Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (2192 page)

I will first remark on the perfect good faith of the gentleman in question, and his readiness to have the experiment fairly tried. Had he had the slightest misgiving of the truth of clairvoyance, he might easily have evaded my test; but he met it in the frankest spirit of truth-seeking, such as inclines me to believe that there must be something in the facts which a man like this believes. I say so after the entire failure of both my experiments. The reply just quoted is, in no one particular, correct. But although these have failed, I am open to conviction yet. Let me place the conditions and I will abide the result.

In conclusion, let me say that the fallacy of clairvoyance is, I take it, the interpretation of a
dreaming
power as a
seeing
power. The clairvoyante (when not a charlatan) sees the objects of her dreams, and describes them;
what
those objects are depend mainly upon the suggestion of external stimulus, in the shape of words, tones, hesitations, &c. If she sees that a man’s hair is black, and you tell her “no,” she corrects herself and will, in course of time, correct herself till she calls it red, if you make her. Once, when I “travelled” with a clairvoyante,
i.e.
, when she accompanied me in thought all over my house, I found that by simple assent to what was wrong, and by feigning an anxious surprise, I could make her say just whatever I anticipated she would say. If she were not duping every one, she was dreaming, and her dreams were swayed by what I said.

 Collins replies
—
The Leader
3 April 1852

THE INCREDIBLE NOT ALWAYS IMPOSSIBLE

TO G. H. LEWES

MY DEAR LEWES, — I have just read your article on the “Fallacy of Clairvoyance.” Certain portions of it seem to me to call for a rejoinder on my part as the writer of the series of letters, entitled “Magnetic Evenings at Home.”

In the first place, allow me to acknowledge the liberal and temperate spirit in which you have written; and let me further admit, that I consider you, personally, quite justified in your disbelief in clairvoyance by the failure of the personal experiment which you made as a test of its truth. I am not writing to remonstrate with
you
; but to defend myself — or, in other words, to show that, if
your
disbelief is founded on what you term “a crucial instance,”
my
belief is founded on “a crucial instance” too.

Referring to the experiment related by me, in No. 102 of this journal, you endeavour to account for the extraordinary results which I relate as having been obtained, by assuming that the
clairvoyante
was prompted in her answers by “leading questions, by intonations, by the hundred suggestions of voice and manner.” You further admit, that the gentleman who put the questions (not the magnetizer, remember), denied your explanation, and assured you that he had remained perfectly passive. His statement does not appear to have staggered you in your theory. I suppose you doubted whether the person who put the questions was the best witness as to how the questions were put. At any rate, you resolved to “test the
clairvoyante
when she knew nothing, when her operator knew nothing, when no other human being but yourself knew what the real case was.”

It is on this part of your letter that I wish to make one or two comments.

1. I beg to repeat what I have already stated in the “ Magnetic Evenings” —
i.e.
, that in the case of clairvoyance now under review, and in the others which I have reported, I took down in writing the questions and answers as they passed, and sent them to press in the
Leader
from the notes thus taken. Is this evidence of the verbal correctness of my report of the questions, or is it not? Do scientific men, like the Dr. Cullen you quote, disbelieve other people’s ears as well as their eyes; and assume that the general public are as incapable of correctly writing down what they hear, as of correctly describing what they see? I can only say for myself, that I wrote down what I heard, exactly
as
I heard it; that whenever a question was repeated (and that was not often) it was repeated in the same words; that no observations of any kind intervened between the questions and answers in the part of the interrogatory which produced the most astounding results; and that no interference, by word, look, or gesture, proceeded from any of the audience — for the simple reason, that none of them knew whether the answers were right or wrong. I know all this just as well as I know that I am writing to you at the present moment.

2. Now let us examine the questions taken down under these circumstances. We will only revert to two of them, in order to save time and space. But, for the sake of the point at issue between us, we will select the two questions which elicited the most marvellous answers, and one of which I know to have been
immediately
followed by the answer. They are these, (I quote from my fifth letter): — ”
Q
. How many people were seated at table?
A
. (given directly) Seven. (
right
).
Q
. How many ladies and how many gentlemen?
A
. (after a pause of perfect silence) Four gentlemen and three ladies. (
right
).” First recapitulating the circumstance, that these questions referred to a breakfast-party at Paris, given while the
clairvoyante
was at a watering-place in Somersetshire; and that we knew, by every human means of knowledge, that no hint of the party, or of any matter connected with it, had been communicated to her, or to any one about her, — first recapitulating this, let me ask whether the two questions quoted are, in any sense of the word, “leading questions?” and whether they are not, on the contrary, studiously confined to the, simplest, baldest form of interrogatory? If you believe that from such questions any guess could be formed by anybody, of what the required answer ought to be, I have been wasting my time in writing this letter; but I know you don’t.

Having done with the “leading question” part of your explanation, let us get on to your notion that “anxious expressions, intonations, and the hundred suggestions of voice and manner,” had something to do in producing the answers that we heard. If, by “anxious expressions,” you mean expressions in
words
, the questions, as they stand, dispose of that hypothesis; if you mean expression by
look
, I should like to know your idea of the “look” which can so eloquently accompany the question, “how many people were seated at table?” as to inform the questioned person (previously in a state of total ignorance on the subject) that the right answer was “seven?” Or, if you would rather, not tell me about the “look,” perhaps you will inform me how an “intonation of voice” accompanying the same question, would be able to produce the same effect? I should like to hear you sound that “intonation,” some day, after dinner, when we are in a comfortable state for judging of it, — say after a bottle of port apiece. The celebrated Irish echo, which, when a traveller says “How d’ye do?” always replies “Pretty well, thank ye” would be nothing to the “intonation!”

