July, 1860
Second time I saw Kate Fox was at a night of entertainments in the Sunderlands’ parlour.
“Our hosts are LaRoy and Lucretia,” said Willy as we approached the lofty house.
“The woman with the curls?” said I.
“The woman,” said he, “who is missing her mother. But yes, the woman with the curls.”
“I seem to remember them, Willy,” said I.
At the door to the house: “Mrs. Sunderland, Ma’am. You honour us greatly,” said I, “as your guests.”
“You’re welcome, I’m sure,” said the girl in the foyer. A private and embarrassed smile.
The jeweller whispered in my ear: “That isn’t Mrs. Sunderland.”
“I’m ridiculous, Willy,” said I. “Will she tell?”
“They don’t pay her to gossip, Hannah.”
First thing I saw in the Sunderland’s parlour: the fresh snowy face and the bell-shape of hair. Grouped about her, people. Milling. Glasses of wine and champagne in their hands. The woman’s name was Katherine Fox. I’d seen her stand upon a stage. She’d spoken words, as best I knew. Though I could not recall their theme.
The party guests stared at me. Called me by Mumler.
The room was outfitted for some kind of viewing. A screen or a bed-sheet draped over the window before a couple of rows of chairs. We sat in the left bank of chairs, toward the back.
I watched Kate Fox sit down in front. While Fanny Conant sat behind us.
When I turned to see Fanny arranging herself, she was staring at me in a high trance of ease.
Willy with a glass of sherry. “This will make work of your nerves. Now drink up.”
A man whom I had yet to meet yet whom I remembered was some sort of actor. Seated in coattails just right of the stage. Cleared his actor’s throat to speak: “Since we’ve yet to lay hands on Mr. Muybridge’s Zoopraxiscope we must make do for now with the old-fashioned kind. Gentlemen, ladies. Most honoured of guests. We project for you now Le Fantasmagorie.”
“Look right at the wall,” said the spirit photographer. “Otherwise, you’re bound to miss them.”
“Courageous assembled, I give to you now: the Bloody Nun of Saint-Germain.”
Something flickered on the wall. A sort of flaming leaf, I thought. Still more of these shapes came to flicker in turn. Until without warning one swerved into focus. The blades of it melted away and it lengthened. Became a head atop two shoulders. Stringy hair about the face. Or was it blood. The Bloody Nun. She groped and yearned for us in terror.
No sooner than she was replaced.
“The Ghost of Banquo and Macbeth.”
A man at a table. Got up like a knight. Shielding his face from some spectre above him.
A muffled ting. The jeweller’s finger. Knocking the rim of my glass that I drink.
We sat through: The Nightmare. The Death of Lord Lyttleton. Medusa Beheaded. The Rape of Leda by the Swan.
Willy went to get more wine. And that was when there came a shift. The air around me shifted, say. In Willy’s place was Katherine Fox.
The smell of her a piney smell. The smell of Clayhead’s pines in May. The folds of our skirts feeding over our thighs where they mingled like skins in the gap there between us.
“Do you find them unsettling—these pictures?” said she.
“Only strange,” I said to her, “that people laugh to see them shown.”
“I find them unsettling. Must they be so bloody? Spiritualism, so it seems, must always have a lot of blood.” She paused a beat, then gave a sigh. “Mediumship—what a circus,” she said.
Shockingly quickly she drank down her sherry. Her fine white throat, in blue lapels, went swallowing after the last of the liquor.
“You are just starting out. Have you clients?” said she.
“Fairly many clients, Ma’am.”
“Clients come and go,” said she. “Since the spirits first rapped in my ears as a girl we Fox sisters have been booked solid.”
“Rapped,” said I. “I’ve heard it, Ma’am. The rap,” said I, “what does it mean?”
“Do they not rap for you?” said Kate.
“They—well …” I blushed. “They might rap yet.”
“They always like to give a rap. Rapping is their grammar, dear. Go ahead and ask Miss Conant. She is a most dexterous rapper, I’m certain.”
“The dead ones, they—I mean, the spirits. Mostly they just come,” said I.
“They come to us in different ways. So who’s to say what form they take.”
The Destruction of Pompeii. Osiris Enthroned. The Witch of Endor in her Cave.