Shadows in Summerland

  Whatever good these pictures prove, I am convinced they are a fraud.

  But you must judge that for yourself. So I enclose one for you here.

  Our movement is tender, so tender, my brother. Going forward we must take great pains to protect it.

  Your Sister in Spirit,

  Fanny Conant, Trance-Speaker

  Miss Conant in Fellowship

  November, 1859

  E.H.B.’s chambers were on the top floor. I’d received word from Constance to go there at once. I brought with me a galley of The Banner of Light, published monthly at the Center, in which I’d made good on my reticent promise of featuring the jeweller’s picture.

  The caption: Spirit Picture Taken! Endorsed by the Medium Fanny A. Conant!

  I found her engaged in preparing a session—“making up” the séance room.

  Rounding the end of a cherry wood table with her polishing cloth barely touching the top, she was humming in tuneless, domestic low tones. Beneath four lamps with crimson shades positioned at its cardinal corners, the séance table streamed with light.

  “You wanted to see me, Mrs. Britten.”

  “This Mumler,” she said.

  “Mrs. Sunderland’s friend.”

  “Oh, curse it all, Fanny, this is rather awkward.” E.H.B. was English and you could not mistake it whenever a critter came up in her throat. “Help me, Fanny, if you will. My joints don’t hinge as once they did.”

  She knelt again below the wood and scrabbled for something just under the surface. I knelt and I followed her hand underneath, feeling along her until I had found it—a confluence of wire extensions centred in an iron ring, every one of these wires fastened each to a corner where they ran to the bases of four standing lamps. If any of these wires were tugged the ring would function as a pulley, feeding the wires toward the head of the table and bringing the lamps to the ground with a crash.

  Kneeling, I ushered the wire to its limit and fitted it over the base of the lamp.

  Next I found out the rectangular leaves that boxed in the legs and concealed their oiled castors. The slightest push from E.H.B. would set the table gliding like a stateroom pianola.

  “The lengths we’re driven to,” she said, “to insure that our ravings are heard by the public.”

  “Is William Mumler such a threat?” I said to E.H.B. abruptly.

  Not responding to me straightaway, she said, “That.” Then she crossed to the wall opposite where she stopped. “I rather thought—we thought, us girls—it seemed premature to go to print at this stage. At least until we have the tale of how he made this spirit picture. What with so many liberties poised in the balance—ours and the Negroes who live south of here . . . Can you hear me, Miss Moss?” she spoke into the wall. “What about when I say: in peace? What about when I say: harmonium?”

  I heard movement behind the wood.

  “What about when I say: washed clean?”

  At that the panel opened out and a girl by the name of Miss Moss ventured forth, lifting her skirts above the cut. She did it with a certain grace—a certain grace, I’ll grant her that. Now she stood there businesslike, her finger pressed against her lips. “Your words were muffled, Mrs. Britten. Clearest when you said: washed clean.”

  Miss Moss was one of several girls who were on at the Centre for the Diffusion of Spiritual Knowledge—the CDSK, as we called it for short. Such girls, whom we employed as spies in séance rooms beneath trapdoors, or in the crush of lecture halls would feed or perform us the things that we needed, the trickeries inside our trade. Miss Moss was only one of these. But the one thing that bothered me more than her angling to become a trance-speaker as I had become was the secret that we had entrusted her with and so had we with all the girls: that the spirits were only a means to an end, a way to enshrine the ascendance of woman; how this ascendance had its gambits, no different than anything.

  E.H.B. said, “Very well. Washed clean shall be our watchword then. Are you wretchedly cared for back there, I should ask? It must be incredibly dusty and dark.”

  “I’ve lain in wait in tighter spots. The chair is a welcome addition, Mrs. Britten.”

  “You’re very welcome, dear,” she said. “Now off to clothes and make-up with you.”

  E.H.B. watched until Miss Moss was gone. “A premier actress of the parlour. Prodigy at touching shoulders.”

