Delphi Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated) (1572 page)
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Authors: SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
As a matter of fact, Davies had fought at Culloden in April, 1746, and met his end in September, 1749, so that he had been nearly three and a half years in the Highlands, mixing in sport with the gillies, and it is difficult to suppose that he could not muster a few simple sentences of their language.
But apart from that, although our information shows that knowledge has to be acquired by personal effort, and not by miracle, in the after life, still it is to be so acquired, and if Sergeant Davies saw that it was only in a Gael that he would find those rare psychic gifts which would enable him to appear and to communicate (for every spirit manifestation must have a material basis), then it is not inconceivable that he would mastef the means during the ten months or so which elapsed before his reappearance. Presuming that Macpherson’s story is true, it by no means follows that he was the medium, since any one of the sleepers in the barn might have furnished that nameless atmosphere which provides the correct conditions. In all such cases it is to be remembered that this atmosphere is rare, and that a spirit comes back not as it would or when it would, but as it can. Law, inexorable law, still governs every fresh annexe which we add to our knowledge, and only by defining and recognising its limitations will we gain some dim perception of the conditions of the further life and its relation to the present one. We now pass to a case where the spirit interposition seems to have been as clearly proved as anything could be. It was, it is true, some time ago, but full records are still available. In the year
A fortnight later a miller, named James Graham, was grinding corn in his mill at night some miles away. It was after midnight when he descended to the floor of the mill after putting a fresh fill of corn in the hopper. His exact experience, as preserved in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, was as follows:
“The mill door being shut, there stood a woman in the midst of the floor, with her hair hanging down all bloody, with five large wounds on her head. He being much amazed began to bless himself, and at last asked her who she was and what she wanted. She answered, ‘I am the spirit of Anne Walker, who lived with John Walker.... He promised to send me to where I should be well looked to ... and then I should come again and keep his house. I was one night sent away with Mark Sharp, who, upon a certain moor’ (naming the place) ‘slew me with a pick such as men dig coal with and gave me these five wounds, and after threw my body into a coalpit hard by, and hid the pick under a bank, and his shoes and stockings being bloody he endeavoured to wash them, but seeing the blood would not part he hid them there.’”
The spirit ended by ordering the miller to reveal the truth on pain of being haunted. In this case, as in the last, the message was not delivered. The horrified miller was so impressed that he would by no means be alone, but he shirked the delicate task which had been confided to him. In spite of all his precautions, however, he found himself alone one evening, with the result that the vision instantly reappeared, “very fierce and cruel,” to use his description, and insisted that he should do as commanded. More obdurate than the Celtic Macpherson, the miller awaited a third summons, which came in so terrific a form in his own garden that his resistance was completely broken down, and so, four days before Christmas, he went to the nearest magistrate and lodged his deposition. Search was at once made, and the vision was justified in all particulars, which, it must be admitted, has not always been the case where information has seemed to come from beyond. The girl’s body, the five wounds in the head, the pick, the bloodstained shoes and stockings were all found, and as the body was in a deep coalpit there seemed no normal means by which the miller could possibly have known the nature of the wounds unless he had himself inflicted them, which is hardly consistent either with the known facts, with his appearance as informer, or with the girl’s admissions to Dame Carr.
John Walker and Mark Sharp were both arrested and were tried for murder at the Durham Assizes before Judge Davenport. It was shown that the miller was unknown, save by sight, to either prisoner, so that it could not be suggested that he had any personal reason for swearing away their lives by a concocted tale. The trial was an extraordinary one, for there seems to have been a psychic atmosphere such as has never been recorded in a prosaic British court of law. The foreman of the jury, a Mr. Fairbairn, declared in an affidavit that he saw during the trial the “likeness of a child standing upon Walker’s shoulder.” This might be discounted as being the effect upon an emotional nature of the weird evidence to which he had listened, but it received a singular corroboration from the judge, who wrote afterwards to a fellow-lawyer, Mr. Serjeant Hutton, of Goldsborough, that he himself was aware of a figure such as Fairbairn described, and that during the whole proceedings he was aware of a most uncanny and unusual sensation for which he could by no means account. The verdict was guilty, and the two men were duly executed.
