[Back to Chapter 5]



CHAPTER SIX

SPIRITUALISM AND THE NEW WORLD

[1870 - 1874]

Since Massey's remarriage in 1868, three daughters had been born.  Hesper Carmina Emilia on 9 May 1869, Maybyrn Adelaide on 30 March 1870, and Evelyn on 2 February 1871.  Financially more solvent at that time, he was able to employ a nursemaid as well as a housekeeper to ensure satisfactory provision for the family while he was away on his lecture tours.  These were now extended to the summer, as well as continuing through the winter months.  On Friday, 28 July 1871, a conversazione was held at St. George's Hall, Langham Place, to mark a farewell meeting and presentation in honour of a valiant crusader and Spiritualist speaker, Mrs Emma Hardinge Britten, who was leaving for a lecture tour in America.  The hall, seating some 900, was nearly filled, with Gerald Massey known as an experienced lecturer and now an avowed Spiritualist, taking the chair.  Representing the Spiritualists of England, Massey gave a general appreciative address on their behalf.[1]  In his own address, Massey referred to Spiritualistic phenomena in general, comparing the effects of orthodox belief with those of the Spiritualistic philosophy:

I find the mass of so-called religious people don't want to believe in the spirit-world save in the abstract or otherwise than as an article of their creed.  They accept a sort of belief in it, on authority—a grim necessity; it's best to believe, in case it does exist after all; but they give the lie to that belief, in their lives, and in presence of such facts as we place before them.  Our orthodox spiritual teachers have arrested and made permanent the passing figure, and permitted the eternal essence of the meaning to escape.  They have deified the symbol on earth instead of the God in heaven. They have taken hold of Christ by the dead hand and lost sight of the living Lord … [2]

    The address was enthusiastically received, and in a letter sent the following day from Marie Sinclair, the Countess de Pomar who was shortly to become Countess of Caithness, she hoped that the address would receive eventual publication.  The following year Massey did expand the address into a small book Concerning Spiritualism, published by James Burns.  Burns was a well known Spiritualist lecturer and publisher, based at 1 Wellington Road, Camberwell before he moved to his Spiritual Institution at 15 Southampton Row, in 1869.  He advertised phrenological classes, held receptions every Monday evening, and published the weekly Medium and Daybreak and monthly Human Nature.  A large ‘Progressive Library’ was available on the premises for the loan of books by subscription to members.  Massey became a frequent visitor to the establishment, where his 'breezy personality' diffused an atmosphere of energy whenever he called.  Concerning Spiritualism is stated in some biographical references as having been withdrawn by the author.  Although not withdrawn as a publication, many of the opinions to which Massey then subscribed were to change radically during the following ten to twelve years and he did not have it reprinted. (See fn 8.)  In the book he admitted having read very little Spiritualistic literature, save in the first instance William White's Swedenborg: His Life and Writings.  His conclusions were based purely on personal experience and were, so far as he knew, original.  Some Swedenborgian metaphysical ideas are inherent in the book, particularly the idea that all force, including life, is of spiritual origin.  But Massey was attempting to separate orthodox doctrinal theology from what he regarded as a reality that, he said, resulted deductively from observable Spiritualistic phenomena.  While accepting Darwin's theory of man's origin and believing that we have ascended physically from lower forms of creation, he considered the cause to be spiritual, and endeavoured to make this more easily understood by what he termed ‘plain speaking’.  The 'here and now' of eternity, which he stressed so often in his lectures, indicated his belief in the individual continuity of spiritual life:

The other world is something to be believed in so long as it is afar off, but to be doubted and rejected if it chance to draw near. It is distance that lends enchantment to their view. Many good people appear to think that we must wait until death before we can get at the spirit-world; as though we could only touch bottom by grave-digging! We are in spirit-world from birth, not merely after death; we are immortal now if ever, and must be dwellers in eternity, which is Here and Now, however we close our eyes to it, and be self-shut out of it … Our lost darlings have not gone off from us like an escape of gas, as so many seem to imagine … Here are our clergy asserting Sunday after Sunday, in the name of God, any number of things which any number of listeners do not believe, only they have heard them repeated till past all power of impinging - things which they themselves do not believe if they ever come to question their own souls. . . Spiritualism will also destroy that belief in the eternity of punishment …

