As always, I tip my hat to you.
Samuel Clemens
September 3, 1897
Dear Father,
Frederic and I have arranged for the Clemenses to visit a psychic, a certain Mrs. Turner on Grosvenor Square, in order to obtain information about their daughter Susy’s situation in the afterlife. Stanley and I are planning to accompany them tomorrow afternoon, though I do wish that Stanley would remain behind, as he is somewhat skeptical about such things.
Good night, my dearest.
From Lady Stanley’s Journal, the Evening After the Séance at Mrs. Turner’s
WE ARRIVED AT MRS. TURNER’S around four. Her parlor was largely bare save for a circular table and some six or seven chairs, a cabinet containing crystal balls and some “star” stones from Tibet, and a nearly transparent screen made of rice paper, which stood on a Chinese lacquered frame against one of the walls, through which, it has been said (by my sister Eveleen, who has assisted Mrs. Turner on occasion), the faces of the departed have sometimes suddenly appeared, glowing. On the table itself was a slate board, some chalk, and some paper and pencils.
Mrs. Turner was a rather matter-of-fact sort of lady — from Kent, I believe. Around sixty, she wore an ordinary dress, her only spiritualist affectation a crystal that hung off a leather cord around her neck. When our party walked in, she could not have been more welcoming, and she seemed, in fact, quite flattered to meet the famous couple. Since Frederic and I were well known in such circles as believers but were not direct participants, she allowed us to sit off in a corner to observe. But a problem arose with Stanley, whose “energies” put Mrs. Turner off.
At least she was forthright about it: “Sir, with all due respect, I must ask you to wait outside; yours is such a powerful presence that you may confuse the communications.” Which is to say that she sensed immediately Stanley’s skepticism. And so, to his discontent, he left, advising us that he would wait to hear news of the outcome at home. (I was quite relieved.) However, another skeptical subject was on hand — Mr. Clemens himself, who, having dabbled with Livy (so she once told me) in spiritualist communications at the Lily Dale colony in upstate New York, remained unconvinced that there was anything to this practice. (The irony, I should say, was that they had often taken Susy to spiritualist healers to cure problems with her throat and had perhaps relied upon them a bit too much; despite my beliefs, I always went to doctors when I felt unwell.) Clemens and his wife, while courteous about the whole business, were sheepish at first and, as Mrs. Turner instructed them, took their place around the table somewhat reluctantly — I think with a little embarrassment, which is a normal thing.
“Have you something that belonged to the person you wish to contact?” she asked.
Livy did — one of her daughter’s brooches. This she passed to the medium. Mrs. Turner then instructed Mr. and Mrs. Clemens, who were sitting across from her, to join hands and close their eyes and concentrate on the object as a means to open the channels of communication. She then pressed the brooch against her heart, then held it against her forehead for several minutes, then set it down on the table before her. For some several minutes more she said nothing, her face in a grimace of fierce concentration. Though she had asked them to remain still, Samuel shifted in his seat several times during the twenty-minute or so lull. Once, he turned quickly toward me and winked; however quietly he had done so, and though her eyes were closed, Mrs. Turner noticed it and whispered, “Be still, sir, or I will end this now.” Another twenty minutes passed. A great silence prevailed — not a sound from the outside world penetrated the heavy drapes over the windows. Since it was September — and a warm one, I should add — the room became stifling, nearly unbearable. However, after another twenty-minute interval, the temperature in the room became noticeably cooler and a slight scent of strawberries wafted into the air. The atmosphere changed, without a doubt, and once this had taken place, Mrs. Turner, who had been still as a statue, with her eyes still closed, began to scramble about the table for her writing implements. Taking both chalk and pencil in hand, she began to scribble various words down on both the slate board and the papers. Coming out of her trance, she sat back in her chair and exhaled deeply, as if exhausted. At first, when she looked about, it seemed that she did not know where she was.
But she gathered herself and, instructing Samuel and Livy to open their eyes, began her interpretation of what she had received. On the slate board she had written, in wildly scripted letters, one word: “Train,” which in her confusion she had spelled “Twwain,” as if an infant had written it. Beneath that were two letters, P and W. And on the paper she had scribbled other words—“Mama,” “My book,” and the letters P-P. The rest, as often happens, consisted of indecipherable bits of script.
“Well, then,” she cheerfully said, “open your eyes to the revelation that your loved one is thriving.” Then, without so much as a pause: “Without being able to ascertain everything, I can tell you with confidence, Mr. and Mrs. Clemens, that your daughter Susy was in this very room, having been conducted through me.”
“You know her name?” gasped Livy.
“Of course,” said Mrs. Turner. “I read the newspapers. But what matters most are the other communications.”
Then she said: “Does this first word, ‘Train,’ have any relevance to you?”
They conferred. “Well, yes,” said Livy, somewhat hopefully. “We last saw our daughter waving good-bye to us from the Elmira train station, some sixteen months ago.”
Livy bowed her head and did not look up for some time.
“And the letters P and W—have these any meaning?”
“No,” Clemens said. “Nothing.”
“And ‘My book’—what do you make of that?”
“Well,” said Samuel, “she was the most gifted writer of the family, really.”
“Was she writing a book at her end?”
“She’d already written one, as an adolescent, about our family.”
“Ah,” said Mrs. Turner. Then: “But ‘Mama,’ what does that bring to mind, Mrs. Clemens?”
“Her last word,” said Livy. “She spoke of me, then she died.”
And Livy began to weep in Clemens’s arms, gasping so deeply and with so many convulsions of her slight body that I, looking at Frederic and thinking that it had been a mistake to bring them there, despaired: The purpose of contacting the spirit world was not to conjure past grief but to give hope. But then, to my relief, Livy calmed down and awaited the rest of Mrs. Turner’s questions.
Mrs. Turner, holding up the slate board, then asked about the letters P-P.
“And these initials, have they a meaning for you?”
Neither Livy nor Samuel could arrive at any answer, though Samuel, slightly peeved, said: “They can mean anything.”
“You may say so,” said Mrs. Turner, “but such received things do have meaning. Does anything come to your minds?”