The Ghost Hunters - Deborah Blum [86]
William James, Henry Sidgwick, and their fellows, although they also counted themselves as rationalists, could not go nearly so far. To exclude from reality anything not demonstrated through the scientific method was to accept on faith, they would argue, that there is no reality beyond what a select group of people (on an insignificant planet) say is so. To deny the existence of the spirit—without thoroughly exhausting the subject through dogged research—to accept such arbitrary limits, was to them a prejudicial view, closed-minded and unscientific.
Yet as much as the psychical investigators—led by philosophers, after all—were motivated by grand principles, by the metaphysical generalities at the center of their quest, they constantly found their energies drained by small particulars. In the fall of 1889, the particular problem was the stubborn behavior of a certain Boston medium.
Mrs. Piper rejected all calls to duty or to higher purpose and flatly refused to travel to England. Yes, she could see the importance to advancing psychical research. She appreciated the researchers’ enthusiasm for her abilities. As she kept repeating, however, her husband, William, “would not hear of being left alone, subject only to the ministrations of a housekeeper.” Her daughters, Alta and Minerva, were too young to be left without a mother. She was sorry, but family took precedence over explorations of spirit communication.
To change her mind required weeks of effort, the combined persuasive talents of James and Hodgson, their exhortations that Mrs. Piper consider the contribution she could make to history, to human knowledge, and to the understanding of her own abilities. Even so, she said a reluctant yes only after the SPR agreed to send her children along with her on the journey. Her husband’s parents helped the cause by inviting him to stay at their home in the new Boston suburb of Arlington Heights during his family’s absence.
Fred Myers wrote a letter that sang with relief: “Dear Mrs. Piper—I am so very glad you are coming after all! And we will do our best to make your visit pleasant.” Seeking to boost her spirits, James invited her and Hodgson for a pre-departure visit to his country home in the New Hampshire countryside she loved so well. Chocorua was outstandingly lovely that October. The surrounding wooded hills were set with the gemstone colors of autumn—amber and carnelian, garnet and citrine—heart-stoppingly brilliant against a clear blue sky. They spent the days actively, out of doors, saving serious talk for the evenings. Mrs. Piper hiked with James and fished with Hodgson. (Since James disliked family fishing expeditions, the Australian was in the habit of taking James’s children out on Lake Chocorua to try for bass.)
The quiet, sun-touched days confirmed both men’s impression of their subject as unguarded, basically uncomplicated, nice. Nothing about her pointed to a schemer, a confidence artist. Her powers, whatever they were, seemed as much a mystery to her as they were to James and Hodgson. The medium side of her life made her uncomfortable, fearful of appearing foolish, uneasy about what happened during her trances. “I should be willing to stake as much money on Mrs. Piper’s honesty as that of anyone I know,” James wrote to Myers in a burst of sudden optimism following that golden week in New Hampshire.
MRS. PIPER AND her daughters sailed on the Cunard liner Scythia, leaving Boston on November 9, 1889. The day was bright and clear, the wooden docks noisy with the clatter of wheels, stamping of hooves, and reverberating calls of “Godspeed.” At the water’s edge, women pulled their gloved hands out of velvety muffs to wave good-bye; men waved their hats of beaver felt and stiffened silk. Against the glitter of sunlight on water, the three Piper females picked out William ruefully smiling his good-byes from the dock below.
They pressed against the rail as if to cling