    There had been considerable appreciation for Massey's address given at the conversazione the previous year.  Consequently he was invited to present a series of four lectures on Spiritualism at St. George's Hall, Langham Place, commencing in May, 1872 (each being reported in Medium & Daybreak).  The committee of invitation included Sir William Dunbar, Sir Charles Isham, Cromwell Varley FRS, William Crookes FRS, H. D. Jencken, Barrister, George Harris, Vice-President of the Anthropological Institute, Thomas Shorter, and William White the Swedenborg biographer.  Tennyson was sent details, but was unable to attend, writing to Massey on the 7 May:

My dear Mr Massey
If I were in or near London I would come & hear you myself; for I have read your little book more than once & got others to read it, and should like doubtless to hear your viva vox on the same topic … [3]

    Massey's first lecture on 12 May was on the facts of his own experiences together with various theories of the alleged phenomena.[4]  The two hour lecture was well received by a full hall, among whom was Professor Blackie, who briefly mentioned the lecture in a letter:

In the (Sunday) afternoon we heard Gerald Massey give the first of a series of lectures on Spiritualism, to a crowded audience, full of the most strange, odd, and inexplicable stories about the spirits that made revelations to that Fairy called his wife … [5]

    Following on his personal experiences of which he gave accounts during the lecture, Massey compared the theories of Serjeant Cox's ‘psychic force’ with Dr William Carpenter's ‘unconscious cerebration’, or unconscious muscular movement.  This latter had been promulgated in Carpenter's article on electrobiology and mesmerism, and Massey could accept neither of those theories.[6]  It had not been discovered at that time that some apparently paranormal physical phenomena unconnected with muscular action could be produced solely by the individual, or groups of individuals.  The daily press kept silent on the lecture, apart from the Globe which considered it facetiously amusing, and ended by saying:

Trashy ghost stories might have been all very well when Mr Massey wielded the pitchfork; but to hear them soberly delivered in terse, vigorous English, and with the racy, humorous good sense which is characteristic of his style, suggests the idea of a man of real intellectual power degenerated into a hopeless craze.[7]

    Massey's second lecture on 19 May was lengthily titled ‘Concerning a Spirit World revealed to the Natural World by means of Objective Manifestations; with a New Theory of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil’.  He commenced by mentioning the two theories of man's origin; one assumed that he was struck off perfect from the mint of creation, stamped with the image of God, the other that he was developed from the animal kingdom, and is gradually approximating the divine image.  Early man first became aware of a spiritual world and of man's fate after death by visible phenomenal demonstration in the form of spiritual apparitions.  He then went on to examine forms of worship showing that they were the result of objective experiences, not of metaphysical deductions.

    The third lecture on 26 May indicated the direction his views were taking him. In ‘The Birth, Life, Miracles, and Character of Jesus Christ Re-viewed from a Fresh Standpoint’, he said that the only position theologians were able to maintain was in trying to keep the rest of the world as ignorant as themselves.  They still threatened us with everlasting punishment if we did not believe.  Had they been present when Jesus performed his miracles, they would not have believed in them any more than they believe in spiritual manifestations today.  Christ's Messiahship, miracles, resurrection and divinity were mentioned in the lecture as being necessary to awaken humanity to the sense of immortal welfare, not to create immortal life in man, since it was already there.

    His concluding lecture the following Sunday to a moderately large audience, was ‘Christianity as hitherto interpreted; a Second Advent in Spiritualism’, in which he compared Spiritualistic beliefs with those of orthodox Christianity.  He considered that the Christian world had cultivated the greatest fear of death, which to it was like taking a step in the dark.  But with the assurance of immortality being a fact, the Spiritualist could walk through the valley of the shadow of death, and find that death was but a shadow of life's presence.  He could ask ‘Is this the bugbear that has frightened so many?’  For that series of lectures Massey received £25. 4s. (Medium & Daybreak, 7 June, 1872).

