F A R    H O R I Z O N

A Biography of

HESTER DOWDEN

MEDIUM AND PSYCHIC INVESTIGATOR



by

EDMUND BENTLEY













NEW YORK


















TO THE SPIRIT OF CARNEADES,
ONE-TIME GREEK PHILOSOPHER AND SAGE
AND TO THE JOHANNES GROUP
THIS BOOK IS HUMBLY DEDICATED















ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

FOR information about the past, criticism, corrections of fact and permission to quote from various works, I am indebted to certain authors, publishers and other persons. My thanks go to Mrs. Lennox Robinson for permission to quote extracts from her mother's explanatory treatise, Voices from the Void and from Psychic Messages from Oscar Wilde, also to Rider & Co. and T. Werner Laurie respectively, publishers of these books; to Miss E. B. Gibbes, for information and advice on points of psychic evidence; to Miss Geraldine Cummins, for information on many facts about the early life of Hester Dowden. I owe something to Mrs. E. W. Allison and the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, for the former's lucid article contained in the latter. I have to thank Peter Fripp for the extracts I have taken of the pen-pictures of Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin and Hitler from his Book of Johannes, and Rider & Co., who published this work and gave permission to quote from The Shining Brother, the work of the late Laurence Temple.

I should like to thank Mrs. Gwendolen Vivian for her help and information about her daughter's stories, and also Miss I. de B. Lockyer, for much friendly encouragement. I owe much to my friend Percy Allen, for the valuable description he has given me of his contacts with the Elizabethans and for permission to quote from his Talks with Elizabethans (Rider & Co.), and to refer to the conversations of both famous actresses, Ellen Terry and Fanny Stirling.

I wish, in conclusion, to express my acknowledgements and thanks to the Editors of Light and of the Psychic Observer of America, and to any other person or source from whom I have obtained help in this task.

E. B.






CONTENTS

	Prologue	Page 9
I	Background	13
II	The Medium and the Controls	25
III	Farewell to Dublin	33
IV	London. The Alien City	42
V	Communications from Oscar Wilde	60
VI	Probabilities and Improbabilities	73
VII	The Coming of Johannes 	80
VIII	Doctrine of Affinities 	89
IX	Human Affinities	98
X	Cosmic Messengers	105
XI	The Coming of Saint Francis of Assisi	112
XII	The Scripts of Philip 	122
XIII	The Scripts of Philip (continued) 	130
XIV	The Metapsychic Group	138
XV	Elizabethans Return	148
XVI	A Victorian Interlude	162
XVII	The Task Completed	172
	Epilogue	180
	Index	187







ILLUSTRATIONS

Frontispiece: Portrait of Hester Dowden

Facsimile of Hester Dowden's normal handwriting	63

Facsimile of Oscar Wilde's normal handwriting	63

Facsimile of Oscar Wilde's handwriting received through Hester Dowden's hand	63











PROLOGUE

IN writing this biography my task has been twofold. Firstly, I have tried to build up a progressive character study of a remarkable woman who lived her life on earth for more than eighty years. perhaps the best means of obtaining insight into the growth and character of one who has lived a long life is either to have known that person as one old friend knows another or to come to the task with a completely open mind and rely entirely on the documents, letters, and conversation of other people. I have used both methods of approach.

It was my privilege to meet Mrs. Dowden three years before her death. During those three years I lived in her house and spent many an evening in conversation with her. Old people are prone to revive the past when they have a sympathetic listener. I think I can claim. to have been sympathetic, because I was the willing audience of a woman who had the gift of bringing to life the rich tones of an age that had gone; a period teeming with great personalities and contrasting strangely with our modern times. Nearly half a century had elapsed from the time when Mrs. Dowden was in her early middle-age, yet her perspective and recollection of the past did not seem to be distorted by either time or distance. Hers was a mind which could view life philosophically, and, in addition, she had the gift of seeing herself as others saw her. So greatly had she cut herself off from the English world of the middle twentieth century that the scenes which surrounded her daily life during the time I knew her were all considerably less vivid than those pictures of the past which her remarkable memory for names, facts and details could conjure up when she was in the mood.

Even so, by far the most difficult task was to build up a portrait of youth and middle age. Mrs. Dowden enjoyed being a complex' character, enjoyed her individuality, and knew, A the time, that she was enacting in her outward expression a paradox of her inner feelings. Her pretensions of independence from friends and human sympathies were often a thin veneer, adopted by her proud spirit to cloak a sensitive nature that demanded understanding and affectionate interest. Her private and domestic life was accentuated by periods of great happiness and great sorrow. I have deliberately failed to stress many of these aspects, because this biography is chiefly concerned with her work and with the nature of her gift, which was the means of bringing joy out of desolation and hope out of despair to thousands of men and women.

9


10	FAR HORIZON

Secondly, my object has been to understand, as completely as possible, the psychic nature of her surroundings, and of the work in which she was engaged for close upon fifty years. This has not been so difficult because my association with her gave me contacts with her main life-inspirer, Johannes, and because I came to the scene with a good deal of preliminary experience in other psychic adventures.

In both pursuits I have tried to keep my own personality as much as possible in the background. Where I have accepted arguments and conclusions which run counter to, or are at variance with, the orthodoxy of psychical research, it has been because Mrs. Dowden, herself, had outgrown the grudging critical reserve of her earlier years. My acceptance of the personality Johannes is the outcome of my conviction after three years of close study of the whole subject of dual and single personality in mediumship.

Both Mrs. Dowden and I have recognized the case for subconscious manifestation in certain instances; but with Johannes there exists, in my opinion, a clear instance of a discarnate being who has retained a distinctiveness and separate field of expression which only merges with his human medium when messages had to be relayed to the physical world by means of her handwriting and certain portions of her psyche.

I therefore offer what follows to the public as the record of the work of a single individual who approached the subject of psychical research without personal bias one way or the other. Her mind was completely open for or against the acceptance of communication between those who are called dead and the living. Her conclusions were obtained by the slow and frequently tedious building up of evidence with no concentrated or passionate interest in that work. Her religious convictions never influenced her, nor did she regard psychic subjects as having any connection whatsoever with any form of religion. This view she held to the end of her earthly life. Mrs. Dowden's first approach was through sittings with other mediums, but it was through her friendship with Sir William Barrett in 19 11 that she became interested in work which was to absorb her, often reluctantly, to the end of her days.

In her earlier life she hoped that psychic phenomena might, at some future period, be accepted by scientists without question. But later on she relinquished that hope completely. If the essence of scientific experiment is the repetition of results until certainty is assured, then the efforts of psychical researchers must fail in the present stage of development, because in no case today can we have any certainty of the repetition of such results. Our own convictions must rest on the personal experiences of intelligent and educated people and also


	PROLOGUE	11

on the vast mass of evidence which the general public has received of life in the beyond during this last century. Our attitude to the unsolved mystery of life must not be limited by conventions which exclude any path that leads to knowledge and understanding.

At no stage did Mrs. Dowden ever attempt to influence anyone to take up this study, nor did she, at any time, try to persuade those to whom results seemed insufficient to enable them to believe. For she realized clearly throughout her-life that proof of survival is still fluctuating, and may not be positive enough to satisfy some who expect intercourse between different conditions of existence to be the same as intercourse between persons living on earth.

If the question arises as to a meaning or purpose in man's existence, it would seem irrational to refuse to believe in a possible life after death. Many, however, may still feel that there is no purpose behind our destinies and that we are unable to show any proof that such a purpose exists. I firmly believe that the approach to this subject must first be an ethical one, and then scientific. Certain elements always intrude which create a different scale of values from materialistic measurements, and from what is expected in the laboratory. These elements are real and persistent. When dealing with what we may term 'higher forces' qualities such as sincerity, loyalty, right conduct and above all the human emotion of love, play an enormous part in obtaining results.

It is no use blinding ourselves to these things, and it is equally useless to pretend that these elements are abstractions, intangibles, and of no potential value. The fact remains that the 'atmosphere' created in the seance room, both by the record of human personality and the actual sincerity of emotion there displayed, is fundamental. Results of psychic phenomena, or, shall I say, the reaction of discarnate entities contributing to clarity of messages, depend largely on the existence of these things.

Telepathy, which has been the usual explanation of messages from the beyond, can be disposed of, if experiments are carried on steadily with and without the invocation of unseen communicators. Mind can read mind, clumsily, and to a very limited extent, but when the assistance of an unseen presence such as Johannes is requested the whole nature of the experiment changes. This has been the experience both of Mrs. Dowden and of myself. The subconscious mind has much to do with the work and results of poorly-developed mediums, but practice can eliminate its interference to a great extent. If the student of psychic phenomena can exclude every form of conceit, if he can realize that in the approach to a subject such as this there can be no assumption of knowledge until many years have been spent in acquiring the necessary experience, he is in a position to learn, but seldom to teach. His authority will be better


12	FAR HORIZON

if he has some acquaintance both with philosophy and psychology-, but I feel sure that all psychic experience must be gained rather by experimental work than by reading.

Mrs. Dowden believed that it was not helpful to refuse to consider that there is, at least, a possibility that the dead are trying to communicate. To treat all that comes on its face value from another life as the fraudulent invention of the subconscious mind may shut the door on much that is evidential. On these points she spoke with the authority of a lifetime of experience in her own particular branch of investigation.

One other aspect must be mentioned in connection with this biography. Owing to the nature of the subject, the treatment of Mrs. Dowden's life must differ widely from ordinary narrative. Both stress and space have been given to the invisible, intangible and half-materialistic adventures which each psychic experiment engenders. I say 'half-materialistic' because the effects of such experiments create a change of action and response, both on earth and in the beyond; thus it must always be home in mind that results can only be obtained by co-operation between human beings in both worlds. The time factor is in abeyance. Human history relives itself, if only for a fleeting instant. It makes its bow and then departs.

We, now on earth, create in our own lives a chain of incidents which in some future age may well be recorded by those who come after us. We shall be lucky, indeed, if we can enlist the services of a recorder of the calibre of Mrs. Dowden. From the world beyond our call may go out to those on earth. May that call be recognized and accepted in the -measure which we now afford to those who have gone before us.






CHAPTER ONE

BACKGROUND

Hail to thee, lady! and the grace of Heaven, 
Before, behind thee, and on every-hand, 
Enwheel thee round!
Othello, ii, i.

HESTER DOWDEN, or Mrs. Hester Travers-Smith, as her married name was, died in her eighty-first year. Active in work to the end, she passed from this life with the quickness that she had long desired. At the close of a late evening by her fireside, cerebral haemorrhage ended the earthly journey. There was no lingering illness and no pain.

Always she had been proud of her Irish descent and of the outstanding scholarship of her father Edward Dowden who, when aged twenty-four, had held the Chair of English Literature at Trinity College, Dublin. Fame came to her through outstanding gifts of mediumship in automatic writing, fame which placed her amongst the greatest of its exponents. For it was this gift of inspired writing which was to win her recognition both in America and in England in the work of supplying proofs of survival, in providing a chain of evidence, which continued for more than forty years, as to 'life after death'.

In writing such a biography one's first task must be to recapture that elusive Irish pageantry, the misty years of the 'eighties and )nineties, gone almost irretrievably. So much has already been written about Dublin society, its intellectuals and giants, that yet another portrait comes as a pastiche to a canvas that is already overcrowded and certainly rather faded. Yet Dublin and its life, its Castle and the University, intellectuals and eccentrics, all, indeed, Hester Dowden knew well. Dublin was the playground of her youth, the social forcing-ground of her adolescence and the battlefield of her prejudices. Both the record of her life and the task which she performed for the world of spirit were coloured by Dublin and the age of Victoria. It is immaterial if she performed them grudgingly, if her inclinations and ambitions lay more in the realm of music, German literature and art. She still performed her task exceedingly well.

Hester Dowden preferred to be known as a student of psychical research. She started these researches in a cold spirit of scientific 'enquiry and even tinged them with a certain amount of levity and

13


14	FAR HORIZON

cynicism. By 1915, when experiments with Sir William Barrett were in full swingy, the casual approach had given way to dogged perseverance. If she accepted the quest of survival in her forties it was not until the last decade and a half of her life had been reached that she really believed that survival of death had been proved and finally came to complete cleavage on this point with research officers and the Society for Psychical Research.

Orthodox Spiritualism never appealed to her at all. She believed that it was swamped in an atmosphere of credulousness and religious emotionalism. Her stay at the British College of Psychic Science was short in the extreme. Her type of mediumship set her apart from the usual rank of trance and direct-voice sensitives, and she felt that the public would not come to her in such circumstances, when they had more sensational phenomena from which to choose. In any case, Hester Dowden was unique and she needed her own background to offset her qualities.

The pattern of life of the practising medium differs very little from the ordinary run of mankind. Like shopkeepers and some doctors, the chief necessity is to remain indoors to receive people who wish to buy, or to be cured. A permanent address, a dignified home and a spreading knowledge amongst the public that one is to be found there at regular times are useful prerequisites for one who has to build up a practice or, as in this case, a circle of people ready to make appointments. Hester had to conform to these rules of life for more than thirty years of professionally active work. Her influence extended from the salon, not from the public platform. Her adventures and journeyings were those of the mind rather than those arising from physical activity and constantly changing backgrounds. Hence her life must be divided into two distinct expressions. One is that factor of artistic personality which makes a setting for her complex character; the other is the record of persons and scenes over which her mediumship shines.

In a few notes which she wrote before her death, in February, 1949, Hester makes this personal declaration:

"I am a spiritualist in so far as I believe in the continued life of human souls after death. I do not consider that that fact connects itself with any orthodox form of religion, and I do not approach it with any religious idea. On the other hand, I cannot feel that spiritualism ever can become a branch of science. No subject can be more elusive than the attempt to investigate psychic phenomena. Repetition of phenomena is possible in some cases and impossible in many more.

"We can hardly classify our experiments as scientific. The only attitude that is likely to increase our limited knowledge is to assume that the messages we receive are genuine; to assume that the entities


	BACKGROUND 	15

which call themselves guides or controls are beings whose presence is essential to success. I say this because in my earliest writings I tried to do without them. Their veracity should be tested so far as it is possible to do so. . . . Human standpoints are the best guides as to how to treat the communicator, and, indeed, the control who cannot be treated with respect and deference is, in all cases, one who is himself incapable of proving himself worthy of it."

In dealing with this inner life we find that a persistent feature is the interwoven drama of three or four main control personalities; each of these plays a part in moulding, developing, and finally using her phenomenal extrasensory gift of relaying messages from the unseen. These controls dominate phases of her psychic work and the texture of the messages and evidences which percolate through the automatic writing are coloured largely by distinct, human differences of treatment. Johannes dwarfs the personalities of the others both in duration and in intensity. He claimed to be a friend and counsellor for the greater part of her life as a medium; his characteristics and influence are as distinct from those of Hester, herself, as any one human being could be from another.

What are these controls? One school of thought would claim that they were manifestations of the subconscious mind of the subject. Dr. Charcot, at l'hopital Dieu, was able to induce secondary personalities in his patients by means of massed hysteria. But these manifestations were brief, spasmodic and uncontrolled. With Hester Dowden, the pervading influence was always master of a certain limited kingdom. A control would come and go; its arrival could never be commanded, but its departure could always be forced by conscious effort of will, such as the cessation of the muscular act of writing. At no time did these controls completely attempt to dominate the consciousness of their human channel. At the most, Hester would herself confess that during rapid automatic writing her own mind was in a partial state of suspension. This would rarely, if ever, be apparent to witnesses, and always was she able to pick up the thread of an argument, contradict it and express forcible dissent, if necessary.

Again, we must bear in mind that the earlier controls, working with her when she was conducting experiments during ten years with Sir William Barrett, were fugitive figures; the first two were hectored and cajoled, sometimes despised and admonished. But the supreme test of distinctness seems to have been forcibly demonstrated in the character of Johannes. He gives to his medium a personal history which is subsequently revealed. He is consistent and logical in all his actions; he is disciplined in his approach; he claims to wield powers which were beyond that of a normal person in a physical body, and times without number he substantiates these


16	FAR HORIZON

claims, as we shall see later. In addition he acts as a kind of doorkeeper, keeping away evil influences and introducing people who have long departed from the earth when he can obtain contact with them.

But his efforts in this direction are not always successful. He acts in a way which seems consistent with the little that we know on earth of those laws, governing spiritual beings. He states that he was the influence behind the scenes in Hester's education and training; that he directed her love of music and encouraged it; that he influenced her reading and study of Goethe and the poet William Blake. He is the great exponent of the Law of Affinities and we find that Goethe's novel Elective Affinities expresses a theme which is in sympathy and which runs on parallel lines with his own pronounced philosophy. Finally we must consider the decided independence of Hester Dowden herself. She abhorred any vestige of 'surrender' and throughout her life would 'pull down the curtain' between herself and spirit influences directly each sitting was over. "Music, not mediumship, is my main interest in life!" This was an affirmation which she repeated to the day of her death. Financial circumstances and a mysterious directional control of fate forced her to reverse her predilection.

Rivalling these powers was the influence of her father, Edward Dowden, born May 3rd, 1843. His memory, personality and character were the yardstick by which she measured other and, in her opinion, lesser men. But at no time, subsequent to his death, did Hester receive from other sources, or attempt to receive from her own hand, psychic messages from him. Edward Dowden entered Trinity College, Dublin, at sixteen, and was, undoubtedly, outstanding among his contemporaries during most of his life.

"Almost a saint of culture," John Eglington has termed him. In an appreciation of his life and work, Maurice A. GerothwohI described him as a supreme romantic; one with "emotional affinities with nature beyond his fellows". Edward Dowden felt, and felt rightly, that through verse alone could his inmost self become articulate. But the happiness of living wholly, or primarily, as a poet was denied him. The lover overcame the artist. An early and romantic marriage was followed by an early and ill-paid professorship. To supplement his stipend he was driven to undertake all kinds of literary and examinational work. He felt that the latter was soul-killing. Yet contemporaries in learning have described him as undoubtedly the finest English critic of his day, and the most thoroughly representative. It was to Shakespeare and the Elizabethans (to whose study, more than to any other, he owed his worldwide reputation), that he brought an understanding love which swept away all passing vexations, and ever spurred him on to fresh endeavours as scholar and critic.


	BACKGROUND	17

He hated the set type of public lecture which lie was later compelled to substitute for his former and more intimate talks about a play of Shakespeare or an ode of Keats. With the admission of women to the University of Dublin in the early years of the century, his classes suddenly increased from a dozen Honours Students to close upon a hundred. He had, in large measure, a gift, which Hester later inherited from him, of being able to attract involuntary attention. On entering a room, no matter how crowded, your gaze would immediately be drawn and held by his tall, handsome, distinguished figure, adorned with black morning dress and white tie. His fine grey beard, trimmed almost to a point, tapered upwards into a wealth of snowy silken locks. His nose was sensitive and imperious; his lips often softened into a smile. One responded to an intellectual influence that had the compelling quality of fire.

Allowing even for exaggeration, it is small wonder that the influence of her father remained a constant factor in Hester's life. His personality was not merely an excuse for past nostalgia a final spurt of childhood impressions of a woman in her middle and ageing years-rather was it a steady source of inspiration, of affection and loyalty given by one who found little happiness in married life, and few friends who could sustain themselves for long periods against the exacting demands of a difficult nature.

Hester was born on May 3rd, 1868. The first picture that we receive of her comes from a full-length portrait in oils, painted by J. B. Yeats, father of the poet W. B. Yeats, and a portrait painter of some distinction in his day. Examples of his work are in the National Gallery of Ireland. This canvas is of a rather chubby child of eleven, dressed in heavy old-fashioned velvet, which gives her the appearance of an animated doll. Her vivid blue eyes are her most remarkable feature. Her collar of filigree lace is meticulously outlined in white against a rather sombre background. There is a pair of small black mittens covering the top part of her hands. Hester told the writer that Yeats took about forty sittings and continued to paint in details, being never quite satisfied, until her father put a stop to further additions by taking the canvas away from him. The round childish face and apple cheeks are reminiscent of the small boy in Millais' "Bubbles". The velvet dress in the Yeats' portrait is somewhat similar, though it belongs to a little girl. This picture held pride of place in that drawing-room in Chelsea to which so many ranks of English people came during her full flowering of success.

We find a certain amount of family data in the Letters of Edward Dowden. The writer had also the chance of gleaning many facts from Geraldine Cummins, author of The Road to Immortality, and famous in her own field as an automatist. The original Irish Dowden


18	FAR HORIZON

was a Cromwellian soldier who settled in Ireland before the Restoration and was given land. Members of the family in each generation owned land, but they never seemed to prosper exceedingly. Hester's grandfather, we are told, was an extremely handsome man who started a business as a linen-draper in St. Patrick's Street, Cork. Like other early nineteenth-century Irishmen of the upper-middle classes, he combined a life of culture with some desultory business.

Grandfather Dowden had two sons. The elder one became Bishop of Edinburgh, and the second was Hester's father. In this later generation a sister married the Presbyterian Moderator of the time, and the sole offspring of this alliance subsequently became Surgeon-General Sir James McGill, head of the R.A.M.C. The title brought some lustre to the family. Dowden stock blended an upper-middle class squireen tradition with pronounced intellectual capacity. But it is when we turn to the maternal branch that we find certain traits of extrasensitivity from which Hester's subsequent mediumship may have sprung.

Hester's mother was a Miss Mary Clerke, whose father had some land near the village of Skibbereeen in West Cork. In this district lived the Irish authoress, E. (E. Somerville, famous for one series of books widely read at this time entitled Some Experiences of an Irish R.M. This lady was a friend of the older generation of the Dowden family and of the elder Cummins. In course of time Miss Clerke got to know the Dowden children at a time when her father had suffered severe financial losses connected with his small landed property. Thus the stage was set for her meeting with and betrothal to Edward Dowden, when she was twenty-eight and he had just reached his majority. The love-making was short and intense as they immediately desired to get married, but Edward's parents found this plan both premature and ill-advised.

The young couple were sufficiently responsive to Victorian influence to honour a promise Edward made to his father, neither to see each other, nor to correspond for two whole years. But the temporary hardship may have been a blessing in disguise, because Edward Dowden was now able to turn his whole energies to the creation of his first important work. Shakspere, His Mind and Art, was published when he was twenty-nine. It is written in a style which is both witty and satirical, and the success of this book bore out the wisdom of his previous selection for the Chair of English Literature at Trinity College in the year 1867. Their marriage took place a year before this appointment, and the love that had patiently surmounted the first obstacles continued throughout the years until the moment of his wife's death. Hester's mother brought certain psychic gifts into the family. Another interesting fact was her descent


	BACKGROUND	19

from the family of de Hyde, who were distantly linked to the Royal House of Orange.

Hester's early life was spent Dublin, where the influences the country and mountains outside the city was a constant joy to her. Time and again in later life, when relating some story of the past, she would remember this countryside; the grand sweep of Dublin Bay, the mists of the Irish hills and the solitary peasant cottages. Her spirit needed the solace and communion which mountains, trees and the sea alone could bring it. She writes:

"When I was four years old I had such a passionate love of music that it was decided that it was the career I ought to follow. My studies quickly became more specialized, and I had a private teacher for the piano. My father had a decided dislike of schools, and especially boarding schools. We children were all educated privately. I had tutors for English, foreign languages and music. I was a nervous child and had a delicate chest which gave all of us a great deal of trouble. Exercise was supposed to help me and so I took long walks, danced a great deal and was a good ice skater. Games did not interest me at all; but reading did. I used to read continually, and soon had a good knowledge of English Literature. When I was eleven years old, a cousin of mine came to live with us. For about four years he and I were educated together. I knew French fairly well, and when I was eleven I began to read German. I also worked at Italian, but I dropped that language and took up the study of Goethe. This has been very important for me. In Faust I became absorbed. I was completely fascinated. But music now, as always, took the first place."

Hester added that she practised from four to six hours a day at this time, and though she was considered by her teacher to be a good pupil, she was not at all satisfied.

In a way the Dowden home was part and parcel of the life of Trinity College. Hester remembers the giant figure of Sir John Pentland Mahaffy, perhaps the greatest Provost of all that noble band that Trinity produced. Oliver St. John Gogarty writes of Trinity College in his memoirs, with a veneration which, for once, is free from satire. "Is there any College in the world," he asks, "that for its size has sent within the few centuries since it was founded more famous men near and far? Sterne, Burke, Goldsmith Hamilton of Quaternian fame, Fitzgerald who anticipated Marconi and was the first who had the courage to put his convictions of flight to the test in a glider from the parapet of the Engineering School. Her degrees are honoured farther afield than many colleges go."

The great quad of Trinity College, with its grey stone buildings and magnificent oaks, impressed Hester up to a point. But she felt that it contained a world of men, grim, uncertain, all coming and going beyond her orbit and province. Her father would entertain


20	FAR HORIZON

many of his colleagues, whose fame and eccentricities had created discussion in academic circles as far as London. But Professor Dowden preferred the company of his students, whom he had to his house in large numbers. His wife would give them tea, and Hester learnt to help entertain by sharing in the work of the home and directing the servants in their duties. Edward Dowden did not care for drinking, either regularly or in excess. He was not a rigid teetotaller as he kept good wines on his table, but his abstemious nature preferred the atmosphere of his study and of discussion, to that of dinner parties which would take him to other houses as well as waste his time in his own home. His conversation was never stimulated by alcohol, and a natural reticence prevented it from thriving overmuch in the company of others. His home was the centre of youth rather than age, learning rather than society.

In spite of her father's professed dislike of social life for its own sake, Hester went out a good deal with her parents and attended many Vice-Regal entertainments at The Castle. Irish politics began to penetrate the exclusive atmosphere of their academic circle. Edward Dowden was a Professor of Oratory as well as Literature, and he frequently spoke at meetings for the Unionists. Hester would help him in political organizing. She writes in her diary: "I was never really attracted to political work and soon found myself back at the piano."

This was the period of Imperial entertainment, when the Aberdeens, the Dudleys, and the Wimbournes held office. It is reputed that Lord Dudley spent more than £50,000 a year above the salary of Lord Lieutenant. These governing members of the aristocracy created a Court life in Dublin on the scale of a European capital. Yet that section of society which revolved around The Castle lived in a watertight compartment of its own. Again, academic circles of Trinity did not mix with those of Dublin University and the rigid barriers between Catholics and Protestants were preserved in full. Hester's father was a Protestant and an Irish Loyalist and this tradition remained strong and unchanging.

During the second decade of the twentieth century Hester preserved this family tradition in her dislike of the new regime that was striving to assert itself, and in the actions of those Irishmen who, more and more, were breaking away from England in their struggle to form a National Government. When Hester left Ireland after the First World War she expressed an almost equal bitterness against the Lloyd George Government who had abandoned the Irish Loyalists in the struggle. She came to London because the Civil War was repugnant to her, yet she felt that British policy had betrayed families of her class, Protestant faith and political persuasion. In this she differed from her future son-in-law, Lennox


	BACKGROUND	21

Robinson, whose romantic nature conceived the Irish cause as a crusade.

Hester was twenty-three when she paid her first visit to London. Madame Schumann had practically ceased to teach music, so she decided to go to her best pupil and found a most able teacher in Miss Fanny Davies, then a leading pianist in London. It speaks well for her musical training that Miss Davies accepted her as a pupil. Hester's ambition was to become a professional concert player, and her scheme of work was to try and reach a standard where she could make her debut at the Crystal Palace. To attain this end she worked for about eighteen months, but on the eve of her first concert Fate interrupted the plan. Hester was to be again prevented from achieving her desire for a musical career, but this was the first thwarting.

On each subsequent occasion her energies were turned away from music towards the development of her psychic gifts, but at this moment it was the sudden news that her mother was dying after an unsuccessful operation which prevented her from holding her first public engagement. She returned to Dublin immediately, but was too late to see her mother again. On reaching home she found her father almost inconsolable from grief and realized that she would have to take charge of the duties of his house, as her sister was too young to act in that capacity. She therefore decided to give up music as a career and to devote her life to her father. A new distinctive phase had begun.

Life slowly resumed its normal pace as Professor Dowden's academic work continued much the same in its demands and in the duties that attended it. About a year after her mother's death the poet William Watson asked Dowden for his daughter's hand in marriage, but was refused on the score of her extreme youth. Perhaps this refusal was a sequel to that first delay when Edward himself had to wait three years to consummate his own marriage. At all events, Hester's reaction did not run on parallel lines. It seems that she had no great interest in this formal proposal and was not sufficiently in love with Watson to run counter to her father's wishes. Either she preferred the role of chatelaine, or the idea of marriage did not attract her sufficiently just then.

 W. Macneile Dixon, author of The Human Situation, was at this time one of her father's students, and Hester formed a friendship with him that had certain bearings on her life when his works came to be published at a later date.

The truth was that Hester felt the loss of her mother most severely, and she gives her own account of her feelings in these words:

"My mother had been the centre of our family-bright, gay and deeply interested in life. Her knowledge of gardening was the


22	FAR HORIZON

knowledge of a student of the growing of difficult plants. She was a great reader and had studied Italian art. She loved pictures as much as I did and she had a good knowledge of music. Her loss to us was desperate and my father was broken by depression."

One factor helped to alleviate the gloom. The growing reputation of Edward Dowden, his books, his lectures at Trinity and widening fame as a Shakespearean critic, brought a stream of guests to their home. During this period Hester gave endless parties for her father and entertained people much older than herself. But she still worked at her piano and also began to practise with the violin. Still no psychic powers showed themselves, and it was not until she met Sir William Barrett some years later that this aspect was seen. People distinguished in the arts and in the drama came to them. She had always known the Yeats family, for her father and J. B. Yeats were old college friends, and W. B. Yeats was deeply interested in all things psychic. Although Hester did not reveal powers of mediumship, she was even now drawn to the subject and would discuss psychic questions with him. This mutual interest, added to the friendship that already existed, led to many sittings together of a psychic nature.

The stage had appealed to her from her earliest years, and Dublin provided two excellent centres of acting in the Phoenix and Abbey Theatres. Irish temperament has long lent to the drama; the genius of the race thrives on the medium of the stage and the lyrical romanticism which Yeats expressed in poetry was given full vent on the Dublin stage at this period. Again, Professor Dowden believed that Shakespeare's genius was best portrayed by action rather than in words. He not only approved of the theatre, but encouraged his family and students to attend, study and participate. It was natural, therefore, for celebrated actors to visit them when they launched a season of plays in Dublin. Hester, at this time, met and entertained both Sir Henry Irving and Ellen Terry, and later made acquaintance with Beerbohm Tree, the Forbes-Robertsons, Sir Frank Benson and others.

But a new turn of events soon took place. In 1895 Edward Dowden had remarried. He had found that his loneliness still remained and his nature demanded the companionship which only marriage could give him. As a result of this, Hester found her own position in her father's home completely changed. She was unable to adjust herself to playing 'second string' and it is almost certain that she was not prepared to make any attempt to do so. Certain natures throughout their life are best in the role of complete independence. Hester's was a nature that could not contemplate any form of team work, and, as the years advanced, this trait manifested more and more. She described her stepmother, whom she called Aunt Bessie, as 'an erudite woman detested by myself and Hilda'. But there is no


	BACKGROUND	23

record of her sister Hilda's opinion of this stepmother, so it is only fair to say that the dominating personalities of two women-and Aunt Bessie seems to have been a strong character-could not continue side by side.

Hester left home and a year later married Dr. Travers-Smith. This marriage may have been a riposte, but it brought in a new field of activity. Dr. Travers-Smith was a fashionable physician in Dublin with a large practice. He was able to give Hester the type of home that she was accustomed to and a wider and more social life than the one she had participated in up to that time. They moved to a large and roomy house in Lower FitzWilliam Street, which Hester remarked afterwards was "full of servants and contained airy double rooms".

Her penchant towards double drawing-rooms with folding doors began here, if it had not started when she was with her father, and continued to the end of her life. Both her London houses had the same. If this was one of the few unparadoxical things about her, her marriage was certainly a paradox in many ways. Hester quickly learnt to master the tasks which fall to the lot of most doctors' wives, and she brought up two children by the marriage, a boy and a girl, if not devotedly, at least conscientiously. She had never been one to lavish blind devotion on children. The fact that she, herself, was the mother of children would not call for any especial feeling. In her old age she gave a tenderness and a welcome to her grandchild that was probably more understanding in its effect than anything her own children would have experienced. She regarded human beings as independent creatures, and she respected, above all, the rights of human beings to a way of life free from demands unsolicited and free from maternal sentimentality.

Hester believed in reciprocity of human affection, but the relationship of parent and child held only a slight significance. At all events, she was extremely competent. Her early training fitted her for the role of a brilliant hostess. She and Dr. Travers-Smith entertained widely, but their interests were not the same. Perhaps she was unfortunate in marrying a man who was not given to the arts; she, herself, was never very interested in science or in medicine. Ile marriage continued to the year 1916 when actual separation, due to the doctor's activities in the Great War, brought to an end the long preceding period of separation, mental and spiritual.

After their divorce Hester reverted to her father's name by deed poll. The sixteen years of marriage came before the period of her psychic work and can be considered as the 'outer' stage of her life, before the tapestry of the control-personalities began to be woven about her. Intellect and platonic relationships had long taken the place of passion, though it would be untrue to say that she was a


24	FAR HORIZON

woman without any very deep emotions. Early in her life Hester had sublimated sex, and the reactions of sex, to a point of extinction. Her father's second marriage probably gave the quietus to the strongest emotional force of her life. The death of her own marriage continued the process of freezing over those strains which should have normally blossomed into splendid flowers. Henceforward, a capacity for love which certainly existed was transmuted to a genius for deep understanding friendship where reciprocity of interest was provided by the other.

Like many an Irishwoman she relegated coarser passions to a background of nullity. The wine of life still bubbled and sparkled along other avenues of endeavour; for there was a curious youthfulness in her genius which attracted people to her for the length of her days. Loneliness was to be hers in full measure, but only because ennui forced this upon her and compelled her, from time to time, to raise barriers between herself and others. This mechanism of indifference, this semblance of independence, belied her real nature, but it enwrapped itself around her as a tattered cloak that could not be cast off.

Throughout all, the personality of her father, Edward Dowden, soared into the Empyrean, enlarging and overpowering A other figures with a growing stature which time enhanced, not diminished. The Dublin of this period, its atmosphere and its characters, were to become a nostalgic dream, remaining for ever a dream, for fear of reality proving too unpleasant.






CHAPTER TWO

THE MEDIUM AND THE CONTROLS

And sometimes voices 
That, if I then had wak'd after long sleep, 
Will make me sleep again.
The Tempest, iii, 2.

THE medium is usually described as a 'channel' and, so far as Hester's experiences were concerned, this is a good definition. Most mediums who produce mental phenomena need silence, a very quiet atmosphere and often varying degrees of darkness, if they are to produce results. As a rule the gift of mediumship shows itself early in life. In Hester's case it did not reveal itself in this way. She was a pianist and worked exclusively at the piano for many years. In 1912 Sir William Barrett, F.R.S., was looking for collaborators and sensitives in Dublin to found a branch of the Society for Psychical Research. He asked Hester and her sister, Hilda, to join his group, which they agreed to do. At that time neither of them were conscious of any psychic power.

Both of them tried automatic writing. Hilda gained results easily. She was more credulous than Hester and firmly believed in the personality of her communicator. Hester was very incredulous, distrusting each message that flowed in. She felt, at this time, that the messages were unsound, and she advised her sister to be very careful in accepting hers. In fact so detached and fragmentary were the messages which Hester produced that she was inclined to dismiss them altogether. Her sister's writing proved disastrous. Here is a first-hand description of what took place.

"There was a loud knocking in her room one day, when I was there. I disliked the tone of her communications which were inclined to be pious. Then she confided to me that she felt ill and had been frightened by messages spoken to her the night before. The communicator confessed that she had deceived my sister. She was not the person she professed to be. My sister had the sense of a bodily presence very close to her; an alarming presence. Then a message came, saying that if she would destroy all the automatic writing she possessed the control would leave her. This was done, but it made no difference. The result was a bad nervous breakdown. My sister begged me never to touch it again. I was not at all prejudiced, however, so I held on quietly, writing only twice a week. I was not absorbed by it. . . ."

25


26	FAR HORIZON

This golden rule of non-absorption was practised by Hester Dowden to the end of her life. She claimed that she had given over 40,000 sittings in the course of her career, but at no time, except during the actual hours of professional automatic writing, did she allow her consciousness to be dominated by discarnate influences. It was as if a curtain came down at the end of each sitting, shutting off the personalities of guides and controls. Whenever she referred to these occasions it would be in the manner of a 'third party' investigator, dispassionate and uninterested in any feelings of mediumship.

The writer has given this case of the two sisters and their differing reactions because it was Hester's first introduction to automatic writing, and although an unhappy introduction, it had a definite result. Danger signals were set up from the start and she was on her guard all the time. At the end of 1911, or the beginning of 1912, began the long series of sittings with Sir William Barrett that lasted, with intervals, for a full decade.

The method of receiving messages was as follows: Sir William Barrett and Hester would use an ouija-board, but later a table, three feet long by two feet broad. This table had a sheet of glass cut to fit it exactly, the letters generally being placed beneath the glass in haphazard order in the form of a circle. An alternative was a polished rectangular board with black letters smoothed into the surface in non-alphabetical order and in rows. They resembled the keys of a typewriter and the glass would be omitted. This board was used by Hester in all her subsequent sittings; next a 'pointer' was used. This was a piece of three-ply wood cut into the shape of a heart and shod with three pads of rather thick felt. On top, a cork mat was glued and fastened to fit the pointer, keeping the grasp of the person holding it steady. The pointer flies from letter to letter with automatic action and with extreme rapidity.

The words are spelt clearly and accurately, and there is no question of the user attempting to memorize and direct the pointer to each word as a typist does. Words were spelt out at a speed of 2,000 an hour without much difficulty. This method was used to receive information containing proper names and detailed facts. The next method was that of the actual automatic writing. Hester explained that she used a soft pencil, holding it lightly in the right hand without any special pressure. The original experiments with Sir William Barrett were mainly conducted with all those around the board blindfolded. The blindfold experiments were held with either board or pencil, and it was a strict rule that the mediums sat in silence and had no idea what messages were coming through.

This was occasionally broken. In the case of the pointer and letters, a recorder was necessary who took down the actual letters


	THE MEDIUM AND TILE CONTROLS	27

and words as they were indicated. The company, during the years 1912 and 1913 consisted of the Rev. Savell Hicks, Mr. Livingstone and Hester, Sir William Barrett and his sister, Dr. McDougall, at that time Professor of Psychology at Oxford, and a Mr. Wakeman, who acted as the recorder. Mr. Wakeman was obliged to use shorthand owing to the speed of the communications. At this stage it is as well to quote from Hester's own work on these experiments. Voices from the Void, published by Rider in 1919, was a record of six years' experience in automatic communications. She writes:

"At the second or third sitting of the circle referred to, Peter Rooney made his appearance. He stated that he was an American Irishman; that he had had a most undesirable career and spent much of his life in gaol; that ten days before he communicated with us he had thrown himself under a tramcar in Boston and had been killed. Sir William Barrett, having made careful enquiries both from the Governor of the State Prison at Boston, Mass., and from the Chief of Police in that city, found Peter Rooney's tale an entire fabrication. A certain Peter Rooney had fallen from a tramcar in August 1910, had suffered from a scalp wound, but was alive in 1913, as far as could be ascertained.

"On being upbraided by us for assuming a name and identity not his own, Peter admitted that he had no desire that we should know who he was, and that he had adopted this name as 'it was as good as any other'. He stated that he had been interested in psychical research in his lifetime, and wished to assist investigations of supernormal phenomena now that he had passed over. He refused, absolutely, to give us any further information about himself.

"Peter has a burning desire to shine as a 'test' control; he prefers us to work blindfold, and he is rashly desirous to attempt experiments. He is most uncertain in results, but, given a quiet room and his own mediums, he can do remarkable things. He is a rather primitive creature, has very strong likes and dislikes, and is very vain and fond of a display of his powers.

"Early in our sittings he explained that he used various movements on the board to express his feelings-love, hate, pleasure, annoyance, surprise. We became familiar with these movements, and, blindfold, as we always were, we quite realized Peter's changes of mood. Working under new conditions, a strange sitter, a disarranged alphabet, etc., Peter begins by a very careful examination of the alphabet; he moves in and out between the letters until he has traversed the entire board, and in cases where the letters are not in the usual order he notes the fact carefully. He is most sensitive to noise; it seems to disturb and annoy him. He starts at the sound of a clock striking, or any noise in the street, and asks what it is. He is most impatient and makes no allowance for any hesitation on the


28	FAR HORIZON

part of the person reading and noting down his messages, addressing the unfortunate individual occupied in this somewhat difficult task as 'Fool!' if he asks that a word or sentence be repeated.

"Among the experiments which proved successful with Peter I note a few of the most remarkable. He was asked on one occasion to read something in the room, a sentence from a book or newspaper of which the sitters knew nothing. He selected a page from a calendar with twelve pages; the calendar was taken from the wall by one of the recorders; it was turned over at random, the recorder carefully avoiding looking at it, and also taking the additional precaution of placing a screen between it and the medium, Mr. Livingstone, who was already blindfolded securely. The exposed leaf of the calendar was then placed under the glass, still carefully screened. It proved, when the transcript and calendar were compared, that this calendar had rather long quotations for each month. The page which was copied turned out to be an early spring month, which had been covered over long before; the sitting was in the late winter.

"Peter read the entire page, including the long quotation, perfectly correctly. Of course in this case it may be open to question whether Mr. Livingstone, in whose house the calendar was, might not have had the quotation in his subconscious mind. I do not think this was probable, but I quite admit that it was possible. But even then it must be taken into account that there were twelve pages for his 'subconsciousness' to choose from, and it would be at the best exceedingly good guessing, as well as remarkable memorizing, if this were the explanation of what occurred.

"Peter was, and is still, very fond of telepathic experiments. He used to ask the people present to choose a number or a letter or even a word unknown to the sitters, and to write it on a piece of paper, and hold it under the ouija-table out of their range of vision. The traveller would then make a sudden dive over to the place where the paper was held, examine it most carefully by dipping over the table, touching the paper on which the numbers were written, and generally dart back to the correct letters, or numbers, on the board. It must always be borne in mind that the sitters were blindfolded and knew nothing of the result at the time. Peter is a fairly expert graphologist, and can tell character by handwriting as well as the average professional.

"If a letter is laid under the glass, the traveller goes over, examines it carefully, rubbing the glass above the writing several times, darts back, begins generally by mentioning the sex of the writer, then by degrees and with many careful examinations of the writing, gives a character sketch which generally proves fairly correct. With this experiment care is always taken, of course, that the handwriting is that of a person unknown to the sitters. Another successful experiment


	THE MEDIUM AND THE CONTROLS	29

we have tried with Peter is that one sitter should be blindfolded and that the other, with eyes open, should receive a short message from him. The message is not read aloud. Conditions are then reversed: the sitter who was blindfolded has his eyes open; the other sitter is blindfolded, the letters of the alphabet are mixed, and Peter is asked to repeat the message. Having done so, both sitters blindfolded, the letters are mixed again, and Peter, for the third time, spells out the same message. The average success of this experiment was about ninety per cent.

"I mention these experiments as they serve to illustrate Peter's character as a test control. Who Peter is or was, we do not know, but from years of acquaintance with him on the ouija-board he has become a very clearly-marked personality to us. He evidently belongs to the lower middle class; is far from polished in his manners; has very strong likes and dislikes; is a very vain and rather capricious creature, rejoicing in his own importance, and very fond of display, intelligent, but not in the least intellectual; very unwilling to admit other controls to any sitting he takes part in. He is, in fact, an amusing and rather inelegant person, who seems to regard the ouija-board as a means of displaying a limited number of conjuring tricks. He is very particular about the mediums through whom he communicates, and seems to gather his power to 'see without eyes' from some unknown quality in certain sitters. I have found only a few people with whom he can do blindfold work. He despises sittings with open eyes, and unless a medium is present who has the quality necessary for blindfold sitting, he seldom comes.

"I now pass on to a control who is an entire contrast to Peter Rooney in every respect. This entity calls himself Eyen and says he was an Egyptian priest who served in the temple of Isis in the reign of Rameses H. He professes to have been attracted to the sittings at my house by the fact that I possess a piece of cerecloth in which his mummy was wrapped. Eyen is not a test control like Peter; he cannot do any ouija work with blindfold sitters; he avoids all experiments as quite beneath him. He is much inclined to flatter his mediums, and most untrustworthy in his statements and in the controls he professes to send us, who generally prove to be Eyen himself in fancy dress. He also is most retentive in his hold of sittings, and anxious to exclude other controls.

"I have known him to 'block the telephone', as he calls it, for a month at a time, and exclude any communication except his own; the only means we have found useful in driving him away has been to hypnotize both mediums and suggest that Eyen should not be permitted to speak. This has generally proved successful, for a time at least. In my own case the driving out of Eyen always produced a struggle. When the suggestion that he should go has been made to


30	FAR HORIZON

me, when under hypnotic influence, I have been considerably shaken by him in a rather unpleasant way.

"Eyen interested me for several reasons; he professed in the beginning of our acquaintance to cultivate my psychic powers and those of my fellow-sitter. I had repeatedly tried automatic writing without success. One evening about three or four months after he appeared, Eyen told me he had brought a spirit-light for me, and that I was to give mine to the friend who sat with me, who had none. I asked how this could be done. The reply was that Eyen would put his hand on my head, and I was to place my hand on the head of my friend, and thus the lights would be transferred. I asked: 'What will be the result of gaining more light?' Eyen replied: 'You will gain psychic power. You will soon find you can do automatic writing and your friend will perhaps draw automatically.'

