Affinity (19 page)

I didn’t answer him, but let him think what he liked. He told me again then about the wax, the water, the dipping limbs; and at last I grew calm. I said, that I supposed the mediums who brought the ghosts that made the moulds were very clever ones?—and at that, he looked thoughtful.

‘I should say
powerful
rather than clever,’ he said, ‘—no cleverer than you or I, perhaps, in matters of the brain. These are matters of the spirit, and that is rather different.’ He said it is that that can make the spiritualist faith sometimes seem such a ‘rag-tag affair’ to non-believers. The spirits have no time, he said, for age, or station, ‘or any mortal distinction like that’, but find the gift of mediumship scattered amongst the people, like so much grain in a field. I might visit with some great gentleman, he said, that might be sensitive; in the gentleman’s kitchen there will be a girl, blackening her master’s boots—it might be
she
who is the sensitive one. ‘Look here’—he gestured again to the cabinet. ‘Miss Gifford, who made this mould—she was a parlour-maid, she never knew her powers until her mistress fell ill with a tumour; then she was guided to place her hands upon the lady’s flesh and the tumour was healed. And here, Mr Severn. He is a boy of sixteen, has been bringing spirits since he was ten. I have seen mediums of three and four. I have known babies gesture from their cradles—take up pens and write, that the spirits love them . . .’

I looked back to the shelves. After all, I knew very well why I had gone into those rooms, and what it was I had been looking for there. I put my hand to my breast and nodded to the waxen hands of ‘Peter Quick’. I said, What of that medium, Selina Dawes? Did Mr Hither know anything, at all, of her?

Oh, he said at once—and as he said it the lady at the table again lifted her eyes to us. Oh, but of course! Had I never heard, of poor Miss Dawes’s misfortune? ‘Why, they have her in a prison cell, locked up!’

He shook his head, and looked very grave. I said then that after all I believed I
had
heard something of that. But I had not thought to find Selina Dawes so celebrated . . .

Celebrated? he said. Ah, not in the larger world perhaps. But amongst spiritualists—why, every spiritualist in the country must have trembled, when he heard of poor Miss Dawes’s apprehension! Every spiritualist in England had his eyes upon the details of her trial—and wept, too, when he heard the outcome of it; wept—or should have wept—for her sake and for his own. ‘The law has us as “rogues and vagabonds”,’ he said. ‘We are meant to practise “palmistry and other subtle crafts”. What was Miss Dawes charged with? Assault, was it?—and fraud? What
calumny
!’

His cheek had grown quite pink. His passion astonished me. He asked me, was I familiar with all the details of Miss Dawes’s arrest and imprisonment?—and when I answered that I knew only a little, but should certainly like to know more, he took a step towards the shelves of books, ran his eyes and fingers along a set of leather volumes, then drew one forth. ‘See here,’ he said, lifting the cover. ‘This is
The Spiritualist
, one of our newspapers. Here are last year’s numbers, from July until December. Miss Dawes was taken by the police—when was it?’

‘I believe it was August,’ said the lady with the soiled gloves. She had overheard all our talk, and still looked on. Mr Hither nodded, then turned the pages of the magazine. ‘Here it is,’ he said after a moment. ‘Look here, my dear.’

I gazed at the line of print to which he gestured. ‘SPIRITU-ALIST PETITIONS URGED FOR MISS DAWES,’ it said. ‘
Materialising Medium Detained by Police. Spiritualist Testimonies Discounted.
’ Beneath this was a brief report. It described the apprehension and detainment of the materialising medium Miss Dawes, following the death of her patron, Mrs Brink, during a private development sitting at Mrs Brink’s residence at Sydenham. The subject of the sitting, Miss Madeleine Silvester, was also understood to have been injured. The disturbance was thought to have originated with Miss Dawes’s spirit-control ‘Peter Quick’, or with a low and violent spirit masquerading as that control . . .

This was the same account that I had had, from the matron Miss Craven, and from Stephen, and Mrs Wallace, and Selina herself—though it was the first, of course, to chime with hers and paint the spirit as the guilty one. I looked at Mr Hither. I said, ‘I hardly know what to make of this. Really, I know nothing of spiritualism. You think Selina Dawes has been abused—’

Grossly
abused, he said. He was quite certain of it. I answered, ‘
You
are certain of it’—for I had remembered something from Selina’s own story. ‘But was every spiritualist as confident as you? Were there not some, who were less convinced?’