The array of responsible witnesses in this case was remarkable. There was the judge himself, Mr. Fairbairn, with his affidavit, Mr. James Smart, Mr. William Lumley, of Great Lumley, and others. Altogether, it is difficult to see how any case could be better authenticated, and I have no doubt myself that the facts were as stated, and that this single case is enough to convince an unprejudiced mind of the continuance of individuality and of the penetrability of that screen which separates us from the dead.
What comment can psychic science make upon such an episode? In the first place, I would judge that the miller was a powerful medium — that is, he exuded that rare atmosphere which enables a spirit to become visible as the meteorite becomes visible when it passes through the atmosphere of earth. It is, I repeat, a rare quality, and in this case seems to have been unknown to its possessor, though I should expect to find that the miller had many other psychic experiences which took a less public form. This is the reason why the apparition did not appear before the magistrate himself, but could only approach him by messenger. The spirit may have searched some time before she found her medium, just as Sergeant Davies was ten months before he found the Highlander who had those physical qualities which enabled him to communicate. Law and obedience to law run through the whole subject. It is also abundantly evident that the confiding woman who had been treated with such cold-blooded ingratitude and treachery carried over to the other world her natural feelings of indignation and her desire for justice. As a curious detail it is also evident that she recovered her consciousness instantly after death, and was enabled to observe the movements of her assassin. With what organs, one may ask? With what organs do we see clear details in a dream? There is something there besides our material eyes.
A most reasonable objection may be urged as to why many innocent people have suffered death and yet have experienced no super-normal help which might have saved them. Any criminologist could name off-hand a dozen cases where innocent men have gone to the scaffold. Why were they not saved? I have written in vain if I have not by now enabled the reader to answer the question himself. If the physical means are not there, then it is impossible. It may seem unjust, but not more so than the fact that a ship provided with wireless may save its passengers while another is heard of no more. The problem of unmerited suffering is part of that larger problem of the functions of pain and evil, which can only be explained on the supposition that spiritual chastening and elevation come in this fashion, and that this end is so important that the means are trivial in comparison. We must accept this provisional explanation, or we are faced with chaos.
Can these dim forces which we see looming above and around us be turned to the use of man? It would be a degradation to use them for purely material ends, and it would, in my opinion, bring some retribution with it; but, where the interests of Justice are concerned, I am convinced that they could indeed be used to good effect. Here is a case in point.
Two brothers, Eugene and Paul Dupont, lived some fifty years ago in the Rue St. Honoré of Paris. Eugene was a banker, Paul a man of letters. Eugene disappeared. Every conceivable effort was made to trace him, but the police finally gave it up as hopeless. Paul was persevering, however, and in company with a friend, Laporte, he visited Mme. Huerta, a well-known clairvoyante, and asked for her assistance.
We have no record as to how far articles of the missing man were given to the medium, as a bloodhound was started on a trail, but whether it was by psychometry or not, Mme. Huerta, in the mesmerized state, very quickly got in touch with the past of the two brothers, from the dinner where they had last met. She described Eugene, and followed his movements from the hour that he left the restaurant until he vanished into a house which was identified without difficulty by her audience, though she was unable to give the name of the street. She then described how inside the house Eugene Dupont had held a conference with two men whom she described, how he had signed some paper and had received a bundle of bank notes. She then saw him leave the house, she saw the two men follow him, she saw two other men join in the pursuit, and finally she saw the four assault the banker, murder him, and throw the body into the Seine.
Paul was convinced by the narrative, but his comrade, Laporte, regarded it as a fabrication. They had no sooner reached home, however, than they learned that the missing man had been picked out of the river and was exposed at the Morgue. The police, however, were inclined to take the view of suicide, as a good deal of money was in the pockets. Paul Dupont knew better, however. He hunted out the house, he discovered that the occupants did business with his brother’s firm, he found that they held a receipt for two thousand pounds in exchange for notes paid to his brother on the night of the crime, and yet those notes were missing. A letter making an appointment was also discovered.
