CHAPTER XIX.
On the 17th of August, in 1838, as I find by my diary, “I went with Henrietta Skerret to see the Baron Dupotet magnetise his patients.” This was my first introduction to a subject, and to a special little world of its own, of which subsequently I saw a great deal, and which shortly began to attract an increasing amount of attention from the greater world around it. The Miss Skerret mentioned was the younger of two sisters, the nieces of Mathias, the author of the once well known, but now forgotten, _Pursuits of Literature_. Mr. Mathias and his sister, Mrs. Skerret, had been old acquaintances of my mother from earlier days than those to which any reminiscences of mine run back. And Maryanne and Henrietta Skerret were life-long friends of my mother’s and of mine. They were left at the death of their parents very slenderly provided for, and Maryanne, the elder, became by the interest of some influential person among their numerous friends, received into the service of the Queen in some properly menial capacity. But of all those in the immediate service of Her Majesty, it is probable that there was not one, whether menial or other, equal to Miss Skerret in native power of intellect, extent of reading, and linguistic accomplishment. And this the Queen very speedily discovered, the result of which was that to her particular service, which I believe consisted in taking charge of the jewellery which the Queen had in daily use, was added that of marking in the volumes which Her Majesty wished to make some acquaintance with, those passages which she deemed worth the Queen’s attention. She remained with the Queen many years, till advancing age was thought to have entitled her to a retiring pension, which she was still enjoying when I saw her, a very old woman, two or three years ago. I know that she found her position in the household, as may be readily understood, an irksome and materially uncomfortable one. But of her royal mistress, and of every member of the royal family she came into contact with, she never ceased to speak with the utmost affection and gratitude.
The younger sister, Henrietta, died some years before her. I had of late years seen much more of her than of her sister; for of course the position of the latter cut her off very much from all association with her friends. Henrietta was as remarkably clever a woman as her sister, but very different from her. She was as good a linguist, but her natural bent was to mathematics and its kindred subjects rather than to general literature. And whereas Maryanne was marked by an exquisite sense of humour, and was always full of fun, Henrietta was, I think, the most judicial-minded woman I have ever known. I have never met the man or woman whom I should have preferred to consult on a matter of weighing and estimating the value of evidence. She was for many years, as was my mother also, an intimate friend of Captain Kater, who was in those days well known in the scientific world as “Pendulum Kater,” from some application, I fancy, of the properties of the pendulum to the business of mapping, in which he had been engaged in India. Young, Woolaston, De Morgan, and others _ejusdem farinæ_, were all Miss Skerret’s friends, especially the last named. And I was brought into contact with some of them by her means.
This was the lady who, in 1838, invited me to accompany her to a _séance_ at the house of Baron Dupotet, a Frenchman, whose magnetising theories and practice were at that time exciting some attention.
Here is an extract from my diary written the same evening.
“The phenomena I have witnessed are certainly most extraordinary and unaccountable. That one young woman was thrown into a convulsive state, is entirely undeniable. Her muscles, which we felt, were hard, rigid, and in a state of tension, and so remained for a longer time than it is possible for any person voluntarily to keep them so--for, I should say, at least twenty minutes. A little girl became to all appearance somnambulous. This, however, might more possibly be imposture. When the little girl and the young woman were placed near each other, the effect on both was increased, and the girl instead of being merely somnambulous became convulsive. The little girl, _as far as the_ CLOSE _observation of the onlookers could detect_ [underlining in original], saw the colours of objects, &c., with her eyes closed. This, however, is evidence of a nature easily deceptive. When waked from her magnetic trance, she forgot, or professed to have forgotten, all that she had said or done when in it. But when again put into a state of trance or somnambulism, she again remembered and spoke of what had occurred in the former trance.
“After these patients were disposed of, two young men of the spectators offered themselves as subjects to the magnetiser. He said that they were not good subjects for it, and that it would be difficult to affect them, and would take a long time. He then tried me, and after a short space of time, I think not more than half a minute, he said that I was _very_ sensitive to the magnetic influence, and that in two or three sittings he could produce ‘_des effets extraordinaires_’ on me; but that he was then tired, and that ‘_rien ne coule plus_’ from his fingers.”
It is not so stated in my diary, but I remember perfectly well that the general impression left on my mind by the Baron was not a favourable one. I find by my diary that I read his book, translated from the French by Miss Skerret, a few days afterwards, and the result was to increase the above impression. But I was far from coming to the conclusion that his pretensions were all chimerical. As regards his dictum about my own impressionability, I may observe, that on various occasions at long distant times, I have been subjected to the experiments of several professing magnetisers of reputed first-rate power, but that _never_ has the slightest effect of any kind whatever been produced upon me. Sometimes I was pronounced to be physically a bad subject; sometimes I was accused of spoiling the experiment by wilfully resisting the influence; sometimes the magnetiser was too tired.
I think I may as well throw together here the rest of my experiences and reminiscences in connection with this subject--or rather some selections from them, for I have at different times and places seen so much of it, that I might fill volumes with the reports of my observations.
On the 13th of February, 1839, my mother and I dined with Mr. Grattan to meet Dr. Elliotson, and on the following day we went by appointment to meet him at the house of a patient of his, a little boy in Red Lion Street. I saw subsequently a great deal of Dr. Elliotson, and I may say became intimate with him. It needed but little intercourse with him to perceive that here was a man of a very different calibre from Baron Dupotet. Without at all coming to the conclusion that the latter was a charlatan, it was abundantly evident to me that Elliotson was in no degree such. He was a gentleman, a highly educated and accomplished man, and so genuinely in earnest on this subject of “animal magnetism,” as it was the fashion then to call it, that he was ready to spend and be spent in his efforts to establish the truthfulness and therapeutic usefulness of its pretensions.
Here is the account of what we--my mother and I--witnessed on that 14th of February, as given in my diary written the same day:--
“He put the little boy to sleep very shortly, then drew him by magnetic passes out of his chair, and caused him while evidently all the time asleep, to imitate him [Dr. Elliotson] in all his attitudes and movements. We both firmly believed that the boy _was_ asleep. We then went to the house of another patient, Emma Melhuish, the daughter of a glazier, sixteen years old, and ill in bed from cataleptic fits.”
This was a very remarkable case, and had attracted considerable attention. Emma Melhuish was a very beautiful girl, and she was perhaps the most remarkable instance I ever witnessed of a singular phenomenon resulting from magnetic sleep, which has been often spoken of in relation to other cases--the truly wonderful spiritual beauty assumed by the features and expression of the patient during superinduced cataleptic trance, which has never, I believe, been observed in cases of natural catalepsy. I have seen this girl, Emma Melhuish (doubtless a very pretty girl in her normal state of health, but with nothing intellectually or morally special about her), throw herself during her magnetic trance into attitudes of adoration, the grace and expressiveness of which no painter could hope to find in the best model he ever saw or heard of, while her face and features, eyes especially, assumed a rapt and ecstatic expressiveness which no Saint Theresa could have equalled. It was a conception of Fra Angelico spiritualised by the presence of the breath of life. Never shall I forget the look of the girl as I saw her in that condition! I can see her now! and can remember, as I felt it then, the painfulness of the suggestion that such an apparent outlook of the soul was in truth nothing more than the result of certain purely material conditions of the body. But was it such?
Here is my diary’s account of what I saw that first day:--
“We found her in mesmeric sleep, she having been so since left by Dr. Elliotson in that condition the day before. We heard her predict the time when her fits would recur, and saw the prediction verified with the utmost exactitude. We heard her declare in what part of the house her various sisters were at the moment, saying that one had just left the counting-house and had come into the next room, all which statements we carefully verified. My mother and myself came home fully persuaded that, let the explanatory theory of the matter be what it might, there had been no taint of imposture in what we had witnessed.”
On subsequent visits we assured ourselves of the entire truthfulness of statements to the effect that Emma was conscious of the approach of Dr. Elliotson, while he was still in a different street, and to the punctuality with which she went to sleep and waked, at the hour she had named herself as that when she should do so.
I remember Dr. Elliotson relating to me, as an instance of the utility of the magnetic influence, a curious case to which he had been called. The brother of a young girl had, as a practical joke, suddenly fired off a pistol behind her head. She was of course painfully startled, with the result of becoming affected by a fit of hiccough so persistent, that no means could be found or suggested of making it cease. It was absolutely impossible for the girl to swallow anything. She was becoming exhausted, and the case assumed a really alarming aspect. It was at this conjuncture that Elliotson was called in. He succeeded in putting her into a magnetic sleep, with of course perfect calm, after which the hiccough returned no more.
