3365. EBB to Mary Brotherton
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 20, 150–152.
[Rome]
[ca. 25 March 1854] [1]
My dear Mrs Brotherton you are quite welcome to make any use of the papers you please. I dont take this famous ‘Telegraph’ [2] in, never did take it in– The numbers were lent to me .. given to me rather .. a few weeks ago, and I did not send them to you before just because I foresaw the probability of the very impression you have received as to their vulgarity & ‘spiritual’ unattractiveness– You are to please to remember however that they are American papers, & you cant expect them to do otherwise than convey the general characteristics of the Transatlantic press on what we call vulgarity & provincialism. As to evidence, there are many ‘for[e]gone conclusions’ [3] which the regular readers of the journal are in possession of, and of course strangers cannot judge of the respectability of the names mentioned. For instance, young Fowler [4] who was the medium .. viz .. slept in the room where the m.s. of oriental writings was found .. is known & trusted by many respectable & thoughtful persons in New York who have given attention to the subject. Did you ever hear of the case of Mr Tal[l]madge, a member of Congress & famous as a political economist? [5] A pencil, (dropped through the eye of a pair of scissors, while he held them by the points so as to keep the pencil in the right position,) wrote steadily the name of his son under his own eyes in broad daylight– He was previously an unbeliever. I believe, not because of one fact, but because of the accumulation of facts & of the evidence confirming them– With every liking & respect for you, I confess to you that, not knowing you very intimately, I should infallibly have disbelieved the genuineness of the Greek phenomena .. & have attributed them perhaps to some moral or intellectual insanity .. some mystery of partial madness .. my dear Mrs Brotherton .. if the fact stood alone in the history of philosophy & the records of man’s experience. Therefore I cant agree with you that you are reasonable in disbelieving everybody’s phenomena except your own. How can I? I seem to know Mrs Crowe sideways—that is, I know people who know her, & I just missed being introduced to her in London. In a letter from Barry Cornwall to my husband, she was said to be “dying mad from the effects of the charlatanerie of the turning tables” .. (Barry Cornwall is an infidel as you may suppose–) This was scarcely a week ago. I hope that she does not “walk invisible,” [6] simply by having walked out of the world– Tell me, will you, if you have heard any more about her– Very probably she was neither mad nor dying when Mr Procter wrote. The sceptics have a peculiar pleasure in shutting up the believers in mad houses, whether or not saner than themselves. No—I dont know Mr Brailsford– [7] I never heard of him in my life– Does he sup in the third Heaven [8] once a week? Nothing surprises me now.
Pray give the newspapers to Mr Hemans. I have no later numbers,—& always lend these unwillingly, because they are so calculated to offend in various ways. In the first place, this Telegraph is what is called an open newspaper .. & people of all sorts of spirits (in every sense) express in it various opinions, which are occasionally licentious in respect to scripture authority– But it presents a curious spectacle in the state of public opinion & in the general movement of the question in America.
Oh yes—I wish I could write. I would ask questions, you know–
It is lovely weather now, & I shall creep out of my shell, one of these days & climb up the hill my snail’s pace to visit you– [9] Meanwhile I think you may care to read a letter which I received last autumn from Mr Westland Marston, author of the “Patrician’s Daughter,” [10] a most upright & veracious man. You may show it to Mr Hemans too, if you please–
Most truly yours always
Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Docket, in Mrs. Brotherton’s hand: With some American papers—called The “Spiritual Telegraph.”
Publication: None traced.
Manuscript: University of Texas.
1. Dated by EBB’s reference to the “letter from Barry Cornwall” (letter 3355).
2. The Spiritual Telegraph; see letter 3038, note 14.
3. Cf. Othello, III, 3, 428.
4. Edward Payson Fowler (1833–1914), at this time a student at New York Medical College, later a respected physician in New York City. According to Emma Hardinge, Fowler was the “principal medium” in a “society known as the ‘New York Circle’ … the first organic movement that had yet been established in connection with spirit communion” (Modern American Spiritualism, 2nd ed., New York, 1870, p. 73). “Besides the faculty of seeing and conversing intelligently with spirits, Mr. Fowler’s mind … was frequently instructed through vivid pictorial imagery or direct communications with the methods adopted by spirits to effect their communion with mortals by means of raps, movements of bodies, entrancement, etc. Languages of the most unfamiliar nature, hyeroglyphical [sic] figures, and Oriental writings, were constantly found in his chamber inscribed on scraps of paper, vases, and other objects, under circumstances that rendered the action of human agency impossible” (p. 84).
5. The “case” did not directly involve Tallmadge but rather his friend and former colleague James F. Simmons (1795–1864), U.S. Senator from Rhode Island (1841–47 and 1857–62). A letter detailing the incident EBB describes appeared in an article by Horace Greeley entitled “Modern ‘Spiritualism’” in the maiden issue of Putnam’s Monthly Magazine (January 1853, pp. 57–64). The letter was addressed to Greeley by Sarah H. Whitman (1803–78), onetime fiancée of Edgar Allan Poe and a poet in her own right. She began: “I have had no conversation with Mr. Simmons on the subject of your note, until to-day. … This morning he called on me to say that he was perfectly willing to impart to you the particulars of his experience in relation to the mysterious writing performed under his very eyes in broad daylight, by an invisible agent” (p. 63). The letter went on to relate how Simmons’s wife had been directed to a medium in order to communicate with their dead son. On the day of the incident she and her husband went to the medium’s house where there were indications that the son’s spirit was present. Simmons suggested that his son should make his presence known by writing his signature on a piece of paper. “In order to facilitate the operation, Mrs S. placed the closed points of a pair of scissors in the hands of the medium, and dropped his pencil through one of the rings or bows, the paper being placed beneath.” (p. 64). The medium was unable to hold the scissors, so “Mr. Simmons then took them into his own hand, and again dropped his pencil through the ring. … It then began slowly to move. Mr. S. saw the letters traced beneath his eyes … and the handwriting was a fac-simile of his son’s signature” (p. 64). Tallmadge’s name is connected with this story only indirectly. The 25 April 1853 issue of The National Intelligencer, a Washington D.C. newspaper, carried an article dismissing the spiritualist movement, “Impostures and Delusions.” Tallmadge felt compelled to reply to the editors of the paper in a letter dated 30 April 1853, in which he included a letter he had written to Simmons, mentioning the Putnam’s article: “I was pleased to see, in the January number of ‘Putnam’s Monthly,’ a statement of your experience in ‘spiritual manifestations.’ In our conversation at Washington, during the last session of Congress, you had stated the same to me” (E.W. Capron, Modern Spiritualism: Its Facts and Fanaticisms, Its Consistencies and Contradictions, Boston, 1855, p. 340).
6. Cf. I Henry IV, II, 1, 87. EBB refers to Mrs. Crowe’s recent adventure on an Edinburgh street (see letter 3355, note 7).
7. Presumably the William Brailsford to whom EBB had written in July 1853 (see letter 3223). We are, however, unable to explain the odd way she refers to him. The “third Heaven” is the most interior of the three heavens in Swedenborg’s theology.
8. Cf. II Corinthians 12:2.
10. The Patrician’s Daughter (1841), a play by John Westland Marston.
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