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THE MYSTERIOUS MR. HOME
By Scaife, Hazel Lewis, 1872-1939
you've brought the devil to my house,
have you?"
"No, no, aunty, no! It's not my fault."
With an angry gesture the woman, tall,
large boned, harsh visaged, pushed back her
chair and advanced threateningly toward the
pale, anemic looking youth of seventeen, who
sat cowering at the far end of the breakfast
table.
"You know this is your doing. Stop it at
once!"
The other gazed helplessly about him, while
from every side of the room came a volley of
raps and knocks. "It is not my doing," he
muttered. "I cannot help it."
"Begone then! Out of my sight!"
Left to herself and to silence, for with
her nephew's departure the noise instantly
ceased, she fell into gloomy meditation.
She was an exceedingly ignorant, but a pro-
foundly religious woman. She had heard
much of the celebrated Fox sisters, with tales
of whose strange actions in the neighboring
State of New York the countryside was then
ringing, and she recognized, or imagined she
recognized, a striking similarity between their
performances and the tumult of the last few
minutes. It was her firm belief that the Fox
girls were victims of demoniac influence, and
no less surely did she deem it impossible to
attribute the recent disturbance to human
agency. Her nephew was not given to prac-
tical jokes; there had been nothing unusual
in his manner; he had greeted her cheerily as
usual, and quietly taken his seat. But with
his advent, and she shuddered at the remem-
brance, the knockings had begun. There
could be only one explanation the boy,
however unwittingly, had placed himself in
the power of the devil. What to do, however,
she knew not, and fumed and fretted the entire
morning, until upon his reappearance at noon
the knockings broke out again. Then her
mind was quickly made up.
"Look you!" said she to him. "We must
rid you of the evil that is in you. I will have
the ministers reason with you and pray for
you, and that at once."
True to her word, she despatched a mes-
senger to the three clergymen of the litttle
Connecticut village in which she made her
home, and all three promptly responded to her
request. But their visits and their prayers
proved fruitless. Indeed, the more they prayed
the louder the knocks became; and presently,
to their astonishment and dismay, the very
furniture appeared bewitched, dancing and
leaping as though alive. " Verily," said one
to his irate aunt, "the boy is possessed of the
devil." To make matters worse, the neigh-
bors, hearing of the weird occurrences,
besieged the house day and night, their curi-
osity whetted by a report that, exactly as in
the case of the Fox sisters, communications
from the dead were being received through
the knockings. Incredible as it seemed, this
report found speedy confirmation. Before the
week was out the lad told his aunt:
"Last night there came raps to me spelling
words, and they brought me a message from
the spirit of my mother."
"And what, pray, was the message?"
"My mother's spirit said to me, * Daniel,
fear not, my child. God is with you, and who
shall be against you ? Seek to do good. Be
truthful and truth loving, and you will prosper,
my child. Yours is a glorious mission you
will convince the infidel, cure the sick, and
console the weeping.'"
"A glorious mission," mocked the aunt, her
patience utterly exhausted, "a glorious mis-
sion to bedevil and deceive, to plague and tor-
ment! Away, away, and darken my doors no
more!"
"Do you mean this, aunty?"
"Mean it, Daniel? Never shall it be said
of me that I gave aid and comfort to Satan or
child of Satan's. Pack, and be off!"
In this way was Daniel Dunglas Home
launched on a career that was to prove one of
the most marvelous, if not the most marvelous,
in the annals of mystification. But at the
time there was no reason to anticipate the re-
markable achievements which the future held
in store for him. He was fitted for no calling.
Ever since his aunt had adopted him in far-
away Scotland, where he was born of obscure
parentage in 1833, he had led a life of com-
plete dependence, not altogether cheerless but
deadening to initiative and handicapping him
terribly for the task of making his way in the
world. His health was broken, his pockets
were empty, he was without friends. Cast
upon his own resources under such conditions,
it seemed but too probable that failure and an
early death would be his portion.
Two things only were in his favor. The first
was his native determination and optimism;
the second, the interest aroused by published
reports of the phenomena that had led to his
expulsion from his aunt's house. Already,
although only a few days had elapsed since
the knockings were first heard, the newspapers
had given the story great publicity, and their
accounts were greedily devoured by an ever-
widening circle of readers, quite willing to
regard such happenings as evidence of the
intervention of the dead in the affairs of the
living. It was, it must be remembered, an era
of wide-spread enthusiasm and credulity, the
heyday period of spiritism. So soon, there-
fore, as it became known that young Home was
at liberty to go where he would, invitations
were showered on him.