But by far the most curious and interesting of Elliotson’s cases was one, of which a good deal was, I think, said and printed in those days, but of which very few persons, probably, saw as much as I did--the case of the two Okey girls. They were both patients, I believe for some form of catalepsy, in a hospital of which Dr. Elliotson was one of the leading physicians. Dr. Elliotson was obliged to throw up his position there, because those who were in authority at the hospital were bitterly opposed to his magnetising experiments and practice. And about the same time, or shortly afterwards, the Okey girls were dismissed for a cause which seems grotesquely absurd, but the story of which is strictly true. These girls, of, I suppose, about thirteen and fourteen, being in the very extraordinary condition which a prolonged course of magnetising had produced (of which I shall speak further presently) were in the habit of declaring that they “saw Jack” at the bedside of this or that patient in the hospital. And the patients of whom they made this assertion invariably died! That the presence of such prophetesses in the hospital was undesirable is intelligible enough; but what are we to think of the motives, presentiments, instincts, intuitions of mental or physical nature which prompted such guesses or prophecies?
Much about the same time my brother had a serious and dangerous illness, so much so that his medical attendants--of whom Dr. Elliotson was, I know not why, not one, though we were intimate with him at the time--were by no means assured respecting the issue of it. Now it is within my own knowledge that the Okey girls, especially one of them (Jane, I think, her name was), were very frequently in the lodgings occupied by my brother at the time, during the period of his greatest danger, and used constantly to say that they “saw Jack by his side, but only up to his knee,” and therefore they thought he would recover--as he did! I am almost ashamed to write what seems such childish absurdity. But the facts are certain, and taken in conjunction with the cause of the girls’ dismissal from the hospital, and with a statement made to me subsequently by Dr. Elliotson, they are very curious. I may add that when cross-examined as closely as was possible as to _what_ they saw, the girls said they did not know--that they did know that certain persons whom they saw were about to die shortly, and that was their way of saying it. They, on more than one occasion, on reaching our house by omnibus, said that they had seen “Jack” by the side of one of the passengers--of course I cannot say with what issue.
The statement referred to was as follows:--Elliotson having been in some sort the cause of the two girls being turned out of the hospital, and being anxious, moreover, to continue his observations on them, took them into his own house. There looking out one day from an upper window, they saw across the street at the opposite window three fine healthy-looking children. They were, said Elliotson, the children of a hairdresser, who had a shop below. “What a pity,” said Jane Okey, “that that child in the middle has Jack at him. He will die!” And so within a day or two--it might have been hours, I am not certain--the child _did_ die! Believing, as I do, Dr. Elliotson to have been a truthful and habitually accurate speaker, I confess that it does not satisfy me to dismiss this story, especially when taken in conjunction with the other anecdotes I have related, as mere “coincidence,” though I have no shadow of a theory to offer in explanation of it.
The purely physical experiments which were performed with these girls before my eyes were curious and interesting. I have seen those Okey girls, and they were slight small girls, lift weights, which it would be quite impossible for them to lift normally, not by applying the whole strength of the body and back to the task, but by taking the ring of an iron weight in the hand, and so lifting it in obedience to the “passes” of the magnetiser applied to the arm.
But decidedly the most singular and curious part of the case consisted in the abnormal condition of mind and intelligence in which they lived under magnetic influence for many weeks at a time. There were three conditions, or, as it might be said, three stages of condition in which I saw and studied them. Firstly--though it was lastly as regards my opportunities of observation--there was their normal natural condition. Secondly, there was a condition not of trance, or somnambulism, but of existence carried on according to the usual laws and conditions, but resulting apparently from the application of magnetism during prolonged periods of time, during which complete interruption of conscious identity seemed to have taken place. The third state was that of trance. In the first state they were much such as children of that age taken out of a workhouse, say, might be expected to be--awkward, shy, seemingly stupid, and unwilling to speak much when questioned. In the second state they were bright, decidedly clever, apt to be pert, and perfectly self-confident. And in this condition they had no recollection whatsoever of any of the circumstances, persons, or things connected with their previous lives. It was in this state that they talked about “Jack,” and in this state that we--my mother and myself--knew them for weeks together. While in this state a very slight accident was sufficient to produce cataleptic rigidity and trance; often one without the other. I remember one of the girls dining once with us in the middle of the day. A dish of peas was handed round, the spoon in which, it being hot weather, was no doubt heated by the successive hands which had used it. When Jane Okey grasped it in her hand to take some peas her fingers became clenched around it, and she could not open them. But there ensued no trance or other manifestation of catalepsy. On another occasion she was in my mother’s house playing on the accordion, which she did very nicely in her magnetic state, but could not do at all in her normal state, and I, sitting at the other side of the room opposite to her, and reading a book, was moving my hand in time to the music, though not thinking of her or of it. Suddenly she fell back in a trance, magnetised unconsciously by me by the “passes” I was making with my hand. I have also produced a similar result by magnetising her intentionally behind her back, while she was entirely unconscious of what I was doing.
But perhaps the most singular and remarkable scene connected with these girls was that which occurred when, their physical health having been very greatly, if not perfectly, restored, it became necessary to take them out of that “second state,” which has been above described, and to restore them to their former consciousness, their former life, and their parents. The scene was a very painful one. The mother only, as far as I remember, was present. Memory seemed only gradually, and at first, very partially, to return to them. The mother was a respectable, but poor and very uneducated woman, and of course wholly different in intelligence and manners from all the surroundings to which the girls had become habituated. And the expression of repulsion and dismay, with which they at first absolutely refused to believe the statements that were made to them, or to accept their mother as such, while she, poor woman, was weeping at what appeared to her this newly developed absence of all natural affection, was painful in the extreme.
Subsequently the daughter of one of these girls lived for some years, I think, with my brother’s family at Waltham, as a housemaid.
The next reminiscences I have in connection with this subject belong to a time a few years later.
We, my mother and I, had heard tidings from America of a certain Mr. Daniel Hume, of whom very strange things were related. It was no longer a question of physical specialties and manifestations, which unquestionably did tend, apart from their medical value, to throw some gleams, or hopes of gleams of light on the mysterious laws of the connection between mind and matter. The new candidate for the attention of the world claimed (_not_ to have the power, as was currently stated at the time but) to be occasionally and involuntarily the means of producing visitations from the denizens of the spirit world. And before long we heard that he had arrived in England, and was a guest in the house of Mr. Rymer, a solicitor, at Ealing. We lost no time in procuring an introduction to that estimable gentleman and his amiable wife, and were most courteously invited by him to visit him for the purpose of interviewing and making acquaintance with his remarkable guest. We went to Ealing, were most hospitably received, and forthwith introduced to Mr. Daniel Hume, as he was then called, although he afterwards called himself, or came to be called, Home. He was a young American, about nineteen or twenty years of age I should say, rather tall, with a loosely put together figure, red hair, large and clear but not bright blue eyes, a sensual mouth, lanky cheeks, and that sort of complexion which is often found in individuals of a phthisical diathesis. He was courteous enough, not unwilling to talk, ready enough to speak of those curious phenomena of his existence which differentiated him from other mortals, but altogether unable or unwilling to formulate or enter into discussion on any theory respecting them. We had tea, or rather supper, I think. There were the young people of Mr. Rymer’s family about on the lawn, and among them a pretty girl, with whom, naturally enough, our young “medium” (for that had become the accepted term) was more disposed to flirt--after a fashion, I remember, which showed him to have been a petted inmate of the household--than to attend to matters of another world.
But other guests arrived, Sir David Brewster I remember among them, and Daniel had to be summoned to the business of the evening. This was commenced by our all placing ourselves round a very large and very heavy old-fashioned mahogany dining table, where we sat in expectation of whatever should occur. Before long little crackings were heard, in the wood of the table apparently. Then it quivered, became more and more agitated, was next raised first at one end and then at the other, and finally was undeniably raised bodily from the ground. At that moment Sir David Brewster and myself, each acting on his own uncommunicated impulse, precipitated ourselves from our chairs under the table. The table was seen to be for a moment or two hovering in the air, perhaps some four or five inches from the floor, without its being possible to detect any means by which it could have been moved.
I said to Sir David, as our heads were close together under the table, and we were on “all fours” on the floor, “Does it not seem that this table is raised by some means wholly inexplicable?” “Indeed it would seem so!” he replied. But he wrote a letter to the _Times_ the next day, or a day or two after, in which he gave an account of his visit to Ealing, but ended by denying that he had seen anything remarkable. But it is a fact that he did do and say what I have related.
