PLAYING IN THE DARK.
111HE British public appear to prefer a decidedly distinct state of
mind with respect to their play no less than to their work. It is curious to notice how combative they become when an imagi- native thaumaturgist proposes to amuse them not only with food of marvels for their wits, but with the luxury of a vague and uncertain hypothesis to account for those marvels. Imaginative children love nothing better than leave to invent freely for them- selves wonderful causes for ordinary events, without being con- founded by too obtrusive a light of common day. But it is im- possible to attend the rival seances now going on at St. James's Hall and the Hanover Square Rooms, without feeling perfect certainty that the British public prefer professed conjuring to "" experiments in preternatural philosophy," as the Brothers Davenport and Mr. Ferguson call the exhibition at the latter place. At Professor Anderson's séance there was a strong disposition to extinguish summarily a respectable gentle- man who, after being chosen as the chairman of the " Committee of Investigation," showed a glimmering of sym- pathy with the spiritualistic hypothesis of the rival exhibition ; and at the end of the proceedings a noisy proposal to " tie up Hollingshead " appeared to find great favour with the opponents of " humbug." And even in Messrs. Davenports' " select " parties the turbulent disposition to blast recklessly the character of any respectable gentleman who professes to be a sailor and volunteers the tying of the knots, as a secret confederate with the Messrs. Davenport, is sufficiently remarkable. This public injustice preyed so much upon the mind of the unhappy man named for this purpose last Saturday at the Hanover Square Rooms, that it gave an air of puckered anguish to his face throughout the proceedings. And yet he was obviously as hostile to the " pre- ternatural " hypothesis as any man in the room. He suggested sus- picions and difficulties which angered Mr. Ferguson and the Brothers, he whispered into a private ear or two that their pulses were very high after the interval of darkness, owing apparently to violent ex- ertion, and he lurked round the corner of "the structure" with his ear to the cupboard while the lights were out, and confided to favoured persons as the result of his observations—the public in general had treated him too badly to earn his confidence— that lie distinctly heard the Brothers rise and sit down daring the period when they were supposed to be passive and when the spiritual hands ought to have been liberating them. He was most injuriously suspected by the public,—but this was the only consti- tutional way, in compliance with the conditions of the séance, in which antagonism could be shown, and hence the obloquy thrown upon him. The vote of want of confidence in " the sailor " is the authorized mods in which the Hanover Square assemblies express their wish to expose the preternatural theory.
For our own parts, we differ from the British public in this feeling, and think it adds much humour and amusement to the performance to acquiesce decorously in the prescribed attitude of mind as a student of "preternatural" philosophy, and to trifle gently with the theory which Mr. Ferguson so grandly expounds. It gave a keen flavour of interest, for instance, to a few words of prelimi- nary conversation which it was our privilege to have with the polite manager, to have this shadow of delicate ambiguity cast over the theme of discussion. We ventured to suggest that tying and untying knots in a cupboard was a little incommensurate, so to speak, with the grandeur of the spiritual hypothesis, in which the manager cordially concurred. But the difficulty, on our part at least, was to refer to the show at once as a thing capable of modification by prudent and responsible persons anxious to make it successful, and yet not to derogate improperly from the high theory that in- voluntary phenomena were to be exhibited of which the Brothers Davenport were only passive conditions. We could almost have fancied that the manager himself felt the same embarrassment. He was anxious, he said, to have had something less childish done, and hoped it might be so in future, but the Brothers Davenport had been used to this particular class of phenomena, and it was not easy to effect a change more satisfactory to the public. Whether the difficulty lay with the unknown Agency or the twin " passive con- ditions" of it, whether the custom of dealing with cordage was a custom contracted by the preternatural Agents who tied and untied the knots or by the human limbs which acquired too fixed and deeply rooted a habit of being tied, we did not like to discuss. It is clear, however, that public opinion may be brought to beacon the unknown Agency in some way or other,—probably quite as unknown,—which is a fresh and striking tribute to the power of enlightened Opinion,—and that the channel through which it is amenable to that influence has more analogies to that through which we should try to affect an ordinary human show than might have been expected. The mysterious Agency is like an editor. It is possible to affect it by communications addressed to the Hanover Square Rooms, but it is impossible to know the degree in which you have affected it, much more to know whether it was interest or reason which told most powerfully on its proceedings. It is even possible that the Brothers Davenport may be passive conditions of pheno- mena whose supply will vary with the effective demand,—an exten- sion of economical laws to the region of the physically preter- natural which would be exceedingly encouraging to the Manchester School.
