Page:Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Ingram, 5th ed.).djvu/165

Rh One of the most important victims to the new epidemic was Mrs. Browning. Her letters of this period are filled with allusions to Spiritualism, and its strangest development, "spirit-rappings."

To a woman of such strong common sense as Miss Mitford, her friend's belief in such things as these "manifestations," appeared almost incomprehensible. Writing in March of this year to Fields, the American publisher, she remarks, "Mrs. Browning is most curious about your rappings—of which, I suppose, you believe as much as I do of the Cock Lane ghost, whose doings they so much resemble." And then again, about a month later, she writes, "Only think of Mrs. Browning giving the most unlimited credence to every 'rapping' story which anybody can tell her." Some weeks subsequent she again writes, "Mrs. Browning believes in every spirit-rapping story—all—and tells me that Robert Owen has been converted by them to a belief in a future state"; whilst directly afterwards she reiterates, "Mrs. Browning is positively crazy about the spirit-rappings. She believes every story, European or American, and says our Emperor consults the mediums, which I disbelieve."

Elizabeth Browning's strong credence in Spiritualism is not more difficult to dissect and understand than is her belief in Louis Napoleon. The great charm in Spiritualism for her was that, if true, it proved there was a life hereafter. To a woman of her intense religious cast of thought, a woman who clung with the sternest tenacity to dogmas she so often had to hear refuted and contemned, this revelation was at once a weapon and a shield. She was only too eagerly ready to accept the new doctrine and, once accepted, she was, as is already manifest, not the woman to