This was the sum of what occurred. There was no pretence of the presence of any spiritual visitor. I may observe that although an ordinarily strong man might have lifted either end of the table while the other end remained on the ground, I am persuaded that no man could have raised it bodily, unless perhaps by placing his shoulders under the centre of it.
After the table exhibition Mr. Hume fell into a sort of swoon or trance. And it was then that he uttered the often-quoted words, “When Daniel recovers give him some bottled porter!” which was accordingly done! It may be observed, however, that he _did_ appear to be much exhausted.
Various little fragments of experiences, and the increasing amount of attention, which the world was giving to the subject, had kept the matter in my mind, till some years afterwards I had an opportunity of inviting Mr. Hume to visit me in my house in Florence. He came, and stayed with us for a month. And during the whole of that time--every evening as it seems to my remembrance, though I have no diary which records the fact--we had frequent experiments of his “mediumship.”
Of course it is (happily for the reader) out of the question for me to attempt to give any detailed record of the proceedings and experiences of those repeated _séances_. I can only select a few facts which appeared to me most striking at the time, and add the general result as to the impression produced on my mind.
All our Florentine friends and acquaintances were eager to have an opportunity of passing an evening with the already celebrated medium. We generally limited our number to about eight persons; but pretty regularly had as many as that every evening. The performance usually began by crackings and oscillations of the round table at which we sat. Then would come more distinct raps; then the declaration that a visitor from the spirit world was present, then the demand for whom the said visit was intended, to which a reply was “knocked out,” by raps indicating the letters required to form the desired name as the letters of the alphabet, always on the table, were rapidly run over. Sometimes a mistake was made, and an unintelligible word produced in consequence of too great haste in doing this. And then the process had to be gone through again. The medium never corrected any such mistake at the moment it was made, but seemed to await the completion of the process as the rest did.
One or more “spirits” came, to the best of my recollection, every evening. Nor could I detect any sort of favouritism, or motive of any sort for the selection of the parties said to be visited. This is the sort of thing that would occur: There was present a well known and much respected English banker, established in Florence, a hale, robust, cheery sort of man, and a general favourite--the last man in the world one would say to be credited with nervous impressionability. A “spirit” was announced as having “come for him.” Who is it? A name was rapped out in the manner described. The elderly banker declared that he had never had any friend or relative of that name, and had never heard it before. A second time the name was spelled out while the banker sat thrashing out his recollections. Suddenly he struck his forehead with his hand, and exclaimed, “By Heaven! it is true! Nanny ----” (I forget the name.) “She was my nurse in Yorkshire more than half a century ago!” Of course those who do not understand that scepticism is frequently more credulous than faith, say at once that Mr. Hume, in the exercise of his profession, like the gipsies in the exercise of theirs, had made it his business to discover the former existence of Nanny ----, and her connection with the person he was bent on befooling. But taking into consideration the total severance of the old banker’s infancy both as to years and locality from any of his then surroundings; the fact that it was so long since he had heard the name in question mentioned, that he had himself entirely forgotten it; and the further fact that there was nobody in Florence who had any connection with him or his family in his early years, and the circumstance that he that evening saw Mr. Hume for the first time, I confess that it seems to me that the improbability of any proposed explanation of the mystery must be incalculably great indeed, for a solution the improbability of which approaches so very near to impossibility to be preferably accepted.
Here is one other case, which I will give both because the person on whose testimony the value of it depends, was one on whose accurate veracity I could depend as on my own, and because it illustrates one specialty of Mr. Hume’s performances which I have not yet spoken of. This was a sensation of being touched, which was frequently experienced by many of those present. This touching almost invariably took the form of a knee being grasped under the table, or a hand being laid upon it. In the case I am about to relate this was experienced in a more remarkable manner.
A very highly valued old female servant, who had lived in my then wife’s family since her birth, and had followed her when she married me, had some months previously died in my house. The affection which had subsisted between her and my wife was a very old and a very strong one. Now there was, it would seem, an old nursery pet name, by which this woman had been long years before in the habit of calling my wife. I had never heard it, or of it. My wife herself had never heard it for very many years. She and the old servant had never for years and years spoken on the subject. But one evening this pet name was very distinctly spelled; and my wife declared that she at the same time felt a sort of pressure at her side, as she sat in the circle, as if some person or thing had been endeavouring to find a place by her side. But for all that, my wife, though utterly mystified and incapable of suggesting any theory on the subject, was a strong disbeliever in all Mr. Hume’s pretensions. She strongly disliked the man. And were it not that, as we all know, her sex never permits their estimate of facts to be influenced by their feelings, it might be supposed possible that this biassed her mind upon the subject!
I could add dozens of cases to the above two, but they were all very similar; and it is sufficient to say that the same sort of thing occurred over and over again.
I may mention, however, that I observed that any question addressed to the supposed spirits bearing on theology and matters of creed were invariably answered according to the views of the questioner. Catholics, Protestants, materialists, were all impartially confirmed in the convictions of their diverse persuasions.
Also I should not omit to mention that my wife, taking her occasion from Mr. Hume’s complaints of his own weakness of lungs, spoke of my brother’s death in Belgium and of my life at Ostend, and at a sitting some few days afterwards asked if she could be told where I had last seen my brother on earth. The answer came promptly, “At Ostend.” But the truth is, as the reader knows, that I took my leave of him on board the Ostend steamer in the Thames.
My account of these sittings would not be as judicially accurate as I have endeavoured to make it, however, were I to omit the statement that Mr. Hume on two or three occasions offered to cause “spirit hands” to become visible to us. The room was darkened for this purpose; and at the opposite side of a rather large table from that at which the spectators were sitting, certain forms of hands did become faintly visible. To me they appeared like long kid gloves stuffed with some substance. But I am far from asserting that they were such.
On the whole, the impression left on my mind by my month-long intercourse with Mr. Hume was a disagreeable one of doubt and perplexity. I was not left with the conviction that he was an altogether trustworthy and sincere man. Nor was I fully persuaded of the reverse. I _saw nothing_ which appeared to me to compel the conclusion that some agency unknown to the ascertained and recognised laws of nature was at work. But I _did hear_ many communications made in Mr. Hume’s presence in the manner which has been described, which seemed to me to be wholly inexplicable by any theory I could bring to bear upon them. It may be observed that no theory of thought-reading will serve the turn, for in many cases the facts, circumstances, or names communicated were evidently _not_ in the thoughts of the persons to whom they were so communicated. Of course it may be answered, “Ah! but however ‘_evident_’ that may have seemed to you, the facts _were_ in the thoughts of the parties in question.” To this I can only reply that to me, my very complete knowledge of the persons in question, and of their veracity--one of them, as in the case above related, being my own wife--renders the explanation suggested absolutely inadmissible.
I have seen at various subsequent periods a great many professors of “mediumship,” and their performances. I was present at many sittings given by Mrs. G.----, a huge mountain of a woman, very uneducated, apparently good-natured and simple, but with a tendency to become disagreeable when her attempts at communication with the unseen world were declared to be failures.
I will give here the copy of a letter which I wrote to the secretary of “The Dialectical Society,” which had applied to me for my “experiences” on the subject. I cannot at the present day sum up any better the conclusions to which they led me.
“FLORENCE, _27th December, 1869_.
“SIR,--In reply to your letter of the 17th I can only say that I have but little to add to those previous statements of mine, of which you are in possession.
“With regard to the sittings with Mrs. G., I can only say that the greatest watchfulness on the part of those sharing in them failed to detect (as regards the physical phenomena), any trace of imposture. These phenomena, which took place in the dark, such as the sudden falling on the table of a large quantity of jonquils, which filled the whole room with their odour, were extraordinary, and on any common theory of physics unaccountable. The room in which this took place had been completely examined by me, and Mrs. G.’s person had been carefully searched by my wife. With regard to metaphysical phenomena, an attempt to hold communication with intelligences other than those present in the flesh, was stated by a lady to whom a communication was addressed, to have been extraordinarily successful, and to have been proved by the event. In the case of myself and my wife all such attempts resulted in _total_ failure.
“I have recently had a sitting with Dr. Willis of Boston. The physical manifestations (in the dark) were remarkable and perplexing. The attempts at spiritual communication were altogether failures.
“In short, the result of my experience thus far is this--that the physical phenomena frequently produced are, _in many cases_, not the result of any sleight of hand, and that those who have witnessed them with due attention must be convinced that there is no analogy between them and the tricks of professed ‘conjurors.’ I may also mention that Bosco, one of the most accomplished professors of legerdemain ever known, in a conversation with me upon the subject, utterly scouted the idea of the possibility of such phenomena as I saw produced by Mr. Hume being performed by any of the resources of his art.