The two men, a father and son, named Dubuchet, were then arrested, and the missing links were at once discovered. The pocket-book which Eugene Dupont had in his possession on the night of the murder was found in Dubuchet’s bureau. Other evidence was forthcoming, and finally the two villains were found guilty and were condemned to penal servitude for life. The medium was not summoned as a witness, on the ground that she was not conscious at the time of her vision, but her revelations undoubtedly brought about the discovery of the crime.
Now it is clear in this authentic case that the police would have saved themselves much trouble, and come to a swifter conclusion, had they themselves consulted Mme. Huerta in the first instance. And if it is obviously true in this case, why might it not be so in many other cases? It should be possible at every great police-centre to have the call upon the best clairvoyant or other medium that can be got, and to use them freely, for what they are worth. None are infallible. They have their off-days and their failures. No man should ever be convicted upon their evidence. But when it comes to suggesting clues and links, then it might be invaluable. In the case of Mr. Foxwell, the London stockbroker who fell into the Thames some years ago, it is well known that the mode of his death, and the place where his body would be found, were described by Von Bourg, the crystal-gazer, and that it was even as he had said. I venture to say that the mere knowledge that the police had an ally against whom every cunning precaution might prove unavailing would in itself be a strong deterrent to premeditated crime. This is so obvious, that if it had not been for vague scientific and religious prejudices, it would surely have been done long ago. Its adoption may be one of the first practical and material benefits given by psychic science to humanity.
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V
SINGULAR RECORDS OF A CIRCL
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I have recently received a considerable bundle of records from a circle sitting in Uruguay. The sitters consisted of two Englishmen of the best class, whom I will call “Hudson.” They have given me permission to use their real names, but perhaps they hardly realise how considerable the backwash might be from such a publication. A lady friend, Miss Reader, is the medium, and the procedure is by means of a glass and the alphabet in the usual fashion.
The number of real or alleged spirits that came to this circle and their communications have been so clear and direct and present such extraordinary variety that they invite comment. After reading their record, which has been very well taken, I guarded myself by getting each member of the circle to sign a document putting them upon their word of honour that no hoax was intended. The elder Mr. Hudson adds: “The way in which spirits of different character came through, one after the other, and the unexpectedness and spontaneity of the answers with the different styles and phrases would have taxed better imaginations than those possessed by any of the three of us.”
I particularly inquired whether they had any special acquaintance with the English public schools and whether they had done any particular reading as to seventeenth or eighteenth-century life. The answer to the first question was that they had both been Eton boys, but that they knew nothing of any other school, and the answer to the second was that none of them had any particular knowledge of the centuries named.
When I say that among the visitants were two very exuberant public-school boys, four ladies of easy virtue, one old sea captain, one Austrian adventurer who had been murdered, and a number of bucks from the Regency and earlier years, it will be realised that the communications really seemed of unusual nature. They were full of points which might be evidential and I have taken some trouble to follow these up, sometimes with striking success and sometimes with complete failure.
The first visitant who came on December 18th, 1928, and on several subsequent occasions, was one Nicholas, who refused to give his surname. He said he had just died, having been shot in Vienna. He was forty-one years of age, had lived an evil life and was intensely unhappy in the other world. He was born in Baku, had gone to Germany afterwards, as an Austrian he had served in the war, against the Russians, had been taken prisoner and sent to Siberia, had been liberated by the Communists, but had been arrested by the Bolshevists as a spy, not making his escape until 1926. Then he went to Vienna, where he had an intrigue with an English girl who had gone there to study art. In the course of this intrigue he had been shot, presumably by some jealous rival. The story seems to me to hang together fairly well, though there is no means of verifying the statements. It is worth noting that the sitters had some little difficulty as to where Baku might be, and were corrected at once by the visitor.