He bowed his head a little. There were, he said, some doubts, ‘in certain circles’.

Doubts? Did he mean, as to her honesty?

He blinked, and then he lowered his voice, in surprise and a kind of reproach. ‘Doubts,’ he said, ‘as to Miss Dawes’s
wisdom
. Miss Dawes was a powerful medium, but also a rather young one. Miss Silvester was even younger—just fifteen, I think. It is often to just such mediums as that, that boisterous spirits attach themselves; and Miss Dawes’s control—Peter Quick—was sometimes very boisterous indeed . . .’

He said it was perhaps not quite prudent of Miss Dawes to have exposed her sitter, alone and unsupervised, to such a spirit’s attentions—for all that she had done it before, with other ladies. There was the question of Miss Silvester’s own undeveloped gifts. Who knew how they might not have worked on Peter Quick? Who knew but that the sitting was invaded by some base power? Such powers, as he had said, made special objects of the inexperienced—used them, to make their mischief with. ‘And it is mischief,’ he said, ‘—not the marvels of our movement! no, never those!—that the papers seize on. There were many spiritualists, I am afraid—and some of them the very people who had most celebrated her successes!—who turned their backs to poor Miss Dawes, when she stood most in need of their good wishes. And now, I hear, the experience has quite embittered her. She has turned her back to
us
—even to those of us who would be still her friends.’

I gazed at him in silence. To hear him celebrate Selina; to hear her called, respectfully, ‘Miss Dawes’, ‘Miss Selina Dawes’, instead of ‘Dawes’ or ‘prisoner’, or ‘woman’—well, I cannot say how disconcerting that was. It was one thing to have had her story from her own lips, in that dim half-world of the wards, so different, I realise now, to all the worlds that I am used, that no-one in it—not the women, not the matrons, not even myself when I am there—seem quite substantial or quite real. It was very different to hear it here, told by a gentleman. I said at last, ‘And was she really so successful then, before her trial?’—and at that he clasped his hands together as if in rapture and said, My goodness me, but yes, her séances were things of wonder! ‘She was never so famous, of course, as the best of the London mediums—as Mrs Guppy, Mr Home, Miss Cook, of Hackney . . .’

Them I had heard of. Mr Home, I knew, was said to be able to float through windows, and to handle coals from an open fire. Mrs Guppy was once transported, from Highbury to Holborn—‘Transported,’ I said, ‘whilst writing “onions” on her shopping-list?’

‘Now you smile,’ said Mr Hither. ‘You are like everybody else. The more extravagant our powers are, the more you care for them, for then you may disclaim them as a nonsense.’

His gaze was still kind. I said, Well, perhaps he was right. But Selina Dawes:
her
powers were not usually so startling as Mr Home’s and Mrs Guppy’s—were they?

He gave a shrug, and said that his definition of the startling, and mine, might be quite different. As he spoke he stepped again to the shelves and drew another volume from them—it was
The Spiritualist
again, but an earlier number. He took a moment to find the piece he wanted, then passed it to me, saying, Was that what I would term ‘startling’?

The report told of Selina leading a séance at Holborn, where there were bells brought in the darkness and shaken by spirits, and a voice that whispered through a paper tube. He handed me a second book—a different paper, I forget the title of it, it described a private meeting at Clerkenwell, at which invisible hands dropped flowers, and chalked names upon a slate. An earlier number of the same newspaper told of a grieving gentleman, amazed to find a message from the spirit-world stand out, in words of crimson, on Selina’s naked arm . . .

This, I suppose, was the time she had told me of. She had spoken of it proudly, as a ‘happy time’ for her; but her pride had made me sad even then—now the memory of it made me sadder. The flowers and the paper tubes, the words marked out upon her flesh—it seemed a tawdry sort of show, even if put on by spirits. She had held herself at Millbank as an actress might, surveying a marvellous career. Behind the newspaper reports now I thought I saw that career for what it really was—the career of a butterfly or a moth, a career passed in the homes of strangers, a career spent lurching from one dreary district to the next, performing garish tricks for petty payments, like a music-hall turn.