Among these was one from the nearby town
of Willimantic, and thither Home journeyed
in the early spring of 1851. It was determined
that an attempt should be made to demon-
strate his mediumship by the table tilting
process then coming into vogue among spirit-
ists, and the result exceeded all expectations.
The table, according to an eye-witness of the
first seance, not only moved without physical
contact, but on request turned itself upside
down, and overcame a spectator's efforts to
prevent its motion. True, when this specta-
tor "grasped its leg and held it with all his
strength" the table "did not move so freely as
before." Still, it moved, and Home's fame
mounted apace. From town to town he
traveled, holding seances at which, if con-
temporary accounts are to be believed, he
gave exhibitions of supernatural power far
and away ahead of all other of the numerous
mediums who were by this time springing up
throughout the Eastern States. On one occa-
sion, we are told, the spirits communicated
through him the whereabouts of missing title
deeds to a tract of land then in litigation; on
another, they enabled him to prescribe suc-
cessfully for an invalid for whom no hope w T as
entertained ; and time after time they conveyed
to those in his seance room messages of more
or less vital import, besides vouchsafing to
them "physical" phenomena of the greatest
variety.
What was most remarkable was the fact
that the young medium steadfastly refused to
accept payment for his services. " My gift," he
would solemnly say, "is free to all, without
money and without price. I have a mission
to fulfil, and to its fulfilment I will cheerfully
give my life." Naturally this attitude of itself
made for converts to the spiritistic beliefs of
which he was such a successful exponent, and
its influence was powerfully reinforced by
the result of an investigation conducted in the
spring of 1852 by a committee headed by the
poet, William Cullen Bryant, and the Harvard
professor, David G. Wells. Briefly, these
declared in their report that they had at-
tended a seance with Home in a well lighted
room, had seen a table move in every direc-
tion and with great force, " when we could
not perceive any cause of motion," and
even "rise clear of the floor and float in
the atmosphere for several seconds"; had
in vain tried to inhibit its action by sitting
on it; had occasionally been made "con-
scious of the occurrence of a powerful shock,
which produced a vibratory motion of the
floor of the apartment in which we were
seated"; and finally were absolutely certain
that they had not been "imposed upon or
deceived."
The report, to be sure, did not specify what,
if any, means had been taken to guard against
fraud, its only reference in this connection
being a statement that "Mr. D. D. Home fre-
quently urged us to hold his hands and feet."
But it none the less created a tremendous sen-
sation, public attention being focused on the
fact that an awkward, callow, country lad had
successfully sustained the scrutiny of men of
learning, intelligence, and high repute. No
longer, it would seem, could there be doubt of
the validity of his claims, and greater demands
than ever were made on him. As before, he
willingly responded, adding to his repertoire,
if the term be permissible, new feats of the
most startling character. Thus, at a seance
in New York a table on which a pencil, two
candles, a tumbler, and some papers had been
placed, tipped over at an angle of thirty degrees
without disturbing in the slightest the position
of the movable objects on its surface. Then
at the medium's bidding the pencil was dis-
lodged, rolling to the floor, while the rest re-
mained motionless ; and afterward the tumbler.
A little later occurred the first of Home's
levitations when at the house of a Mr. Cheney
in South Manchester, Connecticut, he is said
to have been lifted without visible means of
support to the ceiling of the seance room. To
quote from an eye- witness's narrative: "Sud-
denly, and without any expectation on the part
of the company, Mr. Home was taken up in
the air. I had hold of his feet at the time, and
I and others felt his feet they were lifted
a foot from the floor. . . . Again and again he
was taken from the floor, and the third time
he was carried to the lofty ceiling of the apart-
ment, with which his hand and head came in
gentle contact." A far cry, this, from the
simple raps and knocks that had ushered in
his mediumship.
Now, however, an event occurred that
threatened to cut short alike his "mission"
and his life. Never of robust health, he fell
seriously ill of an affection that developed into
tuberculosis. The medical men whom he con-
sulted unanimously declared that his only hope
lay in a change of climate, and, taking alarm,
his spiritistic friends generously subscribed a
large sum to enable him to visit Europe. Inci-
dentally, no doubt, they expected him to serve
as a missionary of the new faith, and it may be
said at once that in this expectation they were
not deceived. No one ever labored more
earnestly and successfully in behalf of spirit-
ism than did Daniel Dunglas Home from the
moment he set foot on the shores of England
in April, 1855; and no one in all the history of
spiritism achieved such individual renown, not
in England alone but in almost every country
of the Continent.
