VI. HOAXES
CHAPTER XXXI
THE TWENTY-SEVENTH STREET GHOST. – SPIRITS ON THE RAMPAGE
In classing the ghost excitement that agitated our good people to such an extent some two years ago among the “humbugs” of the age, I must, at the outset, remind my readers that there was no little accumulation of what is termed “respectable” testimony, as to the reality of his ghostship in Twenty-seventh street.
One fine Sunday morning, in the early part of 1863, my friends of the “Sunday Mercury” astonished their many thousands of patrons with an account that had been brought to them of a fearful spectre that had made its appearance in one of the best houses in Twenty-seventh Street. The narrative was detailed with circumstantial accuracy, and yet with an apparent discreet reserve, that gave the finishing touch of delightful mystery to the story.
The circumstances, as set forth in the opening letter (for many others followed) were briefly these: – A highly respectable family residing on Twenty-seventh Street, one of our handsome up-town thoroughfares, became aware, toward the close of the year 1862, that something extraordinary was taking place in their house, then one of the best in the neighborhood. Sundry mutterings and whisperings began to be heard among the servants employed about the domicile, and, after a little while it became almost impossible to induce them to remain there for love or money. The visitors of the family soon began to notice that their calls, which formerly were so welcome, particularly among the young people of the establishment, seemed to give embarrassment, and that the smiles that greeted them, as early as seven in the evening gradually gave place to uneasy gestures, and, finally to positive hints at the lateness of the hour, or the fatigue of their host by nine o’clock.
The head of the family was a plain, matter-of-fact old gentleman, by no means likely to give way to any superstitious terrors – one of your hard-headed business men who pooh-poohed demons, hobgoblins, and all other kinds of spirits, except the purest Santa Cruz and genuine old Otard; and he fell into a great rage, when upon his repeated gruff demands for an explanation, he was delicately informed that his parlor was “haunted.” He vowed that somebody wanted to drive him from the house; that there was a conspiracy afoot among the women to get him still higher up town, and into a bigger brown-stone front, and refused to believe one word of the ghost-story. At length, one day, while sitting in his “growlery,” as the ladies called it, in the lower story, his attention was aroused by a clatter on the stairs, and looking out into the entry he saw a party of carpenters and painters who had been employed upon the parlor-floor, beating a precipitate retreat toward the front door.
“Stop! – stop! you infernal fools! What’s all this hullabaloo about?” shouted the old gentleman.
No reply – no halt upon the part of the mechanics, but away they went down the steps and along the street, as though Satan himself, or Moseby the guerrilla, was at their heels. They were pursued and ordered back, but absolutely refused to come, swearing that they had seen the Evil One, in propria persona; and threats, persuasions, and bribes alike proved vain to induce them to return. This made the matter look serious, and a family-council was held forthwith. It wouldn’t do to let matters go on in this way, and something must be thought of as a remedy. It was in this half-solemn and half-tragic conclave that the pater-familias was at last put in possession of the mysterious occurrences that had been disturbing the peace of his domestic hearth.
A ghost had been repeatedly seen in his best drawing-room! – a genuine, undeniable, unmitigated ghost!
The spectre was described by the female members of the family as making his appearance at all hours, chiefly, however in the evening, of course. Now the good old orthodox idea of a ghost is, of a very long, cadaverous, ghastly personage, of either sex, appearing in white draperies, with uplifted finger, and attended or preceded by sepulchral sounds – whist! hush! and sometimes the rattling of casements and the jingling of chains. A bluish glare and a strong smell of brimstone seldom failed to enhance the horror of the scene. This ghost, however, came it seems, in more ordinary guise, but none the less terrible for his natural style of approach and costume. He was usually seen in the front parlor, which was on the second story and faced the street. There he would be found seated in a chair near the fire place, his attire the garb of a carman or “carter” and hence the name “Carter’s Ghost” afterward frequently applied to him. There he would sit entirely unmoved by the approach of living denizens of the house, who, at first, would suppose that he was some drunken or insane intruder, and only discover their mistake as they drew near, and saw the fire-light shining through him, and notice the glare of his frightful eyes, which threatened all comers in a most unearthly way. Such was the purport of the first sketch that appeared in the “Sunday Mercury,” stated so distinctly and impressively that the effect could not fail to be tremendous among our sensational public. To help the matter, another brief notice, to the same effect, appeared in the Sunday issue of a leading journal on the same morning. The news dealers and street-carriers caught up the novelty instanter, and before noon not a copy of the “Sunday Mercury” could be bought in any direction. The country issue of the “Sunday Mercury” had still a larger sale.
