Delphi Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated) (1560 page)

A more justifiable persecution, but one which also amounted to torture, is detailed by Mrs. Carter Hall, the authoress, as having come within her personal observation in her youth. In this case a young officer had inflicted the greatest of all injuries upon a beautiful young woman, who afterwards died. The resulting persecution may have come not from her gentle spirit, but from that of someone who loved her and desired to avenge her, but it was of the most atrocious character. Particulars will be found in Mr. Dale Owen’s
Footfalls
— a book so accurate in its cases and so wise in its deductions that it should be a classic upon this subject. The unfortunate officer was attended wherever he went by such noises and disturbances that at last no landlady would let rooms to him, and he was hunted from house to house, a miserable and despairing man, alternately praying for relief and cursing at his unseen enemy. No dog would stay with him, and even his relatives were scared at his company, so that he had to leave his home for fear of driving his mother and sister into an asylum. “It is hard to be so punished,” he said to Mrs. Carter Hall, “but perhaps I have deserved it.” Possibly this admission may have proved to be the dawn of better days.

V
I

THE ALLEGED POSTHUMOUS WRITINGS OF KNOWN AUTHOR
S

OSCAR WILDE — JACK LONDON — LORD NORTHCLIFFE — DICKENS — CONRAD — JEROME

 
From time to time communications have come through mediums which are alleged to emanate from men who have been famous in literature. These have been set aside by the ordinary critic, who starts with the assumption that the thing is in a general sense absurd, and therefore applies the same judgment with little or no examination to the particular case. Those of us, however, who have found that many psychic claims have actually been made good, may be inclined to look a little more closely into these compositions, and judge how far, from internal evidence, the alleged authorship is possible or absurd. I venture to say that an impartial critic who approached the subject from this angle will be rather surprised at the result.

Let us predicate on the first instance that if the Spiritualist hypothesis is true, and if things are carried out exactly as they say, then one would expect the posthumous work to be inferior to that of the living man. In the first place, he is filtering it through another brain which may often misinterpret or misunderstand. Even a typewriter under my own control, causes me, I find, to lose something of my sureness of touch, and how much more would it be if it were an unstable human machine which I was endeavouring to operate. In the second place, the writer has entered upon a new life with a new set of experiences, and with the tremendous episode of physical dissolution between him and the thoughts of earth. This also may well show itself in his style and diction. The most that we can hope for is something which is strongly reminiscent of the deceased writer. This, of course, might be produced by parody, and we have to ask ourselves how far such a parody is likely or even possible in the case of the particular medium. If that medium has never shown signs of the rare power of parody, if he has had no previous literary experience, and if there are other internal evidences of the author’s identity, then the case becomes a stronger one. In no event could the judgment be absolutely final, but if several instances can be adduced, each of which is cogent, then the collective effect would tend to greatly strengthen the psychic proof of identity.

I would first take the alleged messages of Oscar Wilde, which are certainly very arresting. Wilde’s style was so marked, and at its best so remarkably beautiful, that I have never seen any admitted parody which was adequate. Yet there have been several communications alleged to be from the other side which do reproduce those peculiarities in a very marked form. One of these was a play which came through the hand of Mrs. Hester Dowden, and which exhibited both the strength and the weakness of Wilde. Another is to be found in that remarkable narrative, “Both Sides of the Door,” where Wilde was alleged to have interfered, in order to save a family who were suffering from a peculiar psychic persecution. Wilde had a particularly fine eye for colour, and a very happy knack of hitting off a tint by an allusion to some natural object. I think that all the “honey-coloured” moons which have floated over recent literature had their origin in one of Wilde’s adjectives. In this particular little book Wilde spoke of the Arctic seas as “an ocean of foaming jade.” That struck me as a particularly characteristic phrase.

In the present essay, however, we will concentrate our attention upon the volume which has been published by Werner Laurie under the title of
Psychic Messages from Oscar Wilde
. These also came through the hand of Mrs. Dowden (or Mrs. Travers Smith) and they are dignified by a preface from the father of Psychic Research, Sir William Barrett, who makes the general assertion concerning the script, “It does afford strong primâ facie evidence of survival after the dissolution of body and brain.”