  I felt my mood sour and my mouth project down. E.H.B. must’ve noticed; she looked at me large-eyed. I think that she meant it to seem like a kindness, but all that I saw was advantage and shrewdness. Miss Moss was a pretty addition, no more, to the ranks of our weary and roundabout circus. She would enter the trance, as we players all did. She would do this and never completely return.

  “Tell me what it is I should do and I’ll do it.”

  “You make this far too easy, Fanny.”

  “I will not print it then,” I said.

  “You needn’t go that far,” she said. “You must only allow us to meet with him, Fanny. Katherine Fox and yourself, as you’re probably aware, are speaking together a week from today. I wonder if they shouldn’t come. Do you happen to have it with you, Fanny?”

  “The picture?” I said.

  “Should you happen to have it.”

  I folded the galley out before her. She scrutinized then lightly traced the image of the jeweller’s cousin.

  “She becomes rather faint past the waist, doesn’t she? I wonder is this Mumler clever. And the woman looks faintly familiar somehow. As if I had known her in some other life.”

  “I will fetch her along with the jeweller,” I said.

  “Many thanks for that, my dear. I should like to perceive round the corner, is why. So much unexpected floats into our midst and I would hate, frankly, to add to it much. Constance?” E.H.B. called sharply. “Are you hearing what we’re saying, dear?”

  “As a spring,” said a voice hidden somewhere beneath us.

  “And how has your research been coming along?”

  “Perfectly well, Mrs. Britten,” it said, and the room erupted neatly with a feminine form who stepped from a trapdoor concealed in the grain. As predicted, it was Constance. Than subtle Miss Moss she was starker by far—a hawkish, uncomplaining girl. And though she was every last bit as ambitious, at least she wasn’t coy about it. She held an extensive notation of papers, foxed at the edges from reading downstairs. She scrolled down the names on the page with her finger.

  “Horace Greeley will be there.”

  She spoke only to E.H.B.

  “Horace Greeley . . .”

  “He and Mary. Lost their only son to croup.”

  “Their only son?”

  “Well, Raphael.”

  “We had better remember their names, hadn’t we?”

  “The Spirit protect you this evening,” I said.

  “Miss Conant,” said Constance, and turned to regard me with what I can only describe as intensity. It was loneliness, learned. It was rivalry, given—perverse and burning kin to love. I’d have ventured to say that the girl hated me had I not known her look so well, having worn it myself for three years, in the basement, walking these halls with my basket of mail.

  All that I heard as I turned from the room was the shuddering crack of the floor tipping closed.

  Hannah at Melodeon

  December, 1859

  Mother would not go with me to the Spiritist lecture with William Mumler.

  Because I was a woman now. William a man. Mother would not come between us.

  Until.

  When Willy came to call. Beard combed out from him in waves. Ruby cufflinks at his wrists. Beyond them stretched two white silk gloves. Withdrew from his coat to complete the ensemble, beneath a brief and private smile, mother’s cameo necklace. Buffed high and repaired. And then held it open for her to step into.

 
No explanation, of course, why he had it. Why he and not me had presented it to her.

  Watching me as she thanked him. “So lovely,” she said. “More lovely even than before.”

  Now we travelled there together. Willy up front and Bill Christian in back. Rode between Bill and my stern island mother while Willy narrated the passing landscape.

  Here the airy reservoir. There the Tremont House Hotel. Armoury-Ticknor on the left from which the Hub dispatched its books.

  Melodeon loomed up at us. Clean and carved and bright. Reins ho.

  Mumler and Willy fetched up at the train where they lifted a bulky suitcase to the curb.

  A man of some proportion met with Willy at the doors. Did not seem to recognize him. Wore a crimson coat with tails. Carnation stabbed in his lapel.

  “Help you, sir?” said crimson-coat.

  “We’re here for Katherine Fox’s lecture.”

  Said crimson-coat: “That’s two hours off.”

