The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864

A FAST-DAY AT FOXDEN

I

Colonel Elijah Prowley, like all good and true genealogists, held the mother-country in tender reverence. For, if there be any truth in the well-known mot which calls Paris the Paradise of virtuous Yankees, it is limited to a few city-bucks of mongrel caste. England must be the Promised Land for the genuine representative of the Puritan. Whatever we may have felt about her lately,—and I confess there have been times when the declaration of the Fee-Faw-Fum giant of nursery-romance seemed to be of a moral and praiseworthy character,—there is no doubt, that, in the year of grace of which I write, and in the regards of many ratherish-scholarly gentlemen of our country-towns, the British Islands were the nearest terrestrial correspondences to the Islands of the Blest. About the massive Past Colonel Prowley never ceased to thrust his epistolary tendrils. Was not Great Britain a genealogical hunting-ground where game of rarest plumage might be started? Was not a family-connection with Sir Walter Raleigh (whose name should be written Praleigh, a common corruption of "Prowley" in the sixteenth century) susceptible of the clearest proof? There were, in fact, few distinguished Englishmen of the present day, who, if a provoking ancestor or two could be unearthed, might not be shown to have the Prowley fluid in their veins. To many of these eminent personages the head of the American branch of the family had written, and with several he had succeeded in establishing a correspondence. Old sermons, moral obituaries of public characters, celebrations of centennial anniversaries, and heavy reading of like description, constantly left the Foxden Post-Office addressed to the British Museum. The printed formulas of acknowledgment which arrived in return were preserved as the rarest treasures.

And in fulness of time all this corresponding and presenting produced a glorious result. Elijah Prowley, of Foxden, was chosen an Honorary Member of the Royal Society of British Sextons,—an association than which there is none more mouldy in the whole world. Certainly, this was glory enough for any Western genealogist,—yet Fortune had a higher gratification to bestow. For, in His Worship, the Most Primordial, the High Senior Governour and Primitive Patriarch of all Sextons, Colonel Prowley soon discovered a relative of his own. Sir Joseph Barley, a rubicund old knight, and the Most Primordial in question, after an elaborate investigation and counter-investigation, a jockeying of the wits of very old women, and a raid into divers registers, scrolls, schedules, archives, and the like,—Sir Joseph Barley, I say, turned out to be a long-lost cousin. "Barley," it appeared, had anciently been written "Parley," and "Praley," and even "Proley." Having arrived at this point, Sir Joseph conjectured that his ancestor Proley might have dropped a w out of his name, and the Colonel conjectured that his progenitor, the Puritan, might have put one into his. Now it did not matter which was right, for, as was convincingly underscored in one of my letters from Foxden, "upon either hypothesis, the relationship of the Barleys of Old England to the Prowleys of New England was positively established."

And so Sir Joseph Barley was dead!

Although shocked, when the fact of his demise was abruptly announced in the familiar chirography of my old friend, I was unable to prevent a certain sense of the grotesque from mingling with the idea. A portrait in pastel, which hung over the chimney-piece in the Colonel's study, had given me a thorough acquaintance with the outward Sir Joseph. That brief, but bulky figure, clad in official robes as High Senior Governour, that weighty seal of the Sextons which dangled from the fob, those impressive spectacles with the glasses cut in parallelograms, above all, that full-blown face blandly contemplating our American rudeness like a smiling Phœbus from British skies,—how could all these things, which had so individualized the natural body of Sir Joseph Barley, be dispensed with in its spiritual counterpart? No answer to such question,—only the grim facts, that one brother more had "gone over to the majority," and that the living minority got on very comfortably without him. Comfortably? Ay, truly; for in the very letter that brought the news I was begged to spend the approaching Fast-Day in Foxden, just as if nothing had happened. The season, so I was assured, was unusually advanced, and already the flavor of spring was perceptible in the air; moreover, the different congregations in town were to unite in services at the Orthodox Church, and, by extraordinary favor, one of the Colonel's Boston correspondents, no less a man than the distinguished Dr. Burge, was to preach the sermon.

