Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T08:13:04.555Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

“MISS X,” TELEPATHY, AND AFFECT AT FIN DE SIÈCLE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 May 2018

Susan Zieger*
Affiliation:
University of California, Riverside

Extract

In his book Apparitions and Thought-Transference: An Examination of the Evidence for Telepathy (1895), Frank Podmore relates what might at first seem a humdrum occurrence of settling into bedtime reading. The diary he has transcribed, of a woman he calls D, records on January 6th, “Tried several books . . . finally took to ‘Villette.’” But D’s choice was not completely autonomous. She was clearly influenced by her friend, “X.” As Podmore wrote, “From Miss X's diary it appears that she willed D to read The Professor,” which he notes, portentously, was “also by Charlotte Brontë.” X got luckier – or honed her skills – a few weeks later, when D recorded “Sonnets by E.B.B. 10:30 p.m.” and “In Miss X's diary, written at about 10 p.m., appears the entry, ‘Sonnets viii-ix., E.B.B.’” Assessing the records, Podmore found X's influence over D's literary taste to be “presumably telepathic” (122–23). Although the phenomenon was sensational, the circumstances surrounding it were decidedly mundane, ranging from bedtime reading to hearing X's piano-playing at a distance of miles, and meeting specific people at certain times. At a second glance, the phenomenon remains humdrum. Gauri Viswanathan has described how the institutionalization of Theosophy created reality effects that routinized its mysticism, rendering it ordinary (7). Similarly, though psychical research studied the numinous, its institutions ensconced it in bureaucracy, making it mundane. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century in Britain, the oddly interesting-yet-boring phenomenon of thought-reading became a cultural activity that ranged between scientific research, domestic pastime, and popular entertainment. Could people read each other's minds? If so, how was it done? Thought-reading arose to compete with Spiritualism, the practice of contacting the dead through séances. Its most mysterious public persona, and one of the more intriguing historical figures of the period, was Podmore's aficionado of Charlotte Brontë and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the presumed telepath known as Miss X.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