  “Miss Conant will forget such things! It was her that instructed me, sir: be here early. And bring your billings with you, please. Please”—he touched the bulky case—“is what she would say to you now, were she present.”

  “I’m afraid that I can’t, sir, instructions or no. Not without Miss Conant here.”

  Willy Mumler smiled. Moved in: “A private word, if you don’t mind.”

  The two of them in low cahoots. His white glove relaxed on the broad crimson back.

  Now crimson-coat was laughing strangely. Looking me from toe to crown.

  “Spiritualism,” said the man. “It is the purveyor of our age.”

  And then we were in through the carved double doors. Into the hall and the suitcase was open. Open between them, the jeweller and Bill. They rafted it before them like a banner they were hanging. Out from it came little cards that they placed on the first of the seats in each row.

  Willy turned back as they went down the aisles.

  “You’re gifted,” said he. “There’s no arguing that. In a couple of hours hence you’ll be famous, my girl!”

  Looking down I saw myself. Tipping out of Willy’s grasp. My eyelids fluttering and sick. My island skin—so poor, so pale. While Grace. Just behind me. Just there, by my chair. Her auburn hair gone dark and wet. Extending one pale, wrinkled palm toward the camera. On every seat, this same tableau, stretching onward toward the stage.

  These items, I knew, were called cartes de visite. Everyone in house would have one.

  And then I thought, Lift up your face. Marvel of this place that held us. Gold leaf as far as the eye could make out. Chandeliered and tin-stamped ceiling. Sweep of the seat-rows reflected above, wider the higher they climbed toward the rafters.

  Turnout enough for the show to begin. Some forward-sitting. Some slumped in their seats. Some of them standing, hands folded before them.

  A thin man in coattails who might be an usher standing with his back to me.

  But no: unbidden, dead. He turned. The dark and curtained stage receded.

  “The Scottish play or Lear they’re on? Which do you prefer, my dear? Now where was I sitting?” The man scratched his chin. “Where is my wife, Berenice? Have you seen her? Can I be such a muddle-pate that I have banged my face up laughing?”

  The curtain parted on the stage.

  A pale girl appeared. Wore a bell-shape of hair. Lowering her crinolines. The curve of her bending, re-bending the fabric. The shallow crescent of her back. She was testing for strength or for comfort, it seemed, a polished wingback chair. Stage-centre. And having took my breath from me the curtain closed. The vision gone.

  Say your name, I might have said.

  The girl was alive, there was no doubt about it.

  I had to wrench my gaze away. For here was mother on my right. Presenting me one of the cartes de visite. Who’d seen me see the pretty girl. Who’d seen me blush for want of her. Here was my mother who knew everything. About Willy, photography. Taking the locket. Stillness of her. Watching me.

  “People are going to know you now. It doesn’t flatter you to stare. Stand up straight,” said she. “Smile, Hannah. Pay these poor lost souls no mind.”

  Miss Conant at Melodeon

  December, 1859

  The calm of Melodeon’s green room was stifling. Like a covey of schoolmarms we sat, trim and trussed: E.H.B., Constance, Miss Moss and myself. Several of us sipped at coffee, except E.H.B., who was partial to tea.

  The Englishwoman pecked her cup. “Well,” she said. She smoothed her skirts. “Isn’t this silence the grandest illusion.”

  “Who will name the theme?” said Constance.

  “I would gladly,” said Miss Moss.

  “Miss Moss, if you’ll recall,” said Constance, “often names the evening’s theme. If she is permitted to do it too often people will begin to talk.”

  “Constance’s point is a fair one, Mrs. Britten. I need not always have the privilege.”

  “What does Fanny Conant think?” said E.H.B., her eyebrows raised.

  I thought I did not like Miss Moss. Her false modesty was a bunion to me. We were false every day about so much besides I did not see the purpose now.

  “Why not Constance then,” I said. “Our faithful want variety. If Constance is to make her name we must provide her avenues.”

  “I submit to your judgement,” Miss Moss said at large while Constance attempted to not look triumphant.

