THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE
On 20 July 1861, a 47-year-old London spinster received a visit from her cousins that would forever transform her life and work. Georgiana Houghton had trained as an artist but had given it up 10 years earlier when her beloved sister Zilla died in childbirth at the age of 26. That loss, and the earlier death of a 13-year-old brother, Cecil, had led Georgiana to search out comfort – as so many prematurely bereaved Victorians were doing – in spirit mediumship. No amount of table-tipping, however, could have prepared Georgiana for what her cousins introduced to her on that day.
They told her about artwork, purportedly prompted by souls beyond the grave, created by Elizabeth Wilkinson, the wife of William M Wilkinson, editor of The Spiritualist Magazine and of the first published book about spirit drawings. Georgiana learned that Mrs Wilkinson’s works had been “executed through her hand by her son in spirit life, a lad of about 13.” Reaching for her planchette – the flat piece of wood with two wheeled casters and a pencil-holding aperture, used to assist in automatic writing – Georgiana tried firstly to call upon Zilla, and then Cecil, to inspire a drawing. Cecil, she reported, was not able to help, but communicated that he would go and fetch an artist who could.
Shortly afterwards