WORKS CITED

Altholz, Josef L.Anonymity and Editorial Responsibility in Religious Journalism.” Victorian Periodicals Review 24.4 (1991): 180–86.Google Scholar
Baylen, Joseph O.W. T. Stead's Borderland: A Quarterly Review and Index of Psychic Phenomena, 1893–1897.” Victorian Periodicals Newsletter 4 (1969): 3035.Google Scholar
Beard, George. “The Physiology of Mind-Reading.” Popular Science Monthly (Feb. 1877): 459–73.Google Scholar
Berlant, Lauren. The Female Complaint: The Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American Culture. Durham: Duke UP, 2008.Google Scholar
Bidston. “Miss X on ‘Hauntings’.” Light (Jan. 1898): 11–12.Google Scholar
Brake, Laurel. Subjugated Knowledges: Journalism, Gender and Literature in the Nineteenth Century. New York: New York UP, 1994.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
“A Correspondent” [J. Callendar Ross], “On the Trail of a Ghost” The Times (8 June 1897): 10.Google Scholar
Creery, A. M. “Notes on Thought-Reading.” Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research (1882–83): 43–46.Google Scholar
Crichton-Browne, James. A Doctor's After-Thoughts. London: Ernest Benn, 1932.Google Scholar
Crofton, Sarah. “‘Julia Says’: The Spirit-Writing and Editorial Mediumship of W. T. Stead.” 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century 16 (2013).Google Scholar
“The Crystal-Gazing Scene.” Borderland (Apr. 1894): 382–83.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. “Telepathy.” The Oxford Literary Review (1988): 43–60.Google Scholar
Easley, Alexis. First Person Anonymous: Women Writers and Victorian Print Media, 1830–1870. London: Routledge, 2004.Google Scholar
Easley, Alexis. Literary Celebrity, Gender, and Victorian Authorship, 1850–1914. Newark: U of Delaware P, 2013.Google Scholar
Eckley, Grace. “Borderland: On the Edge of the ‘Immense Ocean of Truth.’” Publishing Research Quarterly (1993): 34–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elmer, Jonathan. Reading at the Social Limit: Affect, Mass Culture, and Edgar Allan Poe. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1995.Google Scholar
Galvan, Jill. The Sympathetic Medium: Feminine Channeling, the Occult, and Communication Technologies, 1859–1919. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2010.Google Scholar
Goodrich-Freer, Ada [Miss X]. The Professional and Other Psychic Stories. London: Hurst and Blackett, 1900.Google Scholar
Goodrich-Freer, Ada. “Psychical Research and an Alleged ‘Haunted’ House.” The Nineteenth Century (Aug. 1897): 217–34.Google Scholar
Gray, F. Elizabeth. Women in Journalism at Fin De Siècle: Making a Name for Herself. London: Palgrave, 2012.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grimes, Hilary. The Late Victorian Gothic: Mental Science, the Uncanny, and Scenes of Writing. Farnham: Ashgate, 2011.Google Scholar
H. R., “On the Trail of a Ghost” The Times (12 June 1897): 11.Google Scholar
Hall, Trevor H. The Strange Story of Ada Goodrich Freer. London: Duckworth, 1968.Google Scholar
Hamilton, Trevor. Immortal Longings: F. W. H. Myers and the Victorian Search for Life after Death. Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2009.Google Scholar
Harper, Edith K. Stead the Man: Personal Reminiscences. London: W. Rider, 1918.Google Scholar
Harris, Neil. Humbug: The Art of P. T. Barnum. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1981.Google Scholar
Huxley, T.H. “Spiritualism Unmasked.” The Pall Mall Gazette (Jan. 1889).Google Scholar
“In Memoriam: [Mrs.] Adela Monica Goodrich-Freer Spoer (1870–1931).” Folklore (1930): 299–301.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
“A Late Guest,” “On the Trail of a Ghost” The Times (18 June 1897): 6.Google Scholar
L. E. B. “On the Trail of a Ghost.” The Times (14 June 1897): 6.Google Scholar
Ledger, Sally. The New Woman: Fiction and Feminism at Fin-de-Siècle. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1997.Google Scholar
Luckhurst, Roger. The Invention of Telepathy, 1870–1901. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Massumi, Brian. Politics of Affect. Cambridge: Polity, 2015.Google Scholar
Myers, Frederic W. H. “On the Trail of a Ghost” The Times (10 June 1897): 4.Google Scholar
Myers, Frederic W. H. The Subliminal Consciousness [1892]. New York: Arno P, 1976.Google Scholar
Natale, Simone. Supernatural Entertainments: Victorian Spiritualism and the Rise of Modern Media Culture. University Park: U of Pennsylvania P, 2016.Google Scholar
Ngai, Sianne. Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2012.Google Scholar
Oppenheim, Janet. The Other World: Spiritualism and Psychical Research in England, 1850–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1985.Google Scholar
Otis, Laura. Networking: Communicating with Bodies and Machines in the Nineteenth Century. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2001.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Owen, Alex. The Darkened Room: Women, Power, and Spiritualism in Late Victorian England. Chicago: Chicago UP, 1986.Google Scholar
Podmore, Frank. Apparitions and Thought-Transference: An Examination of the Evidence for Telepathy. London: Walter Scott, 1895.Google Scholar
Rogers, Edmund Dawson. “Paid Mediums.” Light (Jan. 1898): 6.Google Scholar
Royle, Nicholas. Telepathy and Literature: Essays on the Reading Mind. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991.Google Scholar
Sausman, Justin. “The Democratisation of the Spook: W. T. Stead and the Invention of Public Occultism.” W. T. Stead: Newspaper Revolutionary. Eds. Ed King, Roger Luckhurst, and Mussell, James. London: British Library, 2012. 49165.Google Scholar
Sedgwick, Eve. Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity. Durham: Duke UP, 2003.Google Scholar
“Spiritualism Outdone.” The New York Times (July 1874).Google Scholar
Stewart, Kathleen. Ordinary Affects. Durham: Duke UP, 2007.Google Scholar
Stead, W. T. [“Amanuensis”]. After Death: A Personal Narrative. New and Enlarged Edition of ‘Letters from Julia.’ New York: George H. Doran, 1914.Google Scholar
Stead, W. T. “Borderland: A New Quarterly Review and Index.” Review of Reviews (1893): 675–78.Google Scholar
Stead, W. T. “A Case of Auto-Telepathy.” Borderland 1.6 (Oct. 1894): 507.Google Scholar
Stead, W. T. “Robert Louis Stevenson: As Man of Dreams.” Borderland (2 Jan. 1895): 12–24.Google Scholar
Tenez-Le-Droit, “On the Trail of a Ghost.” The Times (10 June 1897): 4.Google Scholar
Thurschwell, Pamela. Literature, Technology, and Magical Thinking, 1880–1920. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tyndall, John. “Science and the Spirits.” Fragments of Science [1872]. 6th ed. New York: Appleton and Co., 1892. 444–52.Google Scholar
Viswanathan, Gauri. “The Ordinary Business of Occultism.” Critical Inquiry 27.1 (2000): 120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wiley, Barry. The Thought-Reader Craze: Victorian Science at the Enchanted Boundary Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2012.Google Scholar
X, “Folklore and Psychical Research.” Borderland (2 July 1895): 262–64.Google Scholar
X. “Hauntings” Light (18 Jan. 1898): 16–17.Google Scholar
X. “On the Trail of a Ghost.” The Times (9 June 1897): 6.Google Scholar
X. “On the Trail of a Ghost.” The Times (16 June 1897): 9.Google Scholar
X. “On the Trail of a Ghost: A Times Correspondence Edited by Another Guest.” Borderland (4 July 1897): 303–09.Google Scholar
X. “Recent Experiments in Crystal Vision.” Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research Volume 5 (1888–89) London: Trübner and Co., (1889): 486–546.Google Scholar
X. “A Record of Telepathic and Other Recent Experiences” Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research Volume 6 (1889–90) London: Trübner and Co., (1890): 358–97.Google Scholar
Zaretsky, Eli. Secrets of the Soul: A Social and Cultural History of Psychoanalysis. New York: Vintage, 2004.Google Scholar