'Twixt two worlds : a narrative of the life and work of William Eglinton

CHAPTER XIII.
THE ROYAL FAMILY AND SPIRITUALISM.
PSYCHOGRAPHY EXPLAINED.
R. EGLINTON arrived in London on the 22nd April. The desire he had
long had to live apart from Spiritualism as a profession seemed now to
be on the point of being fulfilled. He entered into partnership with a
gentleman in a publishing firm, trading under the name of the Ross Publishing
Company ; but although exceedingly prosperous, the erratic conduct of
his partner drove him to a dissolution, in August, 1883, a great loser by
the transaction. In the meantime he gave occasional non-professional seances, some of the
finest being held at the residence of his friend, Mr. Dawson Rogers, at whose house, Mr. Eglinton
writes, " I first had the pleasure of meeting that estimable and remarkable medium, Mrs.
Everitt, whose sconces for the direct voice are the best I have ever known." After the dissolution
of partnership he was so much broken down by constant cares and worries that he
decided to accompany his friends Colonel and Mrs. Lean on a visit to Paris. They stayed
together in a pension in the Boulevard Haussmann, and in their pleasant society he soon
recovered his usual health. He gave one or two private seances to persons of distinction during
his stay in Paris, notably to the Princesse Lucien Buonaparte, Madame Olympe Odouard, Dr.
Goyard, and others, with excellent success. The return to town occurred in December, 1883,
after an absence of five or six weeks. It becoming known that he was about to give professional
seances in London again, not having done so, with but one or two exceptions, since
1878, he was flooded with requests for sittings, and one of the first was given at the residence
of Mr. Sam. Ward — the " Uncle Sam " of American fame, and uncle of clever F. Marion
Crawford, the author of "Mr. Isaacs," etc. It was at his house that he first had the pleasure of
meeting Mr. Sinnett, the Earl of Dunraven, and others. So much has been said about the
connection of the Royal family with Spiritualism, that it may not be out of place here to say,
concerning the many contradictory reports asserting that H.R.H. the late Duke of Albany took no
interest in " Mr. Eglinton's Spiritualism," that there is in existence a letter of invitation from a
well-known Spiritualist asking him to dinner to meet H.R.H., thus showing he did take an
interest in Mr. Eglinton's mediumship.
At a later period another "contradiction" from Sir Henry Ponsonby, the private secretary
of the Queen, went the round of the papers, whereupon I wrote as follows to the Pall Mall
Gazette, one of the journals in which the "denial" appeared:— "In your issue of Wednesday,
the 25th instant, you copied from the Adelaide Evening Journal a letter purporting to have