July 1892 - The Emma Hardinge Britten Archive

172 Extracts from the Second Volume of " Ghostland."
offices I was introduced to a Mr. Laurie. It seems that
both the wife and daughter of this gentleman were
mediums, the young lady being the instrument of the
most stupendous movements of ponderable bodies ever
witnessed in this generation, the elder lady being a trance
and musical medium of such extraordinary capacity that
I have heard her, in a single evening, improvise the words
and music of five or six songs, rendered in as many
different voices, and those ranging from a deep baritone
to a shrill bird-like soprano.
But it is of the Government official's mediumship
principally that I am about to speak.
Mr. Laurie was what was called a drawing mediumthat
is to say, he drew involuntarily and so constantly, that
when not actually engaged in writing official documents
he felt impelled to draw on every piece of paper, card, or
plain surface that came within his reach. He himself,
assured me, in the social gathering at which I first met
him, that he had executed thousands of drawings, and
that, by an impulse he could not resist, and what was still
more grievous to the executant, his drawings-as he
himself declared-were without sense, meaning, beauty,
or interest. On my request to be favoured with a sight
of these remarkable productions, paper and pencils were
readily furnished. These being laid on a table before the
artist medium, he suddenly grasped the pencils, and using
.one after another with incredible speed, he drew a cup, a
plate, a knife, and at last covered a large sheet of paper
with what at first seemed to be a shapeless mass of
scratches, but all representing in different parts, at all
sorts of angles and kinds of order, vestiges of animal
limbs, heads, horns, or hoofs; parts of insects; scraps of
plants; a leaf here, a piece of fruit there; a horn sticking
out of a blossom, and here and there half-formed human
heads, hands, or limbs, large and small, but all massed