"On the particular night I speak of, no further power was developed in myself or my friend, but on the next occasion on which we sat, Eyen suggested that I might try to write. I did so, with a completely successful result; automatic writing came through quite easily. The drawing also was successful to a certain extent, the subjects Eyen permitting to come through being very limited! At first only mummies were drawn, and later what Eyen called 'Nile flowers'. These were conventional in design and somewhat like the lotus. At first these results could only be obtained when my friend and I sat together. After a short time Eyen said that while Mr. X's influence was still in my hand I should be able to write. This I found was the case, but my own strength must have increased, as gradually I found I got automatic writing by myself without difficulty.

"Eyen has proved himself a fraud and a liar in most ways, and he has been driven repeatedly from the board by us in consequence. But he has a very definite personality, and his smoothness, flattery, and falseness are part of it. He is a most sentimental person, full of imagination, and he possesses decided powers in the direction of fiction. More than once he has spelt out most sensational tales to us, the plots of which might quite well be of service to a writer in search of melodrama. He tells us stories of life in ancient Egypt, and describes the rites in which he took part in the temple of Isis. He has also told us most sensational stories of the present day, and one very striking Italian tale which came through at midnight while the clocks were striking on New Year's Eve. This tale runs as follows:

" 'Long ago in an Italian town there lived a most beautiful woman. She was much sought after and had many lovers, but she cared only for one. Now, this beautiful woman was a most enigmatical creature, and was possessed of a strange smile that reminded one of the picture of Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci. Her lovers made no way with her. She always kept them at a distance.


	THE MEDIUM AND THE CONTROLS	31

'But she was attracted to this particular man because he had never loved any woman; he did not seek her company or friendship in any way, and she determined to conquer him. Long and hopelessly she strove to attract him, with no success. But at last she had her wish; he fell desperately in love with her. Step by step they came nearer and nearer to each other, until at last one night he asked her to give him all a woman can give a man. She was furious at this insult to her honour, and refused indignantly, and in a rage the man put an end to her life.' When Eyen came to this point, I asked: 'Is that all? it's not a very original story.' 'Wait!' said Eyen. 'The murdered woman left her lover something in revenge for her death. She left him the Mona Lisa smile, which had protected her from men, so that he might be protected from all women and never love again.'

"Eyen's latest development is the role of poet! He has taken to writing verse, invariably addressed to one of his original mediums, Mr. X or myself. Mr. X has driven him from the board of late years, and has refused to hold any converse with him. The verses which Eyen addressed to Mr. X consist of curses, reproaches, and regrets for this insult; while those addressed to me are all suavity and most flattering in tone. These verses came through me, and a friend, Mr. W., who 'sits' here frequently. They are more or less correct as to versification, though neither this friend nor I are guilty either openly or secretly of writing poetry.

"The next control who occurs to me calls himself Astor. He professes to be the guide of an intimate friend of mine, Miss C.,* who lives in my house. We frequently sit together, and Astor appears 'invariably and opens the seance. He controls Miss C.'s hand most powerfully; all the force, mental and physical, seems to come through her, and I add probably a kind of balance only. Astor is, of course, chiefly interested in Miss C.'s concerns, but in so far as hers are connected with mine, he is deeply interested in me also, and often devotes most of his attention to me at a sitting. He dives across the table towards me and presses the traveller against my arm, as if contact with me gave him insight into my mental state.

"Astor is an intelligent creature, not given much to flattery, indeed, often very plain-spoken. His leading characteristics are that he is clairvoyant and sees vivid pictures of the future. His prophecies are indefinite as to time. He admits that time cannot be measured in his sphere. He has predicted some quite unforeseen events in a most remarkable way. In one case he made what seemed a most rash and absurd prophecy about a business affair of my own, at which I laughed, I remember; but within a week this totally unlikely event Came true. Astor is very clear in his statements, does not hedge when questioned as Eyen does, and holds on to his predictions stoutly,

*Miss Geraldine Cummins.


32	FAR HORIZON

although the course of time may not have justified them. lie always maintains that they will come true if we have patience, and that he cannot measure time. He is a much more rational creature than Peter or Eyen; generally ready to have his say, and then to allow others to speak. He is grave and moderate in tone and allows no trifling on the part of his mediums.

"The last control I shall speak of here is one of my own who is not yet an intimate acquaintance, as she came only a few months ago. She calls herself Sharma, says she was a Hindu, and that she is my spirit guide. Eyen being merely 'the guide of my astral'! Sharma has undertaken to conduct most of my sittings lately; she devotes herself to cultivating my powers by sending me genuine communications. She says she is very fond of sending messages from living persons who are asleep or drowsy. In these cases absolute proof is, of course, only sometimes possible. Twice lately I had conversations with friends who stated they were in a drowsy state, and the information I received through them proved true in every respect.

"So far as I know her, Sharma is sincere; she makes no magnificent promises and she has been very faithful in bringing interesting communicators. She is quite different from Peter, Eyen, or Astor. She has no sense of humour; she never indulges in anything of an imaginative nature. She never foretells future events. She comes and offers to bring someone who will interest me, or if I, as I seldom do, ask for any special person, she will send him if she can. She does not indulge in any platitudes; she is simple and apparently truthful; she seems to believe she has certain work to do at a sitting and she does it to the best of her ability.

.I may add that both Astor and Sharma have remarkable gifts for elucidating the history of objects placed on the board. Psychometry, as it is commonly called, is a gift which both controls possess, apparently; but how much of this is due to special sitters I am unable to say."






CHAPTER THREE

FAREWELL TO DUBLIN

My bosom franchis'd, and allegiance clear, 
I shall be counsell'd.

Macbeth, ii, I.

HESTER'S marriage created for her a widening sphere of social activity. In 1912 they moved from Lower FitzWilliam Street to FitzWilliam Square. She still worked at her music, but the older society in Dublin was changing. The Irish literary set were coming to the front. Many of them came to her house. Hester's memories seem to have been centred around the personality of A. E., mystic as well as poet. James Stephens had also been a frequent visitor, but by far the greatest friendship of this time was that made with Lennox Robinson, whose drive and personality not only kept the Abbey Theatre going, but gradually gained for it international fame.

Lennox Robinson came from County Cork. He was eighteen years younger than Hester, but this disparity in age made no difference to their deep platonic friendship. He had been manager of the Abbey Theatre prior to 1914, when, through Yeats' influence, Lady Gregory had given him that appointment; but all the time he felt the need for more leisure to write his plays. Not only had they close ties in their interest in literature, painting and the drama, but Lennox Robinson had distinct psychic gifts and a clear insight into the 'inner life' which Hester was developing at this time. Just before the First World War, Lennox resigned from the Abbey Theatre and returned to his father's home, where he wrote an early novel called Young Man from the South.

Although he was an ardent Home Ruler, when war broke out he volunteered for the Army but was refused admission on account of his extreme short-sight. Hester was able to help him obtain a secretarial post at Dublin Castle. However, this Civil Service work was uncongenial and shortly he was given the post of librarian to the Carnegie Library Trust. The new work sent him to County Limerick, where he organized the Carnegie Libraries in Ireland, coming to Dublin for brief visits. In 1919 the Abbey Theatre Company ended, and W. B. Yeats appealed to Lennox to restart it. Thus began the long association with that theatre which continued to the present.

In 1915 Hester organized a series of concerts for the International

33


34	FAR HORIZON

Red Cross, and in the following year she and Dr. Travers-Smith separated. The total break between them was protracted, but inevitable. During the last three years of their marriage the doctor had fallen in love with a younger and more beautiful woman. This lady was well known in the social life of Dublin, and Dr. Travers-Smith, whose practice took him amongst that set, found that he had neither eyes nor heart for anyone else. This defection stirred Hester's pride to the depths, and she showed her resentment by an almost unbroken silence when her husband returned to his home.

Complete severance took place when the doctor joined the R.A.M.C. and went to England. In many other directions life in Dublin seemed to grow more sombre. A year before the outbreak of war, Professor Dowden had died suddenly. Hester writes of this event in supernormal vein. "A very strange psychic warning was given me of this tragic event. Mrs. M., a remarkable trance medium, not professional, came to my house once or twice for seances. On one of these occasions the circle present sat round a table, until Mrs. M. dropped the hands she was holding (she was not under control apparently), stared at me and said: 'I see a tall lily standing in front of you. Someone near and dear to you is going to die.' I said: 'You may be mistaken; it may be myself.' Mrs. M. said: 'No, it is someone very near to you, perhaps your father or mother. It is close; the lily is bowing towards you. It will be in a very short time and sudden.' I attached very little importance to this incident, being of a sceptical turn of mind. A month later, however, my father died very suddenly. Now this was a very clear and distinct case of prevision, as it happened that this was not in my subconscious mind; there was no indication that my father was especially ill until within half an hour of his death."

Her father's death meant a psychological severance with the past. From that moment Hester was preparing to carry into effect a complete break with the Dublin scene. The war, however, prevented this from taking place immediately and the life in Dublin continued with sittings for psychic experiments, concerts in aid of the Red Cross and the entertaining of numerous personalities, who were passing through the city or who were taking refuge there to escape the storm of Europe. Hester speaks of her meeting with Philip Haseltine, better known as Peter Warlock, the composer. Warlock was an ardent pacifist whose whole nature revolted from warfare and the brutalities of the struggle which was engulfing the world. He had settled in Dublin and was brought to Hester's house by a mutual friend. Hester offered him the use of her piano and he composed many of his best known songs and lyrics in her drawing-room. She writes that "he was a very striking personality, with curious


	FAREWELL TO DUBLIN 	35

psychic powers. Sittings I had with him were always interesting and always to the point."

Peter Warlock, whose biography has been written by Cecil Gray, was a genius whose nature combined a curious dual personality in lightheartedness and gloom. His revolt against the sordid waste and ugliness of life expressed itself in terms of atheism and a perpetual struggle against his Catholic upbringing and conventional background. Hester found that there was too sinister a strain in his character for any prolonged psychic experiments. She prudently brought these to an end, but their love of music and her maternal feeling for this 'lost soul', kept their friendship alive.

During this decade Hester made a lifelong friend of Geraldine Cummins, who came frequently to Hester's house from 1914 onwards. She was working in the National Library in Dublin, and she became a member of the circle which held bi-weekly sittings in the house in FitzWilliam Square. In collaboration with Miss S. R. Day, Geraldine Cummins had written two plays which were produced at the Abbey Theatre and were subsequently played on tour by the Irish Players. She was a suffragist, as well as an international hockey player in her youth, and had been stoned through the streets of her native city, Cork, for advocating votes for women when she was twenty-one. She was the author of two Irish novels, Fires of Beltane and The Land They Loved, and had also published some Irish short stories, but it was during the years of the First World War that her psychic power was developed and trained along with Hester Dowden's. Her main control, Astor, has been mentioned in the previous chapter.

The early years of this friendship between two remarkable women have a particular significance and both have achieved equal fame and recognition throughout the world as automatists. Thousands ,of people, both in England and America, have read Geraldine Cummins' script, The Road to Immortality. This is in automatic writing and deals with the life beyond. It is supposedly dictated by F. W. H. Myers, poet and Cambridge classical lecturer, who passed 'over in 1900. Miss Cummins has also produced six other books in automatic writing collectively known as The Scripts of Cleophas, .dealing with the childhood of Jesus and the missionary journeys of Paul.

The two friends had a certain measure of success in their psychic exploration from the very beginning. Perhaps the most remarkable result was that quoted by Sir William Barrett in his book, On the Threshold of the Unseen. It has been known as the Pearl Tie-pin Case. Hester refers to it in this way:

"A strange piece of evidence of discarnate identity came through one evening when my friend, Miss Cummins, and I were sitting together. As in the case of Alice Franks, this message was very brief,


36	FAR HORIZON

and we attached no importance to it at the time. The name of a young cousin of Miss Cummins was spelt out on the board. He had recently been killed at the front, and he stated that he had been engaged to a girl whose name and address he gave in full, and asked that his mother should be told that he wished her to give his fiancee his pearl tie-pin in memory of him.

"The boy was only nineteen when he was killed, and this seemed a most unlikely story. Miss Cummins laughed at it and would not have investigated it but that I asked her to write to the address given and discover if the person mentioned lived there. Her letter was returned as incorrectly addressed, and we decided that the case was hopeless. Some time afterwards the young officer's relatives heard that he had willed all his possessions to a girl whose name was the same as the one spelt on the ouija-board-though the address was different-and to whom he had been privately engaged. This fact was absolutely unknown to his relatives."

A further case occurred through the joint writing of these two friends which does not furnish definite proof of identity, yet was most convincing in its substance and the manner in which it was expressed. The message was from a brother of Miss Cummins who was killed in Gallipoli. Miss Cummins did not sit until some time after his death, but almost immediately after she began he came with urgent messages for his mother. Mrs. Cummins had been overwhelmed with grief at the loss of her son, and even after more than a year and a half she was quite inconsolable. Lieutenant Cummins had been a high principled, fine young man, a very spiritual person in fact, and these messages were all of the same nature, begging Miss Cummins to tell his mother that her grief was keeping back his progress in the new sphere, and that he was unable to rise until she ceased to mourn for him.

He described himself as 'caught in the miasma of desire that shrouds the earth'. Miss Cummins told her mother, who made every effort to be more cheerful and forget her sorrow, and the last time Miss Cummins' brother spoke to her he seemed to be getting free from the fetters which bound him to earth. He said he did not expect to be able to speak again. These messages were very convincing to Miss Cummins. Those urging her to speak to her mother came through very rapidly, and gave her the sensation of intense anxiety and excitement.

In 1919 Hester was able to put into effect the desire that had been gaining ground for some time. Her dislike of Irish Nationalist politics and her attitude to Sinn Fein brought the matter to a head. During the famous Dublin Easter Week rising she had been barricaded in her house, as shooting was taking place in Sackville Street as well as in other parts of the city. Nevertheless, she had


	FAREWELL TO DUBLIN 	37

,gone out shopping and narrowly escaped becoming a casualty of the war between the Irish Irregulars and English Government forces which were arrayed against them. She speaks of the incident with a droll impatience, mixed with comical indignation.

Lennox Robinson, who later became her son-in-law, had taken up the Irish cause with the full enthusiasm of his nature, but Hester remained a strong Irish Loyalist. She believed that the Nationalist element did not represent the best of Irish life and that the Dublin of her father's time was being completely submerged in a sea of parvenu politics and politicians. She was equally indignant over the attitude of the British Government in their neglect and betrayal of the Irish Loyalists. Because of this she preserved a critical hostility towards English politics and successive English Governments up to her death.

She writes in her diary: "When the war was over, the Civil War in Ireland began. I never had psychic communications from my family, but in 1919 I had a very forcible impression that I must leave Ireland. The circumstances of my departure were very strange. I felt my father -wanted me to go, and I overcame obstacles which, at the time, seemed insurmountable in order to do what he wished. My difficulties were conquered at last and I decided to live in London, which was familiar ground after my period of musical study there."

Life in England presented a host of new problems, which did not allow her time for much introspection. Not that Hester was one to allow herself a brooding on past events. Her practical mind engaged itself on the task of finding a home and in earning a living. The sense of companionship with the unseen, with the psychic personality of her father for example, held no comfort for her. At no time in her long life did she allow herself spiritual solace through the powers of a sensitive. The first few months in London were occupied with the urgent problem of finance. During both her early life at home and also during her marriage she had lived in comfort completely untroubled by immediate economic crisis. Her husband's practice had been a large and affluent one, and both at FitzWilliam Street and also during the time when they had moved to the larger house in FitzWilliam Square she and her husband had lived not only in comfort, but extravagantly.

The upkeep of the two large establishments, a staff of household servants, a coachman, horses and carriages, meant that nothing had been saved. In addition there had been the education of the two children. But by this time her son was in the Army, and her daughter was working to keep herself. Marital breakdown and divorce turned the tables completely. Hester found herself with only £120 a year, which she received as alimony, together with a very small sum which came to her in trust from her share of her father's estate. She


38	FAR HORIZON

therefore decided to give tip all idea of music as a profession, for the second time in her life. Her mother's death had forced a similar decision on her when she was twenty-one; now, the ending of her marriage in middle age, and the resulting economic blizzard, once more prevented the attainment of this life-long ambition.

With letters of introduction she turned her hand to journalism. She writes: "In this I was fairly successful. I was on the staff of The Athenaeum for some time, and wrote many articles for that paper, including The Irish Letter, but none on psychical research."

Before leaving the Irish scene, it would be as well to give the reader the story of a famous piece of psychic evidence before her professional mediumship began. This incident took place in Dublin. Sir William Barrett has mentioned the case in his own book, but the writer records the story as it was written by Hester Dowden herself in Voices from the Void.

"I knew Sir Hugh Lane personally, and had heard he had gone to America about a fortnight before the sinking of the Lusitania, I had no idea why he had gone, or how long he intended to stay. About five o'clock on the day we heard of the loss of the Lusitania I saw posters on my way home, saying: 'Lusitania reported sinking'. I did not buy a paper, and had no personal interest in the sinking ship, as I knew of no one on board. Sir Hugh Lane's name did not occur to me, probably because he had been in America such a very short time. A sitting was arranged for 8.30 o'clock that evening, and before we began I felt a strange sensation of depression, so much so that I went up to my bedroom and sat alone for a short time. I could not have said why this feeling got hold of me; there was no special reason for it/that I knew of.

"At 8.30 o'clock I came down, and we began our sitting. The Rev. Savell Hicks recorded in silence, while Mr. Lennox Robinson and I sat blindfolded and talked to each other while the message was being spelled out by our hands. After a couple of minutes Mr. Hicks said: 'Would you like to know who is speaking? It is Sir Hugh Lane, and he says he has been drowned, and was on board the Lusitania'. We were terribly shocked-we both knew Sir Hugh -and asked Mr. Hicks to read the message to us. It ran as follows: First the name of our usual control, Peter; then, 'Pray for Hugh Lane'. Then, on being asked who was speaking, 'I am Hugh Lane; all is dark' came through. At this moment a stop press edition of the evening paper was called in the street, and Mr. Robinson ran down and bought one. When he came up to me he pointed to the name of Sir Hugh Lane among the passengers. We were both distressed, but continued our sitting.

"Sir Hugh Lane described the scene on board the Lusitania. 'Panic, then boats lowered-Women went first', he said. He stated


	FAREWELL TO DUBLIN 	39

that he was last in an overcrowded boat, fell over, and lost all memory until he 'saw a light' at our sitting. He sent me a message about our last meeting which was quite evidential so far as I could tell, and gave me greetings and advice for very intimate friends of his and mine in Dublin. The number of his cabin and the name of a fellow-passenger given by him were incorrect, so far as I can discover.

"This communication was very striking, but what followed was more evidential in my opinion. Sir Hugh Lane continued to come, and at each sitting at which he appeared he begged us to restrain any efforts of those who might wish to erect a memorial gallery to him in Dublin. This he seemed to have a horror of. At the same time he was most anxious that we should make every effort to have the conditions of the codicil to his will carried out. He wishes his pictures to come back to this city, and is much disturbed because the trustees of the National Gallery are very justly reluctant to restore them to Dublin.

""We had a very strange sitting-Mr. Lennox Robinson and I-last September, at which Sir William Barrett was present. Before the sitting I had said to Sir William that I thought the remarks of various people were justified who considered the Hugh Lane case evidential to the sitters who knew him personally, but not to the outside public. After a communication had come through from a man who died in Sheffield, and which in some particulars proved to be correct-it was not possible to investigate them all-Sir Hugh Lane came to the board, seized Mr. Robinson's arm, as he always does, and after much difficulty in reading the message, we discovered that he was much annoyed with me because of the way I had spoken to Sir William Barrett about his first communication on the night after the Lusitania sank.

"He was most violent on this occasion, seizing Mr. Robinson's arm and driving it about so forcibly that the traveller fell off the table more than once. Since then whenever we-Mr. Robinson and I-have sat together, the same thing has happened. Sir Hugh had come repeatedly, and always with the same message. He begs that we shall believe that it was really he who spoke to us that night when the Lusitania sank. He says any future words he speaks to us or anyone else will be discredited if we put no faith in the first he spoke after he died.

"The latest message we have had from Sir Hugh referred to the Lane Picture meeting which was to be held at the Mansion House, Dublin, on January 29th, 1918. It came to Mr. Robinson and me on January 22nd, 1918. It ran as follows: 'Hugh Lane'. (We said we wanted Peter instead, as we wished to do telepathic experiments.) 'I will not go. I want to speak, and this is my chance. I want you to go to that meeting and tell them I can still let the world know my


40	FAR HORIZON

wishes. Those pictures must be secured for Dublin; tell them I cannot rise to get rest; it tortures me. Do you believe me? I am Hugh Lane!' The last sentence was spelt out very passionately. Mr. Robinson's arm was seized furiously.

"These communications from Sir Hugh Lane are very evidential and convincing to us who knew him; to the scientific observer I do not think there is anything which could be called a genuine proof of identity, although certainly one fact was mentioned entirely outside our subconsciousness-i.e., that Sir Hugh was on board the lost ship! It must be remembered that this was spelt out before we bought the stop press with a list of the passengers. I am bound to confess that the fact that the communicator was so excitable on and after the sitting in September did more to persuade Mr. Robinson and me that it was really Sir Hugh than the whole Lusitania message. I have little or no doubt that the influence which came was actually Sir Hugh Lane, but I do not ask my sceptical readers who have not felt the tremendous energy of this communicator to share my belief."

The attitude of mind which Hester Dowden betrays regarding the whole question of survival and psychic communication, at this stage, differed little from that which she registered up to the end of her days. During the next thirty-five years her experience of the subject, in a repetitive sense, widened enormously, but her mind remained always extremely cautious. Spiritualism, then and henceforward, was to remain an attitude of mind which repelled her. But she had by now passed beyond the portals of the average man or woman student of psychical research. Her own sensitivity allowed her to be independent of the data received from discarnate entities, but she was always on the look-out for fragments of her subconscious mind suddenly coming to the surface, and taking the place of a discarnate who purported to write through her hand. The truth was that at this stage the majority of spirit people and personal controls with whom she had had dealings were not of a remarkably high order. The messages that were conveyed through her dealt directly with material conditions in this life. All of them, with the possible exception of Shamar, reacted to human emotions, and portrayed passions and prejudices which were largely of the earth, earthy.

It was not until the period of her English mediumship and the coming of the personality of Johannes that the whole standard of messages and general atmosphere took on a more lofty and spiritual tone. The Dublin scene was the period of her apprenticeship; the time when, by trial and error, Hester Dowden was learning to become convinced of the cardinal fact of survival. This process required a sloughing off of much dross and subconscious waste matter. She believed that the external influence, the control, was often remote, vague and unsatisfactory. She assessed her experiences to date by


	FAREWELL TO DUBLIN 	41

two alternative hypotheses. That we are in actual communication, directly or indirectly, with persons who have passed through the experience which we call death; or that in some mysterious and inexplicable way, we have read the minds of persons who are not in touch with us in any way, and that for no reason which we can understand.

"I am not by any means convinced, but I am inclined to believe that under certain unexplained conditions we are enabled to communicate with the dead," was her pronouncement and record of her state of mind before coming to London. Subsequent events in England blasted this cautious approach to the question into a more positive, if no less grudging, admission.






CHAPTER FOUR

LONDON. THE ALIEN CITY

Good, good, my lord; the secrets of nature, 
Have not more gift of taciturnity.
Troilus and Cressida, iv, 2.

HESTER came to London in 1921, and worked for Sir Howard Spicer, a big paper merchant, as his factory Welfare Officer. She took rooms in the Albert Bridge Road on the Battersea side of the Thames. After a few months she moved to a furnished flat at Primrose Road, in the same locality. Her daughter, Dorothy Travers-Smith, came to live with her and obtained a job in a toy shop, which was opposite the Old Chelsea church. London must have been a strange city for both of them, and the new move was somewhat hazardous. In addition to her work during the day, Dolly took courses at the Chelsea Arts Polytechnic and soon became a clever scenic artist.

She found her talents well suited to the theatre, and these studies at the Polytechnic served her in good stead when she married Lennox Robinson in 1931. Lennox, besides having some of his plays produced at the Abbey Theatre, was then its manager. Dolly returned to Ireland to pursue her craft in scenery painting about three years before her marriage, but for six years she and Hester remained together in London, as, in 1922, the latter took a long lease of 15, Cheyne Gardens, a narrow, red-brick Victorian house about two hundred yards from the Embankment. Cheyne Gardens, in those days, was a pleasant street in one of the nicest parts of Chelsea. Standing at right angles to the better-known Cheyne Walk, it yet had some of the lustre of the famous mile of studios and houses, with Thomas Carlyle's house facing the river to the west.

The lease of 15 Cheyne Gardens was not exorbitant, but this move was, in certain aspects, a risky one: because, at the same time, Hester, through the advice of her cousin, decided to launch out into professional mediumship. She had found her work as factory Welfare Officer uncongenial, and for about a year had been working as a free-lance journalist for editors both in London and Dublin. But her heart was not even in this work. She would have liked to obtain engagements as a concert pianist, but her training had not been sufficiently extensive for this to be practicable. During the last few years of her time in Dublin she had been acting as Honorary Secretary for the Irish Musical League, and on her

42


	LONDON. THE ALIEN CITY	43

departure Mr. Dermod O'Brien was deputed to inform her of the following resolution which the Executive Commit tee had passed.

"The Executive Committee of the Irish Musical League desire to express to Mrs. Travers-Smith their deep gratitude for her inspiring suggestions and her unsparing work to which the inauguration of the League has been mainly due. They much regret that her departure from Ireland has obliged her to relinquish the office of Honorary Secretary and tender her their warmest thanks for the service which in that capacity as in others she has so zealously done for the cause of music in Ireland."

To this resolution Dermod O'Brien added a postscript: "I want to add my own thanks for all you have done in this cause, and my admiration for your untiring zeal, and for the many hours of really hard work which you stole from the night, or robbed from your daily duties. How we shall get along without you remains to be seen, but I cannot but feet apprehension and doubt as to whether it won't all peter out like so many other well-intentioned efforts. I hope you will have good luck in finding the right sort of roof over your head when you get to London."

The new home in Cheyne Gardens was to remain the centre of all Hester's future psychic, musical and social activities till 1939. Even then the final move was only next door, and the house at No. 17 was a replica of that which she now entered.

On the first floor was the long double drawing-room, half of which faced the street, and here sittings were held in broad daylight. Hester used her polished square board with the letters of the alphabet in black, sunk into the surface. She would -sit in an easy chair with a dozen pencils, sharpened ready at her side, and foolscap paper at hand, on which the main messages were written. Clients came slowly at first, but she had this advantage. Prior to remaining exclusively a consultant at her own home, she had started her professional career by joining Hewett Mackenzie and his wife at the British College of Psychic Science. But again Hester's individualism and strong personality ran counter to this move. She writes:

"I felt I was not the right person, and had no natural mediumship. I also found conditions at the British College very difficult. I was the only automatist there, and my subject did not excite much interest. No room was set aside for automatic writing, and I was generally confronted with two sitters or more, which is hopeless! One sitter seems to interfere with another, except in very exceptional cases. I was terribly discouraged. My first sitting was given to two people. In this case the same message was repeated again and again through my hand. It was always addressed to the old gentleman of the two clients, and purported to come from his father. It was: 'Be sure not to take down that wall. If you do, it will involve you in a large


44	FAR HORIZON

sum of money'. I never expected to see these people again and, indeed, a long time passed before I did so. Then, one day, the old lady of the pair came to see me, alone. I said to her: 'Why should you come to me again? The sitting was so bad'. 'Why?' she said. 'You saved my husband a large sum of money. If he had taken down -that wall, he would have been put to very heavy legal expenditure'. I was much surprised, but it restored a little hope for me. I soon decided that I must work in my own house, so without any background, I left the British College and worked at home."

The position of a medium is always very difficult at first. It has a similarity to that of any professional man or woman whose clients must come to his front door and receive some service before he can charge them a fee. Hester could play the piano and she could write as a journalist fairly successfully, but to write automatically for strangers was a very different matter. The atmosphere was totally different to the friendly Irish sittings which Sir William Barrett had conducted. There was a sense of complete blankness that was very dismaying. Hester was very nervous at every sitting and thought too much of results beforehand.

Then she decided that if she was to continue, she must develop a technique of some kind. She felt she must shake loose from her fears and learn to be indifferent to results. From the time that she made this decision she went forward to each sitting with complete indifference. She felt as if she were playing in public, and that the results formed themselves. She became very much happier and soon found herself mistress of each situation. She writes: "I am bound to say that among the thousands of sitters I have interviewed, I have very seldom found a difficult person, or anyone who seemed hostile in any way. Occasionally I have had an entirely blank case and I soon understood that such cases must be dropped. The difficulty cannot be conquered. I drop these cases and make no attempt to wrestle with them, because I find that if there is no 'rapport' and no psychic sympathy between medium and sitter, it is far better to drop the experiment."

And so, bit by bit, Hester started to build up a clientele second to none throughout the country. The nature of her work permitted complete daylight in her drawing-room. Paintings from her father's home, with the striking portrait of herself by the elder Yeats, hung around the walls. She was lucky enough to obtain the services of a Mrs. Neighbour for her housekeeper. Mrs. Neighbour would answer the telephone and admit callers. Clients would make appointment by letter or telephone, and gradually, as satisfactory results were obtained, her fame as an automatist spread. Members of the aristocracy, men and women from the artistic life of Chelsea, society people from all over London came to her at regular intervals. Her


	LONDON. THE ALIEN CITY	45

average appointments, at first, numbered three in the afternoon, but latterly she reduced this to two and she kept to her rule of single persons at a time, and no more.

In addition letters came from America, Australia, and India, ,asking for automatic messages. She preferred to handle some object belonging to the writer in order to obtain a contact, but soon found that even this was unnecessary. It is easy to write about these things, but much harder for the reader to believe that outstanding psychic gifts could meet with such a steady response. But the rule of commercial service boils down to the fact that clients will come once, and once only, they are dissatisfied. The vast majority of Hester's increasing circle of clients came regularly, and yet more were added to their number. She kept up her piano practice assiduously, and the full-sized Steinway stood in the inner drawing-room as a symbol of relief from psychic work immediately its allotted span of time ceased. Hester Dowden had an intense love of Siamese cats and pekinese. A succession of these animals remained with her, and new generations appeared after the earlier ones had expired of old age. Ching was her first pekinese, and, at one time, Hester had two together.

The back garden was their playground and a large part of the household routine revolved round the happiness of these pets. The Siamese cats were brought up by her as kittens. She loved their lithe grace and looked on them as the epitome of aristocratic aloofness. She treated animals as entities with souls of their own who had a right to independence, and she never fussed them or intruded any undue affection upon them other than a quiet sympathy and love in attending to their daily needs and welcoming their approach to her when they saw fit to make it.

Her daughter, Dolly Robinson, had painted two of the pekinese, and this portrait, in oils, had its prominent position in the drawingroom. Gradually down the years the animals of the household became an integral part of it. They wandered in and out of the drawing-room during sittings, and visitors were expected to accept them as part and parcel of the home.

Another trait of character was rapidly developing. This was a collecting habit, which, in course of time, became a dominating passion. Bric-a-brac, and objets d'art, were found in the shops of the King's Road, and brought home. Dresses, shoes, and especially hats, were collected and put away in cupboards. Her small slender figure was always extremely neat. She preferred to wear black. Each morning she would attend to the dusting of the numerous ornaments herself. This was done with a bunch of feathers on a bamboo stick.

At first her powers were given to proving survival to private individuals, and it was not until she had been practising professional


46	FAR HORIZON

mediumship for some years that great personalities from the beyond came through to give their messages and establish the more famous cases about which a number of books have been written. Hester, at this time, describes four incidents which she claims have not only given her enquirers complete satisfaction, but which she considers gave first-class proof of survival through the facts which were revealed. She says that these cases seemed to her a reproof of her sceptical attitude to the subject.

The first of these was in connection with a lawsuit. A certain lawyer visited her, and urged her to try and find a family tomb for which he was searching and also a copy of a marriage certificate. He told her that he was not at all certain that these things were in existence. The tomb might be in England or in India; the marriage certificate might be in England or in France. Hester said that it was highly improbable that, with so little information, these things could be found. The lawyer was urgent.

"I asked him," Hester said, "to give me a week in which I could try to find one or both. After he had gone, I talked to Johannes, my control. I was told that the marriage certificate would not be found; it had been destroyed at Le Havre during the French Revolution. As to the tomb, I was given no information except that Johannes would look for it. For a week I made enquiries, off and on, as to whether any discovery had been made. In the same space of time the lawyer returned. He enquired eagerly about my investigations, and I had to admit that nothing definite had come to me. We then spoke to Johannes. He repeated the fact that the marriage register was destroyed, and then added the remark that he happened to have found the grave of John Hawkins for which we were seeking.

" 'Go', he said, 'to Marylebone Parish and find a churchyard with no church. The grave is there and the date is on the grave.' The lawyer made ready to go at once. I discouraged him. I was sure it would mean another disappointment. However, he started at once and a short time afterwards I heard that the churchyard of St. George's, Hanover Square, was in Marylebone parish. The grave and the date were found, and were used in the law case.

"The second case was one in which we had no information to help us, Some friends asked me to dine with them. They suggested that we might go on afterwards to a house in Gray's Inn which was badly haunted. I explained that whenever I tried to investigate hauntings they invariably stopped! My friends still urged me to go, The haunting took place in a flat at the top of a house in Gray's Inn. Doors were constantly opened, furniture, including heavy chairs on which people were sitting, were moved about the rooms. At night, when the occupant of the flat woke up suddenly, the house seemed to be on fire.


	LONDON. THE ALIEN CITY	47

After we arrived we sat down and waited, but nothing happened. That was as I expected. My host then asked me to do some writing, and I was glad to be occupied. Johannes was insistent that I should go away; he said there was danger for me if I stayed. I did not obey him, as I was determined to find the cause of the haunting. He said that in the year 1693 a man was murdered in that room. 'The murderer and the murdered are both here', he added. The murderer held some official position in Gray's Inn. We had had enough of it, and went away. Next day I heard from the occupant of the flat that she had been to the library at Gray's Inn, and had verified the fact of the murder. The gatekeeper was the murderer. She now felt terrified of living there and begged me to exorcise the place. This I did, and all hauntings ceased."

This was the second series of evidences in which a discarnate personality had revealed facts of which no one had any knowledge. Neither Hester nor any of the people who gave the dinner party were aware of the historical information; the sequence of events which had brought those enquirers to Hester's door suddenly came to an end.

"I have two more records," Hester remarks, "of the same kind. One was of a lady who had a great desire to find a large group of graves where some of her ancestors were buried. She thought it probable that they were buried in England, but that was all she knew. Johannes said he must have a map of England. He asked me to put my pencil on London. From there it moved to a small town in Lancashire and wrote: 'The Turner family is buried in a village churchyard, six miles south of this town. If you took at the parish register you will find that some mistake was made; I cannot tell you what'.

"The lady set off at once for Lancashire, found the small town and also the village churchyard. On looking at the parish register there she found that the parish clerk had been dismissed for omitting to enter one of the names of the Turner family."

The fourth case was, perhaps, the most remarkable of all. "A lady came for a sitting," writes Hester, "who was a complete stranger to me. She was interested in the possibility that she possessed psychic power. I did not think that Johannes was encouraging. She then turned suddenly and asked Johannes whether he could find her brother. She explained that he had been lost for six years. The Army had searched for him and also the police, but nothing had been heard of him. Johannes replied at once: 'He has been a farm tabourer in Australia. Write to the Farmers' Industrial League, Perth, Australia. He is not there now, but they have his address'.

"For ten months I heard nothing, and had nearly forgotten the case when the lady turned up again. She began by saying she really


48	FAR HORIZON

must thank Johannes for finding her brother. He was living in Sydney, and had been at the Farmers' Industrial League for some time before that. 'But', I asked, 'did you know of the existence of the League?' She had never heard of it, and neither had I. Johannes wrote this at once, and very quickly."

In dealing with these cases of evidence of survival, the biographer cannot omit mention of a series of evidences which Hester gave to a Mrs. E. W. Allison a few years after the above events. A report was published in the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research by Mrs. Allison and is typical of many proofs that were being presented during these early years of the third decade of the century. Hester is referred to throughout as Mrs. Travers-Smith, her married name.

MRS. ALLISON'S REPORT

On Friday, June 6th, 1924, at a sitting with Mrs. Osborne-Leonard near London, who, as usual, was working in trance and controlled by Feda, the following prediction was made which appears to have some bearing upon Mrs. Travers-Smith through her reputation in connection with the Oscar Wilde scripts.

Excerpt from Leonard sitting, Feda controlling:

Feda: Then he (the purported Dr. Hyslop) says: "We are both going to speak to you through writing soon."

[Note. The 'both' referred to Dr. Hyslop, who purported to be the principal communicator, and Dr. Allison, who purported to accompany him. This excerpt is a fragment from a long series of many veridical communications received through Mrs. Leonard-]

Feda: They are both going to someone you will be taken to soon, through whom they will be able to get some very good writing. I feel it is a condition you already know. You are not going at once. A little later on. They think you will not get that writing until after these few sittings with Feda. They want you to know that. They are going to bring you in touch with a person who will do writing.

[Note. I had no plans whatever in mind for any such work with anyone.]

Feda: You will not be alone. Someone with you. Same condition.

[Note. I was alone at the three sittings here reported, but at some of the subsequent ones others were present-]

Feda: You are going to have other sittings of a different kind to Feda's. This time, automatic. They will be there and do the best they can. They have an idea it is more of a physical sitting than this one. (It proved to be so.) As if they will be able to do voice . . .


	LONDON. THE ALIEN CITY	49

[Note. This did not prove true. Feda, like many controls, is addicted to interpretations, erroneous and otherwise.]

Two weeks later, at tea with Mrs. de Crespigny in the course of conversation she casually mentioned Mrs. Travers-Smith's name. I expressed interest, and Mrs. de Crespigny volunteered to arrange an anonymous sitting for me with Mrs. Travers-Smith. Several days later Mrs. de Crespigny wrote me that I might telephone Mrs. Travers-Smith and secure my appointment by mentioning Mrs. de Crespigny's name and not my own. I carried out these instructions.

I append Mrs. de Crespigny's statement:

Artillery Mansions, Westminster, S.W.1, Oct. 26, 1924. I made the appointment for Mrs. Allison with Mrs. Travers-Smith without mentioning her name, merely asking for it for a friend, and I knew nothing concerning Mrs. Allison's life in America nor of her friends.-Rose Ch. de Crespigny.

I further append the statement of Mrs. Travers-Smith:

London, Nov. 22nd, 1924.

In July, 1924, Mrs. Edward Wood Allison rang me up one day saying that she had been introduced by Mrs. Champion de Crespigny and did not wish to give her name. The first sitting with Mrs. Allison was given under the condition that her identity was absolutely unknown to me. I had not happened even to have heard of her before.-Hester Travers-Smith.

[Note. It will be apparent that 'Mrs. Travers-Smith's memory of the first sitting falls by a few days of the actual time. The bulk of her work for me was done in July. It should also be especially noted that in my entire acquaintance, living or dead, no other person than the communicator could have given the correct answers to my questions. These called for names associated with contacts of the communicator, widely diverse in time and locality.]

Record of sitting with Mrs. Travers-Smith, London.
	June 27th, 1924, 3 p.m.	 	

Section One

Mrs. Travers-Smith opened the door and invited me into her drawing-room. I remarked I was greatly pleased to have the opportunity of sitting with her, as I had been particularly interested in the


50	FAR HORIZON

Oscar Wilde scripts. Thereupon she told me, at some length, the circumstances under which these scripts had been made. She then arranged her ouija-board and enquired if I had brought anything belonging to the persons with whom I wished to communicate. I produced a number of articles and selected a grey suede tobacco-pouch, unopened but containing a pipe and some packages of tobacco. This was wrapped in black paper which Mrs. Travers-Smith, with my permission, removed, in order to secure direct contact. She placed the pouch close to the ouija-board pointer and said: 'Will you ask the name of the person to whom this belonged?' I replied that it seemed too severe a test and that I should be glad to hear anything the communicator wished to say. But Mrs. Travers-Smith preferred the definite question, so I put it. In the following, 'L' stands for 'Lydia', my Christian name.

L. W.A.: Can you tell me to whom this pouch belongs?

Ouija: Edward.

L.W.A.: Correct. Can you give me the name by which you were always called?

Ouija: Ned.

L.W.A.: That's right. Tell me who was married the other day.

[No response. I repeated the question.]

Psychic: I don't think they can answer that. I don't think they pay any attention to the things that go on here. You'd better ask something that he would remember.

[Note. The name called for was secured at a subsequent sitting as the answer to a question framed to awaken memory in the communicator who, naturally, had no memory of the marriage here referred to. What is the bearing of telepathy from the sitter in a case of this sort?]

L. W.A.: Can you tell me who gave you the pouch?

Ouija: A n i t a.

L.W.A. (excitedly): This is most astonishing. Where did she give it to you?

[Note. There were several unsuccessful attempts to give the name, so we rested. Mrs. Travers-Smith explained that it was never profitable to continue after an apparent fatigue. The name Anita is correct, being that of the friend who had given the tobacco-pouch to the purported communicator about a dozen years previously. She was, at this time, in her home, over four thousand miles away from the scene of this sitting.]

The above record was taken partly in shorthand and partly in longhand and is essentially correct and unexpurgated. Full verbatim notes were intermittently precluded by the fact that the psychic frequently requested me to place my hand on her own in order to add power. However, my hand was withdrawn and in my lap in every


	LONDON. THE ALIEN CITY	51
case before the ouija pointer began to travel. During these intervals I caught up with my notes of what had been said. Ouija messages were taken when and as given.

Section Two

In this part of the sitting we followed a different method, at Mrs. Travers-Smith's instance. She brought out some large sheets of paper and pencils for automatic writing. Mrs. Travers-Smith placed a pencil in my hand and covered my hand with her own. She took up the thread of the sitting at the point where we had broken off, and asked:

Psychic: Where did she give it to you

Pencil: Ned. Londan (Sic).

['.\Tote. The L was poorly formed, and the second o resembled an a. London was the correct answer. I was perfectly certain that I retarded the action of the pencil, which I held very limply, fearing to give assistance. The psychic's hand guided my own, in fact pushed it ahead.]

L.W.A.: Can you give me your surname?

Pencil: All . . . (scrawl).

[Note. Imperfectly written, but recognizable.]

L.W.A.: Can you give your middle name;

Pencil: Wood.

L. W.A.: Good!

Pencil: Edward.

L.W.A.: Will you try the last name again?

[Note. A number of attempts followed that resembled the name in general outline, but were too inaccurate, so we dropped it for the time being.]

Pencil: Lydia (indistinct and scrawly), Lydia (very clearly).

Pencil: Wood.

[.Note. Correct middle name of purported communicator. These two spontaneous efforts, Lydia and Wood, represent a continuity of association.]

We rested for some time and had tea. I was careful to say nothing that might give the psychic a clue about myself. She evidently gathered that I was interested in psychical research. She told me of having sent some of the Oscar Wilde script to America for an expert opinion on the handwriting, and also spoke of her early experiences in psychical research, which antedated by some years the development of her automatism.


52	FAR HORIZON

Section Three

We now resumed with the ouija-board. The psychic placed the pointer in contact with the tobacco-pouch, then -asked me to put my fingers on the back of her hand. I did so, very lightly, pulling back to some extent, fearing to give assistance. (See commentary following this section.)

Psychic: Will you ask a question?

L.W.A.: Ned, is it really you? (defiant and determined to push questions to the extreme). Well, then, whom did you allow to communicate in your place at my sittings recently?

Ouija: James Hyslop. (Correct, in Osborne-Leonard sittings.)

L.W.A.: Splendid! Whose name did he mention?

Ouija: Prince. (Correct, in Osborne-Leonard sittings.)

L.W.A.: Whom else'

Ouija: Bruton.

[Note. The action had grown feeble. The name 'Bruton' was unknown to me. However, I felt, and still feel, that it might mark the high spot of the sitting, because in the Osborne-Leonard series the purported Dr. Hyslop had described a number of persons unknown to me and still unidentified. The verification of the name Bruton would eliminate the application of the telepathic hypothesis here.]

L.W.A.: Never mind. Try and give me your sister's name.

Ouija: A n n a.

[Note. Correct Christian name, although not the one used by the purported communicator in addressing her. This accords with my experience, both here and elsewhere, in regard to baptismal names. Even though the nickname was habitually used in life, it is seldom given first and is often omitted. Compare Edward-Ned above. I never heard anyone address him by his baptismal name, though he regularly used it in his signature.

L.W.A.: Good! And your other sister's name?

Ouija: Mary.

L.W.A.: Splendid! Now can you give me your surname?

Ouija (slowly): Allesn-Allisn-Allison.

[Note. The last is correct.]

The memorandum of names given in this sitting was made immediately, both psychic and sitter agreeing on the order in which they had been given. The psychic as a rule writes very rapidly. If, after a question was put, the pointer hesitated, she would say encouragingly, "Can you give just the first letter? Try the first letter." The result, except in the case of Allison, came like a flash. Mrs. Travers-Smith remarked that she had noticed my retarding her hand, but was quite willing I should do so.


	LONDON. THE ALIEN CITY	53

Excerpt from Shorthand Records of Travers-Smith Sitting.
London, July 3rd, 1924, 4 p.m.

Mrs. Travers-Smith arranged the ouija-board, rubbed the pointer against the same tobacco-pouch and said, addressing her regular guide:

Psychic: Johannes, will you call him?