On Sunday morning, every sheet in town made some allusion to the Ghost, and many even went so far as to give the very (supposed) number of the house favored with his visitations. The result of this enterprising guess was ludicrous enough, bordering a little, too, upon the serious. Indignant house-holders rushed down to the “Sunday Mercury” office with the most amusing wrath, threatening and denouncing the astonished publishers with all sorts of legal action for their presumed trespass, when in reality, their paper had designated no place or person at all. But the grandest demonstration of popular excitement was revealed in Twenty-seventh street itself. Before noon a considerable portion of the thoroughfare below Sixth Avenue was blocked up with a dense mass of people of all ages, sizes, sexes, and nationalities, who had come “to see the Ghost.” A liquor store or two, near by, drove a splendid “spiritual” business; and by evening “the fun” grew so “fast and furious” that a whole squad of police had to be employed to keep the side-walks and even the carriage-way clear. The “Ghost” was shouted for to make a speech, like any other new celebrity, and old ladies and gentlemen peering out of upper-story windows were saluted with playful tokens of regard, such as turnips, eggs of ancient date, and other things too numerous to mention, from the crowd. Nor was the throng composed entirely of Gothamites. The surrounding country sent in its contingent. They came on foot, on horseback, in wagons, and arrayed in all the costumes known about these parts, since the days of Rip Van Winkle. Cruikshanks would have made a fortune from his easy sketches of only a few figures in the scene. And thus the concourse continued for days together, arriving at early morn and staying there in the street until “dewy eve.”
As a matter of course, there were various explanations of the story propounded by various people – all wondrously wise in their own conceit. Some would have it that “the Ghost” was got up by some of the neighbors, who wished, in this manner, to drive away disreputable occupants; others insisted that it was the revenge of an ousted tenant, etc., etc. Everybody offered his own theory, and, as is usual, in such cases, nobody was exactly right.
Meanwhile, the “Sunday Mercury” continued its publications of the further progress of the “mystery,” from week to week, for a space of nearly two months, until the whole country seemed to have gone ghost-mad. Apparitions and goblins dire were seen in Washington, Rochester, Albany, Montreal, and other cities.
The spiritualists took it up and began to discuss “the Carter Ghost” with the utmost zeal. One startling individual – a physician and a philosopher – emerged from his professional shell into full-fledged glory, as the greatest canard of all, and published revelations of his own intermediate intercourse with the terrific “Carter.” In every nook and corner of the land, tremendous posters, in white and yellow, broke out upon the walls and windows of news-depots, with capitals a foot long, and exclamation-points like drumsticks, announcing fresh installments of the “Ghost” story, and it was a regular fight between go-ahead vendors who should get the next batch of horrors in advance of his rivals.
Nor was the effect abroad the least feature of this stupendous “sell.” The English, French, and German press translated some of the articles in epitome, and wrote grave commentaries thereon. The stage soon caught the blaze; and Professor Pepper, at the Royal Polytechnic Institute, in London, invented a most ingenious device for producing ghosts which should walk about upon the stage in such a perfectly-astounding manner as to throw poor Hamlet’s father and the evil genius of Brutus quite into the “shade.” “Pepper’s Ghost” soon crossed the Atlantic, and all our theatres were speedily alive with nocturnal apparitions. The only real ghosts, however – four in number – came out at the Museum, in an appropriate drama, which had an immense run – “all for twenty-five cents,” or only six and a quarter cents per ghost!