Mr. Ferguson's short but eloquent preliminary lecture would by no means exclude this hypothesis. He remarked that, like all other events the cause of which is as yet involved in mystery, the phenomena of which these remarkable Brothers are apparently the spring, are dependent on conditions. Nothing, he continued, in the whole universe of nature or the supernatural happens without those conditions without which it could not happen,—which struck us as a very important and impressive generalization.
The conditions, over and above the mere presence of the Brothers
Davenport in the flesh, requisite for the remarkable phenomena which we were to be in some modified sense witnesses of, were darkness and partial insulation from the magnetic influence of
other men's bodies. It was regarded, he remarked, as a suspicious circumstance that darkness was made a condition, for darkness might of course conceal jugglery or fraud. He admitted it,—yet why should that be a fatal objection ? Was not darkness, lie observed in a rapture of eloquence, a universal principle of incipient life and germination ? Does not the seed before:it struggles upward through the "clotted earth" towards the light, first fructify in total darkness? In darkness and in secret all great powers are first generated,—why not this ? If Light is God's right hand, said the lecturer, in a bold flight of devout imagination which struck us as a little profane, Darkness is His left. And therefore, he con- tinued, with a perhaps somewhat sudden downward step, the sim- ple " structure " before us—the celebrated wooden cupboard—had been provided to accommodate the Brothers Davenport with suffi- cient darkness and insulation to develop the germs of their un- wonted power. He laboured, perhaps almost superfluously,
throughout his address to insist on the analogy between the wonderful phenomena we were to witness and an ordinary plant. After his inaugural explanation, much more eloquently worded than we can pretend to reproduce it, the mysterious Brothers, having been bound up by a committee of the audience, including the injured person to whom we have before referred, were accord- ingly planted in the cupboard, and (as the diamond-shaped opening still admitted some rays of light from the footlights) these were so far turned down as to render the light in the room exceed- ingly faint. It was evident to the ear that the shell of their peculiar power was quickly broken in this fructifying darkness, and that the vital germ beneath was growing up rapidly into a vigorous plant of open sesame for Gordian knots : the drawing of cords was clearly heard, a hand was pushed out at the window, and soon on the return of the lights the open cupboard exhibited the Brothers released from their bondage. The same or converse operation happened several times, accompanied with much violent and discordant fiddling, bell-ringing, &c., in which the germs of the peculiar Davenport power appear to blossom or fructify most freely ;—happening also, though somewhat more slowly and with no discordant music, when flour was put into their hands, which appears to restrict partially the fertilizing influence of darkness over the Agency ; and then the cupboard was abandoned, and in com- pensation for a less perfect insulation of the Agency we had a more perfect, indeed an absolute, darkness. It was interesting to find that while imperfect darkness with insulation in a cup- board generates a tying and untying Agency, the variety of Agency generated by perfect darkness with less complete insula- tion is favourable to the use (or abuse) of musical instruments as winged missiles. While the company held hands and the Messrs. Davenport sat tied tight in their chairs, the fiddles, tambourines, guitars, &c., whizzed violently about the circle, creat- ing quite a wind against the cheek, apparently flying hither and thither, and depositing themselves finally, sometimes on the ground with a violent crash, sometimes with much more thought- ful delicacy on individual knees. We ourselves received a fiddle that seemed gifted with wings, which after whizzing past us several times settled gently into our lap. Nor was the affinity for knot- tying and untying in this variety of the Agency less marked than in the more perfect insulation given by the cupboard. Mr. Fay was untied in about three minutes of riotous darkness, and tied up again in about the same interval of blind unrest. The coat was taken from his back and discovered, on the restoration of the light, hanging on the chandelier,—a blossom of the bidden Agency which appeared to give peculiar delight and satisfaction.
On the whole, we found it much more amusing to accept the attitude of mind enforced by the lecturer, and suppose ourselves to be fostering a mysterious Agency, which germinated beneath the figurative " clotted earth " of " the structure," budded in winged guitars, and blossomed when the coat took to itself wings to flee away to the extinguished chandelier, than to assume the forbid- ding attitude of the British public denouncing a fraud upon its faith, and refusing to indulge in a harmless game of philosophic blind man's buff with a humorous transcendentalist from the States.
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