    Now almost completely dependent on lecturing for his living, he again issued a prospectus for the forthcoming winter season.  These nineteen lectures were the same as for the previous winter of 1871-72, including Pre-Raphaelitism, Tennyson, Burns, Shakespeare, Swedenborg, Lamb and Thomas Hood.  But he now included a special course of four, the lectures he had delivered recently, concerned more specifically with Spiritualism.  Prior to the London lectures he had many connections with Young Men's Christian Associations.  They considered his poetry particularly pious, and had been booking him on a regular basis for some seventy to eighty lectures during the winter months.  Following his avowal of Spiritualism he had offers of only seven.  Some fifteen years after publication of Concerning Spiritualism, his researches into Christian origins led him to admit that apart from his Spiritualistic concepts, the position which he had held at that time based partly on orthodox theological doctrine, had been incorrect.[8]  That statement, had it been made earlier, would certainly have severed completely all his links with the YMCA's.

    The amount of interest engendered in Spiritualism in the 1860s led to the whole subject being investigated by the secular London Dialectical Society, based then at 1, Adam Street, Adelphi, in the Strand.  This society was very prestigious and included Charles Bradlaugh among its founder members.  Its prospectus, issued around 1867, asserted that:

Freedom of speech and thought are, not less than personal freedom, the natural birthright of all mankind.  To refrain from uttering opinions because they are unpopular, betokens a certain amount of mental cowardice … In the London Dialectical Society, however, not only will no person suffer obloquy on account of any opinion he may entertain or express, but he will be encouraged to lay before his fellow-members the fullest exposition of his views …

    It carried on the tradition of the London Debating Society, commenced in 1834 by John Stuart Mill, the lectures being notable for cross examination of the speakers, allowed from the floor.  Such subjects as ‘Cremation’, ‘Chastity’, and ‘Marriage’ were debated, many of the lecturers, like Annie Besant and George Bernard Shaw, gaining fame over the years.[9]  In January 1869 the society resolved to appoint a committee under the presidency of Sir John Lubbock MP, to investigate the phenomena alleged to be Spiritual manifestations, and to report thereon.  They did not make it their brief to report on Spiritualism as a creed or philosophy.  The opinions of the press prior to the investigation were highly negative: that no such phenomena as alleged occurred at all; that the alleged phenomena were the result of imposture or delusion or both; that the phenomena that occurred were explicable by natural causes, and that Spiritualists as a body shrank from any investigation.[10]

    The thirty-six member committee commenced by inviting oral and written evidence, then divided themselves into six sub-committees, meeting at 4, Fitzroy Square, to investigate experimentally.  Numerous séances were held, with and without well-known mediums, many at private residences of committee members to preclude the possibility of pre-arranged mechanisms or contrivances.  Some were held with D. D. Home in the presence of Lord Lindsay and Lord Adare, together with society committee members.  Oral evidence was given by thirty-three people, including Lord Northwick, Cromwell Varley, Thomas Shorter, Lord Lindsay and D. D. Home, with written evidence supplied by some thirty persons, including Lord Lytton, Professor Tyndall, Alfred Russel Wallace and Camille Flammarion.  A letter from Dr William Carpenter dated December 24 1869 included a long extract from his theory of ‘Unconscious Cerebration.’  Gerald Massey's affidavit for the Lyon v. Home suit was cited, together with a testimony of Professor De Morgan.  Professor Huxley was invited to serve, but declined, saying that he had no time, and no interest in the subject.  Phenomena experienced by the subcommittees included varied sounds apparently proceeding from furniture, floors and walls, movement of heavy bodies without mechanical contrivance or adequate exertion of muscular force, and answers and communications regarding questions asked at the time.  Other phenomena given in evidence recorded levitation, the appearance of hands and human figures, red hot coals applied to hands and head without pain or scorching, and trance-speaking.

