CHAPTER SEVEN

 

CLAIRVOYANCE: PUBLIC AND PRIVATE

 

In the course of a long career as a medium I have given clairvoyance in most of the principal public halls in the United Kingdom. My biggest meetings were, of course, at the Royal Albert Hall where, on most of the score of occasions that I appeared there, every one of the seven thousand seats was occupied. But, more often, my London appearances were at the Queen's Hall, where I demonstrated many, many times, and at the Seymour, Caxton, Kingsway and Aeolian Halls.

 

I asked no payment for my services though generous fees were frequently offered. I wanted only to bring my gifts to the greatest number of people, without thought of personal gain. The only exception to this rule was when I demonstrated in Scotland, Ireland, or on the Continent. My limited resources could not be stretched to cover the costs of these journeys, and at such times I was happy to accept my out-of-pocket expenses.

 

These public demonstrations usually followed a similar pattern. I always made a point of arriving at the venue, in plenty of time, going straight to the ante-room where I would silently commune with the spirit people. "I have come here as a bridge between you and your loved ones in the audience," I would tell them. "Help me to help both you and them." Not that they have ever failed me, or were ever likely to do so - of that I was quite sure. It was in my own shortcomings that my doubts lay. I imagine that few people accustomed to appearing on stage or platform entirely outgrown the "nerves" which invariably precede the big occasion. This heightening of tension is almost bound to arise and at such moments my fears were not that the spirit people would fail me but that I might somehow fail them. It was a burden of responsibility which always weighed heavily upon me until I rose to speak. Then, magically, it would disappear, to be replaced by a surging sense of power and confidence.

At the advertised hour for the meeting to begin, I would leave the ante-room and take my seat on the platform. Sometimes we would begin with a hymn and a prayer; sometimes just a prayer. This would be followed by the chairmen's introductory comments. Usually he was famous in some other field of activity and had a number of well-known people seated on either side of him. When he sat down, it was my cue to rise. I would walk to the front of the stage and, speaking into a microphone, would quote the biblical phrase, "I heard a voice from heaven say . . . “ I made a practice always of beginning with these words so that the audience would know that I was in touch with the spirit world.

 

A medium taking the platform at a mass meeting is in a very different position from any other lecturer or public speaker. The lecturer comes to the meeting prepared in advance; he knows for how long he proposes to speak and precisely what he is going to say. The medium knows neither of these things. She is there to transmit the messages of others and continues to do so for as long as they come, or until her guide calls upon her to stop. In my case I cannot recall a demonstration when there were not many more spirit messages than I could possibly give. As I listened I would hear perhaps as many as a dozen voices all excitedly claiming my attention: "Tell my mother this . . ." "Tell my brother that . . ." Often I would have to entreat them to be calm, begging them for a chance to do their bidding. I remember once remarking on this to Red Cloud after a packed meeting at the Albert Hall. "Why is it," I asked, "that all these dear ones crown in on me with never a pause or break?" He replied:

 

"The hall was filled with the people of your world tonight because they know and trust you. Does it not enter your mind that you are no less known and trusted by the people in my world, too?"

 

The receiving and transmitting of messages is always a most exhilarating experience. I feel myself vibrating with the power of the spirit as I walk from side to side of the platform, pointing to people in all parts of the audience, even to the back of the gallery. Some messages are short and to the point, others long, and some so involved that they have little meaning to anyone but their recipients.

 

Then, usually after about three-quarters of an hour, Red Cloud comes to me and says gently, "Sufficient." He always knows when the high state of tension to which I had been brought is beginning to take its effect. He never allows me to carry on beyond my

endurance. Then I bow to the audience and return to my seat. As this action is invariably greeted by an audible sigh of regret, I joyfully know I have not failed my friends in either world.

 

During the 1930's my public demonstrations of clairvoyance were regularly filled to overflowing. It used to worry me that so many interested folk should have to be turned away. One of my regular meeting places at this time was the Victoria Hall, Bloomsbury, which, in fact, was not one hall but two. Somebody suggested that it would help to solve the "House Full" problem if we were to link these two adjacent halls by microphone. This proved to be an excellent solution, enabling me to give clairvoyance to packed audiences in both halls at the same time.