Ouija: I can easily.

Psychic: Do, please.

L.W.A. (to Psychic): Do you think you could -work entirely without my hand? Whatever comes, if correct, will have a much greater evidential value.

Psychic: I will try. (This left me free to take shorthand notes.)

Ouija: Edward Allison is here. (Pause.) She can perceive things. Shall I bring Hyslop?

L.W.A.: Sure. (Pause. This reply, if in fun, was characteristic of the purported communicator.)

At this point, Mrs. Travers-Smith, of her own volition, turned her head away from the board and closed her eyes, maintaining this position for the remainder of the sitting. She also requested the sitter not to say the letters loudly as they were given, as they might give her a clue, nor to mention the completed word later. I followed her instructions. During the entire sitting my hands remained in my lap.

Ouija: James Hyslop is here.

L. W.A.: Thank you for coming. Will you tell me who has just arrived in London in whom you are especially interested?

Ouija: Tubby.

L.W.A.: Good.

[Note. Miss Tubby, for many years past closely associated with Dr. James H. Hyslop and the work of the A.S.P.R., had arrived the previous afternoon from America, without announcing her visit to anyone in England except L.W.A., in order to have several anonymous sittings first. I here omit a number of communications purporting to come from Dr. Hyslop, that might be considered appropriate to the occasion, but without evidential significance.]

L.W.A.: Do you think you could bring back Ned?

Psychic (to L.W.A.): Could I ask a question?

L.W.A.: Certainly.

Psychic: Dr. Hyslop, I have been commissioned to write a special book for America. Would you help me in that way?

Ouija: I will surely help you. (Pause.) Edward Allison is here.

L.W.A.: I want to substantiate the above. Do you remember Gretchen?

[Note. My manner was rather defiant. I felt that if the names


54	FAR HORIZON

given in this and the preceding sitting came from the source they purported to come from, I ought to get a correct answer to any question, providing the question recalled an important association to the purporting communicator.]

Ouija: Yes.

L.W.A.: Well, then, give me her sister's name.

Ouija: Elsa. (Pause.) Elsie.

L.W.A.: That's right.

[Note. Correct. Baptismal name Elsa, but regularly called Elsie by her family and friends, including the purported communicator. She was one of the closest friends of both the communicator and the sitter. Two other sisters might have been mentioned, who were only casual friends. Another instance of the giving of the baptismal name before the familiar nickname. See earlier notes.]

L.W.A.: Do you remember Jack? Jack and Marian.

Ouija: Yes.

L.W.A.: What was their last name?

Ouija: M a c k a y (spelled quite slowly).

L.W.A.: That's right.

Ouija (spontaneously): Macky.

L.W.A.: Yes, but you omitted a letter this time.

Ouija: That's the way it's pronounced.

[Note. This is a good point, especially as the psychic was still unaware, from sight or sound, of a single word written by the pointer. In England I learned, subsequent to this sitting, the name is accented on the last syllable, with the 'ay' pronounced as long 'i', while the name of our friends is accented on the first syllable and the 'ay' pronounced as short T. The automatist, even were she aware of the variation of pronunciation in America, was working blindly, accurately and rapid. What I interpreted as mis-spelling, elicited pertinent explanation from the communicator who, by inheritance and experience, must have been familiar with the alternate usage.]

L.W.A.: Do you remember my mother?

Ouija: Lydia's mother.

L. W.A.: Yes. Well, give me her first name, the name we always called her.

Ouija: P a u I a.

L.W.A.: That is excellent.

[Note. I had been thinking of Polly, her family nickname. Paula was her correct name.]

L.W.A.: But give me her nickname.

Ouija: Mudder.

[Note. This is excellent. The communicator's particular nickname for my mother was Mudder, and this answer actually recalled that fact to me, after fifteen years' disuse. The communicator never


	LONDON. THE ALIEN CITY	55

spoke of her in this manner, but addressed her in person as Mudder. In his life with me, subsequent to her death, the term has, to the very best of my recollection, never been used to the time of this sitting. I was expecting to get Polly.]

L.W.A.: Splendid! But the other one, you know.

Ouija: P o I I y. Now do you think it is I? You are very amusing to me.

[Note. The communicator's pronounced reaction to many of my interests was amusement, often and diversely expressed to my friends and myself. The last phrase is therefore highly characteristic of his temper of mind.]

Excerpt from Travers-Smith Sitting, London.
July 9th, 1924, 2-30 p.m.
(At ouija-board, beginning of sitting, conditions the same as at previous sitting:)

L. W.A.: I am so sorry I forgot to bring the pouch.

Psychic: I don't think it will matter now. At the first sitting it might have made a difference. (Pause.) Johannes, can you get the gentleman?

Ouija: Edward Allison is here.

L. W.A.: I shall only ask for one new name today, and we'll go on to something else. dive me your sister's name again.

Ouija: Anna.

L.W.A.: Right. The other sister now.

Ouija (fumbles about).

L.W.A.: You remember-the younger one-you 'were particularly fond of her.

Ouija: Mary.

L.W.A.: That's right. Now give me the name of the young girl (very emphatically), your sister's daughter.

Ouija: T h m (very rapidly).

L.W.A. (interrupting): Wait a moment, begin Over.

Ouija: T h e I m a (correct).

[Note. Thelma would have been the correct answer to my question as to a recent marriage, at my sitting Of June 27th, above. But in that case the continuity of interest appears to have been maintained in the pouch and its associations, to the exclusion of this irrelevant personality. In the present seance, the name found its fitting associations in the purported communicator's memory. As my original question was not repeated, the giving of the name offers no ground on which to judge of the communicator's ability to refer to events subsequent to his passing, and therefore unassociated in his memory.]

The records reported above are accurate except for omissions


56	FAR HORIZON

as stated. Mrs. Travers-Smith's general conversational remarks after my arrival and in the intervals when she was resting are not recorded. I held my own counsel throughout, merely maintaining an encouraging interest in her remarks.

The voice of the tobacco-pouch and its contents for these experiments may have been especially fortunate. I was not experienced in psychometric work, but it has occurred to me since the experiment that, of the three articles I had with me, only the pouch and its contents had particular associations, other than the communicator's constant use of them, which might have rendered them especially likely to stimulate his memory and emotion. My choice seemed purely accidental; indeed, I had at first picked up one of the other articles and rejected it for no apparent reason.

The pouch had been seen and admired by the purported communicator in a London shop window before it was given to him. It had been in more or less constant use until the time of his passing after which it was carefully put away, containing the pipe and several packages of tobacco. This pipe, one of a dozen, more or less, was a very handsome one which he had especially requested of me as a birthday gift. He always referred to it as the finest one he had ever owned. The tobacco had been mixed by him to his liking and wrapped in small packages in waxed paper, each package containing about a pipe full.

The pipe is not merely something that belonged to the communicator, but was the source of much genuine enjoyment and is vividly reminiscent to the sitter's mind of many happy, quiet chats in 'the wee sma' hours'.

Comments by the Research Officer of the American Society for
Psychical Research

"For the satisfaction of readers who do not know Mrs. Allison I will say that she is an unusually well-qualified witness. The high order of her intelligence is manifest in the clarity and compact adequacy of her comments. She is touched by the scientific spirit and is contemptuous of credulity. The greater part of the record was taken down by her in shorthand and she guarantees the substantial accuracy of the remainder.

"The most surprising thing about the record is its transmission of proper names, generally about the hardest facts to produce.

"The theory of designed or accidental acquisition of these names by the medium would be absurd. Even had Mrs. Allison announced her name, it is unthinkable that Mrs. Travers-Smith could have been prepared to produce the names demanded, not only of her mother and her husband, but of the woman who gave


	LONDON. THE ALIEN CITY	57

him the pouch, of his two sisters, of his sister's daughter, of a particular friend, the surname of two other friends, the name of the sitter's mother and her nickname. Mind you, names on demand, of a stranger from over the sea. But we have the testimonies not only of Mrs. Allison, but also Mrs. de Crespigny and the psychic, ail ladies of standing, that the sitter's identity was not disclosed.

"I am free to confess that, had all the work been done as in Section Two or Section Three of the first sitting, I should not have been convinced that the delivery of correct names and other facts was not accomplished by means of an uncommonly subtle species of muscle-reading. That is, although admitting that Mrs. Allison's determination not to help but rather to hinder was very likely effective, I could not have been certain that it was. But the testimony is that in Section One of the first sitting, although Mrs. Allison's hand was frequently placed on the ouija-board 'in order to add power', it invariably had been withdrawn and placed in her lap before the pointer moved on. And, best of all, the second and third sittings were accomplished quite independently of her. This fact saves us from all speculations about the first sitting, for the others produced with exactly the same facility fully as remarkable results in the way of instant and correct naming of designated persons.

"Did the names come from spirits, or from the mind of the sitter? I am far from thinking that a definite conclusion can be drawn from one brief case like this. But there are certain logical Implications which ought to be stated.

"Mrs. Allison remarks, with some appearance of surprise, that her experience with veridical communications has been that the proper baptismal names, rather than familiar nicknames, or diminutives, are usually given. This makes it still more likely that Ned was in her mind rather than Edward when she asked for her husband's name. That is, since she has always called him Ned, she was looking for that name, if any. We have her direct testimony that she was thinking Polly when she got Paula. And she would normally think the familiar Elsie rather than the unused Elsa, and whatever the familiar substitute for Anna was. But in every case she got the formal baptismal name. It is possible that she might have marginally thought of the latter also and the marginal form might have come by telepathy in a case or two. But it is contrary to the expectation established by the records of experimental telepathy that the form of the name marginally thought should have reached the psychic instead of the form dwelt upon in the foreground of her mind in all four cases.

"But it would not be strange in the event of a spirit communicating, if the demand for a name was answered by it in its correct form, exactly as it is not strange that the husband, although


58	FAR HORIZON

familiarly called Ned, wrote his name Edward when living, or, if asked what his name was, customarily replied: Edward (not Ned) Allison.

"Again, after the name Paula came, Mrs. Allison asked for her mother's nickname. She was not fully intent on getting Polly. But instead came, purporting to be from her husband, his nickname for the mother, mudder, which had been almost forgotten by the sitter, and was recalled to her upper consciousness by its appearance through the board. On the spiritistic theory this has a personal relevance which is impressive, while on the telepathic theory, though not unthinkable, it is not at all what we would expect from the experimental records.

"Finally, there is a singular fitness to the spiritistic theory in the failure of Edward to give the name of the person lately married, though it was later given when the name of his sister's daughter was demanded. For he would remember the name of his sister's daughter, but could not be expected to remember what had happened since his departure, unless on the unreasonable assumption that spirits must know all that takes place on earth. But Mrs. Allison had the name Thelma as definitely in mind when she asked who was married as when she asked who was the sister's daughter. Why should telepathy between the living observe the consistencies appropriate only to a spirit consciousness?"


Hester continued to find London an alien city. A certain streak of obstinacy made her regard the English scene through the eyes of a foreigner; yet she had definitely exiled herself from Dublin. The revolutionary period had passed away in the early 'twenties, and further Irish troubles had taken the place of the old, but Hester's last picture of Dublin when she had witnessed barricades and shooting from the roofs and pavements of Sackville Street continued to be the prevailing one in her mind.

During this period she entertained a number of interesting and amusing personalities. Peter Warlock, who had visited her in Dublin during the middle of the First World War, came to Cheyne Gardens. She gave sittings to the ex-Queen Victoria Eugenie. A Dr. Ravenhill, at this time, took a room in her house and remained with her for the next twenty years. He had retired from medicine and devoted himself to painting. Right up to her death, Raven, as he was nicknamed by the family, remained a devoted and loyal friend.

Musical parties abounded and Hester also found time to visit most of the West End plays that held any appeal for her. During this


	LONDON. THE ALIEN CITY	59

period her mediumship was developing into stronger channels. Unknown to herself she was about to become a chronicler for groups of souls famous in particular fields of work during their earthly lives; but before this took place she became involved in the efforts of a former literary personality to prove his discarnate survival of death. This was none other than the spirit of Oscar Wilde.






CHAPTER FIVE

COMMUNICATIONS FROM OSCAR WILDE

. . . Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night . . .
Hamlet, i, 4.

MESSAGES from Oscar Wilde came to Hester Dowden during the months of June and July, 1923. These messages started at the beginning of a sitting which she gave to a gentleman whom we shall call 'Mr. V.' Previously he had had several sittings of an experimental nature with her at the British College of Psychic Science. He seemed quite conversant with the subject, but he told Hester that he had no powers as a medium himself. He was a mathematician, and much interested in music; but, apparently, he had no special interest in literature. However, Mr. V. was one of those persons who make communications easy and harmonious. He was, in some mysterious way, helpful at a sitting. Hester wrote of him: "There was a clearness of psychic atmosphere, when I sat with him, which is not usual with strangers who come to me for the first time."

From this chance meeting sprang a series of messages which created a limited furore, not only in psychic circles, but also amongst the general public both in England and America. Psychic Messages from Oscar Wilde was published the following year. The book sets out with complete accuracy the whole series of communications purporting to come from the personality of Oscar Wilde, together with an explanation of possibilities.

Prior to these events Professor Richet, perhaps the greatest physiologist in Europe, had startled the scientific world by the publication of his results of thirty years' investigation of psychical research. At that time he did not believe in survival, although at the end of his life he recanted in favour of survival being proved. But he recognized phenomena then "as merely due to psychical faculties possessed by certain persons, who are known as mediums". Subjective phenomena he divided from the objective sort. From the two types Richet evolved a theory, which he named cryptesthesia.

Hester Dowden analyses the case for Richet's cryptesthesia, compares and contrasts it with the alternative case of the subconscious mind, and rejects both in favour of a cautious belief in proven survival. Her final conclusion is supported wholeheartedly by Sir William Barrett in his preface to the book.

Before giving the reader examples of the type of messages which

60


	COMMUNICATIONS FROM OSCAR WILDE	61

Oscar Wilde revealed, it is necessary to say that the same spirit also wrote a psychic play which showed great similarity to his work on earth as a dramatist. From these messages a controversy sprang up which was fanned by many newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic as to the authenticity of the messages and as to whether it would be possible that the medium could produce work over such a prolonged time, and of such variety, which so closely approximated to the style and personality of Oscar Wilde.

Here was a major series of evidences -which finally brought Hester Dowden into the open in defence of her life's work. Incidentally the Wilde case gave her work a recognition which never diminished. Dating from the Oscar WiIde messages she joined that small circle whose international work in psychic fields has been recognized the world over. Margery Crandon and Mrs. Piper in America, Gladys Osborne-Leonard and Lilian Bailey in England, are some who have broken through to a similar sphere of recognition.

In February 1924, Geraldine Cummins, Hester's friend and collaborator for many years, published in the Occult Review an extremely interesting and impartial study of these Oscar Wilde scripts. Sir William Barrett, referring to this study, said: "As time went on, during the eight years she [Hester] studied these psychical phenomena, she was compelled to abandon her preconceived opinion. The striking personality of the soi-disant Oscar Wilde gradually became apparent. Miss Cummins remarks: 'Style, handwriting, personality, the speed of the communication, the facts unknown to the medium's mind, must all be carefully considered before any judgment can be passed.'

"It will be seen from the dispassionate examination of the scripts which Mrs. Travers-Smith gives in the present volume that she is disposed to agree with Miss Cummins, that the whole contents of the scripts afford 'more convincing evidence of survival than the giving of certain facts unknown to the mediums'.

"Nevertheless, my own belief is that, just as here on earth our true personality cannot reveal itself except through some material medium such as the brain, so after death the soul must await the clothing of 'the spiritual body' before it can fully manifest itself to others. Be this as it may, the fragmentary and elusive glimpses we get of those who have passed into the unseen do afford to some a basis for religious belief, and frequently they give inexpressible comfort and hope to many bereaved and stricken hearts."

It is worthy of note that Oscar Wilde's messages produced a new line of approach in attempted proof of a discarnate entity. Usually proof is offered by means of names and facts, which are supposed to be recognized by the recipient, and to be unknown to the medium.


62	FAR HORIZON

But the subconscious mind of both medium and recipient complicates the issue. Telepathy, as a proven factor, is also another deterrent. It is therefore the duty of the trained research officer to sift such evidence and assess its value, by allowing as much as possible for these alternative facts.

In psychical research, each case must be judged on its own merits, but to the normal Spiritualist, a vast mass of evidence accumulates over a long span of years. This evidence consists not only of facts which have proved to be correct, and which are outside alternative explanation, but consists also of a multitude of impressions of personality, traits and characteristics which add up beyond the possibility of coincidence, and whose sum total creates an acceptance of the theory of communication, -when conditions are right for it.

Oscar Wilde does not attempt many factual proofs. He certainly gives a few names, which show acquaintance with events in the past life of the historic Oscar. His main approach, however, lies in literary style. It is just here that the expert must judge how far Hester Dowden could subconsciously reproduce characteristic epigrams and twists of style of the true Oscar Wilde and how far it would be beyond her powers of reproduction over a sustained period.

The following extracts from the psychic messages received will illustrate this line of approach. The intrusion of Oscar Wilde began inconspicuously. Mr. V., who was attempting to develop his own powers of automatic writing, was holding the pencil in his hand on that afternoon of June 8th. Hester rested her own hand lightly over his, without exerting any pressure, and the first four words that appeared were "Lily, my little Lily."

These words were the call of a deceased friend for his own daughter, still on earth, but they apparently produced the needed shaft of entry for Oscar Wilde, who, at that point, intruded:

"No, the lily was mine-a crystal thread-a silver reed that made music in the morning. (Hester: Who are you?) Pity Oscar Wilde-one who in the world was a king of life. Bound to Ixion's wheel of thought, I must complete for ever the circle of my experience. Long ago I wrote that there was twilight in my heart, but this is the (last?) twilight of the soul. In eternal twilight I move, but I know that in the world there is day and night, seed time 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 lane and hedgerow and year after year the hawthorn bears blood-red fruit after the white death of its may. (Hester: Are you Oscar Wilde?) Yes, Oscar Wilde. (Hester: Tell me the name of the house you lived in in Dublin. Tell me where your father used to practise.) Near Dublin. My father was a surgeon. These names are difficult to


	COMMUNICATIONS FROM OSCAR WILDE	63

Facsimile of Hester Dowden's normal handwriting

Facsimile of Oscar Wilde's normal handwriting

Facsimile of Oscar Wilde's handwriting received through Hester Dowden's hand

Reproduced from Psychic Messages from Oscar Wilde, by kind permission of the publishers, T. Werner Laurie, Ltd.


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recall. (Hester: Not at all difficult if you are really Oscar Wilde.) I used to live near here-Tite Street. (Hester: There is a Tite Street near here and he has spelt it correctly. I don't know where he lived in London. Did you know about it? (Mr. V., the writer of the script: I have never been in Chelsea before today, and to the best of my knowledge I had never heard of Tite Street.) (Hester: Well, Oscar Wilde, what was your brother's name?) William-Willia ... (Hester: Now, what did your mother, Lady Wilde, call herself?) Speranza. Pity Oscar Wilde. (Hester: Why have you come here?) 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, that 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."

"Pity poor Oscar Wilde!" This was the tenor of his first approach. This wild call for pity and a return to the beauty of earth. What was it that Wilde had done which kept him in a state of darkness? What crimes had he committed for which he had not already atoned? The answer seems to lie in Wilde's absorption, utter and complete, in physical aspects of beauty. His was a mind incapable, at that stage, of human sympathy. His full energies were turned inwards to the barren core of self. Yet the love of words, of word-pictures and style, remained.

"Pity Oscar Wilde! To think of what is going on in the world is terrible for me. Soon the chestnuts will light their white candles and the foxgloves flaunt their dappled, drooping bells. Soon the full moon will swim up over the edge of the world and hang like a great golden cheese. Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop! This image is insufferable. You write like a successful grocer, who from selling pork has taken to writing poetry. (Hester: Who said that?) I find the words in my medium's mind. Try again-like a great golden pumpkin hanging in the blue night. That is better, but it is a little rustic. Still, I adore rustic people. They are at least near to nature, and, besides, they remind me of all the simple pleasures I somehow missed in life. (Here Hester made some remark about Lady Wilde being a half-crazy old woman who thought she could write poetry.) Please do not insult my mother. I loved and honoured her. (Hester: We are not insulting her. Spell out the name by which your mother called herself) Speranza. Yes, it is quite true what I said. I lived for the beauty of visible things. The rose flushed anemones that star the dark wood


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land ways, those loveliest tears that Venus shed for Adonis, and shed in vain, were more to me than many philosophies."

During the whole of this essay Mr. V. wrote, as the writer has already said, with Hester's hand resting on his. When she took her hand off the pencil only tapped, and did not continue. The italics have been inserted to indicate quotations similar in style, which were afterwards discovered in Wilde's works, for he was attempting his first aspects of proof-that of similarity to the brilliant style of earth. Mr. V. had no special interest in the works of Oscar Wilde, but many years before, he had read, he stated, The Ballad of Reading Gaol, De Profundis and The Picture of Dorian Gray.

The next sitting on June 18th consisted of the same Mr. V., Hester, Geraldine Cummins, another man, and a Mr. Dingwall, who was the Research Officer of the Society for Psychical Research. The sitting was extremely brief, but it illustrates, for the first time, some of the wit and sparkle of the former Oscar. Writing in the same vein, he began:

"Oscar Wilde. Being dead is the most boring experience in life. That is, if one excepts being married or dining with a schoolmaster. Do you doubt my identity? I am not surprised, since sometimes I doubt it myself. I might retaliate by doubting yours. I have always admired the Society for Psychical Research. They are the most magnificent doubters in the world. They are never happy until they have explained away their spectres. And one suspects a genuine ghost would make them exquisitely uncomfortable. I have sometimes thought of founding an academy of celestial doubters . . . which might be a sort of Society for Psychical Research among the living. No one under sixty would be admitted, and we should call ourselves the Society of Superannuated Shades. Our first object might well be to insist on investigating at once into the reality of the existence of, say, Mr.- Dingwall.

"Mr. Dingwall, is he romance or reality? Is he fact or fiction? If it should be decided that he is fact, then, of course, we should strenuously doubt it. Fortunately, there are no facts over here. On earth we could scarcely escape them. Their dead carcases were strewn everywhere on the rose path of life. One could not pick up a newspaper without learning something useful."

At the next meeting, Oscar Wilde makes it quite clear that he is communicating through Hester, and not through Mr. V., whom he terms merely 'the tool'. In other words, Mr. V. gives an automatic response, but only when Oscar Wilde is controlling the brain and subconscious personality of Hester. The following communications dealt with fractions of his early life and the posthumous state in which Wilde then found himself; but before I mention them, readers should remember that these communications took place more than


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a quarter of a century ago. Oscar Wilde has since communicated many times through other mediums and the drift of the later messages seems to confirm the fact that he has evolved, at last, from dimness into regions less bleak and less grey. But at this time we find him writing of the other world in pessimistic vein.

"Here we are in the most amusing position. We are like so many ants that creep round and round and do our silly tasks daily without any interest in our work. I feel like a very ancient aunt nowadays. I am doing what is little better than picking oakum in gaol. There, after all, my mind could detach itself from my body. Here, I have no body to leave off. So one of my most interesting occupations is impossible. It is not by any means agreeable to be a mere mind without a body. That was a very decorous garment, that made us seem very attractive to each other; or, perhaps, supremely the opposite. Over here that amusement is quite out of the question, and we know far too much about the interiors of each others' ideas. They grow very pale in this process, and one tires of one's ideas so easily. You can see them just as you saw the slightly creased and dabbled clothes of your friends on earth. (Have you seen your mother?) Yes, I have seen her. She has not really improved in the process of dying. She is less comely now than when Speranza used to lead the intelligentsia in Dublin, in those days when we had still the relics of civilization among us. (Will you come again?) I will come gladly, if you will let me buzz on as an autumn bee might who was tired of hunting for fresh blossoms out of season. I am tired, too, but I like to remind myself now and then of the fact that there are people who regard this little globe as the whole of what is reality."

There now crept in a new and faster means of communication. Hester began to use the ouija-board, and Geraldine Cummins took down the messages which the flying pointer picked out from the letters. Yet another and more difficult method of proving identity was attempted. Wilde had previously criticized some of the novels of Arnold Bennett, H. G. Wells, and Eden Phillpotts. Mr. V., Geraldine Cummins, and Hester had each read one novel by Bennett, three or four of H. G. Wells' earlier works, but no one had read anything by Phillpotts. The literary criticism shows the penetration of an acute mind that can move to the core of a personality, and reveal defects and weaknesses. But each criticism, does not, in itself, give much point to the presence of a discarnate personality, except in so far as it shows an impish malice and surface knowledge of faults, which would be in tune with the sentiments of the earthly Oscar.

Wilde has this to say of Bernard Shaw: "Shaw, after all, might be called a contemporary of mine. We had almost reached the point of rivalry, in a sense, when I was taken from the scene of action. I had a kindly feeling towards poor Shaw. He had such a keen desire to be


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original that it moved my pity. Then he was without any sense of beauty, or even a sense of the dramatic side of life, and totally without any idea of the outside of any human being as he was utterly ignorant of his internal organs. And yet there was the passionate yearning to be a personage, to force his person on the London world and to press in, in spite of the better state of those who went before him. I have a very great respect for his work. After all, he is my fellow-countryman. We share the same misfortune in that matter. I think he may be called the true type of the pleb. He is so anxious to prove himself honest and outspoken that he utters a great deal more than he is able to think. He cannot analyse; he is merely trying to overturn the furniture and laughs with delight when he sees the canvas bottoms of the chairs he has flung over. He is ever ready to call upon his audience to admire his work; and his audience admires it from sheer sympathy with his delight."

Strangely enough, John Galsworthy was the man Wilde most admired amongst the modern dramatists. His was the only mind he had entered into which appealed to his literary sense. Wilde felt that Galsworthy was ever occupied with externals, and that he succeeded with his difficult medium in producing something akin to life, "with all the artificiality which is so essential to the stage". He believed that he was the aristocrat of literature, the man who took joy in selection, "as our poor friend Shaw never did".

Wilde has great sympathy with Shakespeare's use of the character of Hamlet for revealing his knowledge of the unseen. He writes: "The clumsy way in which he addressed the shade of his father used to wound my feelings of delicacy and selection. But now that I am a mole myself, I understand. I fully appreciate this expression. It was well chosen and should be of interest to the Society for Psychical Research, as it displays an inward knowledge of the state over here.

I shall readily speak to you, because it seems to me that these glimpses of the sun keep me from growing too mouldy here below. Hamlet speaks of his father's ghost as 'old mole'."

We have to realize that Wilde is dependent on the light from the earthly scene for any relief from the tedium of greyness, possibly blackness, in his spiritual abode. When he enters the field of the aura of a medium, or when he uses her sight through the physical organism of her brain, only then does he recapture the brighter world of earth. But his state is a comparative one. What exactly is the state that he describes to us?

"Like blind Homer," he writes, "I am a wanderer. Over the whole world have I wandered, looking for eyes by which I might see. At times it is given me to pierce this strange veil of darkness, and through eyes, from which my secret must be forever hidden, gaze once more on the gracious day. I have found sight in the most curious


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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 and the Yezediz, who worship both God and Satan and who love only snakes and peacocks.

"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 weeping to her mother and wondered why. Ali, those precious moments of sight! They are the stars of my night, the gleaming jewel in my casket of darkness, the priceless guerdon for whose sake I would willingly barter all that fame has brought me, the nectar for which my soul thirsts. Eyes! What can it profit a man if he loses them, or what can a man give in exchange for them? They are fairer than silver, better than seed pearls, or many-hued opals. Fine gold may not buy them, neither can they be had for the wishes of kings."

In another message he continues this vein of bitterness. It is a bitterness which is self-centred and without remorse; the desire for earthly scenes, scents, and colours is wholly physical desire. There is as yet no waking consciousness of a spiritual world around him. He is still thrown back into the prison which is dependent on material things of earth. Thus, he remains blind to the bright world of spiritual prototypes, and he starves for what he cannot attain, lacking as he does all physical senses. "So far I cannot be said to have found the after-life a state of bliss-rather it is the dimming of the senses and the stultifying of the brain from lack of light and colour. . . . But doubtless the Almighty has an excellent purpose in stamping out as far as possible that taste for His creations, which worked so deeply to my detriment. . . ."

Wilde next discusses his plays. "My plays were scarcely drama. They were more the weaving of character into pattern; and this, with the use of language which I chose in each instance to illustrate the surface of the human being. I did not propose to go deeply into the heart, as it is called; that organ, which is so frequently maligned, did not interest me. I was more intrigued by the human pattern as it appeared on the surface of London society. It seemed to me we used to get more from each other by accepting the outside than by probing into the intestines. The outside of this great machine was at that date comely, and presented to the eye a picture which had the charm of much shade and little light. It was a time when beauty was spoken of, but kept in the inner chamber and not permitted to walk abroad. . . . I should rather like to give you some idea of what it meant to plunge into this huge heap of philistinism. I felt like a goldfish who has choked from devouring too much bread. The meal did not nourish me, it merely distended my stomach. It seemed a foolish thing to go on living in such a world as this was. And I found I had


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a mission-the mission of drawing aside the veil from beauty and showing her in her nakedness to the world. I had all the ardour of a missionary; and my own rather unusual appearance gave me the suitable garb of a parson. The priest of art, of culture, must of necessity show it in his own form."

Wilde condemns Thomas Hardy as a harmless rustic. He writes of Tess: "I well remember how his Tess set maiden hearts a-throbbing. It was a tale which might attract a schoolgirl who imagined she had just arrived at puberty; but as a work this book is shapeless and has neither value as an artificial rendering of rustic life, nor as a minute study of the village. Mr. Hardy is indeed the middle-class provincial. He never dreamt he could arrive, and yet he had his day, partly because he tried to paint the peasant, who at this period was just about to peep above the horizon for the first time. We were quite interested to meet the peasant; we even found him rich for a short space, but soon his day had passed. For Mr. Hardy wearied us. We wearied of his peasants, and he had to fall back upon a class a little more elevated, but totally uninteresting. This, I feel, was the reason for his steady decay."

He was frankly an admirer Of Meredith, as he recognized his appreciation of beauty and the right word. But Wilde believed that Meredith drowned his ideas in a wordy smother. "They [ideas] clung about him as barnacles on an old ship, and he was so completely clogged that his thoughts escaped and only words were left. But, after all, what an immense achievement it is to plait the English language!"

Hester was also an admirer of Meredith, and thought he had a fine sense of beauty. She would, therefore, entirely disagree with Wilde's caustic estimate of Meredith's work. Further sittings reveal his ideas about women.

"Dear lady, do you really wish to speak again to your criminal? I feet rather melancholy tonight. So possibly it is an occasion on which I may reasonably babble about my lost illusions. I have long since passed into a state in which women appear merely to exist as the coloured phantoms of an over-excited brain. But even here, in this condition into which the Almighty has found it His pleasure to confine me, He cannot shut out from my only-too-fertile memory the images of those who passed in and out of my life-flashes of lightning, flitting across the leaden Heaven. . . .

"I desire to say that not one woman passed across my path in life who left no furrow on the road behind her. My sensations were so varied with regard to your sex, dear lady, that you would find painted on my heart-that internal organ so often quoted by the vulgar-you would find every shade of desire there, and even more. (An interruption.) These women, who, like dancing flowers,


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sprang on my path, these jewels, who crowned me with torturing pleasure, were the strings of my lure. They gave me words to weave, and thoughts to cluster round my words."

(Hester: Tell us about one woman.)

"Women were ever to me a cluster of stars. They contained for me all, and more than all, that God has created. Evil came through them, and all the best of me was woven from the woman. (Here there was an interruption from those present.)

"Oscar is speaking. Woman was to me a colour, a sound. She gave me all. She gave me first desire, desire gave birth to that mysterious essence which was within me, and from that deeply distilled and perfumed drug my thoughts were born; and from my thoughts words sprang. Each word I used became a child to me. I loved my words and cherished them in secret. They became so precious they were hidden from the gaze of men until I nurtured them, and in their fullness brought them forth as symbols of the woman. . . .

"I feel it very difficult to make your simple nature follow me in this matter. Do I insult you, if I maintain that woman must ever be to man the force that is creative? That was what made her hateful in my sight-hateful and sweet as a too-powerful vintage.

(Hester: Were all women the same to you?)

"Women came to me like clustered stars. I gathered them as flowers might be culled from a rich garden. All their varied perfumes came to me as an intoxicating draught-not singly, but combined. This twined wreath encircled me through life, and made my days both sweet and bitter."

From the point of view of evidence we must note that Wilde refuses to discuss one individual woman in his life, and persists in eulogizing the sex. He is complimentary to Hester, but seems forgetful or unwilling to particularize about characters from the past.

There are other literary celebrities upon whom his critical shafts are turned. He abhors James Joyce. He loathes his Ulysses. He remains bitter in the outer world when referring to his prison experiences. Here we have a strain which was started in De Profundis, more than thirty years before the sitting.

"Society sent me to prison and then into exile. The world that had welcomed me so gladly thrust me out from its care. With the brand of Cain on my brow and the charity of Christ in my heart, I set out to seek my bread in sorrow, and, like Christ or Cain, I found how weary the way was, and, like Dante, how salt the bread when I found it. The world had no place for me. When I walked in public places I was asked to go, and when in hot confusion I retreated, the curious craned their heads, or raised their lorgnettes that they might


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the better view a monster of vice. I had lost everything except my genius.

"All the precious things that I had gathered about me in my Chelsea home and that had become almost a part of my personality were scattered to the winds, or lost, or passed into careless and alien hands. The very children of my imagination were thought unworthy to live, and a lady whom I had trusted and who in the days of my pride had often called me her friend, deliberately destroyed a manuscript of mine. As the man was tainted so must his work be tainted also. The leper with his cowl and little bell was not more shunned than I. . . . But though I have forgiven the world the humiliations that were heaped upon me, and though I can forgive even that last insult of posthumous popularity that has been offered me, I find it hard to forgive them for translating my beautiful prose into German. You may smile, but that, to the artist, was a very real form of murder. To have maimed my soul was terrible, but to have maimed the soul of my work was more terrible still."

It is impossible to deal with all the evidence of this discarnate personality. But the whole story can be found in Hester's record of these strange sittings. Few were the people that seemed worthy of his memory, but there is a passing reference to a little farm in Ireland where he stayed with his brother and sister. He tries three times to write its name. "McCree . . . Cree . . . No, that's not the name. . . . Glencree . . . where we stayed with Willie and Iso." He mentions a priest, Father Prideau. There was a dinner-party that came to his memory, and a scene in France after his imprisonment.

"Dining with Arnold and Pater near Hyde Park. Lunching with Margot Tennant, Mrs. Fox Blunt and others in London. Asquith was like a fish out of water. I did most of the talking and afterwards told Margot stories. Stayed behind . . ." These statements were not within the knowledge of anyone present. "One of my happiest moments.... One of my few happy moments after leaving prison was when I entertained the little schoolchildren at the little village near Bernaval . . . . Of course, I was M. Sebastian Melnotte in those days . . . . Melmoth from some ancestor of mine. Sebastian in memory of the dreadful arrows. jean . . . Dupre . . . I knew in a Paris cafe. Everything is confused and I misplace events in time."

In My Diaries, by Wilfred Scawen Blunt, on pages 178-79, the following entry occurs:

"17th July. A brilliant luncheon with Margot and her husband at 30 Upper Grosvenor Street, and I took her a wedding ode which I had written for her amusement. The other guests were Mrs. Grenfell, Mrs. Daisy White, Ribbesdale, his brother, Reggie Lister, and Oscar Wilde. All immensely talkative, so that it was almost like a breakfast


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in France. Asquith alone, rather out of it. I sat next to him and was rather sorry for him, though he was probably happy enough. After the rest had gone away, Oscar remained telling stories to me and Margot." Mrs. Fox Blunt was not mentioned as present at the luncheon.

Hester mentions that the whole of the Oscar Wilde scripts were written fluently and very easily. She was convinced that none of the facts came from the minds of those present, nor from her own mind. Neither before, nor during the time of these sittings, had she read any biography of Wilde's life. She mentions that his personality did not please her either then or in her youth, and she had avoided any study of his works beyond a cursory reading of two plays and the essay De Profundis. Hester believed that at least twenty years had lapsed since she had opened any book connected with his life or personality.

In the months that followed, Oscar Wilde gave her a full play in three acts, which was produced on the ouija-board. The first two acts bear certain resemblances to The Importance of Being Earnest, but the final act reaches a psychic climax when the characters appear outside the earthly scene. This play was sent to Sir Gerald du Maurier, and interested him, but he finally decided not to produce it. Probably its psychic nature scared him.

Wilde lived in hope of spiritual redemption. He believed that while dwelling in darkness, he would one day reach the world of light. Remaining obsessed in the dream of physical and carnal beauty, he yet upheld a vision of the true poet which sustained and comforted him. He bids his adieu in these words: "Tell the world that vision for it must ever be obscure. While body still exists, the mind is trammelled by weights such as the heaviest burden borne by man cannot compare to."

He speaks from the limitations of a self-made purgatory, from which, let us hope, he has now departed.






CHAPTER SIX

PROBABILITIES AND IMPROBABILITIES

But how is it
That this lives in thy mind? What see'st thou else
In the dark backward and abysm of time?
The Tempest, i, 2.

MUCH water has passed under the bridges of time since events in the last chapter took place. As this century approaches its half-way mark, followers of things psychic have had the benefit of research conducted by Professor Rhine. They will also have assessed accumulated evidence pointing to survival of human personality beyond death, which has been given to the world during nearly a full generation. But in the early twenties much stress was laid upon three explanations of psychic phenomena. Professor Richet and his "cryptesthetic power" created a hypothesis which, in many respects, was more complicated and placed more burden upon credulity than the simpler belief in worlds unseen having partial power to communicate with earth.

Richet's theory granted man extrasensory powers. He admitted clairvoyant and clairaudient faculties. Telepathy, beyond normal physical communication, and ectoplasmic manifestation, was produced by rare individuals under extraordinary circumstances. But all these signs and wonders were of a physical nature. Richet refused, until the very end of his life, to recognize communication with discarnate entities, preferring to believe that man himself could produce every out-of-the-way happening connected with the seance room. If we adopt cryptesthesia as a possible hypothesis, then we create our own phantoms. We even materialize them in some cases. As Hester Dowden expresses it, "our automatic messages are all part of ourselves. They are largely fished from the great well which we call the subconscious; but when we recognize impressions which must be outside our memories, because, as yet, they have not become memories, we have created them through that new sense which in future we shall recognize as cryptesthesia.

"Professor Richet expresses absolute pain in having to make some of these admissions. He has not suffered the supreme pain, however, of accepting the spiritist theory; which, of course, is the simplest explanation of the shadows that beset us from time to time. He seems more ready to believe that angels and demons are in touch with us than to give consideration to the possibility that those who loved the

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world and what it contains may survive in some form and seize any opportunity, no matter how dim, to impress their continued existence on us."

Automatic writing falls under Professor Richet's definition of cryptesthesia, but only in the sense that it relates to facts connected with the writer's earthly human relationships. Richet accepted the powers which automatic writing reveals with regard to future events, messages from a distance and telepathic knowledge, but not once did he admit that the source and inspiration of such writing came from discarnate entities.

Where Richet's theory breaks is on the rocks of that sea of evidence which, for the past hundred years, has come to us in a steady stream, that we define as facts outside both our normal and subconscious knowledge. Does the veil of our mind hide this vast swarming mass of images? The submerged self comes upon our horizon since Freud boldly laid the map of our dreams before us.

Quite apart from the characteristics, or the lack of them, which Hester's automatic writing imparted, there is a further factor, which is that of the actual writing itself. When Mr. V. began the first scripts with Hester's hand lightly resting on his wrist his condition was purely a receptive one; but gradually he was able to speak as his pencil moved across the paper, and more often than not he would remain with his eyes closed while the writing went on. While this took place, each word which was put to paper was produced clearly and accurately. Hester describes it in these words:

"The words were divided, the t's crossed, and the i's dotted; even quotation and punctuation marks were added and punctuation attended to. The signature struck me as unusual, and on reading the script over I noticed that at times a Greek a was used; also that there were strange breaks between the letters of the words, such as 'death', 'vintage', etc. Neither Mr. V. nor I had ever seen Wilde's writing so far as we could remember. When he was gone, it struck me that it would be interesting to compare the script with a facsimile, if I could find one.

"I was singularly fortunate, for at the Chelsea Boko Club not only did I see a facsimile of Wilde's writing, but an autograph letter of his happened to be there for sale. I was amazed; the handwritings seemed similar, allowing for the fact that our script was written with a heavy pencil and the autograph letter, probably, with a steel pen. There was a Greek a used occasionally, not invariably; and there were the long breaks between the letters of certain words."

The above analysis illustrates a set of circumstances which are certainly outside the range of Richet's convenient theory of cryptesthesia. We must next deal with the second explanation, that of subconscious mind. If the subconscious contains all our memories,


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which factor of control preselects what shall come to the surface and what shall remain hidden? Hester now deals with this argument:

"For instance, if Oscar Wilde arises from my memories, he is one among hundreds of literary persons who has interested me; but distinctly a lesser light, not one of the authors who has made any real impression on my mind. Why should my subconsciousness amuse itself by plagiarizing his style rather than the style of any other writer who has arrested my attention more fully? The reply to this is, 'Because Wilde's style is easy to plagiarize'. If we accept the explanation that Mr. V. and I (either, or both of us) have drawn up Oscar Wilde in a moment of suspended consciousness, what was the process? First, we had both read some of Wilde's work, poems and prose, though not recently. Echoes from that Source might readily rise upwards. Then it will have to be supposed that, at some unknown time, one or both of us has seen an autograph or facsimile of Wilde's handwriting.

"Further, we shall have to imagine that at some vague period one or both of us had read, or heard, a number of small and intricate facts relating to Wilde's life which remain photographed on our subconscious memories, while others, more important, cannot be induced to make their appearance. Now, from these rags and tatters in the subconsciousness we must imagine we can create a style so similar to Wilde's that the chief question for the critics is whether it is Wilde at his best, or whether his 'wit is tarnished'; and also handwriting, which is almost a facsimile of his manuscript and which continues without a break through hundreds of NIS. pages. That point seems to me to be difficult to explain. These buried memories rise rather dimly, as a rule. At times they present themselves as symbols of what is to be conveyed. It requires a wide stretch of the imagination to believe that a glance at a letter of Wilde's at some undefined period would result in this sustained forgery."

Of actual evidence this might be taken into account. When Hester asked for the address at which Sir William and Lady Wilde lived in Dublin, which she knew, the reply was that it could not be recalled; but the Chelsea address of Tite Street was given. This Hester did not know. In the preceding chapter only a limited number of authors were mentioned upon whom Wilde's shafts of criticism had been directed in the original manuscripts; but amongst what was omitted was a very full criticism of James Joyce's Ulysses. Hester admits that she had no recollection of reading this author, "beyond glancing at a few pages at the beginning of the book". Mr. V. was even more ignorant of the works of Joyce.

The truth is that it is not possible to accept fully each objection to the theory of subconscious mind as related to the famous Oscar Wilde scripts, without reading first Hester Dowden's full texts, both


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on the report of the messages, word for word, and of her masterly and dispassionate analysis of alternating theories. Some readers will have studied the question of subconscious mind in relation to many psychic phenomena. The biographer must confine his remarks to the particular field of action of the subject of his writing. But one point more must be raised. Hester claims that she, in common with all who uphold the Spiritualist case, believes in the subconscious mind.

"No one who has worked for so long at experiments under various degrees of hypnosis could deny the fact for a moment," she says. "What I doubt is, that as definite an entity as the Oscar Wilde of those scripts can be dramatized by Mr. V. or myself. Possibly there is a mingled condition here. The subconscious may supply a part and under these conditions cryptesthetic power may also come into play. We are dealing largely with words. 'The subconscious' and 'cryptesthesia' express ideas that serve us for a time, and will surely be superseded by others as our knowledge increases. We may, in fact, be coming towards the time when we shall be forced to admit the presence of an external influence in cases such as this. We may even be reduced to the stage of believing some of the statements of their identity which our communicators make to us! I admit that in many instances they lead us astray, but I think the best results are obtained by taking them at their face value. That, of course, is the medium's point of view while experimenting.

"The medium should produce as much evidence as possible, should ask no questions until he has arrived at the limit of production, and then add his criticism to that of the scientists. For, as in some ways the actor is the best and most intimate critic of drama, the medium, who has instinctively felt results, can explain them from a point of view arrived at by no other person. We, however, want many opinions in such cases as this. I feel that, when possible, it is a duty to offer such material to the public in order that its value may be thoroughly sifted."

Lastly, the Spiritualist explanation remains to be considered. Today, those who believe in total extinction after death are in the minority, but still, a vast multitude of people do not believe that those who have passed on can return and communicate with this earth. It took Hester Dowden twelve years to arrive at this stage when she could see some real value in her writing. She said: "I have found very great difficulty in believing that, through my pencil or ouijaboard, I am in actual communication with the dead." But Hester believed that both the case of Sir Hugh Lane, previously referred to in this biography, and that of Oscar Wilde, differed from any case reported by either Professor Richet or by the exponents of the theory of subconscious mind.

