Delphi Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated) (1456 page)
Read Delphi Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated) Online
Authors: SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
Hotel life began to tell upon the children, who are like horses with a profusion of oats and no exercise. On the whole they were wonderfully good. When some domestic crisis was passed the small voice of Malcolm, once “ Dimples,” was heard from the darkness of his bed, saying, “ Well, if I am to be good I must have a proper start. Please mammie, say one, two, three, and away! “ When this ceremony had been performed a still smaller voice of Baby asked the same favour, so once more there was a formal start. The result was intermittent, and it is as well. I don’t believe in angelic children.
The Adelaide doctors entertained me to dinner, and I was pleased to meet more than one who had been of my time at Edinburgh. They seemed to be a very prosperous body of men. There was much interesting conversation, especially from one elderly professor named Watson, who had known Bully Hayes and other South Sea celebrities in the semi-piratical, black-birding days. He told me one pretty story. They landed upon some outlying island in Carpentaria, peopled by real primitive blacks, who were rounded up by the ships crew on one of the peninsulas which formed the end of the island. These creatures, the lowest of the human race, huddled together in consterna-
tion while the white men trained a large camera upon them. Suddenly three males advanced and made a speech in their own tongue which, when interpreted, proved to be an offer that those three should die in exchange for the lives of the tribe. What could the very highest do more than this, and yet it came from the lowest savages. Truly, we all have something of the divine, and it is the very part which will grow and spread until it has burned out all the rest. “ Be a Christ! “ said brave old Stead. At the end of countless seons we may all reach that point which not only Stead but St. Paul also has foreshadowed.
I refreshed myself between lectures by going out to Nature and to Bellchambers. As it was twenty-five miles out in the bush, inaccessible by rail, and only to be approached by motor roads which were in parts like the bed of a torrent, I could not take my wife, though the boys, after the nature of boys, enjoy a journey the more for its roughness. It was a day to remember. I saw lovely South Australia in the full beauty of the spring, the budding girlhood of the year, with all her winsome growing graces upon her. The brilliant yellow wattle was just fading upon the trees, but the sward was covered with star-shaped purple flowers of the knot-grass, and with familiar home flowers, each subtly altered by their transportation. It was wild bush for part of the way, but mostly of the second growth on account of forest fires as much as the woodman’s axe. Bell- chambers came in to guide us, for there is no one to ask upon these desolate tracks, and it is easy to get bushed. Mr. Waite, the very capable zoologist of the museum, joined the party, and with two such men the conversation soon got to that high nature talk which represents the really permanent things of material life — more lasting than thrones and dynasties. I learned of the strange storks, the “ native companions” who meet, 500 at a time, for their stately balls, where in the hush of the bush they advance, retreat, and pirouette in their dignified minuets. I heard of the bower birds, who decorate their homes with devices of glass and pebbles. There was talk, too, of the little red beetles who have such cunning ways that they can fertilise the insectivorous plants without being eaten, and of the great ants who get through galvanised iron by the aid of some acid-squirting insect which they bring with them to the scene of their assault. I heard also of the shark’s egg which Mr. Waite had raped from sixty feet deep in Sydney Harbour, descending for the purpose in a diver’s suit, for which I raised my hat to him. Deep things came also from Bellchambers’ store of knowledge and little glimpses of beautiful humanity from this true gentleman.
“ Yes,” he said, “ I am mostly vegetarian. You see, I know the beasts too well to bring myself to pick their bones. Yes, I’m friends with most of them. Birds have more sense than animals to my mind. They understand you like. They know what you mean. Snakes have least of any. They don’t get friendly-like in the same way. But Nature helps the snakes in queer ways.
Photo: \V. G. Smith, Adelaide.
See page 81.
BELLCHAMBERS AND THE MALLEE FOWL. “ GET ALONG WITH YOU, DO! “
Some of them hatch their own eggs, and when they do Nature raises the temperature of their bodies. That’s queer.”
I carried away a mixed memory of the things I had seen. A blue-headed wren, an eagle soaring in the distance; a hideous lizard with a huge open mouth; a laughing jackass which refused to laugh; many more or less tame wallabies and kangaroos; a dear little ‘possum which got under the back of my coat, and would not come out; noisy mynah birds which fly ahead and warn the game against the hunter. Good little noisy mynah! All my sympathies are with you! I would do the same if I could. This senseless lust for killing is a disgrace to the race. We, of England, cannot preach, for a pheasant battue is about the worst example of it. But do let the creatures alone unless they are surely noxious! When Mr. Bellchambers told us how he had trained two ibises — the old religious variety — and how both had been picked off by some unknown local “ sportsman “ it made one sad.