    After two years, the society produced its report in July, 1870.  They commented that they were almost wholly unsuccessful in obtaining evidence from those who attributed the phenomena to fraud or delusion.  Summarising the reports of the sub-committees, they concluded that the testimony of witnesses was supported by reports of the sub-committees, and there was absence of proof of imposture or delusion as regards a large portion of the phenomena.  The exceptional character of the phenomena was noted, as was the world-wide influence of a belief in supernatural origin, for which no philosophical explanation had been determined.  They considered it necessary therefore, to state their conviction that the subject was worthy of more serious attention and careful investigation than it had hitherto received.[11]

    Following publication of the report, the press were varied in their opinion.  Some made misquotations and misrepresentation, while others had a more courteous and tempered response than before the report was issued.  Even the American Catholic World went so far as to agree with the three hypotheses existing to account for the phenomena: unconscious cerebration expressing itself in unconscious muscular action, psychic force, and spirits.  But concerning the latter, it said, account had to be taken into the church notion of magic and direct diabolical interference.

    Distribution of the report, which contained press opinions, ensured that the inclusion of the subject in Massey's lecture tours would at least receive a more enquiring response.  Since 1858 he had been considering the possibility of an American tour, mentioning this at the time to James Fields, the senior partner of Ticknor and Fields of Boston who had published his poetical works, but this had been negated by his wife's illness.  Now, he began again to make more definite plans in this direction while continuing his tours throughout England and Scotland.  That winter he visited Durham, Barnard Castle, Bishop Auckland, Darlington and Halifax.  Returning to Barnard Castle for a further two lectures on his Spiritualistic theme, an attempt was made to get him out of town before completing his engagement.  However, due to an enthusiastic circle of friends, the pastor of the Free Christian Church, Joseph Lee, let him deliver his lecture from the pulpit:

“On the 6th and 7th instant Mr. Gerald Massey delivered two lectures, on Spiritualism to large and intelligent audiences at Barnard Castle; the subject was handled in a masterly style, orthodox theology was fought on its own ground, several ministers were there to hear it, and such was the artillery brought against the old creeds that the most independent thinkers declare that its foundations are terribly shaken; raving priests and foaming bigots raised such an uproar with the old cry, "the church is in danger;" and an attempt was made to get Mr. Massey out of the town before completing his engagement.  This his friends would not submit to, but the Free Christian Church was placed at his service, and a large audience listened to him with great interest for one hour and forty minutes.  The subject was, "The Birth, Life, and Death of Jesus," and again old orthodoxy fell in for a most fearful lashing; he set forth Jesus as an ever-living and spiritual presence which has given encouragement to free and independent thinkers.  A few séances have been held, and striking manifestations realised.  I would recommend all who wish to study this important subject to listen to Mr. Massey's lecture on the person of Jesus from a new standpoint.” (Medium and Daybreak 22 Nov. 1872.)

    The Reverend H. Kendall of Darlington commented despairingly that the churches seemed to be in low water at present, referring to Massey as a certain individual who had been lecturing last week in Darlington and other places on Spiritualism, and he was amused at that gentleman's curious statements and beliefs.[12]  Due to inclement weather and the proximity to Christmas, his Halifax lecture was poorly attended.  Additionally, the Spiritualists in that town were divided in opinion, and even got up a Sunday opposition meeting.[13]

    In Middlesbrough his lecture for the Philosophical Society was by contrast well attended, and received with repeated salvos of applause.  The local Gazette gave a favourable report, together with a leader giving fair comment on Spiritualism.  Strangely, as Massey was at that time a supporter of a number of Swedenborg's ideas that were presented in his Arcana Coelestia, it was reported that the Swedenborgians were arranging for a lecturer to visit Middlesbrough to offset Mr Massey's teachings.[14]  But Spiritualism was the sole reason for their refusal to accept Massey's ideas.  They considered that the spiritual experiences of Swedenborg between 1845-1849 might seem to countenance the séances of mediums.  A Swedenborgian later confirmed this view, stating that Swedenborg's ‘admission into the spiritual world, however, is no justification of admission by self-seeking, and the dangers of so doing Swedenborg points out.  Therefore the New Church is opposed to Modern Spiritualism.’[15]

