The clairvoyant, the magician and the proto-psi-cop

Alexis Didier was born in 1826 and died 60 years later in 1886. He flourished mainly in the decade between 1840 and 1850, and the encounter between Alexis, the clairvoyant, and Jean Eugene Robert-Houdin, the magician, took place in 1847. But with the psi-cop, Michel Seldow, we reach quite recent times.

Alexis Didier was usually referred to as Alexis, partly because he started practising as a clairvoyant as a 16 year old, and partly because his brother Adolphe also practised in the same line, but Alexis was the more gifted. Before saying more, let me mention that all the material related here has been gleaned from a remarkable book by Bertrand Meheust published this year and entitled Un Voyant Prodigieux, 'A Prodigious Clairvoyant.' I hope it will appear in English before too long.

Gifted is an understatement, and prodigious is not an overstatement, because if psychics were given artistic ratings in the same way as other creative artists, Alexis would be one of the few in the genius class. I must try to illustrate this before taking the matter further, because the extraordinary quality of his clairvoyance must be appreciated to some extent to make it worth while exploring the lengths to which psi-deniers will go to discredit genuine demonstrations of paranormal cognition.

If Alexis had practised 50 years later then we should expect to have reports from dedicated psychical researchers whose names are familiar to us, because he gave sessions in England as well as in France. But creditworthy investigators existed before 1882, and there were publications that dealt with the less frequented corners of inquiry. One of these was The Zoist, the editor of which was Dr. John Elliotson, a professor of medicine at University College. Elliotson was a man of great integrity who actually ruined his career by persistently supporting the claims made for mesmerism. It was very appropriate that The Zoist should have published a report about Alexis, because Alexis's mediumship manifested solely when he was put into a mesmeric trance - magnetised, to use the contemporary description.

Today a hypnotic state is usually evidenced by sticking needles into the entranced person, or telling he can't raise or lower his hand, or making him dance with a broomstick or forget the number 7, in other words by exhibiting the hypnotist's power over him; but in the early 19th century mesmeric trance was more likely to be proved by the subject giving demonstrations of clairvoyance. Alexis was in fact called a 'sonnambule,' a sonnambulist, rather than a clairvoyant, the psychic gift being bound up with the mesmerised state and proving that there was such a thing as a mesmeric trance. It seems odd to prove the existence of something strange but supposedly normal, the hypnotic state, by displays of paranormal faculties, but there it is.

The report from which I am going to quote to show what Alexis could do was sent in to The Zoist by a friend of Elliotson, the Rev. Chauncey Hare Townsend, who had a session with Alexis in 1851while he was visiting Paris. Usually Alexis was mesmerised by Jean-Bon Marcillet, his mentor and business partner in the clairvoyant enterprise, but as Townsend was himself a mesmerist Marcillet on this occasion let Townsend take over, and left him alone with Alexis as soon as he was satisfied that Alexis was in trance. This at a stroke eliminates the inevitable mutterings that Alexis was being prompted by Marcillet, who had in any case met Townsend for the first time an hour or two earlier in the evening.

Another factor that can be eliminated is that Alexis spent the previous night researching the life of Townsend, because the session took place within a few hours of this meeting, and with no interval between the two events. Marcillet caught Alexis on his way home from the theatre, and secured his agreement to an immediate session, as Townsend was leaving Paris the next day.

Townsend had a cautious attitude to Marcillet and Alexis, which was fully justified, bearing in mind that they both made a comfortable living from Alexis's demonstrations, and before his own encounter Townsend was more than half inclined to assume that Alexis was a trickster. But not afterwards, for reasons that will soon become apparent.

Townsend's report runs to eight pages, out of which I shall pick some highlights to give the flavour of a session with Alexis. He started by asking Alexis to use his distant viewing faculty to visit Townsend's house. 'Which one?' Alexis asked, 'You have two, one in London and another in the country.' Townsend specified the country house. Alexis gave a very good description of the exterior of the house and the garden, which was not a typical English country house, because it was in Italy; but it is not until we get to the interior that things become precise beyond any expectations.

Alexis said he saw a lot of pictures on the walls of the living room, all modern except two; of those two one was a seascape and the other had a religious theme. At this point Townsend says that he felt a frisson, because Alexis's description was absolutely right; that was enough for a frisson, but then Alexis continued. 'There are three figures in this painting, an old man, a woman and a child? Is it the virgin Mary? No, she is too old. The woman has a book on her knees, and the child is pointing to something in the book. And there is a distaff in the corner.' Townsend confirmed that the painting represented St. Anne teaching the virgin Mary to read, and there was a distaff (yarnwinder) in the corner.

Townsend then asked what the picture was painted on. After some thought Alexis said it was on stone; he said he would examine the back, and then said that it was grey or nearly black. Townsend says that the picture was in fact painted on black marble. But Alexis was not finished. 'Hallo,' he said 'It's concave.' If Townsend had felt a shiver before, it was this detail that must have had him weak at the knees, because the black marble was indeed concave, and had presented a big problem for the framer.

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