CHAPTER IV. THE SUB-CONSCIOUS

NOW that I have described the methods as to how these communications came to us, perhaps it is well to discuss the three explanations which are most likely to present themselves to my readers.

First, and apparently simplest, is the theory that Oscar Wilde has arisen from the subconscious memories of one or both of the mediums who produced the script.

I have already disposed of the idea that Mr. V. or I had been reading Wilde's books immediately before these messages came or that he or I were enthusiastic admirers of his work. That is naturally what the man in the street says when he glances at these writings. It is true that if either of the mediums had been making a special study of Wilde's work, there would be a very strong case for the sub-conscious. Even then there are points which would throw it off its balance. I shall not discuss this sub-conscious theory except as a possible result of our readings of Wilde many years ago and a less possible result of one or both of the mediums having at some time seen a fac-simile or autograph, which would account for the handwriting.

We are told by Freud and Jung, whose work on this subject has met with very general acceptance, that everything seen, known or heard of is photographed indelibly on the sub-conscious mind; everything, literally, which has become a memory is there. Therefore, if I had at some time in my life (now remote) picked up a book in some shop or stall and glanced at it momentarily, whatever had met my eyes would probably remain in my sub-consciousness, buried, but still alive. So that, if conditions were favourable, that memory might, as well as any other, rise to the surface. Now what are the conditions that send these buried memories floating up to the conscious mind from the sub-conscious? To put it very mildly, the most favourable condition is suspension of consciousness. This occurs, of course, in sleep, in hypnosis, in trance. In a lesser form, I believe it occurs when the medium is writing automatically, using the ouija board or gazing into a crystal. Under these circumstances we may draw up from the well of our memories anything we have seen, known, or heard of.

I do not attempt to dispute this hypothesis; it has, like many others, been proved and accepted. That of course does not mean that it will not be disproved at some future time. There are stumbling blocks for the unscientific person in accepting this theory. It seems difficult to account for the strange selection of fish that we draw up in our net.

If the sub-conscious really holds all our memories, why is it that what is brought to the surface is frequently what has been of no particular moment to us? 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 sub-consciousness amuse itself by plagiarising 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 plagiarise.” 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 had seen an autograph or fac-simile 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 sub-conscious memories, while others more important cannot be induced to make their appearance. Now, from these rags and tatters in the sub-consciousness 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 fac-simile of his manuscript and which continues without a break through hundreds of MS. 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. I fancy the most accomplished forger would find it a tough job to carry on through even a hundred pages-much less through our manuscript. Of course, speaking from my own small experiments, I am quite aware that the sub-conscious mind can do what the conscious mind is incapable of. Its clairvoyante or “cryptesthetic” powers are entirely different from those of the conscious mind. In fact in my own case semi-hypnosis seems actually to create powers which I do not ordinarily possess. Normally I have no clairvoyante gift at all that I am aware of, yet at the ouija board I develop a power of getting at facts which are not present in my consciousness. In my normal state I might hold an object in my hand for hours and get no impression of its history, but at the ouija board I can do psychometry. These facts are, I take it, due to a state of semi-hypnosis, although any person sitting with me would probably say I was fully conscious. A very important point in this case would be to discover where the suggestion arose which brought about this Oscar Wilde episode. It seems apropos of nothing. I sit at the ouija board and ask my control to write me a poem or an essay, and, at a speed which far exceeds that of the fastest writing, a poem or essay is written, which is perhaps crude but is quite beyond my powers unless I were to sit and think. Here we have script after script poured out at a headlong rate in Oscar Wilde's style; indeed, in his two styles, for we get his over-ornate and redundant prose and that sharp caustic humour of his alternately.

It is said that Wilde was not quick at repartee. Whistler's rapid shafts of wit used to annoy him because he never could reply with equal speed. If the ouija talks sometimes contain expressions which seem cruder than anything Wilde might be supposed to have used, it should be remembered that they are conversations; they certainly are not prepared as the automatic writings appear to be. The latter nearly always savour of the essay.