We had a touch of comedy, however, when Mr. Bellchambers attempted to expose the egg of the Mallee fowl, which is covered a foot deep in mould. He scraped into the mound with his hands. The cock watched him with an expression which clearly said : “ Confound the fellow! What is he up to now? “ He then got on the mound, and as quickly as Bellchambers shovelled the earth out he kicked it back again, Bellchambers in his good-humoured way crying “ Get along with you, do! “ A good husband is the Mallee
8
x f cock, and looks after the family interests. But what we humans would think if we were born deep underground and had to begin our career by digging our way to the surface, is beyond imagination.
There are quite a clan of Bellchambers living in or near the little pioneer’s hut built in a clearing of the bush. Mrs. Bellchambers is of Sussex, as is her husband, and when they heard that we were fresh from Sussex also it was wonderful to see the eager look that came upon their faces, while the bush-born children could scarce understand what it was that shook the solid old folk to their marrow. On the walls were old prints of the Devil’s Dyke and Firle Beacon. How strange that old Sussex should be wearing out its very life in its care for the fauna of young Australia. This remarkable man is unpaid with only his scanty holding upon which to depend, and many dumb mouths dependent upon him. I shall rejoice if my efforts in the local press serve to put his affairs upon a more worthy foundation, and to make South Australia realise what a valuable instrument lies to her hand.
Before I left Adelaide I learned many pleasing things about the lectures, which did away with any shadow cast by those numerous correspondents who seemed to think that we were still living under the Mosaic dispensation, and who were so absent-minded that they usually forgot to sign their names. It is a curious difference between the Christian letters of abuse and those of materialists, that the former are usually anonymous and the latter signed. I heard of one man, a lame stockman, who had come
Speculations on Paul and his Master. — Arrival at Melbourne. — Attack in the Argus. — Partial press boycott. — Strength of the movement. — The Prince of Wales. — Victorian football. — Rescue Circle in Melbourne. — Burke and Wills’ statue. — Success of the lectures. — Reception at the Auditorium. — Luncheon of the British Empire League. — Mr. Ryan’s experience. — The Federal Government. — Mr. Hughes’ personality. — The mediumship of Charles Bailey. — His alleged exposure. — His remarkable record. — A second sitting. — The Indian nest. — A remarkable lecture. Arrival of Lord Forster. — The future of the Empire. — Kindness of Australians. — Prohibition. — Horse-racing. — Roman Catholic policy.
One cannot help speculating about those great ones who first carried to the world the Christian revelation. What were their domestic ties! There is little said about them, but we should never have known that Peter had a wife were it not for a chance allusion to his mother-in-law, just as another chance allusion shows us that Jesus was one of a numerous family. One thing can safely be said of Paul, that he was either a bachelor or else was a domestic bully with a very submissive wife, or he would never have dared to express his well known views about women. As to his preaching, he had a genius for making a clear thing obscure, even as Jesus had a genius for making an obscure thing clear. Read the Sermon on the Mount and then a chapter of Paul as a contrast in styles. Apart from his style one can reconstruct him as a preacher to the extent that he had a powerful voice — no one without one could speak from the historic rocky pulpit on the hill of Mars at Athens, as I ascertained for myself. The slope is downwards, sound ascends, and the whole conditions are abominable. He was certainly long-winded and probably monotonous in his diction, or he could hardly have reduced one of his audience to such a deep sleep that he fell out of the window. We may add that he was a man of brisk courage in an emergency, that he was subject to such sudden trances that he was occasionally unaware himself whether he was normal or not, and that he was probably short-sighted, as he mistook the person who addressed him, and had his letters usually written for him. At least three languages were at his command, he had an intimate and practical knowledge of the occult, and was an authority upon Jewish law — a good array of accomplishments for one man.
There are some points about Paul’s august Master which also help in a reconstruction of Himself and His surroundings. That His mother was opposed to His mission is, I think, very probable. Women are dubious about spiritual novelties, and one can well believe that her heart ached to see her noble elder son turn from the sure competence of His father’s business at Nazareth to the precarious existence of a wandering preacher. This domestic opposition clouded Him as one can see in the somewhat cold, harsh words which He used to her, and his mode of address which began simply as “ Woman.” His assertion to the disciples that one who followed His path had to give up his family points to the same thing. No doubt Mary remained with the younger branches at Nazareth while Jesus pursued His ministry, though she came, as any mother would, to be near Him at the end.
