A Communion of Shadows by Rachel McBride Lindsey

Author:Rachel McBride Lindsey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
Published: 2017-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Figure 26. Front page, Harper’s Weekly, May 8, 1869. Modern Graphic History Library, Washington University in St. Louis. Used with permission.

After the hearing, William and Hannah returned to Boston, where they took up shop at 170 West Springfield Street. They slowly built a clientele, he leaning more on her until their separation several years later. They remained known in Spiritualist circles, but the popular press had lost interest. The trial had severely undercut Mumler’s trade—he had, after all, been the subject of a lengthy and well-documented fraud investigation—and had left him deeply in debt with little promise of remuneration. Within weeks of the resolution of his hearing, Hunter & Co. of Hinsdale, New Hampshire, placed an ad for “copies of the celebrated $10 Spiritual Photographs. Made by Mumler . . . The greatest wonder of the age,” now for the bargain price of “25 cents each, 3 for 50 cents, 8 for $1, or $10 for a hundred.”82 Photographs that had once commanded high prices were now being sold wholesale. More of his clients now were self-affirmed Spiritualists rather than a cross-section of the bereaved. And yet even as Mumler rather precipitously became a whispered memory, not unlike the shadowy outlines in his pictures, the field of spirit photography continued into the twentieth century and remained a subject of private interest and public scrutiny. By the 1890s, at least one photographer had figured out how to turn the probity of suspicion into cash. R. L. Green charged $2 for personal sittings (a small premium was added for sittings by mail) and $10 for “test sittings”—if they were unsuccessful, however, there would be “no charge.” “If the above conditions don’t suit you,” he taunted would-be investigators, “DON’T SIT, and save my time and yours.”83

Still, even as his notoriety evaporated into oddity, tales of William Mumler’s remarkable talents occasionally surfaced. In late 1871, Emma Hardinge Britten, one of the earliest chroniclers of modern Spiritualism, called upon Mumler. She had elected not to include him in her compendium of American Spiritualism a few years earlier but found herself “impelled” to visit him now “by the remarkable accounts of tests furnished to me by reliable persons who had obtained . . . proofs of their spirit friends’ presence and identity.” After an unsuccessful attempt—it bore “some resemblance to a dearly departed friend, [though] not sufficiently obvious to constitute a likeness”—Britten was delighted when Beethoven appeared at her side. She had not disclosed to Mumler or “anyone in America,” she explained, that prior to calling upon the photographer she had been “writing musical criticism” during a recent residence in England. “Whilst engaged in these writings,” she continued, “I have the best reasons for believing that the spirit of the noble German was frequently with me.” Upon receiving the likeness of the noble German, Britten offered her “unsought-for testimony” in defense of the “virulently assailed and publicly prosecuted” photographer to anyone who would listen to or, better, print her tale. She also touted the remarkable success of sittings by mail.

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