I am quite ready to admit that the whole case can be explained by anyone who accepts Professor Richet's theory that, under certain circumstances a clairvoyante power, above and beyond what we possess normally, comes to us; but I am not inclined to think that it i's due to sub-conscious plagiarism alone. It is too accurate, too sharply defined. What rises from the submerged past of us is blurred in its outlines. It is ever ready to accept suggestion and spin elaborate webs around it, but where there is no suggestion it is inclined to be indefinite. From long practice I have come to recognise little halts and hesitations where the sub-conscious alone is at work. In producing these scripts we have sometimes had long pauses, and with the ouija board there have been halts where the communicator was obviously hunting for a happy expression, but in neither case has there been the groping that comes when one feels instinctively that we are dealing with the subconscious mind alone.

All that I have said on this subject seems a special pleading against the conclusion (which might be arrived at rapidly by any intelligent outsider who reads the scripts) that both mediums, having a certain knowledge of Wilde's work, were plagiarising from their submerged memories. I think the opinion of the medium is worth something on that point; I feel instinctively that it was not the case.

If we take these scripts one by one and analyse them we shall find much that speaks in favour of and against this idea. In the first automatic writing we had a dozen or more passages which, though not quotations, were parallel with passages in “De Profundis,” “Dorian Gray,” and “Intentions.” That fact, of course, is an argument in favour of the subconscious idea. On the next occasion we had a completely uncalled for essay on the Society for Psychical Research, suggested probably by the presence of Mr. Dingwall. His presence there might have given the sub-conscious mind a suggestion; but, if so, how very aptly it responded! Going back to the first script it should be remembered that when I asked the address at which Sir William and Lady Wilde lived in Dublin, which I knew, the reply to my question was that it could not be recalled; but the Tite Street address, which I did not know, was given. Mr. V. or I may have had this information at some time, but that cannot be proved or disproved. Later on we bad various facts given to us which we could not have known consciously and which go to disprove the sub-conscious hypothesis. Some of these related to Wilde's personality, small details which could not have reached me unless I had read a life of Wilde or met someone who knew him intimately. He left Ireland after he had graduated at Trinity College, and I never came across any member of his family, or, so far as I know, anyone who knew him personally. Except one, the literary scripts all came through the ouija board. The first, which was in automatic writing, deals with H. G. Wells, Arnold Bennett and Eden Philpotts. Neither Mr. V. nor I had ever read a page of Eden Philpotts' work and very little of Arnold Bennett's; rather more of Wells. It is noticeable that very little is said of Wells. Both automatists were more familiar with his work than that of either of the other novelists. Surely more should have been photographed on our sub-conscious minds of Wells, whose works are fairly familiar to us, than of Bennett, who is criticised in greater detail and of whose writing we know far less. Again, in speaking to me at the ouija board of Shaw, Galsworthy, Hardy, Meredith and Moore, if this is sub-conscious criticism direct from my mind, the submerged portion of me must hold entirely different opinions from my consciousness. Joyce, I had not read. I had glanced at a few pages at the beginning of his book, but felt the task beyond my powers and resigned myself to being one of the persons who had not succeeded with “Ulysses.” I admit, of course, that in some indirect way, I might have gathered that Philpotts wrote about Dartmoor. If so, I have absolutely no recollection of the fact. Mr. V. was as much at sea about this allusion to Devonshire as I was. I admit also that my sub-conscious mind may be the direct opposite of my conscious mind. It is a fact which no one can prove or disprove. If so, the literary criticism of my sub-consciousness in its opposition to my consciousness is singularly accurate, except in the case of Galsworthy, where in a sense I agree with Wilde. Then there arises that interesting point, which could not possibly have come from me, consciously or subconsciously. On those three or four different occasions, always through the ouija board, Wilde speaks of the “fluid state of his mind at the other side.” I have referred to this incident in a previous chapter and pointed out that at the seance after Wilde's death he has described his condition in almost the same words as in my script; the IDEA is exactly the same. How did this idea reach me? It does not strengthen the sub-conscious theory.

In the last message that came through the automatic writing-which consists of a series of tattered memories-Wilde says: “I was M. Sebastian MELNOTTE in those days.” This was quoted to me as definite proof that the subconscious memory had supplied the word, as MELMOTH was the name which Wilde took after he left prison. On looking again at the original automatic script, I found that the name was first spelt Melnotte and afterwards Melmoth. Strangely enough, some weeks later I saw in The Times a notice of a sale of Oscar Wilde's letters. In it was mention of several of these being signed “Sebastian Melmoth,” and further, there was one in which Wilde asked that the reply should be addressed M. Sebastian Melnotte. He says in that letter that he will explain the change later on. These facts cannot have arisen from either Mr. V.'s mind or mine. Neither of us knew consciously the name Wilde had taken and certainly we did not know that he had used two different versions of that name.