It is from this point that the mystery of his
career really becomes conspicuous. Hitherto,
with the exception of the Bryant- Wells inves-
tigation, which could hardly be called scientific,
his pretensions had not been seriously tested,
and operating as he did among avowed spirit-
ists he had enjoyed unlimited opportunities
for the perpetration of fraud. But henceforth,
skeptics as well as believers having ready
access to him, he found himself not infre-
quently in a thoroughly hostile environment,
and subjected to the sharpest criticism and
most unrestrained abuse. Nevertheless, he
was able not simply to maintain but to aug-
ment the fame of his youth, and after a me-
diumship of more than thirty years, could
claim the unique distinction of not once having
had a charge of trickery proved against him.
Besides this, overcoming with astounding
ease the handicaps of his humble birth and
lack of education, his life was one continued
round of social triumphs of the highest order;
for he speedily won and retained to the day of
his death the confidence and friendship of
leaders of society in every European capital.
With them, in castle, chateau, and mansion,
he made his home, always welcome and al-
ways trusted ; and in his days of greatest stress,
days of ill health, vilification, and legal en-
tanglements, they rallied unfailingly to his
aid. Add again that Kings and Queens vied
with one another in entertaining and reward-
ing him, and it is possible to gain some idea
of the heights scaled by this erstwhile Con-
necticut country boy.
He began modestly enough by taking rooms
at a quiet London hotel, where, his fame hav-
ing spread through the city, he soon had the
pleasure of giving a seance to two such dis-
tinguished personages as Lord Brougham and
Sir David Brewster. Both retired thoroughly
mystified, though the latter some months later
asserted that while he "could not account for
all" he had witnessed, he had seen enough to
satisfy himself "that they could all be pro-
duced by hands and feet," a statement
which, by the way, was at variance from one
he had made at the time, and involved him in
a most unpleasant controversy. After Broug-
ham and Brewster came a long succession of
other notables, including the novelist Sir Bul-
wer Lytton, to whom a most edifying experi-
ence was granted. Rapping away as usual,
the table suddenly indicated that it had a mes-
sage for him, and the alphabet being called
over in the customary spiritistic style, it spelled
out:
"I am the spirit who influenced you to write
Zanoni."
"Indeed!** quoth Lytton, with a skeptical
smile. " Suppose you give me a tangible proof
of your presence?"
"Put your hand under the table."
No sooner done, than the invisible being
gave him a hearty handshake, and proceeded :
"We wish you to believe in the " It
stopped.
"In what? In the medium?"
"No."
At that moment there came a gentle tapping
on his knee, and looking down he found on it
a small cardboard cross that had been lying
on another table. Lytton, the story goes,
begged permission to keep the cross as a
souvenir, and promised that he would remem-
ber the spirit's injunction. For Home, of
course, the incident was a splendid advertise-
ment, as were the extravagant reports spread
broadcast by other visitors. Consequently,
when he visited Italy in the autumn as the guest
of one of his English patrons, he gained in-
stant recognition and was enabled to embark
with phenomenal ease on his Continental
crusade.
In order to reach the most striking mani-
festations of his peculiar ability, we must
pass hurriedly over the events of the next few
years, although they are perhaps the most
picturesque of his career, including as they
do seances with the third Napoleon and his
Empress, with the King of Prussia, and with
the Emperor of Russia. In Russia he was
married to the daughter of a noble Russian
family, and for groomsmen at his wedding had
Count Alexis Tolstoi, the famous poet, and
Count Bobrinski, one of the Emperor's cham-
berlains. This was in 1858, and shortly after-
ward he returned to England to repeat his
spiritistic triumphs of 1855, and increase the
already large group of influential and titled
friends whose doors were ever open to him.
Had it not been for their generosity, it is diffi-
cult, indeed, to see how he could have lived,
for his time was almost altogether devoted
to the practice of spiritism, and he was never
known to accept a fee for a seance. As it was,
he lived very well, now the guest of one, now
of another, and the frequent recipient of costly
presents. From England he fared back to
the Continent, again traversing it by leisurely
stages. Thus nearly a decade passed before
the occurrence of the first of the several phe-
nomena that have won Home an enduring
place among the greatest lights of spiritism.
At that time his English patrons included
the Viscount Adare and the Master of Lind-
say, who have since become respectively the
Earl of Dunraven and the Earl of Crawford.
