Enigmatic Medium

HEYDAY OF A WIZARD --Jean Burton--Knopf ($2.50).

In the 1850s spiritualism swept the U.S. eastern seaboard like a fog. It seemed, said one flabbergasted convert, "as though the spirit world, having at last hit upon a means of communicating with ours, could not get enough of it." Mediums sprang to fame, set the ether vibrating with spirit music, spirit painting, voices, lights, icy currents of air, luminous faces, words written in fire. "A whole mine of mysticism hatching beneath the skepticism of the 19th Century," said the shrewd French Diarists Edmond and Jules Goncourt.

Jean Burton, who has made eccentrics her specialty (Elisabet Ney, TIME, April 5, 1943; Sir Richard Burton's Wife, TIME, June 23, 1941), has written a lucid, witty biography of the most successful, most enigmatic of these 19th-Century mediums. Daniel Dunglass Home was born in a small Highland village. His father was the illegitimate son of the tenth Earl of Home. His mother specialized in prognosticating the deaths of her best friends. In 1840 the Home family emigrated to the U.S., leaving Daniel in the care of his aunt, Mary Cook. When he was nine, Daniel and Mrs. Cook went to the U.S. too, settled at Greenville, Conn. The older Daniel grew, the more mediumistic he became. When the family sat down to breakfast, the furniture began to scuttle about. A Baptist minister, called in by Mrs. Cook to exorcise the spirits, could hardly make himself heard above the din of mysterious rappings. "So you've brought the devil to my house, have you?" screamed Mrs. Cook, hurling a chair at her nephew. When he was 18 she kicked him out of the house, threw his Sunday suit after him.

Young Home "had no profession. He never did a day's work. He became simply, on a lifelong, international, and really magnificent scale, the man who came to dinner." Always ready to help the children with their lessons or admire a housewife's new quilt pattern, he was taken in by families all over New England. He repaid hospitality liberally by dispensing "spirit prescriptions" to the ailing and smelling out long-lost relatives and title deeds.

Telekinesis and Pseudopods. At 20, Daniel Home was the U.S.'s star medium. He had only to enter a room for the furniture to quiver expectantly. "Pillars of cloud appeared in doorways and spirit forms lounged near windows ... if [the audience] glanced over their shoulders, they might catch an ottoman in the act of pouncing. . . . Pianos playfully wedged old ladies against the walls . . . hassocks stood up and tapped out messages [once the spirits ordered beer for Mr. Home] . . . folding doors swung unnervingly open and shut." To his brilliant repertory of telekinesis (the "science" of moving ob jects without touching them) young Home added the summoning of "pseudopods" (spiritual arms and hands which calmly handed plates and played the piano).

Unlike most mediums, Home liked to work with the lights on. "Where there is darkness," he explained gravely, "there is the possibility of imposture." "Humbugging!" cried crusty Poet Robert Browning, when Home visited England. But Browning's wife, Poetess Elizabeth Barrett, was bowled over when a wreath of clematis flew through the air and landed on her head. Husband Robert turned pale with rage, later threatened to kick Home downstairs. Said the wizard suavely, Robert had hoped the wreath would fall on him.

Nobelman, Crowned Heads. In England Home made his most important conquest. In 1870, sober, brilliant William Crookes, Britain's famed Nobel Prize winner, who discovered cathode rays and invented the Crookes electrical tube, sat in on Home's seances with an array of instruments--electromagnets, glass and wire cages, self-registering indexes of variations in weight. Crookes placed an accordion in a wire cage, held Home's hands in his own. Soon the accordion began "floating about inside the cage, playing runs and chords." Then Home summoned a "beautifully formed" pseudopod, which Crookes seized and examined ("It was warm and lifelike, grasping my [hand] with the firm pressure of an old friend") until it melted away. Crookes also watched Home rise smoothly off the floor, and hover, while the scientist futilely searched the air for wires. Finally Crookes witnessed Home's most spectacular act:

"Mr. Home . . . went to the fire, and after stirring [it] with his hand, took out a red-hot piece nearly as big as an orange. . . . Holding it up [in his hand] he said: 'Is not that a beautiful large bit, William?' 'Pray do not hesitate to mention me,' concluded Crookes, 'as one of the firmest believers in you.'"

Home went on to conquer the court of Napoleon III. When he marched into the royal salon, the crystal chandeliers tinkled musically. A royal pseudopod appeared with a pencil, signed itself "Napoleon." When Empress Eugenie asked leave to kiss the hand to which she and her husband "owed so much," the pseudopod graciously raised itself to her lips. Meanwhile tables covered with glass and plates sprang into the air; a silver bell was "snatched" from the hand of the Countess of Montebello and "transported" to General Espinasse.

Home became one of the most famous men in Europe. A semipermanent house guest at the palace of Czar Alexander II of Russia, he married the late Czar's goddaughter, Sacha de Kroll. French Novelist Alexandre Dumas was best man; Alexis Tolstoy, author of Boris Godounoff, stood sponsor. The Brownings watched this progress with a skeptical eye. Wrote Elizabeth Barrett reflectively to her sister: "Think of the conjugal furniture floating about the room at night, Henrietta . . . extremely disturbing." "This dung ball," spat her enraged husband.

Mummery or Miracle? Many of the most talented minds of his day were shaken by Home's extraordinary performances. Professional magicians declared themselves utterly incapable of imitating his acts. The clergy hardly knew whether to praise or blame him. For years rationally minded critics had ridiculed religious belief in miracles. Now famous intellectuals were recklessly propagating the idea of "a great spiritual power . . . omnipotent as the law of specific gravity . . . mighty, vast, untamable."

When he was 38, Home quietly retired. He had always refused a fee for his seances. He took his pay in jewels, clothes, fur coats, etc. Attended by his second wife, his secretary and a host of admirers, Home moved regally from spa to spa, leaning elegantly on a cane. He died of consumption at Auteuil, France, in 1886, aged 53. Nobody had succeeded in proving him a fraud. Enigmatic Mr. Home never admitted he was one.

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