Again, in the script in which the planets are mentioned, some knowledge of astronomy is displayed which might come from Mr. V's brain. He, being a mathematician, is naturally conversant with this subject. This can be used as a prop for the sub-conscious case. It seems, however, to be expected that the communicator will make use of what is in the brain of the medium; these references to the history of astronomy are selected by Wilde merely to illustrate his own argument; possibly the literary criticisms may have been helped by the material in mine, though, of course, that is less probable, as Wilde was distinguished in literature. I therefore ask my readers to pause and consider a while before they decide that the script contained in this book is merely sub-conscious plagiarism from the medium or mediums as the case may be. I am quite willing to admit the possibility that it may arise mainly from the subconsciousness; but before deciding I would ask that these who take it seriously would weigh what evidence there is, and would consider whether this evidence covers all the ground. To my mind the completeness of these results show some more subtle cause. I feel that the handwriting is the point that almost decides me against this hypothesis. Sceptics are often more credulous than persons who allow their imagination to carry them away in a different direction, who admit that there may be a larger reality outside themselves.

Apropos of the unbelievers I am glad to find in Professor Richet's new book that he sets aside the argument, so often repeated to me, that every medium is a fraud; that the professional medium has taken pains to become so expert a conjuror that he or she might well make an easier living on the music hall stage; or that a private “Scotland Yard” is employed by the average clairvoyante in order to discover facts about every client who knocks at his or her door. It seems, on the face of it, rather absurd to imagine that the very moderate fee offered to the professional medium could cover such heavy expenses. These however, are the arguments put forward by highly intelligent and sceptical persons deeply interested in Psychical Research, perhaps because they suffer the pain which Professor Richet speaks of, the pain which comes from belief being wrung from us in what we hoped was the impossible. I can say with perfect sincerity that I believe in my sub-conscious mind. No one who has worked for so long at experiments under various degrees of hypnosis could deny the fact for a moment. What I doubt is, that as definite an entity as the Oscar Wilde of these scripts can be dramatised 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 sub-conscious” 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 all 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 on cases such 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.

CHAPTER V. CRYPTESTHESIA

LET us now consider this case from Professor Richet's point of view and see how far it will lead us towards solving the problem of Oscar Wilde's unexpected appearance. Let us set aside the suggestion that he may possibly be speaking to us from some unknown region, the conditions of which we are unable to understand, and assume that our script has risen entirely through the medium's clairvoyante or cryptesthetic powers.

To express it simply. Professor Richet's theory is that science has proved, under conditions which cannot be definitely defined, that it is possible to develop “cryptesthesia,” a supernormal power by which we become aware of facts unknown to us in either the present, past or future. We have therefore no proof of survival and none is possible.

Such a hypothesis can carry us over all the ground if we are ready to accept it. In my first chapter I have already spoken of this solution of the difficulties that beset the student of Psychic Science. I shall not say that I am wholly convinced by it, but I am quite ready to admit that it is entirely logical and would probably be entirely satisfactory to certain types of mind. In fact to these persons it will be an immense relief to shake off all the difficulties of proving survival and rest on a basis which seems natural and conceivable.

As I continued to read “Thirty Years of Psychical Research “I grew more and more interested. We progress from telepathy to monitions and premonitions to the problem of psychometry, which seems insoluble to ordinary mortals, to pre-vision, an even more impossible puzzle, and we finish with hauntings. There we call a halt; for, so far, materialisations and “telekenesis,”* etc., though scientific facts, cannot be explained; cryptesthesia does not take us quite the whole way.

*The levitation of objects without contact with the medium.