Of His own personality we know extraordinarily little, considering the supreme part that He played in the world. That He was a highly trained psychic, or as we should say, medium, is obvious to anyone who studies the miracles, and it is certainly not derogatory to say that they were done along the line of God’s law rather than that they were inversions of it. I cannot doubt also that he chose his apostles for their psychic powers — if not, on what possible principle were they selected, since they were neither staunch nor learned? It is clear that Peter and James and John were the inner circle of psychics, since they were assembled both at the transfiguration and at the raising of Jairus’ daughter. It is from unlearned open-air men who are near Nature that the highest psychic powers are obtained. It has been argued that the Christ was an Essene, but this seems hard to believe, as the Essenes were not only secluded from the world, but were certainly vegetarians and total abstainers, while Jesus was neither. On the other hand baptism was not a Jewish rite, and his undergoing it — if He did, indeed, undergo it — marks Him as belonging to some dissenting sect. I say “ if He did “ because it is perfectly certain that there were forgeries and interpolations introduced into the Gospels in order to square their teaching with the practice of the Church some centuries later. One would look for those forgeries not in the ordinary narrative, which in the adult years bears every mark of truth, but in the passages which support ceremonial or tributes to the Church — such as the allusions to baptism, “ Unless a man be born again,” to the sacrament, “ This is my body, etc.,” and the whole story of Ananias and Sapphira, the moral of which is that it is dangerous to hold anything back from the Church.
Physically I picture the Christ as an extremely powerful man. I have known several famous healers and they were all men who looked as if they had redundant health and strength to give to others. His words to the sick woman, “Who has touched me? Much power” (dunamis is the word in the original Greek) “ has gone out of me,” show that His system depended upon His losing what He gave to others. Therefore He was a very strong man. The mere feat of carrying a wooden cross strong enough to bear a man from Jerusalem to Calvary, up a hill, is no light one. It is the details which convince me that the gospel narrative is correct and really represents an actual event. Take the incident during that sad journey of Simon of Cyrene having helped for a time with the cross. Why should anyone invent such a thing, putting an actual name to the person? It is touches of this kind which place the narrative beyond all suspicion of being a pure invention. Again and again in the New Testament one is confronted with incidents which a writer of fiction recognises as being beyond the reach of invention, because the inventor does not put in things which have no direct bearing upon the matter in hand. Take as an example how the maid, seeing Peter outside the door after his escape from prison, ran back to the guests and said that it was his angel (or etheric body) which was outside. Such an episode could only have been recorded because it actually occurred.
But these be deep waters. Let me get back to my own humble experiences, these interpolated thoughts being but things which have been found upon the wayside of our journey. On reaching Melbourne we were greeted at the station by a few devoted souls who had waited for two trains before they found us. Covered with the flowers which they had brought we drove to Menzies Hotel, whence we moved a few days later to a flat in the Grand, where we were destined to spend five eventful weeks. We found the atmosphere and general psychic conditions of Melbourne by no means as pleasant or receptive as those of Adelaide, but this of course was very welcome as the greater the darkness the more need of the light. If Spiritualism had been a popular cult in Australia there would have been no object in my visit. I was welcome enough as an individual, but by no means so as an emissary, and both the Churches and the Materialists, in most unnatural combination, had done their best to make the soil stony for me. Their chief agent had been the Argus, a solid, stodgy paper, which amply fulfilled the material needs of the public, but was not given to spiritual vision. This paper before my arrival had a very violent and abusive leader which attracted much attention, full of such terms as “ black magic,” “Shamanism,” “witchcraft,” “freak religion,” “cranky faith,” “cruelty,” “ black evil,” “ poison,” finishing up with the assertion that I represented “ a force which we believe to be purely evil.” This was from a paper which whole-heartedly supports the liquor interest, and has endless columns of betting and racing news, nor did its principles cause it to refuse substantial sums for the advertising of my lectures. Still, however arrogant or illogical, I hold that a paper has a perfect right to publish and uphold its own view, nor would I say that the subsequent refusal of the Argus to print any answer to its tirade was a real breach of the ethics of journalism. Where its conduct became outrageous, however, and where it put itself beyond the pale of all literary decency, was when it reported my first lecture by describing my wife’s dress, my own voice, the colour of my spectacles, and not a word of what I said. It capped this by publishing so- called answers to me by Canon Hughes, and by Bishop Phelan — critics whose knowledge of the subject seemed to begin and end with the witch of Endor — while omitting the statements to which these answers applied. Never in any British town have I found such reactionary intolerance as in this great city, for though the Argus was the chief offender, the other papers were as timid as rabbits in the matter. My psychic photographs which, as I have said, are the most wonderful collection ever shown in the world, were received in absolute silence by the whole press, though it is notorious that if I had come there with a comic opera or bedroom comedy instead of with the evidence of a series of miracles, I should have had a column. This seems to have been really due to moral cowardice, and not to ignorance, for I saw a private letter afterwards in which a sub-editor remarked that he and the chief leader-writer had both seen the photographs and that they could see no possible answer to them.
