully. “Ella, darling, is it you?”
“Ella!” Leah said hastily. “Knock two times for yes. You can count to two, can’t you, dearest?”
Two tiny knocks were clearly heard in the room, and Mother raised her hands from their customary position on the table and clasped them to her face. “Ella, my darling! Are you in heaven?”
Two raps, tentative and childlike.
“Are you alone, Ella?” asked Leah. “You can knock one time for no, or two for yes.”
The spirit of Ella rapped one time, for no.
Leah nodded knowingly. “You are not alone. That is good, my darling. Who is with you—is it perhaps your great-aunt Catherine?”
Acting upon impulse, or perchance because I had grown accustomed to working from Leah’s hints, I caused there to be two very strong knocks upon the table.
Mother’s eyes lit up, glistening with tears. I rapped out the command for the alphabet board, feeling on sure ground. I did not remember this sister of my mother’s, who had died many years ago, but I knew of her from Leah’s stories, and it was easy to spell out a message that my mother would believe: I told you, Peggy, when you left John, that I would care for your children as my own. That is as true now as it was twenty-seven years ago.
My mother sobbed loudly, but they were cleansing tears, and Leah raised a hand to brush at her own wet cheeks, giving me a quick, grateful glance. We were all hurting from this unhappy loss, but somehow it was very reassuring to think of little Ella in the hands of the indomitable Aunt Catherine, who had taken my mother and her children into her home when they had nowhere else to go.
Adelaide Granger, who was present that evening, put her arms around my mother and pressed a handkerchief into her hands. “How very good it is,” she said, smiling through tears of her own, “that you, who have given so much comfort to others, can also reap the benefits of your daughters’ precious gift!”
***
As successful as we were in promoting our new family business, we were unable to convince everyone. Many people left our circles unsatisfied, especially those wanting to make a fortune with their stock speculations or seeking a way to outwit a rival in business or romance. Leah explained that the dead no longer understood the complexities of finance or love, having transcended to a realm of divine contemplation, but these seekers grumbled nonetheless when they received messages that spoke more to patience and virtue than to ambition and avarice.
Some sitters did more than grumble. Jealous women loosed their shrewish tongues to give us a piece of their minds, and a few of the men became angry and abusive, hurling epithets at our faces and calling us heathen witches and frauds. Persons of this temperament generally found themselves grasped firmly by an elbow and propelled swiftly to the front door at the hands of Calvin Brown, who, though mildly mannered, possessed substantial strength in his six-foot frame.
We also received a fair share of attention from the newspapers. The New York Tribune frankly called us humbugs, and the Rochester Courier and Enquirer doubted that real spirits would spend their time “thumping on walls and rapping on tables.” Some favorable press could be found in the Rochester Daily Democrat, which stated: “These young women will have to be pretty smart if they have deceived everybody.” The likelihood of
such a phenomenon was apparently rated somewhat lower than the possibility of real communication with ghosts.
Still, Mr. Capron and the Posts were rather disappointed with the jeers of the press and the public at large. Leah, Kate, and I met with them late in October to discuss the suspicion and skepticism of the Rochester community.
“I am at a loss to know what we can do to further our cause,” Leah began with a note of fatalism in her voice. “The spirits have commanded us to make their communications more public.”
“Perhaps,” suggested Mr. Capron, tapping his fingers nervously upon his pipe, “when I publish my book, we will attract the attention of intellects more scientifically minded than the journalists of the local papers.”
“You know that we have the support of Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Stanton,” Amy added. “I also understand that Frederick Douglass has expressed some interest in coming up to hear these raps for himself, and will most certainly publish his experience in his North Star paper.”
A few moments of silence followed as our friends considered other potential contacts or venues for advancing the idea of spiritualism. Kate and I contributed nothing to the conversation, for we were not expected to have any opinions, but we did cast sidelong glances at each other, waiting for the skillful maneuver that we knew must be coming.
“It does occur to me,” Leah finally said hesitantly, “a dear friend of mine suggested a few weeks ago that we appear in a public forum to proclaim the truth of spiritualism and prove it to the doubtful by demonstration. I was aghast at the suggestion, of course.”
We Hear the Dead Page 9