We must not be alarmed in discussing Professor Richet's theories by the fact that the strain on our imagination will be more severe than if we admit the possibility of survival. Through countless ages we have been taught to look forward to a life beyond the grave where reward or punishment awaits us according to our deserts. This belief is so embedded in our nature that it requires less effort to entertain it than to accept a series of ideas dealing purely with what is intangible; which involves faith in a power, the possession of which has been hitherto discredited by many of our scientists. For cryptesthesia is practically what we used to call clairvoyance. It is more extended in its application; it is the power of “seeing more clearly” than the ordinary mortal, seeing in many directions to which the “clairvoyante” vision was not supposed to extend. What amazes me most in reading Professor Richet's book is that he accepts more than many of us, provided the case fits in with his central idea. Trifles, which seem hardly worth recording, present themselves to him as fresh evidence of his hypothesis. We recognise that with Professor Richet cryptesthesia fills all the cracks; we must preserve a critical attitude and not permit ourselves to be carried away too far by his enthusiasm,

Let us now analyse the case of Oscar Wilde from Professor Richet's point of view.

In speaking of Mrs. Piper's phenomena, Richet says: “When these entities manifest, they make mistakes, trifle so childishly, forget so much and show such reticences that it is impossible to believe that the spirit of a deceased person has returned.” That is a very sweeping statement. Even I, with a very limited experience, and that without the help of any professional trance medium, deny that communication purporting to be from the dead is, as a rule, childish and futile; I agree that my communicators seem to have forgotten most facts connected with their earth life, and, more strangely still, they sometimes seem to have forgotten their own names and the names of their friends, but I do not often get what could be called “childish” messages from them. In another passage Professor Richet says: “The poor spiritist personality is not in any way incoherent, it is simply low grade, and very low grade, being with few exceptions much below average intelligence.” I have usually five to seven sittings in the week at the ouija board and my results vary considerably. I find, if intelligent questions are asked, intelligent answers are given. In fact I should say that, far from being low grade, the spirit personality I come across is extremely interesting so long as it is speaking of conditions on the other side; the difficulty as a rule is that its memory of earth life is dim, it forgets names and details, which may be accounted for by its distance from the earth atmosphere. We, however, look naturally for clear and distinct proofs of an earth existence, and if what we get deals chiefly with the future state we attribute the communication to the subconsciousness of the medium, and possibly we are right.

We must, however, for the moment, adopt Professor Richet's explanation of the appearance of Oscar Wilde. We must assume that when we had that first sitting for automatic writing, at which he professed to speak, Mr. V. and I brought our cryptesthetic powers into play, we impersonated Oscar Wilde and, playing up to the impersonation, through our sub-conscious minds, we made use of the submerged memories of Wilde's works and personality, which we possessed from reading his books. A very remarkable feat-at a first sitting for automatic writing. The imitation of style, Professor Richet would say, is “parody, not authorship. It is clever literary work, but it does not come from a Beyond. The human intelligence that composes this prose is in no way beyond human powers.” I believe that there have been a good many cases in which distinguished persons have purported to speak from “Beyond.” Most of these have, in reality, been parodies. The style is a dim reflection of that of the author who is supposed to be writing; I have not personally come across a case where a clever imitation of style was combined with a clever imitation of handwriting.

What is Professor Richet's explanation of the handwriting? “The similitude of handwriting need not trouble us,” he says, “for there is nothing to show that cryptesthesia may not extend even to that. Helen Smith sees before her the signature of Burnier by her cryptesthesia, and then she imagines herself to be Burnier in virtue of the natural tendency of mediums to impersonate.” My only objection to this last contention is that, even if Helen Smith sees Burnier's signature through her cryptesthesia (a signature that includes only a few of the letters of the alphabet), will it leave a sufficiently enduring impression to carry her through hundreds of pages of MS. without any alteration in the handwriting? Perhaps; but we must admit that a great stretch of imagination is required to suppose so; and that at least the Oscar Wilde script is a remarkable case.

I have said that I did not think the explanation of sub-conscious plagiarism covered the ground. I feel sure, however, that cryptesthesia covers it completely if we accept this hypothesis, because, once awakened, that power can develop cognition of facts unknown to the sitters. Therefore, Professor Richet contends it is impossible to prove survival. He also contends that the existence of cryptesthesia is a fact, which is demonstrated by hundreds of instances which he quotes. I agree with Professor Richet that, in a sense, it is impossible to prove survival. Proofs on a subject so much outside human experience are, at best, only partially convincing; but in defining “metapsychical facts,” he says, “they seem due to unknown but intelligent forces, including among these unknown intelligences the astonishing phenomena of our subconsciousness”; and he defines cryptesthesia further on as “a sensibility whose nature escapes us. If so, if we are dealing with “unknown” intelligences, we are not in a position to assert that Oscar Wilde is or is not an extension of our own faculties. This “unknown intelligence” may surely be the discarnate mind of Oscar Wilde himself. Professor Richet says, speaking of “Raymond,” “Cryptesthesia is always partial, defective, symbolical and so mixed with errors and puerilities that it is difficult to believe that the consciousness of a deceased person can be limited to such a degree.” Does that criticism apply to the series of scripts now before us? Symbolism is, I think, ruled out in this case, and, even if the facts in the scripts which were unknown to us are few, they are not “errors” or “puerilities.” Therefore, accepting Professor Richet's own statements, this is not a typical case of cryptesthesia.

