Maggie
Elisha’s letter was not as much a disappointment as Leah had suggested, especially after she had lowered my expectations. He mentioned our last carriage ride into the country, the significance of which Leah did not know. Nor could she have understood his reference to patting his right breast pocket for luck before each of his lectures—the promised residing place of my carefully clipped curl. I embraced these small allusions to his affection, cherishing them all the more for having been told they did not exist.
It was true that he devoted the bulk of the letter to his concern over my calling as a spirit medium.
“Oh, how I wish that you would quit this life of dreary sameness and suspected deceit,” he wrote. “We live in this world only for the opinions of the good and noble. How crushing it must be to occupy a position of ambiguous respect!”
I expected this was the comment that raised Leah’s ire and caused her to assert so firmly that our role as mediums had brought us respect in society. In truth, I skimmed this part of his letter, simply desiring to devour his words and seek out tender phrases.
He confided in me his worries about collecting sufficient funds for the second expedition. Although his lectures in Boston had been well received, private contributions had not met his expectations. The letter continued, “I present my theories to an uninterested audience, and my pleas for support sound desperate even to my own ears.”
Over the next three days, I planned and savored and replanned my reply to him. I did not presume upon his affection but matched the tone in which he fondly recalled our days in Philadelphia. I did make bold enough to comment on his desire to reap more revenue from his lectures. Carefully and most logically, I suggested that he rely less on the scientific theory behind the polar sea and the lands above it and more upon his experience during the expedition. His tale of falling through the ice with his sled dog had enthralled listeners in Philadelphia, and if there were any other harrowing adventures he could recount, I felt sure he would see an increased enthusiasm in his audience.
When my letter was completed, after much revision and several copies, I presented it dutifully to Leah for reading. She declined, waving her hand and saying, “I rely on your good sense.”
Leah was very busy with spiritualist business at that time. Most recently, Mr. Capron had invited us to Auburn to visit a newly discovered medium, a young girl named Cora Scott. Leah accepted the offer on behalf of the whole family, feeling that we owed Eliab Capron the courtesy of a visit and the medium Miss Scott a gesture of professional support.
The Capron household was crowded but cozy, overflowing with a passel of giggling girls and the warm hospitality of the plump and amiable Mrs. Capron. Kate was welcomed like a long-lost sister, and after only a few minutes of acquaintance, so was I.
I felt some trepidation regarding our meeting with Cora Scott. I knew, of course, that spirit mediums had cropped up all over the country, but I had never met any. It was daunting and troubling to think of these people who imitated the example set by my family. Did we greet them as devoted believers or as artisans exchanging professional secrets?
Miss Cora Scott turned out to be a tiny thing, very pale with wide-set green eyes and hair the color of dark honey. She spoke hardly a dozen words to us, completely dominated by her hatchet-faced father. Her mother, Mrs. Scott, was a ghostly presence, floating along the perimeter of the room and avoiding eye contact with anyone. We, the guests, were directed to seats in a parlor elaborately overdecorated, cluttered with furniture, and heavily muffled with curtains. The room was uncomfortably close, and the smell of perfumed oil rose from the cushions and draperies.
Mr. Scott required us to place our hands on the arms of our chairs “to await the coming of the apparition” and warned us against moving from our assigned places. The spectral Mrs. Scott fluttered forward and presented her daughter with a cup of pungent tea. Miss Cora sipped delicately, then allowed her mother to remove the cup while she slumped in her seat with a soft sigh. Soon the child’s eyelids began to twitch and her mouth worked silently, flecks of froth appearing on her pale lips. Her limbs jerked stiffly and her body began to convulse. I assumed the fit was faked but still glanced at Leah for reassurance. And then Mr. Scott put the gaslight out.
For a moment, we sat in total, impenetrable darkness. Then, with a sudden burst of noise, a powerful light exploded into the room, a harsh, unnatural light that caused sharp pain in our dark-adapted eyes. It was nothing like I had ever experienced, magnitudes of brightness beyond any gas flame and accompanied by a harsh crackling sound. In the center of this supernatural illumination a figure appeared, moving toward us.
A vision of a young woman, veiled and robed in diaphanous silks flickered in and out of existence. The apparition approached us in a disjointed and frightening progression, so that I drew back in my seat with horror. She was bleached of all color in the terrible light, inhumanly pale with dark eyes just visible beneath the obscuring veil, drawing inexorably closer with undulating ripples. Then, just when I thought I might scream, she began to retreat, writhing backward like some feminine snake. She descended into the brilliance, which abruptly popped out of existence, leaving us in darkness with bright images still dancing across our eyes and a harsh smell permeating the room.
