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Darwin Correspondence Project

To G. H. Darwin   2 [April 1875]1

6 Queen Anne St—

Friday 2d

My dear G.

I have thought you wd like to hear about the £100 seance yesterday, (April Fool day) at Hensleigh’s, & I have another motive for writing.2 As far as I could make out—one girl was put in dark room with hands tied & sealed—& tied & sealed to floor. The other girl was in the partly lighted room in a trance on the sofa & not tied, with all the spectators.— All that happened was that the spirits talked & chattered much, & Hope3 thinks that she saw lips of girl on sofa moving— There was only one appearance of a spirit & even Hensleigh admitted that it presented no distinct appearance: Hope (who believes in spirits) says it might have been merely a white handkerchief, waved through opening of curtain from the tied girl in the other room, as she was placed near the curtain. One of the spirits first asked who & how many were present, & made each one give his honour that he wd not try of seize hold of any spirit! No doubt this was done because there were unknown people present.— Now in the dark room with the tied girl a sort of stand was pulled down so it lay at & almost on the tied girl, & all the music books were scattered about. Now here comes curious point: after Hensleigh had gone away this morning I said to Fanny4 that I thought that the girl must have slipped out of her fastenings & then it came out that the seal by which she was fastened to the floor was broken!! & Hensleigh evidently thought this so unimportant that he never even alluded to it!— Now be sure you do not betray me, but I shall be very curious to hear if Sidgwick5 mentions this circumstance of the broken seal;; so get him to give you full details of the seance of April 1.—without alluding to what you have heard.—

Hensleigh made some point about the risk of girl having had her legs hurt by the prostrate stand, & Erasmus thinks this position of the stand was chosen to account for the broken seal.6

Good Heavens what rubbish the whole does seem to be.—

Yours affect | Ch. Darwin

Heaven knows whether you will be able to read or understand this—

Footnotes

The month and year are established by the reference to ‘April Fool day’ (1 April), and by the fact that CD visited his brother, Erasmus Alvey Darwin, at 6 Queen Anne Street, London, from 31 March to 5 April 1875 (Emma Darwin’s diary (DAR 242)). In 1875, 2 April was a Friday.
George had attended a seance hosted by Hensleigh Wedgwood in 1874 (see letter from T. H. Huxley, 27 January 1874). Wedgwood became spiritualist later in life and contributed articles to the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research; on Wedgwood’s and his family’s interest in spiritualism, see Wedgwood and Wedgwood 1980, pp. 305 and 324–5, and J. Browne 2002, pp. 404–6.
Hope Elizabeth Wedgwood.
Frances Emma Elizabeth Wedgwood.
CD had attended a seance hosted by Erasmus in 1874 (see letter to J. D. Hooker, 18 January [1874]).

Bibliography

Browne, Janet. 2002. Charles Darwin. The power of place. Volume II of a biography. London: Pimlico.

Wedgwood, Barbara and Wedgwood, Hensleigh. 1980. The Wedgwood circle, 1730–1897: four generations of a family and their friends. London: Studio Vista.

Summary

CD recounts events of the April-fool’s day séance at Hensleigh [Wedgwood]’s. Asks GHD to find out whether Sidgwick’s account of it agrees with what he has heard. "What rubbish the whole does seem to be!"

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-9911
From
Charles Robert Darwin
To
George Howard Darwin
Sent from
London, Queen Anne St, 6
Source of text
DAR 210.1: 45
Physical description
ALS 4pp

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 9911,” accessed on 28 March 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-9911.xml

Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 23

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