Perhaps the greatest factor of separate identity was the length and


	PROBABILITIES AND IMPROBABILITIES	77

continuous nature of the scripts. If we imagine the unseen Oscar Wilde attempting to convince an earthly audience of a very few people of his presence, we must imagine his seizing the pencil of an unknown writer and at the word Lily proceeding to give an essay in which he deliberately includes literary passages reminiscent of his earthly work. He is annoyed at interruptions because his sole aim is to force his identity on the recipients:

He finds himself in the same position from his plane of life as members of the Society for Psychical Research find themselves during their investigations. Hence his remark about founding a Society of Superannuated Shades for the investigation of the living. Wilde retains both irony and humour. His play on words is characteristic of the past. He exhibits a total lack of respect for his contemporaries. All the time he skims the surface for the epigram and is unconcerned with depth, or mature judgment.

The Spiritualist will be interested in certain conditions here revealed. Wilde shows that he is living in the darkness of the soul and in nakedness of mind which is temporarily without a vehicle of identity and expression. He is shut off from the earthly beauty of the sun, from nature and green things except when he can enter the aura of the medium.

The spirit of Oscar Wilde failed to recover from the experience of the earthly prison. That experience left it filled with bitterness and unable to meet the degradation and loneliness of the final years of his early life. Wilde felt instinctively that he had come to the end of everything, because he finally lost the power to create beauty by means of words as he had already lost the sustained force of discipline necessary to forge a work of creation into actuality. The revelation which was vouchsafed him in prison, which he mentioned in De Profundis, was not sustained to the end of his days. Had he been able to rise again from the depths into which his own folly had plunged him, his reward and tranquillity might have been greater than that which falls to the average mortal when he puts off the garment of his body. For he had indeed, during his earthly life, savoured both the sweets of ecstasy and plumbed the depths of despair. As it was, he was plunged into a state of twilight, and pathos lies in the fact of his crying need of objective beauty.

Throughout his sojourn in the world beyond, he is sustained by the hope of rising once again upon the wings of spiritual experience into fairer and brighter climes. To Wilde, human justice is the accumulation of remorse-remorse more acute in its anguish than human beings can attain to. Twenty-three years after he died in sordid poverty and degraded by drink, his personality shines through these scripts, but he still bemoans his condition and craves for the physical counterpart of spiritual light, At the time of writing more


78	FAR HORIZON

than another twenty-three years have passed. In the course of evolution, the spirit of Oscar Wilde may well be something sublimely different to that which appears in the messages of 1923.

Portions of these scripts appeared in the Daily News and in the Occult Review. Hester's reaction to the criticism and controversy aroused at this time is shown in her comment on what John Drinkwater, who was interviewed by The Weekly Despatch, frankly confessed, that he was entirely out of touch with the psychic side of the matter, but from the literary standpoint did not consider the style convincing. Drinkwater cited various expressions which were not like Wilde, notably the cruel manner in which he described the modern woman as 'a wart on the nose of an inebriate', and in which he dismissed the writings of the Sitwells, by stating that he did not spend his 'precious hours in catching tadpoles'.

Hester writes: "These expressions, Mr. Drinkwater says, are 'crude'. He cites Wilde's horror of anything unpleasant: the horror with which he was inspired by seeing a man with toothache, for instance. He suggests that the real Oscar would be incapable of speaking of anything as painful as a wart. I admit that this case is so surprising that if one is suddenly 'interviewed', it is probably very difficult to criticize the writings of a discarnate spirit who is speaking from the 'twilight'. My reply is that Wilde's feeling for what is ugly and painful altered after his prison experience. He probably has not prepared these discourses, and, even in his best period, it is possible that a crude expression may have escaped him now and then, especially in conversation. For instance, being tapped on the shoulder by an acquaintance, with the remark, 'Wilde, you are getting fatter and fatter', his retort was: 'Yes, and you are getting ruder and ruder'. Would Mr. Drinkwater consider that a very suitable reply?

"Other critics have expressed the opinion that Wilde 'has not improved in the process of dying', as he says of his mother, Lady Wilde. His wit is 'tarnished' since he 'passed over'. Do we then expect our shades to 'smarten up' in the beyond? The pathetic part of it is that poor Oscar agrees with these critics; he moans over his mouldy state and cites Hamlet's remarks to his father, when he calls him 'old mole', as a case in which the Society for Psychical Research should take an interest. In one rather long article we are accused of raising a 'dreary' shade.

"Now why are we expected to provide a jovial ghost, when we consider Oscar Wilde's career? It is suggested that we should let the dead rest, that having been exhumed was bad enough for the poor poet and that I add insult to injury by hauling him back from Hades. The fact, however, is that Oscar forced his company on Mr. V. and myself. He seized the pencil from another communicator and


	PROBABILITIES AND IMPROBABILITIES	79

has held on firmly to it ever since. He has insisted on speaking to the world again. It seems to afford him a little relaxation; why should I refuse it? If it relieves him to let fly his bitter shafts of wit once more, I feel, in mere courtesy, I must permit him to relieve his mind."

Experiences related to this chapter and the last mark a definite stage in the development of Hester Dowden as a medium. Up to now her contacts with the world unseen had consisted mainly in attempts to supply proofs of survival for those who had died and to obtain recognition of them from their relatives and close friends on earth. In this she had been remarkably successful. But a new phase was beginning, in which her growing faith in the work she was doing and the arrival of her control Johannes made her a bridge of communication between earth and higher orders of beings. The span of her mediumship reaches more and more into the inner spiritual planes. Individual messages begin to represent the thoughts of groups of souls rather than one soul.






CHAPTER SEVEN

THE COMING OF JOHANNES

So from the root springs lighter the green stalk, from whence the leaves more aery; the bright consummate flower, Spirit odorous breathes.
	-JOHN MILTON.

ALMOST immediately after Hester moved into 15, Cheyne Gardens, Chelsea, in the autumn Of 1922, and had taken up psychic work professionally, Johannes appeared. One evening while she was giving a sitting to an acquaintance, Sharma interrupted her for the first time in their association. After repeated requests that she should speak to Hester alone, she spoke at the end of the sitting. Hester asked what she wanted. "To bid you good-bye," she said. "My time is at an end, I shall not speak to you again until we meet in another state."

Hester was much concerned and asked Sharma how she should continue her investigations. "Another will come," she said, "who is much more powerful than I am." That was all. It was a very brief farewell after ten years' work together!

This first meeting with Johannes must have created a vivid impression on Hester's mind, because she comments on it in her diary. "At this time I was reading Bligh Bond's book, The Gate of Remembrance, in which the monk, Johannes, was the spokesman. I asked who would speak, and the name Johannes was written at once. I felt sure it was the same Johannes, and said: 'You are the monk referred to in Bligh Bond's book, of course?' My Johannes replied: 'I am much earlier than he. I was born in Athens in the year 216 B.C. I am a Greek; my mother was an Athenian, and my father a Jew'.

" 'Why do you call yourself Johannes?' I asked.

" 'I come of the group of John', was the reply..

" 'Did you live in Greece?' I asked.

"He answered: 'Only in my early and late years. I lived most of my life in Alexandria'.

"I was much surprised, for he went on to show a dislike of Egypt and Egyptian things, entreating me to destroy some shabti and some cerecloth-Egyptian relics which I possessed. He offered to give me his views on the future life, and what he said was so striking that I was much impressed."

Before dealing with the philosophy of Johannes, the reader should be acquainted with his extraordinary history. The facts of

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	THE COMING OF JOHANNES	81

this history were collected from time to time by Mrs. Dowden herself, and by the writer, who, for two and a half years, obtained additional facts of the story from Johannes, through the automatic writing of his sensitive. His family name he has not given, but his own name was Michael. As he told us, his mother was a Greek of a well-known and high-placed family in Athens. His father was a Jew. He was much attached to his mother, but he says little about his father.

When he reached the age of fifteen he begged his parents to permit him to go to the famous school of philosophy in Alexandria, where he was received, he says, as a scribe. Asked what this term implied, he said: "I was in a very humble position. I attended lectures on Plato, and made notes." Asked if Plato was his chief study, he replied: "Yes. He was the foundation of what I am."

From the beginning Johannes showed a passionate dislike of the Egyptians, and spoke of Egypt as "the odious country of preserved bodies".

Questioned as to how much of his life had been spent there, he answered: "A great deal of it, because I could not leave the Library. Plato gave me my foundations, and on them I built a philosophy of my own."

Johannes was a great enthusiast when a subject stirred him. He used to support Christianity when talking to Hester, as a most exalted form of religion, implying that she had not taken it always as it was intended by Jesus. He amplified Christ's teaching to her, explaining some difficult points very logically. Later, he introduced Philip, a first-hand witness of events.

Most of these facts were gleaned by Hester Dowden herself, during the early years of their association, from 1922 onwards. She had no particular knowledge of Greek history, nor had she read anything, as far as she was aware, concerning the Great Library at Alexandria, nor of any adventures of a young Greek in it, correspond to Johannes' story. But the extraordinary thing was that these facts concerning his life and background were all that were revealed for the next twenty-three years, until the writer, beginning in 1945, was able to conduct a series of private sittings, which added further information to the life story of this control.

Johannes takes up his tale as follows: "I had been a student for many years in Alexandria, progressing from the humble position of a scribe to that of a teacher, in a sense a priest, for a teacher must always be a priest if he is to make any impression on future generations. I steeped myself in philosophy, chiefly the writings of Plato, and from these studies in meditation arose a vision glorious and solemn which became for me the truth. The work in the Library consisted mainly in attending lectures and reading. The younger


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students were not allowed to read, but had to take their ideas from the spoken word. Rules were very strict, and books could not be touched except by those who bad special permits. We assembled early in the morning, and attended lectures three times a day. These lectures were on subjects such as historical contacts of the past, with current events of the time in which I was living. There were suggestions for conduct of the young and discourses on the life to come, comparing the ideas of Egypt, Greece and India.

"We wished all pupils to be quite free to think with no trammels of convention. We had meals in the Library, and, as in monasteries, someone read aloud on different subjects, including the arts of sculpture and painting. I think the best point was the encouragement of all games which would serve the body. My own race in Greece adopted this ideal from the training at the Library of Alexandria. To keep the body in perfection so that it could serve the mind was one of the strongest points in the education of the young.

"Of the students, the larger number of scholars were mature men; boys, however, from the age of sixteen could go there for training. It was a wide and excellent education that was offered to all, an education given without payment, but frequently paid for voluntarily. The wealthier students paid, though they were never asked for payment. I, personally, taught philosophy and the arts; though I was not a sculptor, nor painter, I knew a good deal about those subjects. There was no examination system, but we expected the student, when advanced and prepared, to lecture to the assembled company on whatever subject suited him."

Johannes considered that the modern examination is not a sufficient test. He prefers the ancient system. He believes that Oxford and Cambridge have only a faint resemblance to the ancient system. He considers that there is too much recreation and too much technical study today. Alexandria presented wide ideas that were influenced by the desert. There was less material luxury then than now, and as a result of the complexities of modern life, he considers that we have retrogressed, in a broad sense, in failing to create the right type of mind for our own civilization.

"I was forty-two when I left Alexandria," Johannes said. This must have been in the year 174 B.C. At a later date Johannes admitted that he was the Athenian philosopher Carneades. The writer had been making enquiries during the series of sittings that had taken place, when the story which has been given was revealed. If one can accept the above facts as true, we must piece together certain fragments of this life, which history has not revealed to date. It is possible, however, to link up what has been told with the historical figure of Carneades, who lived most of his life in Alexandria, studying and


	THE COMING OF JOHANNES	83

later teaching a philosophy which he created for his group of followers, from the writings of Plato and from his own conclusions concerning the two different schools of thought current at his time, namely the Stoics and Epicureans.

Harvey's Companion of Classical Studies (Oxford University Press) gives the following information: "Cameades is associated with Cyrene where a Greek colony existed. He went to Rome in 155 B.C. to get the authorities to recognize certain practical points in the government of the Greek colony opposite Eritrea. His mission was completely successful. He was the founder of the New Academia, whose studies were mainly centred on the doctrines of Plato, and in this sense he was the very earliest of the Neo-Platonists, as his school created the subsequent vogue for platonic studies which reached a peak at the time of Plotinus and Porphyry about 350 years later.

"Carneades was born in Athens in 216 B.C. and died in 129 B.C. His philosophy, in opposition to the dogmatism of the Stoics and Epicureans, held that certain knowledge was unobtainable, but that in its absence conclusions of various degrees of probability could be formed and that these supply a guide to conduct. Cicero became an adherent of his views, roughly one hundred years later."

At a sitting with Hester Dowden, on June 7th, 1947, Johannes addressed the writer as follows: "You have discovered me! My garments are taken from me! You know now that I knew Rome, and I sought there for a mouthpiece and found it. Now we can talk openly. I am Carneades, not of Cyrene, but of Athens. I went to Rome to get certain practical points set straight, and I succeeded."

This visit to Rome was when the philosopher was Principal of the Third Academy at Athens. He headed an embassy to Rome which was short lived. His skill in argument on both sides of moral questions aroused the ire of the Praefect of that time and he was summarily expelled the city and returned to Athens.

Carneades claims to have had a lifelong spirit influence on Plotinus, who lived from A.D. 205 to 270. Readers must realize that Johannes continued his story from the point when his early death released his spirit into the beyond. He says: "I will refer to my having influenced an Egyptian in later years, when I myself had passed through five spheres, and left the earth far behind me. In Plotinus I found a mind similar to my own, in shape and form, and, as I had actually had the experience of my vision when on earth, and also after leaving it, I attempted to give my knowledge clearly and distinctly to a mind still inhabiting a body. This work was long. I spent many years with Plotinus, finding in him a receiver almost perfect, and ready to set down my experiences. Therefore if my vision fits with the vision of Plotinus, you must understand that it was not a case of reincarnation, but that it was a connection and fusing of two minds into one."


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Carneades made it clear, however, that at no time during the earthly life of Plotinus was the latter physically conscious of him. The influence and control which Johannes exercised was on the etheric duplicate, which acted outside the earthly consciousness of Plotinus, but which influenced his recorded writings as a direct inspiration.

"Let us now speak," he writes, "of my experience as a Vision; taking first the earth sphere, and progressing through the others, seven, including the earth, and endeavour to understand the logic of the soul's progression; for, in spite of the fact that no one inhabiting the earth can find a meaning in its apparent senseless confusion, it is a logical basis for all the progressions -which follow it. This confusion of earth springs partially out of the past, but it was to the future that my vision was directed. The spheres are purposeful.

"The first, the Earth Sphere, is an attempt to discipline the soul, and so fit it for its further journey. The trials and joys of the earth-life, its temptations, its triumphs, are all the tasting of experience, and in tasting experience the soul chooses its future existence. Without this earth experience, the soul would go forward to further stages, not knowing the possibilities of existence.

"The spheres above the earth are entwined with it, arc above arc, and the divisions between them grow less definite as progress grows more wide. The first four worlds which the soul inhabits are all spheres of learning and experience. After that, when the fifth stage is reached, there is a pause. This sphere (fifth), of meditation closely resembles the Nirvana of the Indians' heaven. It is a world in which, in meditation, there is a sorting out of all that came before. After the fifth sphere is passed, the spheres of creative activity give to the soul its first sensation of the Divine. It may be said that these two final spheres of progression are in the presence of the One, and yet even in the seventh sphere there is no knowledge of the One.

"There is a divine perception of his presence and an unspeakable satisfaction in the soul's approach to him, but of his actual ego nothing is known.

"Then the soul can, for the first time, cast away its shape and become a wandering flame, or a mist if it chooses. It can finally pass into the One and become a part of the Whole, or if it is anxious to refresh far distant memories, it can revisit any of the spheres through which it has passed.

"Many, in fact all, of your supermen have been ready to repeat the entire journey, so marvellous and sweet has that experience been. The previous experience enables them to make a much better thing of the earth life the second time. What induces the soul to make the journey twice? A sense of incompleteness, and in most cases, a hope that having passed through the Whole, the soul may help others of


	THE COMING OF JOHANNES	85

his own kind to progress more rapidly. Now I must explain that the soul has at all times a knowledge of its future, and its purpose within itself, though it can only function consciously in a small section of itself, as it passes from sphere to sphere. As each sphere is reached there is a widening of consciousness; and thus, when the soul has reached the seventh sphere, it has full knowledge of itself. For it never must be thought that the soul can be contained in the body, or any of the bodies it wears. The soul is much greater in extent than any body. It is the ego.

"A soul which has progressed must function within its spiritual family, for thus only can it be helpful.

"The soul is made of two parts which unite in one after the fifth sphere is reached. There is an over-soul which is, at all times, conscious of, and in touch with, the One. There is an under-soul which is in touch with folly, temptation and lack of wisdom. After the fifth sphere is reached these two merge in one and become fitted for the Spheres of Creative Activity."

Johannes defines the term 'sphere' as a state of being; the earth being the first of these. His use of the word 'plane' denotes a level of intelligence and understanding. Planes, to him, are not higher or lower; they are different. Those on one plane have not a full understanding of souls on other planes, until the finest levels are reached. He believes that there are roughly seven planes of consciousness in each sphere, and he gives the following as an index of what he means.

1.	The plane of the understanding of practical needs of life.
2.	The plane which is limited by orthodox religious beliefs.
3.	The plane of inspiration and intuition.
4.	The plane of intelligence without inspiration.
5.	The plane of creation through the intelligence.
6.	The plane of creation through the intelligence combined with
	inspiration.
7.	The plane of balance and understanding through spiritual
	imagination and a vision of the One.

Johannes claims that he was interested in mathematics, but at no time could he call himself a mathematician. He read philosophy. "I took one Greek philosopher after another, and studied his work," he said, "but the foundation of all was Plato. The vision of the spheres, and the future progress of the soul, occurred after I had become a professor. This was when I was at the Library at Alexandria. It was at this time that I built up my philosophy and line of conduct. Both revealed themselves slowly, and in the beginning I made mistakes which I corrected later."

When asked to give examples of his philosophy, he replied: "Never rush at ideas; digest them; otherwise you cannot be sure of them. Never accept what is given you without questioning it. Do not


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conclude, because people are not in sympathy with you, that they are worthless. The great art of life is to consort with those who really belong to you and to realize that others outside this rule of graded affinities fit into a different part of the pattern. You will gain nothing by the society of the latter. You will also gain nothing by joining up with what are called causes; these conclusions are arrived at quickly and have little or no root.

"Do not become enthusiastic until you are quite sure of your ground and always try to see the other side, the side which is not in sympathy with you. You can do so if you pause and give it consideration; and let me add, be slow to condemn, but when you feel something is quite outside you, be constant in your opinion. Remember you cannot divide the world into right and wrong. Divide it, so far as you can, into wise and foolish. Wisdom is the best thing in dealing with life. Folly is destructive and leads nowhere. If you believe what is above, below and at both sides of you (the world of spirit), be ready to learn and slow to conclude. I do not want to lay down many axioms.

"You help others if you become wise and you will find the greatest benefits that have come to mankind have come through the knowledge of great men who have risen to high places of thought. Study and learn. You will lose nothing and be in a position to help young and old. I have said that the purpose of life is to develop the soul as a whole. I repeat this!"

Johannes believed that the support of religious doctrines was good for those who could use them; but not in excess. He held that the Buddhist, the Christian, and the adherents of complicated religions in India, China, and Egypt receive benefit if they can use religion as a 'rest', or foundation to their life. The danger lay in blind allegiance and lack of reasoning. Man must learn to stand alone and to bear his own responsibility on the path of evolution. Before he had strength to stand alone, the crutches of orthodox religion were of help to him in moderation. During his time on earth, Johannes never had recourse to direct spirit communications. But he said: "There are many questions which can be mentally discussed with those who have passed on. With Socrates in my mind, I made experiments in that line. I received answers which were spoken to me. I had the words and set them down."

Hester gives further facts about her control. "As a personage, Johannes is both modest and retiring. He has a sense of humour which he displays sometimes. He is quite ready to be helpful in mere mundane matters. His attitude to me is completely impersonal and I have no sense of his presence except at sittings. I hardly ever ask for help or advice for myself. Johannes dislikes all 'artificial' methods of rising to higher planes. He urges that every step of the journey


	THE COMING OF JOHANNES	87

should be taken naturally and simply, if the path is to be known. He has no use for the 'vision' that is forced by either drugs or occult practice, or other similar inducement, and in all the work he has done for me, he asks for no special 'conditions'. When I am ready the automatic writing comes. When it is finished I can draw down the curtain and forget that I may have been in touch with another world.

"The characteristics of the sittings over which Johannes presides seem to indicate that there is a very definite preparation on his part. Frequently, unknown persons come, who do not wish to give their names. Almost invariably the two or three people admitted by Johannes (from the beyond) are those who are expected and wanted. Names are, as a rule, quite easy; in fulfilment of a promise made by my control to me that, so far as was possible, names would be clear and not confused with wrong names. I lay no claim to any monopoly of Johannes' help. He frequently controls other people and helps them to develop automatic writing. I find him very sympathetic to most people, but occasionally he refuses to call communicators, in which case I do not force results.

"I may here mention a strange result which may have some bearing on the origin of Johannes. An Indian 'sitter' of mine, who knew nothing about me, went to Hope, the psychic photographer, some years ago. In another sitting with me she asked that her Indian 'inspirers' and relations should appear on the plates and she also asked Johannes to show himself. He consented, but I did not think it likely he would fulfil his promise. On her return, my sitter did not show me her results, but asked what happened. Johannes replied that she had had six exposures and that on five her Indian 'guides' and relatives had shown themselves. 'On the sixth', he said, 'there is what you would describe as a modern European face. It is a portrait of myself and there is a "great mystery" connected with it.'

"My sitter handed me the photograph and, looking at the face, I was surprised beyond words. It was not a portrait of my father, but it might have been a twin brother. A grave face with a broad, fine forehead, the thick hair sweeping backwards. The face of a scholar. I asked Johannes to explain this: His reply was, 'I am connected with Edward, your father, in a long line of ancestry'."

This guide remained with Hester till the end of her earthly life, never varying his ministration and always loyally upholding the conditions of their partnership. On the 9th June, 1947, the writer of this book had occasion to elicit further facts about this link with Professor Dowden. He gives the following dialogue as it occurred at the particular sitting:

E.B.: I am most interested in the link and in certain parallelisms of scholarship between Professor Dowden and yourself,


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J.: Edward and I were like in temperament. I was a scholar by nature, but on the questions which ended my visit to Rome I took part in political matters and in that I preceded Edward.

E.B.: You seem to have had a magnetic appeal to Roman youth and great oratory.

J.: Yes. That is true. I was a fluent speaker and have no difficulty in expressing my philosophical thought.

E.B.: Possibly I could study the philosophy of Chrysippus, whose views you are said to have opposed, and the philosophic systems of Clitomachus, who was your disciple?

J.: Yes, that is a most excellent idea, and my successor has made a good summary of my ideas. But better take my teaching from me.

E.B.: Had you any external contact with the beyond when you were on earth, apart from unconscious inspiration?

J.: No, I made no effort. Socrates' daemon had interested me, but I felt I should rather solve the problem for myself. My lower soul was conscious of no contact.

The personality of Hester Dowden and Johannes are as separate as the poles. In spite of this ancestral link of affinity, there is no question but that each ego plays its distinctive part in their dramatic partnership. The dramatic background of Johannes' life is revealed in two parts. The first array of facts were given to the medium and some of her sitters, including Miss Geraldine Cummins, fairly soon after his joining her. The additional history, which the writer obtained for himself through a long series of private sittings, was only revealed after a lapse of thirty years.

I repeat that the character of Hester Dowden was totally different from that of this control. With the years came a certain blending and fusing of outlook. The philosophy and mental awareness of the medium mellowed into similarity with that of the control. The working partnership produced a certain harmony, but their friendship was never permitted to encroach beyond the borders of the time which was set apart for professional work. Inevitably, however, 15, Cheyne Gardens, and latterly No. 17, became a centre of power which reflected in a subtle way this pervading presence of the invisible. Johannes was never a poor uncertain ghost. He was the heart and centre of a work for which he returned near to the earth to perform. Both the task which he set himself and the doctrine which he gradually revealed over the long span of years must be described in the following chapters.






CHAPTER EIGHT

DOCTRINE OF AFFINITIES

There's a divinity that shapes our ends, 
Rough-hew them how we will.
Hamlet, v, 2.

At the time when Johannes gave Hester Dowden an outline of his philosophy of the soul and the future life, she had never read any of Plotinus, though she had met Stephen McKenna, whose translation of Plotinus was a standard work. Although there was a span of over 350 years between the lives on earth of Carneades and Plotinus, the teachings of the former show great similarity to the philosophy contained in the Enneads of the latter. Hester discussed this parallelism in her diary. "I will first give a brief idea of the course of development, according to my control, which takes Place as we rise to what Johannes calls the All, and Plotinus calls the One.

"He says: 'Have no delusion that the soul is in the body. The body is in the soul and, at all times, has within itself a knowledge of its future states, though it can only function in each state in a portion of its full consciousness, until it reaches the condition of Creative Activity. The soul preserves its form as it was on earth, until this sphere is reached. There it can discard its shape for the first time and appear as a cloud, or a flame. When its term in the seventh sphere is ended, it can choose the direction. It can remain in the All, or it can return to any of its former spheres, if it wishes to instruct or help struggling souls.'

"Much of this was conveyed to Plotinus by Johannes and, as a result, Plotinus gives us similar descriptive visions of future states of the soul. Johannes is working on earth, he says, to help souls to unite in affinity. He takes. the view that human affinity, when it is perfect, is the reflection of the affinity of the soul with God, and that souls, as they ascend, draw closer and closer together in the group, which he speaks of as the Spiritual Family where there is perfect mutual understanding.

"I have recently been reading the Gifford Lectures of Dr. Inge on Plotinus, and I have been amazed at the similarity of thought between the famous Neo-Platonist and my control. Both regard the soul as having two parts-the higher and the lower. The higher soul is ever with the All and conscious of the All. It is the lower soul which causes what is called sin and which Johannes calls folly. This

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lower soul may become blind to the purpose of existence, which is the full development of soul. In old age, or because of long and fatal illness, the lower soul may, in part, pass on to the Higher Soul, before the bond between soul and body is actually severed. This is a natural happening; but the deliberate destruction of the body before its appointed time is the worst of follies, for it arrests the development of the soul and ties it between two states of consciousness. Thus suicide is sin!

"The ego is threefold in the earth sphere; body, soul and spirit. After the body is cast off, the soul is still a compound of three parts -mind, spirit and the oversoul, in the sphere beyond. This oversoul has never descended from the All, but while the soul is restrained by the body, it is drawn downwards and is nearer the undersoul than it is after the body is discarded.

"The attributes of God are Goodness, Truth and Beauty. Plotinus seems to set greater value on goodness and truth, rather than on beauty. Johannes values the three as equals, setting great value on beauty and its stimulation to joy in all things.

"Asceticism does not appeal to Johannes. He argues that in order to reach the Spirit and live within it, the body must be unconscious, as far as possible, of its needs. He condemns gluttony and recommends a state of health in the body which, he maintains, is reached through reasonable attention to food and warmth. He gives me a scale of values. Sloth is the worst folly. 'Better an actively wicked man than a slothful one', he says. Heaven being Creative Activity, slothfulness means the negation of any desire to reach to the All.

"Johannes is very clear in his ideas of giving. 'Be sure that by what is called generosity, you are not gratifying your own self-esteem, or robbing another of his power to acquire what he needs.'

" 'No real friendship can be given to another, if there is no sense of spiritual kinship. Do no harm to anyone, but do not try to enter into the life of another if he is not of the same spiritual family that you are! In such a case, there can be no real understanding; for those who are outside your spiritual family are speaking a different language from yours.'

"Pride and conceit are in Johannes' opinion, merely fetters. They are like a strong net in which there is no opening. The soul looks at others with a blinding mesh over its eyes, through which it cannot tell the true proportion of things. Conceit is an obstacle to all progress. It may even hold you back in the after-life.

"Johannes says that reincarnation is not the rule; it is the exception to return to this world. It may be chosen by the soul if any work on earth has been left undone, or if the life on earth has not provided the inner experience necessary for the further development


	DOCTRINE OF AFFINITIES	91

of the ego. In rare cases, souls who have reached the seventh sphere may wish to retrace their steps and to go through the seven spheres again. These may be saints on their second journey, or super-men.

"Johannes is very lenient on the subject of human love. The soul's ultimate desire is to unite itself with the All and, on earth, sexual love is a symbol of what is divine. If affinities discover each other in the earth life, they attract each other inevitably and it is futile to separate them. But in such cases, the affinity must be sure and perfect. As the souls ascend the two become one and unite in a desire to be one with the All. In Johannes' teaching there is more human feeling and sympathy than in what Plotinus teaches. He has shown himself most tender and helpful in human relationships.

"I will now give the words Johannes used to me and quote from Dean Inge's Gifford Lectures to show the close resemblance between the ideas of my control and Plotinus.

Gifford Lectures, Vol. I, p. 197. Plotinus:
'There is nothing yonder which cannot be found here'.
Johannes: 'The earth life is a reflection of what is to come. No experience is lost, for it will be repeated Beyond.'

Vol. I, p. 199.
'Sun and stars and all that is beautiful here below exist also Yonder.'
Johannes: 'The soul finds all essentials the same in the spheres above his own. The sea, the sun, the stars-but with a finer light and brilliance.'

Vol. I, p. 214
'Each individual soul has its own character and uniqueness, which gives it its individuality; but in the world yonder there is no obstacle to their complete communion with each other. On the lower levels, on the other hand, we get separation without disparity and resemblance without unity.'
Johannes: 'Each soul is itself and different from all others. In the distant worlds there is perfect communion and understanding between those who are of the same spiritual family. In the lower spheres, the family has not united and unity cannot be found.'

Vol. I, p. 218.
'The soul is not in the body, but the body is enveloped and penetrated by the soul which created it.'
Johannes: 'The soul is not in the body; the body is in the soul, which is much greater than the body. The soul is infinite and has full knowledge of its progression at all times.'

Vol. I, p. 2 18.
'There is a higher and a lower soul. The latter is the principle of the physiological life.'
Johannes: 'The soul is made of two parts, the vase of the spirit


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and the vase of the body. The vase of the spirit is with the All. The vase of the body is united to it, but cares for the more material part and is liable to sin.'

Vol. I, p. 254
'We have seen that Plotinus conceives the Universe as a living chain of being, an unbroken series of ascending and descending values and existences' (Dean Inge).
Johannes: 'The Universe can best be described as a series of arches.. Each arch, greater and wider than the one below it, and in each, the soul comes to a fuller knowledge of itself, until in the perfection of itself, it is fitted to enter fully into the All.'
"These are but a very few parallelisms on which I have been able to touch, in the relation of Plotinus to Johannes. If Johannes has an enthusiasm for Christianity, it is for the person and life of the Founder of Christianity, rather than for the dogma of the Churches which followed after, and because both he and Plotinus expounded a philosophy which both accept as not alien to Christianity.
"Eventual union with the All is what Johannes describes as the object of the soul's existence, and, in its long journey to the All, the full realization of itself. For, he says, each soul is a reflection of its Creator as the earth life is a reflection of the Divine Life.
"Here is yet another instance of the mental agreement between Johannes and Plotinus.

Vol. II, p. 170.
'Use your body as a musician uses his lyre. When it is worn out, you can still sing without accompaniment. . . . The good man will give to the body all he sees to be useful and possible, though he, himself, remains a member of another order. Health makes us more free in the enjoyment of the good, though hardly any bodily ills need seriously impede this.'
Johannes: 'It is a mistake to believe that any privation of the body's needs can help the development of the soul. It is a serious hindrance of the soul's development if the body is hungry or ailing.' "

Johannes once spoke of the One of Plotinus in the following terms. "I know little of the One, except the sense of what may be really called Divinity, which I have experienced on the Sixth and Seventh Spheres. I personally do not feel that the One is conscious of His Work, or what He is, for He lives in a state of complete relaxation and happiness. But He is a force, which supplies all that lives with force, and is above all that is evil."

"Wonder at the infinite magnificence of the Creator, and wonder at what He has given us!" is another suggestion of Johannes for those who study his philosophy.

It must have taken Hester some considerable time to accustom herself to the personality of this supreme inspirer. He is the directive


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of all her future work, and his reasons for working with her are bound up in what he calls the doctrine of affinities. From the foregoing account of actual sittings in which he has given fragments of his life history, we find that Johannes, working through Hester Dowden, had conceived a goal which he believed was a universal plan. He claimed to have returned near to earth to bring people separated by death into relationship with each other once more. But we must realize here that the personality of Johannes embodies a group of souls who had perfected and completed their journey through the spheres.

As Carneades he is the one in many; the Greek philosopher of a definite historic epoch. As Johannes he is a facet of a completed group, a mind manifesting in matter from the sum total of many other minds, who had reached the goal of the Oversoul, and who could thus return as single units of a greater whole, to undertake work as inspirers of suitable instruments on earth. He found in Hester a mind singularly suited to record his teachings and to give evidence to those who sought the existence of others, whom they had lost by death.

Johannes has stressed the point that his scheme proceeded from a vision which he had on earth, and which pointed a way, or path, that he had already advanced along during his own journey into the spheres. Plotinus, who lived his span of earth-life in the third and fourth centuries after Christ, reacted to the Greek daemonic influence of Johannes, who was able to inspire him through their close affinity. Johannes told the writer that he found a mind similar to his own in shape and form, and as he had actually had the experience through his journey into the beyond, of the vision which he had formerly witnessed, he was able to give his knowledge clearly and distinctly, to a mind still inhabiting a body.

Johannes points out that the trials and joys of the earthly life, its temptations and its triumphs, are all a tasting of experience, and in tasting experience the soul chooses its future existence. He says: "Without this earthly experience, the soul would go forward to further stages, not knowing the possibilities of existence."

At this stage I must take up a more general aspect of The Scheme, for the above line of thought concerns the odyssey of the Soul of Man and we should rather, at this point, consider the initial stages of the life force which propounded this scheme as a thought from the furnace of the creative impulse of God, outside manifestation in material terms, and prior to the universe of matter.

Little indeed is known of the Creator by mind living within the compass of the first six spheres of existence. Man can conceive of a First Principle, a boundless universal principle, and he can experience a sensation of the Divine in the two final spheres of progression.


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He becomes ultimately aware of the presence of God without any knowledge of God. There is a divine perception of presence and an unspeakable satisfaction in the soul's approach towards God, but of His actual Ego, nothing is known.

Johannes, however, conveys a sense of a beginning to sensory creation. We should imagine an outpouring of life force; we must conceive of animate and inanimate, conscious and unconscious form as the outcome of this cosmic release of all forms of life. Every single one of the myriad particles of life, spiritual forms in all their variety, animal, vegetable and mineral expressions of material form in all their variety, is an outlet of this cosmic release springing from the centre and created in the mind of God. These myriad forms of life springing, in their primal essence from the conception of God, from the viewpoint of God, were first conceived of as spirit. But from the beginnings of the universal plan, the material universe was created, each particle of which was a mass of energy, imbued with its own life. This material universe was created to be used as a platform for the life-force to work upon.

just as a child is born of a cell of living matter, so the material universe was created to be used as a starting point for spiritual progression. This process of spirit and matter applies only to the forms of life conceived in the Divine Consciousness as needing the balance of spirit and matter in their evolutionary journey back to the Creator. We must exclude from the Scheme of the Universe spiritual forms which are outside the cosmic law of matter as an evolutionary stage in development. It is an essential foundation, this material universe, for the evolution of spirit as he can conceive it at our stage of development.

Now the characteristic of the life-force transmitted into outward symbols is for it to develop towards perfection, which means an eventual mergence by purification with the spirit of the Creator. That is the destiny of each vibrating particle of the universe, just as it is the destiny of each human being; evolution by means of a returning odyssey towards the source. We must beware, at this stage, of looking at this scheme from the purely human perception. Johannes experiences the fact that the universe was not built for man in the first place.

Creation, as we have already said, was the outpouring of every form of life. Man is but an incident in this process; because the whole scheme is perfect in conception the place of mankind and the part he has to play in the whole is also perfectly conceived. His future destiny is assured, but the process of achieving that destiny is by struggle and by ever-increasing activity, in which the method of outward expression in varying forms, on different planes of consciousness, is always subordinate to the main principle of the


	DOCTRINE OF AFFINITIES	95

evolution of the soul upwards to the oversoul or spirit, and thence onward to an eventual mergence in the great cosmic ocean of the Godspirit. This is a salutary lesson for us, and one that must be painfully digested by all who wish to become students of cosmic philosophy along the pathway of truth.

Fire, for instance, is life acting within preordained limits; but this element is not alien to the human spirit. For we find that man in the highest stages of his evolution can assume that element of fire as an outward means of expression. The lesson we learn is that we are part of every manifestation of creative life. We are inextricably bound within the wheel of expression of animal, vegetable and mineral; but only as we gain the power from our control of form and symbol can we associate ourselves with these divergent patterns which are so far from the role of flesh and its prototypes in the nearearth planes beyond absolute matter.

Blazing stars, cooling fiery planets, disintegrating nebulae, vapour and gases condensing to water, the receding oceans, the resurrection of primordial earth, vegetation arising from cells, heat and moisture, all are ingredients of unconscious life force, merging into right conditions for conscious life; each following the prescribed pattern of thought in the mind of God. Thus we find that the animal form of life gained the quickest impetus to evolve through change, dying back into communal spirit, always the prototype of all physical manifestations and re-emergence in other forms, each ever striving to accommodate itself to physical conditions of survival, and, in this way, gaining a shade more mastery of matter in conformity with spiritual law.

In the course of this ascending spiral of evolving life, man was formed when his brain had reached the development necessary to achieve consciousness of his soul and that individual soul was able to begin to operate through the physical; not, as in the case of animals, by means of a Group Soul, or Group Species. In other words, man attained to a primitive individual consciousness, and henceforth the path of his evolution was bent to an increasing awareness of his relationship with his Group, or collection of other human souls, as well as animal, vegetable and mineral forms of life, comprising a spiritual family in varying stages of evolution under the guidance of one mastering overself, or spirit. Man is not an essential purpose in the original cosmic plan, rather is he an incident and is inferior to the angelic hierarchy until he has qualified himself to pass from time into timelessness, from form to the complete formlessness of the essence of pure thought, to live simultaneously both within the material universe and outside it, to become a part of the Divine Principle in essence.

From here on Johannes develops his Scheme of Affinities which


96	FAR HORIZON

stands away beyond the evolutionary scheme of mankind, yet embraces man's path in its wide sweep. Johannes believed that the scale of law governing affinities covers the relationship of the most minute particles of matter such as atom-units, electrons, molecules, cells, etc., to the utmost confines of the material universe where planets and stellar groupings also obey this cosmic law of attraction. He has said that there is an urge all through the universe to develop; that any trifling matter that might interfere with this development cannot and must not be neglected, even in the smallest detail.

There is a basic perfection in man revealed in the symbolic pattern which runs through all forms of life. The bodies of each animal and each man are living symbols of latent divinity. The analogy of the grain of corn and of the mustard seed, the acorn and the root of the lotus is presented in every form of Eastern philosophy. Both Gautama and Jesus Christ have used these illustrations to convey the lesson of the continuity of life and in initiation ceremonies down the ages the neophyte has been instructed in the underlying hidden significance of the seed within the pod, germinating into a full-grown tree, flower or fruit. If we thoroughly understand this symbology, we begin to realize that our bodies are cosmic maps, signposts to the celestial universe. Dr. Kenneth Walker, in his Diagnosis of Man, writes that each cell within the animal or human body is a living thing, separate and yet functioning collectively to create a healthy unit.

"Who can watch," he says, "a battle between the white corpuscles of the blood and the invading bacteria without saying that the whole behaviour of the corpuscles is designed to overcome and devour the organisms which threaten not only their own lives, but that of the whole organism?"

Field-Marshal Smuts has elaborated a theory of cellular affinities which ranges into sociological fields. In Holism he traces the law of attraction of the one cell form, the amoeba, which can be taken as the biological first rung in the ladder of life, upwards through all animal stages to initial tribal societies and then onwards through successive cycles of history to a culminating point when the League of Nations was conceived and attempted at Geneva in 1919, finally reaching a Utopian conception of a United States of Europe and of the New World, beginnings of which, we hope, are to be discerned in the present growth of the United Nations Organization and such tentative schemes as the Marshal Plan and other economic aids to Europe and the Far East.

But Johannes extends our vision in his scheme further still. He says: "As you ascend, you find the law of affinity is more pronounced. Instead of a medley of human beings, you find yourself in touch with minds similar to your own in greater or lesser degrees.


	DOCTRINE OF AFFINITIES	97

This is an advantage in every way. You can learn more and teach more."

To return to forces other than human, higher spiritual forces were evolved from lesser spiritual beings. It is all a matter of evolution. What we can learn from this is that the cosmic laws of God work throughout all forms of life. The principles remain the same whether in the evolution of spiritual forms of life outside the realm of matter, or in matter, in mineral, plant or animal or human lives. From chaos came order, from order, on a series of slow vibratory waves, came a quickening of the tempo of vibration, until mind was reached which could operate within flesh.

Today we are engaged in a struggle with matter at snail-like pace, because, by so doing, we quicken the essence of our soul and discipline it-condition it, if you will-so that we may learn to go forward into spheres of yet more malleable substance than that of earth. In these realms, we must learn to control and quicken our surroundings as well as pay our meed of service to whatever community in which we find ourselves. In the higher spheres, this community will be increasingly of our own Group, our own kith and kin. On the earth plane, while all mankind and the whole animal and vegetable world are component parts of the one great tree, yet the stress must be laid on our particular branch and stem. We must return to God along with our own spiritual kin. Thus we see that the first inklings of the Scheme of the Universe must be the beginnings of the knowledge of the Law of Affinities, both in unconscious and conscious forms of life. By this path shall we reach the stars.






CHAPTER NINE

HUMAN AFFINITIES

... for, I know
When thou didst hate him worse,
Thou lov'dst him better ...
	Julius Caesar, iv, 3

"YOU must regard the earth," writes Johannes, "as the cradle of the human soul. This is indeed true, for it is a necessary and a painful experience. The soul could not develop without it."

At that point, the writer asked whether it were possible for the human soul to gain experiences of a pure spiritual nature in its development without experiencing the school of earth. Johannes replied: "No! That could not be done. The human soul begins its journey in the flesh. The main reason that this is so is because the soul is protected by the flesh and the flesh is very necessary to pure spirit in its earthly stages. If spirit alone entered the earth sphere it might easily perish, for the contending conditions of the earth sphere could easily destroy it. The spheres are graduated. This sphere, the Earth, is a very necessary experience. No man leaps from here to heaven, but develops through a gradual approach to the spiritual, and it is not desirable that the spirit should realize itself too quickly. It must find itself step by step."

Many people on earth regard this existence in matter as a beginning and end in itself. Blind and deaf to spiritual conditions, still more make no attempt to discover the underlying truth; for the soul is so poorly developed, so stunted in its growth, that it is forced to take a very slow course indeed. In fact, it has no desire to do otherwise. The education of the soul begins first through love and then through suffering. The soul who has known love has enriched itself at once; then suffering comes and teaches it that nothing is permanent, nothing endures and this is the first indication it receives that there is another life and another condition of existing.

But the human soul never receives its full earth experience because, inevitably, emotions interrupt its course. The soul's object is to gain full knowledge of itself, and, at first sight, you might say that this is not at all impossible. But it is swept by love, attacked by loss, impinged on by ill-health and assailed by a multitude of kindred excesses which create attendant emotions that forcibly affect it. Thus its education is interrupted and it fails to complete itself.

The above arguments merely serve to show that this school of

98


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earth life cannot be sufficient in itself for the average man or woman who passes through it. There must be a gradual process of development, but if the average person is able to profit by a sufficient number of lessons whilst in the flesh, he can prepare himself for the subsequent stages of life in less tenuous forms of matter. There are three other spheres of experience, making four in all with the earth life. Johannes does not view the question of reincarnation as an inevitable return to earth life.

Often it is a retrograde process which would be unnecessary if the soul had learnt sufficiently during its progress in matter. For example, the search for a kindred affinity may bring a soul back to earth seeking a loved one who had possibly progressed onward into higher spheres, and it were better if that soul had patiently and joyfully accepted the various experiences on the upward path, so that it would meet the affinity at the inevitable point when such a meeting must take place, when the two souls were ready to come together and continue their joint journey increasingly as one.

I asked Johannes what his motive was in the work which he was now engaged upon. He answered: "In the development of the soul nothing is as important as the discovery of affinity. It may be discovered through sexual love, through love of parents or children, through friendships and a host of other human relationships. These various relationships did not matter. It is the underlying law of affinity at work which is the key of the whole matter! That is all-important. The reason I embraced this work," Johannes continued, "is that the realization of affinity is the moment in which the soul realizes its place in the world and grasps its purpose. If I have hastened this process I have done much."

Regarding earthly affinities, Johannes tells us that provided there is a real underlying spiritual law of attraction between them, they will find each other of their own accord. This may be immediately, even from the time of birth as in the case of identical twins, or it may take many years for the discovery to result. Likewise, the earthly period of recognition may be for a long duration, in exceptional cases for nearly the whole span of earth life, or for a few brief moments, at the other extreme, when two souls may come together for the shortest possible time before the death of one of them in the physical world. Nevertheless the spark of recognition has been created and the process of magnetic attraction has begun.

Johannes claims that the very common element of opposition, quarrels, seeming antipathy, age difference, may prevent the completion of the affinity on earth, but if this is realized, much is done. We now see more clearly some of the reasons which attract the Johannes group to work through the mediumship of Hester Dowden. The personal reasons of Carneades, given elsewhere, are one thing.