There was another and more pleasing side to the local conditions, and that lay in the numbers who had already mastered the principles of Spiritualism, the richer classes as individuals, the poorer as organised churches. They were so numerous that when we received an address of welcome in the auditorium to which only Spiritualists were invited by ticket, the Hall, which holds two thousand, was easily filled. This would mean on the same scale that the Spiritualists of London could fill the Albert Hall several times over — as no doubt they could. Their numbers were in a sense an embarrassment, as I always had the fear that I was addressing the faithful instead of those whom I had come so far to instruct. On the whole their quality and organisation were disappointing. They had a splendid spiritual paper in their midst, the Harbinger of Light, which has run for fifty years, and is most ably edited by Mr. Britton Harvey. When I think of David Gow, Ernest Oaten, John Lewis and Britton Harvey I feel that our cause is indeed well represented by its press. They have also some splendid local workers, like Bloomfield and Tozer, whole-hearted and apostolic. But elsewhere there is the usual tendency to divide and to run into vulgarities and extravagances in which the Spiritual has small share. Discipline is needed, which involves central powers, and that in turn means command of the purse. It would be far better to have no Spiritual churches than some I have seen.
However, I seem to have got to some of my final conclusions at Melbourne before I have begun our actual experience there. We found the place still full of rumours and talk about the recent visit of the Prince of Wales, who seems to have a perfect genius for making himself popular and beloved. May he remain unspoiled and retain the fresh kindliness of his youth. His success is due not to any ordered rule of conduct but to a perfectly natural courtesy which is his essential self and needs no effort. Our waiter at the hotel who had waited upon him remarked : “ God never made anything nearer to Nature than that boy. He spoke to me as he might have spoken to the Governor.” It was a fine tribute, and characteristic of the humbler classes in this country, who have a vigour of speech and an independence of view which is very refreshing. Once as I passed a public house, a broken old fellow who had been leaning against the wall with a short pipe in his mouth, stepped forward to me and said: “I am all for civil and religious liberty. There is plenty of room for your cult here, sir, and I wish you well against the bigots.” I wonder from what heights that old fellow had fallen before he brought up against the public house wall?
One of my first afternoons in Melbourne was spent in seeing the final tie of the Victorian football cup. I have played both Rugby and Soccer, and I have seen the American game at its best, but I consider that the Victorian system has some points which make it the best of all — certainly from the spectacular point of view. There is no off-side, and you get a free kick if you catch the ball. Otherwise you can run as in ordinary Rugby, though there is a law about bouncing the ball as you run, which might, as it seemed to me, be cut out without harming the game. This bouncing rule was put in by Mr. Harrison who drew up the original rules, for the chivalrous reason that he was himself the fastest runner in the Colony, and he did not wish to give himself any advantage. There is not so much man-handling in the Victorian game, and to that extent it is less dramatic, but it is extraordinarily open and fast, with none of the packed scrums which become so wearisome, and with linesmen who throw in the ball the instant it goes out. There were several points in which the players seemed better than our best — one was the accurate passing by low drop kicking, very much quicker and faster than a pass by hand. Another was the great accuracy of the place kicking and of the screw kicking when a runner would kick at right angles to his course. There were four long quarters, and yet the men were in such condition that they were going hard at the end. They are all, I understand, semi-professionals. Altogether it was a very fine display, and the crowd was much excited. It was suggestive that the instant the last whistle blew a troop of mounted police cantered over the ground and escorted the referees to the safety of the pavilion.
I began at once to endeavour to find out the conditions of local Spiritualism, and had a long conversation with Mr. Tozer, the chairman of the movement, a slow-talking, steady-eyed man, of the type that gets a grip and does not easily let go. After explaining the general situation, which needs some explanation as it is full of currents and crosscurrents caused by individual schisms and secessions, he told me in his gentle, earnest way some of his own experiences in his home circle which corroborate much which I have heard elsewhere. He has run a rescue circle for the instruction of the lower spirits who are so material that they can be reached more easily by humanity than by the higher angels. The details he gave me were almost the same as those given by Mr. MacFarlane of Southsea who had a similar circle of which Mr. Tozer had certainly never heard. A wise spirit control dominates the proceedings. The medium goes into trance. The spirit control then explains what it is about to do, and who the spirit is who is about to be reformed. The next scene is often very violent, the medium having to be held down and using rough language. This comes from some low spirit who has suddenly found this means of expressing himself. At other times the language is not violent but only melancholy, the spirit declaring that he is abandoned and has not a friend in the universe. Some do not realise that they are dead, but only that they wander all alone, under conditions they could not understand, in a cloud of darkness.