THE DAVENPORT KNOTS. T HE Invisible Agencies, whatever they are, which
whisk about'. tambourines and guitars, tie and untie complicated sailors' knots, and manifest gelatinous hands without visible arms and bodies, have gained a distinct step in society this week. Chaperoned by an eminent actor and stage-manager, Mr. Dion Boueicault, they have made acquaintance with Lord Bury, a baronet, two eminent knights, a celebrated Arctic explorer, a couple of clergymen, and a large group of distinguished literary and scientific men, and received a sort of formal certificate to character from twenty-four respectable gentlemet, to some of whom we have referred. The-- "stern philosopher" alone who according to Mr. Dickens "outlaughs and saith to the Grotesque What ho arrest for me that Agency,' " does not seem to have been present, or if he were he did not succeed in getting the Grotesque (who was clearly master of the ceremonies at Mr. Dion Boucicault's house) to make the arrest; and we are still under the same painful uncertainty as to the impersonal or per- sonal character of the agencies in question, as we have been for the last ten years. Mr.Dion Boucicault himself evidentlyinclines to some form of the naturalist or "intelligent vapour" theory favoured by the author of "Mary Jane," and wishes the great students of light, Professor Roscoe andProfessor Bunsen and their colleagues,tobecomestudente of darkness in the hope that they may discover some new extra-- violet or other rays most vigorously developed in the dark, which produce specific effects on tambourines, gait as, sailors' knots, dress-coats, and other miscellaneous phenomena of artificial life. "Some persons think," says Mr. Boucicault, "that the require- ment of darkness seems to infer trickery. Is not a dark chamber essential in the process of photography ? And what would we reply to him who would say, ' I believe photography to be a hum- bug ; do it all in the light and I will believe ; otherwise not, and not till then?' It is true that we know why darkness is necessary to the production of the sun-picture, and if scientific men wills subject these phenomena to analysis we shall find out why dark- ness is essential to such manifestations." The only difficulty is-- that when the phenomena are so very miscellaneous, involv-- ing answers to requests as well as the manipulation of knote,_ guitars, and dress-coats, the scientific men will scarcely knew how to begin their analysis. If the Brothers Davenport or- Mr. Fay were to die, they might perhaps have a post-mortem upon, them and weigh the chemical constituents of their bodies, but it• is not likely anything remarkable would be so discovered ; and in their life-time we cannot take their nerves to pieces. Indeed we might as well submit the gambols of a puppy to scientific analysis, and gravely set about finding the chemical antecedents when it tosses a bone in the air, or distinguishing them from those other antecedents present when it worries a cat, as attempt to " analyze" the pranks of these invisible agencies. Whatever these strange stories mean, they certainly do not as yet invite the attention of chemists, or physiologists, or any other students of the simpler laws of nature. A few hard-headed practical men like Lord Bury and Captain Inglefield, assisted perhaps by physicians who lire accustonael to study symptoms, and also by the sharpest of Sir Richard Mayne's force, will do more to decide the question of agency than all the pure science in the world. Grant that the agency is proved to be invisible,—it is evidently not yet simplified in a way to admit of what is called "scientific analysis." And should it prove to be visible, the are the sort of men to bring it home to its visible sources. It is idle to apply science to analyze an agent which, whether true or false, is as concrete and complicated as human folly. It would be just as wise to expect Professor Faraday, Professor Owen, and Professor Roscoe to arrive by severe induction at the scientific causes of the last caprice in bonnets, as to hope anything from the application of their methods of thought to the dances of tambourines and dress- coats and insulated hands about an ordinary drawing-room. The question whether these things are done by visible or invisible agents is a question for all shrewd men of sense, not particularly for men of science. There is nothing nearly specific enough, even if the facts could be proved true, for the application of pure scientific methods. Supposing it were once possible to prove, as the twenty-four gentlemen who assembled at M. Boucicault's seem to have agreed, that the performances exhibited were not due to the legerdemain of any human being present in the flesh, we submit that the next question concerning them, —to what agency or agents these doings might be ascribed,—is less a scientific question than an ethical and ?practical one. We must judge of the tree by its fruits. Nobody would ask Faraday to investigate for him the nature of an agency, if visible, which spent its time in rolling about billiard-balls, strumming on tambourines, and untying difficult knots as a tour de finve. Nor do we see that if the invisible agency were once clearly established, the conditions of the problem would be in the least altered by the fact of their invisibility. There may surely be an invisible frivolity as easily as a visible. A frivolous nature is not in itself necessarily related to either -time, or space, or colour, or form, and may as well exist without colour or form as a wise and spiritual nature. There is, indeed, -a school of spiritualists arising which 'traces these marvels to no external source at all, but like the author of " Mary Jane " to the involuntary and un- conscious energy of the mind of the medium ormediums. In that case the sooner mediums disavow their unconscious and involuntary nature, and explain that they are not " responsible" either for their -opinions or actions, the better. It would be very humiliating for the Messrs. Davenport and Mr. Fay to think that their second selves, their secret and suppressed intellectual instincts, were always em- ployed on creating -flabby hands of various sorts and