  There came a knock upon the door.

  “Samuel. One. Twenty-eight,” someone called.

  E.H.B. said: “We are ready and waiting!”

  An assemblage of people filed inside, chief among them Katherine Fox, the songbird of tonight’s event. Trailing behind with his hat in his hands as if he had no business there was the owner of the CDSK, Horace Day, who did not seem to recognize me.

  I had met Katherine Fox one time when she was serving on a panel at the Rutland Free Convention. That had been a year ago. The occasion had not accomplished much. The womanists and Spiritualists, neither alike nor different really, had come away opponents of “despotic sensualism,” a rather swirling resolution. The Fox girl had sat there, slim-waisted and pale, aloof of the opinions that were dragging her down. Apart from nightly demonstrations in which she’d entreated the spirits for aid, she’d said hardly a word all week.

  It hadn’t been for arrogance. Rather she’d seemed lost for words. She’d seemed to orbit in and out of the many scouring conversations, as if her attention were constantly drifting and once in a while must be gathered to hand.

  She struck me, tonight, as little different. Mrs. Greeley, her handler, announced her. She entered. She dressed a little flambishly, her milky neck and arms exposed. Her waist was as slight as a puddingstone column. Her face was alarmingly round, her mouth small, her large and liquid eyes wide-spaced above a plunging nose. Her skin was pale but thick as cream; I could only assume there were veins underneath it. There was a sort of murkiness or hint of disease that kept her from appearing pretty.

  It was hard to imagine I had her to thank for the lifestyle that I now enjoyed.

  Greeley was a baroness. She kept close by her ward, arms tensed. Her husband, Horace Greeley, owned the New York Tribune. He had yet to write in to the Banner of Light. Indeed he was known to support other papers, the Herald of Progress primary among them, whose pages had been teeming with the raid on Brown’s Ferry while my own, to no end, had promoted this night. I wondered if she knew my name. I wondered if she knew my title.

  Constance and Miss Moss were rising, abdicating their seats for Fox and Greeley. Horace A. Day was a gentleman’s hat rotating lengthwise between two hands.

  E.H.B. had stood to greet them. “How lovely to see you again, Mrs. Greeley. Miss Fox, your ladyship, I’m charmed.”

  “Mrs. Britten,” said Fox and then sat down with a faint taking out of her
skirts.

  As though she’d barely noticed him, E.H.B. said: “Mr. Day.”

  The gentlemen nodded. We echoed our mentor:

  “Mr. Day.”

  “Mr. Day.”

  “Mr. Day.”

  He was awkward a moment beneath our attentions. He bankrolled the Center—in fact, owned the building—a staunch devotee of “progressive endeavours,” though Spiritualism, trance-speaking, all that, appeared to fill him with unease.

  Mrs. Greeley sought our hands. Engaged with my own she announced, “Plucky Fanny! A handshake befitting those strong raps she makes. Take note of her, Katherine. Her style is robust.”

  “I too speak to spirits directly, Mrs. Greeley, if that is what you mean,” said Fox.

  “To them or through them?” I said.

  “To them, Miss.” She spoke to me but looked at Greeley. “And then I speak through them to whoever listens.”

  “You don’t rap with your toes?” I said.

  “I’m not sure what you mean,” said Fox.

  “And I don’t suppose that you speak out of trance. Horrors, we should come to that. Airing our thoughts and opinions as ours.”

  Katherine Fox was silent in the process of responding. E.H.B. was smiling stiffly. Mr. Day, uncomfortable, had fled the vicinity, shoes sounding off.

  “Katherine’s a purist and Fanny’s, well, modern. Now can’t the two exist at once? Which makes me think,” said E.H.B., “you might show Katherine round the stage.”

  “I will fumble around it myself,” said Kate Fox.

  Mr. Day peered through the chink in the curtain. Reporting back he told us of a man down in the aisles, pamphleting the music hall, row after row.