 

Before the first "twin" performances, I wondered whether I should be able to project my clairvoyant powers beyond the immediate surroundings to an entirely separate assembly, even though the distance between the two was trifling. I need not have worried, however. I found I was able to send messages and describe spirit people to the audience in the second hall as successfully as if I had been sitting among them. A two-way microphone arrangement enabled those in the second hall to converse with me and acknowledge the messages I gave.

 

It was at one of these "overflow" meetings that Ishbel, Marchioness of Aberdeen and Temair received convincing proof of her husband’s survival. As a result, she became an enthusiastic Spiritualist. When, at the age of eighty-four, she joined the House of Red Cloud, she thought nothing of flying back from Paris expressly to attend my direct-voice séances. During his earthly life the Marquis had been deeply interested in Red Cloud's teaching, and had actually passed into the next world while peacefully reading one of his guide's lectures.

 

At another of these meetings a man received abundant evidence of his wife's survival from the messages I transmitted to him. He acknowledged the truth of all that I told him until I spoke of flowers being placed in his wife's coffin.

 

At this the husband explained, "What a pity you said that, Mrs. Roberts, because no flowers were put in the coffin!"

 

"It was not I who said it," I reminded him. "It was your wife who was speaking."

But, he insisted, he was quite certain no flowers had been placed inside the coffin, and emphasized that he was in a better position to know than I was.

 

However, he was on the telephone to me the next day. When he repeated the messages on his arrival at home, his daughter had told him what he had not previously known - that she had enclosed a little posy for her mother in the last few moments before the coffin was sealed. It was generous of the man to confess his error so readily.

 

Spiritualism is a subject which consistently interests the Press. Several national newspapers have conducted investigations and invited my collaboration. I have always been willing to cooperate and have invariably found them to be considerate and fair in their reports. I well remember Mr. Hugh Cudlipp, then Editor of the Sunday Pictorial, coming to take his place at one of a series of public meetings his paper had organized. A few hours earlier he had suffered a great bereavement, caused by his wife dying in childbirth. But he appeared in his place nevertheless, and stressed that nothing should be said about this tragedy, thereby earning my gratitude and admiration.

 

More recently that other mass-selling Sunday newspaper The People published a series of articles on survival after death, basing their findings in some instances on certain of my cases. I was not unnaturally proud when they named me among the five best­known women in the country, but I was embarrassed by the unexpected response. During the next few days over five thousand letters from people all over the world came pouring in to me. Most of them were from strangers, though from their wording they might have been from old friends. Thus strong is the bond that unites all who are convinced of spirit communication.

 

My marriage to Arthur Roberts ended in the divorce court in 1938. I was granted a decree on the grounds of cruelty after successfully defending an action alleging misconduct. The hearing of these actions aroused wide-spread interest in the Press. Naively I had hoped they would pass through the courts as unnoticed as the vast majority of similar cases, but in this I was sadly disappointed. The case was widely reported in all its unhappy details and in some instances the printed accounts did not stop at straight reporting. I was astonished to read in one paper, for instance, that Red Cloud would vindicate me at my next public meeting. As far as I knew this was a rumor completely without

foundation. It made me very cross that people should think I could mix my private and professional lives in this manner.

 

At this time I was speaking each Sunday evening at the Aeolian Hall in Bond Street. Although the court had clearly established my innocence, I did not look forward to that first meeting after the verdict was announced. As a representative of a religion in which I sincerely and devoutly believed, I was fearful of the general public's reaction to the widespread publicity I had received. With trepidation I made my entrance through the big swing doors. Inside, the broad foyer and the staircase leading to the hall were packed with waiting people. There was no murmur of conversation, just and uncanny silence as I walked to the foot of the stairs. Then somebody began to clap . . . and the applause was taken up all round - hands clapping, feet stamping, spontaneous cheering. The apprehension in my heart gave way to jubilation, an overpowering happiness swept through me. In the eyes of the general public I had been tried and not found wanting.

