Miracles
Graham Hough
The Shadow and the Light: A Defence of Daniel Dunglas Home, the Medium Elizabeth Jenkins
(Hamish Hamilton f12.95) rs Browning thought him weak and 14
Sludge , vulgar. Browning pilloried him.as 'Mr the Medium', and called him 'this In the
Ilug-hall', 'bestiality incarnate', wrapped
; mystery of iniquity. But an impartial v,,'ew of the career of Daniel Dunglas Home 'uggests that he must really have been rather a nice man. He may have been a ,rand, to some degree he must have been; out it is not recorded that he ever did harm, 19 anyone. When he came on a visit he was liable to stay for months, if not years; but ehv.rYone seems to have been glad to have k!Ill. His somewhat effeminate appearance, ',sus caressing and childish manners, were found charming by some people and repulsive by others. But Lord Adare, the rung Guards officer with whom he lived ,();,_r two Years, later described him as 'of a -,;.`"Ple, kindly, humorous and lovable imison,; ,,,kept his friends, who were %°,"`" to him through some bad times; he who twice married, very happily, to women death, remained devoted to him, net ll her steuath, the other till his. Meanwhile he went ai:jail fling about among the royalty and frZ9eraeY of Europe, bringing messages n"' the dead, attracting spirit forms, caus- n °Zabogany tables to rise spontaneously hin- , air, rising spontaneously in the air self, andt. picking up live coals without getting burn itself s not a way of life that would suggest was to any; but Home, born in Scotland, had take to America at the age of nine and ex`' Just reached adolescence when the great in Plic)RSAI 2n of American spiritualism began Prn,..,--'°' He was the subject, quite un- pe-tipted it seems, of poltergeist ex- th ierices, and in the wave of spiritualist en- consiasm that was sweeping America he 111d hardly fail to capitalise his preter- enural gifts. By the time he came back to es,gland at the age of 22 he was already an b:ablished medium — and it had already that a sort of profession. This means po even those with genuine psychic veh,. rs, whatever they may be, learnt a con- makes 4_..tion.,1 al, Q' patter and procedure which -'es it very hard to sort out the wheat
from the chaff. Elizabeth Jenkins seems to accept all this without comment or criticism; and as her aim is to tell the story sympathetically it is perhaps the best thing to do. Home began his practice in England in modest domestic circles, but his fame quickly grew, and he was soon giving large seances in fashionable drawing rooms. The most startling manifestations were physical — levitation of tables, objects moved by unseen forces or visible spirit hands, appari- tion of spirit forms, levitation by Home himself — to take the reports at their face value. There were also messages, spelt out by table-rapping or later spoken by Home in 'spirit' voices. Of these little record re- mains. At all events they seem to have cap- tivated large numbers of the great and good in the mid-Fifties. When Home moved to France in 1856 his success was even more remarkable. From mere smart society he moved to the Imperial court and gave a suc- cession of seances before Napolean III and the Empress Eugenie. His influence over the Empress became a cause of anxiety; but Home kept his cool, and when a scandal threatened he was found to have moved discreetly to Rome. Here he met his future wife, a beautiful Russian girl of good fami- ly: amazing as it may seem, they willingly accepted him as a bridegroom. While in Russia for the wedding he was able to add to his imperial triumphs by giving seances before the Czar.
When the Homes returned to England in 1859 the spiritualist craze was at its height, and so were Home's mediumistic powers. He was besieged with invitations; duchesses, the wives of high officials, bar- risters, Fellows of the Royal Society were among his patrons. The wonders increased in numbers and in wondrousness. From 1867 to 1869 he had a close friendship with Lord Adare, later Earl of Dunraven, who kept a record of the many seances of those two years. He had his setbacks. In 1868 he was taken to court by a Mrs Lyon who had settled some money on him. She said she had been induced to do so by his mediumustic influence. It became a cause celebre; Home lost and had to pay back the money. But Elizabeth Jenkins, aided by some very full documentation in the archives of the Society for Psychical Research, has little difficulty in' showing that Mrs Lyon was a vicious and unbalanc- ed woman, and that Home was a good deal more sinned against than sinning. The other prominent blot on his reputation is the sus- tained hostility of Browning. Again Elizabeth Jenkins comes to Home's aid. Browning's behaviour was thoroughly unscrupulous. His hatred of Home — for no known reason — was so maniacal that he gave a quite untrue story of their slight encounter, a story which grew more violent as the years went by.
This is the extent of Elizabeth Jenkins's 'defence'; she tells Home's history in full and fascinating detail; but she leaves the real questions unanswered and even unask- ed. Wha nans t are we to make of these in- numerable seances at which heavy articles of furniture heaved themselves into the air, Home himself was seen to float about the room, spirit hands and sometimes whole spirit forms appeared? Well, these were pre- psychical-research days. Credulity was boundless; no attempt was made to check or examine the phenomena; records were ramshackle and inaccurate. In these cir- cumstances it is easy to see that many of the supposed miracles simply did not happen. The stories were the result of suggestibility and misreporting. Others fade on examina- tion. The oft-repeated story of Home's floating out through one third-floor win- dow and in at another turns out to be vague inference, not a record of what was seen. However, Home was never detected in fraud. The trick methods imputed to him by hostile witnesses are in general as im- plausible as the marvels themselves. And when all is said, there remains a residue of extraordinary physical phenomena, re- markably well attested as such things go, for which no explanation has been found. Nor will it ever be. We can learn nothing at this late date from these 19th-century excur- sions into the paranormal; the trail was always confused, and by now is hopelessly effaced.
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