sizes that do not belong to them, and using these to untie complicated knots in .a system of ropes, to pat gentlemen's faces, and to shy tambourines and dress coats through the air. It must be a great blow to fish asp such `tricks as these from the " abysmal deeps " of one's own "-personality." If this be so indeed, there is nothing to prove that the present writer's unconscious and involuntary nature is not at the present moment thrumming on a tambourine before Mr. Babbage's window, pulling off Mr. Fay's dress-coat, or doing any other silly piece of mischief either within or -without the sphere of this planet. If Mr. Davenport's own invisible agency -unties knots and touches the light guitar, while he himself sits quietly at Mr. Dion Boucicault's, a number of trackless and unauthenticated physical agencies are suddenly launched upon the world which will surely much disturb the administration of justice. Midler, though in the carriage with Mr. Briggs, may be innocent of his murder, while a medium who was not in the carriage, may have committed it through these invisible hands, and possibly even without personal responsibility. If this were -true nothing could any longer be brought home to any one. Once admit an invisible agency which acts without the knowledge and volition of man, and it would seem to us much less irrational to attribute it to an invisible person than to a visible person who knows nothing about it, and cannot detect himself in any sort of relation to it. Scientific •analogies notwithstanding, we should claim the right, if invisible agencies playing on the guitars, tambourines, &c., were -once established at all, to judge of their general intelligence and cul- ture, or inanity and ignorance, by their acts, and we should deny the right to confound them arbitrarily with persons who appear to take no share in these acts.
Indeed if we could once get proof of the existence of such in- -visible agencies, the sort of things they do would suggest a guess that they were due to a crowd of vacant half-taught girls who had learned in life to be nimble with their fingers, to trifle with music, and to like good society, perhaps without attaining it. Nothing is more striking than the impulse apparently given to a séance by the presence of an emperor, or a nobleman or two. Mr. Home, according to his own account, has had his greatest triumphs in im- perial society; and the presence of Lord Bury and other dis- tinguished men evidently increased greatly the number of hands .appearing at this séance of the Brothers Davenport and Mr. Fay, though we had heard little of them on former occasions. It was no doubt a great attraction to the " slender female hands " to pat so dis- tinguished a member of the House of Commons as well as one of the best rifle shots in England. " Lord, Polly !" said Miss Braughton in " Evelina," "only think ! Miss has danced with a Lord," and we suspect that the same feeling must be strong wherever those hands came from which favoured Lord Bury and Sir C. Wyke so much at Mr. Boncicault's the other day. Mr. Home relates that one day at Mr. Rymer's at Ealing "each person in the circle who wore a ring had it quietly removed by a spirit hand, the hand being seen afterwards with all the rings on its fingers and, after display- ing itself by turning about, showing the back and palm two or three times, inverted itself and cast the rings on the table." Can any one doubt that this was the hand of a young lady still yearning after jewellery, and discontented with a state in which rings can only be borrowed from earth for a moment's display ? Also the inefficiency and want of resource in these agencies which always seem to repeat in connection with the same mediums the same feeble feminine "accomplishments" over and over again,—flower-selecting, weak sentiment, and feeble music with Mr. Rome's set,—knot-untyings, guitar playing, and trying on or taking off dress coats with the Messrs. Davenport,—forcibly suggest a half-cultivated class of frivol- ous minds which are still disposed to flirt with this world rather than to make head in the next. " What do ladies talk about," says Miss Emily Davies in her clever pamphlet on the education of girls, "at morning calls and evening parties? Children, servants, dress, and summer tours—all very good subjects in themselves, but so treated, partly through sheer ignorance, that as the conversation advances tedium grows till at last all signs of intelligence dis- appear, and the weary countenances too faithfully reveal the vacancy within." This same betrayal of utter vacuity of mind, so soon as a few feeble accomplishments have been played off, certainly characterizes almost all the agencies in the seances of which we have read, and it looks very much as if the terrible ennui of the new existence had given rise to the resource of trifling idly with the world they ought to have done with. The author of " Matter and Spirit " gave, we remember, a communication from a sullen young person who found the other world intolerably dull and could not be persuaded to take at all to its more spiritual pursuits, —and this must clearly describe the state of the young people who play at hide and seek in the Messrs. Davenports' cabinet, and geltly stroke Lord Bury and Sir Charles Wyke. Surely it would be a new and fresh impulse to the cause of secondary educa- tion if it could only be satisfactorily established that numbers of young persons, especially girls, go hence into the other state with minds so vacant that they are tempted, after they have passed the boundary, to linger on the precincts between the two worlds only in order to thrust delicate.arms and hands back -through the veil.for a little posthumous admiration, and a chance now and.then of wearing a temporary ornament,—to make appointments with the Messrs. Davenport in Regent Street or Portland Place for a good masquerade romp in distinguished company and a squeeze of one or two gentlemanly hands,—and to become " a sign " to the inhabi- tants of earth in that they untwist so cleverly the knots of earthly hemp while adding fresh meshes to 'the Gordian knots of human destiny.
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