Delphi Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated) (1457 page)

Then comes the work of regeneration. They are reasoned with and consoled. Gradually they become more gentle. Finally, they accept the fact that they are spirits, that their condition is their own making, and that by aspiration and repentance they can win their way to the light. When one has found the path and has returned thanks for it, another case is treated. As a rule these errant souls are unknown to fame. Often they are clergymen whose bigotry has hindered development. Occasionally some great sinner of the past may come into view. I have before me a written lament professing to come from Alva, the bigoted governor of the Lowlands. It is gruesome enough. “ Picture to yourself the hell I was in. Blood, blood everywhere, corpses on all sides, gashed, maimed, mutilated,, quivering with agony and bleeding at every pore! At the same time thousands of voices were raised in bitter reproaches, in curses and execrations! Imagine the appalling spectacle of this multitude of the dead and dying, fresh from the flames, from the sword, the rack, the torture chambers and the gibbet; and the pandemonium of voices shrieking out the most terrible maledictions! Imagine never being able to get away from these sights and sounds, and then tell me, was I not in hell? — a hell of greater torment than that to which I believed all heretics were consigned. Such was the hell of the ‘ bloody Alva/ from which I have been rescued by what seems to me a great merciful dispensation of Almighty God.”

Sometimes in Mr. Tozer’s circle the souls of ancient clerics who have slumbered long show their first signs of resuscitation, still bearing their old-world intolerance with them. The spirit control purports to be a well-educated Chinaman, whose presence and air of authority annoy the ecclesiastics greatly. The petrified mind leads to a long period of insensibility which means loss of ground and of time in the journey towards happiness. I was present at the return of one alleged Anglican Bishop of the eighteenth century, who spoke with great intolerance. When asked if he had seen the Christ he answered that he had not and that he could not understand it. When asked if he still considered the Christ to be God he threw up his hand and shouted violently, “ Stop! That is blasphemy! “ The Chinese control said, “ He stupid man. Let him wait. He learn better” — and removed him. He was succeeded by a very noisy and bigoted Puritan divine who declared that no one but devils would come to a seance. On being asked whether that meant that he was himself a devil he became so abusive that the Chinaman once more had to intervene. I quote all this as a curious sidelight into some developments of the subject which are familiar enough to students, but not to the general public.

It is easy at a distance to sneer at such things and to ask for their evidential value, but they are very impressive to those who view them at closer quarters. As to evidence, I am informed that several of the unfortunates have been identified in this world through the information which they gave of their own careers.

Melbourne is a remarkable city, far more solid and old-established than the European visitor would expect. We spent some days in exploring it. There are few cities which have the same natural advantages, for it is near the sea, with many charming watering places close at hand, while inland it has some beautiful hills for the week-end villas of the citizens. Edinburgh is the nearest analogy which I can recall. Parks and gardens are beautiful, but, as in most British cities, the public statues are more solid than impressive. The best of them, that to Burke and Wills, the heroic explorers, has no name upon it to signify who the two figures are, so that they mean nothing at all to the casual observer, in spite of some excellent bas-reliefs, round the base, which show the triumphant start and the terrible end of that tragic but successful journey, which first penetrated the Continent from south to north. Before our departure I appealed in the press to have this omission rectified and it was, I believe, done.

Mr. Smythe, my agent, had been unfortunate in being unable to secure one of the very few large halls in Melbourne, so we had to confine ourselves to the Playhouse which has only seating

for about 1,200. Here I opened on October 5th, following my lectures up in the same order as in Adelaide. The press was very shy, but nothing could have exceeded the warmth and receptivity of my hearers. Yet on account of the inadequate reports of the press, with occasional total suppression, no one who was not present could have imagined how packed was the house, or how unanimous the audience.

On October 14th the Spiritualists filled the Auditorium and had a special service of welcome for ourselves. When I went down to it in the tram, the conductor, unaware of my identity, said, when I asked to be put down at the Auditorium, “ It’s no use, sir; it’s jam full an hour ago.” “ The Pilgrims/’ as they called us, were in special seats, the seven of us all in a line upon the right of the chair. Many kind things were said, and I replied as best I might. The children will carry the remembrance of that warm-hearted reception through their lives, and they are not likely to forget how they staggered home, laden with the flowers which were literally heaped upon them.

The British Empire League also entertained my wife and myself to lunch, a very select company assembling who packed the room. Sir Joseph Cook, Federal Chancellor of the Exchequer, made a pleasant speech, recalling our adventures upon the Somme, when he had his baptism of fire. In my reply I pulled the leg of my audience with some success, for I wound up by saying, very solemnly, that I was something greater than Governments and the master of Cabinet Ministers.

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g By the time I had finished my tremendous claims I am convinced that they expected some extravagant occult pretension, whereas I actually wound up with the words, “ for I am the man in the street.” There was a good deal of amusement caused.

Mr. Thomas Ryan, a very genial and capable member of the State Legislature, took the chair at this function. He had no particular psychic knowledge, but he was deeply impressed by an experience in London in the presence of that remarkable little lady, Miss Scatcherd. Mr. Ryan had said that he wanted some evidence before he could accept psychic philosophy, upon which Miss Scatcherd said : “ There is a spirit beside you now. He conveys to me that his name is Roberts. He says he is worried in his mind because the home which you prepared for his widow has not been legally made over to her.” All this applied to a matter in Adelaide. In that city, according to Mr. Ryan, a seance was held that night, Mr. Victor Cromer being the medium, at which a message came through from Roberts saying that he was now easy in his mind as he had managed to convey his trouble to Mr. Ryan who could set it right. When these psychic laws are understood the dead as well as the living will be relieved from a load of unnecessary care; but how can these laws be ignored or pooh-poohed in the face of such instances as this which I have quoted? They are so numerous now that it is hardly an exaggeration to say that every circle of human beings which meets can supply one.