But I must not forget to say that, really, the details given in the “Sunday Mercury” were well calculated to lead captive a large class of minds prone to luxuriate in the marvelous when well mixed with plausible reasoning. The most circumstantial accounts were given of sundry “gifted young ladies,” “grave and learned professors,” “reliable gentlemen” – where are those not found? – “lonely watchers,” and others, who had sought interviews with the “ghost,” to their own great enlightenment, indeed, but, likewise, complete discomfiture. Pistols were fired at him, pianos played and songs sung for him, and, finally, his daguerreotype taken on prepared metallic plates set upright in the haunted room. One shrewd artist brought out an “exact photographic likeness” of the distinguished stranger on cartes de visite, and made immense sales. The apparitions, too, multiplied. An old man, a woman, and a child made their appearance in the house of wonders, and, at last, a gory head with distended eyeballs, swimming in a sea of blood, upon a platter – like that of Holofernes – capped the climax.
Certain wiseacres here began to see political allusions in the Ghost, and many actually took the whole affair to be a cunningly devised political satire upon this or that party, according as their sympathies swayed them.
It would have been a remarkable portion of “this strange, eventful history,” of course, if “Barnum” could have escaped the accusation of being its progenitor.
I was continually beset, and frequently, when more than usually busy, thoroughly annoyed by the innuendoes of my visitors, that I was the father of “the Ghost.”
“Come, now, Mr. Barnum – this is going a little too far!” some good old dame or grandfather would say to me. “You oughtn’t to scare people in this way. These ghosts are ugly customers!”
“My dear Sir,” or “Madam,” I would say, as the case might be, “I do assure you I know nothing whatever about the Ghost” – and as for “spirits,” you know I never touch them, and have been preaching against them nearly all my life.”
“Well! well! you will have the last turn,” they’d retort, as they edged away; “but you needn’t tell us. We guess we’ve found the ghost.”
Now, all I can add about this strange hallucination is, that those who came to me to see the original “Carter,” really saw the “Elephant.”
The wonderful apparition disappeared, at length, as suddenly as he had come. The “Bull’s-Eye Brigade,” as the squad of police put on duty to watch the neighborhood, for various reasons, was termed, hung to their work, and flashed the light of their lanterns into the faces of lonely couples, for some time afterward; but quiet, at length, settled down over all: and it has been it seems, reserved for my pen to record briefly the history of “The Twenty-seventh street Ghost.”
CHAPTER XXXII
THE MOON-HOAX
The most stupendous scientific imposition upon the public that the generation with which we are numbered has known, was the so-called “Moon-Hoax,” published in the columns of the “New York Sun,” in the months of August and September, 1835. The sensation created by this immense imposture, not only throughout the United States, but in every part of the civilized world, and the consummate ability with which it was written, will render it interesting so long as our language shall endure; and, indeed, astronomical science has actually been indebted to it for many most valuable hints – a circumstance that gives the production a still higher claim to immortality.
At the period when the wonderful “yarn” to which I allude first appeared, the science of astronomy was engaging particular attention, and all works on the subject were eagerly bought up and studied by immense masses of people. The real discoveries of the younger Herschel, whose fame seemed destined to eclipse that of the elder sage of the same name, and the eloquent startling works of Dr. Dick, which the Harpers were republishing, in popular form, from the English edition, did much to increase and keep up this peculiar mania of the time, until the whole community at last were literally occupied with but little else than “star-gazing.” Dick’s works on “The Sidereal Heavens,” “Celestial Scenery,” “The improvement of Society,” etc., were read with the utmost avidity by rich and poor, old and young, in season and out of season. They were quoted in the parlor, at the table, on the promenade, at church, and even in the bedroom, until it absolutely seemed as though the whole community had “Dick” upon the brain. To the highly educated and imaginative portion of our good Gothamite population, the Doctor’s glowing periods, full of the grandest speculations as to the starry worlds around us, their wondrous magnificence and ever-varying aspects of beauty and happiness were inexpressibly fascinating. The author’s well-reasoned conjectures as to the majesty and beauty of their landscapes, the fertility and diversity of their soil, and the exalted intelligence and comeliness of their inhabitants, found hosts of believers; and nothing else formed the staple of conversation, until the beaux and belles, and dealers in small talk generally, began to grumble, and openly express their wishes that the Dickens had Doctor Dick and all his works.