The next comer was an exceedingly flighty youth who gave the name of Lionel Vereker, but admitted that the surname had not been disclosed. He was a practical joker, and his answers to questions are so full of levity, sometimes witty and sometimes foolish, that it is difficult to know when one is to take him seriously. When his jokes were not appreciated he seems to have got sulky. When pressed as to his surname he said, “I think, in the excitement of dying, I forgot it.” In his more sober moments he said that he had been educated at Dulwich and that he left school in the year 1920. When asked what house he was at there, he replied, “Alleyne’s.” I find on inquiring, that “Alleyne” was actually the founder of Dulwich College, so that this reply was evidential if we accept the assurance of the sitters that they had no knowledge of the matter, which I may say I unreservedly do. Judging by his high spirits he seemed perfectly happy. He gave the impression of being an irresponsible fribble with no great harm in him and no great good. I can well believe that there are impersonations at séances if Lionel was around. I inquired at Dulwich, but the name could not be traced.
The next visitor, December 29th, 1928, was a very interesting personage. This was Harriette Wilson, the famous courtesan of the beginning of last century, who numbered among her lovers both the Duke of Wellington and the Duke of Argyll. She wrote a volume of Memoirs which show that in spite of her profession she was in many ways a woman of fine character. The circle seems to have known that such a person existed and also that she wrote Memoirs, so to that extent the evidence is weakened. She gives, however, some details which have been found on examination to be approximately correct and which could hardly have been known by them. She says, for example, that she died a hundred years ago. She actually left London in 1826, lived in Paris for a short time and then seems to have disappeared. I have often wondered whether she had been poisoned. She had promised to write a second book of “Memoirs,” mentioning the names of quite a string of people whom she would inculpate. The spirit says she was thirty-nine when she died. She was, I think thirty-six when she left London. The monologue with her concludes thus:
Q. “Are you happy?” — A. “No.”
Q. “Have you others to whom you can talk?” — A. “Yes” (glass moves violently).
Q. “Don’t you like them?” — A. “No” (furiously).
Q. “Why?” — A. “I don’t find them to my taste.”
Q. “Do you know us?” — A. “No, who are you? Interesting?”
Q. “Have you talked to others on this earth?” — A. “Yes. Many.”
Q. “Can you materialise?” — A. “No, I wish I could.”
Q. “Have you got any particular message?” — A. “No.”
So appeared Harriette after a hundred years. She does not seem to have found the peace which some of her kindly actions upon earth deserved.
The message seems to be evidential unless I could suppose that members of the circle in Uruguay had hunted up details which I have had some difficulty in getting in London.
The next visitor was one Catherine Wimpole, who claimed that she had died at the age of twelve, one hundred and sixteen years before — or in 1812. She had lived in Clarges Street. It is remarkable that in nearly every case the communicator, readily and without hesitation gave the names of streets which did exist at that time, and never made any mistake as to the monarch who reigned then. There was nothing of a really evidential character from Catherine Wimpole, and a Spiritualist must feel surprise that one who died as an innocent girl of twelve so long ago had not progressed beyond the somewhat mediocre crowd who assembled round this circle.
The next was a James Kirk, who claimed to have been a gentleman who died of an unknown pest in the year
“I had a full life. More than my share of entertainment; balls, theatres, and such diversions. I became enamoured many times to no purpose. I was too much like the famous Captain Macheath. (We exclaim at this.) So you also know? I was a friend of the Lady Mary Montague. Perhaps you have not heard her name? (No.) She was a beautiful woman, brilliant in her own circle. I saw the execution of the notorious Jack Sheppard on Tyburn Hill. Did you ever hear of Mrs. Cornelys? (No.) She was the owner of a kind of public ball-room or rooms. She and her daughter became involved in difficulties and eventually disappeared from London, which caused endless idle speculation and gossip. I fought two duels; was, I feared, wounded fatally in the second; but as you perceive, I did not fare too bad. I frequently travelled to Harrogate, Tonbridge and Bath; generally I confess, in quest of the newest aspirant to my name. I enjoyed existence; there was much to occupy one’s mind. I was fond, inordinately fond, of dress. Most of every pleasure I doted upon the theatre. I went without fail to the new plays presented.”
