Heyday of a Wizard: Daniel Home, the Medium

Description

Daniel Dunglas Home was the most celebrated of nineteenth-century mediums and probably the only one whom no "exposer” really discredited. He took two continents by storm, did his eerie work by daylight and without ceremony, could make furniture rush dementedly around a room and his own body float on air. A figure of mystery, he was expelled from Rome and discussed in the House of Commons, and on the strength of his charm as well as his uncanny talents attracted the interest of personages as diverse as Napoleon III, Eugenie of France, Alexander II of Russia, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Drawing on a wealth of scholarly autobiographies, biographies, letters, narratives, memoirs, retrospections and reminiscences the author reconstructs Home's life through many eyes, the friendly as well as the name-calling duplicitous. The author neither debunks Home nor swallows him whole; she treats him as a psychological puzzle, a social phenomenon, and a dramatic theme. The result is a book which is at once an engaging study of strange phenomena, a piece of social comedy, and a fascinating biography. 1 Heyday of a Wizard 3 2 Origins of a Wizard 15 3 The Mystification of New England 36 4 English Summer 51 5 Florentine Nights 72 6 The Second Empire 90 7 The Wizard’s Bride 116 8 “Stranger than Fiction” 142 9 The Road from Rome 158 10 Mr. Sludge 178 11 Lyon v. Home 195 12 The Case of Lord Adare 213 13 Prussian Staff Headquarters, Versailles: 1870 236 14 Sunshine on the Riviera 255 Bibliography 271 Index follows page 275