They were sitting one evening (December 16,
1868) in an upper room of a house in London
with Home and a Captain Wynne, when Home
suddenly left the room and entered the adjoin-
ing chamber. The opening of a window was
then heard, and the next moment, to the amaze-
ment of all three, they perceived Home's form
floating in the dim moonlight outside the win-
dow of the room in which they were seated.
For an instant it hovered there, at a height
of fully seventy feet above the pavement, and
then, smiling and debonnair, Home was with
them again. Another marvel immediately fol-
lowed. At Home's request Lord Dunraven
closed the window out of which the medium
was supposed to have been carried by the
spirits, and on returning observed that the
window had not been raised a foot, and he
did not see how a man could have squeezed
through it. " Come," said Home, "I will show
you." Together they went into the next room.
"He told me," Lord Dunraven reported,
"to open the window as it was before. I did
so. He told me to stand a little distance off;
he then went through the open space, head
first, quite rapidly, his body being nearly
horizontal and apparently rigid. He came in
again feet foremost, and we returned to the
other room. It was so dark I could not see
clearly how he was supported oustide. He
did not appear to grasp, or rest upon the balus-
trade, but rather to be swung out and in."
To Lord Dunraven and Lord Crawford
again was given the boon of witnessing an-
other of Home's most sensational perform-
ances, and on more than one occasion. This
may best be described in Lord Crawford's
own words, as related in his testimony to the
London Dialectical Society's committee which
in 1869 undertook an inquiry into the claims
of spiritism.
"I saw Mr. Home," declared Lord Craw-
ford, "in a trance elongated eleven inches. I
measured him standing up against the wall,
and marked the place; not being satisfied with
that, I put him in the middle of the room and
placed a candle in front of him, so as to throw
a shadow on the wall, which I also marked.
When he awoke I measured him again in his
natural size, both directly and by the shadow,
and the results were equal. I can swear that
he was not off the ground or standing on tiptoe,
as I had full view of his feet, and, moreover, a
gentleman present had one of his feet placed
over Home's insteps. ... I once saw him
elongated horizontally on the ground. Lord
Adare was present. Home seemed to grow
at both ends, and pushed myself and Adare
away."
The publication of this evidence and of the
details of the mid-air excursion provoked, as
may be imagined, a heated discussion, and
doubtless had considerable influence in induc-
ing the famous scientist, Sir William Crookes,
to engage in the series of experiments which he
carried out with Home two years later. This
was at once the most searching investigation
to which Home was ever subjected, and the
most signal triumph of his career. Sir Wil-
liam's proposal was hailed with the greatest
satisfaction by the critics of spiritism in gen-
eral and of Home in particular. Here, it was
said, was a man fully qualified to expose the
archimpostor who had been so justly pilloried
in Browning's "Mr. Sludge the Medium";
here was a scientist, trained to exact knowl-
edge and close observation, who would not be
deceived by the artful tricks of a conjurer.
It was pleasant too to learn that in order to
circumvent any attempts at sleight of hand,
Sir William intended using instruments spe-
cially designed for test purposes, and which he
was confident could not be operated fraudu-
lently.
But Home, or the spirits proved too strong
for even Sir William Crookes and his instru-
ments. In Sir William's presence, in fact,
there was a multiplication of mysteries. The
instruments registered results which seemed
inexplicable by any natural law; a lath, cast
carelessly on a table, rose in the air, nodded
gravely to the astonished scientist, and pro-
ceeded to tap out messages alleged to come
from the world beyond; chairs moved in
ghostly fashion up and down the room; in-
visible beings lifted Home himself from the
floor; spirit hands were seen and felt; an ac-
cordeon, held by Sir William, played tunes
apparently of its own volition, and afterward
floated about the room, still playing. And
all this, according to the learned investigator,
"in a private room that almost up to the com-
mencement of the seance has been occupied
as a living room, and surrounded by private
friends of my own, who not only will not
countenance the slightest deception, but who
are watching narrowly everything that takes
place."
In the end, so far from announcing that he
had convicted Home of fraud, Sir William
published an elaborate account of his seances,
and gave it as his solemn belief that with
Home's assistance he had succeeded in demon-
strating the existence of a hitherto unknown
force. This was scarcely what had been ex-
pected by the scientific world, which had
eagerly awaited his verdict, and loud was the
tumult that followed. But Sir William stood
manfully by his guns, and Home bland, in-
scrutable, mysterious Home figuratively
shrugging his shoulders at denunciations to
which he had by this time become perfectly
accustomed, added another leaf to his spiritis-
tic crown of laurels, and betook himself anew
to his friends on the Continent, where, despite
increasing ill health, he continued to prose-
cute his "mission" for many prosperous
years.