A noble specimen of our New-England clergy was this Dr. Burge. He held the old creed-formulas through which Wilson and Mather declared their faith, yet warmed them into ruddy life by whatever fire the last transcendental Prometheus or Comte-devoted scientist filched from aërial or material heaven. A good diner-out, a good visitor among the poor. His parishioners supplied him with a wood-fire, a saddle-horse, and, it was maliciously said, a boxing-master; and he, on his part,—so ran the idle rumor of the street,—covenanted never to call upon them for cod-liver oil, Bourbon whiskey, or a tour to Europe. In his majestic presence there was a total impression sanative to body and soul. The full powers of manner and tone, of pause and emphasis, were at his command. He would rise in a shingled meeting-house as effective as choir, organ, and sacerdotal vestments in full cathedral-service. I was glad to learn that this stalwart servant of the Word would be at Foxden. He had formerly been well acquainted with the Reverend Charles Clifton, late pastor of a church in that place. He might deal wisely with the evil intelligence, or, possibly, the infatuated egotism, which controlled that unfortunate man. Dr. Burge would possess his soul in calmness in presence of the singular epidemic which was then running through Foxden, as it had previously run through, and run out of, other river-towns.

And now it has come in my way to speak of that strange murmuring of phantoms and their attendant seers, psychometers, and dactylomancers, which in these latter days has revived among us. And what I may have to say about what is called Spiritualism will reflect actual observations. I do not forget that to the advocacy of the "New Dispensation" are devoted many men of earnestness and a few of ability. It is possible that the facts they build upon may render mine exceptional and unimportant. What is here set down is but a trifling contribution to that mass of human testimony and human opinion from which the truth must be finally elicited.

Mr. Stellato had been celestially commissioned to Barnum the spirits in their Foxden exhibitions. Two years previously this gentleman was to be seen at the head of a fanatical and tumultuary offshoot from a cause the most humane and noble. He had done whatever his slender abilities permitted to bring into discredit large-hearted and devoted men and women whom history will honorably remember as New-England Reformers. But to lead anything on a large scale, without a continual winding-up by his companion, the fibrous Mrs. Romulus, was beyond the crassitude of Stellato's pursy nature. Now it had come to pass that this acidulated lady, essaying fresh flurries of progression, discovering higher passional affinities and new duties of demolition, proving that in Church and State every brick was loose and every timber rotten, testifying ever to the existence of a certain harmonial mortar by which the rubbish of a demolished civilization could be rebuilt into unexceptionable forms,—it happened that this woman, having towered for one proud moment at the very apex of her mission, slipped suddenly into the Romish communion, and was no more seen of men. Stellato, perceiving that the peculiar machinery be had been taught to manage was now out of repair and impracticable, looked about for some new invention whereby to gain a livelihood from the credulity of his neighbors. "The spirits," then at the height of their profit and renown, were adapted to his purpose. A blank and vacant mind was freely offered to any power of earth or air which would condescend to enter and possess it. And so Mr. Stellato, with his three parts knavery and two parts delusion, became a popular and successful ghost-monger.

The parsonage had been closed since Charles Clifton terminated his connection with the parish two years before. The newest lights of the Liberal persuasion, fledglings from divinity-schools, youths of every possible variety of creed and no creed, had by turns occupied the vacant pulpit. The Gospel vibrated at all points between the interpretations of Calvin and Strauss. The congregation grew more and more critical, and could agree upon no candidate for settlement. They demanded the respectability of belief with the showy talents of skepticism,—an impossible combination, at least for a parish which offered only eight hundred dollars and a decrepit house. At length Colonel Prowley took a pew in the Orthodox Church;—it was a temporary arrangement, he said, to be terminated whenever a settled minister should be provided for the First Parish.

