The more intently the ghosts gazed, the less

Could they distinguish whose features were;

The Devil himself seem’d puzzled even to guess;

They varied like a dream—now here, now there;

And several people swore from out the press,

They knew him perfectly; and one could swear

He was his father; upon which another

Was sure he was his mother’s cousin’s brother:

 

Another, that he was a duke, or knight,

An orator, a lawyer, or a priest,

A nabob, a man-midwife; but the wight

Mysterious changed his countenance at least

As oft as they their minds; though in full sight

He stood, the puzzle was only increased;

The man was a phantasmagoria in

Himself—he was so volatile and thin.

—Lord Byron, The Phantasmagoria

Mumler’s face is one of the few from which one fails to gather any trace of character. It is calm and fathomless, and although it would be harsh to say that it is unprepossessing, it is yet a face which one would scarcely be able to believe in at first sight.

—The New York Daily Tribute, 1869