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Here are the motives of spiritual service which bring about an approach between an earthly medium and the many inspirer s. Johannes was maintaining human relationships by creating conditions for the continuation of such affinities, even though some souls had advanced to a different plane of life to that of earth and were invisible to the physical senses of those who remained. It is important to realize that though geographical conditions are no bar to the magnetic coming-together of two affinities, the two must yet meet to recognize each other. The moment of meeting may not reveal the truth, but that truth will come to both in time.

The writer has discussed with Johannes some of the questions relating to spiritual governments in the Universe and their bearing on the national governments of mankind. He desired to know if it were possible to create on earth such spiritual government that wars could be abolished and a true brotherhood of man realized in our time. Johannes took up a cautious note. "The ideal may be perfection," he said, "but it will not be accepted in this your sphere of confusion. You must realize that all modes of government are better seen at a distance. The world, as it is now, is in no condition to carry out such a scheme. The earth is in the lowest sphere, where no scheme would exist for any appreciable time. It is a sphere of confusion. That is how you must recognize your earth. In higher spheres, there can be schemes which succeed; but not here. You cannot put these things into practice. The best you can do is to influence individuals who are able to expand and will make use of the influence which you bring to bear on them. All sincere efforts have a certain success, but again, with the individual, not with the crowd."

Dealing once again with the strange quality of this earthly existence, Johannes reports: "Earth is unique. There is no other of the same strang quality. The earth life contains seeds of infinite value. It is unique and no one will ever discover another life parallel to it."

Naturally, the main focus through human eyes is man's destiny and evolution on this planet, and at this stage we must deal with varying degrees of human relationships, always retaining our perspective in studying this cosmic law of affinity, or varying attraction in human beings.

Consider the case of twin souls. If twins have a soul between them, says Johannes, they will show complete harmony, the one with the other, in their earthly lives. We call this relationship that of identical twins. But if the two are sprung from different souls, one being perhaps the mother and one the father of a family in a previous existence, there will not necessarily be harmonious relationship between them. We should consider the significance of this kind of relationship. This awareness may at first be diffuse and rather vague, but it will be a root from which an increasing absorption in the other


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may spring. This law of attraction therefore is super-physical and through its operation, people intended to meet are sure to do so.

It is a popular misconception that the law of absolute affinity applies only to male and female, though naturally male and female attraction is included in the larger scheme. The writer asked Johannes specifically if absolute affinity of two people was confined to male and female relationship. He replied: "I can entirely refute this. Affinity means entire absorption, the one in the other. After the period of procreation is passed, there can be full affinity between persons of different sexes; between persons wide apart in age, and between relations of close blood.

"Affinity, under these latter conditions, is no longer symbolized by sex, or even the semblance of sex production. It is a matter of mind and soul. Nature must procreate, and in the various manifestations of Nature, procreation is essential to the continuation of the human stream of life on this planet; but affinity is essentially a relationship of souls, and as such, has nothing to do with it."

If we accept the above outline of this law of affinity in human relationship,- we must envisage a far wider scheme than the popular conception of physical, carnal love. It is not always easy to do this as the analogies throughout the whole vegetable, animal and human kingdoms support the sex motive as the mainspring for coming together. It seems, however, that in these planes of earthly life this motive is predominant, but it is only part of a pattern which extends into realms beyond our present ken, and into intricate group patterns whose magnetic attraction springs from other impulses than those of animal magnetism. One must note that age has nothing to do with the problem; age, that is, in terms of earthly years. We find that in spiritual states of being age and evolution depend on mental progress and the use to which experience is put by the individual during his vast journey of development and advancement back to the Oversoul, or Supreme Spirit from which he sprang.

There is another argument which is advanced against this theory. It is that male and female represent positive and negative influences which must come together to make a perfect whole.

The individual is incomplete, it is said, until both positive and negative aspects of human personality merge into one central being. Johannes says that this would apply in the case of male and female, but it is only a fragment of the whole. We have to envisage whole groups of people, irrespective of sex, gradually drawing together through successive spheres, until they merge into complete group absorption and interchance experiences, not only of events which are taking place during the immediate present, but also when those _experiences embrace a whole sequence of past lives in high and lower planes of existence, within the earth sphere and outside it.


102	FAR HORIZON

Plotinus remarked: "Each individual soul has its own character and uniqueness which gives it its individuality; but in the World Yonder there is no obstacle to their complete communion with each other. On the lower levels, on the other hand, we get separation without disparity and resemblance without unity." Johannes, quite independently of this, has said: "Each soul is itself, and different from all others. In the distant worlds there is perfect communion and understanding between those who are of the same spiritual family. But in the lower spheres, the family has not united, and unity cannot be found."

It is just possible that some of us may consider that this doctrine of group affinities runs counter to universal brotherhood. Perhaps we believe that Jesus Christ taught the law of universal love, which we term the Brotherhood of Man. The writer asked Johannes to elucidate this point. His answer was: "The Ideal of universal brotherhood, of nation and nation, and continent and continent, becomes an ultimate reality as you ascend the spheres. But on earth, you cannot begin in that way." The theory of affinities is therefore a step on the ladder of ultimate world brotherhood. As we look around us to-day we see that this earth is torn by strife and discord and that we must recast our steps and make a beginning which is an integrated approach of one to another. By study and application we can play our parts in furthering the law of human affinities. Even while we are on earth, we can become effective agents in its operation, both in the processes of nature and in our human relationships. If we accept this theory as one contributory cause of the earth's place in this Universe, we must work out in our individual lives how we can aid the cosmic process and accelerate its working while we are still in the flesh.

Johannes believes in the attempted influencing of individuals who can co-operate in their daily lives with that philosophy which they believe to be true.

It is difficult to assess how far this philosophy was part of Hester Dowden's personality, and how far distinct from it. Undoubtedly she subscribed to it during the last ten years of her life, but it is not easy to give a picture of the gradual build-up which took place over a number of years during scores of sittings with different people. The foundations had been imposed long before the writer came on the scene, but Johannes had expressed these dicta from the very beginning of his association with his medium. On several occasions he claimed to have influenced her mind, inspiring her educational research and studies, before he actually appeared to her through her hand.

During the whole of her life Hester had a profound veneration for Goethe. As a young girl she had learnt to read German fluently, and


	HUMAN AFFINITIES	103

when she was living with her father, Edward Dowden, she had studied the works of Goethe closely. His theory of Elective Affinities and his novel under that title were well known to her. The story of Faust was a masterpiece for which she had an enormous respect. It is very likely that Johannes inspired her liking for the German sage. The medium is a channel for the unseen and the sum total of her early training and education would be a power-point through which an extrasensory personality could express his own messages the more readily. Johannes had claimed that both Edmund Dowden and his daughter were "of his earthly family", and that there was a degree of affinity between himself and his medium.

Critics, on the other hand, could use the argument that Hester Dowden had a predilection for the doctrine of affinities through her early training in German philosophy. This, in the course of years, would be woven into her subconscious mind, and would dramatize itself when ideas came to the surface, in the spirit of the messages which have already been given. But Hester's sceptical nature was not profoundly interested in philosophy at all. She was not a natural philosopher; her main interests being confined to music, and, to a lesser degree, painting and the arts.

	She had no patience whatsoever with fools, and was always highly critical even of the small circle of people with whom she made passing friendships. This tendency to human isolation became more pronounced as the years went on. Deep down within her there was a grudging, reluctant acceptance of the possibility of survival; but this came about rather through being forced to acknowledge the personality of Johannes as something separate and apart from herself, rather than from any tendency to cling to the Spiritualist hypothesis of future worlds and states of being.

The range and variety of subjects with which her writing had to deal, the multitude of different personalities who came to her door, the complex network of spirit relatives and friends who greeted each visiting client through her automatic writing, all combined to force a conviction on a proud and intellectual soul that the combination of powers and the accurate competency of knowledge in so many fields was not of her own making but issued from other people outside and beyond the physical world.

If Hester had been bound up, in the sense of an alter ego with Johannes, how was it that his coming did not take place until well into middle age? To the end of her days Hester was a pronounced research student of occult matters, but the early zest of the years when she was working with Sir William Barrett had begun to wear off in the late twenties. The exacting routine of two or three clients every day for five days a week necessitated the mental attitude of 4 shutting off' which she had already described in her diary. With


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advancing years came the desire for a larger income. This was the main compelling factor for a professional routine and only the mind of an explorer sustained and sweetened the daily task sufficiently to permit routine to continue.


CHAPTER TEN

COSMIC MESSENGERS

Angels and ministers of grace defend us!
Hamlet, i, 4

SINCE psychic communication has existed, man has speculated on the existence of 'daemonic' personalities who have inspired him down the ages. Yet the literature of communication between the earth and psychic realms gives us very little information about conditions in future states of life. This is understandable when we realize that there is no yardstick to assess the living conditions of discarnate entities except by earthly analogies and comparisons which use earthly terms. Until terrestrial man is able to develop his mind to a state of awareness of conditions which are outside his three-dimensional perspective, or until he has devised some means of perception other than,  or in addition to, his five senses, he will always be limited to those descriptions which he already possesses.

Johannes, in communicating with his medium, frequently referred to the. Cosmic Messenger, or Angelos, as someone who has lived a life on earth, and has evolved into vaster and more perfect states of consciousness. Literature of the past recognizes a different order of beings to humanity and each civilization has built up a set of records of those angelic messengers who have visited the sons of men.

To Johannes, these messengers are the servants of the Great Spirit, who pass to and fro up and down the spheres and who come from an abode beyond the knowledge and experience of any denizen who is still evolving in conscious life within the seven spheres.

The Koran speaks of Mohammed having intercourse with cosmic messengers and of his being transplanted out of one city in Arabia into another. Jewish history is full of incidents concerning angelic messengers, and both early Christian and mediaeval records, and the modern history of the Roman Catholic Church, contain numerous accounts of this angelic contact, with resulting miracles sprung from it which have touched Western civilization in a kind of chain down the ages.

Those who are nearest to the human scene come to us in the form of guides and inspirers, and we consider them as personalities who have left the earth and entered a more advanced stage of evolution. But beyond our vision there is a vast metaphorical ascending,

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and descending staircase, between spheres of pulsating activity, up and down which these messengers in their varying degrees wend their way to help and guide life in all its forms, including humanity in God's cosmos.

"Picture these beings," Johannes asks us, "not as winged messengers, but in their more exalted pattern, as tall and glorious human beings who preserve the outward human shape." Their existence is not a matter of conjecture, they are as necessary and essential to the universe as the very fundamental plan which God has created for universal existence. The symbolic ladder of ascending hosts seen by Jacob in his dream is a metaphorical picture of this ceaseless activity which embodies hierarchies of affinities, often merged into a complete and absolute expression of one great oversoul. But it is that same process, brought to a consummate degree of outward expression. No words can express the quality and the glory of a radiant being who has passed 'out beyond' and has merged into the infinite universe of God beyond the seventh sphere.

Johannes tells us that this seventh sphere is the receiving ground, linking the highest and noblest of human spirits; those who have become lords of all created form, and who have consummated their process of magnetic affinity in lower spheres of life under the one overriding spirit of their group. They have become angelic beings who are beyond form. These can appear as mist, or cloud, or fire, and at all events, in the early history of the Jewish race, we find this outward symbolism appearing to lead the tribes of Israel into the Promised Land; going before them as a Pillar of Cloud by day and a Pillar of Fire by night. But make no mistake, it is not possible for the true angel, as we must conceive the direct messenger of God, to make contact with the sons of earth in their dense physical world of matter.

Johannes stresses the fact that in the full sense the word 'angel' cannot be applied to human beings who have not travelled through the whole circle of humanity. They are essentially an integrated whole comprising in their essence and aura the sum total of a multitude of completed life; integrated into one complete expression of personality, yet each unit of life, being individual and un-lost, reacts as a part of the whole.

Johannes claims that the intermediaries are very important, because the messages which they transmit to lower states of consciousness have been, in turn, transmitted to them from higher spheres and so upward into the vast arcs and vistas of invisibility, penetrating into ever more perfect and finer worlds of expression. Doctor Cornellier mentions this 'fluidic' wave of influence percolating into grosser and grosser matter from higher spheres in his latest treatise. In the intermediate stages, the receptive agent, or

	
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medium, must be sufficiently in tune in spiritual advancement to pick up the fluidic message transmitted to him or her.

In certain cases a medium will receive the grosser part of an exalted message, and the result will be very far from the original sense, or meaning. To begin with, messages relayed from higher sources are not given in words as we know them. The term Cornellier uses is 'fluences'. This term denotes a form of impressionism which can cover a vast field of knowledge, but which has to diminish as the fluence attempts to interpret a cosmic influence, and becomes pin-pointed to concrete terminology.

The application of such a broad stream of influence must pass through the fulcrum of a successive series of human intelligences until it strikes upon the consciousness of one who is on earth, and who has the task of expounding the meaning in terms of human relationships.

As an example of this process, during the last two sittings the writer had with Johannes, much of the purport of what he conveyed to him came directly into his consciousness, apart from the words which were being written down through Mrs. Dowden's pencil. Johannes repeatedly affirmed that the point had been found telepathically, and that he concurred with the thought that was being expressed. But the writer was not receiving, in these instances, a direct verbal message from Johannes, given telepathically through his brain, as in the case of a clairaudient stream of words. Rather was it that Johannes conveyed a fluence, or form of sense-impressionism which needed verbal expression by the writer and, in this process, the wider and fuller meaning was restricted, or curtailed.

At the apex of human creation stand the archangels. Some of these exalted beings control the planets and each planet has its own guardian-controller. Their duties are to keep the whole field of planetary life working according to order and method laid down by the cosmic system of God. These archangels do not alter or interfere with the laws of the Great Spirit; rather are they there to administer, sustain and control what is already in existence. In the occult literature of Theosophy, in the Kabala, in the hidden teaching of the books of the Upanishad, there are hints of this process of angelic ministration. We have certain clues given us through the vision permitted to John on the island of Patmos. In the mysteries of Freemasonry, in its purest and most exalted lodges, there are similar indications of this work being done by angelic hierarchies. A planet such as ours would be completely embraced by the aura and magnetic field of the exalted being in whose charge it rested. Thus we begin to see the gigantic size and structure of the scheme.

Angelic ministry is the near-apex of the whole thesis which Johannes has advanced concerning his law of affinities and one must


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be prepared to accept the vast field of influence which falls to the lot of these exalted beings. Yes! The angelic hosts are the administrators of the laws of the universe, and the visions which are vouchsafed to the sons of men from time to time are not symbolic of other truths which are beyond the cognizance of man's mind. Rather do they reveal the actual truth. Johannes says that if we see a bird in our vision, it probably is exactly what we do see, because it cannot alter its shape. The imprint which is conveyed to us comes from a specific order of creative life, and it is that particular species of creation which is given to us and no other, by way of analogy. This reality of detailed perception is important.

It is difficult indeed to pick out from the multitude of stories of angelic meeting any one that provides a significance to us greater than the rest. The angel is perfect, and has passed beyond good and evil. He is unaffected by the struggle and turmoil which afflict those of us on the lowest planes of life. His purity is unsullied and is in itself a reflection of that perfect purity which springs from contact with the great spirit of the universe. In the literatures of past civilizations we read of many duties which these cosmic messengers have had to perform. At times they bring to mankind warning notes of war, famine, plague and deep adversity. At other times, they are harbingers of relief, messengers that lift the veil of suffering and herald the dawn of new eras of spiritual victory and progressive evolution.

We should be aware that the angel messenger is above the human standpoint when he metes out joy and suffering. These two extremes are probably as one to him, for suffering is brought to mankind as a result of its past actions, and is nearly always remedial in its effect. Perhaps the kindest angel of all is the great messenger of death. To those in ignorance, he is the dread harbinger who closes all accounts in human life; to those who have spiritual knowledge, he is as a welcome friend, opening gates into wider and ever wider spheres of life, light and activity. It is as we learn, on our voyage through the spheres, more and more of those laws which govern our very being, that we come to appreciate the singular duties and actions of this cosmic host. They are the inspirers of the infinite multitude of teachers; they are the fountain for the countless bands of healers, and they provide the very links which unite our humble station with the footstool at the throne of God.

Johannes says: "The whole scheme of this universe, as it seems to me, is that of the smaller spirit lifting itself towards the greater, and gradually forming a group which may become one great spirit force. You who are on earth express at this moment but the minutest particle of your kinship with mightier forces. You are, in potential, linked here and now with every future stage of your journey. Your


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lesson is to realize this kindred spirit which covers not only all life on your planet, but all life throughout the vast field of interplanetary space which surrounds your little world.

"Because this process of realization is so gradual, it is necessary to concentrate every effort on perfecting yourself for the meeting with single affinities. When you have accomplished this early grouping, you will have to strive to be ready to converge with similar and larger groups of affinities, and when this unification has been achieved, your task will be to link up with greater and yet greater groups, until your perfected integration covers a sufficient field to give you the fullness and the stature of the angelic being."

If the reader accepts the personality of Johannes as distinct from his medium, Hester Dowden, then he must recognize also that

Johannes was one of the cosmic messengers. He claims to have reached the summit of the spheres of development, to have integrated himself with his oversoul, and, by so doing, to have become one with the other members of his group. Perhaps it is more correct to say that Johannes, as the messenger who returned to earth, was indeed the Greek Carneades, onetime philosopher and sage. He speaks of the Seventh Sphere as a sphere of persons, who, at one time, inhabited the earth. "At that level the angels are still incomprehensible to us," he says. "God is still a mystery. If we pass into the All, we shall know all; but as we have returned and are working in lower spheres, we are in much the same position as you are."

The personality of Jesus, or rather the larger personality of Christ overshadowing the earthly teacher, so impressed Johannes with his teaching, that he had found it difficult to present arguments from the Neo-Platonist standpoint. Plato's myths should be considered in the nature of vision, though they did not present themselves as such to Plato. They were truths cloaked in symbolism. The Cave was a mystic revelation; undoubtedly it was a vision of very great value.

Johannes mentions, by way of illustrating the process of evolution, that the spirit of Socrates passed into a high plane of the sphere above the earth. The daemon, or inspirer, accompanied him at all times. With the exception of Christ, Johannes asserts that there has been no record of any such combination of control and charge as this was. He passed on immediately into a circle of his spiritual family, for he had been more than a philosopher. He had become a 'voice', which had given so much more than what was within the earth-personality that he had almost entered another state before his death.

The ordinary man and woman makes a choice of the future abode when living on earth. They build their own houses in the world beyond. Those who have chosen dimness find that their world is a


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dim place, for such are the lower planes of life. Their portion on these planes is monotony. We have seen some of this experience in the recorded messages from Oscar Wilde. Those who have used their talents well-head as well as heart-pass to a high plane in the state following the earth life. They are eager to move on, so do not look back or attempt to be reincarnated.

Plato's Republic is the theme of a celestial kingdom; not an earthly one. It came as a vision which had to be fitted into the comprehension of earth. It was a memory from a series of continuous dream states. The Symposium was a combination of both biography and invention, but the inspiration predominated.

Johannes regards the state of purgatory after death in this way. The soul must review its journey on earth, and make its own purgatory out of its regrets. It is not a place, for there are no places which bear any relation to the Christian conception of Purgatory or Hell. It is rather a state of mind and being, and our daemons and inspirers will shorten the duration of it as much as possible, for regret retards progress, except in so far as it is part of experience.

Johannes reiterates his conception of The One in these words. "I know little of The One, except the sense of what may really be called divinity which I have experienced on the Sixth and Seventh Spheres. I, personally, do not feel that The One is conscious of His work, or what He is, for He lives in a state of complete relaxation and happiness. But he is a force, which supplies all that lives with force, and is above all that is evil."

"The act of suicide is not a simple one," he continued, "for there are many reasons which drive the soul to cast off the body before its time; some persons are severely punished for this act; some find no evil consequence in another world. If it is a deliberate act based on reason, no consequence awaits the soul which will delay its progress, except the shock of severing the thread of life too suddenly. But, if life has become too heavy a burden through weakness, or lack of wisdom, there is desperate confusion in the soul which may continue for a long time on low planes where life is not progressive."

What is his teaching with regard to reincarnation? Again Johannes takes a middle path. He believes that the majority who pass on have not got sufficient out of earth experience. But people are in very different grades. At the summit of the scale Jesus and the Buddha had overstepped the earth sphere. But the multitude have a limited capacity to learn. They do not use the power that they have at their disposal, and pass on to another sphere, where their ardent desire to return to earth to gain further experience leads them to accomplish it. But this return denotes a new physical body of expression and a temporary loss of memory of former lives. Often, however, the human spirit will benefit by the casting off of the physical body, because the latter


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is a clumsy vehicle for expression of the spirit which becomes freer when that body is discarded. Yet the earthly stage is the strongest training for spiritual life.

Far different are those advanced beings who desire the whole experience a second time. Some of these are indeed highly developed souls. They are not of those who return because their earth desires are intense. But many of the saints who have passed through the whole experience return because they feel a sense of having done so little, having mistaken the purposes of life through the handicaps of the age in which they were born or because of that orthodox faith with which they were encompassed.

Perhaps the largest number are those who return to find their true affinity. A sense of incompleteness drives them back into what may be a very much more tragic existence. The two may find each other ultimately on advanced planes of life, and this desire to have the earth experience once again is a mad groping in the dark. Johannes remarks: "The soul can return if it feels some work or experience has been left unfulfilled; if it wishes to resume the thread of that experience again, it will do so, and will attack the problem in a more advanced stage than it did in its former earth life. Love of the world can draw the soul back; either love of what is carnal and bestial, or love of striving, that often call a soul again and again to its earth experience. If the Seven Spheres of consciousness have been triumphed, if all possible stages of that consciousness have been understood, and if every inch of the road of development has been traversed, even then may man wish to walk along the long road again. Thus your saints and supermen are born."

From this teaching, it might be stated that, in general, the desire for reincarnation is undesirable. More often than not it is the sign of a restless mind, not content to take development as it comes, but striving for what cannot be accomplished except through patience and an attitude of expectancy.






CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE COMING OF SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI

It is needful that you frame the season for your own harvest.
Much Ado About Nothing, i, 3.

THIS story of the little mediaeval saint who loved the birds and beasts of the earth no less than his brother man is a kind of second instalment of the historic account of his life on earth. In the year 1940 Laurence Temple wrote his story of the coming of Saint Francis. He called it The Shining Brother. Temple was an architect, a man of middle age, a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, active and creative in his profession when the chain of events with which this story deals took place.

The Shining Brother describes a series of spiritual adventures in which Laurence Temple-a name that is a nom-de-plume-gradually grew to recognize the presence and companionship of Saint Francis of Assisi. The notes which Temple made came to a little more than 120,000 words, and they were written from a series of one hundred and sixty-four automatic writing scripts. The events related took place between the years 1928 and 1939, and were given him by no less than seventeen different psychics, who all had a similar story to tell, who were living apart from each other, and at no time in mutual communication. Amongst the seventeen donors of messages was Hester Dowden. Her contribution was by no means the largest, but it was completely in line with the progressive series of messages of the other mediums. Laurence Temple first came to her anonymously, but in course of time they became good friends. This is one aspect of the story.

Almost equally important is the fact that the advent of Saint Francis to his earthly brother illustrated in practice the return of a leader of a group of advanced souls to contact spiritually his closest disciple who had reincarnated to make the journey through life once more.

C. Drayton Thomas, in his introduction to The Shining Brother, raises this perplexing question of reincarnation. If Johannes' words are true, that the present union of soul and body is a much smaller expression of the greater self, then this story illustrates his further contention-that experiences gained by each successive earthly journey are shared by the other brethren of the group in the hereafter -and that their influence and direction can pervade the life of the earthly traveller provided that he is willing and able to increase his spiritual powers to make the inspiration possible.

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Laurence Temple obtained an introduction to Hester through Miss Estelle Stead and made his first anonymous appointment with her on January 30th, 1932. He was shown into her drawing-room in 15, Cheyne Gardens at 3.30 p.m. This is what he describes.

"She was quiet, rather grave. Almost indifferently, she said, as she drew her pencils and paper towards her, 'There is a strong thirteenth-century atmosphere about you'.

"She showed no disposition to ask questions, and I shall never forget the strange thrill I had when, two minutes later, her hand had written the word Francesco.

"Since that day I have come to know the details of his life very intimately and to have a friendly acquaintance with every stone in Assisi, so that the name Francesco is now probably more familiar to me than Francis. At that time, however, Francis of Assisi was the name by which I always thought of him, and the word Francesco came unexpectedly.

"But to return to the beginning of the sitting. After a short discussion between herself and her control, Johannes, an ouija-board was Put between us. Both Mrs. Dowden and I placed a hand upon it.

 "Mrs. Dowden mentioned that there were a lot of brothers about.

"'Do you mean my brothers?' I asked.

"'Monks,' she replied briefly.

"At that moment the traveller moved so violently, that my hand slipped off, and only towards the end of what was apparently a sentence did I catch up with it again.

"Mrs. Dowden came to my help. It spelled out: 'Your own brother.' 'Had you a brother, a monk?' Mrs. Dowden asked.

"I made a non-committal reply. To start some sort of conversation I asked: 'What kind of work do I do?'

"The instantaneous reply was: 'Architecture'.

"'Thank you, can you put it more definitely?'

"'Churches.'

"All that was spelled out so rapidly that I was unable to follow the pointer."

From then onwards, the ouija-board was abandoned as being too slow, and the messages came through the pencil. The substance of this first message was that Temple had received help from the other side of life in the designing of his churches. The thirteenth-century group who had been aiding him saw his architectual plans with the inner eye and were able to inspire him subconsciously.

Saint Francis repeated his name, alluded to the fact that they had been companions in a former existence, and also to a voyage to the own of Assisi which Laurence Temple had made during his present life. Reference was made to a vision which he seems to have seen at


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Assisi, when he saw Saint Francis surrounded by flowers. The spirit also referred to his gift of building churches, which Temple was giving to his brothers in the Beyond when carrying out his normal earthly tasks. The interview moved him exceedingly, though he showed none of that inner emotion at the time. Saint Francis then prophesied that he would build a little chapel at Garstone, which would be the Chapel of the Fioretti. At that point this first sitting ended.

At the next with Hester, about a month later, Temple asked Saint Francis point-blank if they had known each other on earth. He was told that he was one of the Brotherhood and that he had been with them long ago in the Little Town. Furthermore, he had been an especial friend and confidant "on whom I often laid my grief".

That was the answer. Temple had known him and had shared his griefs.

A further message appealed to his understanding that he should know that his eyes were being opened to what was about him, below him, and above him. "Be not haughty that this is so," ran the message; "let it come as a flower that opens in the sun."

Temple writes: "I had no difficulty in accepting it, for in my bones I could feel knowledge creeping in. Not new knowledge, old knowledge, old atmospheres, grey old laughter, which was yet fresh with the childhood of the soul."

He asked himself who was Lorenzo, for there was no mention of that name in the historic record of the Fioretti. No Lorenzo was reported to have accompanied Saint Francis to Assisi. At this point Hester's message told him that he had been known as Leo in the Brotherhood, and that name was coupled with the Lorenzo that would be his always throughout all spheres.

This revelation of his ancient personality, the historic Leo, who had shared the trials, wanderings and spiritual adventures with Francis, which culminated on Alvernia, stirred the modern Temple to his depths. As a youth, he had been deeply moved by the love which had shone between these two friends and at first he felt a distinct shock that he had been given a historic role in relation to the saint. He writes: "It is hardly surprising, knowing the chances of error in any psychic communication, if the human side of me shrank." He had always recoiled from those messages which purported to come from the distinguished dead. Nevertheless, a deep voice within him kept telling him that here was his true affinity and that layer after layer of a great mystery was being stripped for the truth to become apparent to him.

In April 1934, the name Leo was confirmed by a Miss Francis, who was practising at the British College of Psychic Science. This lady had never met Hester, yet she conveyed the information about


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the two names in almost precisely similar terms. And so the story of his former life with Saint Francis was filled in and the frequent companionship and intimacy of further messages made Temple realize the actual presence of this spiritual guardian. He mentions that a whole thread of evidences was presented by different mediums in different places and on different occasions. Even from Helen Hughes he received the same story which embodied the theory of reincarnation which she had never accepted. Temple records that, "From Grace Cooke, from Geraldine Cummins, from Alice Mortley, Ethel Green, Mrs. Dowden, Mrs. O'Connell, and from six or seven other mediums, private or public, I obtained the self-same story without hesitation, and often against very careful suggestions made by myself to create other ideas."

The acceptance of his name Leo implied also a recognition of the close earthly affinity which he had with his brother Francis. From this train of thought sprang the gradual awareness of the brotherhood of the spheres. Temple writes of Hester's scripts which came through on February 20th and March 4th, 1932, that individuals possibly were not so separate from each other as they appeared to be. Saint Francis came to teach him gradually, step by step, that riot only had they been brothers on earth, most constant friends and companions, but Leo had been a son to him also, before the time he was his brother. This reference was to a son in the spirit, 'not as of the body'.

The author of The Shining Brother again refers to this relationship: "When I became your spiritual son," I asked, "did I partake of your spirit as a physical son would partake of the bodies of his parents?" "Ye have partaken, ye are part of me, thy spirit is part of mine. As the son to the father, so are ye to me. And I have, because of this, been able to give ye a consciousness of my presence always. Since ye were a child, I have been with ye. "

"I take it," I asked, "that a spiritual son is born of a higher plane and descends to this?"

"Yes, that is so; ye are born in the spirit before ye enter a body. Ye were born my son on the plane that is sixth after this one. . . . The father's spirit hears all that the son says to him and listens not for words only, but for thoughts that are given as a daily offering to Francesco."

"Do I come to your side in my sleep?"

"Yes, nearly every night ye come to me and gradually ye are drawn to higher planes-the spheres where ye know without learning."

At this point Temple recollected having seen that a certain John da San Lorenzo, who lived in the fourteenth century, probably translated the Fioretti. If he had always borne Lorenzo as a spiritual


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name then possibly there was a relationship there. He asked if this were so.

"Now," came the answer, "ye have asked a question that will puzzle ye, but at the same time will please ye. And ye shall understand this: this San Lorenzo is as another and perhaps lesser father to ye. A fold of Francesco is he and ye are another fold. For the spirit holdeth within itself other spirits and ye are within Lorenzo as ye are within Francesco, but nearer Francesco than Lorenzo are ye."

If Temple hesitated to accept the name Leo, it was merely that it made of him something, if not unique, at least unusual. For what had just been quoted might be the clue to a great generalization in which all were included.

"Upon this point, a paragraph in The Spiritual Universe, by Oswald Murray, is instructive," Temple writes.

"'All the Mighty Beings in these provinces (or very high planes) have offspring passing through the several intermediate states (or planes) of life ... as well as on earth. The life current descends from our Angelic Parents, passing through their offspring in the intermediate states ... till it reaches the outer earth.' " That is, we have parents on each plane. These are of increasing spiritual splendour in an ascending scale until the great Father is reached. In a script by Hester Dowden of June 25th, the question of spiritual families was again taken up: "All that are born into this world," it said, "are born as belonging to a certain Spiritual Family and these are the true relations that are given ye. When ye meet these ye know them, and the love that holdeth a family together draweth ye into the circle and ye are at home."

The effect of the communications from the various channels continued to make the presence of Francis more and more a living reality. It was as if the inspirer wished to reveal himself as a man who had lived and suffered among his kind rather than as a mythical saint.

From this point the scene shifts to Glastonbury. Temple felt the link with other memories of the past. It was as if he had been with a company of brothers who had lived there, worked, and made their abode. He tells us how the past revealed itself when he visited Garstone and let himself into the church alone, early on Whit-Sunday morning. "To one's outer ears the building was still and silent, in the early mists. To one's inner ears, the walls echoed the faint tumult of preparation, and there was no doubt of its being a centre of activity." Temple kept in his pocket a copy of The Little Flowers. He felt that there was a sense of presence and protection around him as he read it.

Now at this point two prominent influences entered his life. One was Alice Mortley, a delicate woman who lived the life of a recluse but


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whose powers of sensitivity and vision were comparable to many a sage of old. From her he received many messages concerning the guidance and presence of Francis. The saint was preparing him for a closer and closer spiritual union and gradually the story of his earlier life on earth came to be revealed. Later that year, Temple paid a visit to Italy and followed in the footsteps of his inspirer, not only in Assisi, but in the surrounding villages and countryside. Now he was able to sense the presence of Francis at many points on the journey, all of which is described in The Shining Brother.

The other lady who had an equal influence on him was Ethel Green, who, through meditation and a certain amount of automatic writing, was able to take up the story and reveal further links between him and his spiritual affinity. During the latter half of October 1932, this lady had three sittings with Hester at which Francesco appeared and occupied the whole time.

"Portions of the scripts which were given were then written by Mrs. Dowden in the usual way, and portions were written by Mrs. Green, who held the pencil, Mrs. Dowden's hand resting on hers," he writes.

"This method, however, did not appeal to Mrs. Green, who preferred her hand to be perfectly free. Eventually Mrs. Dowden put her hand on Mrs. Green's shoulder, when at once, and very clearly, a voice spoke to her. Her hand moved with the voice and she wrote:

" 'My daughter, give me your hand and let me send a message to my son, for such he is. Tell him that Francesco desires him above all things to devote himself to that Greater Life which is around him, above him, and below.'

"That was the first script written by Ethel Green entirely alone. I have many times watched Mrs. Dowden's hand write rapidly and unerringly when she was in the midst of a lively discussion on some quite unrelated subject. There was here a distinct difference between the mediumship of the two ladies, for Mrs. Green required complete silence. Her gift appears to be not so much automatic writing as clairaudience.

"Writing to me a year later, she said that she should always consider her first hearing of the voice of Saint Francis to be the most blessed event of her life. As I write now seven years after I am certain that she would, with great joy, endorse her own words.

"After this message she was told to call and see me in Hillborough and ask me to sit with her.

" 'Ye shall sit with Lorenzo and he shall touch ye with his hand. Power from Francesco shall pass into him and so will ye have the power of both Lorenzo and Francesco. And none shall hinder or prevent ye.'

"Various details she was bidden to arrange, and a few small


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instructions were given to her for me. 'I beg my brother,' was written, 'when he sits with this daughter who hath written first today, to sit without speaking, and in silence will my voice be heard.' "

Ethel Green sent, in all, 130 scripts. With few exceptions they were written in Ireland, between October 1932 and March 1934. The correspondence between Temple and the Irish medium was quite distinct from the intimate messages received from Saint Francis, through her hand. The latter had a definite relationship between what was written and the deeper movements of Temple's mind, but ordinary letters between the two earthly friends were slight, and of an impersonal nature.

A number of messages which Hester relayed to the author of The Shining Brother dealt with Glastonbury, and with a cycle of time in which the two men were supposed to have passed there as monks. Perhaps it is as well to mention at this stage that at the instigation of a Miss E. B. Gibbes, throughout 1923 and 1924, Hester and a Mr. Frederick Bligh Bond, F.R.I.B.A., conducted a series of experiments in automatic writing at Cheyne Gardens and at Glastonbury, Somerset. The messages that came through were not connected with Laurence Temple or his affinity, but the place was the same. The objective in this case was to contact the monks of the past, and to trace any information in connection with the legend of Joseph of Arimathaea and the Holy Grail.

In February 1925, Hester, Miss Gibbes and Mr. Bligh Bond again visited Glastonbury, when Hester used a dowsing rod among the abbey ruins, in an attempt to trace the original outlines, foundations, and buried parts of the abbey. Messages were purported to have been received from the monks who had lived there at the time of Joseph of Arimathaea. A good many of these scripts were printed in pamphlet form by Bligh Bond, the author of The Gate of Remembrance, a book which had much interest for students of the Arthurian Legends and of the stories of the monks of Glastonbury. Scores of these messages have been proved veridical, the most famous of which being the discovery of the Norman wall of Herlewin's chapel. Mr. Bligh Bond was promptly suspended from his Directorship of Excavations, and the excavations were abruptly closed down by order of ecclesiastical authority.

Here are some of the thoughts which entered the mind of Laurence Temple at this stage of his development:

"Is it conceivable that souls can, to a certain extent, organize their own education and evolution? 'It is always a question of desire when the soul returns to earth,' said Johannes, Mrs. Dowden's control. 'It is always a matter of subconscious choice; it may, however,' he went on, 'be almost a compelling choice.'

"Now whatever faults Western peoples may have, they have at


	THE COMING OF SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI	119

least the rudiment of an idea of Brotherhood. The Western man can better create organizations than the Eastern. Teamwork is understood here in a way unknown in the East. The Eastern mystic, or saint, lives in a sort of isolated grandeur, an asceticism of solitariness. I! is conceivable that he might enter into incarnation thousands of times without mixing mentally or spiritually with any other single being.

"Did our leaders discover a way out through Brotherhood, whereby we all bore the sins of the whole Family and pooled results? Was this Christ's great revelation which the East with all its accumulated wisdom has still failed to grasp? Is the group idea particularly Christ's?

"It is possible that the old troubled subject of the Atonement may be seen more clearly if we regard the whole world as Christ's Group. It is possible that His life and death made a Family of those who would, through whom His power could flow: 'Life is within ye which is in touch with the Greater Life,' says the scripts. As a phrase, 'the Blood of Christ' is symbolic, or it remains unexplained. But if we can accept what I have called an 'organic' connection between members of a Group, as I personally do, and as the Francis scripts do, then we have a basis for understanding the Atonement. For the life-force, or 'blood', flowing freely through all, any outstanding degree of spirituality of one would benefit each member of the Group. Incidentally the Leader could not achieve freedom until the whole Group had attained.

"We have a clear view of our own future when in turn we ourselves shall become the Leaders of our own Group. We, being of Christ's family, are permitted to carry on His knightly tradition of succour. Here, also, it is shown to us that we are allowed to bear with Him the weight of the Cross and, entering into the living fellowship of our Spiritual Brethren, be filled with their strength, and by this power awaken in the souls of those weaker and immature the fire and gold of the Grail."

The drama of the two men was a mystic process and it does not affect the life of Hester except for two things. Firstly, she was responsible for a good many of the vital messages which made the presence of the mediaeval saint a living reality to Laurence Temple; secondly, the whole story represents a drama of earthly terms, having a significant bearing on the teaching of Johannes, given in the previous chapters. It must be remembered, in connection with this, that the weaving of the pattern of The Shining Brother was carried out by a number of independent persons who were acting as amanuenses for higher forces.

There is no specific climax to this story, which illustrates both the principles of a group of souls linking in with an earthly brother,


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because he springs from the same root and origin, and the greater lesson of affinities in all spheres of this universe, which the teaching of Johannes during his lifelong association with Hester embodied. Temple continued his work as an architect during the early years of the war, and eventually retired and lived in Bournemouth. Not long after the publication of The Shining Brother his death brought an end to his quest.

One other aspect must be mentioned before the conclusion of this strange story. Laurence Temple had entered the thorny path of discipleship. For the last few years of his life he aspired to the life of a saint. He accepted the training of his affinity, and through his own developing powers became aware of the presence of Saint Francis of Assisi. Before he entered this stage, however, he had to undergo the experience which has been the common lot of many a saint and mystic. He describes his Night of the Soul when, for a period of about three months, he felt the utmost spiritual desolation.

Messages from every source ceased during this time. Not only that, he himself experienced a separation as bleak and as imprisoning as a long polar winter. During that time he was tempted to abandon his quest, tempted to reject the reality of the sequence of messages he had received and to break further contact with spirit sources. Temple gives us this picture as an incident on his road of evolution. He triumphed completely and the eventual union between Saint Francis and himself was the sweeter and sounder for the testing period which he had to undergo.

Perhaps it is pertinent to close this chapter with a final reference to the work of Laurence Temple. Of his affinity, he writes this:

"That Francis has some special relation to our own period seems certain. That he is present in men's minds is manifested in many ways. During the last fifty years there has been an increasing literature about him, and to him a great number of churches have been dedicated. There has been a tendency to clothe Christ in strange ecclesiasticisms and theologies until He is well-nigh hidden. Many have turned to Francis, recognizing that they may get another and a clearer view of the real Christ, as He was and is, through him. My own view is that Francis in this time of terrible trouble has drawn nearer to the earth to make his own great gift towards simplifying the confusion in which we find ourselves.

"I quote from one of the last scripts written by Ethel Green,

" 'From the Spring of Life do I speak unto ye and declare His will, even He, the Master, whom the Golden Worlds have crowned Victor and Deliverer. Through me, the least of His servants, doth He speak to this generation and offereth Himself again in the soul made in His image, and subject to Him in all things. Therefore do I return to Earth bearing with me my Lord, and seeking mansions of flesh


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where we may dwell and spread abroad the glory of our Being, the Light of Perfection shining through the spirit that is Francis, the Little Brother of all Mankind.

" 'This is my day given unto me of the Father, wherein I suffer once again with the wounded and the sad, and bring joy of an unclouded mom to eyes that gaze across the sombre wastes, dim with sorrow and unshed tears.

" 'I lift once more the burden of the weak, and lay myself down in the dark haunts of sin that I may rest awhile with these dwellers of the depths, and waken in them the instinct to cast off the swathings of the animal soul and rise to the purer air.

" 'With all men will I partake, and the beggar's crust shall be as sweet as the delicacies of the rich; for to the souls of men do I call and to them I show the beauty and the gaiety of the untrammelled life, the immeasurable Love which guardeth each one, the infinite value of the human soul, and all the wealth of unimagined splendour which is its heritage.

" 'I shall preach the gospel of release, the escape from the prison house, the opening of the eyes of the blind, the cleansing of the heart and the gift of the spirit of eternal youth to the glory of my Lord whose beauty I am speechless with the burden of my joy.' "






CHAPTER TWELVE

THE SCRIPTS OF PHILIP

Meanwhile, we are well assured that everything helps to secure the good of those who love God, those whom he has called in fulfilment of his design.	-Romans viii, 28.

THE Scripts of Philip represent perhaps the zenith of Hester Dowden's power as an automatist. These began in April 1944, and continued for many months until they were completed, the sittings being held at regular intervals. Those that are recorded in these chapters form a resumption from the same communicator of a series of lengthier messages which started in 1924 and were later published by Mr. Bligh Bond in book form under the title of The Gospel of Philip, the Evangelist. They purport to be a description of the personality of Jesus as a man, and are delivered by one who claims to be a contemporary and to have met Jesus when He was on earth. Johannes announced the presence of Philip who wrote this personal story.

"I am the Philip who wrote the Gospel of Christ which was publicly burned in Athens. I am a Greek, a year or two younger than John who baptized Jesus in Jordan. I was drawn into the Christian faith by my impressions of the personality of Jesus and his teachings, to which I can testify as a man who both saw and heard all that he describes and who has based nothing on hearsay. Now I must give you my first impression of Jesus.

"I was in my father's business in Athens. He was a merchant who dealt in spices and such wares, and at certain periods of the year I travelled in Egypt, into Judaea and Syria for the sale of these wares. Business was not a natural occupation for me. I was deeply interested in religion and philosophy at all times. I mention this to explain how it was that I forsook all that belonged to me and followed Jesus. I was in Jerusalem for the sale of perfumes. It was two years before the crucifixion. I had been interested in what I heard of the new prophet in Judaea. Report said that his personality was powerful, but that he had no regard for any of the conventions of his native land; thus the people I met in the course of my business were not favourably disposed towards him.

"I heard that on a certain evening he had proposed to speak to his disciples and curiosity tempted me to go to the part of the town in which I could hear him. I may mention that he seldom spoke to the public. As a rule he would call together his followers only and speak

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to them in some remote place outside the town. This time I came without any preconceived idea of what he was. I was curious, that was all. A small gathering of people had assembled in an open place to the east of the town-rocky with few trees, a place which did not suggest any atmosphere but that of loneliness. The light was failing and the sky, still of a deep blue, was full of stars. I could however see very distinctly the faces of the persons assembled there. There were about sixty in all, a few women, but chiefly men, and they seemed to be concentrated on what was about to happen. I cannot say that I saw Jesus enter this assembly. In the centre of the group he suddenly appeared and at that moment I realized and understood the source of his power over men.

"He gazed round at us, not smiling. There was a great gravity in his gaze and a sense of grief, perhaps. That was my first impression. He was above the middle height of men. Tall and straight-a man who was strong and could have used his body for hard work of any kind. He had dark hair which hung on his shoulders, a long pate face with beautifully cut features and eyes which were not like the eyes of any man I had seen before. He seemed at all times to gaze at some vision-to see into the unseen, in fact.

"First let me say that his voice was the most penetrating and the clearest voice I have ever heard. It had a musical rhythm that was very different from the usual inhabitants of Jerusalem. If I had been asked his nationality, I should have said he was a Greek of high birth. I saw no light about his head. There was nothing about him which suggested the supernatural at all. He radiated a sweetness which was like a perfume. There was at all times a sense of distance between him and his followers-and yet he was not aloof from us. His hands were continually laid on the shoulders of those who were about him. He spoke very simply, realizing that most of those who listened to him were poor and of small learning, but his words were chosen from the finest in his language, which was a language with a large choice of words. Each expression was clear, simple, and not as his words are quoted in the Gospels of your day.

"Aramaic was the common language of the people. The Scribes and Pharisees and the priesthood spoke Hebrew, but the common people hardly understood it. No one knew better than Jesus that the soul is every-where. It is in the past, in the future, and it is on earth for its earth's span. He had studied the religions of both Greece and Egypt in his novitiate, and he knew the soul's course in the universe where there is neither death nor destruction. Jesus did not teach the law of reincarnation to all his followers, because he knew that the minds of those still in the body could not take in the whole truth.

"He knew that the soul must have hope and must feel that it rises to greater happiness and perfection, but that is only a partial truth.


