Emma, Performing

A question from a friend, a propos of the review of one of her 1860s UK trance lectures that I posted earlier this week: what did Emma do, as a medium? What did it look like?

Leaving aside Emma's own claims about the breadth of her mediumistic abilities, and focusing on the independent historical record, a brief precis of her career as a medium per se would run as follows. From her conversion in 1856 until the end of her life, Emma practiced - publicly at least -- only two sorts of mediumship: (1) a brief period, in New York, from mid-1856 to perhaps as late as the end of 1857, as a classic test medium, under the auspices of Horace Day's Society for Diffusion of Spiritual Knowledge (which folded in 1857) followed by (2) a longer period from her as-yet-not-precisely-dated Troy, NY trance lecture of 1857 until the early 1880s, as a trance lecturer. While she claimed at various times to have a wide range of mediumistic gifts -- including automatic writing and psychometry -- she practiced publicly in more limited ways, as far as I can determine. Her brief stint as a test medium was in the period prior to the rage for direct voice mediumship: as far as we know, her test medium sessions employed alphabet cards and planchettes. Contemporary reports of the test sessions held at the SDSK tend to confirm this. As I have noted in prior postings, it seems clear to me that she ceased to practice as a test medium after becoming embroiled in a local (NY) scandal that was given wider airing during the public drama surrounding the Hatch divorce case, during which Emma was accused of exerting her power over her sitter, during a session, to in effect extort an offer of marriage form the sitter. Whether this in fact happened is beyond our ability to determine. That this accusation dogged her until the late 1870s is undeniable.

Her transition to trance lecturer seems, to me, to be quite natural when we consider that her closest influence at the time was Elizabeth J. French, who was herself a practicing trance medium. While she frequently lectured, from the early 1860s onward, on pre-prepared topics that were entirely conventional addresses (in various catalogs of the day, Emma is listed as often as a "regular speaker" as she is as a trance speaker), when she gave trance lectures, these were of two sorts: (a) lectures on topics of her choosing or the choosing of her sponsors, and (b) lectures in response to questions or positions prepared by a committee formed, ad hoc, of audience members. Emma's lectures were often described as such in surviving newspaper advertisements, as in this one from the New York Herald for April of 1858 (note the "Miss").

This latter sort of trance lecture was, in effect, a kind of test mediumship, as Emma describes in her Autobiography

As this committee were stationed in a small room only separated from the antechamber I occupied by a slight partition, and they were over half-an-hour engaged in discussion, I had, what may be deemed either the pain or pleasure, as the case might be, of hearing their arguments pro and con. All I can now remember is, that a certain Mr. Hunt, whom I was subsequently informed was the "Queen's chemist," was appointed as chairman of that committee, and the last words I heard him utter prior to the committee's return to the audience were, "We'll break her down anyway, and that's all we have to do." The subject selected, I find by the newspaper reports I sent afterwards to my mother, was "The Geological Formation of the Earth and its Ultimate Destiny."

Again the lecture was listened to attentively, and loud applause, in which the committee, as I was afterwards informed, joined, greeted me at its close, but the end was not yet.

Sitting opposite the platform, in the front row, was one whom I subsequently learned was a Jewish Rabbi. On either side of him sat some twelve of his scholars, and it was he it seemed, who was expected by the oppdsition, to "break me down anyway." This gentleman, rising from his seat, asked permission of the audience to put a few consecutive questions to the speaker, and that without any interruption. A loud burst of applause being taken as acquiescence, the rabbi proceeded sternly to ask me a number of purely biblical questions.

After about seven or eight minutes' interlocution of this kind, the gentleman, turning to the audience with a profoundly sarcastic air, remarked, that "These Spirits of the lady's did not know much, as, if they did, instead of answering in orthodox biblical fashion, they would have known that such and such passages, which he repeated, were false translations. In the original Hebrew," he added, "they were so-and-so, and the translations were rendered otherwise, either to suit the opinions of the time, or on account of the translators' ignorance of the ancient Hebrew language."

I cannot now recall the passages to which my opponent referred, nor do I believe that they were indicated in the newspaper reports, but I do remember the nature of the answer which the Spirit power that held me—like a vice— impelled me to give, and it was to this effect : That the sentences quoted were inscribed after the ancient mode of of Hebrew writing, in which the vowels were omitted, and that the methods of pointing employed would render them susceptible of being translated in six different ways ; consequently it was the learned scholar who was endeavouring to impose upon an unlearned audience, and not the young woman who stood before them as the mouthpiece and messenger of those who "did know Hebrew, both ancient and modern."

The rhetoric in this passage -- suggesting as it does that Emma could only recall the subject and material of her trance lectures if newspaper accounts of them existed, since she herself had no memory of what she spoke while under control -- is common throughout her career, and a common position for trance lecturers to adopt.

In terms of the stagecraft of her lectures, reviewers were struck by Emma's physical presence throughout her career (as for example in this review from 1870) often to the exclusion of any discussion whatsoever of her actual address. She seems to have been -- particularly when silent, at the start of a lecture -- commanding.

By 1863, when she went for the first time to California, Emma was mixing her repertoire: giving traditional audience-driven trance lectures on occasion, and speaking on pre-publicized topics as well. These fixed-topic addresses may also have been cast, at the time, as inspired -- the historical record is silent on this. But it seems to me, from sampling her advertisements from the 1860s to 1880s, that it became increasingly rare, as her notoriety grew, for her to give audience-driven trance lectures -- the last of these (outside the UK, at any rate) may have been during her 1878-9 Australia and New Zealand tour.

What seems to me to be unique about Emma's mediumship (and I am no expert in this area) is that, so far as I am aware, Emma never named, during her lectures, her controls (though she did credit various spirits, including her father and Sir John Franklin, in written forums, later in her life). Critics found this maddening, as it prevented Emma from being attacked, as it were, from behind -- by impuning her inspirational sources. As late as her Sydney lectures in 1878, according to this extensive review, she was fending off demands from her audience for attribution.

Although I believe Emma continued to perform trance lectures in the UK after 1881, her public career as a trance medium ended, I think, in August of 1880, when during a lecture she opined on the role mesmeric energy played in the then-all-the-buzz 40-day fast of Dr. Henry Tanner in Clarendon Hall in New York City. Unfortunately, according to contemporary newspaper accounts, Tanner was in the audience during the lecture, and at the close of Emma's remarks, he stood and refuted her remarks in no uncertain terms. This was, for Emma, tantamount to exposure, and -- for no reason other than intuition -- I have always linked this public humiliation to her decision to leave the US almost immediately thereafter.

I think of Emma as a very circumspect medium. She chose, after her brush with exposure in 1857, to practice a type of mediumship that was both consistent with her skills as an actress, and unlikely to attract much in the way of organized debunking (relative to cabinet sessions, elongation, psychokinetics, slate-writing, etc.) and she minimized her exposure within that subgenre by participating in audience-driven trance speaking less and less as she became more and more famous (and hence, more and more of a target). This was, after all, not just her calling -- it was her livelihood, and she was carrying her mother's and her husband's economic weight, as well as her own.