The case of Daniel Dunglas Home is said, in the _Dictionary of
National Biography_, to present a curious and unsolved problem. It
really presents, I think, two problems equally unsolved, one
scientific, and the other social. How did Mr. Home, the son of a
Scottish mother in the lower middle class at highest, educated (as far
as he was educated at all) in a village of Connecticut, attain his
social position? I do not ask why he was 'taken up' by members of
noble English families: 'the caresses of the great' may be lavished on
athletes, and actors, and musicians, and Home's remarkable
performances were quite enough to make him welcome in country houses.
Moreover, he played the piano, the accordion, and other musical
instruments. For his mysterious 'gift' he might be invited to puzzle
and amuse royal people (not in England), and continental emperors, and
kings. But he did much more than what Houdin or Alexis, a conjuror and
a clairvoyant, could do. He successively married, with the permission
and good will of the Czar, two Russian ladies of noble birth, a feat
inexplicable when we think of the rules of the continental _noblesse_.
A duc, or a prince, or a marquis may marry the daughter of an American
citizen who has made a fortune in lard. But the daughters of the
Russian _noblesse_ do not marry poor American citizens with the good
will of the Czar. By his marriages Home far outwent such famous
charlatans as Cagliostro, Mesmer, and the mysterious Saint Germain the
deathless. Cagliostro and Saint Germain both came on the world with an
appearance of great wealth and display. The source of the opulence of
Saint Germain is as obscure as was the source of the sudden enrichment
of Beau Wilson, whom Law, the financier, killed in a duel. Cagliostro,
like Law, may have acquired his diamonds by gambling or swindling. But
neither these two men nor Mesmer, though much in the society of
princes, could have hoped, openly and with the approval of Louis XV.