“To what sort of agency these results are to be attributed I have no idea, and give no opinion; although (inasmuch as I consider that the word ‘supernatural’ involves a contradiction in terms) I hold that to admit that the phenomena exist, implies the admission that they are ‘natural,’ or in accordance with _some_ law of nature.
“With regard to the metaphysical phenomena, though I have witnessed many strange things, I have never known any that satisfactorily excluded the _possibility_ of mistake or imposture.
“Your obedient servant,
“T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE.”
If I am asked what, upon the whole, is my present state of mind upon the subject, I can only say that it is that unpleasant one expressed in Lord Chancellor Eldon’s often-quoted words, “I doubt.”
Before, however, quitting the subject, my gossip about which has run to a length only excusable on the ground of the very general interest that has been attracted by it, I will give two more excerpts from my recollections, which relate to cases respecting which I have _no_ doubt. They both refer, however, to purely physical phenomena.
A French professor of “animal magnetism” came to Florence. His name, I think, was Lafontaine. He had a young girl with him, his patient. He brought her to my house, in which there was a long room, at one end of which he directed me to stand, then put the girl immediately in front of me, and told me to hold her, so as to prevent her from coming to him, when, standing at the further end of the room, he should draw her to him. I accordingly placed my arms around her waist, interlacing my fingers in front of her. She was a small, slight girl, and I was at that time a somewhat exceptionally strong man. The operator then standing at the distance of some twenty feet or more made “passes” as it were, beckoning her with his hands to come to him. She struggled forwards. I held her back with all my force, but was dragged after her towards the magnetiser. This may be accepted as an absolutely accurate and certain fact.
This same Lafontaine had entirely failed in attempts to magnetise me, and in telling me, as he promised to do, what I in my house was doing at a given moment while he was absent.
My second excerpt concerns also my own experience, and shall be given with equally truthful accuracy.
My wife, my wife’s sister, and myself, had been spending the evening in the house of Mr. Seymour Kirkup, an artist, who, once well known in the artistic world, lived on in Florence to a great age after that world had forgotten him. A girl, his daughter by a servant who lived several years in his house, and who also had pretended to very strongly-developed spiritualistic powers, developed, as he asserted, similar powers in a very wonderful degree. And during his latter years the old man absolutely and entirely lived, in every respect, according to the advice and dictates of “the spirits,” as oracularly declared by Imogene, for that was her name. In short, she was a clever, worthless hussy, and he was a besotted old man. Our visit to his house was to witness some of Imogene’s performances. There was also present a Colonel Bowen, who was a convinced believer.
I, my wife, and sister-in-law detected unmistakably the girl’s clumsy attempts at legerdemain, but knew poor old Kirkup far too well to make any attempt to convict her. But as we walked home with our minds full of the subject, we said, “Let us try whether we can produce any effect upon a table, since that seems the regulation first step in these mysteries; and, at least, we shall have the certainty of not being befooled by trickery.” So, on reaching home, we took a table--rather a remarkable one. It was small, not above eighteen or twenty inches across the top of it. But it was _very_ much heavier than any ordinary table of that size, the stem of it being a massive bit of ancient chestnut-wood carving, which I had adapted to that purpose.
Well, in a minute or two the table began to move very unmistakably. We were startled, and began to think that the ladies’ dresses must have, unconsciously to them, pressed against it. We stood back therefore, taking care that nothing but the tips of our fingers touched the table. It still moved! We said that some unconscious exertion of muscular force must have caused the movement, and finally we suspended our fingers about an inch or so above the surface of the table, taking the utmost care to touch it in no way whatever. The table still turned, and that to such an extent that, entirely untouched, it turned itself over, and fell to the ground.
I can only observe of this, as the little boy said who was accused of relating an impossibility as a fact, “I don’t say it is possible, I only say it is true!”
In Kirkup’s case his entire and never-varying conviction of the truthfulness of Miss Imogene’s material manifestations and spiritual revelations was the more remarkable in that he had for many years--for all his life, for aught I know to the contrary--entertained and professed the most thorough persuasion of the futility and absurdity of all belief that the soul of man survived material death. His tenets on this subject are the more strongly impressed on my memory by an absurd incident that occurred to my present wife in connection with his materialistic theories.
He and she were one day talking upon the subject, as they sat _tête-à-tête_ on opposite sides of a table. Now Kirkup was very deaf--worse by a great deal than I am--and my wife failing to make him hear a question she put to him, and having no other writing materials at hand, hastily drew a card from her card-case, and pencilled on the back of it: “What are your grounds for assurance that the visible death of the body is the death of the spirit also?” He read, and addressed himself to reply, letting the card fall on the table between them, which she, thinking only of the matter in discussion, mechanically put back into her card-case, and--left at the next house at which she happened to be making a morning call!
Kirkup’s conversion to spiritualism was so complete that, as I have said, his entire life was shaped according to the dictates which Miss Imogene chose to represent as coming from her spiritual visitors. The old man had lived for very many years in Florence. All the interests which still bound him to life were there, and he was much attached to the city in which so large a portion of his long life had been passed. But Imogene one day announced that “the spirits” declared that he must go and live in Leghorn! Of course the blow to the old man was a terrible one, but he meekly and unhesitatingly obeyed, and submitted to be uprooted when he was past eighty and packed off to Leghorn! I discovered subsequently--what I might have guessed at the time--that the good-for-nothing jade had a lover at Leghorn. Kirkup’s new faith in the existence of a soul in man, separable from his body, continued firm, I believe, till his death, which occurred shortly afterwards.
I have at various times and in various countries been present at the performances of spiritualistic _mediums_ (a monstrous word, but one can’t write _media_), and always with an uniformly similar result in one respect. No non-material experience whatever has ever been vouchsafed to me myself. _Material_ phenomena of a very surprising nature, and altogether unaccountable in accordance with any received physical theories, I have seen in great abundance. And I must in justice say that the performances of Messrs. Maskelyne and Cooke, which attracted so much attention in Piccadilly, masterly as they were as exhibitions of legerdemain, did not by any means succeed in proving the imposture of the pretensions of Hume and others, by doing the same things. I think the Piccadilly performances _did_ achieve this as regards the tying and loosening of knots in a dark cabinet. But when one of the performers above mentioned proceeded to “float in the air,” he only demonstrated the impossibility of doing by any means known to his art, that which Hume--or Home--was declared on the most indisputable testimony to have done. Mr. Maskelyne certainly “floated in the air” above the heads of the spectators, but I saw very unmistakably the wire by which he was suspended. It may not have been _wire_, but I saw the cord, thread, or whatever it may have been, by which he was suspended. Nor is it possible to doubt that the gentlemen, who saw, or supposed themselves to have seen, Mr. Hume floating in the air above them, would have failed to detect any such artifice as that by which the professor of legerdemain was enabled to do the same. And then we must not lose sight of the all-important difference between the two performances, arising from the fact, that the one performer has at command all the facilities afforded by a _locale_ in which he has had abundant opportunity of making every preparation which the resources of his art could suggest to him; whereas the other exhibits his wonders under circumstances absolutely excluding the possibility of any such preparation.
But _I_ never saw Mr. Hume float in the air! The only physical phenomena which I saw produced by him consisted in the moving and lifting of tables--in some cases very heavy tables. But I have witnessed in _very_ numerous cases, communications made by the medium to individuals who have declared it to have been absolutely impossible that Mr. Hume should by any ordinary means have known the facts communicated. And it has appeared to me, knowing all the circumstances, to have been as nearly impossible as can well be conceived without being absolutely so.
Here is one more remarkable case--one out of dozens of such. A middle-aged Italian gentleman of the Jewish persuasion, asked that the spirit of his father, who, it was stated by the medium, was present, should mention where he and his son, then communicating with him, last met on earth. It should be stated that the inquirer, having abandoned the faith of his fathers, professed entire disbelief in any existence of the soul, or any future life. The answer to his query was spelled out in the manner I have already described, a certain Italian city being named. I watched the face of the sceptical inquirer as the letters were “rapped out” and gradually completed the name required. And I needed no confession of the fact from him to know that the answer had been correctly given. I thought the man would have fallen from his chair. He became ghastly pale, and trembled all over. He was in truth very terribly impressed and affected, but--and the phenomenon is a very curious, though by no means an uncommon one--a few days afterwards the impression had entirely faded from his mind. He continued fully to admit that the fact which had occurred was altogether inexplicable, but wholly refused to believe that it involved any supposition inconsistent with his strictly materialistic creed.