    The fairly sedate internal progress of Spiritualism received rather unwelcome news in January 1872 which, fortunately for them, remained mostly confined within its own ranks.  Mrs Victoria Woodhull, a slim fiery American Spiritualist with firm religious visionary beliefs, had stated her open support for free love and the abolition of the marriage system.  Resolute in her opinions of female social reform, she had also strong political aspirations which gained her support from, among others, the National Women's Suffrage Association.  A correspondent to the Medium and Daybreak suggested that free love had a Biblical origin, when the Lord appointed Gabriel to infringe upon the marital rights of Joseph, and render the first-born of Mary an adulterous progeny.  Predictably, this assertion produced a lively response from readers of the paper.  Massey, who had not completely severed his roots of orthodoxy at that time, wrote:

That letter in your last number called the ‘Parentage of Jesus, and Freelove,’ must have given some of your readers a ‘scunner’.  To me it was like a cast-up gobbit of the gross nastiness that used to be dished by the Atheists …  What had it to do with Spiritualism? … The spirit of it was sensual; the intent was obscene; the language loathsome … a leering, tongue-lolling gust of carrion enjoyment …

    The editor tried to steer a middle course in defending his decision to publish.  Admitting that the act as narrated by the correspondent was unwarrantable, although an absurd myth, he considered that it was best to face and deal with the issues rather than behave like an ostrich.  To Massey's remark about the Atheists, he wrote, ‘Thank God for them!  Had it not been for their self-denying labours, where would have been the position of liberty of speech to-day?’[16]

    In the same period of 1872 Massey had obtained almost 100 subscribers that would be necessary to make his book on Shakespeare a viable proposition for reprinting in a limited edition.  One supplemental chapter was added, being essentially a refutation of criticism received from Mr Chasles, since his original publication.  In a letter he wondered how best to get his new edition before the public, saying, 'I sent one Copy only for review and that to the Athenæum and had it returned with the regret that they did not review 2nd Edns … ’[17]  However, James Burns arranged for a review in his journal Human Nature that, perhaps expectedly, gave favourable mention to Massey's vigour of mind, while at the same time he was ‘breathing a poet's warmth of feeling’ and ‘throwing a vivid light on the court-life in the days of Queen Elizabeth’.[18]

    Soon after publication, Massey's American agents wrote to inform him that tour plans had been finalised.  He completed his spring lecture tour and prepared to leave England in the autumn.

    The disunity between religion and science had become increasingly obvious since the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species in 1858, and his Descent of Man in 1871.  Attempts to reconcile the two apparent opposites were of particular interest to Americans following a tour made the previous year by Professor John Tyndall, scientist, natural philosopher and Superintendent of the Royal Institution.  It was anticipated that Massey, coming also from England, would develop the subject.  Prior to leaving, Massey suffered considerable apprehension, having risked his future finances on the tour being successful.  In addition, his wife was in the last stages of pregnancy, giving birth to Elsie on 13 November.  Departing from Liverpool on the s.s. Calabria on 23 September 1873, he arrived in New York anticipating that his first lectures would be in Boston.  However, due to a misunderstanding with his agent he found that he had been replaced for that course.  This compelled him to wait six weeks before proceeding to Boston, while the agent made hasty plans for some interim lectures in New York.

