The Reluctant Spiritualist: The Life of Maggie Fox

Journal of Parapsychology, The, Fall, 2005 by John Buescher

THE RELUCTANT SPIRITUALIST: THE LIFE OF MAGGIE Fox by Nancy Rubin Stuart. Orlando, FL: Harcourt, 2005. Pp. xiii 393. $25.00 (hardback). ISBN 0-15-101013-7.

In 1848, in the town of Hydesville, New York, not far from Rochester, the sounds of disembodied rappings were produced in the presence of Maggie and Katy Fox, and then of their older sister Leah. These sounds were promoted as having been made by spirits telegraphing communications to the living and did more than anything else to precipitate "modern Spiritualism" from the religious atmosphere of the time.

Recently three books have been published on the Fox sisters, suddenly filling in a gap of three decades since the last substantial biography of the Foxes appeared. Nancy Rubin Stuart's book is the latest, but the previous year saw the publication of Barbara Weisberg's Talking to the Dead: Kate and Maggie Fox and the Rise of Spiritualism and David Chapin's Exploring Other Worlds: Margaret Fox, Elisha Kent Kane, and the Antebellum Culture of Curiosity. All three appear to have been in production at the same time. None of them refers to the others.

The similarities between Stuart's book and Weisberg's are strong. The authors received help in their research from many of the same people and consulted many of the same sources. Each of these authors is a former television producer who felt drawn to one of the Fox sisters--in Stuart's case, to Maggie; in Weisberg's, to Katy. Nevertheless, each of the books portrays the Fox sisters and their relatives and friends in a different light. While Weisberg's book is focused on the entire Fox family and on the growth of spiritualism, Stuart's places Maggie Fox in the center and spends less time on the other members of the Fox family and on the larger history of spiritualism. In Stuart's book, Maggie (Margaretta) is the instigator of the rappings; in Weisberg's, it is Katy (Catherine). Stuart portrays Maggie as a tragic figure and has Katy as a clever but less sympathetic character. She describes the girls' mother, Margaret, as naive, soft, and permissive. The girls' father John, she says, was a shiftless drunkard who deserted the family after Leah's birth but then reformed himself into a humorless, teetotal Methodist, rejoined his family, and sired Maggie and Katy.

In Stuart's book, the girls' older sister Leah (Ann Leah) is a relentless, ambitious impresario of her younger sisters, careless of their welfare, responsible not only for turning them into puppets under her control but also for being the "leading force behind the rise of American spiritualism." For Stuart, Maggie's story as a spirit medium is that of her struggle for autonomy against her older sister and against her enthusiastic public.

The particular strength of Stuart's book over all others is her detailed portrayal of the relationship of Maggie to her suitor and (perhaps) husband, Arctic explorer Elisha Kane. For previous biographers, Kane was simply a cad who compromised Maggie. He never had the courage or perhaps even the inclination to marry her but led her on because of his thoughtless fascination with the wild mystery of her powers and his insouciant conviction, born out of his family's social status, that he would tame her as if she were a wild animal.

Stuart, however, analyzing the same letters between the two lovers that other biographers have used, sees irony, playfulness, and mutual regard. She suggests that Maggie and Elisha were equally matched in some sense, pointing to Maggie's letters in which she counters Kane's disapproval of her mediumship by listing some of the intellectuals and scientists who had come out in favor of spiritualism. Stuart's treatment of the lovers' relationship is complex and persuasive, making it easy to understand why Maggie would have fallen in love with Elisha, as well as why his death left her unreconciled to her future without him. Stuart's assessment of character and motive is more complex and consistent than that of previous biographers. She also ventures into considering Maggie's conversion to Catholicism and how this affected her spiritualist practices.

Stuart's book, however, sometimes moves out of its narrative of the Fox sisters' lives into a broader picture of spiritualism and of the religious movements of the time, but when it does, it suffers from mistakes. Stuart says twice that Emma Hardinge married ex-Universalist minister and spiritualist author and editor Samuel Byron Brittan, and she gives Brittan's middle name as "Bryan." In fact, Emma married physician William Britten.

Stuart calls Charles Chauncey Burr "Reverend" but puts quotes around the word, as if his credentials were questionable. But he was indeed a Universalist minister, although no longer making his living as such when he began his anti-rapping crusade. She calls his brother "Raymond," but his name was Heman. She gives Daniel Dunglas Home's middle name as "Douglas." She refers to Ira Davenport as "John." She misspells Alfred Russel Wallace's middle name as "Russell." She mentions that Abraham Lincoln attended a seance given by medium Nettle Colburn Maynard, but Nettle did not become Mrs. Maynard until some years afterward. In the bibliography, Stuart links Ballou's Pictorial to Adin Ballou rather than to Maturin Ballou. She cites Benjamin Hatch's book as Spiritualists' Inequities Unmasked rather than Spiritualists' Iniquities Unmasked. She describes the spiritualists' memorial to Congress in 1854 asking for an investigation into the rappings but does not seem to realize that the petitioners believed they had been betrayed by Senator Shield's mockery of the subject.