In the above case, as in that of the banker given above, it may of course be said that it was within the bounds of possibility that Mr. Hume should have previously ascertained the fact that he stated. It is, of course, impossible for me here to explain to the reader every detail of the circumstances that seem to me to render such an explanation wholly inadmissible. I can only say that to a mind as entirely open upon the subject as I think my mind is, the supposition in question appears so improbable, that it fails to impress me as a possibility.
On the other hand, I have to say that every attempt of a similar kind, whether by Mr. Hume or by any other so-called medium, in which I myself have been the subject of the experiment, has absolutely and wholly failed. Mr. Hume never, to the best of my remembrance, introduced or announced the presence of any spirit “for me.” I was like the boy at school whom no relative ever comes to see! The Mrs. G---- who has been mentioned at an earlier page, announced upon one occasion the presence of my mother, with results which would have sufficed to prove very satisfactorily that my mother’s spirit was not there, if I had previously fully believed the case to have been otherwise.
I once went to visit the then celebrated Alexis in Paris. He knew that I was a resident in Florence, and began operations by proposing to describe to me my house there. Of course such an experiment admitted of almost every conceivable kind of mystification and uncertainty. I told him that the proposed description would necessarily occupy more of his time than seemed to me needed for producing the conviction of the reality of his power, which I was anxious to acquire; and that it would be abundantly sufficient for that purpose if he would simply tell me the number composed of four figures which I had written on a piece of paper, and sealed in a (perfectly non-transparent) packet. He refused to make the attempt.
Many years subsequently I attended the _séances_ of a gentleman in London, whose performances attracted a good deal of attention at the time--of an unfavourable description, for the most part--and whose chief specialty consisted in enclosing a piece of slate pencil loosely between two ordinary framed slates, securely tied together, and awaiting communications to be made by writing produced on the slate by the pencil thus enclosed acting automatically. I _did_ see written words thus produced, where to the best of my observation there had been no words before the slates were (quite securely) tied together. Nor could I form any theory or guess as to the manner in which this writing was produced under circumstances which seemed to make it perfectly impossible that it should be so produced. But the words so written conveyed no remarkable or surprising information--and indeed to the best of my recollection had little meaning at all.
Thus once again that portion of the performance which was, or might have been, of the nature of sleight of hand, was done so well as to cause much puzzlement and surprise; while what may be called the spiritual part of the promised phenomenon failed _entirely_.
I have witnessed the performances of sundry other medi_ums_--I hate to write the word!--always with the same net result. That is to say, the strictly physical phenomena witnessed were in very many cases--not in all--utterly unaccountable and incomprehensible. The statement that the performances of many masters of legerdemain are also unaccountable and incomprehensible appears to me, while I fully admit the truth of it, to be of very little value. The phenomena produced by these professors are in almost every case totally different in kind, and are in every case placed in a wholly different category by the fact that the performers of them have the assistance of tools and means--the highly-skilled preparation and combination of which constitute a very important (if not the most essential) part of their professional equipment--and of the resources of their own prepared _locale_. Furthermore, I cannot forget the testimony of that “prince of conjurors,” Bosco, to the effect that the phenomena, which I declared to him I had seen, were entirely unachievable by any of the resources of his art.
Above all I have the certain knowledge (resting not only on my own very perfect recollection, but on the unvarying testimony of the two other persons engaged in the experiment) that a table did move much and violently, as recorded above, while wholly and certainly untouched by any human hands or persons, and uncommunicated with--if I may use such an expression--save by the minds of the operators.
The net conclusion, therefore, of my rather extensive experience in the matter is, that as regards phenomena purely physical, such have been and are frequently produced by the practisers of “animal magnetism”--or by whatever name it may be preferred to call it--of a nature wholly inexplicable by any of the theories or suggestions which have been adduced for the explanation of them.
With regard to _non-physical_ phenomena--that is to say, such as imply the abnormal exercise of intelligences, whether incarnate or disembodied, outside the intelligence of the individual experimenting--I have to testify that I have _heard_ from many highly credible persons the statement of their own experience of such communication with intelligences other than their own. And I have heard such statements immediately on the occurrence of the facts. But I have never in my own person received or been made the subject of any such.
INDEX.
A.
Abbaye-aux-Bois, at the, 271, 273
Abingdon Road, pedestrian feat on, 218
Academical career, my, a failure, 216
Acheron pavement, 226
Adventure on the Danube, 312, 313
Advertising, modern, 45
Alabama, Miss Wright’s property in, 153
Alban Hall, I matriculate at, 191 as it was under Whately, 192 membership of, disastrous to me, 211 cause of my quitting it, 211
Ale _versus_ claret, 46
Alexis; thought-reader of Paris, 393
Alleghany Mountains, beauty of, 165
American stabbed at Naples, 12
Americans, my experience of, 168, 169, 181-183 rigging a sledge, 346
Amusements of childhood, 22
Anabaptist, 14, 15
Angelico, Fra, 368
Antwerp, from, to Dover, 345
Aristotle’s _Ethics_, 220
Arithmetic, ignorance of, 145
Atlantic, passage across, 156
Austen, Miss, 64
Austrian Empire, heterogeneousness of, 326
Authority of Prefects at Winchester, 124
Authorship, my first, 148
Autobiography, my brother’s, 228
Autograph of Byron, remarkable, 92
Auvergnats at Paris, 264
B.
Badger baiting, Winchester, 108
“Badger,” my nickname at Winchester, 170
Bamberg, 17
Barclay, Captain, 218
Barge, from Bruges to Ostend, 290
Bathing, death from excessive, 292
Batten, Rev. Mr., 72
Beattie’s Young Edwin, illustrated, 224, 225
Bedford, Duke of, 2
Bedford Square, 3
Bedsteads at Winchester, 132
Beer Cellar at Winchester, 100
Belgian cities, tour among, 246
Belgiojoso, Princess, 286, 287
Belgium, tour with Fanny Bent in, 254
Bell, Jockey, 47
Bent, Fanny, 32, 37, 247, 254
Bent, Mary, 32
Bent, Rev. John, 32
Bentley, Mr. Richard, 262
_Beppo the Conscript_ written in twenty-four days, 357, 358
Berryer, 280
Birmingham, mastership at, offered me, 255 delays and disappointments about it, 256, 258 continued disappointment, 294 I assume my duties at, 349 difficulties of them, 350, 352 my life at, 353, 354 I resign my position at, 355
Bismarck and Metternich, contrast between, 328, 329
Bismarck, Prince, 328, 329
Bloomsbury Square, 3
Boat on the Danube, description of, 308-310
Bohemian waggoners, 327
Bosco, the conjuror, 395
Bowen, Colonel, 386
Bower, Fungy, 145
Bowring, Lucy, 39
Bowring, Sir John, 39
Boy, whole duty of, 13
Brewster, Sir David, 376
Brittany, summer in, 303
Brown’s _Vulgar Errors_, 220
Bruges, I join my parents at, 242 return to, June, 1835, 290 my mother quits, 298
Buller, Dean, 38
Bullying at Harrow, 78
Burial of Byron’s daughter at Harrow, 91
Burton’s _Anatomy_, 220
Butler, Rev. Dr., 72, 73, 89
Butt, Dr., M.D., 79, 80
Byron, Lord, 91, 92
C.