    Anxious to continue with and enlarge upon Tyndall's theme, most of the New York papers and journals prepared articles giving an account of Massey's life and earlier literary works.  But in spite of the publicity, he received no formal meeting of welcome as he had hoped.  In addition, he considered that the lecture bureau had failed him due to their interest in him being limited to ten per cent.  Consequently, he decided to make his own lecture arrangements for the rest of the tour, with the assistance of James Fields, the publisher, who would provide names to whom he could send circulars.[19]  In reply to the Golden Age, which had mentioned him as being a representative of the English Spiritualists, Massey stated that he no more represented that body here in America than he would represent when he returned home the latest uterine manifestation of Spiritualism—or phalliculture—which were the peculiar products of America.  He preferred to remain an outsider, representing only his own experience as a literary man who includes the subject in his lectures.  He referred to an article in the Galaxy Magazine for October 1866 which dismissed his book on Shakespeare's Sonnets by saying, ‘He declares, and even perhaps believes that every section in this ponderous and wearisome volume was directly revealed to him by the spirit of Shakspeare!’  ‘Unfortunately,’ Massey commented, ‘we are not going to get our work so easily done for us as that would imply!’[20]

On 4 October Whitelaw Reid, the proprietor and editor-in-chief of the New York Tribune, invited Massey to attend the first seasonal Saturday meeting of the literary Lotos Club, of which he was president. Charles Bradlaugh was also invited as a speaker, prior to his journey to Boston. Bradlaugh had left England for a lecturing tour on 6 September, two weeks earlier than Massey, also with some apprehension. In his case, this was due to an insulting notice by the London correspondent to the Boston Pilot, who had referred to him as:

A creature six feet high, twenty inches broad, and about twelve thousand feet of impudence. He keeps a den in a hole-in-the-wall here, dignified by the title of the ‘Hall of Science’, in which he holds forth Sunday after Sunday to a mob of ruffians whose sole hope after death is immediate annihilation …  The Pilot, if it can do nothing else, can warn our people from laying hands upon this uneducated ruffian.

This was added to by the Boston Advertiser, which said:

In England … practical politicians among the advanced liberal party avoid him as honest men avoid a felon, as virtuous women avoid a prostitute.[21]

 
    Massey, although not heralded by adverse comments, said he expected that he would, on account of his connection with Spiritualism, be the object within a few months of much obloquy at the hands of the American press, but he only asked for fair play.[22]  He did not suspect that a comment by Bradlaugh on an incident that occurred many years previously would also be remembered in some detail by a newspaper reporter in New York.

    Following his first lecture at the Steinway Hall on 3 October, Bradlaugh gave an interview which included ‘A Reminiscence of Gerald Massey’.  The reporter, who signed herself ‘Theo’ asked Bradlaugh if he and Massey had ever met.  Apart from the Lotos Club reception, Bradlaugh said he had not met with Massey since ‘That memorable night when you and I went to hear a lecture on Co-operation by a gentleman named Cooper.  Since then Gerald Massey rather fights shy of me.’  The reporter confirmed that she did remember the incident.  This ‘incident’ was then given with, apparently, some bias:

A gentleman named Walter Cooper, who was Manager of the Co-operative Tailors' Association introduced into the Society, in the capacity of clerk, a young man who was not a tailor, and therefore, not a member, at a stated salary.  This was a direct and flagrant violation of the rules and by-laws of the Association, which declared that no one but a member could fill any office in the concern.  The main body of tailors rebelled, and demanded the instant dismissal of Gerald Massey.  A war ensued, which ended in the discharge of one or two of the most efficient and active members of the Society by Walter Cooper, who, in some hocus-pocus way, got the sceptre of power into his own hands, and kept his favourite in office … It was while this furore was at its height, that Cooper advertised a lecture on ‘Co-operation’ at the Hall of Science, City Road, London; and Charles Bradlaugh, then a young man, almost unknown, who was intimate with the discharged tailors, was appointed to attend the lecture, and, at the close, put a few questions to the lecturer, while the others should be stationed in different parts of the hall, to rise, banquo-like, and confront him, to his dismay and final confusion, when his replies should warrant them in doing so.  Cooper was completely misled by Bradlaugh's youth and innocent appearance, though he showed considerable surprise and some embarrassment at the tendency of the questions put, and soon found that he was indeed stepping among hornets.  Gerald Massey, who was on the platform, with his new-made wife, came to the rescue of his superior, but only added fuel to the flames.  The excitement ran high, and noise predominated, and at one time there were fears of a general melee, in the midst of which Mrs Massey rushed to her husband, encircling him with her arms, and was finally borne from the hall in a swooning condition.  Cooper confounded!  Massey annihilated!  Bradlaugh triumphant! and the discharged avenged!  Oh! what a merry time we had going home from the Hall … [23] [Appendix B gives Massey's account of the Working Tailor's Association.]