 

I opened the meeting with a flat denial of Red Cloud's "vindication" rumor. Red Cloud, I reminded my audience, was a spiritual teacher and unconcerned with my material affairs, however distasteful they may be to me. In saying this, however, I was not entirely right. At this meeting Red Cloud delivered one of his lectures, speaking, as always, through me after I had been entranced. The trance address lasted some thirty minutes and when it was over he turned briefly to the subject of my recent sufferings. Speaking of the mental stress through which I had just passed, he thanked all those present for "the love and sympathy shown to our little instrument during her hour of trial."

 

For hundred's of years witchcraft was the subject of dire punishment according to English law. The story is told of King James I sailing to meet his bride, Ann of Denmark, in 1589. The sea was rough and His Majesty was very seasick. The King believed firmly in demonology and declared that his discomfort was brought about by evil spirits invoked by witches working in league with his enemies. Determined to outlaw any recurrence of such misfortune, he set about the Passing of an Act making witchcraft a punishable offense. By 1735, however, public opinion in the efficacy of witchcraft had become considerably modified so that a new Act was drafted changing the offense to "pretending to conjure

up spirits."

 

In 1824 the Vagrancy Act became the law of the land. This was designed to protect gullible people from "rogues and vagabonds"

like itinerant gypsies who told fortunes. Although the Vagrancy and Witchcraft Acts became law before modern Spiritualism began, they were successfully used to prosecute mediums. Winston Churchill, as Prime Minister, spoke strongly against this practice when, in the midst of the war, the Witchcraft Act was invoked to prosecute a medium who was imprisoned.

 

These two Acts, which had the effect of making séances illegal and denying religious freedom to Spiritualists, were still on the State Book at the end of the Second World War. A campaign to repeal the sections which affected mediums began to gather momentum, and a vigorous attempt was made to end this archaic legislation. A Spiritualist Member of Parliament, Mr. T. J. Books, invited me to attend the first of a series of all-party dinners in the House of Commons, the purpose of the gatherings being to enlist the cooperation of M.P's in redressing our grievances. This function was attended by a large number of well-known men and women from political and social spheres. After coffee had been served I was called upon to recount some of my psychic experiences. I did so and followed my words by a practical demonstration of some of the things I had been talking about. One man, a skeptical Scotsman seated next to Maurice Barbanell, was vocally convinced by my opening preamble, and sat back to receive my demonstration of clairvoyance in the same skeptical frame of mind. A few minutes later, however, I unwittingly gave him more food for thought in this direction than he had believed possible.

 

Among the spirit messages I transmitted came one for the Scotsman - from his son. The boy had ended his earthly life in a burning aircraft and this I told the father, together with the words of comfort that the son offered. I am sure that he left the dinner table in a far less skeptical frame of mind than when he had arrived

 

Mrs. Helen Hughes was the guest-medium at another dinner, and I was present at a third. It is impossible to estimate to what extent the minds of the M.P.'s who came were influenced by these demonstrations, though some thing may be read into the fact that several of them attended more than once. The fact remains that not long afterwards Parliament amended the Witchcraft and Vagrancy Acts replacing them by the Fraudulent Mediums' Act of 1951.

 

I must confess that although under the Act, as it stood, I could have been arrested as a rogue or vagabond, I had been neither deterred nor frightened by the thought of such a happening. My

family rested a little more peacefully after the amendment, however, because it was customary for Hannen Swaffer, when on the same platform, to challenge the Police generally on duty at the rear of the Hall, because of the large audiences, to arrest me. There was no longer the need for them to carry my own Solicitor's telephone number around with them should the necessity arise for him to bail me out!

 

Many Members of Parliament have attended my public meetings and have had private sittings with me. Some of the best known, men like Ernest Bevin and George Lansbury, more than once shared the platform with me. Sir William Stewart often came to talk to Red Cloud. In May 1959 Sir William took the chair at a London public meeting at which I gave clairvoyance and openly testified to the help he had received from my guide.

 

In the course of one conversation Red Cloud warned him that a wheel of his car was unsafe. At the end of the séance Sir William drove off, forgetting the warning until he called at a nearby garage for petrol. Then he remembered and asked the attendant to make a quick check of the wheel-nuts. The man did so and reported all was well.