It was at the very height of the furor above mentioned, that one morning the readers of the “Sun” – at that time only twenty-five hundred in number – were thrilled with the announcement in its columns of certain “Great Astronomical Discoveries Lately Made by Sir John Herschel, LL.D., F.R.S. etc., at the Cape of Good Hope,” purporting to be a republication from a Supplement to the Edinburgh Journal of Science. The heading of the article was striking enough, yet was far from conveying any adequate idea of its contents. When the latter became known, the excitement went beyond all bounds, and grew until the “Sun” office was positively besieged with crowds of people of the very first class, vehemently applying for copies of the issue containing the wonderful details.
As the pamphlet form in which the narrative was subsequently published is now out of print, and a copy can hardly be had in the country, I will recall a few passages from a rare edition, for the gratification of my friends who have never seen the original. Indeed, the whole story is altogether too good to be lost; and it is a great pity that we can not have a handsome reprint of it given to the world from time to time. It is constantly in demand; and, during the year 1859, a single copy of sixty pages, sold at the auction of Mr. Haswell’s library, brought the sum of $3,75. In that same year, a correspondent, in Wisconsin, writing to the “Sunday Times” of this city, inquired where the book could be procured, and was answered that he could find it at the old bookstore, No. 85 Centre Street, if anywhere. Thus, after a search of many weeks, the Western bibliopole succeeded in obtaining a well-thumbed specimen of the precious work. Acting upon this chance suggestion, Mr. William Gowans, of this city, during the same year, brought out a very neat edition, in paper covers, illustrated with a view of the moon, as seen through Lord Rosse’s grand telescope, in 1856. But this, too, has all been sold; and the most indefatigable book-collector might find it difficult to purchase a single copy at the present time. I, therefore, render the inquiring reader no slight service in culling for him some of the flowers from this curious astronomical garden.
The opening of the narrative was in the highest Review style; and the majestic, yet subdued, dignity of its periods, at once claimed respectful attention; while its perfect candor, and its wealth of accurate scientific detail exacted the homage of belief from all but cross-grained and inexorable skeptics.
It commences thus:
“In this unusual addition to our Journal, we have the happiness to make known to the British public, and thence to the whole civilized world, recent discoveries in Astronomy, which will build an imperishable monument to the age in which we live, and confer upon the present generation of the human race a proud distinction through all future time. It has been poetically said, that the stars of heaven are the hereditary regalia of man, as the intellectual sovereign of the animal creation. He may now fold the Zodiac around him with a loftier consciousness of his mental superiority,” etc., etc.
The writer then eloquently descanted upon the sublime achievement by which man pierced the bounds that hemmed him in, and with sensations of awe approached the revelations of his own genius in the far-off heavens, and with intense dramatic effect described the younger Herschel surpassing all that his father had ever attained; and by some stupendous apparatus about to unvail the remotest mysteries of the sidereal space, pausing for many hours ere the excess of his emotions would allow him to lift the vail from his own overwhelming success.
I must quote a line or two of this passage, for it capped the climax of public curiosity:
“Well might he pause! He was about to become the sole depository of wondrous secrets which had been hid from the eyes of all men that had lived since the birth of time. He was about to crown himself with a diadem of knowledge which would give him a conscious preëminence above every individual of his species who then lived or who had lived in the generations that are passed away. He paused ere he broke the seal of the casket that contained it.”
Was not this introduction enough to stimulate the wonder bump of all the star-gazers, until
“Each particular hair did stand on end,
Like quills upon the fretful porcupine?”
At all events, such was the effect, and it was impossible at first to supply the frantic demand, even of the city, not to mention the country readers.
I may very briefly sum up the outline of the discoveries alleged to have been made, in a few paragraphs, so as not to protract the suspense of my readers too long.