Caen, bookseller at; anecdote of, 303, 304
Caermarthen in assize time, 222
_Cain_, Byron’s; Harry Drury and the Vicar on, 91
Calais, journey to, 243 journey from, to Ostend, 244
Calling “Domum” at Winchester, 107
Calomel, use of, 59
Camaldoli, Sagro Eremo, porter at, 1
Cane _versus_ rod, 351
Canterbury, walk in snow to, 347
Carlyle, Thomas, 45, 263
Carmelite Monastery, library at, 246
Casuistry, extraordinary, 246
Catacombs at Vienna, 341
Cathedral service sixty years ago, 84, 85
Catherine’s, St., Hill, Winchester, 106, 107
Chadwick, Captain, 157, 159
Chalk pit on St. Catherine’s Hill, 110
Chambers at Winchester, 131
Chambers, discipline in, at Winchester, 133, 134
Chancery Lane, 47
Chancery report, extraordinary, 48
Changes, social, 25, 26, 28
Changing horses, coach, 35
Chapel-going at Winchester, 137
Chaplains at Winchester, 138
Chapman, General, 62
Chapone, Mrs., 230
Character from school, my, 24
Charity at Winchester and at Harrow, 77
Charles Dix, 265
Charlotte, Princess, 16
Charlotte, Queen, 136
Chateaubriand, 269, 271, 272, 274
Château d’Hondt at Bruges, 245
Cheddar Cliffs, excursion to, 188
Cincinnati, my mother’s house at, 166 country around, 168 Powers, Hiram, at, 176 life at, 178, 181 theatricals at, 181 plans at, 184
Claret _versus_ ale, 46
Clarke, Miss, 271, 272, 285
Class third given me, 216
Classical lesson, giving, in London, 248
“Classicus paper” at Winchester 145
Clements, Mrs., 353
Clergyman’s escape from burning ship, 207
Coaches, names of, 7
Coachman, 35, 36
Cocked hat of master at Winchester disused, 117
Coincidence, singular, 187
Coleridge, S. T., 301
College and Commoners at Winchester, 77
Columbia, near Cincinnati, Mr. Longworth’s estate, 175
“Commercial gentlemen,” dinner with, 222
Confectioner, revisited, 3
“Continent” at Winchester, 120
Conversation sixty years since, anecdote of, 230
“Corduroy” roads, 165
_Corinthian_, the ship, 157
Corporal punishment, objections to, 115, 116
Courage, my boyish notion of, 71, 72
Courier, Austrian, 344, 345
Cousin, 275
Cramer, John, 131, 325
Crediton, near Exeter, 32
Cricket, changes in, 146
Croatian gipsies, 327
Cross, St., near Winchester, 107
Cunningham, Rev. Mr., 88, 91, 151
D.
Dannecker, sculptor, 314
Dante’s _bolgia_, representation of, at Cincinnati, 176, 177
Danube, boats on, 306, 307
Dean Rennell, a Platonist, 142 anecdotes of, 143
Debating Society at Birmingham, 353
Deck, nights on, 158
Degree, examination for my, 215, 216 I take my, 257
_Delirant reges plectuntur Achivi_, 212
Delirium, my, in typhus, 79
De Morgan, 364
Devonport Mail (Quicksilver), 32
Dialect, provincial affected, 37, 38 Devonshire, 43
Dialectical Society, letter to the, 383
Dickens, Charles, 29
Dickson, Colonel, 293
Dinner in Hall at Winchester, 104
Dinner with the Austrian Mail, 344, 345
Discipline by night at Winchester, 121
Dispers at Winchester, 103
Dissenters sixty years ago, 66
Distribution of rations at Winchester, 105
Divinity lectures at Oxford, 242
Docks, the, 9
Dolgelly, ancient custom at, 223
Dons, Oxford, disliked Whately, 197
Door of Fourth Chamber, anecdote, 134
Dorfeuille, M. 176, 177
Dormitories at Winchester, 131
Dover to London in 1834, 247 under snow, 345
Driving in America, 165, 166 French, 261
Drury Lane in 1834, 243
Drury, Mrs. Mark, 74, 75
Drury, Rev. Mark, 72, 74, 76, 78, 90
Drury, Rev. Harry, 72, 89, 91, 92
Drury, Rev. William, 72
Dulau, M., 304
“Dulce Domum,” 99
Dunkirk, journey to, 244 hospitable Frenchman at, 244
Dupotet, Baron, 364, 366
Dusty shoes, 249
Dyer, Lady, 16, 17
Dyer, General Sir Thomas, 17
E.
Echo Song in _Comus_, translation of, 231
Edgware Road, 31
Edwardes, Mrs., 79
Eldon, Lord, 48, 385
Eliot, George, 179
Elliotson, Dr., 366-371
English language not taught, 144
Evangelicalism, 14
Evans, Rev. Mr., 72
Events in life dreaded by me, 71
Exclusiveness, social, less common than formerly, 53
Exe, valley of the, 39
_Exemplum vitiis imitabile_, 357
Exeter Cathedral, 38 changes in, 41, 42 garden in, 42
Expectations, my, disappointed, 68
Experiences, new, 163
F.
Fads, the Vicar’s, 21
Fagging at Harrow, 78 at Winchester, 78 difference between the two, 78
Falstaff, my impersonation of, 181
Farmer, Nurse, 14, 15
Farnham, “The Bush,” 95
Farren, the actor, 243
Fauche, Mr., 245, 291
Fauche, Mrs., 245, 291, 301
Fayette, La, General, 272
Fellow passengers in steerage, 157, 161
Fieschi, conspirator, 265
Fifth of November in College chapel, 141
Fighting at Winchester, anecdote, 169
Firs on St. Catherine’s Hill, Winchester, 109
Fives at Winchester, 147
Fives bat, peculiar, 147
Flanders, French, visited, 290
Fleece, Golden, Installation of Knights, 340
Fleet Prison, 47
Flog, word not used at Winchester, 114
“Flower de Luce,” the, 95
Forest primeval disappoints me, 165
_Fortunes of Nigel_, 47
Fouché, police minister, 337-339
Founders’ Commemoration, 141
Founders’ Obit, 141
“Fountain” inn, Canterbury, at the, 347, 348
Franchise, the, Whately on, 207
Franz Vater, Austrian Emperor, 324, 325.
French prisoners, College dole to, 101
Fulham, walk to, 219
G.
Gabell, Miss, 17
Gabell, Dr., 17, 96, 125, 126
_Gaffarel’s Curiosities_, 220
Gaffer Williams, 110
Galicia, peasants from, 327
Gastronomy and “L. E. L.,” 236
Gedge, Mr., 349
Gennaro, Monte, near Rome, 108
Geography, early studies in, 6
Germany, life in, 221 journey in, 306 South, impression of, 315
Gibbon, Mrs., 60, 61
Gibbon, Kate, 60, 61
Gig, _Virgil_ lesson in the, 82 escape in the, 87
Gloucester, adventure at, 83
Goethe, 327 his _Gretchen_, first performance of, 327
Golden Fleece, Installation of Knights, 340
Gout, Sir F. Milman on, 236
_Grammar, Latin_, my introduction to, 4
_Grandison, Sir Charles_, readings in, 60
Grange, La, La Fayette’s estate, 151
Granger, Edmund, 42
Grant’s family, 257, 294
Granville, Lord, 191
Grattan, T. Colley, 234, 260, 366
Graves, price current of, 225
“Greek Slave,” Power’s statue of, 176
Green, Joseph Henry, 301
Gresley _mésalliance_, 18
Guard, National, in Paris, 268
Guildhall, 9
Guizot, 275, 282, 283
Gumbrell, Mother, 119, 120
Gumbrell, Dicky, 120
H.
Hackney coaches, 29, 30
Hadley, my mother settles at, 298 life at, 300 in the garden at, 356
Haldon Down, 39
Haliburton (Sam Slick), 359
Hall, Captain Basil, 232
Hall, Prefect of, at Winchester, 106, 111
Hall, Rev. George, 254, 256
“Halls” and Colleges at Oxford, 192
Hammond, Mr., 301
Hampstead, 9
“Harmony, New,” Miss Wright’s property, 154
Harrow, my father moves to, 61 farm at, 61 school, 69, 73, 77 masters, 72 my first appearance at, 72, 76 antagonisms at, 88, 89 vicarage of, 89, 90 scandal in parish church of, 90 extraordinary vestry meeting at, 91 my parents quit, 228 Weald, house at, 228 farm at, 150, 151
Haymarket, the, sixty years ago, 55
Heckfield vicarage, 13, 20 _versus_ Julians, 63
Herbout, Dr., 253, 294
Heredity, question of, 350
Hereford, Bishop of, 97, 130
Hertford College, 213
Hertfordshire squire, a, sixty years ago, 63
Hervieu, M., 224, 305, 314, 320, 333
Highgate, 9
Hinds, Mr., 193, 195
“_Hoc est Corpus_,” Blanco White’s anecdote of, 208
Hodgson, Mrs. Archdeacon, 237
Holborn, verse-making in, 6
Homilies, passage from, 216
Hoopern Bowers, 39, 40
“Hopkins, Damme,” 140
Hugo, Victor, 277-279 anecdote of his historical ignorance, 280
Hume (or Home), Daniel, 374, 375, 377, 379-382, 384, 390-392
Hungarian Gipsies, 327
Hungarians, 320
Huntingford, Bishop of Hereford, 127, 129, 130
Hutchinson, Rachel, 39
I.