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There was a belief in reincarnation in the early days of the Church, but you will find no reference to it in the records you hold of Jesus' teaching. However, he did teach some of this to the more learned of his followers, for he always gave the whole truth to the individual who was ready to receive it.

"Now there is a special point that I must make clear. Jesus was not aware of his purpose until after his baptism in Jordan, and even after then, as in the agony in the garden, he had moments of supreme doubt.

"I continue now from that first evening. The impression after he had spoken to us was that I had been uplifted soul and body. I lost consciousness of time and lived for the hour in his words, his gaze, his sense of vision. I was deeply impressed and I feared and hoped that this unique experience might go further. As I am not in a position to speak of my gradual approach to Jesus, I may explain that I sought the company of his followers, and through the friendship of James, who was known as James the Less, I was admitted to an interview with Jesus, which was personal to myself.

"I am fitted to speak of this because I was present twice when miracles were performed. My belief at the time was that these miracles actually took place in the full material sense, but I have spent many hours in other spheres than the earth state since then, and I know that we then lived in the essence of his presence and saw not what actually took place, but what his prayer demanded. We entered, in fact, into his eyes, but it was not the case that Jesus interfered with established laws of nature.

"You must not confuse the miracles with what is called magic. Magic is a different process. Jesus believed that if it were helpful, his Father would make the change in the minds and souls of those who were present, but he never attempted to interfere with natural and material things.

"At times he was unable to perform miracles on account of the lack of faith of those around him; for faith is a material power that can raise the soul and spirit from the dust into the light and without it the soul cannot see what is, according to the ordinary person, immaterial thought."

Philip was asked at this point what he meant by the word 'material'.

"My friend," he replied, "I will give you an example. A man will form the idea of building a cathedral. He may succeed if he believes in his powers of imagination of space, of height, of decoration; but if he has any doubt of his power to express his thought it will die and dissolve itself into air.

"Now I return to my interview with Jesus. He was seldom willing to admit people to his presence singly, but I sought this


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because I have a mind which reasons with my own emotions, and I felt that if I was face to face with this man I should establish a personal relationship which the 'presence' makes more possible. For we all have each of us an aura of light which is the expression of the emotions. Therefore, if light from one mind touches the aura of another, these become one for a brief space and there is perfect understanding. Now it was evening, and again twilight had set in.

"I sought Jesus in a humble house a little way outside the city, and in a room from which we could see the starlit sky I met him face to face. At first I was awed. This feeling annoyed me, for I was not afraid as a rule. It was his eyes and the sense of distance from him, although we sat close to each other. He asked me the special object of MY visit, and I tried to explain that I was seeking for truth, and that my life was much trammelled by business and the affairs of daily life.

"He asked me my nationality, and at once he began to talk to me about the religion and philosophy of Greece with which he was fully informed. I told him that I was dissatisfied with the faith of my own land, and he said what I put into my own words: 'There is not one road. Many roads lead to true understanding, and if you are faithful to any one of these, not believing that the Universe contains trifles which are worth no consideration, but that every atom speaks aloud of God, you have attained at least an idea of truth.'

"I believe I said that I looked for new light on the understanding of religion from him.

"He replied: 'I have had a heavy burden laid on me for which I feel I am not fitted, but in so far as I can help a man of your intelligence, I will show you that all that is needed is a belief in a supreme power, and in one, not in many gods; if to this, love is added, then you have light which will illumine the darkest chambers of the universe. By love, I mean not the love that is given to those around you in daily life. That, too, is a reflection of God, but what is above that love is respect for all that is, and humility to learn its value and its meaning.'

"This teaching is greatly different to that which the Church teaches to-day, for the messages were given to the people in simpler words than I have given them to you, but in all things the teaching of Jesus was symbolic and could not be taken in its literal sense. That is one reason why the true teaching of Jesus was never transmitted to humanity. The teaching later on, after the formation of a church, had to be fitted to political conditions. It was modified to suit those who were administrators, and in the memories of those who set down the gospels, it was not clear where the spirit separated itself from the letter.

"These things followed on the great personal influence of Jesus


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which was bordering on the supernatural at all times. Memory is a thing which yields to every influence, and you cannot trust the Gospels, except in so far as they show the outward idea of Jesus. The inward man is hidden under a shower of words.

"After I had listened and darkness filled the room, he took my hand and said: 'Philip is your name. Your mind is one which can be in touch with my mind, and there is a relationship between us. If you would learn more, come to me again. There is much I would explain to you. I am not vested with authority. What I am has come to me without my seeking it. It is only of value so far as I am able to reflect the personality of God. But I have children round me whose minds need to be nursed and cherished, and I am here to feed them with what they are able to devour. I shall speak to them later on of the God who surrounds and engulfs their existence.'

"After this first interview with Jesus, I pondered deeply on what effect it would have on my own life. My interests were never connected with merchandise and the irresistible attraction of this man seemed to draw me to him. It must be understood that I could not be called one of his disciples. I was always a stranger, not being one of the Jewish people, and I was not willing to listen without asking questions. I longed to speak to him again, to speak face to face with Jesus, not in a crowd, but alone with him. I hardly dared to ask for a second interview, and was greatly surprised when, through the disciple who was James the Less, a second interview was suggested by Jesus himself This time I was bidden to meet him in the evening, and again in a secluded place outside the city.

"It was dark when I arrived. Again it was starlit night and the blue dome of the sky above showed its sapphire hue. He was sitting on a slab of rock alone when I arrived. I felt great heaviness of heart was in this man. He greeted me in a friendly way, laying his hand on my shoulder, and when we both were seated, he said: 'Philip, I have sought you because I have much in my heart that I cannot share with the men who follow me and listen, but have little understanding.' He then spoke to me of the strangeness of his life, his surprise at finding that he was to become a teacher, his fear of the future, which was fear that he would not be equal to the burden that had been laid on him.

"Then I asked him some questions: The first: 'You call yourself the son of man, but are you not convinced that you are the son of God?' To which he replied: 'I am the son of man and also the son of God. I am as other men are in outward things, but I have always, since early childhood, felt beside me and in me a great Presence which I could not see except with the eyes of the soul. This Presence leads me where he will, and gives me the words he wishes me to speak to his children, I am so conscious of him that I am never alone,


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and I know that his care for me is infinite, but he may ask me to carry great sorrows. I have thought of this at night when I am alone and cannot sleep, and I feel sure that I must be in this world for a purpose.'

"Jesus was never ready to accept the fact that he was divine. All through his time as a teacher he was doubtful of his own mission, but never doubtful of the Divine Presence that was beside him. My other question was whether he would accept me as one who would give his life to the collecting of his teachings. I told him I was ready to give myself entirely to him if he would accept such service. He hesitated for a few moments, then said: 'Philip, I cannot say follow me to any man, but if I can be of service to your soul and you are convinced of this, I will accept you as a friend and you may help me to interpret what is given to me to others who are not of quick understanding.' This rejoiced me in a manner I cannot describe. I felt I had suddenly risen in mental and spiritual stature. I knelt and kissed his robe. He took me by the hand and lifted me to my feet. 'Not so, Philip,' he said. 'I cannot accept you as a friend if you present yourself as a man of lesser quality than I am.' Then I told him that never before had I felt that I could devote myself to any man, and I asked whether he would give me more of his teachings of the Presence, for that I did not understand.

"I was not actually present at the crucifixion, but I have had report of it from many who witnessed it. I am sorry that there is no portrait of him, because he forbade it. He was sternly against anything that would display him as a prophet to the after-world.

"He then spoke of the Presence to me. He said that he first felt it when he was a small child, perhaps four or five years old. He then believed that he was in touch with a protector who would save him from all that was evil. He often tried to see this friend, but never had any vision with the eyes-an inward vision only. Then during the time of his novitiate he lost somewhat the sense of this guardian, but when he was baptized in Jordan he had a vision which first made him quite sure that God was indeed his Father, but from time to time doubts came into his mind which he could not always reject.

"The daemon of Socrates was indeed a Presence, and an exalted Presence making good use of his charge, but in the case of Jesus it was more than this. At times a great fear overcame Jesus and he felt that the Power behind him was too much for him. Then again there would be periods of great joy and exaltation which lifted him from the world in which he was living. In the case of Socrates wisdom was given which was beyond the wisdom of the earth, but in the case of Jesus, wisdom was given, but with it a sense of entering into the joy and soul of God, which the daemon could not give to Socrates."

At the next sitting with Hester, Johannes told those present that


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he had asked Philip to take the essential points in the development of Jesus and to leave what was not essential. Philip next referred to the period of the Transfiguration. "The mood of exaltation and confidence which I described in my last messages lasted until the vision of the Transfiguration was given to the disciples. It was an event which took place without any warning and which marked a very definite epoch in the spiritual life of Jesus. The account given in the Gospels is true in detail, but I had an interview with James the Great, in which he described it, and it had a much greater significance than you would gather from the Gospels. It was entirely unexpected, for the group of three who were together with Jesus had gone up on to the mountain for rest and to break away from the crowds which at this time invariably followed Jesus.

"They were weary and soon fell asleep. Suddenly they were half wakened from their slumber by a sense of brilliant light. James said that the light was of an incredible whiteness, and, as he and his companions watched, the light became rosy as the dawn. In the light forming a triangle they saw three figures, the central figure was Jesus, and on looking where he had lain, they saw that silently he had left his place. The two other figures were seen much less distinctly than Jesus, and it was only through symbols that they were recognized. Moses held the tables of the law, and Elias held the book of prophecies.

"The disciples were amazed and were not fully awake. They each, separately, felt it was a dream, but a dream so vivid that every detail was visible. I have been asked whether an aureole was seen on the head of Jesus, and I answered: 'No, not as we saw him who followed him.' But in this vision the aureole was visible, and James told me that flames shot outwards from it into the Heavens. We were told that it lasted a few minutes, but time had vanished for the three who saw it and they could not tell how long it was there. The whole matter was related differently by the three who witnessed it. It seemed more vivid to Peter than to the others, and he was much more impressed with the sense of awe and almost terror than the other two. After the vision faded, the three disciples woke fully, and were amazed to find Jesus sitting in the place where he had been in the beginning. He was not asleep, but was gazing upwards as if his eyes, too, were fixed on a vision. I must pass on to the effect that the Transfiguration had on his teaching, and even more on his personality.

"After the events I have described Jesus seemed changed. The exultant mood had vanished and a different state of mind took its place. He was now sure of his divinity. He was awed by the certainty and he had also for the first time a sense of forthcoming disaster. He often alluded to it. He was conscious of what had happened and ever


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described his sensations to us. He said he had been lifted for a short tune into a state in which he knew all that would happen on earth, and he knew that he was indeed the Son of God.

"From that time onwards we all felt that he was further away from us; that touching his robe gave us no sense of what was within it. We asked whether he was conscious of the two on either side of him. He said no. He was conscious of no personality but his own, but that he felt the Presence very much more definitely than ever before. 'From henceforth,' he said, 'I march to my destiny which comes to me as a divine consequence of what I know I am. I have searched my heart,' he said, 'and questioned my earlier feelings that I was destined to demonstrate the greatness of God, but I dare not question any longer.' "

At this point, Philip was asked if Jesus regarded John the Baptist as a reincarnation of Elias.

Philip replied: "Oh, yes. That was true. John who baptized in Jordan was the same that was Elias. He had returned to earth, but not as Elias in all things. That which was added to him was a knowledge of the coming of the true Messiah. Moses, Elias, and John the Baptist were indeed the first Trinity. The spirit of God is made of three parts, namely, the Law, the Prophets, and the Baptist, who blesses and has the power to bless. These three were the Trinity who gave the first manifestation of God. Next came the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and the last Trinity is at hand, and will rise out of the great sea of blood. In form, the Heavens will be brought closer to the earth through great suffering and a new prophet will show himself."






CHAPTER THIRTEEN

THE SCRIPTS OF PHILIP (continued)

The Kingdom of Heaven, he said, is like a grain of mustard seed, that a man has taken and sowed in his ground.	-Matthew xiii, 31.

WHEN Johannes next introduced Philip he continues his story as an eye-witness of those events which have been discussed in the previous chapter.

"I shall try to give you some idea of how a sense of his mission came to Jesus. Now I was with him at times and again I would be obliged to go away, for it was some time before I could get free from my father's business. At each visit I noticed a change. The change was not only in his attitude to his purpose of life, but a change in his bearing and appearance. I was near him before the Crucifixion. I was not present at it, but I was not far away, and I helped to prepare his body for the tomb. Thus I was a spectator of a very astonishing development.

"After the second interview of which I have told you, I was forced to leave Jerusalem, and I found it difficult to arrange that I should stay for any length of time in one place. I had made up my mind to devote myself completely to Jesus, but life stretches out its tentacles and often draws us into positions which we do not choose.

"The next time I was in Jerusalem, about half a year after the interview which I described, I was no longer afraid to seek Jesus. I knew I should be welcomed. In that short space of time the attitude of the public had changed. There were many who refused to believe in Jesus, but the number of his followers had doubled or trebled itself I found questioning everywhere as to the truth about this strange new prophet, and I knew that his extraordinary magnetic attraction had spread itself widely. I was welcomed when I sought Jesus, welcomed as a friend. He had altered since our previous interview. He held himself erect and proudly, I thought, and there was more assurance when he spoke. Not less gentleness, for he could never be other than a tender and sympathetic presence.

"I was first at a gathering rather of the same nature as the first gathering I have described outside the city. I was surprised at the radiance that seemed to surround him. Confidence in all he said and majesty of bearing were also there. I wondered what had wrought this change in him. After we had separated I sought him alone. I was welcomed warmly, and again I felt the sense of distance between us, and at the same time a brotherliness which I had not felt before. I

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use that word because friendship does not describe our relationship. It was closer than friendship. He spoke of his confidence in his mission and his certainty that the Presence had found in him a toot for his work. 'For,' he said, 'I am more conscious of the Presence now than I was when I spoke to you before. I am doing the will of another; nothing comes from me. I am so much assured of this that I have no fear any longer. And I obey without any consciousness that I am obedient.'

"He then spoke of the attitude of those who were opposed to him. He said: 'I am fully aware of the powers that are against me, but I no longer heed them.' He did not seem at that time to have any feeling that his would be a tragic death. He was filled with the joy of what he had been appointed to do.

"I asked him whether among his disciples he had found many who had any understanding of him. He paused: 'Much love is given to me, much faith is now given to me, but few can understand why I should go about as the leader of a flock of sheep, preaching no religion, but the religion of faith in God.'

"I have thought much about this second meeting with Jesus. At no period of which I have knowledge was he as he was then. He was filled with the glory of God, and feared nothing, not even the chasing forth of the money-changers from the Temple. Later on, as I shall tell, after the Transfiguration, there was another change, but at the period of which I am speaking he was triumphant.

"I saw him often during this visit, and I told him that the next time I came I hoped to stay with him permanently. He explained that he would hold no human soul in bondage to him, that he was a brother to me, but would hold no authority over me, or any of the other disciples. On this point he was definite. He said: 'Each soul stands by itself as a work of God, and is responsible for its own growth and development. None can dare to rob it of its birthright, I least of all. All those who seek me, seek the Presence, not me.'

"I spoke much to the disciples during this time. I found their faith was increased tenfold, but also their wonder at the strange words that Jesus spoke to them. Of those who loved Jesus best was the disciple John. In him there was pure faith without questioning, and of him I may say that he lived in his master's life. And for this reason he was not permitted to approach Jesus as closely as the others. In John there was power to see and hear. He did not reason for himself, he accepted the great gift of loving his master. In Peter I found much argument and doubt at times, and yet no one was more faithful to him than Peter, though he had no understanding of his mission. Among the disciples, Matthew was the most understanding. He, being a man of law, did not accept without question, but none was convinced as firmly as he.


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"I am going to give you an idea of the changes that took place in the mind of Jesus after the event of which I have spoken. Never, after the Transfiguration, was there any doubt whatever in his mind that he was indeed the Son of God, and he was at times exalted into a state in which he no longer touched the earth, and again at times he sank into the deepest depression. But this did not mean that he doubted his purpose any longer. He knew almost in its details the sacrifice that was demanded of him. He was willing to make the sacrifice, but the human terror of it could not take its hold on him.

"It was at this time that he rode into Jerusalem. Now he had spoken of the necessity of showing himself once more to the people before the end, and he did this deliberately, knowing that in future his position would be entirely different. It was an effort to him to do this, and the enthusiasm of the crowd was tremendous.

"After the manner of crowds, they were swept along by the unusual event, and never before had Jesus looked so majestic. Indeed, I have said that there was nothing supernatural about his appearance, but on this Palm Sunday he seemed to belong to another world. He sat upright, making no gesture, royal, and fully convinced of the power he possessed at that moment. This necessitated a reaction, and that night was a night of pain and struggle for him. I was with him a good part of the night. I had now given up all my occupations except that of following Jesus, and I am sure he felt a strong attraction for me, for he often expressed it in words. I am not going to follow the course of events before the Garden of Gethsemane. I shall give you the account, given me by another, of the Crucifixion.

"The account I give you of the Crucifixion is not the account of an eye-witness, but I believe it is faithful in every detail. I was not present, the pain overcame me and I could not bear it. So I quote the words of another, James the Less, who was present. He followed Jesus to the place of execution. Jesus walked behind the two thieves who were crucified with him. He was pale, but not in the least agitated. He did not speak, but bore his heavy cross without stooping and in silence. When the place of execution was reached, he turned to the crowd that was assembled and held out his arms to them, as though he would receive them into his bosom. Then he was nailed to the cross.

"The process of nailing generally provoked great cries from the victims, but Jesus uttered nothing. The cross was erected, and as was usual on such occasions, the crowd remained to watch the torture. What is recorded in the Gospels is true. He once spoke asking for a drink, and the sponge of vinegar was offered to him. The day had been full of sunshine and warm without being oppressive, and about two hours after the crosses had been erected it was obvious that a thunderstorm was coming. Gradually the sky became overcast and


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deep clouds covered the horizon. In Judaea these violent storms come on hurriedly, and gradually the crowd, all except the soldiers and the disciples, slipped away. The storm broke in great fury, and flashes of lightning followed each other in momentary bursts. It was an extremely severe storm, but nothing more. The earth did not quake at any time.

"It is true that the veil of the Temple was rent, but this was an entirely unaccountable fact. No one connected it with the storm, though some said that the houses close to the Temple were shaken with the violence of the thunder and lightning. It was not true that the veil was torn by the storm. It would have been quite impossible. The facts are that two of the priests found the veil rent in two places, and these took it as a sign of disapproval of the execution, but the outer world, given to an exaggeration of the facts, described it as being due to an earthquake. The graves of the saints did not open, nor was any sign given but the violence of the storm and the rending of the veil. The mystery of the veil remained a mystery.

"The incident of the Roman soldier was not true. The side of Jesus was not pierced when he was alive, but the soldier made a motion as if to pierce his side, but did not do so. No Roman soldier of that date would have touched a criminal when he was alive, as it would have been a serious fault of discipline. After the spirit of Jesus had passed from his body, and after the legs of the thieves had been broken, a soldier pierced the side of Jesus when he was already dead.

"The Crucifixion was not looked upon as an ordinary execution. Pilate had washed his hands before them all and yet had permitted the execution to take place. The Roman populace was puzzled by this gesture of washing hands. They were depressed by the storm and the rending of the veil; but they were ready to believe that a great mistake had been made. There was much excitement and discussion in the streets. On the whole, the sympathies of the Romans were with -Jesus.

"Pilate acted as he did knowing that it was a diplomatic action to crucify Jesus, and was personally convinced that Jesus was innocent of any offence. His satellites were divided, some holding that it was the right thing to sacrifice one man to satisfy the people, but others were equally opposed to such an act in order to gratify the wishes of the people of Judaea whom they hated.

"There was no public reference to the execution, because it was felt that there should be as little notoriety as possible. Thus it was hushed up and all the tales of the disciples about the Resurrection were silenced as far as they could be. The policy followed by all in authority was that the matter might be regarded as a perfectly normal happening.

"I saw the body of Jesus after it was taken from the cross. It was


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alive as far as appearances were concerned. The face was not pale or haggard, nor was there any sign of pain or suffering. The eyes were closed and it seemed that he slept. We, who had gathered round him, were amazed at his appearance, and yet the body was cold as a dead body is after an hour. Then we laid him in the tomb. We had, arranged to watch there during the night, but this was forbidden by the authorities. We went back to our homes, saddened and yet amazed at the mystery of the live body of a dead man. The women had brought perfumes and spices and Mary Magdalen had brought a few flowers. These were laid beside him in the tomb. It was a rock tomb, the opening closed by a large and heavy stone which did not fit the aperture. It was not intended that it should stay as it was. We planned to make the opening more secure.

"The next day after the Crucifixion we visited the tomb. First in the morning, then at noon and again in the evening. There had been great amazement at the rending of the veil, but the storm which, though violent, seemed natural, did not give rise to much comment. On the day after the Crucifixion there was no sign of any change. The tomb was outside the city in a very remote place and would be visited only by those who were interested. On the second day we found that the stone which, as I said, did not fit the aperture, was moved slightly. We examined this closely, for we feared that the Jews had been meddling with it. It was so large and heavy that it would have taken eight or ten men to alter its position even in a slight degree. Then, on the third day, the women arose at early dawn and went to the sepulchre. I must explain that we had expected that there would be attempts to move the stone. As the days passed there was more and more talk about the Crucifixion and much argument almost amounting to quarrelling. The women were much moved and in a very emotional condition, more especially Mary Magdalen.

"She gives the following account of what she saw. 'As they turned the comer of rock and the tomb was visible, the stone which had been standing against the aperture was seen lying on the ground and the interior of the sepulchre was revealed. On the stone there seemed to be a mighty form. It was of a dazzling whiteness and was much taller than any human being. It was not defined as a living man is defined. It was as though it was seen in a mist. The sun was rising and the women all agreed as to this vision. Fear took hold of them and they stood still. Then, as the figure did not move, Mary went towards the tomb. The body of Jesus was not resting on the stone slab as we had left it. The cerecloth was folded almost in the shape of a body, the vase of spices and the perfumes were as they had been; the flowers lay on the ground, faded. In great fear Mary turned, and as she left the sepulchre the majestic form had vanished and in its place she saw the figure of Jesus.'


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"Between the time of the entombment and the visit of the women, Roman soldiers were on guard. They stood at a distance, three guarding the spot and at six strides of a man away. It would have been quite impossible for any of the Jews to remove the stone and take the body, because the Roman guard would have intercepted any but the followers of Jesus. The guards were not asleep, but the women claimed that they were at their posts and apparently had not noticed that the tomb was open. I can only explain this as in the nature of a miracle. The mighty angel had removed the stone, perhaps in a moment, and no noise would have roused the soldiers who stood with their backs to the tomb at the distance I have indicated.

"Mary states that the figure of Jesus seemed taller than he had been in his earth life. She said, moreover, that he shone as with an inner radiance of pale fire. He seemed full of joy and glory, and not speaking, gazed at each of the women so as to assure them that it was indeed he, himself. He then disappeared and at the moment of his leaving the guard stationed in front of the opening turned and showed great consternation. This guard then entered the tomb, opened the cerecloth and turned on the women angrily. They were not allowed to stay there, but they took away with them the shroud of Jesus. The stone was left as it had been.

"The women saw the actual physical body, because soul and body had become one. Such was the spiritual strength of Jesus that every atom of his physical body became imbued with spirit force. He rose body and soul.

"The angel did not actually speak to the women then; but they mentioned his speaking to them afterwards as an explanation of their understanding that it was indeed an angel. The women state, as I have told you, that all three saw the angel, but they did not see him clearly as they would see a living man.

"The traditional place today for the holy sepulchre is not the site. It is in a different direction and further from the city. The real site is west of Golgotha, about a mile in your measurement.

"There is a range of low hills and at their feet the rock tombs were hewn.

"I must now continue from the time of the Resurrection. There was endless talk and discussion among the followers of Jesus as to the disappearance of the body. Many believed that he had risen body and soul together. Many, however, were ready to accuse the Jews and some the Romans. This made a strange division in the company of the believers. The question involved so much that might be miraculous. Then a small company of the apostles drew together and decided that there must be no further question of the full Resurrection, and that those who did not believe were outside the


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brotherhood. Then came the supper at Emmaus and this made a deep impression on the larger body of the disciples. It was argued that it might have been possible in the excitement, at the time of the opening of the tomb, to imagine the vision of Jesus, but that his appearance at the supper at Emmaus could not have been due to the imagination of those present. It must indeed have been the actual presence of Jesus himself.

"The incident of Thomas thrusting his hand into the side of Jesus was a true one, and it was fortunate that it took place; for this testimony helped many to believe.

"The appearances in recent times of the risen Christ have been pictures of the faith that wrought each materialization. But the actual contemporary appearances of Jesus were not of the same nature. They were visions of the man Jesus as he was remembered by his apostles. They all agreed that the voice was his own. After the summer at Emmaus, there were no more personal visions of Jesus. He had the power to return during the three weeks after the Crucifixion, but later it was more difficult.

"Now on the eve of the vision of the Ascension, various companies of the believers went up into the mountains to pray. It was usual to go to some solitary place at the time of the moon's changes and seek prayer and communion. One was at Bethany, the other in Galilee. These two companies tell the same story, but the vision was more clearly seen in Bethany than in Galilee. I will repeat what was told by those in Bethany. Those in Galilee saw the same vision, but none there could be certain that it was the figure of the Christ that rose into the Heavens. Those in Bethany say that they went up into the hills and having come to a platform from which the country could be seen in the light of the moon, they began to pray. In such companies it was usual for one to begin the prayer aloud, the others following silently and this was repeated during the night from the hour of midnight until the fifth hour of the morning. When the fourth hour was come, the light in the sky was beginning to show that day was just about to break. The moon was not high in the heavens, but it still gave its light and now it was noticed that there were many white and fleecy clouds in the sky.

"The company had come to a pause in their prayers when the first streaks of dawn began to show themselves. The clouds were beginning to move towards the higher heavens and first one and then another of the company noticed that three masses of cloud were about to descend on the hill top. Two of these clouds-paused in their descent. The third slowly floated down to the company, touching the ground in front of them. They all agree that the cloud which was in their midst remained a cloud for a considerable time, but as the sun rose and began to cast its streaks of rosy light both on the hill and in the


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sky, the cloud took shape and through it, as though he were triumphant in great glory, appeared the figure of Christ.

"Here the accounts of the fifteen persons who were present differ. Some say the figure was not recognizable, others confirm that it was Jesus as they knew him; but all saw the shape of a human form. And now, when the sun had coloured the clouds, they began to rise again into the Heavens. The two which had not descended to the hill top seemed to wait for the Christ, but no one could be sure whether these two clouds were persons. The only certainty was about the cloud which had touched the hill top. So all fell on their faces and prayed. When they raised their eyes to Heaven again there was the risen sun and the miracle had disappeared.

"This was recognized by most as the farewell of the Christ and no further visions of him are recorded. Many, however, disputed and discussed what had been seen and only those who actually can testify that thus the Christ was received into the Heavens.

"I was not with the company in Bethany, but I was with those who had gone to Galilee, where the vision was not so distinct. I could not be sure of the figure at first, but I can testify that the face and head were his as I had often seen them."

Thus ended this series of sittings in which Philip described all the events which are above recorded.






CHAPTER FOURTEEN

THE METAPSYCHIC GROUP

This happy breed of men, this little world ...
Richard the Second, ii, I.

PERHAPS it is inevitable that as soon as a man or woman is able to supply certain needs of mankind his home should become a centre for others. "Though the philosopher or sage live in the desert, or the heart of the forest, yet a pathway shall be made by human feet to his door," runs the old saying. Hester's house in Cheyne Gardens was by no means inaccessible. During the years between the two world wars, thousands of people had come to her door, and had gone away with their burdens lifted and with the dawn of a new hope in their hearts. Many, of course, were drawn there by interests in psychic matters pure and simple; others felt the stimulus of a vivid personality, and the culture and intellectual atmosphere of a true Victorian home. Others, again, felt the spiritual presence of Johannes.

In the homes of most mediums there grows up a distinctive psychic atmosphere, which, while being very difficult to endure as a permanent surround, yet has a definite appeal for short stretches of time. Only the man or woman who has been in tune with the peculiar psychic atmosphere of 'presence', and has disciplined and tuned his daily life accordingly, is able to abide in peace under such an influence. But for the ordinary person, who is living a normal worldly life, there is a definite stimulus in the contact of metapsychic forces, which inevitably permeate such a dwelling completely, from attic to cellar.

During the course of years Hester had built a reputation both as a cultured Irish woman and a witty iconoclast. Her voice still retained a hint of Dublin brogue and her speech was pointed from time to time with the inconsequential Irish phraseology which makes for laughter in the midst of serious argument. "Wild horses on their bended knees will not make me agree to this suggestion," she would occasionally say when her mind was made up. Or again, "That woman was as pigheaded as a mule" would be another example of her forceful Irishisms. The animals retained their pride of place as the centre of the home. The series of male pekinese followed one another in a succession of animal life-spans. Siamese cats, with their sleek feline beauty, satisfied in her a love of artistic symmetry and gave her a companionship which was not too assertive or intimate.

Musical parties continued alongside the ordinary psychic work. But with the coming of war in 1939, and onwards, Hester found

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herself more and more alone. Dolly and Lennox were in Dublin, and were unable to get to London. It was in September that she moved to No. 17, the house next door. Regular afternoon sittings, usually two persons each day, continued right through the war. Meanwhile, bombs exploded around her; bombs which gave place to flying bombs, which in turn gave place to aerial rockets. House after house along the Embankment fell in ruins, but Hester still remained at Cheyne Gardens. Her courage was founded, less on a faith in the unseen and a belief that spiritual forces were protecting her than on a deep pride and stoicism. Once she left London for a few days to stay with a friend in the country, but the conditions were very difficult indeed, as she insisted on her pets accompanying her, and when these became restless and unhappy she returned home immediately. Fortunately, Mrs. Knowles, who had taken a large flat on the second and third floor of the house, remained with her for most of the danger period.

The two old servants still came to work in the mornings, but left to return to their homes at 5 o'clock each afternoon. For years prior to these events Hester had been more and more reluctant to take annual holidays abroad. Events in Austria, owing to Nazi infiltrations, prevented her from revisiting that most delightful of countries. England, whether by the sea, or in the country by lake and river, never appealed to her. Cornwall or the Lake District never reached a tithe of the beauty which Dublin Bay and its environments now conjured up in her mind down the pageant of the years. A few old friends used to meet at her house on Sunday afternoons for tea, and possibly from conversation which flowed from such gatherings the idea of a metapsychic group was first mooted.

It was actually in the middle 'thirties that the Metapsychic: Group was formed. The original idea was to unite a gathering of people who would investigate psychic phenomena from a half-way standpoint. Members should each and all have had evidence of survival which would convince them of the practical possibilities of communication with the world of spirit. In this they would have gone a step farther than those who could not admit any such possibility. For the latter, there was always the Society for Psychical Research. On the other hand, most of Hester's friends deplored the general evangelical tendency of orthodox Spiritualism. In this, they were led by her own predilection. In practice, many people came to receive evidence from her who had previously received evidence from other mediums. But the class of person who appreciated most the atmosphere of Cheyne Gardens did not care for Spiritualist churches, and cared still less for the publicity and notoriety which they considered was attached to a professing Spiritualist.

Johannes, himself, also supported the idea of forming a group


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which would meet regularly. He was asked point-blank why such a group should be formed, and his answer differed widely from most of those who believed that a monthly meeting, with tea, talk and a lecture to follow, would be a very pleasant diversion from the ordinary run of social parties. In reply to that question, he said:

"Because it is impossible for us to work on your side without a reflection of our group on yours. We have formed a group here, and those who would be working in yours would be prototypes of our members. I don't mean in character or physical appearance, but in mind. Now our idea is to prepare a number of people as teachers, for in the near future teachers will be needed. I refer to people who can give a sane and acceptable account of our side to others."

When asked the reason for the general neglect of spiritual learning, he replied:

"There are many reasons. For one thing, in hundreds of cases work of a practical kind would be neglected if there were a too eager desire to study this subject. But this is only one of the lesser reasons. The subject will soon be included in the educational scheme of every university and school."

Asked at a later period, in 1942, about the same matter, Johannes said:

"This is a matter of waiting until the war upheaval has stirred and disturbed the trend of everyday life to such an extent that questions about the unseen must be asked. The churches will disappear, in their present form, and a new religion will take the place of the old. This will be the true Christian religion."

Johannes went on to say that the first and most important problem of such a group was to collect evidence which would demonstrate the presence of spirit powers who could show knowledge and intelligence beyond the means of the ordinary communicator. "I hope this will be demonstrated," he said, "through the photographic work which must be started, and I am also very anxious to reply to the group's questions in a manner which will show that a superior intelligence is speaking. For this purpose, I shall find others who are on a higher level of intelligence to myself, who will speak through the writing. Other objects of the group will be to form small committees to tabulate different forms of study, and to give other demonstrations of mediumship when such instruments can be found."

The Metapsychic Group was thus formed, and continued for about twelve years until Hester's death, when it was immediately disbanded. Its attainments fell far short of the ideals which Johannes outlined for it. At its best, it provided a monthly forum for lecturers who delivered their subjects to an informal gathering in Hester's drawing-room.

Numbers never exceeded sixty, and attendance averaged from


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twenty-five to thirty people at a time. Unfortunately, the social nature of such a gathering predominated. At no time was there any collective machinery formed to attract young members and the lecturers gathered their information in the usual way, by private research. Perhaps a certain amount of knowledge was circulated through the audiences, but no real study was given to the variety of subjects which were dealt with, and thus a progressive policy and a continuous scheme of work were never attained.

The writer mentions these facts as he believes that the history of the Metapsychic Group is typical of many which have been formed up and down the country, where the organizing and work is done by a small committee who have to draw on outside speakers for their monthly programme of lectures throughout the year.

Through all this Hester's personality dominated the scene. She rarely spoke at the meetings, but occasionally joined in the discussions which followed. People felt that they were in the presence of one of the foremost exponents of her profession. Her vast knowledge of* the subject and her cautious approach to it created a feeling of security and a recurrent interest which drew them to the house as forcibly as the actual appeal of the lecturers and their subjects. Perhaps the lack of sufficient desire to propagate whatever had been learnt in strange bypaths of knowledge, which came to members of the Metapsychic Group through the varying programmes each year, strangled any spirit of expansion and enthusiasm which such an organization might originally have created. In looking back, we can see that the Metapsychic Group created a satisfying meeting ground for a few people whose interest and curiosity were roused by psychic matters; that, and the attraction of a great personality who was the centrepiece of a social circle revolving round her.

At the beginning of the war, a well-known dental surgeon came to Hester for a series of sittings. He was not in quest of personal evidence, but desired to put a number of questions to Johannes on religion and philosophy about which he was interested. This gentleman worked out a dialectic of question and answer in collaboration with Johannes from which he was able to publish a report.

The Book of Johannes, by Peter Fripp, was the outcome of this investigation. The contents contain an explanation of Johannes' theory of affinities, but also some comments connected with the war which was then in progress. On July 14th, 1941, Johannes gave to Peter Fripp four character studies of Hitler and Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt. These commentaries are of interest today in view of the time in which they were given. The first, dealing with Hitler, took place just at the period when Germany had launched her first great panzer attack on Russia and when the situation was extremely critical. Here is what a man who lived on earth around 200 B.C. had


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to say of the late German leader when he was at the zenith of his power.

"In our investigations of the human mind as seen from our world, we find strange qualities unsuspected by those on the earth planet, which can account for upheavals, wars, or salvation for a nation. Today I should like to describe two minds as seen from our side, and to explain how much voluntary action there is for each, and how much of what they do is involuntary. It is common to speak of our enemies as evil. That is the view taken by crude and unthinking minds. That is how Hitler is regarded at present by most nations. He is a very different proposition as seen from our side. He is a man whose stars threw him into the world with vast disadvantages, with overwhelming ambition sweltering in his soul, and with an infinite capacity for receiving influences and suggestions from our side. He has never had what is called balance. He cannot calculate, weigh or measure. From his very early childhood, he opened his mind to any influences from our side who would use him. He prayed for inspiration. Those who call can almost always find an answer, and the answer came to Hitler. He is, as I said, open naturally to influences from us, and, in his case, was found to be so facile for use, so ready to welcome sudden impulse, so utterly unable to calculate the effect of his actions that he proves to be an extremely dangerous instrument even for evil forces to use. The beneficent influences would reject him, because of his inability to calculate cause and effect.

"Now, ambition, if rooted deeply in the soul of a human being, can be either an impulse for good or bad results. In Hitler's case, those who used this quality could turn it to the most dangerous purposes, and they, having found an almost perfect medium for what they hoped to do, did not scruple to use him. He might have been turned in another direction and have been a benefactor for mankind, though not in the highest sense. There was no nobility of character because there was no unselfish impulse. All was centred in making Hitler a figure of history. At first evil influences used him in small numbers. It was an experiment, for at all times his want of balance might endanger even an evil cause. He continued to be used after the last war, and having discovered that his mind could be centred in one channel and closed to all others, those over here who desire destruction, death and misery prepared another war through this super-medium.

"And now, do not imagine that Hitler has been misguided! No. He has followed the line that was laid down for him when he was born, and has done his work through passivity. What appears to be hysteria and insanity is merely a manifestation of the forces behind him. Personally, he is passive, and is only interested in his own notoriety. He is a super-case of a medium giving himself entirely to


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the unseen forces, and as a man he is practical, unscrupulous in using human beings, very uneducated in thinking processes, and only a serious menace in this way-that he lays himself open to the unseen and invites what he believes will make him a conqueror.

"Now, Hitler, as he appears today, is infinitely cruel and infinitely evil. When he is unrolled from those unseen forces which have been so closely knit with his fate, the real Hitler will be seen as a rather insignificant creature, with an egotism which is colossal. He must not be regarded as a mighty conqueror. He built up a mighty army through his friends on our side. He used it under their direction, and they bid him fall on the weak and avoid the strong. Hitler did not suspect Stalin of being a man who at least equalled him in capacity for building an army, and with an entirely different purpose.

"When a time came to decide what next, Hitler shook himself free for the first time from the unseen. He looked at the practical side of the next move. Britain was armed, and the sea, of which Hitler is afraid (it is a natural fear given him by his planets), was between them. He feared the attack on Britain, so he turned eastward, and believing that Stalin was an inferior mind who would never carry through a defence on the scale necessary, attacked with all his strength.

"It is the awakening! Not only Hitler's-he is awake already-but of all those Germans who in a lesser degree were caught in the net of the unseen powers. They are all awakening as from a dream which was terrible, and which they cannot now remember in detail. And now they are alone, stripped, and each day will see their armies conquered until the rout is complete."

Johannes then gave to Fripp the pen-portrait of Stalin.

"Stalin's part in the world revolution is not based on his notoriety. Other faults are there, but not the colossal egotism which had been Hitler's undoing. Joseph Stalin is not a super-medium. In fact, he has a great contempt for those who believe in the unseen and who depend on it. He has never depended on anything which cannot be listed and which is not obvious. He began life in contact with great privation and difficulties, and in the early years had no notion of being a leader. His ideas were largely based on the acquisition of what he lacked, through unlawful means, for he was never a scrupulous man. He is, shall we say, crafty and careful. He is not dishonest, though in his early years he could not divide the just from the unjust.

"It was a strange revelation to Stalin to find that he became gradually a 'person' whose voice would be listened to. At first, the sense of responsibility this entailed distressed him. Many times he had the impulse of a wild animal to escape.

"He has assumed the mantle of leadership because he has seen


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so much, especially in Lenin, which did not appeal to his reason, and which he was convinced was dangerous to Russia.

"In the beginning he was not a patriot. He was almost indifferent to nationality; but in Stalin there was also an awakening. As a young man sows his wild oats, so Stalin, but when he became aware that it was possible to influence others he rejected his gangster impulses; but in him at all times there is the seed of a brigand.

"Now, for many years past he has deliberately cultivated a love of country. It is too much an ideal for him to feel it emotionally, but practically, he has a great desire that Russia should take a more honourable place in the assembly of nations. He is very unscrupulous in most things, has little regard for human life, but has not any of Hitler's sadistic instincts.

"He does not enjoy the sight of suffering, though he would willingly give the order that others should suffer if he considered it advisable, and would turn his head away and forget.

"He is very independent of other people's opinions, and is not deeply influenced by anyone. He regards his circle as pieces on a chessboard. He has been pushed into that position through his practical ability.

"I will now speak of his relation with Hitler in the past. Stalin realized that time must be gained if Russia had at any time to go to war. He also realized that war was probable in Europe, but not, he hoped, inside the borders of Russia. He would willingly have allied himself with Britain, for, strangely enough, Britain's orderliness appeals to him in contrast with the ragged lines of Russia.

"The difficulties which arose turned him against the English, though inwardly he always will and has admired them. In 1939, when he made the pact with Germany, he was doubtful of the wisdom of the step. He has a profound contempt for Hitler, whom he regards as an arrogant lunatic.

"He was not contemplating more than preservation of peace with Germany when he made the pact. It was one step in that direction. For then he realized fully that war was about to break out. Since then he has been in the position of a cat watching the antics of a mouse which he intends to catch.

"Great hostility to Hitler was in his mind from the beginning, and ever present was the probability that Hitler, being what he was, would turn greedily to the Ukraine and break the bond.

"Stalin watched, and so Stalin was ready! Not for the blitz attack as it occurred, but he was piling up defences and equipment, and was in no way unprepared for the visit of his friend!

"And now Hitler is against a heavy line that he cannot break. It is not a blitzkrieg-that is not in Stalin's line. It is a nation acting as one, and deadly determined to break the German power.


	THE METAPSYCHIC GROUP 	145

"Please note that 'invades' is not the word to use. Stalin wants to crush Germany, and he will do it. For, in this man who is a mixture of brutality and faith, there is power and determination. He will never call on the unseen to help him, but he will have help from them without a call. Already he has welded the nation into one; parties are gone; they are Russians and Russia.

"He is now acting under influences from us, but he is totally unconscious of it. The feeling that war has awakened in him is patriotism in the best sense, and out of it will rise a Russia which will be spiritualized through suffering. He is not in Hitler's position-an enemy of religion. He has no religious ideal himself, but he respects them in others."

Of Winston Churchill, Johannes has this to say:

"He is an amazing phenomenon. This man has energy which might easily be divided among six and make each an active and strong man. He is not ambitious. That has been a saving grace with him. He never wanted to be at the head of affairs, or take the helm, but, if he was needed, he was willing. There is no quality in Churchill which could lead him to defeat. He has a fine brain, which sees things, not in detail, but in the round. He has great human sympathy, but he would never allow this to lead him into weakness. He is built for the position he fills, as a great battleship is built for the sea. One of the secrets of his success is that he can be hot-headed, full of zeal and enthusiasm, and, at the same time, never lose his balance in the least. If he hates, he hates with the whole of his soul. If he loves, he loves well, but he throws more energy into hate than love.

"He is a magnificent instrument for the work he has been called to do. Yet no one must believe that he would have done the work Neville Chamberlain did better than Chamberlain. That man has been misunderstood. He was not a man of action, but he was so deeply impressed by the discovery of the mistakes of those who preceded him that he made it his task to shelter and protect England, until she could grow to a stature which would permit her to conquer in a war. This Churchill would not have done so well. He is inclined to take risks, though he knows they are risks. Now he is on the rise of the tide, and he will make the victory as complete as it can possibly be."

Lastly, Johannes estimates Roosevelt when he was alive and the President, in his fourth period of office. He rates him as the greatest force of them all.

"I must draw a deep line between Churchill and the President. They are on a different scale, and are not of the same spiritual family. This man who rules America is a most intricate personality. Here again there cannot be said to be ambition, but there is a desire to lead. This is entirely different from ambition. There is a sense of


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power in the President which leads him to believe he can be of great use to mankind. Observe, I say 'mankind', not 'America', for his sympathies are widespread, and, all through the struggle he has had with his people, there has been a desire to be part of the war and help to set the tottering edifice of the earth right. He is a calm spirit. Nothing would drive him into a frenzy. He is there to lead, and he will rule justly, and never forget he is a ruler.

"He has had to conquer physical infirmity, and has done so with a sense of submission to Fate, and at the same time a determination never to allow the body to discourage or depress him. He is a most spiritual man in the best sense of the word. Ready to use the powers that are his to the utmost, but not anxious to impress the public except where impressions are useful, He is affectionate, and has a genuine love for the human race. He is not fond of adventure, as Churchill is, but he would not shirk risks if he felt they might set things in the right direction. In fact, this man is on as high a level as any statesman can be; less trammelled by the necessity to trim his sails and be false than any of his fellows. You may be sure that, when the history of the war is written, the figure that will be most prominent and interesting will be Mr. Roosevelt's."

History has already confirmed this last estimate of President Roosevelt in full measure. When the above message was written he was here on earth, but with a very few years left of earthly life. Today he has joined the immortals.

One of Hester's peculiarities was an affectation about children. She pretended that she cordially disliked them, but often belied her own words by the tender interest she displayed when young children came into her house. Children, for their part, were attracted to her instinctively, because she knew what to say to them and never interfered with their individualities. Bearing this in mind, it is interesting to record a series of sittings which extended over a number of years with a Mrs. Vivian. This lady made a regular weekly appointment each Monday, and during the sitting her daughter would write to her mother through Hester's hand. 'Heather' (Joyce Vivian) died when she was eighteen, but during the last year of her earthly life she had managed to write a remarkable children's story which has become a minor classic of its time. Her mother published this book, which Joyce had called Riding with Reka and had used the nom-de-plume of 'Heather'.

