By Alana DiPlacido
Hometown Weekly Reporter
A group of interested audience members gathered in Needham Free Public Library’s (NFPL) Community Room to hear author Paul Fisher speak. Fisher, a Wellesley College professor of American Studies and an author of multiple books, had come to speak about the James’ family and their relationship with the popular movement of seance spiritualism that spread throughout America in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Fisher led the group through the history of spiritualism in the United States, providing insight into the cultural factors that might have made spiritualism so attractive during the time period. From high rates of infant mortality to the loss of many young lives during the Civil War, many Americans had loved ones they wished to contact in the afterlife. A renowned psychiatrist and philosopher, William James was one of these Americans fascinated by the occult. William James’ interest in the spiritual movement led to his connection to one of the most well-known mediums amongst the wealthy families of Boston, Leonora Piper. Piper drew most of her renown from her eerily astute guesses about the lives of her clients; however, Fisher joked that this knowledge was far more likely due to her close friendships with her wealthy clients’ Irish maids, rather than any gift for seeing into the beyond.
Despite their brother’s fascination with seance spiritualism, Alice and Henry James were both more conservative in their beliefs about the occult. Alice was quite the skeptic, in fact. She is said to have passed off a clipping of a friend’s hair as her own when Leonora Piper requested it for one of her spiritual practices. Henry James, widely-considered to be one of the greatest English language authors, was more neutral on the matter. Neither a true believer or a staunch skeptic, Henry James preferred to observe the phenomenon rather than participate directly in it.
Each sibling in the James family held a unique perspective on the matter of seance spiritualism; however, they were united in the nuanced and intellectual ways in which they approached the matter. Paul Fisher noted that there may not be a prevalent seance spiritualism movement in our country at the moment; however, we can learn from the James family’s intellectual and complex approach to this fascinating cultural movement that took their country by storm.