As a matter of fact, throughout the period of
his mediumship, that is to say, from 1851 to
1886, the year of his death, he experienced
only one serious reverse, and this did not
involve any exposure of the falsity of his
claims. But it was serious enough, in all con-
science, and calls for mention both because it
emphasizes the contrast between his earlier
and his later life, and because it throws a
luminous sidelight on the methods by which
he achieved his unparalleled success. When
he was in London in 1867 he made the ac-
quaintance of an elderly, impressionable Eng-
lish-woman named Lyon, who immediately
conceived a warm attachment for him and
stated her intention of adopting him as her
son. Carrying out this plan, she settled on
him the snug little fortune of one hundred
and twenty thousand dollars, which she subse-
quently increased until it amounted to no less
than three hundred thousand dollars. Home
at the time was a widower, and it was his belief,
as he afterward stated in court, that the woman
desired him to marry her.
In any event her affection cooled as rapidly
as it had begun, and the next thing he knew
he was being sued for the recovery of the three
hundred thousand dollars. The trial was a
celebrated case in English law. Lord Dun-
raven, Lord Crawford, and other of Home's
titled and influential friends hurried to his
assistance, and many were the affidavits forth-
coming to combat the contentions of Mrs.
Lyon, who swore that she had been influenced
to adopt Home by communications alleged to
come through him from her dead husband.
Home himself denied that there were any
manifestations whatever relating to Mrs. Lyon,
whose story, in fact, was so discredited on
cross-examination that the presiding judge,
the vice-chancellor, caustically declared that
her testimony was quite unworthy of belief.
Notwithstanding which, he did not hesitate
to give judgment in her favor, on the ground
that, however worthless her evidence, it had
not been satisfactorily shown that her gifts
to Home were "acts of pure volition," the
presumption being that no reasonable man
or woman would have pursued the course she
did unless under the pressure of undue influ-
ence by the party to be benefited.
If for "undue influence" we read "hyp-
notism," we shall have a sufficient, and what
seems to me the only satisfactory, explana-
tion of the Lyon episode and of the most
baffling of Home's feats, his levitations, elon-
gations, and the like. For the rest, bearing in
mind the fate of other dealers in turning tables
and dancing chairs, he may fairly be regarded
in the light Browning regarded him, that is
to say as an exceptionally able conjurer who
enjoyed the singular good fortune of never
being found out.* It must be remembered
that not once was there applied to him the
test which is now recognized as absolutely
indispensable in the investigation of mediums
who, like Home, are specialists in the produc-
tion of " physical" phenomena. This test is
the demand that the phenomena in question
be produced under conditions doing away
with the necessity for constant observation of
the medium himself.
Even Sir William Crookes, who appreciated
to the full the extreme fallibility of the human
eye and the ease with which the most careful
observer may be deceived by a clever pres-
tidigitator, failed to apply this test to Home;
and by so failing laid himself open on the one
hand to deception and on the other to the flood
of criticism let loose by his scientific colleagues.
Thus, the apparatus used in the experiment
on which he seems to have laid greatest stress,
is described as follows :
"In another part of the room an apparatus
was fitted up for experimenting on the altera-
tions in the weight of a body. It consisted of
a mahogany board thirty-six inches long by
nine and one-half inches wide and one inch
thick. At each end a strip of mahogany one
and one-half inches wide was screwed on,
forming feet. One end of the board rested
on a firm table, whilst the other end was sup-
ported by a spring balance hanging from a
substantial tripod stand. The balance was
fitted with a self-registering index, in such
a manner that it would record the maximum
weight indicated by the pointer. The appara-
tus was adjusted so that the mahogany board
was horizontal, its foot resting flat on the sup-
port. In this position its weight was three
pounds, as marked by the pointer of the bal-
ance. Before Mr. Home entered the room
the apparatus had been arranged in position,
and he had not seen the object of some parts
explained before sitting down."
Now, to give this "test" evidential value,
the disembodied spirit supposed to be acting
through Home should have caused the register-
ing index to record a change in weight without
necessitating, on the spectators' part, con-
stant scrutiny of the medium's movements.
But, in point of fact, a change in weight was
recorded only when Home placed his fingers
on the mahogany board. It is true, that he
placed them on the end furthest from the
balance, and the evidence seems sufficient that
he did not cause the pointer to move by exert-
ing a downward pressure. But as one critic,
Mr. Frank Podmore, has suggested there is
no proof that he did not find opportunity to
tamper with the pointer itself or with some
other part of the apparatus by attaching there-
to a looped thread or hair. To quote Mr.
