Correspondence

3743.  EBB & RB to Hiram Powers

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 22, 141–142.

Feb. 29. [1856] [1]

My dear Mr Powers

I should have written before to thank you for the great kindness with which you acceded to my request at the expense of so much of your valuable time. The result of your letter upon my mind was of course very unfavorable to Hume as a man, though it seems to me, setting one kind of evidence against another, that his standing as a medium remains perfectly unaffected by it. You see, the truth is, that, while you had the means of detection in your power, you did not detect him—you did not catch his foot under the table .. sieze him in the act of raising it .. grapple with the ‘Hands’ & find them to be pieces of machinery. Therefore all the sceptical speculation in the world now, is too late– You will convince unbelievers by such,—but you never will move a believer. In fact, if these sorts of phenomena are tricks, it must be demonstrable that they are tricks, & we must wait for the demonstration.

Sir Edward Lytton told us that he did sieze a ‘hand’, &, in the impulse of the moment, exclaimed .. “That’s your hand Mr Hume”.– Hume in anger & tears left the table & went & stood at the window—& the rest of the circle (this was at Mr Rymer’s) in sympathy with the medium, rose from the table too, & were scattered about the room. Sir Edward was dragged under the table by the Hand, & pinned there—his son standing by as witness. Mr Lytton assured me that his father’s wrist remained strained for three days in consequence of the violence done to him by that mysterious Hand– “not gutta percha,” said Sir Edward to us! “but a human warm, overwarm hand.”

A large heavy table was lifted at Dr Garth Wilkinson’s, eight inches from the floor, while he slowly counted 29, & Hume & the rest of the circle stood round it,—an attitude which excludes the possibility of lifting with legs, knees &c. On this occasion, no one was present but Hume & Garth Wilkinson’s family—no Rymer or other friend. I have seen this statement as written by Dr Wilkinson.

I do hope Mrs Powers & all your children are well—and that the little artist girl in particular is prospering in art & life. What a great joy it must be to you & Mrs Powers to have your son at home again. [2] May God bless you all, & lead us all into the truth & light. I hear that Dickens has been attacking Swedenborg in the Household Words! [3] He had better keep to Little Dorrits. Believe me most thankfully & truly yours EBB–

[Continued by RB]

My dear Powers– There is but one word in your letter that concerns me—that about your being “sorry I should have associated Mr Rymer with Hume” in my charges of cheating against the latter. I will be bound that statement came straight from Hume; there is no truth in it. I told Mr Rymer, distinctly and more than once, that I believed in his perfect good faith; so I believe still. I thought him & his parents about as fit to manage such investigations as to discover the longitude or square the circle; but if they were foolish, they were honest. One of the little girls [4] saw visions, spoke to match, and wanted a whipping sadly—but, I repeat, that “the family” were no worse than dupes, I am sure. They ought to specify the crimes of Hume, however. Not a word from any body about what he has done, and so many words a few months ago about what he did not do!

Ever yours, RB.

Address, in EBB’s hand, on integral page: Hiram Powers Esqre

Publication: None traced.

Manuscript: Armstrong Browning Library.

1. Year provided by reference to the return address.

2. Nicholas Longworth Powers had returned to Florence from the United States in September 1855.

3. In an article entitled “The New Jerusalem” in the 23 February 1856 issue of Household Words, pp. 136–140. The author, according to Anne Lohrli, was George Hogarth (1783–1870), Dickens’s father-in-law and music critic for The Daily News (see Household Words: A Weekly Journal, 1850–1859, Toronto, 1973, p. 150). Hogarth provides extracts from some of the more extraordinary passages in Swedenborg’s works, including descriptions of the inhabitants of Mercury and Jupiter. He concludes: “The extensive and long-continued belief commanded by the revelations and doctrines of Swedenborg is a fact so curious, that it has induced us to present these specimens to the reader, unattended by our comments or our opinions” (p. 140).

4. Emma Jane Abbott Rymer (b. 1841); see Waddington, p. 245.

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