FIRST ENCOUNTER WITH THE CHARISMATIC SPEAKER AND CLAIRVOYANT MEDIUM VIOLET PETRA

I first saw Violet Petra in 1874 at a private gathering in the home of her patron, a banker named Jacob Wilbur, at his well‑appointed town house near Washington Square in New York. She was very young, scarcely more than a girl, and her performance, while affecting, only hinted at what was to come. There was a rage for female trance speaking at that time and men of substance were combing the provinces for attractive young women to grace their parlors with prodigies of clairvoyance. Often these sessions began with a display of the speaker’s better than average knowledge of a subject; say, astronomy or Roman history, chosen at random by the assembled guests. It was understood that the speaker’s eloquence was attributable to the intercession of “spirit guides,” deceased know‑alls who spoke through her, without her will or even her consciousness. Some of these were historical figures – Ben Franklin was a popular resource, which struck me as appropriate, given his reputation for meddling in the affairs of others and his preference for the company of pretty women. Once the fad for guides got under way, American Indians were much in evidence, presumably chosen for their spiritual purity. These guides served as conduits to the immense, sunny, happy land where the spirits of the dead wandered aimlessly waiting for a summons from the loved ones they had left behind.

Violet Petra didn’t have a spirit guide at that first gathering in New York. She spoke for fifteen minutes on the subject of magnetic attraction and took a few questions written on scraps of paper and tossed into a hat. I remember one, an inquiry about the health of the questioner’s relative who had recently decamped for California. This traveler, described only as “my niece,” had insisted on making the trip to join her husband, though she knew herself to be in a delicate condition. Violet read out the question to the group in her soft, clear voice, keeping her gaze upon the paper. Her eyes closed, her lips parted, and she dropped her chin upon her breastbone, which caused her dark, waving hair to fall forward, curtaining her features. A long moment passed, long enough for the gentleman next to me to finger his pocket watch and the air to grow thick with anticipation. Then she lifted her face, brushing her hair back with one hand, and I saw the trademark oddity of her left eye, which bulged in its socket, the iris wandering off to one side.

This peculiarity of Violet Petra’s eye was to become part of her myth. According to the brief autobiographical account sometimes appended to her speaking programs, it was the result of her first contact with the spirit world, which occurred when she was nine years old in a meadow near her bucolic childhood home in upstate New York. It was a warm summer’s day, and she was busily gathering clover to weave into a crown. Her older sister, propped against a maple tree with her writing desk in her lap, was composing a letter. Little Violet could hear the crop‑crop of her pony grazing near the fence of his pasture. The sun brushed the world with a liquid light outlining each flower in gold, or so it seemed to her. She felt a kiss of cool air against her cheek, once, twice. Startled, she brought her hand to touch the spot. A voice close to her ear whispered her name, a voice she recognized as belonging to her grandmother, which was odd, as she knew her grandmother was far away, at her home in Philadelphia. But here she was, gently summoning her granddaughter by her pet name, which was Viva. The delighted child raised her eyes and for a moment looked into her beloved granny’s sweetly smiling face. In the next moment, with the speed and thwack of an arrow striking a target, a bolt of light sliced into her left eyeball. She was knocked backward by the blow, and sprawled unconscious upon the clover with her bouquet still clutched in her hand.

Some hours later she woke up in her own bed. Her mother rose from her chair nearby, laying her knitting on the side table as, with tremulous lips and moistened eye, she approached her daughter. “Where’s Granny?” lisped the winsome child. “I know she’s here. She called me.”

Late that night a telegram arrived from Philadelphia with the woeful news that Violet’s grandmother, a sprightly widow of independent means and spirit who until that day enjoyed excellent health, had collapsed on the sidewalk outside her town house. Before a doctor could be summoned to her aid, she passed from this life, expiring, speechless, in the arms of a stranger.

I’ve never been able to determine whether this story had some basis in the original trauma that resulted in the peculiarity of Violet’s eye, or was entirely fabricated to take advantage of a condition predating her first experience of spirit communication. Apart from the autobiographical sketch and another carefully documented article that has to do with her accurate prediction of a shipwreck during the war, Violet Petra’s history is a carefully guarded secret. She appeared in Boston, like Venus, full blown from some westerly town she refuses to name. She was, she claims, eighteen at that time, but she may have been younger. Like many of her coreligionists, she has a thorough knowledge of the Bible, which book she holds in contempt. She has a strong background and a keen interest in geology, suggesting to me that Petra is not her real name.

I knew nothing about her that evening in Mr. Wilbur’s lavishly furnished drawing room. When she raised her face to her attentive audience, the alteration in her features – for it wasn’t just the eye; her complexion was deathly pale and her lips dark and tumid – was so striking that I joined in the general intake of breath. She coughed, bringing two fingers to her sternum, as if opening a path from her heart to her throat. When she spoke her voice was deeper than her ordinary speaking voice. It wasn’t an entirely different voice; it wasn’t, as is sometimes the case with female mediums, a masculine voice, but it had a sonorous, humorless gravity, an irresistible authority that held her listeners in her sway.

“Bridget and her baby son have come over,” she said. “They are happy, they send love to Aunt Jane.” She paused while Aunt Jane, who had revealed neither her own name nor that of her niece, burst into tears. “I hear another name,” Violet continued. “It’s Jack. No, it’s Zachary, Bridget is watching over him. All will be well.”

Zachary, the sobbing Aunt Jane testified, was Bridget’s younger brother, a boy of ten who was very ill; in fact, it was feared, near death’s door, and under the doctor’s watchful care.

Violet closed her eyes, her head tilted to one side in an attitude of listening. The room grew silent, but for the subdued weeping of the questioner, as all attempted to hear what the medium was evidently no longer hearing. Perhaps thirty seconds passed before she fell back in her chair and opened her eyes, a smile of pure serenity lingering about her lips. “Have I been helpful?” she asked pleasantly, hopefully. Mr. Wilbur’s enchanted guests burst into wild applause.

How wild a guess was it that a pregnant girl on her way to California wouldn’t survive the trip? Or that a child sick with fever would recover? The odds are even, and an educated surmise tips the scale this way or that. In the case of the sick child, his death could be passed off as the result of his dead sister’s calling him home to her. Either way, Violet Petra’s prediction was pretty safe.

Of course, diligent journalist that I am, I spent the following morning tracking down the ailing Zachary, which wasn’t difficult, as the family was eager to give out the glad news that the boy’s fever had broken during the night, that he was cheerful, hungry, eager to be out of bed, and that his full recovery was confidently anticipated by all who loved him.

Date: 2015-02-16; view: 711