The story, written in the normal way, was acclaimed by the critics and was sold in thousands. It is the story of a horse, and no detail of horsemanship, stable, paddock or hunting field fails to ring true. After Heather's death, she returned to her mother and gradually learnt to control the automatic writing. By this means, she continued her authorship, writing week after week through Hester's


	THE METAPSYCHIC GROUP	147

pencil. In course Of time, a series of children's Stories were completed, each in turn being accepted for publication and each reaching a wide public. Some of these books were fairy stories of two worlds, but each of them had that ineffable quality of appeal for children which made them popular. The style is recognizably similar to the first book written by Heather's own hand.

Hero and Fiddle-de-dee are two stories which had great success, in turn, and both were written by this method; Mrs. Vivian confined herself to editing and typing the words which were sent to the publishers unaltered.

Concerning a third children's book entitled Yoyo, Mrs. Vivian writes to the biographer as follows: "Yoyo was written through Hester Dowden's hand and mine alternately. We sat opposite each other. I would first write, slowly, while H.D. closed her eyes, just putting her finger on my wrist for power. When my arm was tired I turned the foolscap over to her, and without reading it or saying a word, even if I had stopped in the middle of a sentence, she would continue at her own rapid speed. We both considered this excellent evidence of an independent mind writing the book."

The last of this series, entitled The Curtain Drawn, describes the experiences of a girl who lost her mother to whom she was greatly devoted. Its theme differs from the preceding books in that the appeal is more for adults and it is not exclusively a child's story. Reunion takes place between the two, and details of mediumship are portrayed from the world outside and beyond the earth. These facts have an interest of their own and a bearing on Hester's own mediumship. When we consider the wide range of her subjects and her disinclination, which she often expressed, for the psychic fairy story, we begin to see how impossible it would have been for her to invent a rapid and flowing series of plots and stories of this nature over a long period.

Hester was producing other messages almost every day of the week, of a type totally dissimilar to that which 'Heather' was contributing. In fact, three or four distinct lines of research were being worked upon, both with the co-operation of Johannes and with the help of other discarnates whom Johannes was bringing to her. Yet the remarkable stream of children's stories poured forth in an unending flow for several years. Mrs. Vivian's presence in the drawing room gave the stimulus for 'Heather' to carry on the creative work which she had begun on earth so successfully. Her readers now number thousands.






CHAPTER FIFTEEN

ELIZABETHANS RETURN

... and there is in this business more than nature was ever conduct of: Some oracle must rectify our knowledge.
The Tempest, v, i.

FOR many years prior to the publication of Percy Allen's Talks with Elizabethans controversy has raged on the question of authorship of the plays supposed to have been written by William Shakespeare. Some years before this author met Hester, a Mr. Alfred Dodd had been holding a series of sittings with her, during which Johannes had introduced a spirit personality to Mr. Dodd who claimed to be either Francis Bacon or a spokesman acting for him. The purport of the messages received was that Francis Bacon was the real author of most of Shakespeare's plays and had written them behind Shakespeare's name. This communicator also claimed that Francis Bacon had written The Sonnets. As a result of this series of communications Mr. Alfred Dodd published a book called The Immortal Master which ventilated his claim.

These events created later a conflict of evidence which was to throw doubt on the reliability of Hester's spirit communicators until the matter was eventually cleared. Three or four years afterwards, Allen himself became involved in psychic communication and the messages he received ran counter to those which had been given to Mr. Alfred Dodd, but until the point of controversy broke there are certain facts which readers must know of, which explain why a Shakespearean scholar should interest himself in direct communications with the beyond, after a lifetime of study in Elizabethan literature.

When Percy Allen was a boy of fifteen or sixteen he had to pass one of the University Extension examinations which necessitated his reading The Tempest. It was his first introduction to Shakespeare, and the thrill which he received from it set his mind upon a lifetime study of the plays. Unknown to Allen at this time, a plan had been worked out by spirit people interested in his earthly life that he should be the means of finally unravelling the great mystery of Shakespeare's origin and work, a mystery which has continued for three hundred and fifty years. At later sittings, Allen grew to realize that he had been incarnated in the Elizabethan era. Perhaps this fact accounted for his loyal and continuous absorption in all things connected with that period. It was also essential that he should develop a wide knowledge

148


	ELIZABETHANS RETURN 	149

of the subject over more than fifty years of his life before the final stage of communicator and scribe could be embarked upon. His whole life was therefore a preparation for the work which he was eventually called upon to do.

"From about the year 1908," he writes in his book, "I had taken an active part in the meetings of a Shakespeare Reading Society at Croydon, and had carefully rehearsed, and had read aloud before an audience, nearly all the heavier Shakespearean parts, and many of the lighter comedy ones, from Hamlet downwards; with the result that I knew, almost by heart, all the more popular plays, and had also a fair working acquaintance with many other Elizabethan dramas; experiences which, though I did not then know it, were to prove inestimably useful to me in later years.

"Almost immediately upon my return from France, where I had been serving with the Y.M.C.A. during 1918, The Christian Science Monitor-the well-known international daily newspaper, published in Boston---engaged me as one of their dramatic critics-work which compelled me to familiarize myself professionally with Shakespearean dramas, from the viewpoint of the stage as well as the study. An important result of these experiences-knowledge most essential for the fulfilment of the tasks which lay ahead-was a profound conviction, slowly born in me, that Will Shakespeare of Stratford was not the author of plays attributed to him; and that Francis Bacon also, though somehow deeply involved in the mystery, wrote neither the great tragedies and comedies, nor the Shakespearean sonnets.

"About the year 1925 I was introduced by Clifford Bax to J. T. Looney's pioneer work, Shakespeare Identified (1920), a reading of which, after some hesitation, convinced me that Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, was indeed the hidden dramatist, though he did not write all the plays in the Folio--a work which was certainly issued by a group of aristocrats, with whom the Veres, Sidneys, Pembrokes, and also Lords Southampton and Derby, were closely connected. My own books and studies of these aspects of Shakespeare followed in rapid succession. By the close of the nineteen thirties my information upon the subject was becoming, after long study and research, relatively complete; and my conclusions, though always, and necessarily, open to modification, were, in substance, systematized and shaped. Between 1928 and 1934 I wrote seven books on Shakespearean subjects, mainly Oxfordian, and delivered a large number of lectures in six or seven different countries, including the U.S.A. and Canada, between 1920 and 1939. I wrote also many articles and pamphlets, some of which were published.

"Meanwhile, with increase of knowledge, my interest in psychic matters broadened and increased. I read Oliver Lodge's Raymond, a


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study of poltergeist activities in France by Camille Flammarion, and a book or two by Shaw Desmond, all of which were impressive in their respective manners and degrees. Later, I met Bligh Bond and Shaw Desmond, and came, once more, into contact with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, whom I had met years before, when he was famous only as the creator of Sherlock Holmes and as author of various romances. This meeting with Doyle was at a dinner of the Causerie Club, held at the Forum Club, in Grosvenor Place, probably in 1925

"Sir Arthur, the guest of the evening, gave us, with intense earnestness and sincerity, a detailed account of his first introduction to Spiritualism, at his own house in Hindhead, in a district which was almost a home to me. I opened the discussion, and in my brief speech must have shown how deeply I was impressed by what I had heard, because, at the close of the function, a lady and her daughter, both unknown to me, introduced themselves, and, with apologies, said that they wished to warn me against the dangers of Spiritualism, of which the elder lady told me that she possessed long and unhappy experience: 'I have come to the definite conclusion that it is evil and MY daughter and I thought it our duty to tell you so.'

"Once again, apparently, I was warned; not, this time, from within, but from without. Conan Doyle, nevertheless, had impressed me with a strong sense of beneficent truth; and from that night onwards I began to realize that my long repugnance to Spiritualism was weakening. Henceforth the subject irresistibly lured me on."

At this stage of his life, Allen witnessed a play dealing with Spiritualistic phenomena written by Aldous Huxley. It was put on at a matinee at the Royalty Theatre, and a debate followed the performance on the stage, in which Huxley, the Rev. Basil Bourchier and Allen took part. Bourchier took up the conventional line that psychic phenomena was forbidden by God and warned his opponents against dealing in 'unholy traffic'. He gave them, however, no logical reason why the Deity should adopt this prohibition. Allen left the theatre with the impression that the Spiritualists had had the best of it. Still later he attended a meeting of the Thursday Club, in which the Spiritualists' case was set out most impressively. He felt that his opposition was weakening and wavering and that destiny was drawing him towards the subject.

In 1936 he left England for a three months' lecture tour of Canada and the U.S.A. During the spring of 1937 he underwent an operation which deprived him of the use of his right eye, and this great trial was coupled with a series of major crippling financial disasters. In 1939 he lost his twin brother, Ernest. Allen describes this loss as that of his closest friend, and it left him in the depths of


	ELIZABETHANS RETURN 	151

despair. Meanwhile the world was sinking into the black shadows of impending war.

About the middle of 1940 he went to a private sitting held by Mrs. Grace Cooke. She said: "I see very clearly a lighted candle and some connection with Francis Bacon." Allen did not then know that a candle was the ordinary symbol used by Bacon. Mrs. Cooke also told him that he would meet the spirit of the Lord Chancellor, and would have conversation with him. At this stage he began his sittings with Mrs. Dowden, and one of his first requests was that he should be able to speak to some of the Elizabethans themselves.

"We asked Johannes, one day, to get them through," he explains. "He replied: 'I do not know whether Shakespeare will come through to you, but I will have a try.' About two or three weeks later, Johannes said: 'I have got Francis Bacon, and he is willing to speak to you.' It was very interesting. At once I began to catechize him .... 'Did you, or did you not, write the Shakespeare plays?' 'No ... nor the sonnets.' Bacon added that he was not sufficiently interested in the Queen to have written those sonnets. When I began to question him about her, he began, at once, to tell me the whole story.

"When I had had about ten sittings with him, I said to Johannes: 'Will you get me William of Stratford?' That was what Bacon called him. Johannes said he did not know whether he would come. Will of Stratford was very proud of his fame, and might not want to speak. I had always said the name 'William Shakespeare' was a mask for a man.

"Two or three weeks later Johannes said: 'William of Stratford is here, but he is not very pleased, and you must remember that he is a very intelligent fellow.' I had been writing, saying that William of Stratford was not intelligent. William of Stratford told me afterwards that he was William the Clown, as in As You Like It, and wrote of himself thus as a joke.

"He seemed at first rather annoyed, and said: 'What do you want me here for?' I said: 'I have had some interesting information, and I want your corroboration.' He said: 'Very well. I will answer your questions.' I catechized him, and gradually got the whole story. As a result I will tell you that according to the information that comes through to me, the Shakespeare plays and poems are principally the work of Lord Oxford. All the work of shaping them for the stage, and much of the comedy, are the work of Will of Stratford. You have to remember that reiteration again and again: 'We are two, Oxford and Shakespeare, with Bacon always behind, as a kind of critic and general adviser.' "

At this point we must return to the controversy arising from the conflicting messages with Mr. Alfred Dodd. It is best to give the explanation which Johannes supplied, in order that readers can judge


152	FAR HORIZON

the two contentions. The explanation involves, however, both a certain knowledge of conditions in the after-life and also a positive belief that Hester Dowden is a true automatist, in that she is not directly responsible for the substance of messages that she receives from the beyond. The issue is between two men; one of whom the writer believes was in contact with truth, and the other with a source which sincerely believed it represented the truth. Students of psychic phenomena will be able to assess the standpoint of the control. The doorkeeper who guards the aura of a medium has power to admit or refuse spirit communicators, at his own discretion, while partnership persists between him and his sensitive. The following communications took place between Johannes, Francis Bacon, and Percy Allen during a number of sittings which followed. They are recorded here without further comment on the issue.

November 7th, 1944.

Johannes: Francis Bacon is here.

P.A. (to Francis Bacon): Thank you for coming again. There is a difficulty in which I should like your help. In 1943, Mr. Alfred Dodd published a book, The Immortal Master, in which are printed extracts from scripts by Mrs. Dowden-with himself as the sitter-which convinced Mr. Dodd that he was in direct communication with you (F.B.) and that you claimed to be 'Shakespeare', and, it seems, author of the sonnets and the plays. This conflicts directly with what you told me during our last talk. Johannes told me that, in this instance, you spoke with Mr. Dodd through a deputy. I do not understand. Can you help me? My only object is to ascertain, if possible, the whole truth of the matter.

F.B.: My friend, I can help you. I was acting through a deputy in the case of Dodd-a deputy who has never been personally in touch with me, and who questions nothing; for he is firmly convinced that I wrote the plays and sonnets, and took no trouble to have a direct message from me.

P.A.: Thank you ...

F.B.: I shall be glad to refute Dodd.

December 5th, 1944

P.A. (to Johannes) : Francis Bacon has explained to me that, in the matter of The Immortal Master by Mr. Alfred Dodd, he was represented by a deputy. May I ask you how it came about that you let through a communicator who did not know the truth of the matter?

Johannes: I must explain that I do not feel it my duty to exclude anyone who desires to communicate a sincere opinion. It would not have been possible to persuade Francis Bacon to talk to Dodd. He did


	ELIZABETHANS RETURN 	153

speak on the subject of his portraits to Theobald. That question interested him, and he came personally. In the case of Dodd, an ardent student of the subject spoke; but he was not insincere, and therefore I did not feel that I should exclude him.

P.A.: Thank you. I understand. Sincerity was the key that opened the door!

Johannes: Sincerity is the leading requirement, in my opinion. No sincere person should be refused. Here, Francis Bacon came through at this sitting.

F.B.: Francis Bacon is speaking. This is Francis Bacon, former Lord Chancellor of England. I am glad to come.

April 30th, 1945. (Francis Bacon communicating.)

P.A.. (to F.B.): Please, Lord Verulam, one final question about the Dodd incident. How did it come about that you permitted a deputy to speak for you who did not know the facts of the case? I am troubled on that point.

F.B.: That, my dear Sir, was beyond my power. There are believers on the plane below ours; and if one wishes to be spokesman to another of this kind we cannot hinder him. It is merely a matter of the truth that opinions survive the tomb; and opinions, as I know to my cost, can sway many minds. Dodd had not reached my plane.

P.A.: May we regard Mrs. Dowden as not responsible for what she writes, her script being what we call 'automatic'?

F.B.: She is not responsible; not in any manner. She is my pen, and with her I write. My pen is not responsible for what I say.

September 5th, 1945 .

P.A. (to Johannes): Concerning the Alfred Dodd incident, I gather from Lord Verulam that persons inhabiting a lower sphere may, to some extent, impersonate, or pose as, deputies for others who are in a higher sphere, but who are unable to prevent these impersonations? In that case, how can we best protect ourselves against deception, and discern true from false?

Johannes: The reply is this. First, if you have any judgment, you can decide whether or not the messages are genuine. Secondly, never accept a mere name, for those who are interested in a theory, such as the Baconian theory, will be ready, in some cases, to assume the mantle of a famous man, so as to catch the ear of the listener. Beyond that, I fear, you cannot be certain. In each case, a sense of style is the decisive factor.

P.A.: Thank you. I understand. We must use judgment, sense of style and our common sense generally.


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"Mrs. Dowden here interpolated an assurance to me that, in the case in question, she emphasized to the sitter, at the time, that, on a point of style alone, she declined to believe that Francis Bacon was the communicator."

The main substance of Talks with Elizabethans is a series of questions and answers between Lord Oxford, Will Shakespeare, Francis Bacon and other discarnate personages, and Percy Allen, with the intermediary link of automatic writing. The complex history of the period is interwoven with many sections of plays which were produced by Will of Stratford, inspired by Lord Oxford, and often supervised by Francis Bacon. It is not possible, in the confines of a biography, to give chapter and verse of the whole argument which Allen sustains. His book must be read by those who are interested in this subject. Many have already done so. If, as he claims, Elizabeth had a child by Lord Oxford, who was the bright youth Southampton, to whom the sonnets were composed and dedicated, then we get a raison d'etre for their creation.

Some of the arguments rest on the cryptic and anagrammatical use of words, both in the plays, sonnets, and letters of that time. Some of these plays refer to backgrounds in which the authors were involved. Other allusions refer to current history, which the author reveals through his knowledge of action and events taking place during the reign of Elizabeth in England and in France. The story which he has to tell can be told, however, in general terms, though the style and proceedings are given in this form of dialogue, composed of close questioning, and answers returned by the spirit communicators.

Allen writes: "By 1574, Elizabeth had become Oxford's mistress; a child was born to them early in 1575, and soon after Oxford, with royal permission, had left England for a long tour in France and Italy. Lady Southampton, it seems at this time-while her husband, the second Earl, was in the Tower-gave birth to an illegitimate child, and the Queen, as I surmise, arranged for her own son to be substituted for Lady Southampton's baby, and to be brought up as the legitimate third Earl of Southampton; he, who, in process of time, will become the Fair Youth of his father's, that is to say of 'Shakespeare's' sonnets."

Oxford had seen Shakespeare as a young immature youth acting at the Globe. It seems that he was struck by the original spirit of this young actor, and that Will of Stratford formed a close friendship with him, preserving his independence. Gradually, Oxford became the inspirer of many of the poetical passages which Shakespeare produced, the latter retaining for himself the creation of much of the comic characters. In course of time, the personality of Shakespeare was used as a cloak for the writings of Oxford himself,


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for his poetry and vision. Shakespeare became the producer of plays which owed their inspiration to Oxford and himself, and their direction, to both of them and also to Bacon. Lord Verulam stands behind and yet forms one of the team, for it was expedient that the public should not be aware of two of the names of the triumvirate.

Here is the prologue to these scripts, dictated to Hester by Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam:

"The writer of these words stands before the screen or curtain of a modern theatre: not the theatre of his own day, but the theatre that is now in fashion. He begs that you will fix your attention on this curtain. On it there is shown no foliage or flowers, or personages in dress of the period of Elizabeth; but only the face of one man. He is familiar to you, for you have seen him in effigy at Stratford-on-Avon, where his bones lie to this day.

"I give the signal, and the curtain rises and displays a group of personages who, from their dress and bearing, undoubtedly belong to the days of Queen Elizabeth. Foremost among these is a young man. He is not represented as he was when he died. He is in the heat of youth, and he clasps a volume to his heart. He is not William Shakespeare of Stratford. (Shaks. [sic] disappeared when the curtain was drawn up.) This young man has a different bearing. He is a person of quality and courtly manner. I will not describe him, for soon you will team what the contents of his mind were. I see others, less in the light than the first man, but, none the less, all personages of distinction. The difference between these and the first figure is that they cluster around him, as though their life were drawn from his life. They are grouped in semi-circles, one behind the other; and I cannot yet distinguish their faces.

"And above these hovers a figure majestic, but dim. It is the figure of a woman; and she is regal, wearing a glittering crown. I would that you could see this strange picture. I shall endeavour to explain its meaning to you.

"I will return to the face which you have seen on the screen or curtain. This face has a noble brow; and no doubt behind it were noble thoughts; but he has not brought these thoughts to life. Interpret he can, if another gives him the material with which he can work, but he cannot give birth to what will live for all ages. He serves as a mask, an emblem for what comes from the minds of these others, who are behind the curtain, and who have given him life.

"Now you will ask what the great volume holds that the young man clasps so lovingly. It holds the plays that are called Shakespeare's, and that are in the First Folio. We should look once more at the face on the curtain. The face is not the face of a creator; but the face of one who understand and interprets; and for that reason, and no other,


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was he chosen by the personages behind the curtain to represent them in the eyes of the public. They gave him the life that filled his life. They advised him that he was to be the inheritor of what they could give, and he, being bowed down by the weight of such gift, became too modest to play great parts, but satisfied himself by being the writer in name only; deeming it the greatest honour a man could desire.

"The others that stand behind the curtain are two men and one woman. These personages seem to minister to the man who holds the volume, and to pour sweet odours on the work. I can see that one of them stands almost beside the holder of the volume. Now you may ask who is he who, standing apart from this group, shows that he takes an outer part in all that is done. He is an older man than the holder of the volume. He is not bowed with years, but with a weight of responsibility. It may be that he is not older than the others, but his head is bowed with some grief that eats at his heart. He is not , as the others, a man of letters only, his is a weight of heavy responsibility.

"Do you recognize these personages on the stage? The man with the volume is what was Southampton, Behind him is Oxford. The woman was called Mary Sydney. He that lurketh mournfully in the background is Lord Verulam-Francis Bacon, who speaks to you now. And if you who have read him would like to know of what material was William Shakespeare made, I would show you Southampton, Oxford, Sydney and myself, and say, if you add all these together, you will find of what stuff was the man Shakespeare made. He that is Bacon had no hand in the creation, but he was the adviser and critic of all the rest.

"It is time to reveal what in my day was a close secret. The third century after our time, the upheaval of a great and bloody war; and as the world settles again to peace, so can a truth such as this be displayed for the contemplation of man. In choosing these that are instruments for the showing, you (P.A.) have a direct line of ancestry with us; and so has the writer, through the knowledge and inclination of her father."

P.A.: Have you, Lord Verulam, any closing message?

F.B.: I think I have given you all; you may ask what you will. The closing message might be as follows: Let not those who think they know mock at those to whom the truth has been apart of their lives.

One of the questions which Allen asked the Elizabethans was why he and Hester Dowden had been chosen to reveal the mystery. The answer given him was: "Principally because you were incarnated in the Elizabethan era; Mrs. Dowden, through the influence of her father, Professor E. Dowden, who dealt greatly with Shakespearean


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subjects. Between you two the tradition was carried on and we set you together to work."

Francis Bacon replied, on another occasion: "We waited until this long and bloody war was over, and then William of Stratford, Oxford and I felt that the time had come for the new revelation of new Shakespearean truths to be given to the world."

As time went on talks became more intimate and it was interesting to see how each character developed himself quite clearly, both in his manner of speech and ideas. William of Stratford was an uncultured though intelligent yeoman; Lord Oxford entirely different. William was often vernacular in style and jocular. Oxford joked occasionally, but his whole style was much more gentle, cultured and poetical. Percy Allen continues the story of his research in a lecture which he gave to the Metapsychic Group.

"Iago, Bottom, Shylock, and such characters, were the work of William; Hamlet, Romeo, etc., the work of Oxford. Hamlet is Oxford himself. Francis Bacon is also a different personality; his style is guarded, that of the philosopher and adviser, who had nothing to do with the actual writing. He said: 'I had the honour to be one of the group behind the Folio of 1623-'

"Then I said to Francis Bacon: 'Will you write me a preface?' 'Yes, but you must give me a little time to think it over.' There was an interval of about three weeks. When they asked for time, it was usually about two or three weeks. I used to forget about it, and then Johannes would come and say: 'Francis Bacon is ready to write the preface.'

"I said: 'Will you dictate it to Mrs. Dowden?' 'Yes. How long do you want it to be?' It was all so natural. I said: 'About one thousand words.' 'Yes. I think that is about right. Anything about the handling? What do you want it to be about?' 'No, I refrain from giving any thought about it at all. I want it to be your preface, and to be able to say I have not given it any thought whatever.' 'Very well.'

"He then dictated. Mrs. Dowden wrote pretty quickly for a full fifteen minutes, without my asking a single question. It is in beautiful Elizabethan language, with an allusion to himself at the end as being 'under a cloud of misfortune'-referring to the time when he had lost the Chancellorship, about 1621. You will find all the scripts in the book.

"Then I said to William of Stratford (he came very often at the same time, and sometimes all three came at once): 'Now, look here; we know almost nothing about your earth-life. Will you dictate your autobiography for me?' He did so. I asked the questions, and got prompt answers. I have inserted occasional interpolations by Oxford. There is a chapter in my book on this. William gave a description of


158	FAR HORIZON

how he played the ghost in Hamlet. Sometimes the traditions about him are confirmed. Oxford said he, Will, always used to enlarge his stories in telling. William often kept us laughing quite a lot, and Oxford could be funny at times.

"I once asked Will: 'Who were Oxford's favourite butts?' I meant the ones Shakespeare expended his art upon. Will replied: 'Philip Sidney and myself.' William said he did not mind much. There was no malice behind any of his fun. Oxford confirmed that one of his butts was Sir Philip Sidney, whom he used to mimic, as weeping because he was not born a woman. Sidney was, in part, Aguecheek in Twelfth Night and Slender in The Merry Wives of Windsor. Oxford said he was nevertheless very fond of Sidney. . . . 'But we were a very merry group, and went for one another. I liked getting a little of Sidney's whim into my stuff.'

"Then I said to them: 'We want, if possible, more documentary proof.' They put their heads together to consider this. I said: 'The best proof is the MSS. Are they still extant? Where are they?' There was some hesitation. Francis Bacon came through at last, and said: 'They are in the tomb-the stone tomb.' Then the other two decided they would tell me about the manuscript. They said: 'They are in the tomb at Stratford.' 'William Shakespeare's?' 'Yes.' 'Is that why you put the curse on him who moved these bones?' 'Yes. William of Stratford and Oxford concocted it before their deaths.' 'What MSS. are there?' 'There are six.' 'Which ones?' 'The Tragedy of Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, Macbeth, Richard II and Henry V. They are wrapped in parchment. Two at the head, two at the feet, and two at the breast. Hamlet is at the breast. Lord Derby put them in the tomb.' He was Oxford's son-in-law, and husband of Lady Elizabeth Vere, who was the model for Perdita.

"I asked: 'Is there any chance of getting the tomb opened-that is, if you will set me free from the curse?' Next time, they wrote: 'Cursed be he who moves my bones, but you are free.' I asked: 'Is there any chance of getting through to the ecclesiastical authorities?' 'About as much as of getting through to the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem!' 'Anyhow, I shall have to try. I shall write to the Dean of Coventry.'

"Then, last May, I was going to Stratford myself. I said: 'I am going to stand in front of the tomb and talk to you.' Oxford said: 'I will make your flesh creep!' I was mildly scared. I went, as it happened, on V-Day, with thousands of people about. They said: 'Wait till the church is empty.' So I went on the Friday, at lunchtime. I was told to stand in front of the tomb and stretch my hands to the head and feet. The manuscript would then be under my nose. I stood there alone, and said: 'Here I am!' For two minutes nothing happened. Then I felt a hot, pleasant tingling coming up my fingers to the


	ELIZABETHANS RETURN 	159

elbow in both arms. I could not stop my fingers from trembling. Then gradually the sensation died away, and after three minutes I said 'Good-bye!'

"I have never had any sensation like it before. I went back to Mrs. Dowden about a day or two later, and directly she took her pencil up, there was William. He signed himself 'Shakespeare', and said 'I want to thank you for coming. We were both there, and very glad to see you.' Oxford then came, and talked to me about it. Next, a very curious thing happened. I took this incomplete MS. to some publishers. Their manager, when I told him a little about the story, did not seem much impressed. He said: 'Can't you give us some real evidence?' I said: 'Do you want me to rewrite Hamlet? That's rather a large order!' He said: 'Give us some poetry, if you can.'

"I always accept challenges; so I mentally challenged Oxford to give me some poetry. I went to Mrs. Dowden, and Oxford came through at once. He said: 'Now you have got something on your mind.' I said: 'Yes, I want some evidence that you can write poetry.' We waited about three weeks. Then I got an envelope one day, from Mrs. Dowden. In my absence, and without my knowledge, but at my instigation, the first sonnet had come through. About a week later, also without my knowledge, a second sonnet came, and about a week later the third came through. The first came on August 3rd, 1945. Oxford had said: 'I will imitate the manner of my original sonnets.' The original sonnets were, of course, all written to Southampton, who was really the Queen's son. I have been assured by all three on this point. And it is significant that the day Oxford died, Southampton was put into the Tower by James I and kept there, presumably until he had renounced all claim to the throne, or to royal honours.

"I read these sonnets to the President of the Shakespeare Fellowship, and he said: 'They must go in the book as a frontispiece; they have clinched the whole matter.' Next time I sat with Mrs. Dowden, Oxford came through and said: 'Is there anything you want to ask me?' I said: 'May I use the sonnets as a frontispiece?' 'No. They must be at the end, as evidence.' This disposed of the suggestion which had been made to me previously. At my request, however, a fourth sonnet was subsequently composed."

The biographer has omitted the fourth sonnet as he feels that the first three will give the reader sufficient evidence of the quality of the verse that was transposed. Mrs. Dowden took about forty minutes to write each sonnet. They were written very slowly, line by line. Her communicator said that he was pleased with her, but had found difficulty in conveying the exact words as he was composing the verses line by line. It might well be observed that if Oxford had known the verses by heart they would have taken only about three or four minutes to dictate.


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In the first sonnet, Oxford rejoices in the fact that he and his beloved son have thrown off the trammels of the flesh and are for ever free from the dread assaults of age, time and death.

I

How dark the murky stream of Time that flows,
Bearing within its bulk both foul and fair;
All that is gracious to oblivion goes,
All that is beauteous, precious, and most rare;
While in some golden realm thy spirit dwells,
Far from earth-Immortal beyond Time-
Terror of death nor creeping age compels
Me to be fareful of thy sure decline,
Nay, all my love is thine, in perfect joy,
And all the sweetness that within thee lies
Age cannot alter, Time cannot destroy;
A holy fire art thou, that never dies-
Immortal love, clad in unchanging youth,
Fair sacrament of Beauty and of Truth.

The second continues the same theme. The poet rejoices that his son retains his eternal youth and that they are united in their undying love.

II

Now is the beauty of thy soul laid bare;
In dust the fairness of thy body lies;
Radiant thy soul! Most chaste and fair
Clearer than stars, spangling the summers' skies.
Nothing of thee can wither or can fade,
Nor foul decay touch thy triumphant prime;
For ever shall our souls, no more afraid,
Gaze surely on the passing flight of time.
Bounteous, my love enwraps thee all around;
No churl am I; for all I give to thee;
In thee, all that in highest heaven is found,
Is thine and mine, sure and eternally.
Thus close entwined, in perfect love and truth,
Endures our Spring and our unending youth.

Allen believes that the third sonnet is the best and most exalted of the trio. In his book, he writes: "This sonnet-surely one of the loveliest in our language-matches in poetic quality the very best Shakespearean sonnets which we possess. Spiritually it is far ahead of them, as the song of an enfranchised soul, now passed from


	ELIZABETHANS RETURN 	161

darkness into light, and singing, from the eternal heavens, a paean of joy over the complete and permanent union of his affinity with himself"

When from the star-strewn Heavens I gaze around,
And mark the scanty compass of the Earth,
Small as an atom, in the sunlight drowned-
I marvel how within such narrow girth
My love for thee found sustenance and space;
The wine too close was housed, too small the cup;
My precious draught o'erflowed the narrow place,
Lost all its perfumed flavour, soon dried up.
Now has my love found her true path of grace;
Deep in thy soul she hides herself and me.
Here is no fear of Time, of age no trace;
Forever of restraining fetters free-
So we enjoy the glory of the sun,
In sure affinity, for we are One.






CHAPTER SIXTEEN

A VICTORIAN INTERLUDE

All the world's a stage.
As You Like It, ii, 7.

No famous actress has been more written about, commented upon and discussed than Ellen Terry. Her fame has girdled the earth; her genius is the pattern of the Victorian stage and her charm has been immortalized by immortals. It is hard, therefore, to realize that over one hundred years have passed since she was acting some Shakespearean roles in London at the beginning of her career. Less famous to-day, but well renowned in her time, is Fanny Stirling, who played many a character with Ellen Terry in those earlier years of the nineteenth century. Fanny Stirling is the grandmother of Percy Allen, whose Talks with Elizabethans has been discussed in the previous chapter.

Both these women have long left this earth, but there are still some who remember their acting at first hand and who can recall those distant plays. Percy Allen not only has the family link with his grandmother, but has also written her biography.

Stage Life of Mrs. Stirling is a close study of her acting, and, among other things, it recalls that she played Portia, both at the Princess's Theatre in November 1845, and again at the Olympic Theatre in 1850. Fanny Stirling was born in 1813, and all through Queen Victoria's reign, right up to the middle of the 'eighties, we find her acting Shakespearean roles in the London theatres.

Percy Allen remarks that his grandmother seems to have been by far the best female after-dinner speaker of her day, and Dickens and Thackeray were among her chairmen at the theatrical charity dinners. Moreover, there is no doubt whatever that she remained close friends with Ellen Terry during her professional career.

This story of a Victorian interlude begins when Allen received his first messages from Fanny Stirling at one of the earliest sittings he had with Hester Dowden. From a score and more of scripts which he has collected, the biographer has taken examples from which a fascinating story can be told of both Fanny Stirling and Ellen Terry in retrospect. Readers will be able to assess the characters of these two women from a new angle, for they reveal themselves remarkably clearly in their messages, full-fed as they are with divergencies of personality.

Ellen Terry has, also, a direct link with Percy Allen, who had met

162


	A VICTORIAN INTERLUDE	163

her in later life. His studies of her plays and acting had created an intimacy and the claim of renewed friendship through the automatic writings, because Ellen Terry returns to him, not only as the close friend of his grandmother, but also as a great figure of the past whose life he had known and whose fortunes had stimulated his interest. The Immortal Ellen is, in some ways, the more dominant character of the two. She seems to thrust forward with her old abounding energy and to use every scrap of psychic power during her turn of communication. Both have abundant humour. Ellen Terry uses her wit and humour to express her very decided opinions; Fanny Stirling, on the other hand, often disagrees with these opinions and expresses in turn her own viewpoint with a more subtle humour that seems to act as a foil to her companions.

Throughout these sittings the women usually appear together and alternate in commentary and discussion. Both show a deep affection for Allen and a deep appreciation of the fact that their medium is one who had a great knowledge of the stage and who had inherited an appreciation of Shakespeare from her father, Edward Dowden. It is as if a curtain were lifted from the past; as if a fragment of the early Victorian life of the theatre was being brought into the light of modern day when this correspondence is read.

In February 1947, Johannes introduces Fanny Stirling to her grandson in the normal way and their conversation devolves upon ancient roles in the plays which took place during their prime.

Johannes: Fanny, your grandmother. [i.e. Fanny Stirling.]

Percy Allen: Good! Is there anyone else?

Joh.: Yes, another; but take Fanny first.

Fanny Stirling: Here I am, and glad to come. I have a good deal to say.

P.A.: Delighted to hear you. What shall I call you? Not Granny?

F.S.: Call me Fanny. I like it; and now we are the same age.

P.A.: Have you anything that you wish particularly to say?

F.S.: I have an idea, and I want you to reply very carefully. I feel I can help you a great deal from my theatrical experience. If we talk about Shakespeare I might be some use, if I gave you hints.

P.A.: I shall be delighted to have your views. You have already told me something of your Nurse in Romeo, with Ellen Terry.

F.S.: I am interested in many of the plays. Let us take the important ones first. You know I never took very heavy parts: I was better in lighter things. The nurse, of course, was a part in which I was successful, but we have discussed it already. Let us take The Merchant.

P.A.: Yes, let us. Did you play Portia?

F.S.: I played Nerissa. Well, it depended on Portia how Nerissa


164	FAR HORIZON

should be played. I alternated that part with Jessica, but I liked Nerissa best.

P.A.: Why did you prefer Nerissa?

F.S.: I could play on Portia, whereas Jessica seemed to have no particular function, but to add a black spot to Shylock.

P.A.: Who do you think was the best Portia in your day?

F.S.: I consider (Ellen) Terry was the ideal Portia. I played Nerissa with her in London.

P.A.: Can you remember the date?

F.S.: I can't give you the year, but I can remember many points. Yes, I built up my part to suit her reading. She did not take the serious side of Portia, except in the trial scene, when she became immensely dignified. I felt I had to play to the lighter side of her character, and therefore I played Nerissa lightly, laughing all the time. When the trial scene came, I exaggerated my dignity. Later-before the trial scene-I played with great reserve, supporting Portia's condition of excitement. In the last act we played to the lovers, and made it all joy.

P.A.: All the ring business could be made very amusing, could it not?

F.S.: Yes, that could be made very amusing; and I kept on the lighter side.

P.A.: Did you, during the play, feel any compassion for Shylock?

F.S.: Oh, yes! Deep compassion. I played it (Nerissa) with both Irving and Booth.

P.A.: Did you ever play at the Lyceum?

F. S. : Yes, sometimes. No more about Nerissa. I must go back and recall Ophelia, which I once played for a few nights.

P.A.: To whose Hamlet? Henry Irving's?

F.S.: No, it was not Irving. I disliked the part, and did not hope to make a success of it. I had read the play most carefully and decided to play Ophelia as a child, so far as her mind was concerned, and to do the mad scene as a child playing, and occasionally remembering reality. She is a simple character, but not opposed to intrigue.

P.A.: She was sensuous, to judge by that bawdy song 'St. Valentine's Day.'

F.S.: No, you are wrong. I think her affection for Hamlet was the ambition of a young girl to be the wife of a prince. The bawdy songs were mere echoes in her disturbed mind. I'm sure I was right. You see, Percy, the Queen had put ideas before her which she could not understand. Read the part carefully. You will find that a large proportion of what she says is repetition of the Queen, her father, but never of Hamlet.

P.A.: Was your presentation of the part dependent at all upon the methods of your Hamlet?


	A VICTORIAN INTERLUDE	165

F.S.: My conception of the part is not dependent on Hamlet, anyway. Where he drives her out of his presence, she dimly feels he has exposed her.'

P.A.: Can you name your Hamlet?

F.S.: Can't remember the name: I must think.

P.A.: Did you ever play Beatrice?

F.S.: Yes, I have played Beatrice, but played it quite differently from Terry; and I saw her Beatrice. I played it with more love and tenderness and less fire than Terry. Perhaps I was wrong, but I felt there was a real love affair between the two.

P.A.: The comedy sways towards tragedy on the "Kill Claudio!"

F.S.: Oh yes; but it was a mood-no serious intention behind it. Beatrice was far too feminine. Now another day we can resume this conversation.

P.A.: The Elizabethans, from what they tell me, seem generally to prefer Much Ado to any other comedy. You rate it highly yourself, do you not?

F.S.: Yes, but not at all on a level with The Merchant. The Merchant has far more variety from the actor's point of view. No more today.

Other correspondence took place in the weeks that followed which was much in the same vein. She discusses her role of Desdemona and her attitude towards Othello. She writes: "I felt angry with him and wanted to fight him, but had no chance. I was just passable; that was all." Fanny Stirling had found this part more difficult than any other, because she could find no key to the character of the hero. There was no definite point to hold to. Her words were, "I felt I was wandering about in a miasma."

Allen asks her if she enjoyed the part of Hermia. She had played this at the Princess's Theatre in 1847.

His grandmother replied: "Yes again; gentle and quite pleasant; but it was more sound than sense. There is not much passion, you'll agree. And now to go back to Macready. He was magnificent when he had something to tear, but he required that. He was the best actor for passionate parts I ever worked with; but his tenderness was poor. He had a really dreadful temper."

P.A.: I remember how he punched Bunn's head at Drury Lane.

F.S.: Yes. That was rather unfortunate. Bunn was furious, and tried to have him arrested.
---
I With regard to Fanny Stirling's statement that she had played the character of Ophelia for a few nights, Allen remarks that he has no record of it; but he has recorded in his Stage Life of Mrs. Stirling that his grandmother played Beatrice in October 1839 at Drury Lane, and again in October in 1845, with Wallack, at the Princess's Theatre.


166	FAR HORIZON

The actor Macready writes in his diary of April 29th, 1836, that he "dug his fist well into the offender." This incident is, of course, not a direct sequence to Fanny Stirling's original remark about this actor. It follows on the rejoinder which Allen made to her when he recalls the actual incident.

The following dialogue introduces Ellen Terry; and we can see some difference in her speech and the ideas which she conveys.

Johannes: You have the two you asked for. Which shall come first?

P.A.: Let the ladies decide, please!

Ellen Terry: Nell speaking. I'm glad to talk to you; Fanny and I are real pals. I think we have had far more fun since we came over than ever before.

P.A.: Well, now that you are both the same age, which parts do you play in Romeo and Juliet? Do you exchange parts and is Fanny Juliet?

Nell: Oh, we can exchange parts now, but I never liked Juliet. I think the Nurse has the best of it. Sheer raw love never suited me.

P.A.: Can you name a part that you did like? Your favourite?

Nell: Yes, two. One Shakespearean. I liked Beatrice, but the other is Nance Oldfield. Yes. Well, it gave me scope.

P.A.: Very interesting. My amanuensis, Hester Dowden, is much interested too. You knew her, she tells me.

Nell: I knew her well; a great friend of Bram's.

[Brain Stoker, author of Dracula, etc., had been biographer to Henry Irving and was, for many years, his manager at the Lyceum. Hester knew the Stoker well and had met both Ellen Terry and Henry Irving on several occasions.]

P.A.: Yes, she was. I well remember seeing you play Beatrice at the old theatre-the Imperial was it?-in Westminster, now pulled down. Your son, Gordon Craig, was the producer, I think.

Nell: Yes, not altogether satisfactory. I never felt that my son knew how to set Shakespeare (sic).

P.A.: The moderns are no better, judging by what I have seen recently in London, and at Stratford-on-Avon.

Nell: None of them worth a cuss, my dear man. They are entirely incapable.

P.A.: I remember you telling me once, over the tea-table in your house in Chelsea, that an artist must give, give, give.

Nell: True, the artist must give, and seldom receives. I felt it; and so often my company wouldn't give. I had to do all the giving. It's that way at Stratford, except that, as a rule, nobody gives.

P.A.: Would you like me to send a message for you to Barry Jackson?


	A VICTORIAN INTERLUDE	167

Nell: I don't feet it would help to send a message. He is sufficient unto himself. I would seem a mere gnat. You can't help Stratford, Percy, it's a mere sink. All very well to despise the star system, but at least, if there were stars, there was a little light.

P.A.: There was often much light. Talking of stars, do you see anything of Henry Irving still?

Nell: I see a great deal of him. We still quarrel, and often over Shakespearean passages. There is comradeship, my dear Percy; that word sums up our relation.

P.A.: You two always were, still are, comrades to us. No two names are more closely linked in English stage history than Henry Irving and Ellen Terry.

Nell: Yes, I suppose so. We had a knack of playing to each other. I generally gave in, and felt he was right in the end, though I often hated him in the beginning.

P.A.: He has, I suppose, still that same dominating quality on the stage?

Nell: He has a power of making others see a play as he does.

P.A.: My son, John, tells me that he is producing Macbeth in London before very long. Have you any hints for him?

Nell: Yes, concerning Lady Macbeth When she says, "Give me the dagger," she is possessed at that moment. The task falls on her suddenly, and she is shocked. The words should be spoken in a low voice with great emphasis. Good luck to John; I will help him all I can. Tell him not to make the witches bearded crones, and give a sense of youth and strength and renown."

[Percy Allen's eldest son, John Allen, was at that time director of the Glyndebourne Children's Theatre; not of the Opera. Ellen Terry's remark about the witches runs counter to tradition, because Banquo speaks to them of 'your beards'.]

P.A.: Thank you, Nell. Anything more, if I'm not too greedy?

Nell: Yes, tell him not to let the minor characters sink into insignificance; they are all and every one significant. Tell him also to forget my Lady Macbeth; I made many mistakes.

P.A.: Very many thanks, Ellen; all this shall go on to John. Time is running out, and I think we ought to have Fanny Stirling now.

Nell: All right. Good luck! I love both of you. Ellen."

There is an amazing divergence of opinion between the two actresses over the modern Hamlet film with Sir Laurence Olivier in the principal part. At a sitting in July 1948, Fanny Stirling, who had seen the film of her world, gives us this point of view:

"I will tell you that I cannot bear to think that Hamlet should be filmed. This shocks me so much, I just can't get over it. Now, allowing that a hideous crime has been committed, I will give you some of


168	FAR HORIZON

the points I like. I liked the dignity of the Queen: I liked her all through. She was completely overbalanced by that rude son of hers. I think the Queen struck the right note: she never forgot she was a queen. Hamlet couldn't pull her off her perch, no matter how hard he tried. He was quite right to misuse her; but he need not have used his hands so much. He used her violently; and, of course, he was forgetful of the fact that you cannot reprove a woman seriously if you take to your fists."

The last comment was a shrewd one, because Hamlet remarks in the play: "I will speak daggers to her; but use none." As for the part of the Queen, which was played by Eileen Hurley, this performance has been widely approved by both public and critics alike.

Fanny Stirling did not like Olivier's Hamlet very much. She thought he was too restless, and she had always believed that Hamlet was a very quiet person. She remarks that "he was excellent with Claudius and good with Polonius; but the play-scene I did not like. There was no point to it, Percy. The play-scene is a moment of crisis, and should make a change in the action, and still more in Hamlet himself."

Allen remarks that Henry Irving was the best Hamlet we have ever had in the play-scene. He mentions the outstanding crisis of the whole drama. He next asked his grandmother what she thought of Olivier's handling of the 'Swear-on-my-sword' scene.

Fanny Stirling replied: "Now you put a difficult question. I think he was good, but did not make it an event. That little scene should have been an event. Two of the Ghost's remarks were cut, and those two are very important. His attitude to Ophelia did not please me at all, because he played the scene as if he believed in her. Read the play, and you will know that he saw through her from the first! And now one more remark. The last scene seemed to me to be too hurried. When a character is killed there must be a moment of pause, and perhaps more than a moment. The shocks followed each other in indecent haste. It was not very effective, so I thought."

A little later in this sitting Ellen Terry took the place of Fanny Stirling, and gave her version of the same film.