 

A day or so later Sir William was about to visit his mother. He knew it would mean a fast journey to get back in time to sit in the House of Commons next day, and he had not forgotten Red Cloud's warning. He decided to make a second check. He drove to another garage and accompanied the mechanic on a tour of inspection. This time they found that the retaining nuts of one of the back wheels were so dangerously slack that the wheel must have come off had the car traveled far or fast.

 

I always remember with pleasure an occasion when Mr. Ewart Dudley, whom I knew well from his regular visits for healing, brought his sister to my house for a séance. It was a particularly satisfying meeting because, unknown to me, my two sitters had prepared for it carefully and intelligently and the results were gratifyingly convincing. The sitting began unremarkably enough. One or two relatives came with short spirit messages and were at once recognized by the brother and sister. Then I said: "Ah, here comes someone rather special; she gives her name as Mary. She is very beautiful and is most excited at coming through to you. She says she is your mother."

 

"Please take this and see if it helps you," said the brother. He thrust a large sealed envelope into my hands. As my fingers closed

on it, I could feel it contained some folded textile. The mother talked almost without pause, naming another of her sons, and her husband who was with her in the spirit world. Then I added: "She says that this envelope contains some of her needlework. There is a text on it worked in red cotton.'

 

"What are the words of the text?"

 

I felt the mother gently take my hand and trace the letters with one finger on the arm of my chair:

 

“COME UNTO ME ALL YE THAT LABOR AND ARE HEAVY LADEN AND I WILL GIVE YOU REST.

 

MARY BAKER"

 

 

"There is a date on it,” said Mr. Dudley. "Can you tell us what it is?"

 

Again my finger traced the letters on the chair-arm, as I repeated aloud! "JUNE, 1869"

 

Then, still without pause, came the words:

 

"Also in the envelope are two lace fronts which I used to wear with my low-necked blouses. One is square and the other triangular in shape. There is also a narrow strip of hand-worked lace which was done by my mother, your grandmother."

 

After the sitting the Dudleys opened the envelope and studied its contents, carefully wrapped in tissue paper. They also showed me a photograph of their mother. There could be no doubt that the spirit figure I had seen was the same person, though she had appeared younger and more beautiful.

Occasionally a medium is granted the satisfaction of a cross­check on the evidence given which becomes more impressive and convincing as proof piles on proof. A remarkable instance of this was set in motion when a women telephoned my home from Manchester making an appointment to see me. At our subsequent sitting I said that her son was communicating. The boy, about twelve years of age, gave a graphic description of a fire at his school in France which had cut off his, and other, young lives. His mother was overjoyed at this evidence of his survival and I was very happy for her.

Some months later a man and his wife, who were clearly new comers to Spiritualism, were sitting with me when a well set up youngster of about twelve communicated. It often happens that people who have never given a thought to Spiritualism during long untroubled years turn to it hungrily, if uncomprehendingly, in their hour of grief. It was sorrow, I felt certain, that explained their presence in my room. I was not surprised when their young son manifested and offered the usual proofs of identity. What did surprise me, however, was that having established himself beyond doubt in the minds of his parents, he went on to give an identical description of a fire in a French school with that described by the other boy some months before.

 

Twice more during succeeding months this experience was repeated. In the end I had convinced of four lots of parents, all strangers to me and whose background I could have had no possible knowledge. In each case they had lost a son in the circumstances described.

 

Normally I make a practice of deliberately trying to erase from my mind as soon as my sitter has left whatever messages may have passed. After all, such messages, being personal to my sitter and the communicator, are no concern of mine. For this reason I often don't remember from one week to another what has transpired. On the whole, the cultivation of this "professional absence of memory" works very well, but it can occasionally be embarrassing as when the sitter, who has probably spent the whole week pondering the events of the previous visit, arrives expecting me to recall in detail precisely what happened seven days earlier.

 

However the circumstances of the tragic passing of the first of the four boys were so unusual that I could not easily forget them. I heard them again at three more séances. In each case the parents confirmed what I told them and marveled that I should describe these events in such detail.