Ilchester to Ilminster, 36
Ilfracombe, from, to Lynton, 87
Indians, West, at Alban Hall, 193
_Infra dig._, or, _in for a dig_! 234
Innovations at Winchester, 131
Intentions, good, imprudence of registering them, 226
Ireland, Whately’s utterances on, 205, 206
Itchen water-meads, Winchester, 108
J.
Jacobson, Mr., 214-216
Jamaica, Bishop of, 71
Jeune, Dr., 254, 256-258, 294, 349, 354
Jeune, Mrs., 354
Jews at Vienna, 323
Johnson, Dr., of Magdalen, 198
Journey in West of England, 81 from Vienna to England, 344, 345
Julians, visits to, 63
K.
Kater, Captain, 364
Keppel Street, 2, 4, 5, 16-18, 24-27, 57
Kensington Gardens, 9
Key of the birch cupboard and “Mother Mark,” 75
“King’s Head” Inn, Dover, detention at, 346
Kirkup, Mr. Seymour, 386-389
Kiss of peace, the vicar’s, 93
L.
La Fayette, General, 151, 152
Lafontaine, M., 385, 386
Lamartine, 274
Lamb, Sir F., 331, 332
Lamennais, Abbé de, 281
Landon, L. E., 235
Language, degradation of, 49
Larochefoucauld, Duchesse de, 272
Law, idea of, supremacy of, at Winchester, 202
Leatherhead, Sexton of, 225
“Leave out” at Winchester, 128
Lebanon, Mount, Shaking Quaker establishment, 174
Lectures, classical, Whately’s, useless to me, 196 logic, Whately’s wit at, 200
Lembach, portrait painter, 329
Leo XIII., 316
Lesson giving in London, 248
Lessons in chapel, extraordinary, 139
Letters, single and double, 55
Librarian at Tübingen, 316
Lincoln’s Inn, 2, 5, 46, 47
Linguistic solecisms, modern, 50
Lipscomb, Rev. Mr., 71
Liszt, 287
Literary judgments of Paris in 1834, 275-277
Little Marlbro’ Street, Lodgings in, 249
Liverpool and Manchester railroad, 223
Livery servant, 4
Livingstone, 82
Lohnkutscher, German, 306
London, changes in, 28, 29, 43, 44
Longworth, Mr., 174, 175
Louis XI., 280
Louis Philippe, 264, 269, 277, 281
Lowth, Dr., 137
Lynmouth as it was, 86
Lynton, sixty years ago, 86, 87
Lyon, John, 69, 73, 77
M.
Macbride, Dr., 213
Mackintosh, Mrs., 292 Margaret, 292
Macready, Mr. 56
Magdalen College, 46, 198
Magdalen Hall, 213 society at, 214 anecdotes of, 214
Magisterial duties, 67
Magnetism, animal, 364, 365 experiences of, with Baron Dupotet, 365 with Dr. Elliotson, 366-371 with Daniel Hume, 374-382 with Mrs. G----, 383, 384 with Dr. Willis, 384 with M. Lafontaine, 385 with Seymour Kirkup, 386 with my wife and sister-in-law, 387 with Alexis, 393 with performer with slates and pencils, 393
Magnetism, performances of Messrs. Maskelyne & Cooke, 389 general impression left on my mind, 395
Mail coaches, 33, 34 racing the, 217 from Canterbury to London, 349
Malibran, 326
Mancel, M., 303, 304
Manchester, marriages at, 224
Manciple and Bishop, anecdote of, 141
Marriage Service extraordinary, 224
Marsh, G. P., 334
Maskelyne and Cooke, Messrs., 389, 390
Mason, Mr., 349, 353
Massaia, Cardinal, 316
Mathias, Mr. 362
Mattingley near Heckfield, 18
Matriculation, my, 191
Meetkerke, Adolphus, 62, 63, 67, 68 Mrs., 64, 67 Mrs. Anne, 64
Melfort, Count, 293
Melhuish, Miss Emma, 367
_Mémoires d’Outretombe_, Chateaubriand’s, 271 readings from, 272
Metternich and Bismarck contrasted, 328, 329
Metternich, personal appearance of, 330, 331 his habit at dinner, 333 his account of his interviews with Napoleon, 335 his story of Fouché, 337 Princess, 332
Metz, 306
Middle Temple, 2
Middleton, Captain, 244
Mignet, M., 275
Milan, “Untori,” 67
Mills, Rev. Mr. 72
Milman, Lady, 236
Milman, Rev. H., 236-238
Milman, Sir William, 237
Milman, Sir. Francis, 236
Milton, Henry, 219
Milton, Mrs., 231
Milton, Rev. William, 13, 18, 63
Mohl, M., 286
Molière, 231
Montmorenci, picnic at, 288
Mountain, Mrs., 35
Mouse digging at Winchester, 109
Mudie, Mr., 229
Murch, Captain, 256
Music never taught, 148
Mutton at Winchester, 102 loin of, anecdote of a, 219
N.
Naples, King of, 18 pocket-picking at, 12
Napoleon, 337, 340
Narrow escape, my, in typhus fever, 79
Nashoba, Miss Wright’s property at, 154
New College, 18 election to, from Winchester, 96 privilege now abandoned, 192
New York, first impressions of, 164
Niagara, visit to, 185, 186
Nieufort, gig monstre, 245
Noailles, Duchesse de, 272
“No innovation!”, 129
Normandy, tour in, 302
Northwick, Lord, 61, 76, 90, 150
Nott, Dr., 15, 231, 331, 332
O.
Oath, College, at Winchester, 128
Obedience, anecdote of, 61
Odiam, theatricals at, 231
Offices of Prefects at Winchester, 103
Ogle, Dean, 120
Okey, two sisters, 369-373
Oratorio, Dr. Nott at an, 231
Ordinations by Bishop of Hereford, 129
Oriel College, Whately popular at, 196
_Orley Farm_, my brother Anthony’s, 235
Ostend, society at, anecdotes of 255 pleasant days at, 291 tragedy at, 292 society at, 293
Ovington, 17
Owen, of Lanark, 153
Owen, Dale, 153
Oxford Road, 30, 31 Street, 31
Oxford, my life at, 217, 220 general habits at, 217
Oyster soup, anecdote, 301
P.
Pantomime, 22
_Parceque_, and _Quoique Bourbon_, 265
Paris, first visit to, 263 changes in, 263, 264
Parish Church, sixty years ago, 65
Parodies and jibes ridiculing the Republicans, 267
Partington, Miss, 18
Passenger ship, burning of, 207
Passengers in steerage, 157
Paved roads in France, 261
Pedestrianism, my, 218, 219, 241 in Wales, 226
Pepe, General Fiorestano, 18
Pepe, General Guglielmo, 17
Personal appearance, my, in youth, 22, 23
Personal superintendence, little, at Winchester, 121
Piccadilly, 6, 7
Picnic at Montmorenci, 288
Pidding, confectioner, 3
Pindar, Peter, 38
Pinner, Lady Milman’s house at, 236
Pittsburg, squalor of, 165
Pleintling, on the Danube, adventure at, 312, 313
Plinlimmon pedestrianism, 226
Plot’s _Oxfordshire_, 220
Plymouth, no tobacconist in, 221
Politics _al fresco_, 264 at Paris in 1834, 265
Postman, twopenny, 54
Post Office, at the, 31
Poulter, Rev. E., 148
Powers, Hiram, 175-177
Practitioner, country, sixty years ago, 79
Prayer, family, sixty years ago, 64
Prefects, authority of, at Winchester, 124
Prefect’s table at Winchester, 104
Prester John, 10
Price, Dr., 178
Price, Mrs., 178, 180
Professional etiquette sixty years ago, 54
Pronunciation, changes in, 49
Propaganda, Roman, visit at, 316, 317
Provence, Rue de, at Paris, 262
_Purley, Diversions of_, 220
Q.
Quakers, Shaking, visit to, 170-174
Quicksilver mail, 33, 36
Quirinal, anecdote of dinner at, 334
R.
Raglan Castle, 85, 86
Railway, new, Liverpool to Manchester, 223
Ratcliffe, Mrs., 85
Rations at Winchester, 101
Ratisbon, 307, 309
Reading, early lessons, 23
Récamier, Madame, 271, 272, 284, 285
Red Lion Square, 3
Religious education, 13 at Winchester, 136, 137 indifferentism at Cincinnati, 178
Remedy ring at Winchester, 111
Rennell, Dean, 129, 142, 143
Republicans, Parisian, in 1834, 266 feared, 267
Rettich, Madame, 327
Return to England from America, 187
Ridding, Mr., 125, 127
Robbins, Mr., 148
Rocks, Valley of, 87
Rod, Mark Drury and the, 75 the Winchester, 113
_Rotis volventibus_, 20
Route through Germany, 316
Russell Square, 3
Rymer, Mr., 375
S.
