Seen and Unseen. E. Katherine Bates
for having "broken the battery" and almost "killed the medium" by his sudden disappearance from the circle.
This awful threat had so much power over the rest of the party that we sat out to the bitter end, leaving the medium at last still in her trance, with husband and son hovering over her in an anxiety which, if acted, showed first-class dramatic power.
Meanwhile I had made the acquaintance of a very beautiful and charming woman in New York, to whom I had brought a letter of introduction.
She has had a tragic and remarkable history; is a woman of great mental powers, in addition to very remarkable beauty; and is of the highest rank, being an Austrian princess, I believe, in her own right, and having spent her youth in foreign courts.
Apart from these facts, which had been told me by a mutual friend before we met, I knew nothing whatever of her family history, nor whether she had brothers or sisters, alive or dead.
I had spoken to her of my curious experiences, and she had discussed the matter with me from the standpoint of a thorough woman of the world, of strong mental power, who had seen too much of life to be dogmatic or narrow in her views, but too much also to believe in what is called the "supernatural," before every possible natural hypothesis had been admitted and dismissed as untenable.
Sitting in her pretty room the day before I left New York, we had talked for some two hours on various subjects connected with life and literature, and before the final "adieux" she said laughingly: "Well, have you been to any more séances?"
I said "No," and that we did not intend to do so, as our time was now so short. A few moments of careless talk on the subject ensued, and picking up a newspaper, I cast my eye over the usual list of mediums, clairvoyants, etc. A half-defined wish to see whether any spirit friend would come to me under totally different conditions and surroundings, and in an entirely different quarter of the city, led to my copying out one of the addresses at haphazard.
I could not prevail upon my hostess to accompany me (she is delicate, and dreads night air), but I took the slip of paper to my hotel, thinking that my friend there might care to take the cars after dinner to this distant end of the city.
My English companion proved rather indifferent and disinclined towards the expedition.
This was very natural. She was not magnetic in temperament, and had no expectation of seeing any of her own friends, although, of course, she had both seen and spoken to those who came for me.
However, a good dinner at the excellent Windsor Hotel fortified us so much after our fatigues that at the last moment we agreed to make one more attempt, no one, ourselves included, having known five minutes previously that we should leave the house.
On this occasion we were ushered into a much more imposing drawing-room, and the lady herself was evidently some degrees higher in the social scale than our first mediumistic friend.
The arrangements also were quite different. As we sat waiting for a few minutes (having arrived very punctually), Mrs. Gray looked at my friend, and then described an elderly lady with grey hair who was standing over her, but, of course, invisible to our eyes. Almost immediately Mrs. Gray began rubbing her knees, and complained of pain in them, adding: "The impression of dropsy is being conveyed to me. This spirit seems to have suffered from disease of that nature."
My friend—who was very self-contained and unemotional—gave no clue to the fact that she recognised anyone by this description, but as we were returning home in the cars she said quietly: "It is curious Mrs. Gray should have described that old lady with grey hair—I suppose she meant my mother. She had grey hair, and died of dropsy."
On my expostulating with this lady for having given the impression that she did not recognise the description at the time she said, with conscious pride: "You don't suppose I was going to let the woman know that she had described my mother?"
To give a false impression in so good a cause as determined incredulity, seems not only justifiable, but actually praiseworthy to many minds.
Later in the evening, the séance being in full swing, a spirit dressed in some kind of white "sister's" dress appeared at the door of the cabinet; and Mrs. Stoddart Gray asked if anyone in the circle could speak German, as this spirit did not seem to understand French, Italian, or English, and she herself only recognised German by the sound.
A gentleman volunteered his assistance, but apparently without much effect, and being a German scholar, I then offered to come to the rescue. The moment I went up to the figure she seemed to gain strength, and came quite out of the cabinet, and said to me in the most refined German (any readers who have studied the language know that there is as wide a difference between the highest and lowest type of German accent as between an educated Irish "accent" and an Irish brogue):
"Ich bin die schwester von Madame Schewitsch," mentioning the name of the foreign friend with whom I had been spending that afternoon: "Ich weisz das Sie Heute Nach mittag bei meiner schwester waren."[1]
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