The Ghost Hunters - Deborah Blum [96]
The book recommended a stash of faces painted on cardboard, which could “peer” through the curtains of a cabinet. It told of, but did not endorse, the practice of one female medium who had painted a baby’s face on one of her breasts and pushed it out between cabinet curtains to be kissed.
A. Medium found the joint-cracking explanation of the Fox sister’s rapping phenomena ridiculous “in view of the fact that there are much more simple methods.” You could sit at a table with your hands resting on top and your thumbnails just touching. “Press them together tightly and slip them a little a time. You will find every time you slip them, one against the other, quite a loud ‘rap’ will be heard.” Books, slates, knees, and heels could all produce rapping sounds as well.
The book presented tips for almost every possible result produced by a physical medium. And that was its point. A. Medium professed weariness with fraud, with the “thousands of persons earning a dishonest living through the practice of various deceptions in the name of spiritualism.” The author still considered himself a believer. He expressed a certainty of life beyond the grave, of seeing friends in an afterlife, and “more than likely” a physical return to Earth. But for this, A. Medium would not require the help of professionals who were cheats, frauds, drunken men, women “no better than a common prostitute.”
In the end, A. Medium made the same recommendation that the SPR had been making for years: Investigate the spirit world, but avoid paid mediums. Remember that any street conjurer possesses the tricks to make lights dance in the dark, tables walk in the air.
THE AMBITIOUS CENSUS of Hallucinations was coming together, but slowly. The SPR’s best statistician, Nora Sidgwick, now had another demanding job, principal of Newnham College.
Both Nora and her husband had worked to see this new, all-women college established at Cambridge. So had Nora’s family, including brothers Gerald and Arthur Balfour, who had donated money to see Newnham built. The college’s chemistry laboratory was named after another Balfour brother, Francis, who had died in a mountain-climbing accident. As soon as Nora was offered the appointment, Henry Sidgwick knew that his wife would accept and throw herself wholeheartedly into the job.
It would have been uncharacteristic of her, however, to abandon the unfinished Census of Hallucinations just because she had new responsibilities. Nora left for her office early each day, dressed in her favorite simple black, her hair pulled back, exuding calm. She looked much the same—still neat and composed but undeniably tired, her husband thought—as she came home each evening, only to return to the census.
“If you ever find me getting slack about the SPR, you must pull me up,” she told her assistant.
Sidgwick considered his wife the brightest of his circle. He was delighted at her latest achievement, but worried that she couldn’t possibly—and shouldn’t—keep up the double pace of college administrator and psychical researcher. Yet how would the organization manage without her? They’d already lost Gurney, whom William James once candidly described as “the worker of the society,” the one best able to get through “drudgery of the most colossal kind.” Sidgwick did not think the group could afford to let Nora go.
“I fear she may not find time for the work of the SPR, for which I think her uniquely fit—much more fit than I am,” he wrote. “If it turns out that she must sacrifice some of this work, I shall have to take her place; but my intellect will be an inferior substitute.”
He proved better suited to helping with the social chores of college administration. He served as a reliable companion at official dinners, receptions, and even meetings with students. The ever-serious Nora still had not mastered the art of conversation. Despite practicing on Henry, she found herself reduced to monosyllables during party chitchat. Worse yet, jokes tended to turn her silent. Henry stepped in to fill the gaps. “He could talk nonsense,” she said with