The messages, it should be explained, came partly by automatic writing, while in a normal state, and partly by the ouija board. Mrs. Dowden was associated with Mr. Soal in the experiments, she sometimes working alone, and sometimes with his hands upon the ouija board. Here are some of the messages which seem to me to be most characteristic of Wilde’s personality and literary style.

“In eternal twilight I move, but I know that in the world there is day and night, seedtime and harvest, and red sunset must follow apple-green dawn. Every year spring throws her green veil over the world and anon the red autumn glory comes to mock the yellow moon. Already the may is creeping like a white mist over land and hedgerow, and year after year the hawthorn bears blood-red fruit after the death of its may.”

This is not merely adequate Wilde. It is exquisite Wilde. It is so beautiful that it might be chosen for special inclusion in any anthology of his writings. The adjective “apple-green” for dawn, and the picture of the may “creeping like a white mist” are two high lights in a brilliant passage. Again as in the “foaming jade” we have the quick response to colour. It is not too much to say that the posthumous Wilde in such passages as this is Wilde with an added sparkle.

In the script we find that after this passage Wilde was subjected to a long
questionnaire
, which he answered with great precision. When asked why he came, he answered:

“To let the world know that Oscar Wilde is not dead. His thoughts live on in the hearts of all those who in a gross age can hear the flute voice of beauty calling on the hills, or mark where her white feet brush the dew from the cowslips in the morning. Now the mere memory of the beauty of the world is an exquisite pain. I was always one of those for whom the visible world existed. I worshipped at the shrine of things seen. There was not a blood stripe on a tulip or a curve on a shell, or a tone on the sea, but had for me its meaning and its mystery, and its appeal to the imagination. Others might sip the pale lees of the cup of thought, but for me the red wine of life.”

This also is beautiful and rare literary work. If an artist can tell a Rubens by its colouring or a sculptor can assign an ancient statue to Phidias, then I claim that a man with an adequate sense of the rhythm of good prose can ascribe these fine extracts to Wilde and to no one else. His hallmark is stamped upon them for all the world to see, and when it ceases to turn away its head it will see it clearly enough. Immersed in trivialities, it seems to have no leisure at present for the great questions of life and of death.

These two beautiful passages and several others almost as fine, came in a single sitting on June 8th, 1923, and were produced by Mr. Soal writing, while Mrs. Dowden laid her hand upon his. In many forms of mediumship it is to be observed that the blending of two human atmospheres produces finer results than either alone can get.

The cynical humour of Wilde, and a certain mental arrogance which was characteristic, breaks out in these passages.

“Being dead is the most boring experience in life. That is if one excepts being married, or dining with a schoolmaster.”

Again being dissatisfied with one of his own images he writes, “Stop! Stop! This image is insufferable. You write like a successful grocer who, from selling pork, has taken to writing poetry.”

When someone alluded to an occasion when Whistler had scored off him, he wrote, “With James vulgarity always begins at home.”

Again

“I do not wish to burden you with details of my life, which was like a candle that had guttered at the end. I rather wish to make you believe that I was the medium through which beauty filtered, and was distilled like the essence of a rose.”

His literary criticism was acid and unjust, but witty.

“I knew Yeats well — a fantastical mind, but so full of inflated joy in himself that his little cruse of poetry was erupted early in his career — a little drop of beauty which was spread only with infinite pains over the span of many years.”

Now and again there are passages of intense interest to an instructed Spiritualist which give a glimpse of the exact sphere upon which Wilde is moving, and the reasons which retard his progress and subject him to those limitations which draw from him the constant exclamation of “Pity Oscar Wilde!” His pictures of earth are a reminiscence, and his witty cynical chatter is a mere screen. The real bitterness of his experience, a bitterness which might I think have been assuaged by some sympathy and instruction from this side, flashes out in occasional passages which vibrate with his emotion.

“I am a wanderer. Over the whole world I have wandered, looking for eyes by which I may see. At times it is given to me to pierce this strange veil of darkness, and through eyes from which my secret must be for ever hidden, gaze once more on the gracious day.”

