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m * Kfritrr %P H XI III I ID
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We should do our utmost to encourage the Beautiful , for the Useful encourages itself .-GOBTHE
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A FLIGHT OF AUTHORESSES . There ! I knew it . I foresaw how it would be . Those women ! Not content with invading our manly domain of literature and lowering the price of articles , they have now assaulted us in our last stronghold—the London season . Town is full of authoresses . There has been a migration . From all the circumam bient towns of England they have flown to the great centre . " What is the consequence ? The consequence is , that lions are " a drug ;" everybody runs after Les Lionnes . Groups are formed round the charming Curber Bell , favouring her with endless remarks upon Jane Eyre , all the ugly men ( and how ugly some men are , poor devils !) giving themselves " Rochester" airs . Groups cluster round Fraulein Fanny Lewald , who is not only an authoress , but a German authoress , so that the noodles can practise their " German without a master " while sitting for their portraitspaint them she will , never doubt it ! Groups cluster round Geraldine Jewsbury , who plays with paradoxes , paints characters in a phrase , and spoils all my good stories by absorbing the listeners . Yah ! Groups also cluster round Mrs . Crowe ( I owe her a grudge , because , if her story had not been so . good , the Leader would have printed mine , and " Oh , the difference to me ! " ) , discussing , as a wag said , " The Nightshirt of Nature /' instead of hearing my views on the prehistoric period . But this is nothing . These women , and some few others , have claims . I don't object to their coming ; but they bring others . There ' s Mrs . Bugby Jones , there ' s Miss Bunion , there are twenty or thirty female horrors with inky thumbs and impossible toilettes , crowding our dinner tables and heating our rooms . Only last week I was deprived of an invitation to a house where the cuisine is on a scale of collossal grandeur , because Mrs . Bugby Jones was asked , and she cannot meet " that Vivian " who wrote the quiz upon her Triune Developments of the Spirit . Yesterday I could not join a picnic , because Miss Bunion was to be present . How fond I am of Miss Bunion : how I should like to be the shoe to squeeze her ! ( Parenthetically , that joke is not original , but derived from Anacreon , who wishes to be a sandal , that his mistress might trample on him . Kcu a-uv ^ ccXov yevoipriv ' ( aovov ito < riv vrdret / & « . *) If you wish to know the real secret of my affection for Miss Bunion I will tell you : she writes poetry herself , and because it doesn ' t sell , declares the age is prosaic . One day , hearing her give utterance to this opinion , I pointed to certain lines written in Harriet ' s album , without a signature , and asked her what she said to an age which could produce such verses as those ? She read them , and dogmatically pronounced them " trash . " The lines were written by me , and here they are , for the reader to judge : — TO . ' * Tear me , tear me from this sadness ! Kiss me , kiss me till I faint ! "Want of love and want of kisses Is my languishing complaint . " Passes Youth , and Manhood lingers ; Purposeless my life doth seem . Droop thy loving eyes upon me ; Love is life—and life a dream ! ** ' Eyes caress , and words will fondle ; Loving thoug hts will calm my brain . Press me , press me to thy bosom ! Kiss me into dreams again !" I dare say they are trash ; but I am sure no man ever asked her to droop her loving eyes upon him , or to press him to her—wadding ! Not he . But this is digressive . My protest is loud against the flight of authoresses . If women will write ( I don't see why they should—haven ' t they us ?) let them at least keep to their own towns and villages . Let them be imperial in Bungay ; give the law in Southampton ; startle York , and scandalize Lincoln , if they pluase ; but don ' t let them alight in flocks upon this hot and wearied city to the injury of us—the weaker sex—occupying our seats at the
festive board , eating our ices , drinking champagne that would have cooled us , Rpoiling the effect of our stories , taking the polish off our boots , the lustre from our whiskers , the glory from our names . Who will talk to Vivianthat agreeable causeur—when he or she can say a word to Curreii Bell , ? Who will invite Vivian when his place in the Opera-box can be filled by Fanny Lkwald or Zok Jkwshuhy ? Thai ' s where the grievance lies . These women first take the bread out of my mouth and then the opera box They spoil my market , and they spoil my " effects . " Is this fair ? Is it ladylike ? Is it endurable ? I could even bring an action for damages against them . On the strength of my reputation I bought a new instrument for curling my whiskers (( Jeraldini 5 Jkwshuky raves about them !) it has a
Greek name and cost me fifteen shillings ; I also bought a velvet dress-coat lined with white satin , —very stylish , I pledge you my word—and made every arrangement for getting myself up very expensively indeed . Well ; is this sacred right of vested interest—the right of capital observe ! to be outraged with impunity ? For if I am not invited , what becomes of my sunk capital ? But I grieve to say vested interests have little respect in this levelling age . Capital has lost its religion . Those vile Socialists have done it all . But I won ' t be angry : why should I ?