    Massey's first lecture in New York was held in the Unity Chapel, 128th Street, Harlem, on 26 October.  'Why does not God kill the Devil?', although heavily laden with myth lore, was basically practical.  Still suffering from the effects of two colds, which he thought were due to the peculiar mode of ventilating his room at Delmonico's Hotel, Massey spoke with a slightly husky voice, with great rapidity and nervous energy.[24]  Making no attempt at oratory, he spoke directly and sincerely in presenting his convictions.  Why, he asked, if God is the superior being, does he permit the Evil One to upset his divine arrangements?  He had searched through the ancient mythologies to ferret out the authorship of this same Devil which theology insists on keeping alive as a main part of its machinery.  He demonstrated that much of what is accepted by mankind in general as ‘revelation’, is nothing more than inverted mythology.

    Following his second lecture in Association Hall the following day on ‘A Spirit World Revealed to the Natural World’, he was referred to as being earnest and sincere, with an enthusiastic temperament and original thought.  He proclaimed that Spiritualism as he understood it, not its vagaries or follies but its philosophy and facts, was a New World's gift that amply repaid all that America had ever received from the Old World.  Mentioning the opposition's cry of hallucination, ‘Blessings,’ he said, ‘upon that word; it constituted the sceptics whole book of revelation.’  He had no fear for Darwin's theory, comparing that with man's evolution of his spiritual nature.[25]  At Princeton, his intended visit was opposed by the faculty, who had heard of his opinions on the new theology.  In spite of this restraint the students arranged for him to lecture in the Methodist chapel on 20 November.  During his lecture on Charles Lamb, he deliberately made reference to the persecuting influence of the old theology and, on leaving, inscribed some verse to the professors on the subject, in a college album:

    From New York he went on to Philadelphia, giving a lecture on ‘Hood’, on 25 November at the Horticultural Hall.  As with his portrait of Lamb, he noted the lights and shadows of Hood's mental moods.  He contrasted his wit and pathos with his poetry and puns, even while living within the sight of death for years.[27]  Continuing via Buffalo, he delivered his lecture on the ‘Devil’ at the Mercantile Library Hall, St. Louis.  This was not appreciated by the editor of the St. Louis Central Baptist, who wrote with passion, ‘… the devil never would insult an intelligent audience with the stuff that passed for literature in Mercantile Library Hall last week.  He is too much of a gentleman.’[28]

    Massey's next venue was in Chicago.  As part of the ‘Star’ lecture course, he was booked at the Kingsbury Music Hall for 9 December.  Despite a considerable amount of advertising by his agents, his lecture on ‘Charles Lamb’ was attended by two-thirds of empty chairs—the equivalent amount of applause being given to an introduction by the Star orchestra.  After that preamble, Massey came in by a side entrance appearing unusually nervous, and immediately commenced his lecture.  The reporter did not consider Massey either handsome or to have an intellectual appearance, observing his thin moustache and side-whiskers, with hair parted in the middle.  The lecture itself was well appreciated, the critical reporter referring to Massey's considerable imitative ability and versatility of expression.  But he noted also the occasional omission of an aspirate, and pronunciation of ‘unctious’ for ‘unctuous’, twice.  He had a very rapid delivery which tended to puzzle the audience until they became attuned to it.  Also in the audience were ‘Theo’ and some of her friends, of whose presence Massey was probably aware and fearful they would make another disruption.  ‘Theo’ was Richard Carlile's youngest daughter, Theophilia.  Charles Bradlaugh had been friendly with Carlile's widow, her son and two daughters, whom he first met in 1848.  After the lecture when Massey was met in the lobby, he still appeared very nervous and indifferent.  ‘Theo’ referred to one person being present whom he barely acknowledged, as 'One who had assisted him in his early days' and ‘from whose house his first poems were published,—who had waited with the most delightful anticipations for his visit to Chicago … ’[29]