Now this reads extraordinarily true. The “Beggar’s Opera” was all the vogue at the time and Captain Macheath would be a most natural allusion. Mary Montague was, of course, as stated and comes within the dates. Jack Sheppard was executed at Tyburn in 1724. Finally, Madame Cornelys is excellent. How many are there who have heard of her? By a chance note in an old book I found that she was the proprietor at that time of a very popular dancing-place at the corner of Soho Square, and that she went bankrupt. I think that this sequence of correct references is beyond all guess or coincidence and that we may take James Kirk at his face value.
He was fifty-three when he died, so that he was born in 1698. When asked if he would come again he replied that he would be “full glad.” His health, he said, was excellent. “The Cocoa Tree” was his favourite resort upon earth, and Mr. Oliver Penberthy of St. James’ his best friend. He was at his best among the fair sex.
The next actor upon this curious stage was one David Overman who claimed to be an Uppingham boy, but whose name is not upon the School lists. There is a mystery in names and possibly some prohibition upon their use in a way which would hurt surviving relations. The evidence of the last comer shows that even when the name of the communicator may be wrong his allusions are quite correct. David Overman was an irresponsible person, very much like Lionel Vereker, for whom he professed great contempt. “A perfect fool” was his description. Overman left school, according to his account, in 1917, did not go to the war, and died at the age of twenty-seven, He seems to have been in a cheerful, frivolous sphere. The dialogue runs:
Q. “Where is Lionel?” — A. “Off on the gay, I expect.”
Q. “Any ladies there?” — A. “Plenty. Too many.”
Q. “Are you restricted?” — A. “Not unreasonably. We can even dance.”
Q. “What clothes?” — A. “Any. I wear a very handsome suit of plus-fours.”
Q. “Did you die in them?” — A. “Yes.”
Q. “Of what?” — A. “Motor accident. Nasty man. Quick car.”
Q. “Instantly killed?” — A. “Yes.”
Q. “Where?” — A. “On the Portsmouth Road between Esher and Kingston.”
It would be interesting to know whether in 1927 or
The next visitant was Edward Keith of Lincoln, who died in 1870 of small-pox, being sixty-four years of age. He said that he found difficulty in communicating and he soon stopped. There was no means of checking this witness.
We now come to a very gay young lady with the curious name of Norah Sallast. Norah died at the age of nineteen, seventy-eight years ago, which takes her back to the middle of last century.
Q. “Are you happy?” — A. “No.”
Q. “Why?” — A. “Life is so monotonous. I hate it” (violently).
Q. “Is it dark?” — A. “No, light.”
Q. “Have you anyone to talk to?” — A. “Yes. I hate it all. You can do little to help me. I was wrong in my life.”
Q. “And you suffer for it?” — A. “Quite enough.”
Q. “Any prospect of happiness?” — A. “I doubt it.”
Q. “In what way were you wrong?” — A. “Bad (violently). Rotten all through. I could not be thought immoral, as I knew not the meaning of the word.”
She then proceeded to give a sketch of her life which was certainly rather hectic considering that she died at nineteen. She ran away from school with a mysterious man. “He gave me a hell upon earth. I left him and life was a series of meetings and separations — Budapest, Berlin, everywhere — had no money of my own. I was stranded in Sicily and found my way home. I lived in London for five years. I was only thirteen when I ran from school. I spent two days in Bristol and died there.”
This pitiable story hangs together and yet is incapable of proof. Taking it as true it seems a long purgatory for so young a sinner. One could imagine that she, like Harriette Wilson, is held until she has realised that the seeking of excitement is not the object of life. Had the sitters been experienced Spiritualists this would, of course, have been pointed out to her, and a new era have, perhaps, been started.