Mr. Hughes was good enough to ask me to meet the members of the Federal Government at lunch, and the experience was an interesting one, for here round one small table were those who were shaping the course of this young giant among the nations. They struck me as a practical hard- worked rough-and-ready lot of men. Mr. Hughes dominated the conversation, which necessarily becomes one-sided as he is very deaf, though his opponents say that he has an extraordinary knack of hearing what he is not meant to hear. He told us a series of anecdotes of his stormy political youth with a great deal of vivacity, the whole company listening in silence. He is a hard, wiry man, with a high-nosed Red Indian face, and a good deal of healthy devilry in his composition — a great force for good during the war.

After lunch he conducted me through the library, and coming to a portrait of Clemenceau he cried : “ That’s the man I learned to admire in Europe.” Then, turning to one of Wilson, he added, “ And that’s the man I learned to dislike.” He added a number of instances of Wilson’s ignorance of actual conditions, and of his ungenial coldness of heart. “ If he had not been so wrapped in himself, and if he had taken Lodge or some other Republican with him, all could have easily been arranged.” I feel that I am not indiscreet in repeating this, for Hughes is not a man who conceals his opinions from the world.

I have been interested in the medium Bailey, who was said to have been exposed in France in 1910. The curious will find the alleged exposure in “ Annals of Psychical Science,” Vol. IX. Bailey is an apport medium — that is to say, that among his phenomena is the bringing of objects which are said to come from a distance, passing through the walls and being precipitated down upon the table. These objects are of the strangest description — Assyrian tablets (real or forged), tortoises, live birds, snakes, precious stones, &c. In this case, after being searched by the committee, he was able to produce two live birds in the seance room. At the next sitting the committee proposed an obscene and absurd examination of the medium, which he very rightly resented and refused. They then confidently declared that on the first occasion the two live birds were in his intestines, a theory so absurd that it shakes one’s confidence in their judgment. They had, however, some more solid grounds for a charge against him, for they produced a married couple who swore that they had sold three such birds with a cage to Bailey some days before. This Bailey denied, pointing out that he could neither speak French, nor had he ever had any French money, which Professor Reichel, who brought him from Australia, corroborated. However, the committee considered the evidence to be final, and the seances came to an end, though Colonel de Rochas, the leading member, wound up the incident by writing: “ Are we to conclude from the fraud that we have witnessed that all Bailey’s apports may have been fraudulent? I do not think so, and this is also the opinion of the members of the committee, who have had much experience with mediums and are conversant with the literature of the subject.”

Reading the alleged exposure, one is struck, as so often in such cases, with its unsatisfactory nature. There is the difficulty of the language and the money. There is the disappearance of the third bird and the cage. Above all, how did the birds get into the carefully-guarded seance room, especially as Bailey was put in a bag during the proceedings? The committee say the bag may not have been efficient, but they also state that Bailey desired the control to be made more effective. Altogether it is a puzzling case. On my applying to Bailey himself for information, he declared roundly that he had been the victim of a theological plot with suborned evidence. The only slight support which I can find for that view is that there was a Rev. Doctor among his accusers. I was told independently that Professor Reichel, before his death in 1918, came also to the conclusion that there had been a plot. But in any case most of us will agree with Mr. Stanford, Bailey’s Australian patron, that the committee would have been wise to say nothing, continue the sittings, and use their knowledge to get at some more complete conclusion.

With such a record one had to be on one’s guard with Mr. Bailey. I had a sitting in my room at the hotel to which I invited ten guests, but the results were not impressive. We saw so-called spirit hands, which were faintly luminous, but I was not allowed to grasp them, and they were never further from the medium than he could have reached. All this was suspicious but not conclusive. On the other hand, there was an attempt at a materialisation of a head, which took the form of a luminous patch, and seemed to some of the sitters to be further from the cabinet than could be reached. We had an address purporting to come from the control, Dr. Whitcombe, and we also had a message written in bad Italian. On the whole it was one of those baffling sittings which leave a vague unpleasant impression, and there was a disturbing suggestion of cuffs about those luminous hands.

I have been reading Bailey’s record, however, and I cannot doubt that he has been a great apport medium. The results were far above all possible fraud, both in the conditions and in the articles brought into the room by spirit power. For example, I have a detailed account published by Dr. C. W. McCarthy, of Sydney, under the title, “ Rigid Tests of the Occult.” During these tests Bailey was sealed up in a bag, and in one case was inside a cage of mosquito curtain. The door and windows were secured and the fire-place blocked. The sitters were all personal friends, but they mutually searched each other. The medium was stripped naked before the seance. Under these stringent conditions during a series of six sittings 138 articles were brought into the room, which included eighty-seven ancient coins (mostly of Ptolemy), eight live birds, eighteen precious stones of modest value and varied character, two live turtles, seven inscribed Babylonian tablets, one Egyptian Scarabaeus, an Arabic newspaper, a leopard skin, four nests and many other things. It seems to me perfect nonsense to talk about these things being the results of trickery. I may add that at a previous test meeting they had a young live shark about i| feet long, which was tangled with wet seaweed and flopped about on the table. Dr. McCarthy gives a photograph of the creature.