 

Wondering how it was that four lots of parents should thus have come to me, I asked my secretary if she had any knowledge of them. She could tell me nothing save that they came from the different parts of the country. I think it likely that they were all known to each other and by prior arrangements among themselves had come one after another for proof of survival and, perhaps, to test my powers of mediumship.

 

A well-known authority and lecturer on psychic matters is Brigadier R. C. Firebrace. I am indebted to him for the details of

an extraordinary sequel to one of my voice séances where communicators speak in a replica of their earthly tones. Red Cloud announced that the Brigadier would have further experience of direct-voice mediumship "at some other time at some other place." Shortly afterwards Brigadier Firebrace was sent to Latvia as Military Attaché. There he and his wife made the acquaintance of a Russian woman who was interested in spirit communication. It was not long before the three of them formed a circle for psychic development.

 

They met twice a week in Firebrace's flat and, as usual, a trumpet, not the musical instrument but a megaphone to intensify sounds, was placed in the circle. At first they were not very successful, but they knew they were making progress when they began to get short whisperings through the trumpet. This was satisfactory as far as it went, but it also raised the intriguing question as to which was the medium. They were not kept long in suspense as one evening the trumpet began to move sharply about the room while the Firebraces were outside and only the Russian was present.

 

They continued to make progress until, to the Brigadier's astonishment, through the trumpet came mention of Red Cloud's name. The spirit voice said that Red Cloud had come to help until the Russian mediums guide had gained greater proficiency at using the trumpet. This statement was rounded off by a chuckle which the Firebraces instantly recognized as Red Cloud's distinctive laugh. From that evening onward, Red Cloud continued to visit the circle until it was broken up by the Firebrace’s return to England.

 

On the Firebraces’ first visit to me after their return home, Red Cloud volunteered a reference to their circle and its happenings in Latvia, giving further proof of supernormal knowledge at which I have never ceased to marvel.

 

The accounts I have given of events relating to a variety of people, some of them newcomers to Spiritualism, have been mostly solitary episodes for the purpose of illustrating one or another aspects of the subject. But through these happenings were presented as isolated instances they were, as often as not, nothing of the sort, being either single links in a long chain of experience, or else the first link from which many others were later to lead. It is extremely rare that anyone making his first incursion into Spiritualism, and witnessing some psychic phenomenon, does not investigate more deeply. Indeed, the very nature of Spiritualism

insists that he should. In my experience, the more you know about psychic phenomena, the more you want to know. This opinion has been borne out by the scores of sitters who came to me knowing practically nothing and remained to make psychic study almost their life’s work.

 

One such was a headmaster of a large boy's school, a man with a critical, well-trained mind. He first visited me about six years ago, seven months after his world had collapsed when his wife and younger son, Roger, were killed in a flood disaster. He knew no more of Spiritualism than he had read in the popular press, and was almost aggressively skeptical of it, though out of courtesy for me he tried to conceal it. He came partly out of curiosity, but principally because friends had urged him to do so. Such, then, was his frame of mind when we met - certainly not the ideal conditions for producing a convincing demonstration.

 

However, I did my best, beginning with detailed portraits of his wife and son. What followed was later described by the man himself:

 

"I sat dumbfounded as a stream of references to the small things which had made up our world came through from the Other Side in a young boy's language. Mostly they were things which nobody but I could now know about - Roger's prized watch which had been found in the debris left by the flood; the mole on his thigh; the chipped tooth that had bothered us lest it interfered with his playing the clarinet; the present whereabouts of his playbox; the photograph I had put away because I could no longer bare to look at it. Mention of all these and many more poured out in a torrent of words and in terms of expression that could have been no one's but Roger's.

 

"Then Estelle said:- `Your wife is speaking of a bruise on her left cheek.' Immediately my thoughts rushed back to the dread I had felt as I entered the mortuary lest my dear ones be disfigured in death. Then had come the relief of finding that the only mark either bore was a small bruise under Alice's left eye.

