XI
AN OBSCURITY MADE CLEAR

 

WITH one exception the Mrs. K. messages /thus far received had been communicated mentally; the new series came by the way of automatic writing. On March 11th, Joan, in my absence, put pencil to paper with the thought that some further word of interest to Mrs. K. might come. I quote the proceedings that ensued, the communications themselves being indicated by the word "pencil":

 

PENCIL (writing after Joan had sat waiting for ten minutes): Do you remember the necktie with the scrawly pattern? [These words were followed by great indecision on the part of the pencil. Then the writing was continued, but apparently by another communicator.]

 

PENCIL: He wants to say he never liked to wear it. JOAN: Who is this?

PENCIL: Charles—Charles—Charles. JOAN: Do you know Mrs. K.?

PENCIL: Yes, very well. Good friends with her and

JOAN: Are you trying to say "her husband

PENCIL: Yes, yes. Wading in a brook, wading in a brook—

no, brooks.

JOAN: Is this Charles talking?

PENCIL: Yes, but not my necktie—not my necktie.

JOAN: All right, Charles. It's not your necktie. But did you go wading in a brook?

PENCIL: NO.

JOAN: Did you know Mrs. K. when she was a little girl? Joan thought that possibly Charles was a childhood friend of Mrs. K. and that they might have gone wading together as children.]

PENCIL: No. [And then the pencil came to a halt, writing nothing more for a space of seventeen minutes. Then—]

PENCIL: Charles wading in brooks. [Again the pencil stopped; whereupon Joan spoke the name of Stephen, asking him to come and straighten matters out.]

PENCIL (apparently Stephen): Be patient. The words are not for you. [And again the pencil was idle for a while.]

PENCIL (not Charles, but evidently the original communicator, who Joan had thought might be Mr. K.): Necktie—did not like. She will remember the incident. She said

 

I was fussy. My friend Charles is here with me. My hand—my hand—my hand. [I italicize the last words; they proved very interesting.]

JOAN: Can you give some other identification in addition to "necktie"?

PENCIL: Beside the lake, beneath the trees, laughing and dancing in the breeze.

JOAN: You are quoting Wordsworth. PENCIL: Don't you like daffodils?

 

This script, so lacking in the ease and coherence of Stephen's philosophical discussions, would seem, at first glance, to be wholly valueless. But Joan and I have learned that the obstacles of subconsciousness frequently give to really evidential messages an appearance of worthlessness. We doubled the script up and forwarded it to Mrs. K. Her reply said, in part:

 

"When I began reading your script I said to myself, 'I don't know anybody named Charles.' Then came 'wading in a brook—no, brooks.' And there flashed into my mind that a very dear and intimate friend of Mr. K.'s was named Charles Brooks."

 

The chance of Joan ever having known of such a friendship was so remote that Mrs. K. did not suggest a subconscious explanation. Yet, after all, "Charles Brooks" was a mere inference on Mrs. K.'s part; the word "Charles" had been written, and the phrase "wading in brooks." The inference is interesting. But is one justified in definitely concluding that Charles Brooks was the communicator or even that the "pencil" intended to suggest his name?

 

"Necktie" meant nothing to Mrs. K., she said; she had never accused her husband of being "fussy." Did the quotation from Wordsworth mean anything?

 

Joan and I, looking the lines up, found them in the little poem "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud," the first stanza of which reads:

 

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering ["laughing" in the communication] and dancing in the breeze.

 

We read the entire poem through time and time again, hoping to discover a purpose behind its being dragged into the script. We could find none. And the fact that the communicator had asked Joan, "Don't you like daffodils?" seemed as pointless as the quotation itself.

 

Then on the evening of March 15th Stephen, communicating mentally, said: "Tell Mrs. K. that her husband has not forgotten the many yellow flowers she bloomed in the spring. Tell Mrs. K. to think on daffodils."

 

Stephen's words were mailed to Mrs. K. In a hurried reply, received by Joan March 18th, Mrs. K. said:

 

"I have raised daffodils in the house every spring for nearly twenty years, and they have been quite notable among my friends."

 

At last it looked as though Joan's and Mrs. K.'s correspondence had got somewhere. The Wordsworth quotation had acquired a very definite meaning. Unless it could be shown that knowledge of Mrs. K.'s daffodils was a part of the forgotten store of Joan's mind, the evidence that some extraneous agency was at work would be, to use Mrs. K.'s words, "most important."

 

Writing more in detail on March 19th, Mrs. K. said:

 

"The statement relative to the daffodils I raised in the spring is important; and yet I have to admit that there is a possible explanation. My daffodils were occasionally noticed in a local paper, which you might have seen. I hasten to say that it is my instinctive conviction that neither you nor Darby ever did see these notices. Yet the publicity given my narcissi catches me by the ankle just as I start to run with freedom!"

 

Again that vexing riddle—what is and isn't in Joan's subconscious mind! Again Joan can say that to the best of her belief she never read a word regarding Mrs. K.'s daffodils.

 

And, I think, something further can be said. The first daffodil suggestion was contained in the quotation from Wordsworth. This quotation itself did not mention daffodils, but was taken from a stanza that does. Stephen has said that the concrete is most difficult to communicate, because it tends to awaken the latent memories of the receiving station's own mind. But he has also indicated that, in order to catch the receiving station's subliminal off guard, it is sometimes necessary to employ roundabout methods, that the store of the subconscious, though so often an obstacle to communication, offers, nonetheless, one of the roundabout ways by which the concrete may sometimes be communicated.

 

Let us assume that Mr. K. was actually seeking to identify himself to Mrs. K. and for that purpose desired to use the word "daffodils." Had he come out with the word pointblank, Joan's subliminal might have traveled off on a personal tangent, relating such experiences of her own as the word suggested; and narration of these experiences might have entirely blocked the word. Instead of running this risk, Mr. K., let us say, found in Joan's mind memory of Wordsworth's daffodil poem; it was easy for Mr. K. to influence Joan and the pencil to write a quotation from this poem; the lines were quite impersonal. Once the verses were written the daffodils became a logical consequence. Mr. K. could then ask Joan with safety, "Don't you like daffodils?" and so, after much indirection, clinch the matter, preparing the way for Stephen to tell, without difficulty, of the many yellow flowers Mrs. K. had been wont to raise in the spring.