E.T.: Nell is here-sword sharpened to cut Fanny into small pieces. I like the film and I liked the actor. I will tell you how the film moved me. The pace was excellent-no drawling. The businesslike attack was very good indeed. I liked him (Olivier) from the first. He reminded me just a little of Henry. He took the view Henry took. He was a human being, and he was completely puzzled in the opening scenes. Then the play-scene revealed something. Did you notice that he quickened his pace from then onwards? It is a good point. Henry declined to see it so far. The idea shocked him. Then the question of


	A VICTORIAN INTERLUDE	169

Ophelia. She was wrong from every point of view, I thought. You see, Percy, Ophelia has had a very moving adventure in Hamlet's wooing of her. She has talked it over with her father, and he is very keen on her being cautious, and leading Hamlet to believe she is more or less indifferent to him. She should never treat him as a lover, for, in my opinion, he has not made love to her, and she is very doubtful of his real feelings to her. She had never been his mistress, never; that would have been impossible. She is really very artful, and means to get the better of Hamlet if he marries her. She is not an unsophisticated girl by any means. She has been in the court, and fully realizes what Hamlet's position is. I think she should be played as a completely adult woman. I am sure Shakespeare intended her to convey her sense of Hamlet's very doubtful position with regard to her.

P.A.: Many thanks, Ellen. I take it that, on the whole, you approve the filming of the great Shakespearean plays?

E. T. : I approve entirely of filming all great plays. Not only does it mean they reach a much larger public, but the play is displayed from a new angle.

P.A.: Marie Lloyd told me, some time ago, that she and other theatre people in your world were urgently advocating the filming of great plays, though always with stage actors, and not film actors, in the cast.

E.T.: Yes, you must admit this experiment is a great success. His face (the Ghost's) should have been seen. That blind thing is not Hamlet's father."

Certain information came to light during this series of sittings with regard to the use of the theatre and of acting in the world beyond. At yet another meeting Allen asked his grandmother if they had dramatists in their world. Fanny Stirling answers that they have specialized authors, who are paid great respect. Their scenes alternate between earth and their world. Their plays are made typical of both worlds, as far as they can be. Fanny Stirling tells her grandson that the dramatists of her world continue to write, but they have learnt a good deal more about life, as they "study technique, and are able to make a better thing of it". They act a good deal of Shakespeare still. Many of the dresses are symbolical, and represent character in their features. The scenes can be changed in more fluid form, and can be made more realistic than anything that has yet been devised on earth. Sound travels and penetrates far vaster distances than on earth.

	At one of the very last sittings which Hester gave to Allen before her death, Ellen Terry described a play which she has recently been acting in. Although it is impossible to prove the truth of her words, perhaps it is fitting to conclude this chapter with the account that


170	FAR HORIZON

this great actress gives of certain conditions of her present life. Life goes on, and the pursuits of earth continue when there is need of them. It is only natural that the overpowering zest of acting should continue and be given fuller scope in the world beyond.

E. T. : Have you any idea of anything you would like?

P.A.: Last time, Fanny told me something of the parts she was playing in your world, and of the plays you have over there. Could you tell me something of those plays?

E.T.: Yes, I'll begin with that. Don't imagine that we have a different type of stage. It is larger than yours, but not different from yours. I like our plays here. They are, of course, concerned with the two worlds, and they give us much more scope.

P.A.: Can you describe one to me?

E.T.: Yes, I think I can. The play I am doing at the present moment is a love play. Two who have been separated by death, and who are intensely in love with each other. I mean love as the ordinary human being is in love. The woman wants to return to earth. The man is in despair and will not allow himself to rejoin her. She feels she must waken up new love in time, and most of the drama is a series of attempts to get through her conscious love of him. The woman is here; the man is on earth. The woman does all she can to attract him to her. She has no medium, and does not feel that she wants to communicate that way. She impresses him, and he wakes knowing she is thinking of him intensely. I feel I shall be able to do the part. He believes he is in touch with her; and gradually he gets into touch. Although she is unseen, she gradually becomes a reality. I show the earth plane as twilight, and the higher plane as brilliant light. The only person she confides in is an old man who is about to pass on to my side. Now the plane which we shall call Heaven is open to the sky, and earth is shut in by a roof. I think that is effective.

P.A.: You use the old man as your confidant, to explain your motives and thoughts to the audience?

E.T.: Yes, I use the old man as my medium. I have found it difficult because the drama is entirely in the hands of two people: myself and the man who loves me; and the old man. The man who loves me is represented as a shadow. I believe a play on these lines would interest your stage. I am sure it would!

P.A.: I think so, too. What is the denouement of your play?

E.T.: My lover comes to me, and confides that he has ended his life intentionally. Then comes the question of separation again.

P.A.: The act of suicide separates you?

E. T. : Yes; and he cannot join me. We are left in a state of separation again, and know that it means many years apart. It means also that, at some period, we shall be united, with no question of parting.


	A VICTORIAN INTERLUDE	171

P.A.: Was your lover-your fellow actor in the play-a known actor when on earth?

E.T.: No, he was a musician. That just gives you an idea; you can imagine how difficult the plot is!

P.A.: Almost a tragic theme! Have you comedies also?

E.T.: Yes, we have. They are not written to make the audience laugh. They are written very often to show the approach and growth of affinity.

P.A.: I see! The subtler, lighter beginnings of a love affair?

E.T.: Yes, while the attraction can be played with.

P.A.: And the dialogue?

E. T. : It is witty, and sometimes poetical.

P.A.: Tossing the ball from one to another?

E. T. : I enjoy tossing the ball.

P.A.: Do you like our old plays best, or your own new ones?

E.T.: I prefer the new ones; they are new ground for me. I am sure they give far more scope than older plays.

P.A.: And you can make yourself, for these plays, as young as you please?

E.T.: Well, of course, I am young!

On this point of youth let us leave our glimpses of Ellen Terry and Fanny Stirling. The world of to-day redounds to the memories of past genius. Perhaps the world of the future will recognize that genius persists and expands into ever greater glory in existences which are now beyond our ken. For a brief spell the curtain is lifted, and if we are to accept the continuity of human life, then these conversations must bear witness to a logical sequence of events which will have significance for everyone when their turn arrives to pass across the footlights on to a greater stage than the one on which we now enact our scene.






CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

THE TASK COMPLETED

Thou liv'st; report me and my cause aright To the unsatisfied.
Hamlet, v, 2.

To one who looks through the wrong end of a telescope all is distant and in miniature. To the observer who views the whole life of Hester Dowden from the vantage of her last four years impressions are much the same. Yet distinctness of detail remains. Not distance, only over-proximity, obscures the scenes.

The Second World War broke remaining strands with the past. The Irish stage, its players and audience had been cast out into limbo; only its memories, vivid, poignant, and happy, remained. The Abbey Theatre, Kildare Street, Lower FitzWilliam Street, Trinity College, the Castle, were all as a tale that is told. From 1945 onwards, Hester would talk of a flying visit to Dublin, but in her heart she knew that she would not attempt the journey. The war had cut the strands of impulse, and the high cost of living made a tangible reason for remaining in Chelsea.

Of course, the old Continental holidays had also vanished with the times. Lennox and Dolly were absorbed in their life in Dublin. Austria, even a decade before the outbreak of war, had raised difficulties for visitors. Its music and its mountains must be experienced vicariously. Many of the old circle had left London on account of the bombing, and had not returned.

Clients, however, continued to visit Cheyne Gardens in a steady stream. The Metapsychic Group still held its meetings on the third Thursday of each month. But a tiredness was creeping in which many old friends recognized as a sign of age. In spite of this, Hester retained her capacity to recapture the stimmung of a period, past or present, and to relive the atmosphere of past adventure with extraordinary relish. Her keen, caustic humour was as sharp as ever, and her words and surface demeanour sometimes belied and overlaid the generous springs of her nature. Much of this has been already mentioned, but the tenor is accentuated and stressed. Her task was nearly completed, and the last half decade of her life involved a repetition both of thought and routine. Her extraordinary psychic powers remained with her up to the day of her death. Hester had evolved a perfect technique of withdrawal, when withdrawal was

172


	THE TASK COMPLETED 	173

necessary; her subconscious presented a rich mine of fact and experience from which discarnate personalities could draw, to aid them in expressing avenues of thought which only a highly educated medium could approach.

The biographer, so far, has only given passing reference to yet another phenomenal psychic gift. This was her faculty of psychometry. Throughout the years of her life, many objects had been sent to Cheyne Gardens from clients both in England and abroad. Hester was able to use both her own personal gift of psychometry, and also, and more generally, to call in the aid of Johannes.

One very interesting case took place in her early life, when Hester was on a holiday in Corinthia. She was staying at a castle which belonged to an Austrian friend, not very far from Klagenfurt. One day her hostess produced a strange little leaden animal, and asked her to psychometrize it. "It is certainly prehistoric," she added. "It was found beneath the castle, and we consider it an heirloom." Hester called in the aid of Johannes, who had a habit of examining objects to be psychometrized, as a dog would examine a bone. Having inspected the little animal, he said: "This is not prehistoric. It is just four hundred years old." Her hostess protested that Johannes was wrong. Hester next asked where the objects were made. Johannes replied: "They were used as mascots for the better breeding of cattle, and presented to the churches in the name of St. Ulrich."

Her hostess was rather annoyed because Johannes had doubted her word, so the matter had to be left with two contrary opinions. A few days after this happened, Hester went to the town of Klagenfurt in order to visit the local museum where recent prehistoric finds, together with some local remains, had been arranged on exhibit. The museum visit proved very interesting, and while she was walking round a case in which there were half a dozen lead animals, such as the one she had studied at the castle, she called the custodian over, and enquired about the objects.

"They are four hundred years old," he said; "made locally for the better breeding of cattle, and presented to the churches in the name of St. Ulrich for that purpose." When she returned to the castle, Hester asked for a signed statement from her hostess as to what had happened. This document was found amongst her possessions at her death.

Here is an extract from a lecture given by Mr. H. G. Bois to the Metapsychic Group in December 1942. The story is another proof of Hester's psychometric gift.

"Some years ago I bought a ring with an engraved intaglio stone set in it. I thought it was engraved with a figure of Jupiter holding a thunderbolt. I took it to the British Museum and asked Sir Hercules


174	FAR HORIZON

Read, the keeper of the department which dealt with such things, what it was. He said it was a ring made in the early part of the sixteenth century, probably for Spain by an Italian artist. I was far more interested in the engraving and asked Sir Hercules what it meant. He said he did not know as that was not his special job. So I left it at that. Some years afterwards when in Dublin I tried having it psychometrized by a control who used to work through Mrs. Dowden, He did not say very much, but another control came who said he was an old Persian fire-worshipper. He said he knew the stone, and that it had a close connection with the element of fire and light. This interested me, and I began to try and find out the meaning of all the engraving on the stone apart from the figure.

"To make a long story short, I soon saw that the figure which I thought was Jupiter holding a thunderbolt and with the eagle behind him might very easily be a figure of the sun god with a crown of sun rays, and that the bird at his back was a cock, a sun symbol and not an eagle, the bird of Jupiter. Beneath the figure is a sign which I knew to be the symbol of the earth, and below, all in Hebrew letters, is the word Raphael, one of the three great archangels But the letters above the figure puzzled me until I found out that they were merely a fancy form of the Hebrew word 'Iah', one of the names of the Almighty. I later found that the symbol in the hand of the figure was the sigil, or seal, of the angel of the sun.

"According to a Kabalistic belief, all the planets, including the sun and moon, are ruled by an angel, of course under the Almighty. But there was still one symbol I could not trace. It was not till some years after that I came across it quite by accident. It is the sigil of Cor Leonis, the chief star in the constellation Leo. According to astrology this is the house of the sun, and when the sun is in Leo it is at its greatest power. Therefore the whole engraving has to do with the sun as the giver of light and heat.

"If I had known all this from the first, I should say that in some way my knowledge had become known to Mrs. Dowden's subconsciousness; but I did not know it, and, therefore, why should an old Persian fire-worshipper, if indeed there was one, have come forward and told me what he did?"

Hester always believed that time was a very difficult factor in the announcement of impending events. She used to advise investigators to make quite sure which year the event was to take place, as often the happening occurred a year after it was indicated.

"I always find," she said, "that in cases where a fact is given, unknown to the sitter, hesitation on the part of a communicator is a bad sign. If a fact is correct, it generally comes at once; if there is hesitation, I distrust it."

Many readers will have experienced the same difficulty when


	THE TASK COMPLETED 	175

contacting the beyond concerning this factor of time, but it is undoubtedly one of the barriers which exist between our world in time dimension and other states of consciousness which are outside it.

Most psychometric results are connected with an object, but Hester believed that it is not essential that there should be an object. If an object is psychometrized in England, the history connected with it may well be related to America, or some other country, but the actual handling does not confuse results, or necessarily blur the history surrounding the object. Hester believed, in fact, that we use an idea as our psychometric object, rather than the thing itself. Yet, undoubtedly, in some of her experiments, one object affected another if they were touching. She believed that a study should be made of this subject, as many of the conclusions, lightly arrived at by Spiritualists, might be swept away, or altered. But in the early days of her work, she was convinced that it was necessary to hold some object, letter, glove, etc. This seemed essential if results were to be obtained without a sitter; but comparatively early she found that this was unnecessary.

At a later date she wrote: "I never ask now for a connecting link. I remember on one occasion, I was sent three objects by an absent sitter. They were a walking-stick, a glove, and a short note. The walking-stick gave me nothing: the note, which was very short and unimportant, was of little or no use; but the glove gave me everything. The whole story was revealed by the last object, and a very sensational story it was. This seems to indicate that objects which touch the body carry a stronger association than objects, such as the walking-stick, which are not in continuous contact with the human body, except at the point of handling. I should have been inclined to say that I could have done without the glove, but the result might have been much slower."

It is not generally known that for some years Hester Dowden worked in close association with a Mr. Frank Hemingway in absent healing. Both regarded themselves as impersonal instruments used by the Johannes Group in this work. There was an understanding between them that Mr. Hemingway should not be brought into personal contact with those he was to help. Indeed, in some cases, patients were not even to know that they were being helped, as their own relatives approached Hester on their behalf.

Frank Hemingway would book a regular sitting with Hester, at which certain initials were given him. Johannes would then give him a diagnosis of the case and would indicate the method he was to employ. "Sometimes," Hemingway explains, "this was by use of a formula." At these meetings, which were held once a month, Johannes would also go over past cases, reporting progress and making


176	FAR HORIZON

suggestions. About a year after this collaboration had started, Hemingway was advised to keep a record of results.

The biographer has obtained in this way a few details of outstanding success. This work remained hidden from most of Hester's friends to the end of her earthly life, and because of this it is impossible to check the various cases which are mentioned. Those which have come to light, however, show the extraordinary power of absent healing by prayer under skilled discarnate direction. Hemingway affirms that they must have dealt with nearly a hundred cases of different kinds since 1930, Many were entirely successful, but there were others where they obtained no result. Since Hester's death, Hemingway declared that the healing power seems to have left him.

The writer has discussed with Hester Dowden her attitude to the whole question of absent healing. It was one of the few subjects where she was content to refrain from questioning the methods. She was prepared to allow her critical faculties to remain in abeyance, but continued this work regularly for nearly twenty years without fees, only encouraged by the letters which she received from patients or their relatives, reporting the success of the joint treatment. Her lack of desire to probe often led her into dangerous paths. On several occasions Hester would accept a call of succour from relatives or friends of the insane.

In each case that Johannes agreed to treat he reported that there was a clear instance of obsession, and on one or two occasions the methods employed released the obsessing entity from the aura of the victim, but rebounded, with rather devastating effect, on Hester herself. Once or twice she was prostrated for twenty-four hours, as the malignant force would attach itself to her aura. But on every occasion Johannes was able to restore her normal vitality and freedom from outside interference. Readers who are interested in this subject should obtain a copy of Dr. Carl Wickland's book, Thirty Years Among the Dead. The story of the work which he and his wife performed is a monumental testimony to a self-sacrificing couple who, in America, were able to restore many hundreds of unfortunate people to sanity.

Perhaps a few words should be written on the wording of the different scripts and on the style used by the various historical groups of communicators. The writer believes that if the discarnate theory is to be accepted, then most of the historic scripts were composed by groups of spirit people using a spokesman to convey their joint message through Hester's hand. The authorship of these scripts is shared, it seems, rather than being a series of messages from one mind outside the physical through the hand of an earthly medium. Only in the case of the scripts of Saint Francis is there any deliberate archaic style used. The mass thought coming from the mediaeval


	THE TASK COMPLETED 	177

monks would have qualities which might force its expression in sentences tinged by mediaevalism. The use of the word 'ye' would be an interpretation of the type of thought impinging on the medium's subconscious mind, and would convey itself through this affectation in style. But it is more extraordinary still to note that the majority of the scripts are written in straightforward modern English. Thought has been interpreted in plain terms.

Hester's attitude to death was a paradoxical one. At times she feared it greatly; but not because of any belief in extinction. Rather was her fear that of the pessimist who knows that a higher stage of life was shortly to be hers, and who fears that its uncertain qualities and demands will exact sterner effort. She loved many of the things which this life had to offer. She had little or no consolation in religion, and her analytical mind refused to fill in the picture of a future life with rosy colours, because she had never permitted herself either sentiment or vague speculation. Her enquiries had always been founded on facts which were connected with the things of earth, that could be checked, proved, or disproved. The realms of fantasy and speculation she had resolutely rejected, because they could not be measured by any yardstick of research. Othodox religion had no appeal for her, and the world of Paradise which many Spiritualists depict was even less satisfying to her mind.

Throughout her long life she had come to rely on Johannes for loyal co-operation, promptness and exactitude. At no time did she appeal to him direct for help, as far as the writer is aware, either in financial difficulties or in alleviation of physical ill-health. Yet on many occasions Johannes has affirmed that his influence was both pervading and continuous, even from the days of her young girlhood. He claimed to have inspired her love for Goethe and for the mystic poetry and drawings of William Blake. About her and surrounding her was always this influence of the great spirit personality. Johannes acted as her daemon, just as Plato's life was inspired by such a force and Plotinus unconsciously received his inspiration from a similar source.

It can fairly be said, however, that Hester now was constantly aware of this pervading influence, its tender understanding and gentleness, just as she was aware of the tremendous powers of the great groups of souls who used her gifts from time to time. She accepted, if subconsciously, the philosophy which Blake reveals in his poem William Bond.

And we are put on earth a little space,
That we may learn to bear the beams of love;
And these black bodies, and this sunburnt face,
Are but a cloud, and like a shady grove.


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For when our souls have learnt the heat to bear,
The cloud will vanish; we shall hear his voice,
Saying, Come out from the grove, my love and care,
And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice.

Perhaps this result was inevitable even for one whose whole attitude tended towards scepticism.

During the last three years all who knew Hester Dowden felt a tenderness which was never far beneath the surface. The shafts of wit , the barbs of scorn, had lost their power to strike deeply and there was a lull before the end. In many ways life still nagged at her. For some years now she had been troubled by arthritis, and when this increased, the pain was often severe and continuous. But her spartan nature and deep pride would not let her alter the daily habits of a lifetime; the supervision of the house, the shopping, the afternoon appointments, the evening's correspondence, practice at the piano and discussions about the past, all continued. However, many an old friend found that there was an increasing frailty. Still she would move about her home with assurance and would daily negotiate the front steps and pavement to the restaurant, even during deep winter snow. One of the last of the pekinese came from the famous Alderbourne Kennels and provided her with constant companionship. Marco was the last of his line and predeceased her by about a fortnight. But within that short space she had made plans to obtain another from the same kennels. Time, however, did not permit this.

	Perhaps the memory which is most constant in the minds of many of her friends is that of the little bent Irish figure sitting in her high-backed chair to the left of the fireplace. In later years she would use the dining-room with its electric fire to save fuel. There she would sit, preferably with a vis-a-vis listening to her reminiscences of past scenes and past adventures. Sir William Barrett and the first experiments; the imperious summons from Hugh Lane; the blindfold sittings with Peter Rooney; memories shared with her old friend Geraldine Cummins; vivid and eccentric characters from Dublin Town; memories of Lennox, and that strange, unhappy, far-off marriage with the doctor whom she never understood and never forgave; the move to London and the early hardships of the alien city; life with Dolly before her marriage and the long succession of musical parties, new plays, the opera, concerts and Chelsea celebrities; the host of visiting sitters, with their weird entangled personal problems and demands; the old Irish servants and the animals that loved her and that she so dearly loved; all would be conjured from the ashes of the past, with old faces renewed, and old places mentally revisited. These were the evenings of her content, the sport of her quiet hours, the consolation for a task completed.

In the earliest hour of the morning of February 16th, 1949,


	THE TASK COMPLETED 	179

shortly after midnight, Hester fell forward from her high chair. Death was instantaneous. Early next morning she was found by Rudkin, her manservant, who had been with her for eighteen years. The earthly voyage had ended.

Her body was cremated at Golders Green cemetery. Friends near and far felt that a spirit had, indeed, gone out of their lives and that its passing left a gap that was irreparable.






EPILOGUE

CONTROVERSY has waxed and waned over evidence of identity and messages which people are reputed, to have received from Mrs. Hester Dowden since her death in February 1949. Personal history has swung full circle. For forty years and more she was the centre of controversy over facts connected with the postmortem survival of personality of other people; now, she herself has again become a centre of controversy connected with her own claims to survival. I have not deliberately attempted to follow the precedent set by Mr. Bernard Shaw in his play St. Joan in writing an epilogue. Many readers may well think that a biography should end when the central character takes her physical exit from the stage of life. But here we are dealing with one who devoted her life to prove that death is not the end and it is imperative for me to place before readers some pros and cons.

I, myself, believe that Hester Dowden lives on, and has returned to tell us so. My belief is founded not only on my personal evidence from her through the channels of three reliable London mediums, but also because her survival is the logical outcome of the results of all the messages that have contributed to that great total of proof which the world beyond has yielded to our world during the course of history.

If we assume that discarnate intelligences who have sent posthumous messages are not Hester Dowden nor her deputies, but are impostors purporting to be her, or to speak for her, then we must ask ourselves the reason for this monstrous and elaborate practical joke which has gulled more than a dozen people into conviction of her survival only six months after her passing. Furthermore, sceptics will have formidable difficulties to explain away. Firstly, things happen for reasons. Then why all this elaborate and persistent labour from mountains just to produce a mouse? Secondly, the sceptic must contrive to explain how it was possible to enlist the help of more than a dozen experienced and well-accredited mediums, to say the same things independently of each other and to know those things only known to Hester Dowden and an intimate circle of friends. Why should Mrs. Bedford of the London Spiritualist Alliance be able in trance to imitate Mrs. Dowden's voice and to inform me that although her physical body was burnt by falling forward against an electric fire, yet her spirit had already left it and there was no pain or shock? Those facts that could be known in the above statement were true.

In truth there is always unity. Now let us assume that these

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	EPILOGUE	181

communications her friends have received do come from Hester Dowden. Instantly we are on logically unassailable ground and we need not challenge the integrity, or the truthfulness, of the mediums or controls involved, because every incident points clearly and unmistakably to the same conclusions-that fixed determination of Hester Dowden, who in earth life was nothing if not determined to give proofs of her survival to a small group of her closest friends and chroniclers. The case, therefore, is simple, logical, consistent, documented. It provides a good example of the building up of what, in legal phraseology, is called 'circumstantial evidence'.

As I have attempted to show throughout this book, communion between us and the departed is no mere question of logical brainwork and argumentation, such as will alone satisfy a legal mind. Communion is a compound of rapport between two parties in different states of being. Combined in this rapport lie the elements of sympathy, love, mutual identification of interests, understanding and faith. Add to these all the logic, fact and exactitude that can be mustered, and we find the eventual element of truth.

From a group seance given by Mr. William Roy, a few hours after her passing, Psychic News reported that "a name which sounded like Perches was also mentioned!" At this seance reference was made to the Metapsychic Group. "Roy declares that he had no knowledge of a group connected with Hester Dowden, but Psychic News are informed by Mr. G. Jacklin, secretary of the London Metapsychic Group, that this organization was founded by the famous medium years ago. It was to have met on the day following her death, but the meeting was cancelled by the secretary. More interesting, however, was the second piece of evidence. Mrs. Dowden's daughter, Mrs. Robinson, who had flown over from Ireland to attend her mother's funeral, says that the reference to Perches probably refers to the name Purtscher. Countess Nora Purtscher was a great friend of Hester Dowden."

In June 1949, Percy Allen published, in an article in Light, the following evidence, under the title: Was It Hester Dowden? "On March 7th, at the London Spiritualist Alliance, Mrs. Mary Methven, in trance, gave me a friendly message of encouragement from Mrs. Dowden's control, Johannes. Two weeks later, in Bournemouth, a friend of mine, a powerful medium, Mrs. E. L., during a call I made on her, wrote for me, automatically, the following message: 'This is Mrs. Dowden's control. (Johannes.) I want him (P.A.) not to worry. He is to continue his work, and he is to realize that his book (Talks with Elizabethans, recorded by Hester Dowden) has done good. . . .' Mrs. E. L. added verbally: 'Johannes says my medium (Mrs. Dowden) is sleeping.'

"There followed, on April 16th, the most crucial of all these


182	FAR HORIZON

happenings; for on that day, at 67a, Hampstead Way, I had my first experience of a 'direct voice' sitting, the medium being William Roy. About seven others of both sexes were present. We sat in a small room in complete darkness, with the medium in deep trance. About half-way through the hour's sitting, after many voices had spoken, I was beginning to drowse, when the lady next to me touched my arm and said: 'Mr. Allen, you are being called for.'

"At once I was fully awake and alert. After a few moments of complete silence, out of stilly darkness, from a spot seemingly about four feet above the head of the medium, who was sitting in an armchair, came a clear, cultured, and melodious voice, which I at once judged to be that of an English lady of about thirty years (I noted these figures at once). The conversation went, almost verbatim, as follows:

Voice: I am Joyce Vivian.'

P.A.: I do not remember anyone of that name.

J.V. : I used to come and visit my mother, who was a friend of Mrs. Dowden's, and I used to help her. I have a message for you from Mrs. Dowden. You must finish your book.

P.A.: I suppose you mean the sequel to Talks with Elizabethans?

J.V. : Yes, I do. Mrs. Dowden wants you to promise her that you will finish it.

P.A.: I promise faithfully that I will finish it.

J.V. : You have promised! (Yes, P.A.) Please come again in a few weeks' time, when Mrs. Dowden hopes to be able to come to you herself. At present she is resting.

"I was deeply impressed by this conversation; but knowing nothing of any Vivians, I could not, at the moment check the truth of the statements made by the spirit calling herself Joyce Vivian.

"On April 11th, having tea at my club with Miss Geraldine Cummins, the well-known writer of automatic scripts, I told her of the above communications. As a result, Miss Cummins kindly gave me Mrs. Vivian's address, to whom I wrote, receiving a most interesting reply, the principal points of which I epitomize below:

" 'My daughter's name is Joyce Vivian (she writes under the name 'Heather'). Joyce passed thirteen years ago. She was innately cultured, a writer of a 'best seller' before her passing. She had a beautiful speaking voice, very like the one which came through at Mr. Roy's. She passed at the age of eighteen.'

"These details corroborate at every point the facts stated by Joyce at the sitting, and the inferences immediately drawn by myself, including the melodious and cultured quality of the voice, which I

* Joyce Vivian used the pen name of 'Heather' for her books.


	EPILOGUE	183

noted at the time as suggesting a woman of about thirty. Joyce Vivian passed thirteen years ago at the age of eighteen. As we reckon time, she is, therefore, now thirty-one years old. When the daughter told me that she had been 'helping her mother' she meant that, at sitting after sitting with Mrs. Dowden as medium, she dictated for her mother, through Mrs. Dowden's hand, seven books, all of which have been successfully published. In order to show that 'Joyce is a reliable person to have given you H.D.'s message,' Mrs. Vivian added:

" 'Yesterday I went to William Roy's circle, to meet a Major Crawford and his wife, who told me an extraordinary thing, especially in view of your letter to-day. They are psychic and have their own circle. A short time ago a Joyce Vivian came to them (they had never heard the name; Joyce's books are all written under the name "Heather"). Joyce asked them to contact her mother, Gwendolen Vivian, (but) they thought no more of it, knowing nobody of either name.... I do feel Mrs. Dowden is determined to prove her existence through her old sitters and book-writers.... You had never heard of Joyce. Major Crawford had never heard of Joyce, yet in a week we have all linked up. Evidently Joyce is helping Mrs. Dowden while she regains her strength. Joyce must have known that H.D. was coming over. Doesn't it make the next world seem near and so real?'

"I agreed. On May 6th I sat with Mrs. Bedford at the L.S.A., when the proceedings opened as follows, and were carefully noted by me in writing as the words were spoken. The Messenger is Mrs. Bedford's control.

Messenger: Good afternoon. Thank you for coming. I want to tell you that Hester Dowden is here.

P.A.: I am delighted to greet her. Will she speak herself?

Messenger: Yes, she will speak.

[Then came a voice like Hester Dowden's in the earth-life; only much more powerful; such as it might have been in middle age. H.D.'s voice, in old age, was somewhat toneless and flat.]

H.D.: Good afternoon. I am glad to come. I knew that I had made mistakes about the future life; but it is all more beautiful than I thought. I have met your father, mother, brothers, and many old clients. Now I can help you, and inspire you to go on with your work.

"The conversation continued for about five minutes more; the subject, initiated by Mrs. Dowden, and not by me, being the need-strongly inculcated by H.D.-for prayerful humility in the sitters, by reason of the difficulties of communication, which are greater than is


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usually supposed, and greater, it seems, than H.D. had realized. I have no space for quotations here. Mrs. Dowden concluded thus:

" 'I consider that the work done by me has been God's work-more so than you know. Good-bye.' "

Now with regard to other witnesses. Frank Hemingway writes, in a letter to me, that he attended a sitting with Mrs. Bailey, which he considered a most evidential one. The control, William Hadley Wootton, who was shot through the eye when 'going over the top', leading his men at the Battle of Ypres in the First World War, stated that Johannes was present; also H.D., who said she would keep in touch with him. My own evidence comes from both Mrs. Bailey and Mrs. Bedford, and messages confirm what others have received.

Again, we have the testimony of Mrs. Vivian herself, who attended on May 2nd, 1949, a seance with Alfred Rayner, an Australian medium, who has been in this country on a visit and who is a complete stranger to her, that Hester Dowden spoke through him, and, in a voice full of emotion, thanked her for various things she had done. Again Mrs. Vivian received a message from H. D. on June 16th from Mrs. Bailey, whose control said that she was there, "a little lady about five feet one inch tall". The further message referred to the series of books which Mrs. Vivian had published through her daughter's control of Mrs. Dowden's automatic writing, when she had been on earth. It also referred to a new series which were to be written, of which the first was just finished. Hester Dowden then said: "You have missed me, my dear. I have spoken to you once before this and I made a very great effort to do so."

This was a reference to the sitting held with Alfred Rayner which was unknown to Mrs. Bailey. The message continued, mentioning that Mrs. Vivian had been reading certain scripts the last few days and that she (Hester Dowden) had been reading them with her. She also referred to the fact that Mrs. Vivian had been sorting the scripts and putting together certain fragments in the right order. All of this was perfectly correct. She then mentioned having met Mrs. Vivian's daughter Joyce, whose pen name is 'Heather', and that she had been immensely helped by her when she first passed over.

Other messages have been received by more people with further facts. It would be impossible to give additional evidence, but the gist of it would be redundant. We must, however, consider certain factors relating to Mrs. Dowden and her death which differ slightly from that which attends the passing of someone completely unknown.

Hester Dowden was well known by name to most of the more famous English mediums. Her long record of psychic investigation gave her a fame amongst enquirers, both in England and America,


	EPILOGUE	185

which is probably second only to that of Mrs. Osborne-Leonard. On the other hand, little was personally known of her outside her immediate circle; for she had absolutely no contacts with other mediums and only a few of those who went to her regularly were acquainted with the more intimate facts of her life. The Metapsychic Group was completely unknown to Mr. William Roy. Few indeed, outside its members, were aware of the existence of such a group. Yet, immediately on her death being reported, messages were received through the channels of five or six practising mediums, each of which purported either to be directly, or indirectly, from Hester Dowden. Some of these messages reveal an intimate acquaintance with what had taken place at private sittings during the last six months of her life. The facts, for example, which I received from Mrs. Elizabeth Bedford connected with the actual moment of her passing were known only to two or three people.

We have next to consider the 'colour' of these messages. They collectively reveal a marked change of personality in the communicator. It must be remembered that Mrs. Dowden, when on earth, viewed trance communication with repugnance. She did not discount it, but she considered that it was entirely outside her province and she would not have attended a trance sitting under any circumstances; certainly not during the last five years of her life. Yet we find her returning through this means and using the very channels that she would previously have rejected. I believe that her transition had created an enlargement of understanding, a greater breadth of vision and a firm resolve to make amends for the previous narrower attitude. I believe that she has bravely attempted, under very difficult circumstances, to approach the borderland of earth and spirit, in order to make known to those who would receive and report the fact that she is alive, and that she retains interest in, and affection for, the lives of her friends. One of the very earliest messages from her was to the effect that she was met by her father, Professor Dowden, who held in his arms a small pekinese. Even its name, Marco, was supplied! It must be remembered that this small dog had predeceased her by about a fortnight.

There is certainly a spiritual paradox to the truism that our fundamental personality seems to come into alignment with something greater than ourselves after death has taken place. The higher part of us is more nearly approached then by what has developed from the experiences of the earthly journey. In Mrs. Dowden's case, we can consider that this change had taken place and that she desired to round off and complete the work that she had given a lifetime to accomplish. For those who cannot accept the message which her life story tells there is the fact that spirit communication can, indeed, become coloured by the personality of the medium through whom it


186	FAR HORIZON

is derived. We must, therefore, look deeper and depend not on single messages, but on the general build-up; each message contributing a part to the greater whole. Psychic messages will continue to appear from time to time signed with the imprimatur of this remarkable woman. They will continue while she remains near earth, and then will fade and vanish when she comes to voyage into the inner spiritual planes. This record of her life here will, I hope, remain for present and future generations a means to assess the essential truth of what has happened. For truth, in time, must be revealed.

THE END


INDEX

		A	Bruton, 52
			'Bubbles', picture by Millais, 17
Abbey Theatre, The (see Robin-	Bunn, Victorian actor, 165
	son, Lennox), 22, 33, 35, 172	Burke, 19
Affinities, 98
Albert Bridge Road, 42
Allen, Percy, 148
Allison, Edward, 48, 53, 55		C
Allison, Mrs. E. W., 48
Alvernia, 114		Carlyle, Thomas, 42
Angelos, Cosmic Messenger, 105	Carneades, 82, 84, 89, 93, 109
Anita, 50		Carnegie Library Trust, 33
Anna, 52		Castle, The (see Dublin), 13,
Artillery Mansions, 49		172
Ascension, The, 7	Causerie Club, 150
Assisi, Saint Francis of, 112	Cerecloth, 80, 134
Astor, 31		Chamberlain, Neville, 145
Athenaeum, The, 38	Charcot, Dr., 15
Athenian, 80		Chelsea, 17, 64, 71
			Chelsea Book Club, 74
			Cheyne Gardens, 42, 80, 88, 113,
				138,139
	B	Ching, a pekinese, 45
			Christian Science Monitor, The, 149
			Chrysippus, 88
Bacon, Francis (Lord Verulam),	Churchill, Winston, 141
	148, 151, 153, 157	Cicero, 83
Bailey, Mrs. Lilian, 61, 184	Clarke, Miss, 18
Barrett, Sir William, 10, 14, 15,	Cleophas , The Scripts of, author,
	22, 25, 26			Miss Cummins, 35
Beatrice, 165		Clitomachus, 88
Bedford, Mrs. Elizabeth, 180,	Cooke, Mrs. Grace, 115, 151
	183, 185		Cork, 33
Benson, Sir Frank, 22	Cornellier, Dr., 106
Blake, William, 16, 177	Cosmic Messenger, 105, 109
Bligh Bond, Mr., 80, 118	Craig, Gordon, son of Ellen
Blunt, Wilfred Scawen, 71		Terry, 166
Bois, Mr. H. G., 173	Crawford, Major, 183
Bond, William (see Blake), 177	Crespigny, Mrs. de, 49
Boston, Mass., U.S.A., 27	Cummins, Miss Geraldine, 35,
Bottom the Weaver, 157		61, 66, 115, 182
Bourchier, Rev. Basil, 150	Cummins, Lieutenant, 36
British College of Psychic Science,	Curtain Drawn, The, by 'Heather'
	43,44,60		(Joyce Vivian), 147

187


188		INDEX
	D	Flammarion, Camille, 150
			Forbes-Robertsons, The, 22
Daily News, 78		Fox Blunt, Mrs., 71, 72
Davies, Miss Fanny, 21	Francesco, 113, 116
De Profundis, Oscar Wilde, 70	Francis, Miss, 114
Derby, Lord, 149	Francis, Saint, 113
Dingwell, Mr., 65	Franks, Alice, 36
Dixon, W. Macneile, author of 	Fripp, Peter (see The Book of
	The Human Situation, etc., 21		Johannes), 141
Dodd, Mr. Alfred, 147, 151, 152
Dolly, Mrs. Lennox Robinson, 42,
	45, 178				G
Dowden, Professor Edward, 13,
	16, 18, 20, 22, 24, 87, 156	Galsworthy, John, 67
Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan, 150	Garstone, 114
Drinkwater, John, 78	Gate of Remembrance, The (see Bligh
Drury Lane, 165		Bond, Mr.), 118
Dublin, 20, 66, 138, 139	Gerothwohl, Maurice A., 16
Dublin, University of, 13, 17	Gibbes, Miss E. B., 118
Dudley, Lord, 20		Gifford Lectures (of Dean Inge),
Dudleys, The, 20		89,91
Dupre, jean, 71		Glastonbury, 116, 118
			Globe Theatre, The, 154
			Glyndebourne,167
		E	Goethe (see Faust, also Elective
				Affinities), 16, 19, 102
Eglinton, John, 16	Gogarty, Oliver St. John, 19
Egypt, Egyptian, 80, 81, 123	Gray, Cecil (author of A Life of
Elective Affinities (see Goethe), 16,		Peter Warlock), 34
	103		Green, Ethel, 115, 117, 120
Elias, reincarnation of, 129	Gregory, Lady, 33
Elizabeth, Queen, 154, 155	Grenfell, Mrs., 71
Elsa, Elsie, 54		Gretchen, 53
Emaus, supper at, 136
Epicureans, 83
Eyen, 29, 30, 31			H
			Hamlet, 67, 149, 164
		F	Hardy, Thomas, 69
			Harvey (author of Companion of
Farmers' Industrial League, 47		Classical Studies), 83
Feda, 48		Haseltine, Philip (alias Peter War -
Fiddle-de-dee, by 'Heather' (Joyce		lock), 34
	Vivian), 147	Hawkins, John, grave of, 46
Fioretti ("Little Flowers"), records	Hemingway, Frank, 175, 184
	of Saint Francis, 114, 115	Hero, by'Heather' (Joyce Vivian),
Fitzgerald, 19			147
FitzWilliam Square,, Dublin, 33,	Hermia, 165
	37		Hicks, Rev. Savell, 27, 38


	INDEX	189

Hilda, Hester's young sister, 23,			L
	25
Hitler, 141		Lane, Sir Hugh, 38, 39, 76, 178
Homer, 67		Law of Affinities, the, 97, 107
Human Situation, The (see W.	Leo (see Saint Francis), 115
	Macneile Dixon), 21	Leonard, Mrs. Osborne, 48, 61,
Huxley, Aldous, 150		184
Hyslop, Dr. James, 48, 52, 53	Letters of Edward Dowden, 17
			Library, The, Alexandria, 85
			Limerick, 33
		I	Lister, Reggie (see Ribbesdale,
				Lord), 71
			Livingstone, Mr., 27, 28
Immortal Master, The (see Dodd,	Lodge, Sir Oliver, 149
	Alfred), 152	London	Spiritualist Alliance,
Imperial Theatre, 166		The, 180
International Red Cross , 33	Lorenzo (see Saint Francis), 114,
Irish Musical League, 42, 43		115
Irving, Sir Henry, 22, 167, 168	Lower FitzWilliam Street, Dub
Isis, Temple of, 29		lin, 23, 172
			Lusitania, 38
		J	Lydia, 51
					M
Jacklin, G. (see Metapsychic
	Group), 181	Macbeth, 167
Jackson, Barry, 166	McCree, 71
Jessica, 164		McDougall, Professor, 27
Jesus, 96, 101, 109, 122-7	McGill, Sir James, 18
Johannes, 10, 15, 46, 78, 79, 80,	McKenna, Sir Stephen, 89
	86, 98, 140, 147	Mackenzie, Hewett, 43
Johannes, The Book of, 141	Macready, Victorian actor, 165
John, The Baptist, 129	Magdalen, Mary, 134
John, Disciple of Jesus, 107	Mahaffy, Sir John Pentland, 119
Joyce, James, 70		Mansion House, 39
Joyce, see 'Heather' (Joyce Vivian),	Marco, Hester's last pekinese,
	146			178
Judaea, 122, 133	Marian Mackay, 54
Jupiter, 174		Mary, 55,134
			Marylebone Parish, 46
			Melnotte, 71
		K	Meredith, George, 69
			Messenger, The (see Mrs. Elizabeth
Kabala, 107			Bedford), 183
Kildare Street, Dublin, 172	Metapsychic Group, 138, 139,
King's Road, Chelsea, 45		140, 157
Klagenfurt, Austria, 173	Methuen, Mrs. Mary, 181
Knowles, Mrs., 139	Millais, 17


190		INDEX

Mortley, Alice, 115, 116	Rayner, Alfred, 184
Murray, Oswald, 116	Read, Sir Hercules, 174
Myers, F. W. H., 35	Reincarnation, 83, 110, 123, 129
			Rhine, Professor, 73
			Ribbesdale, Lord, 71
	N	Richet, Professor, 60, 73, 76
			Riding with Reka, by 'Heather'
Neighbour, Mrs., 44		(Joyce Vivian), 146
Neo-Platonists, 89	Road to Immortaliy, The (see
Nerissa, 163			Cummins, Miss Geraldine), 35
			Robinson, Lennox, 21, 33, 37,
		O		38,39,42
			Rooney, Peter, 27, 29
O'Brien, Dermod, 43	Roosevelt, 141
Occult Review, 78	Rose, Ch. de Crespigny, 49
Oldfield, Nance, 166	Royalty Theatre, The, 150
Olivier, Sir Laurence, 167	Roy, William, 181
Olympic Theatre, 162	Rudkin, 179
On the Threshold of the Unseen (see
	Sir W. Barrett), 35			S
Ophelia, 168
Ouija Board, 26, 53, 76	Sackville Street, 36
Oversoul, 85, 101	Schumann, Madame, 21
Oxford, de Vere, 17th Earl of, 151	Shabti, 80
			Shakespeare identified, 151
			Shakespeare, William, 149
		P	Shakspere. His Mind and Art (see
Paula, 58			Prof. Edward Dowden), 18
Percher (see Purtscher), 181	Sharma, 32, 40, 80
Philip the Evangelist, 122, 124	Shaw, George Bernard, 66
Phoenix Theatre, 22	Shining Brother, The (see Laurence
Pilate, Pontius, 133		Temple), 112, 115, 118
Piper, Mrs., 61		Shylock, 157
Plato, 85		Siamese Cats, 138
Plotinus, 83, 89, 92	Sidney, Mary, 156
Primrose Road, 42	Sidney, Philip, 156, 158
Princess' Theatre, 165	Sitwells, The, 78
Psychical Research, Society for,	Skibbereen, 18
	14, 25, 65, 67, 78	Smith, Dr. Travers, 23, 34
Psychic Messages from Oscar Wilde,	Smith, Hester Travers (see Hester
	60		Dowden), 13, 49, 61
Psychometry, 174, 175	Smuts, Field Marshal, 96
Purtscher, Countess Nora, 181	Socrates, 88
			Somerville, Miss E. (E., 18
			Southampton, Lady, 154
		R	Southampton, Lord, 149, 154, 156
			Speranza (see Lady Wilde), 64
Rameses, 29		Spicer, Sir Howard, 142
Ravenhill,Dr.,58	Spiritualist,14


	INDEX	191

Stalin, 141	Vivian, Mrs. Gwendolen, 146,
Stead, Estelle, 113		183, 184
Stephens, James, 33	Vivian, 'Heather', Joyce, 146,182
Stirling, Fanny, 162, 163	Voices from the Void, 27, 38
St. Patrick's Street, 18
Stratford, 166
Symposium, The (see Plato), 110
				W
	T	
			Wakeman, Mr., 27
Talks with Elizabethans (see Percy	Walker, Dr. Kenneth, 96
Allen), 148		Warlock, Peter, 34
Temple, Laurence, 112	Watson, William, 21
Tennant, Margot, 71	Weekly Dispatch, 78
Terry, Ellen, 22, 162	Wells, Mr. H. G., 66
Thackeray, 162	White, Mrs. Daisy, 71
Thelma, 55	Wickland, Dr. Carl, 176
Thomas, Drayton, 112	Wilde, Sir William, 75
Tite Street, Chelsea, 64 3 75	Wilde, Lady, 64, 75
Tree, Sir Beerbohm, 22	Wilde, Oscar, 50, 59, 60
Trinity College, 13, 19, 172	Wimbournes, The, 20
Tubby, Miss, 53	Wootton, William Hadley, 184
Turner family, The, 47			
					Y

		V	Yeats, J. B., 17, 22
			Yeats, W. B., 17, 22, 33
Venus, 65		Yezediz, 68
Victoria Eugenie, ex-Queen, 58	Yoyo (story by 'Heather'), 147