 

"As a result of that first sitting with Estelle I read all I could lay my hands on relating to psychic phenomena. And I kept going back for further sittings. With each new sitting I got more evidence, incontrovertible evidence, of eternal survival. My father came and spoke with me, as did Alice's parents, a cousin and two old friends, each contributing substantial support to the concepts that were running in my mind . . .

"I learned that Estelle was a healer and eagerly asked her if she would treat a friend whose spine had been injured five years previously. She readily agreed though the doctors said the injury was incurable and the unhappy girl was resigned to spending the rest of her life in a spinal jacket. Estelle gave her healing, and for six months there was no apparent change. Then, quite suddenly, there was some improvement, and we dared to hope again. The improvement, once started, advanced apace. In a matter of weeks all pain had ceased and, a few months later, full use of the spine was restored.

 

"I continued to sit with Estelle, and one day came a message from Red Cloud indicating that the healing of my friend was an example of what could be done by spirit healing. I also could exercise such gifts, he said, if I would devote myself to the things which must be done. I felt very humble and inadequate, but immeasurably proud to have been thus chosen. I applied myself to learning, and under Estelle's guidance it has been my privilege to bring about many healings wrought by divine power working through prayer.

 

"Thus out of tragedy had grown new understanding. My recovery from the shattered loss of my wife and son has been due to the ample proofs of the nature of life, both here and hereafter. In grief l learned the true meaning of earthly existence and my own life is now ordered accordingly. Indeed, it could hardly be otherwise for `as he thinketh in his heart, so is he'."

 

This is a very happy sequel to this story, as I now have the frequent pleasure of meeting with this headmaster with his second wife, the lady of the spinal jacket, and they have the most adorable small daughter.

 

An interesting instance of earthly friendship continuing undisturbed by death is that of Sir John Marshall and the late Marquess Curzon of Kedlestone. Sir John, a distinguished scholar, the author of a number of outstanding works on Indian antiquities, was one-time Director General of Archeology in India. Lord Curzon was Viceroy of India when the two men first met. Their mutual love of archaeology quickly drew them together and cemented a friendship which was broken with Curzon's death in 1925 but reborn thirty years later.

 

It was in 1954 that Sir John came to see me for the first and only time. Even then he was an old man, unable to get about as he

could have wished. Ever since it has been his daughter, Margaret, who has come in his stead. Many times she has visited my house and carried back messages from Curzon to her father.

 

The occasion of Sir John's solitary visit was a memorable one. The sitting began inauspiciously enough until I mentioned the name, Curzon of Kedleston. Instantly Sir John was agog.

 

"What does he say?" he demanded.

 

"He asks whether you remember the two stone elephants." "Remember them? Of course I do."

 

This reference to the elephants convinced Sir John beyond all doubt that he was in communication with his old friend, because nobody but Curzon could have known the allusion. Explaining it, Sir John told me that he and Curzon, fully fifty years before, had been working together on reassembling the fragments of two black, stone elephants they had uncovered at Delhi Fort. Who but he and Curzon would remember, or even be aware of, an incident which, compared with their many other more important activities, was almost a triviality?

 

From that time onwards, Lord Curzon often communicated when Margaret Marshall was with me. Once she took a message to her father from Red Cloud. The guide said that he wished her father to know that he visited him from time to time and was familiar with his surroundings. As proof of his words he spoke of a curious little image in Sir John's room that carried an inscription on its base. Margaret knew the image well enough but was puzzled about the inscription. To the best of her knowledge it did not have one. On returning home her first action was to examine the image, The inscription was so minute that one had to look closely to see it.

 

Two years prior to this, Red Cloud had bewildered Margaret and me by speaking of a highly evolved spirit being who was helping Sir John and who had first been in touch with him many years previously in India. Time after time he spelled out the name, but for some reason I could never get beyond the first six letters - MAHAMO. Six more letter followed these but, try as I would, I could not get them. The first six letters, however, were sufficient for Sir John; he knew the name at once as one of Buddha's two chief disciples. He told Margaret how he had once reconstructed a burial mound containing relics of Buddha and his followers Mahamogalana and Sariputra. He had spent endless time and