This would mean in our language that from time to time he has been able to take control of a medium, and so get into touch with physical things once more. His troubles come from the desire to struggle down rather than up. He has found strangely assorted mediums.

“I have found sight in the most curious places. Through the eyes out of the dusky face of a Tamil girl I have looked on the tea fields of Ceylon, and through the eyes of a wandering Kurd I have seen Ararat.... Once on a pleasure steamer on its way to St. Cloud I saw the green waters of the Seine and the lights of Paris through the vision of a little girl, who clung wondering to her mother and wondered why.”

What rational explanation can be given for such messages save the Spiritualistic one? They are there. Whence come they? Are they the unconscious cerebration of Mr. Soal? But many of them have come when that gentleman was not present, so this explanation is ruled out. Are they then an emanation of Mrs. Dowden? But they have come in full strength and beauty when her hands have not been on the ouija board, but have simply touched those of Mr. Soal. What then is the alternative explanation? I confess that I can see none. Can anyone contend that both Mr. Soal and Mrs. Dowden have a hidden strand in their own personality which enables them on occasion to write like a great deceased writer, and at the same time a want of conscience which permits that subconscious strand to actually claim that it
is
the deceased author? Such an explanation would seem infinitely more unlikely than any transcendental one can do.

The case might be made fairly convincing on the question of style alone. But there is much more in it than that. The actual writing, which was done at a speed which forbids conscious imitation, is often the handwriting of Wilde, and reproduces certain curious little tricks of spacing which were usual with him in life. He alludes freely to all sorts of episodes, many of them little known, which have been shown to be actual facts. He gives criticisms of authors with a sure, but rather unkind touch, where the medium has little or no acquaintance with the writings criticized. He alludes to people whom he has known in life with the utmost facility. In the case of one, Mrs. Chan Toon, the name was so unlikely that it seemed to me that there must be some mistake. As if to resolve my doubts a letter reached me presently from the very lady herself.

To sum up, I do not think that any person who approached this problem with an open mind can doubt that the case for Wilde’s survival and communication is an overpoweringly strong one.

We now turn to a second case, that of Jack London. Here again we are dealing with an author who had such a marked individuality, and such a strong explosive method of expression that any imitation should be readily detected. The collector of the evidence is Edward Payne, who died soon after his task was completed. He was a man of considerable attainments, a close friend of London’s in his lifetime, and not a Spiritualist, so we have the material for a very instructed and unprejudiced opinion. The messages came to him through a lady who has a public career, and therefore desires to remain anonymous. Mr. Payne answers for her bona fides, and assures us she was not a professional medium, that she was a woman of considerable culture, and that she was a convinced materialist, so that no strand of her own nature, so far as can be traced, is concerned in producing messages which are in their very nature the strongest indictment of materialism that could be framed.

The messages assume two forms, the one quite unconvincing, the other most powerful. The former is an attempt at a work of fiction which was an utter failure. The fact that London could not get his story of worldly life across, and yet was most convincing in discussing his own actual condition, is to be understood readily. It is clear that he was attempting the most difficult of all forms of communication, a long, connected narrative with characters and plot, under indirect conditions to which no living author could submit.

If London had relied upon his transmitted fiction alone he would have been deservedly set down as an impostor. But when he comes to draw not others, but himself, he is much more convincing. Apparently he was much worried after death by finding everything entirely different from anything he had expected, though if he and other materialists would deign to listen to the poor despised Spiritualists they would save themselves all such shocks, the effects of which endure often for many years.

Instead of loss of personality he found himself, like Wilde, in a mist or haze — a reflection of his own perplexed mind — with a body and mind as before, the perceptions being more acute than on earth. He quickly was forced to realise that all his teaching had been utterly wrong, that he had done harm by it, and that his immediate task was to get back if he could, and set the matter right. This getting back is no easy task. The right vibration has to be found, and it is far to seek. But London was not a man to be repulsed. He found his vibration and he delivered his message. Here are some of the communications which seem to me to bear the stamp of the man on every line of them.