D D Home: His Life His Mission (Paperback or Softback)

Julie de Gloumeline, aka Madam Home, was Daniel Dunglas Home's second wife; they were married in 1871. In 1877 Madam Home's memoirs of his life, D.D. Home: His Life His Mission, were published. D D Home's letters and diaries were a Who's Who of 19th Century society. His autobiography, Incidents in My Life - Part One which was published in 1863, detailed his public life, his psychic life, and some would argue, his tragic personal life, including his struggle with TB as well as the death of his wife Alexandria de Kroll and their son Greigore. Many of the amazing accounts in Incidents of my Life left out names in order to protect friends from ridicule. In Madam Home's book she reveals many of the names and stated: The fact that many of these names are now for the first time published, will prove to what degree Home carried his consideration for others, suppressing their names in order to spare them from ignorant abuse, and tranquilly encountering the host of calumnies that were directed against him in consequence. D.D. Home has been called 'The Greatest Physical Medium in History'. He has been accused of fraud by skeptics but never found to be anything but genuine by anyone who studied him seriously while he was alive. The list of people who sat with Home is impressive. Count Alexis Tolstoy, cousin of Leo Tolstoy, Alexander Dumas, Lady Shelly, Sir Francis Galton, James M. Gully, an eminent doctor whose clients included Charles Darwin, Sir William Crookes; President of the Royal Society, and the Emperor Napoleon III and the French royal court. During one conversation, the Duke de Morny told the Emperor that he felt it a duty to contradict the report that the Emperor believed in spiritualism. The Emperor replied: ""Quite right, but you may add when you speak on the subject again that there is a difference between believing a thing and having proof of it, and that I am certain of what I have seen."" Napoleon later stated "Whoever says that Home is a charlatan is a liar."

Introduction.
I have felt it to be an honour to be allowed to edit
this new edition of the Life of D. D. Home. The book is so
vital that it went much against the grain to excise any part
of it, but our first task is to make it easy for the public to get the
information which they need, and in its original form the book
was a little difficult on account of occasional redundancy and
repetition. This I have endeavoured to correct, but I foresee the
time when the full text will be restored and I censured for having
tampered with what is a very valuable record. Meanwhile this
shorter version gives the reader all that is essential.
Home has himself left three books to the world, the first
and second series of Incidents in my Life and Lights and Shadows
of Spiritualism. The latter contains the most earnest protest
against the abuse either of mediumship or of Spiritualism
which the most conservative critic could utter. Personally I am
of opinion that Home took a somewhat narrow view of mediumship,
failing to realize its protean aspects, so that when he
found any which differed from his own he was inclined to put
it down to bad observation or to fraud. At the same time he sets
us an example of that alert and critical intelligence which every
spiritualist should cultivate. In Incidents in my Life will be found
a most interesting autobiography including his controversy with
Sir David Brewster from which the man of Science emerged so
badly. Very especially the second series is commended to the
student of Home, because in it will be found all the actual papers
dealing with the Home-Lyon lawsuit, showing conclusively
how honourable was the action of Home, in spite of the severe
remarks by Lord Gifford, which were the result of his own ignorance
and prejudice. To quote them against Home's character is
like quoting the remarks of a Roman judge upon an early Christian.
A spectator has told me that Gifford asked Home's counsel:
"Do I understand that your client claims to have been levitated?"
Upon the counsel assenting, Lord Gifford made a wild gesture of
his arms, very much as the High Priest rent his garment of old.
The reader who consults the evidence for levitation given in this volume will certainly have no doubt as to Home's power or as to
Gifford's bumptious ignorance.
Home is a man to whom the human race, and especially the
British public, owes a deep apology. He was most shamefully used
by them. He came as one of the first and most powerful missionaries
who have set forth upon the greatest of human tasks, to
prove immortality, to do away with the awful mystery of death,
to found religion upon positive knowledge, and to break down
the dense materialism which was as great within the Christian
Churches as outside them. All this he felt that he could do by
those same personal demonstrations of spiritual power which
were used for the same ends in the early age of the Church, before
form and ritual smothered the living reality. He devoted his
life to this end in spite of failing health and comparative poverty.
Never did he receive any reward for his splendid, self-sacrificing
work save indeed those personal souvenirs from Royalties which
were given not in payment but in friendship. He left a trail of religious
conviction and of human consolation behind him wherever
he went. He was admirable in every relation of life, a good
husband, a devoted father, a beloved friend, a charitable helper, a
worker upon the battle fields, a lover of art and of all that is beautiful.
And yet when he died worn out at the age of 51 there was
hardly a paper in Great Britain which did not speak of him as if
he had been a Cagliostro, who had spent a life of intrigue and deception.
Those who read this life will surely echo my words that
we owe him a deep apology, and recognize that in this Spiritual
tide which flows so strongly today we find much which undoubtedly
found its spring in his unselfish labours. His influence was
admirably summed up by Mrs. Webster, a well known resident of
Florence, when she wrote: "He is the most marvellous missionary
of modern times, and the good that he has done cannot be
reckoned. Where Mr. Home passes he bestows around him the
greatest of all blessings, the certainty of a future life."
One or two of Home's aphorisms may be quoted to show the
mind of this man who is even now hounded down by ignorant
traducers, especially Materialists who cannot forgive the shattering
blow which he inflicted upon their whole philosophy a
death-blow, as it will prove. "Follow Christ's teaching and carry out His mission." "Religion is to worship something outside and
beyond yourself." `Try all communications by the help of your
conscience and your reason." The sanity as well as the essential
piety of the man shines through such sayings. Surely it is the outworn
case of a beautiful soul which lies under the slab in Paris
on which is carved the words: "To another, discerning of spirits."
Cor. xii. 10.
Arthur Conan Doyle
March, 1921