" I will take some savage woman , she shall rear my dusky race !" I will quit the haunts of fashionable frivolity , &c , and the arms of my divine savage , I will dream away the listless hours , and murmur to her kisses the resounding lines of that Epopae , which I carry within me , and will some day publish , if the women have not utterly ruined the market . And if they have , who cares ? I will burn my pen , return to my savage , and bamboo the youngsters ! Vivian .
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TWO MAGNETIC SEANCES . The theories of animal magnetism are to me not yet proven ; but I hold my mind in a perfect state of abeyance with respect to them . That very extraordinary facts are exhibited by mesmerists is undoubted ; but few philosophical minds will accept the facts as perfectly conclusive , if only for this reason , that Dr . Braid , of Manchester , produces the same effects , by making the patient mesmerize himself . Hence , if by looking at a key or a chimney pot , a person is thrown into the state of coma—and I have seen that at Dr . Braid ' s—it is quite clear that the state does not depend upon any fluid communicated by the passes of a mesmerist .
But it is not my province to argue the matter here . I wish to record two experiences of my own , and will confine myself to narrative . I had never doubted the general phenomena of mesmerism ; but I always doubted the higher phenomena of clairvoyance , and of the operation of the will . The ordinary facts of mesmerism are credible upon the testimony of trustworthy people , for they are only in addition to our previous knowledge—they are new facts , but that is all ; with clairvoyance the case is different : there the facts are not in addition , but in contradiction to all we know of vision and of
human powers ; the trustworthiness of a witness , therefore , would not consist in " respectability" general veracity , but in those combined with a keen sagacity and analytic power . The intellectual peculiarities here require scrutiny before the testimony is worth listening to . Believing in mesmeric facts without being satisfied as to the theories , I altogether disbelieved in clairvoyance . I had seen no mesmeric phenomena , but accepted them on the faith of others . Clairvoyance I was ready to accept if it were successful in my own case , and with my own conditions ; no second hand testimony had the slightest credit with me .
In this frame of mind I was invited by Dr . M . in Paris to attend a private seance , wherein I was " to be converted . " A celebrated clairvoyante was brought by her doctor , who luckily was a perfect stranger to me . I think it right to mention that the seance was strictly private in the physician ' s house , Rue Basse du Rempart , there being only the mesmerizer , his patient , Dr . M ., a friend , and myself . My friend went into the room , and after about twenty minutes returned to Dr . M . amazed at the revelations which had been made . " She told me all about myself ; described my house perfectly ; and described my wife . " I had no greater desire than to be convinced , and went into the room full of expectation . On the sofa was seated a sickly
looking girl with her eyes closed , chattering away with the utmost volubility . I was told to take her hand , and to ask her if she would travel with me . She consented . I asked her to go to England , and to accompany me to my house . She did so , and began describing it in that vague and general manner which would apply to nine hundred houses out of a thousand , but not to mine ; whenever I forced her to descend to details she was invariably ¦ w rong , wrong beyond possibility of mistake , and not only so , but falling into every trap that I chose for her . It is to be observed that , although 1 went there anxious to be convinced , I carried with me not only a natural fund of scepticism but also a distinct theory as to how the clairvoyante
proceeded , and how she succeeded in convincing others that she did see what she described : that theory was excessively simple , but every observer of human nature will at once recognize it as probable . It was that the knowledge yon have of the thing described enables you to Jill up the vague outline given by the clairvoyante . She gives you a general statement ; you make it particular . She describes a room , your memory furnishes the room . You are , moreover , so eager and so delighted to find the marvel , that you unconsciously play into her hands .
I rigidly abstained from doing this . I wanted to be convinced , no (; cheated . If she really described the tilings as they were , I would believe . Not a word , therefore , * did I utter which could in any way tend to undeceive her ; I suffered her to proceed in the belief that she was describing everything with minute accuracy , never helping her out of any difficulty , never replying to her guesses , never contradicting her when wrong—or rather never contradicting after the two first attempts . She said my house was on ihe right hand side , and I said " No . " "No , not the right , the left , " she said ;
and on entering the first room she said it was round . " No , " said I . " Not round , " she replied , " but square . " After this I thought proper not to contradict her ! I have spoken of certain traps laid for her . Let a word suffice to explain them . Although I refused to do what was expected of me , and unconsciously assist her to the very knowledge she pretended to give me , I did—
M * Kfritrr %P H Xi Iii I Id
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284 < & % t yLtSLtftt * [ Sa * UR » AY ,
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* Anne . od . 20 . Kai < rdv ^ x \ ov —Spalletti ex cod . notavit tlv o-dcvSatKov * Pauwius Kat ; Prof . Schweinkopf diHcrs from all editors , and proposes to road rrjy Porrvjv ( the boot—hence the French hotline ) for toj / erai / cta /\ ov , tiuly remarking that a sandal is only tied round the ankle , and cannot , therefore , be trampled on . The Germans are , certainly , profoundcr scholars than we !
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), June 15, 1850, page 284, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1842/page/20/
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