As for my friend’s “manner” helping the
clairvoyante
, — I wish you had seen it! He sat with both his hands on the elbows of her chair all the time, certainly “suggesting” nothing in that direction. His face, whenever I looked at it, (and that was pretty often,) always wore the same expression of rigid attention, — nothing more; and he plied his interrogatories with as much coolness and deliberation as if he had been a practised hand. But, let his
manner
have been any manner you like, if — accompanying the two questions I have quoted — it could have helped to betray what the answers ought to be, then, assuredly, one of the easiest stage-directions ever given to an actor, is that renowned direction in the old melodrama: — ”Here the miser leans against the side-scene, and
grows generous
.”

3. If you have any doubt whether our friend could be quite certain that in selecting the subject for experiment he was testing the
clairvoyante
as you tested her, “when she knew nothing of the case, and when her operator knew nothing,” and I may add, when nobody present and nobody not present connected with the magnetizer or his family circle, knew anything either — I refer you first, to our friend himself; and secondly, to the statement of the matter contained in my fifth letter. In both cases you will find the evidence as clear and direct as evidence can possibly be.

And now I have done. If after this you still believe that, because
your
experiment failed, there must necessarily have been some failure in
our
experiment which we could not detect, I must give up all hope of convincing you. But why then did
my
experiment fail? you will say. I again refer you to my letters. You will find failures faithfully reported there; and you will find the magnetizer himself quoted as saying, that what he succeeded in at one time, he did not succeed in at another. He has failed in your case — he succeeded with us: he has succeeded with dozens of other people — he may yet succeed with you, in the manner and under the circumstances which you would imagine least likely to produce success. In the mean time, I write this letter, (my last) not with any wish to enter into a controversy on the general subject of
clairvoyance
, but simply to vindicate the special experiment to which you have referred in your letter, as a
genuine
experiment; and to try and show you, by clear straightforward evidence, that my friend and myself were not duped by our own imaginations — not misled by any deception of our own senses — and not unmindful of using every possible caution, as well as of raising every fair difficulty in selecting and prosecuting our test of the merits of
clairvoyance
.

W. W. C.

You have proposed that I should recommend to inexperienced readers some of the books which are necessary for a liberal education; and you have kindly sent a list of works drawn out by Sir John Lubbock with this object in view, and recently published in your journal.

I am sincerely sensible of the compliment to myself which is implied in your suggestion; but I am at the same time afraid that you have addressed yourself to the wrong man. Let me own the truth. I add one more to the number of reckless people who astonish Sir John Lubbock by devoting little care to the selection of what they read. I pick up the literature that happens to fall in my way, and live upon it as well as I can — like the sparrows who are picking up the crumbs outside my window while I write. If I may still quote my experience of myself, let me add that I have never got any good out of a book unless the book interested me in the first instance. When I find that reading becomes an effort instead of a pleasure, I shut up the volume, respecting the eminent author, and admiring my enviable fellow creatures who have succeeded where I have failed. These sentiments have been especially lively in me (to give an example) when I have laid aside in despair “Clarissa Harlowe,” “La Nouvelle Héloise,” the plays of Ben Jonson, Burke on “The Sublime and Beautiful,” Hallam’s “Middle Ages,” and Roscoe’s “Life of Leo the Tenth.” Is a person with this good reason to blush for himself (if he was only young enough to do it) the right sort of person to produce a list of books for readers in search of a liberal education? You will agree with me that he is capable of seriously recommending Sterne’s “Sentimental Journey” as the best book of travels that has ever been written, and Byron’s “Childe Harold” as the grandest poem which the world has seen since the first publication of “Paradise Lost.”

After this confession, if I nevertheless venture to offer a few suggestions, will you trust my honesty, even while you doubt my discretion? In any case, the tomb of literature is close by you. You can give me decent burial in the waste-paper basket.

To begin with, What is a liberal education? If I stood at my house door, and put that question to the first ten intelligent-looking persons who passed by, I believe I should receive ten answers all at variance one with the other. My own ideas cordially recognise any system of education the direct tendency of which is to make us better Christians. Looking over Sir John Lubbock’s list from this point of view — that is to say, assuming that the production of a good citizen represents the most valuable result of a liberal education — I submit that the best book which your correspondent has recommended is “The Vicar of Wakefield” — and of the many excellent schoolmasters (judging them by their works) in whose capacity for useful teaching he believes, the two in whom I, for my part, most implicitly trust, are Walter Scott and Charles Dickens. Holding these extraordinary opinions, if you asked me to pick out a biographical work for general reading, I should choose (after Boswell’s supremely great book, of course) Lockhart’s “Life of Scott.” Let the general reader follow my advice, and he will find himself not only introduced to the greatest genius that has ever written novels, but provided with the example of a man modest, just, generous, resolute, and merciful; a man whose very faults and failings have been transformed into virtues through the noble atonement that he offered, at the peril and the sacrifice of his life.