The Reverend Charles Clifton seldom left the rooms which he had taken in a farmer's family on the outskirts of the town. We have seen how this man had once believed that Providence had called him to an exceptional and brilliant destiny. The total renouncement of what once glowed as a mission requires a sturdy nature and plenty of active work. Clifton possessed an exceeding susceptibility of nervous organization; he was full of subtile intimations of what was passing in the minds of other men, and at times seemed to have a strange power of controlling them. The deep passion for metaphysical knowledge, which in his youth had been kindled, was stilled, but never overcome. Wifeless, childless, he was put under no bonds to struggle with the world. He knew the coldness of the church in which he had been ordained to minister,—the hard and dreary lives of those whom he had undertaken to illumine. But he made the fatal mistake—inexcusable, it would seem, in a man of his liberal nurture—of supposing that this world's evil was owing to the absence of right opinion, and not of right feeling. It is to be feared that it was not principle, but only a paroxysm of cowardice, which caused Clifton to bury Vannelle's legacy in the Mather Safe. At all events, the minister found himself unable to dismiss a certain thin and impalpable fantasy which lingered behind that ponderous speculation of an all-embracing philosophy. For the past two years he had fitfully sought, or rather persuaded himself that he sought, some clue through the sad labyrinth of his fate. He had indulged in the most morbid conditions of his physical organism; there was neither steadiness in his purpose nor firmness in his action. He yearned for that proximity to hidden things, which, if not forbidden to all men, yet is dangerous to most men. At length he succeeded in freeing his soul from the weight of conscious intellectual life which had become too heavy for it to bear. And while the Foxden people were wondering about the occupation of a late pastor in one of their churches, and inquiring of each other whether he would again speak before them, their gossiping solicitude was suddenly set at rest. Printed show-bills were posted about the streets: "Grand Festival of Spiritualists at the Town Hall." "The Reverend Charles Clifton will speak"—a line of largest type gloated upon the scandal—"IN A TRANCE-STATE."

"I really ought to apologize," said Colonel Prowley, upon opening the hall-door for my admittance, on the afternoon of the second Wednesday in April, and this after repeated summons had been sounded by the brazen knocker,—"I ought to apologize for keeping you here so long; but there has been so much knocking about the house of late, and our cook and housemaid having turned out to be such excellent mediums, taking just as much interest in their circle down-stairs as we do in ours in the parlor, and then Mrs. Colfodder being so positive that it was either Sir Joseph Barley or Roger Williams,—though I am sure neither of them ever knocked half so satisfactorily before, and besides"–

"My dear Sir," interrupted I, "no excuse is necessary. I have seen enough of 'the spirits' to know how they put aside all conventionalities. I should have accompanied Dr. Burge to the hotel, had I anticipated disturbing the circle which, I infer, is at present in session."

"You would have grieved me very much by doing so," rejoined the kind old gentleman. "Dr. Burge dines with me to-morrow, and I confess—not yet calling myself a convert to these miracles which are now vouchsafed in Foxden—it would not be amiss to rid my premises of the amiable magicians congregated in my parlor before a minister were invited to enter. But a layman, as I take it, might witness these thaumaturgical matters without scandal,—nay, perchance you may help me to that wholesome credence in their reality which my celestial visitants so unceasingly demand."

Colonel Prowley was in the state of mind not unusual to many well-meaning, unoccupied people, when this modern necromancy was thrust upon them by those pecuniarily or socially interested in its advocacy. The upheaval to the air of that dark inward nature which is ever working in us,—the startling proof of that loudly proclaimed, faintly realized truth, that this mind, so pervading every fibre of the body, is yet separate in its essence,—the novel gratification of the petty vanities and petty questionings which beset undecided men,—what wonder that persons not accustomed to sound analysis of evidence should be beguiled by these subtilest adaptations to their conditions, and hold dalliance with the feeble shades that imposture or enthusiasm vended about the towns? Historical personages—a nerveless mimicry of the conventional stage-representation of them—stalked the Colonel's parlor. Departed friends, Indians à discrétion, local celebrities, Deacon Golly, who in the year '90 took the ten first shares in the Wrexford Turnpike, the very Pelatiah Brimble from whom "Brimble's Corner" had taken its name, the identical Timson forever immortal in "Timson's Common,"—these defunct worthies were audibly, visibly, or tangibly present, pecking at great subjects in ghostly feebleness, swimming in Tupperic dilutions of cheapest wisdom, and finally inducing in their patrons strange derangements of mind and body.