Shortly thereafter we were escorted from the house by Mr. Scott, leaving his daughter limp on the couch and his wife hovering nearby. There were no questions to the spirit, no messages, no significance to the ghastly phantasm beyond, apparently, scaring the wits out of us.
We spoke among ourselves in the carriage on the ride back to the Capron house. Leah seemed amused. “Impressive,” she said, “but rather a one-trick pony for all that. What did you make of it, Calvin?”
“They used an arc lamp,” her husband affirmed with confidence. “It’s an electric device, probably run from a battery in this case. If you looked directly into the light, you could see it on the floor.”
Look directly into that light? I admired Calvin’s fortitude of eyesight while Leah asked questions about the device.
“I saw one demonstrated as part of a science lecture in Rochester. It was some years ago,” said Calvin, “but the lack of color in the light and that crackling noise make it unmistakable. Clearly, there was a hidden door or cabinet behind one of those curtains. Their accomplice started the battery and threw open the door. All she did was walk across the floor toward us, then backward away from us. She closed the door and dropped the curtain, then extinguished the battery.”
“But she kept popping from place to place,” Kate observed, with a tinge of jealousy in her voice.
“The light was flickering, too fast for you to realize. Her movement forward was steady, but it appeared fragmented to our eyes.” Calvin turned to Leah. “If you want one, I know where to inquire.”
My sister laughed. “I think not. Our business is best done in the dark. Besides, all it will take is one visitor to reach out and grab that spirit, and I expect she will squeal like a stuck pig. It is a doomed venture.”
“They will be exposed before the year is out,” Kate uttered in the flat, throaty intonation she used for her supposedly true predictions. Leah simply snorted her derision and commented that she did not need the second sight to predict that!
***
After a week’s stay in Auburn, we returned by rail to New York City. Awaiting us, I found another letter from Dr. Kane. This time I sat in the room with Leah while she read it, fidgeting anxiously and trying to interpret the expressions on her face, ranging from raised eyebrow to scowl. Finally, she handed over the letter with obvious reluctance.
Dearest Maggie,
Your letter has been a comfort and a stimulus to long sessions of self-reflection. I can hear your voice in every written word, and I discover that I am bereft of a cherished friendship in your absence. How I miss you when listening to the nonsense of my fashionable friends who flatter and fawn and drown a man in empty praise! Only you, Maggie, have the sharp wit and intellect to puncture a man’s folly and sense of overworth and still retain your sweet innocence of expression. Your words are honey, laced with a sharp tonic!
It was a blow when you suggested that “harrowing” tales were valued more than science and philosophy. What a comedown to think that I was simply being paid for an evening’s worth of vicarious entertainment! I have chastised you, dear darling, for wasting your youth and conscience for a few paltry dollars, but when I think of the crowds who come nightly to hear wild stories of the frozen North, I realize that we are not so far removed after all.
However, I hasten to add that my accomplishments are true, and however entertaining, my stories harbor no exaggeration. If I must face the reality that the public will open its pocketbooks more out of sensation than humanitarianism, then I will be content to know that my intentions are pure. Can you, Maggie, claim a similar virtue in your rapping?
You say that my last letter was full of preaching, and I know that this one may be similarly received. Know only that I have your best interests at heart, and that my persuasions only serve to divert me from writing at length about other matters…how I long to look—only look!—at your dear, deceitful mouth and your hair tumbling over your cheeks. Better that I devote my attention to your character and your soul than other comely aspects of your precious self.
Thus, I must resign myself to being, fondly…
Your Preacher,
E. K. Kane
I could not control the flush that came to my cheeks nor force down the smile that curved my lips when I came to his final paragraph. I glanced guiltily at Leah, who was scrutinizing me with her stern gaze, but she had no comment to make.
In my reply, I addressed his question, defending myself from the criticism that he had so ably wrapped in silky words. “While I cannot pretend to lofty deeds that will expand the sphere of the globe and the knowledge of mankind all at once, I affirm a smaller, more personal goal in my actions. It is the meek and humble who come to me, broken with grief, racked by guilt, unable to escape the icy grip of despair, and it is to these poor souls I address my efforts.” Honey laced with tonic, indeed!
Thus our correspondence continued for several months, as we debated our positions on faith and honor while slipping endearments between the barbs. Leah commented dryly that if I was suddenly so taken with letter writing, then I could assist with her duties in correspondence, and I found myself sitting with my sister daily, writing letters under her direction to the Posts, Mr. Capron, and various spiritualist supplicants.
Elisha’s touring schedule took him to Columbus and Cincinnati, then back to Philadelphia before he headed south to Washington. At first he wrote that he planned on diverting to New York City for a few days, and my hopes soared wildly, but a following letter served as apology when his plans changed.
