Things near & far
to stand on the very verges of an unknown world.
So the winter of ’84–85 went on and I dreamed and wondered and did
nothing, though I was nearing the age at which many a young man has
produced his first novel with success and acclaim. I never could
do these things, and still I cannot do them. I knew that I had no
business to be loafing and mooning about the rectory, a burden on my
poor father--the “John” of that happy return of the ’fifties had by
this time experienced sorrows and pains and miseries of all sorts.
My mother had been a hopeless invalid for fifteen years, my father’s
health had failed and he had become very deaf, the poor “living”
of Llanddewi Fach had grown poorer still through the agricultural
smash of 1880, he was in dire and perpetual straits for money, he
underwent most of the mortifications which are allotted to the poor.
It makes me grieve to this day to remember with what piteous sadness
he would lean his head on his hand; he had lost hope; nothing had
any savour for him any more. And seeing this, I was distressed to be
an additional weight in the heavy pack of sorrows and trials that he
bore daily, and I tried to get all sorts of employments for which I
was utterly unfit, which would not have harboured me for twenty-four
hours. Nothing came of these attempts, and so the time went on till
we were in June, 1885. Then there was a letter from the publisher
of “The Anatomy of Tobacco” to the effect that he thought he could
find me some odd jobs of work if I would come up to London; and so I
returned again to the well-remembered cell in Clarendon Road.
With mixed feelings. I was glad indeed at the prospect of doing
something for myself and so removing a little from the weary burden
at the rectory: but, I had not forgotten the _peine forte et dure_;
the dry bread, enough and no more than enough, the water from a
bitter runnel of a sorrowful street, the heavy weight of perpetual
loneliness. “Alone in London” has become a phrase, it is a title
associated, I think, with some flaring melodrama; but the reality is
a deadly thing. I was only twenty-two; and I shuddered a little one
June night when I went out and bade farewell to the brooks and the
woods and the flowers; to the scent of the evening air.
All sorts of odd jobs and queer jobs awaited me. I was given a
big folio book full of cuttings on a particular subject, and the
publisher asked me to make a selection from these and so compile a
book of oddments. Then, there were novels submitted to him that I
was to read and advise upon: a weary business when the said novels
were as a rule foolish things written in varieties of straggly and
scraggy scripts. But the principal business was the making of the
Catalogue. For the publisher of York Street was also a second-hand
bookseller. He had a mass of odd literature stored in a garret in
Catherine Street, and on these volumes I was let loose; my main
business being to write notes under the titles, notes describing the
content of the books and setting that content in an alluring manner
before the collector.
It was as odd a library as any man could desire to see. Occultism
in one sense or another was the subject of most of the books. There
were the principal and the more obscure treatises on Alchemy, on
Astrology, on Magic; old Latin volumes most of them. Here were books
about Witchcraft, Diabolical Possession, “Fascination,” or the Evil
Eye; here comments on the Kabbala. Ghosts and Apparitions were a
large family, Secret Societies of all sorts hung on the skirts of the
Rosicrucians and Freemasons, and so found a place in the collection.
Then the semi-religious, semi-occult, semi-philosophical sects and
schools were represented: we dealt in Gnostics and Mithraists, we
harboured the Neoplatonists, we conversed with the Quietists and
the Swedenborgians. These were the ancients; and beside them were
the modern throng of Diviners and Stargazers and Psychometrists
and Animal Magnetists and Mesmerists and Spiritualists and Psychic
Researchers. In a word, the collection in the Catherine Street garret
represented thoroughly enough that inclination of the human mind
which may be a survival from the rites of the black swamp and the
cave--or an anticipation of a wisdom and knowledge that are to come,
transcending all the science of our day.
Which? It seems to me a vast question, and I am sure it is utterly
insoluble. Of course, an enormous mass of occultism, ancient and
modern, may be brushed aside at once without the labour of any
curious investigation. Madame Blavatsky, for example, her coadjutors
and assessors and successors need not detain us. I do not mean that
every pronouncement of Theosophy is false or fraudulent. A liar is
not to be defined as a man who never by any chance speaks the truth.
