December, 1859
The calm of Melodeon’s green room was stifling. Like a covey of schoolmarms we sat, trim and trussed: E.H.B., Constance, Miss Moss and myself. Several of us sipped at coffee, except E.H.B., who was partial to tea.
The Englishwoman pecked her cup. “Well,” she said. She smoothed her skirts. “Isn’t this silence the grandest illusion.”
“Who will name the theme?” said Constance.
“I would gladly,” said Miss Moss.
“Miss Moss, if you’ll recall,” said Constance, “often names the evening’s theme. If she is permitted to do it too often people will begin to talk.”
“Constance’s point is a fair one, Mrs. Britten. I need not always have the privilege.”
“What does Fanny Conant think?” said E.H.B., her eyebrows raised.
I thought I did not like Miss Moss. Her false modesty was a bunion to me. We were false every day about so much besides I did not see the purpose now.
“Why not Constance then,” I said. “Our faithful want variety. If Constance is to make her name we must provide her avenues.”
“I submit to your judgement,” Miss Moss said at large while Constance attempted to not look triumphant.
There came a knock upon the door.
“Samuel. One. Twenty-eight,” someone called.
E.H.B. said: “We are ready and waiting!”
An assemblage of people filed inside, chief among them Katherine Fox, the songbird of tonight’s event. Trailing behind with his hat in his hands as if he had no business there was the owner of the CDSK, Horace Day, who did not seem to recognize me.
I had met Katherine Fox one time when she was serving on a panel at the Rutland Free Convention. That had been a year ago. The occasion had not accomplished much. The womanists and Spiritualists, neither alike nor different really, had come away opponents of “despotic sensualism,” a rather swirling resolution. The Fox girl had sat there, slim-waisted and pale, aloof of the opinions that were dragging her down. Apart from nightly demonstrations in which she’d entreated the spirits for aid, she’d said hardly a word all week.
It hadn’t been for arrogance. Rather she’d seemed lost for words. She’d seemed to orbit in and out of the many scouring conversations, as if her attention were constantly drifting and once in a while must be gathered to hand.
She struck me, tonight, as little different. Mrs. Greeley, her handler, announced her. She entered. She dressed a little flambishly, her milky neck and arms exposed. Her waist was as slight as a puddingstone column. Her face was alarmingly round, her mouth small, her large and liquid eyes wide-spaced above a plunging nose. Her skin was pale but thick as cream; I could only assume there were veins underneath it. There was a sort of murkiness or hint of disease that kept her from appearing pretty.
It was hard to imagine I had her to thank for the lifestyle that I now enjoyed.
Greeley was a baroness. She kept close by her ward, arms tensed. Her husband, Horace Greeley, owned the New York Tribune. He had yet to write in to the Banner of Light. Indeed he was known to support other papers, the Herald of Progress primary among them, whose pages had been teeming with the raid on Brown’s Ferry while my own, to no end, had promoted this night. I wondered if she knew my name. I wondered if she knew my title.
Constance and Miss Moss were rising, abdicating their seats for Fox and Greeley. Horace A. Day was a gentleman’s hat rotating lengthwise between two hands.
E.H.B. had stood to greet them. “How lovely to see you again, Mrs. Greeley. Miss Fox, your ladyship, I’m charmed.”
“Mrs. Britten,” said Fox and then sat down with a faint taking out of her skirts.
As though she’d barely noticed him, E.H.B. said: “Mr. Day.”
The gentlemen nodded. We echoed our mentor:
“Mr. Day.”
“Mr. Day.”
“Mr. Day.”
He was awkward a moment beneath our attentions. He bankrolled the Center—in fact, owned the building—a staunch devotee of “progressive endeavours,” though Spiritualism, trance-speaking, all that, appeared to fill him with unease.
Mrs. Greeley sought our hands. Engaged with my own she announced, “Plucky Fanny! A handshake befitting those strong raps she makes. Take note of her, Katherine. Her style is robust.”
“I too speak to spirits directly, Mrs. Greeley, if that is what you mean,” said Fox.
“To them or through them?” I said.
“To them, Miss.” She spoke to me but looked at Greeley. “And then I speak through them to whoever listens.”
“You don’t rap with your toes?” I said.
“I’m not sure what you mean,” said Fox.
“And I don’t suppose that you speak out of trance. Horrors, we should come to that. Airing our thoughts and opinions as ours.”
Katherine Fox was silent in the process of responding. E.H.B. was smiling stiffly. Mr. Day, uncomfortable, had fled the vicinity, shoes sounding off.
“Katherine’s a purist and Fanny’s, well, modern. Now can’t the two exist at once? Which makes me think,” said E.H.B., “you might show Katherine round the stage.”
“I will fumble around it myself,” said Kate Fox.
Mr. Day peered through the chink in the curtain. Reporting back he told us of a man down in the aisles, pamphleting the music hall, row after row.