Podmore :
"It is by the use of such a thread, I venture
to suggest, that the watchful observation of
Mr. Crookes and his colleagues was evaded.
Given a subdued light and opportunity to
move about the room and from detailed
notes of later seances it seems probable that
Home could do as he liked in both respects
the loop could be attached without much risk
of detection to some part of the apparatus,
preferably the hook from which the distal
end of the board was suspended, the ends [of
the thread] being fastened to some part of
Home's dress, e.g., the knees of his trousers,
if his feet and hands were under effectual
observation." *
Moreover, it must not be forgotten that,
barring the Crookes investigation, Home's
manifestations for the most part occurred in
the presence of men and women who, if not
spiritists themselves, had implicit confidence
in his good faith and could by no stretch of the
imagination be called trained investigators.
Indeed, it seems safe to say that had present
day methods of inquiry been employed, as
they are employed by the experts of the So-
ciety for Psychical Research, Home, so far at
any rate as concerned the great bulk of his
phenomena, would quickly have been placed
in the same gallery as Madam Blavatsky,
Eusapia Paladino, and those other wonder
workers whom the society has discredited.
In the matter of the levitations and elonga-
tions, however, it is not so easy to raise the
cry of sheer fraud. Here the only rational
explanation, short of supposing that Home
availed himself if not of the aid of "spirits"
at least of the aid of some unknown physical
force, seems to be, as was said, the exercise
of hypnotic power. The accounts given by
Lord Dunraven, Lord Crawford, and Sir Will-
iam Crookes show that he had ample scope
for the employment of suggestion as a means
of inducing those about him to imagine they
had seen things which they actually had not
seen. In this connection, it seems to me, con-
siderable significance attaches to the following
bit of evidence contributed by Lord Crawford
with regard to the London levitation:
" I saw the levitations in Victoria Street when
Home floated out of the window. He first
went into a trance and walked about uneasily;
he then went into the hall. While he was
away I heard a voice whisper in my ear 'He
will go out of one window and in at another.'
I was alarmed and shocked at the idea of so
dangerous an experiment. I told the com-
pany what I had heard and we then waited
for Home's return."
After it is stated that Lord Crawford, not
long before, had fancied he beheld an appa-
rition of a man seated in a chair, it is easy to
imagine the attitude of credulous expectancy
with which he, at all events, would "wait for
Home's return" via the open window. And
the others were doubtless in the same expectant
frame of mind. "Expectancy" and "sug-
gestibility" will, indeed, work marvels. I
shall never forget how the truth of this was
borne home to me some years ago. A friend
of mine now a physician in Maryland, but
at that time a medical student in Toronto
occasionally amused himself by giving table-
tipping seances, in which he enacted the role
of medium. There was no suspicion on his
sitters' part that he was a "fraud." One
evening he invoked the "spirit" of a little
child, who had been dead a couple of years,
and proceeded to "spell out" some highly
edifying messages. Suddenly the seance was
interrupted by a shriek and a lady present,
not a relative of the dead child, fell to the floor
in a faint. When revived, she declared that
while the messages were being delivered she
had seen the head of a child appear through
the top of the table.
With such an instance before us, it can
hardly be deemed surprising that Home should
be able to play on the imagination of sitters
so sympathetic and receptive as Lords Dun-
raven and Crawford unquestionably were.
To tell the truth, Home's whole career, with
its scintillating, melodramatic, and uniformly
successful phases is altogether inexplicable
unless it be assumed that he possessed the
hypnotist's qualities in a superlative degree.
It may well be, however, that in the last
analysis he not only deceived others but also
deceived himself that his charlatanry was
the work of a man constitutionally incapable
of distinguishing between reality and fiction
in so far as related to the performance of feats
contributing to the success of his "mission."
In other words, that he was, like other historic
personages whom we have already encoun-
tered, a victim of dissociation. There is no
gainsaying the fact that he was of a distinctly
nervous temperament; and it is equally cer-
tain that he chose a vocation, and placed
himself in an environment, which would
tend to make a dissociated state habitual with
him. But this is bringing us to the considera-
tion of a psychological problem which would
itself require a volume for adequate discussion.
Enough to add that, when all is said, and
viewed from whatever angle, Daniel Dunglas
Home, was, and remains, a fascinating human
riddle.
Finish