The circle, which was very select, consisted of three highly susceptible ladies and Stellato as medium-in-chief. Miss Turligood, a sort of Oroveso to the Druidical chorus, was a muscular spinster, fierce and forty, sporting steel spectacles, a frizette of the most scrupulous honesty, and a towering comb which formed what the landscape-gardeners call "an object" in the distance. Next this commanding lady, with fat hands sprawled upon the table, sat Mrs. Colfodder, widow, according to the flesh, of a respectable Foxden grocer. By later spiritual communications, however, it appeared that matters stood very differently; for no sooner had the departed Colfodder looked about him a little in the world to come than he proceeded to contract marriage with Queen Elizabeth of England, thereby leaving his mortal relict quite free to receive the addresses of the late Lord Byron, whose proposals were of the most honorable as well as amatory character. Miss Branly, by far the most pleasing of the lady-patronesses, was a fragile, stove-dried mantua-maker,—and, truly, it seemed something like poetic justice to recompense her depressed existence with the satisfactions of a material heaven full of marryings and givings in marriage.

"Will Sir Joseph tip for us again?" inquired Miss Turligood, with her eyes fixed upon a crack in the mahogany table. "Will he? Will he not? Will he?"

Sir Joseph vouchsafed no answer.

"Hark! wasn't that a rap?" cried Stellato, in a husky whisper.

Here every one pricked an ear towards the table.

"Doctor Franklin, is that you?"

"The Doctor promised to be present to give a scientific and philosophical view of these communications," parenthesized the interrogator.

"Doctor Franklin, is that you?"

A faint creaking is audible.

"Byron's sign, as I'm a living woman!" ejaculated the Widow Colfodder.

"Her spiritual partner and guardian-angel," explained Miss Turligood,—and this for my satisfaction as the last-comer.

Direct examination by the widow:—

"Have you brought your patent lyre here to-night?"

For the enlightenment of the company:—

"He played the lyre so beautiful on earth, that when he got to the spheres a committee gave him a golden one, with all the modern improvements."

Question concerning the lyre repeated. A mysterious rubbing interpreted as an affirmative reply.

"Have you brought Pocahontas with you? (she 'most always comes with him)—and if so, can she kiss me to-night?"

The table is exceedingly doubtful.

"Could she kiss Colonel Prowley, or even pull his hair a little?"

No certainty of either.

"Can she kiss Miss Turligood?"

The table is satisfied that it couldn't be done.

"Let me try her," urged Stellato, with the confidence of an expert; then in seductive tones,—

"Couldn't Pocahontas kiss Miss Branly, if all the lights were put out?"

Pocahontas thought it highly probable that she could.

Here some interesting badgering. Miss Branly declined being kissed in the dark. Miss Turligood thought it would be very satisfactory, if she would, and couldn't see why any one should object to it. She (Miss Turligood) would willingly be kissed in the dark, or in the light, in furtherance of scientific investigation.

Stellato suggested a compromise.

"Might not the kissing be done through a medium?"

At first the table thought it couldn't, but afterwards relented, and thought it might.

"Would Pocahontas appoint that medium?"

She would.

"Should the alphabet be called?"

It should not.

"Would the table tip towards the medium indicated?"

It could not be done.

"Should somebody call over the names of all mediums present, and would the table tip at the right one?"

Ah, that was it!

"I suppose you and I have no share in this Gift Enterprise," whispered Colonel Prowley.

"Order! order!" shouted Miss Turligood, glancing in our direction with great severity. "This general conversation cannot be permitted. We are about to have a most interesting manifestation.—Pocahontas, do you wish me to call over the names?"

Pocahontas did not object.

"Very well, then, you will tip when I come to the name of the medium through whom you consent to kiss Miss Sarah Branly?"

Pocahontas certainly would.

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