I thought of the aunt, who had set her upon it. I thought of the lady who died—Mrs Brink. I had not realised until Mr Hither told me of it now, that Selina had lived
with
Mrs Brink, in her own house—‘Oh yes,’ he said. He said it was that which made the charges that were levelled against Selina—charges of deception, as well as of violence—so very gross; for Mrs Brink had so admired her, she had given a home to her—‘was quite a mother to her’. It was through her care that Selina’s gifts were nurtured, and grew. It was at the house at Sydenham that she first acquired her spirit-control, ‘Peter Quick’.

I said, And yet, it was Peter Quick that so frightened Mrs Brink—so frightened her, she died?

He shook his head. ‘It seems a curious business to us, a thing that no-one could explain except the spirits. Alas,
they
were not called, to speak in Miss Dawes’s defence.’

His words intrigued me. I looked at the first paper he had shown me, that was dated for the week of her arrest. I asked, had he the later numbers? Did they report the trial, the verdict, the taking of her to Millbank? He said, Of course, and after a moment’s search he found them for me, and fastidiously tidied the earlier volumes away. I brought a chair up to the table, setting it far from the white-gloved woman, and placing it at an angle which put the cabinet of moulds out of my gaze. Then, when Mr Hither had smiled, and bowed, and left me, I sat and read. I had my note-book with me, there were phrases in it I had copied from the prison histories at the British Museum. Now I folded those pages away and began to take notes instead on Selina’s trial.

First they question Mrs Silvester, the American woman, the mother of the nervous girl, Mrs Wallace’s friend. She is asked, ‘When did you first make the acquaintance of Selina Dawes?’—and she answers: ‘It was at a séance at the house of Mrs Brink, in July. I had heard her spoken of, in London, as a very clever medium, and I wanted to see her for myself.’

‘And what was your opinion of her?’—‘I saw at once that she was very clever indeed. She also seemed modest. There were two rather wild young gentlemen at the meeting, who I thought she might try to flirt with. She did not, and I was glad of it. She seemed quite the girl of quality that everybody painted her. Of course, I should not on any other terms have allowed the intimacy between her and my daughter to develop.’

‘And what was your purpose in encouraging this intimacy? ’—‘It was a professional one, a medical one. I had hopes that Miss Dawes might be able to assist in restoring my daughter to a proper state of health. My daughter has been ill for several years. Miss Dawes persuaded me that the condition had its origins as a spiritual ailment, rather than a physical one.’

‘And Miss Dawes attended your daughter at the house at Sydenham?’—‘Yes.’

‘Over what period of time?’—‘Over a period of two weeks. My daughter sat in a darkened room with Miss Dawes for an hour a day, and for two days in each week.’

‘Did she sit alone with Miss Dawes on these occasions?’—‘No. My daughter was fearful, and I sat with her.’

‘And what was your daughter’s state of health over this two-week period of attendance by Miss Dawes?’—‘It struck me as improved. I believe now, however, that the improvement was the product of an unhealthy excitement on my daughter’s part, encouraged in her by Miss Dawes’s treatment.’

‘Why do you believe that?’—‘Because of the condition in which I found my daughter, on the night on which Miss Dawes finally abused her.’

‘This was the night on which Mrs Brink suffered her fatal seizure? That is, the night of the third of August, 1873?’—‘Yes.’

‘And on this night, contrary to your usual practice, you allowed your daughter to visit Miss Dawes alone. Why was that?’—‘Miss Dawes persuaded me that my presence at her sittings was hindering Madeleine’s progress. She claimed there must be certain channels opened between my daughter and herself, that my presence was obstructing. She was an artful speaker, and I was taken in.’

‘Well, that of course is for the gentlemen here to decide. The fact is, you allowed Miss Silvester to travel alone to Sydenham.’—‘Quite alone. She was accompanied only by her maid, and of course by our driver.’

‘And how did Miss Silvester appear to you on setting out for her appointment with Miss Dawes?’—‘She appeared nervous to me. I now believe her, as I have said, to have been unhealthily excited by the attentions of Miss Dawes.’

‘In what way “excited”?’—‘Flattered. My daughter is a simple girl. Miss Dawes encouraged her to believe that she had the powers of a spirit-medium. She said her good health would be attained once these had begun to be developed.’

‘Did you believe your daughter might be the possessor of such gifts?’—‘I was ready to believe anything, sir, that would explain my daughter’s illness to me.’

‘Well, and then your faith on this issue will be seen to do you credit.’—‘I hope it will.’