February, 1860
So I would go to him this time. It was I who requested the meeting.
I went.
The time was mid-evening. The man looked exhausted. I sensed I was first in a long string of clients. Photographers must eat of course. But only when the jewellers earn.
He was sitting there waiting for me at his desk. Rather, more of a workbench repurposed as one. Even in his own rooms and so late in the evening—it was well after eight, when he said he’d be free—his coat was buttoned all the way, his hands encased by white silk gloves.
A moment passed before I saw her, the pale girl standing near the door.
When I’d entered the room she had been there behind me, her hair hanging slightly in front of her face. For all of a moment it made me uneasy, but soon the feeling went from me.
She had this sweetness to her eyes—grey mixed in with bits of green.
“You’re here with some concern?” he said. “Your telegram sounded concerned, so I ask.”
“And how may writing, lacking speech, impress you as concerned?” I said.
“Its terseness, I reckon,” said Mumler and shrugged. “Should like to have a word with you.”
“To be perfectly honest.” I harboured a breath. “I am irritated with you, Mister Mumler.”
I saw recognition, then nothingness, vast. He fingered the blotter. He wanted a drink.
“For handing out the pictures in Melodeon,” he said. “I’m truly sad about all that.”
“I have come here to hear that you’re sorry. . . .” I said.
“And now that I have said I am?”
“Have you?” said I. “Have you said that?”
The jeweller smiled at me and shrugged.
“Rather than hearing you beg for forgiveness,” I said to the jeweller, still standing above him, “I would like to propose an alliance between us.”
“What kind?” he said.
“Say, a business alliance.”
“Is that not one we have already?”
“Something official,” I said. “On the books. Something that, weekly, we both might commit to. A column,” I told him, “a blending of talents. I grow tired of speaking through spirits,” I said.
“And yet,” Mumler countered, “that is your profession.”
“I am a womanist,” I said. “The spirits, all that, are a means to an end. I have positions that want grounding. Dress reform, marriage, the feting of woman. The freeing of woman,” I said, “by my hand.”
He considered a moment. He did not deny it—deny that it needed to happen, I mean. He said: “Spirit pictures are only of spirits. They meddle not in woman’s plight.”
“They are evidential,” I said. “And that matters. Images affect, you see. People, for better or worse, Mr. Mumler, aspire to recognize the real.”
“And so I print pictures,” he said, “of the dead.”
“You take the pictures, I print them,” I said, “in the Banner of Light, publication of mention. You and she take the pictures,” I nodded to Hannah,” and I pair them with a message to the sitter from beyond. Yet along with the fluff that they normally say—dear one, take heed, etcetera—I outline the aims of progressive religion, which Spiritualism is, at root. I will call it: the Message Department,” I said.
“You will outfit the spirits with captions?” he said.
“They will be transcriptions—direct ones—from death on what the living might accomplish.”
He appraised me a moment in calculant silence. “Hannah,” he said. “What do you make of this?”
I found myself surprised he’d asked her.
“I think that, well, Willy, it’s fine. It sounds fine.”
“A contract, then. To make it binding,” said William Mumler, his gaze fixing me.
I said: “I have made one in printing your pictures.” But Henry by Holbein would not be backed down. So I said: “Very well.”
“Here’s a pen for you. Wield it.” He slid one, with paper, toward me. Then sat back. “Transcribe what follows, then,” he said.
“I do attest . . .” he started in and I began to write apace, “. . . that the manifestations of William H. Mumler, photographic portraitist of eminence and licence . . .” The bottom of his voice dropped out, obtaining new texture, new depths of announcement: “. . . are as faithful and artful—please underline that.”
I scribbled headlong in pursuit of his words
“. . . are as faithful and artful toward Beauty and Truth as any life-drawing or atlas put forth on behalf . . .”
“You will have to slow down.”
And he stopped. I arrived at the end of the phrase and looked up.
“. . . put forth on behalf of the earth’s living record.”
“Signed,” he said.
“My name?”
“Indeed. Signed,” he said, “In Spirit Bonds . . . Fanny A. Conant . . . Trance-Speaker. The date.”
The minute I finished he reached for the paper and mostly ripped it from my hands. He did it with such strength and speed that the pen trailed away from the line I was writing. He took up the paper and shook it to dry it. He observed its completion. He set it before him.
Hannah was looking up, semi-surprised, from the tattered storm-cloud of her hair.
The jeweller rose out of his chair and came around to draw my own. As I stood and the chair scudded back on the boards I felt his eyes below my waist.
I thought, It is a part of me.
I turned around, and there he was.
Before the door he took my hands and held them for a moment, waiting. And then when the gesture was going too long, he treasured them up to his lips and he kissed one. I was not at all sure why I let him do this. He held my right and writing hand between his rabbit paws of gloves and he seemed to want to trap it or to understand it fully the way he held it to his lips.
But then the jeweller parted his. My index finger slipped inside. My instinct was to draw it out, but something slowed my doing so and I felt him applying the minutest pressure as my finger emerged from his mouth at the knuckle. Hannah was standing there, watching us gently, as the rows of his teeth grazed the length of my bone.