It was claimed that the “Edinburgh Journal” was indebted for its information to Doctor Andrew Grant – a savant of celebrity, who had, for very many years, been the scientific companion, first of the elder and subsequently of the younger Herschel, and had gone with the latter in September, 1834, to the Cape of Good Hope, whither he had been sent by the British Government, acting in conjunction with the Governments of France and Austria, to observe the transit of Mercury over the disc of the sun – an astronomical point of great importance to the lunar observations of longitude, and consequently to the navigation of the world. This transit was not calculated to occur before the 7th of November, 1835 (the year in which the hoax was printed;) but Sir John Herschel set out nearly a year in advance, for the purpose of thoroughly testing a new and stupendous telescope devised by himself under this peculiar inspiration, and infinitely surpassing anything of the kind ever before attempted by mortal man. It has been discovered by previous astronomers and among others, by Herschel’s illustrious father, that the sidereal object becomes dim in proportion as it is magnified, and that, beyond a certain limit, the magnifying power is consequently rendered almost useless. Thus, an impassable barrier seemed to lie in the way of future close observation, unless some means could be devised to illuminate the object to the eye. By intense research and the application of all recent improvements in optics, Sir John had succeeded in securing a beautiful and perfectly lighted image of the moon with a magnifying power that increased its apparent size in the heavens six thousand times. Dividing the distance of the moon from the earth, viz.: 240,000 miles, by six thousand, we we have forty miles as the distance at which she would then seem to be seen; and as the elder Herschel, with a magnifying power, only one thousand, had calculated that he could distinguish an object on the moon’s surface not more than 122 yards in diameter, it was clear that his son, with six times the power, could see an object there only twenty-two yards in diameter. But, for any further advance in power and light, the way seemed insuperably closed until a profound conversation with the great savant and optician, Sir David Brewster, led Herschel to suggest to the latter the idea of the readoption of the old fashioned telescopes, without tubes, which threw their images upon reflectors in a dark apartment, and then the illumination of these images by the intense hydro-oxygen light used in the ordinary illuminated microscope. At this suggestion, Brewster is represented by the veracious chronicler as leaping with enthusiasm from his chair, exclaiming in rapture to Herschel:
“Thou art the man!”
The suggestion, thus happily approved, was immediately acted upon, and a subscription, headed by that liberal patron of science, the Duke of Sussex, with £10,000, was backed by the reigning King of England with his royal word for any sum that might be needed to make up £70,000, the amount required. No time was lost; and, after one or two failures, in January 1833, the house of Hartley & Grant, at Dumbarton, succeeded in casting the huge object-glass of the new apparatus, measuring twenty-four feet (or six times that of the elder Herschel’s glass) in diameter; weighing 14,826 pounds, or nearly seven tons, after being polished, and possessing a magnifying power of 42,000 times! – a perfectly pure, spotless, achromatic lens, without a material bubble or flaw!
Of course, after so elaborate a description of so astounding a result as this, the “Edinburg Scientific Journal” (i. e., the writer in the “New York Sun”) could not avoid being equally precise in reference to subsequent details, and he proceeded to explain that Sir John Herschel and his amazing apparatus having been selected by the Board of Longitude to observe the transit of Mercury, the Cape of Good Hope was chosen because, upon the former expedition to Peru, acting in conjunction with one to Lapland, which was sent out for the same purpose in the eighteenth century, it had been noticed that the attraction of the mountainous regions deflected the plumb-line of the large instruments seven or eight seconds from the perpendicular, and, consequently, greatly impaired the enterprise. At the Cape, on the contrary, there was a magnificent table-land of vast expanse, where this difficulty could not occur. Accordingly, on the 4th of September, 1834, with a design to become perfectly familiar with the working of his new gigantic apparatus, and with the Southern Constellations, before the period of his observations of Mercury, Sir John Herschel sailed from London, accompanied by Doctor Grant (the supposed informant,) Lieutenant Drummond, of the Royal Engineers, F.R.A.S., and a large party of the best English workmen. On their arrival at the Cape, the apparatus was conveyed, in four days’ time, to the great elevated plain, thirty-five miles to the N.E. of Cape Town, on trains drawn by two relief-teams of oxen, eighteen to a team, the ascent aided by gangs of Dutch boors. For the details of the huge fabric in which the lens and its reflectors were set up, I must refer the curious reader to the pamphlet itself – not that the presence of the “Dutch boors” alarms me at all, since we have plenty of boors at home, and one gets used to them in the course of time, but because the elaborate scientific description of the structure would make most readers see “stars” in broad daylight before they get through.