As the weeks and months passed, I worked more and more closely with Leah in her web of connections between spiritualists and abolitionists and feminists. During our daily toil, she began to pressure me to demand some sort of answer from Dr. Kane regarding his intentions.
“You have known the man eight months,” she said, “although he has spent most of them hundreds of miles away from you. You are eighteen years old, highly marriageable right now, and there would be suitable young men knocking on our door day and night if it were not known that you were holding out for some mystery man who never shows his face here.”
“I cannot ask him if he wants to marry me!” I protested. “That is carrying the feminist cause too far!”
“He continually asks you to abandon your family and quit the rapping!” she retorted. “Yet he has not declared any serious intentions for you. And even if he did, is he really what you want? That man will spend all of his life traveling the world, and any wife of his had better get used to a marriage by post.”
It was hard to listen to her words, as blunt and sensible as they were. As his prolonged absence continued, Kate and Calvin ceased to defend him on my behalf, and all the tokens I had from Elisha himself were philosophical arguments and travelogues signed “The Preacher.” I did not want ministering; I wanted the romance and excitement of our time together in Philadelphia. I needed to see the fire in his eyes, the quickness of his hands, and the energy in his athletic frame. One day Kate solemnly pointed out a newspaper gossip column that listed a sighting of “the eminent explorer Dr. Elisha K. Kane” at an opera in Philadelphia with “a beautiful, unnamed young woman.” It was during the very week that he had failed to come to New York to visit. That’s when I finally broke down.
With all his previous correspondence stacked neatly on my writing desk, I composed my carefully worded note. It was very brief and, I hoped, dignified:
Dearest Elisha,
You have spent the last few months trying to reform me from my current occupation, but I have to ask you, to what end? You speak of education in broad terms. Do you wish me to train as a schoolteacher? I know not how you wish me to make my way in the world, because currently the only thing that stands between my family and destitution is our renowned role as spiritual guides.
You have been my dear friend, Elisha, but I cannot continue in such an indeterminate state. I know well that I have no claim upon you. However, I have come to a point where I must know your intention, and while I value the friendship that we have, I cannot turn my back on my family and their calling even for the sake of friendship.
Fondly,
Maggie
No sooner was this missive posted than I regretted my rashness. I spent days in agony, imagining his response. He would profess his love to me. He would be angry at my presumption. He would rush to my side. He would crush my hopes with a laughing rejection. All these and more I spilled out in a torrent to Kate.
“It is not unreasonable that you should ask,” Kate said, again and again.
“What kind of woman asks a man for a proposal?” I would reply. “He will think me shameless and grasping!”
“If he is your sincere lover, he will understand,” she soothed me. “After all these months, is he your suitor or your brother?”
Restless and miserable, I scarcely listened to her. I could take no faith in the reassurances of a fifteen-year-old girl who laughed at potential suitors behind their backs. I realized that I had been goaded into unwise action by Leah, who wanted the affair ended by my doing or his, and I cursed myself for rising to her bait.
The reply to my demand was two interminable weeks in coming, and when it arrived, it appeared on my bed in the middle of the day with no warning. It was already opened. Leah had read it and left it for me. I understood at once that she did not want me to witness her reaction, and I knew instinctively that I would find the contents very good or very bad indeed.
Tears were pricking at my eyes before I even had it unfolded.
Maggie,
I confess that your letter comes as a shock to me, and yet I chastise myself for having been so childishly credulous in all these months of sharing my thoughts and dreams with you. In all your former correspondence, which I have reread at length, you write to me entirely as to a friend—kind, noncommittal letters. All the warmth and affection seem to be on my side. And now I see that you have viewed me all this time as nothing but a gentleman hypocrite, never really sincere and amusing himself with a pretty face. I suppose the sort of company you keep has conditioned you to a low expectation.
I imagine that you care for me but not enough. Perhaps it is not in your nature to feel that deeply. Rather sternly you chastise me for not putting my intentions forward. All the more fool I was, for thinking they were self-evident.
I am a man of facts and purpose. I will leave after me a name and a success. But with all this I am a weak man that I should be caught in the midst of my grave purposes by the gilded dust of a butterfly’s wing. My intentions? My intention is to sail to the Arctic and from there proceed to the discovery of Sir Franklin’s fate and the polar sea. No true gentleman would promise anything to a lady under those circumstances; no true lady would require it.
Just as you have your wearisome round of daily moneymaking, I have my own sad vanities to pursue. I am as devoted to my calling as you, poor child, are to yours.
Remember, then, as a sort of dream, that Dr. Kane of the Arctic Seas once loved Maggie Fox of the Spirit Rappings.
E. K. K.