    The comments on Massey's elocution were reinforced in a lecture report on ‘Jesus’ which he gave at the West Side Opera House on 14 December.  He was again accused of being extremely rapid in speech and, in addition, making some comments which were too flippant.[30]  For his next lecture arranged by the Free Religious Society, General Israel Stiles, lawyer and anti-slavery orator, presided.  In his opening address, he referred to Massey as an enemy of opposition and wrong, and one of the distinguished visiting English lecturers among his countrymen Thackeray, Dickens and Tyndall.  During his lecture ‘Christ, a Medium’, Massey announced Christ as the greatest Spiritualist of all time, but pronounced his disbelief in the doctrine of the Trinity.  Even this comment was well received by the audience.  His second lecture the following day on ‘Why does not God kill the Devil?’ was advertised as free, and additional to an already prepared schedule.  The arrangements for this were made by the chairman of the Chicago Philosophical Society, the Reverend Hiram Washington Thomas.  Due to the unorthodoxy of the Chicago lectures, the Trustees of the Chicago Methodist Church who had let their building to the Society for that lecture, made a protest.  The executive committee of the Philosophical Society replied, saying that they recognised the Church's right and duty to protest against the improper use of the church property; but ‘In the case of Gerald Massey's lecture, we did not use our usual caution in ascertaining the character of it; and are equally free to say that, had we been aware of its character, we should have declined it.’[31]  Hiram Thomas was later tried for heresy in 1881, and accused then of bringing the liberal-minded Massey to Chicago.[32] Despite the strong reservations of the Philosophical Society, the editor of the Religio-Philosophical Journal was pleased with a personal meeting with Massey, in which Massey aroused his interest in spirit communion, and took uncompromising grounds concerning the status of the religious systems of the time.

    On arriving in Boston for his own organized series of lectures, he was greeted by his friends James and Annie Fields.  Feeling more at ease with the New Englanders, he was able to relax and make further friendly contacts.  The poet John Greenleaf Whittier appreciated Massey's humane idealism, the two of them meeting at Whittier's home at Amesbury, where Massey's poems remain in Whittier's study.  It is possible also, but not recorded, that he met Harney, who had moved to America in 1863 and was living then in Boston.

    Massey opened his series of four weekly lectures to the Music Hall Spiritualist Society, Boston on 4 January 1874.  Having had to alter his plans on his arrival in New York, he said in a letter to James Fields, ‘I have to begin as in New York with the despised Spiritualism in default of anything else.’[33]  Music Hall had a large capacity, and was the theatre where Queen Victoria's Prince Edward (Bertie) was welcomed with a music festival by some 1,200 school children during a tour in 1860.[34]

    Improved health and greater confidence showed in his first lecture ‘Why am I a Spiritualist?’ which was heartily appreciated, the Boston Post noting his clear, full voice, his fluently expressed ideas and eloquent delivery.  The Banner of Light of 10 January reported the lecture very adequately.  Henry Wilson, USA. Vice-President, the scientist Professor J. Buchanan and William Claflin, ex-Governor of Massachusetts were present for his second lecture, ‘An Inquiry Concerning a Spirit World … ’[35]  The third lecture on Jesus Christ was equally well received.  The fourth and last lecture, (with singing by a choice choir) on ‘Why Does not God Kill the Devil?’ had been commended previously by the Chicago Religio-Philosophical Journal as ‘replete with evidence of the mythological origin of the basis of all religions … ’ and ‘was one of the most masterly and exhaustive lectures ever delivered before a Chicago audience.’