I shall only go on to say that, by the 10th of January, everything was complete, even to the two pillars “one hundred and fifty feet high!” that sustained the lens. Operations then commenced forthwith, and so, too, did the “special wonder” of the readers. It is a matter of congratulation to mankind that the writer of the hoax, with an apology (Heaven save the mark!) spared us Herschel’s notes of “the Moon’s tropical, sidereal, and synodic revolutions,” and the “phenomena of the syzygies,” and proceeded at once to the pith of the subject. Here came in his grand stroke, informing the world of complete success in obtaining a distinct view of objects in the moon “fully equal to that which the unaided eye commands of terrestrial objects at the distance of a hundred yards, affirmatively settling the question whether the satellite be inhabited, and by what order of beings,” “firmly establishing a new theory of cometary phenomena,” etc., etc. This announcement alone was enough to take one’s breath away, but when the green marble shores of the Mare Nubium; the mountains shaped like pyramids, and of the purest and most dazzling crystalized, wine-colored amethyst, dotting green valleys skirted by “round-breasted hills;” summits of the purest vermilion fringed with arching cascades and buttresses of white marble glistening in the sun – when these began to be revealed, the delight of our Luna-tics knew no bounds – and the whole town went moon-mad! But even these immense pictures were surpassed by the “lunatic” animals discovered. First came the “herds of brown quadrupeds” very like a – no! not a whale, but a bison, and “with a tail resembling that of the bos grunniens” – the reader probably understands what kind of a “bos” that is, if he’s apprenticed to a theatre in midsummer with musicians on a strike; then a creature, which the hoax-man naïvely declared “would be classed on earth as a monster” – I rather think it would! – “of a bluish lead color, about the size of a goat, with a head and a beard like him, and a single horn, slightly inclined forward from, the perpendicular” – it is clear that if this goat was cut down to a single horn, other people were not! I could not but fully appreciate the exquisite distinction accorded by the writer to the female of this lunar animal – for she, while deprived of horn and beard, he explicitly tells us, “had a much larger tail!” When the astronomers put their fingers on the beard of this “beautiful” little creature (on the reflector, mind you!) it would skip away in high dudgeon, which, considering that 240,000 miles intervened, was something to show its delicacy of feeling.
Next in the procession of discovery, among other animals of less note, was presented “a quadruped with an amazingly long neck, head like a sheep, bearing two long spiral horns, white as polished ivory, and standing in perpendiculars parallel to each other. Its body was like that of a deer, but its forelegs were most disproportionately long, and its tail, which was very bushy and of a snowy whiteness, curled high over its rump and hung two or three feet by its side. Its colors were bright bay and white, brindled in patches, but of no regular form.” This is probably the animal known to us on earth, and particularly along the Mississippi River, as the “guyascutus,” to which I may particularly refer in a future article.
But all these beings faded into insignificance compared with the first sight of the genuine Lunatics, or men in the moon, “four feet high, covered, except in the face, with short, glossy, copper-colored hair,” and “with wings composed of a thin membrane, without hair, lying snugly upon their backs from the top of their shoulders to the calves of their legs,” “with faces of a yellowish flesh-color – a slight improvement on the large ourang-outang.” Complimentary for the Lunatics! But, says the chronicler, Lieutenant Drummond declared that “but for their long wings, they would look as well on a parade-ground as some of the cockney militia!” A little rough, my friend the reader will exclaim, for the aforesaid militia.
Of course, it is impossible, in a sketch like the present, to do more than give a glimpse of this rare combination of astronomical realities and the vagaries of mere fancy, and I must omit the Golden-fringed Mountains, the Vale of the Triads, with their splendid triangular temples, etc., but I positively cannot pass by the glowing mention of the inhabitants of this wonderful valley – a superior race of Lunatics, as beautiful and as happy as angels, “spread like eagles” on the grass, eating yellow gourds and red cucumbers, and played with by snow-white stags, with jet-black horns! The description here is positively delightful, and I even now remember my poignant sigh of regret when, at the conclusion, I read that these innocent and happy beings, although evidently “creatures of order and subordination,” and “very polite,” were seen indulging in amusements which would not be deemed “within the bounds of strict propriety” on this degenerate ball. The story wound up rather abruptly by referring the reader to an extended work on the subject by Herschel, which has not yet appeared.