Sabbath observance, Whately on, 200
Saffron Hill, expedition to, 10, 11
St. Catherine’s Hill, Winchester, 106
St. James’s Park, 9
St. Martin’s-le-Grand, 32
St. Martin’s Lane, pilgrimage to, 72
St. Stephen’s at Vienna, catacombs under, 341
Salisbury, 21
Sand, Georges, 275, 280, 282
Saunders, butler at Pinner, 237
Schiller, 314
School, public, what constitutes a, 73
Schools _versus_ colleges, Whately on, 201
Schwab, Gustav, 315
Scott, Sir W., 86, 223
Scourging, practice and method of, at Winchester, 115
Self-knowledge, disadvantage of, 179
Seniority in college at Winchester, 123
Sermons at the Cathedral, Winchester, 141, 142
Sermon by Bishop of London, 219
Severn, banks of, visited, 226
Seville, anecdote of scene at, 209
Shaking Quakers, visit to, 170-174
Shakespeare, 223
Shopkeepers, Parisian, 268
Shops, non-advertising, obsolete, 45
Shuttleworth, Warden of New College antagonism with Whately, 198, 199, 201 his wit, 200, 238, 239
Shyness, my, 179
Siddons, Mrs., 25
Simon, Saint, 1
Singlestick practice with Anthony, 225
Skerret, Miss Henrietta, 362-365
Skerret, Mrs., 362
Skerret, Miss Maryanne, 362, 363
Skinner, Rev. Mr., 65, 66
Skinner, Rev. Mr., of Bath, 188
Skinner, Miss, 188
Slang, modern, 50 progress of, 51 when vulgar, 51; and why, 52 humility in the use of it, 53
Sledge journey from Dover, 346
Smithett, Captain, 235, 247, 293
Snobbishness, absence of, among the Viennese, 321 anecdote on this subject, 321
Sobriety, my, 217
Somerset, Duke of, 85
Speedyman at Winchester, 99
Spiting Gabell at Winchester, 127
Squire, country, sixty years ago, 64
Squiress sixty years ago, 64
Stage coaches, plans for improving, 19
Stanton, near Monmouth, 23
Steerage passage across the Atlantic, 156
Store Street, 2
Storm at sea, 159
Strasbourg, 306
Stuttgardt, 306
Superannuation at Winchester, 144
Symonds, Dr., 354
Systematic law, force of, at Winchester, 122
T.
_Tabula legum_ at Winchester, 113
Tea-things at Winchester, 100
“Telegraph,” Exeter coach, 36
Temple, the, 46
Temple Bar, 47
Temple, Sir William, 331
Thackeray, Rev. Mr., 299
Thackeray, William M., 288, 358
Thames Embankment, 46
Theatre, visit to, to hear Siddons, 25
Theatres sixty years ago, 55 reforms in, 56
Theatricals at Cincinnati, 181
Theresa, Saint, 368
Thiers, Ad., 275, 282, 283
Thomason, Sir Edward, 257
Tilley, Sir John, 300
Tintern Abbey, 86
Tomkisson, Mr., 245
Torreborre’s barge, 290, 291
Tottenham Court Road, 2
Traffic between Dover and Canterbury stopped, 345
Trapbois, Miss, 47
Travel in West of England, my father’s mode of, 81, 82
Trenton Falls, visit to, 185, 186
Trollope, Thomas Anthony, my father, 2-5, 13, 20, 57, 59-62, 67, 68, 76, 82, 87, 150, 156, 168, 184, 185, 190, 191 at the whist table, 58 his mode of teaching, 58 his expectations disappointed, 62 his dispute with Whately, 211 no fortune hunter, 230 his failures, 241 at Bruges, 245 consultations with French physicians, 263 his declining health, 294 his death, 295 his _Ecclesiastical Dictionary_, 297 his great industry, 297 his New College friends, 296 his unhappy life, 295 his peculiar temperament, 296
Trollope, Frances, my mother, 59, 83 journey from Exeter with, 37 at Cincinnati, 176 her letters to my father before marriage, 229 her book on America, 232 its truthfulness, 232 its faults, 234 at Harrow Weald, 235 effects of her success, 241 at Bruges, 245 her terrible time there, 251-253 her estimate of Chateaubriand, 273 her _Paris and the Parisians_, 273 her wonderful recuperative faculty, 299 her industry, 300 her account of Danube boat, 307, 308 consultations with me, 355 her illness, 359 settles in York Street, 359
Trollope, Henry, my eldest brother, 21, 79, 153, 166, 184, 250, 251 his illness, 247, 250, 251 my last parting with him, 251
Trollope, Anthony, my younger brother, 21, 240, 242, 243, 250, 260, 294 his autobiography, 228 at the Post Office, 257 in Ireland, 258 in South America, 259 his judgment of me, 356 work a necessity to him, 358 his industry, 359 his illness, 370
Trollope, Cecilia, my elder sister, 245, 300, 305
Trollope, Emily, my younger sister, 245, 250, 298, 299
Trollope, Rev. Anthony, my grandfather, 63
Tub, Prefect of, at Winchester, 103, 105
Tübingen, adventure at, 315, 316
Tuileries, ball, anecdote, 269
Tunding at Winchester, 111, 112
Tupto, Warden’s nickname, 130
Turbot, mutilated, 293
Tutor and pupil at Winchester, 123
Twistleton family, 70
Tyburn turnpike, 31 toll man at, 31
Typhus fever, I am attacked by, 79
U.
_Udolpho, Mysteries of_, and Raglan Castle, 85
Upland, 314, 315
Upton Pynes, 39
V.
Vacancies at New College, 99
Varying at Winchester, 119
Vauxhall, excursion to, 240
Verses, nonsense, 5
Vice-Principal’s examination, curious coincidence, 215
Victor Emmanuel, 334
Vienna, journey to, planned, 304, arrival at, 317 Custom House, adventure at, 318 changes in, 319 from, to England, 344, 345
Viennese Society, 319 exclusiveness of, 320 habits of, 321, 322, 324 loyal feeling of, anecdote of, 324
Vinerian Fellowship, 3
Voyage down the Danube, 311-313
“Vulgus” at Winchester, 118
W.
Wager between Bishop and Dean, 129
Wall, Mr., 195
Warton, Dr., 135
Warton, Tom, 135, 136
Ways, the parting of the, 356
Whately, Archbishop of Dublin, his liberalism, 191, 204, 207 purges Alban Hall, 192 biography of, by Miss Jane Whately, 193, 195, 197 his methods of teaching, 194 anecdotes of, 195, 199, 203, 207, 208 disliked by the Oxford dons, 196 I did not please him, 196 his despotic temper, 197 antagonism with Shuttleworth, warden of New College, 199 his wit, 200; specimen of it, 200 his dislike of Winchester and Wykehamists, 201, 203 I rubbed him the wrong way, 202 his remarkable utterances on state of Ireland, 205 his logic lectures, 200, 203, 210 his “Liberalism,” good modern “Conservatism,” 207 his treatment of me, 212
Whately, Miss Jane, 193, 195, 200, 202, 208
Whately, Mrs., 195
Wheeler, Mr., 148
Whipcord and oats, 35
White Bear Inn, 7
White, Blanco, 208-210
Whitefriars, 47
White Horse Cellar, 6, 31 scene at, 8, 9
Wilkes, Mr., 164, 187
Williams, Dr. David, 24, 110, 115, 125-127, 148
Willis, Dr., of Boston, 384
Wilson, Rev. Daniel, 88
Winchester, Cathedral, chapter of, 15 restoration of, 16 my first journey to, 94 college electors, 69 election, manner of, 69, 70, 97 founders kin, 70 election chamber, 97 festivities, 98 phraseology, 101 rations, 101
Witney, drives to, 217
Woodburn, Rev. Jack, 139
Woolaston, Dr., 364
Work hard, 357
Wright, Camilla, 151, 153
Wright, Frances, 151, 152, 154, 165
Writing master at Winchester, 145
Wye, the, from Chepstow to Ross, 85 banks of the river, 226
Wykehamists, Whately’s dislike for, 196, 201-203
Y.
York Street, my mother’s house in, 359
Young, Dr., 364
Young, John, 62, 63
Z.
Zandt, Baron de, 17, 221
END OF VOL I
RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LONDON AND BUNGAY.
FOOTNOTES:
[A] Subsequently Master of the Rolls.
[B] My query.