A thief occasionally comes honestly by what he has. I mean that
the specific doctrines and circumstances of Theosophy: the Mahatma
stories, the saucers that fell from the ceiling, the vases that were
found mysteriously reposing in empty cupboards, the Messiahship of
a gentleman whose name I choose to forget: all this is rubbish, not
worth a moment’s consideration. And so with Spiritualism; though
in a less degree. For I am strongly inclined to believe that very
odd things do sometimes happen amongst those who “sit,” that some
queer--and probably undesirable--psychic region is entered; and all
this quite beyond and beside the intention or understanding of those
present at the séance. You never know what may happen when a small
boy pokes his fingers carelessly among the wheels and works of a
clock. But as to the profession of the Spiritualists; that they are
able to communicate with ghosts, _that_ need not trouble us. Their
photographs of fairies need not trouble us. Their revelations as to
the life of the world to come as given through the Rev. Vale Owen
need not trouble us. Though here is a “phenomenon” which seems to me
of no little interest. How can a man who is confessedly perfectly
honest and straightforward conjure himself into the belief that when
he takes up a pencil an intelligence apart from himself guides his
hand as he writes? I suppose the answer involves the doctrine of
dual or multiple personality; and _that_ is mysterious enough in all
conscience. Yet, apart from all the nonsense, apart from the state
of mind of the average Spiritualist--one of them, a very eminent
one in his day, said that the clause of the Creed: “I look for the
Resurrection of the Dead” meant “I expect to see some physical
manifestations of the departed”--apart from all this I still think as
I have said that very strange and inexplicable things do sometimes
happen. Here is nothing to do with ghosts: but the evidence that the
famous medium Home rose into the air, floated out of an open window
high on a Scottish castle tower and floated in again at another
open window: the evidence here is good; that is, if levitation,
as they call it, were a criminal offence and Home had been put on
his trial he would have been convicted. It will be seen that I am
not exactly a fanatical Spiritualist: but I had rather be of the
straightest sect of Rappers and Banjo Wielders than of that company
which understands all the whole frame and scheme of the universe
so thoroughly and completely that it is absolutely certain that
levitation is impossible, that a man cannot rise into the air unless
he is mechanically and materially impelled and supported, that no
evidence, however direct and unimpeachable, can establish this for a
fact. I do not understand the universe; consequently I do not dare to
advance any such proposition. And further; let me diminish a little a
proposition that I have only just dared to make. I have said that all
the ghost business, all the Vale Owen sort of business, is rubbish
and foolery. Well, I believe most heartily and profoundly that it
_is_ rubbish, nonsense, unveridical to the last degree; in fact, and
in the proper sense of the word, a lie. Yet; let us beware. Not one
of us understands the universe. Even in the Higher Mathematics, the
Queen of profane sciences, very odd things are reported to happen.
So, possibly, the following account may really correspond with the
truth of things.
The room is in total darkness. One of the sitters proclaims with
exultation that his nose has been tweaked by _Joey_, who, on
this side, was a clown. _John King_, understood to have been a
master-mariner, sings “Tom Bowling” in a falsetto voice through a
speaking trumpet. On this, Cardinal Newman, known to be a lover of
music, is gratified and utters the word “Benedictine.” There is a
sudden scream of joy in a female voice: “Oh! darling Katy, thank you,
thank you, _thank you_! Oh, _please_, may we have the lights turned
up for a moment? Katy promised me a lock of her beautiful golden
hair, and I am _sure_ I felt it float down on my hand.” The lights
are turned up. A strand of yellow hair is, sure enough, reposing
on the lady’s hand. It had evidently been treated with spiritual
peroxide, made, no doubt, of Ethers, like the ghostly whiskey and
sodas in “Raymond.” Then the room is darkened and the Medium takes up
the tale.
“This spirit’s name is Milton. Henry--no, John Milton, the author of
the ‘Faery Queen.’ He says that he is very happy. He spends most of
his time with Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. Shakespeare has confessed
to him that all his plays were written by Bacon. The evidence will be
found in a brass box under the Tube station at Liverpool Street. Pope
often has tea with him. He says they don’t use alcohol there.”
There is a sudden crash. “Avast!” comes with a roar through the
trumpet. _John King_ has returned, bringing with him an _American
Indian_ who speaks in the idiom of a Nigger Minstrel practising in
the East End of London and will call the Medium his “Midi.” Whereupon
Katy puts a beautiful warm arm round the neck of a gentleman
sitter and the gramophone plays “Abide with me.” All repeat the
Lord’s Prayer, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle expresses his intense
gratification.
Well; it may be so. But I hope it isn’t, and I shall never believe
that it is so.
Well; there I laboured in the Catherine Street garret amidst all
this, and much more than this. Down below were the publishing
offices of old Mr. Vizetelly, who was issuing English translations
of Zola at the time, and was at last sent to gaol for publishing an
English version of “La Terre,” an obscene book that every judicious
Bishop of Central France should put in the hands of newly ordained
priests--if it is to be accepted that the physician ought to have
some knowledge of the constitutions of his patients and of the
diseases from which they are suffering. It was a sumptuous and rich
garret--a street now passes over the site of the house--filled with
that mysterious odour that used to prevail in oldish London houses
that were not too carefully swept and washed and polished, and there
day after day I worked, reading and annotating, and all alone. Now
and then in the older books I came across striking sentences. There
was Oswaldus Crollius, for example--I suppose his real name was
Osvald Kroll--who is quoted by one of the characters in “The Great
God Pan.” “In every grain of wheat,” says Oswaldus, “there lies
hidden the soul of a Star.” A wonderful saying; a declaration, I
suppose, that all matter is one, manifested under many forms; and,
so far as I can gather, modern science is rapidly coming round to
the view of this obscure speculator of the seventeenth century; and,
in fact, to the doctrine of the alchemists. But I would advise any
curious person who desires to investigate this singular chamber of
the human mind to beware of over-thoroughness. Let him dip lightly
from the vellum quarto into the leather duodecimo, glancing at a