Taking the scripts one by one, we must suppose that the first was largely due to the subconscious. The two mediums had a certain content of Wilde's writing in their minds, and from those memories they built up an essay which had many sentences in it containing ideas from Wilde's published works, sometimes even the words being almost identical with phrases from “De Profundis,” “Dorian Gray,” etc. The handwriting must have been due to the fact that Mr. V. or I had glanced at an autograph or fac-simile of Wilde's handwriting at some time, now forgotten. In the state of “semi-somnambulism” induced by automatism, the cryptesthetic powers of one or both mediums was aroused, hence the address in Tite Street, unknown to either of us. It seems strange, under these circumstances, that the address in Dublin was not given. Mr. V. knew neither it nor “Speranza,” Lady Wilde's nom de plume. I knew both. At the second sitting, at which Mr. Dingwall was present, HE gave the suggestion to the sub-conscious minds of the mediums, and the essay on the Society for Psychical Research was the result. Cryptesthesia was not evident here except in supplying the name of Mrs. Chan Toon, who was unknown to either, medium.

The second essay on that afternoon, in which Wells, Bennett and Philpotts are spoken of, was, of course, due to the sub-conscious minds of both sitters, except in the case of Philpotts, where cryptesthesia may have accounted for the allusion to Dartmoor. Of course some casual glance at a volume in a book shop or a review of one of Philpotts' novels may have dropped that memory into the sub-conscious mind of either or both mediums.

Then comes that question of Wilde's references to his fluid state of mind and “cloaque of souls” of the seance at Andre Gide's, which finds an echo in the ouija script. “The shades are really too tumultuous. They are overcrowded and we get confused by seeing into each other's thoughts.” I must have, through my cryptesthesia, got at the fact that Wilde had professed to speak through automatic writing before and have gathered the ideas that were communicated on that occasion.

Again, in the ouija script, dealing with his prison life, I seem to follow the actual state of Wilde's mind, so far as we can judge from what Sherard, who frequently visited him in gaol, has told us. First, despair seems to have seized him; he, however, rose from this, and, pressing from fury and despair to resignation, made use of the resources of the prison, and before he left, through his good conduct, his life became more tolerable, and he was permitted to have abundant books and periodicals to read. This particular script, I have no doubt, would be relegated by Professor Richet as an entirely sub-conscious production.

Now, taking the last section, which came through in automatic writing, partly through Mr. V. and myself, and partly through him with my daughter's hand resting on his, we find a number of ragged bits of memory giving us some interesting points which I have been able to verify and some which are of such a trivial nature that it would be impossible to get evidence for their truth or the reverse. I cannot, so far, verify that a story was spread by Wilde about Pater's wishing to kiss his hand. I have verified the fact, unknown to me when the writing came through, that Pater was a very silent person in company. The next memory, recalling a little farm at Glencree, was interesting. Wilde makes two shots at the name: “McCree-Cree-no, that's not the name-Glencree.” I knew; Mr. V. could not have known, as he has never been in Ireland, that, high up in the mountains twelve miles from Dublin, there is a lonely valley called Glencree. Wilde speaks of staying there with “Willie and Iso.” Of course, I knew Willie must be his brother, but I had never heard he had a sister. I find now that Oscar was very much attached to his only sister, “Isola,” who died when she was eight years old.

He speaks of an old priest, “Father Prid*-Prideau,” who gave them lessons there. I wrote to Glencree reformatory school and, through the courtesy of Father Foley, ascertained that sixty years ago Father Prideau Fox was manager of that school, at Glencree.

* This information I now find I could have obtained had I seen Donahoe's Magazine (Boston, Mass., USA) for April 1905. Father Lawrence Charles Prideau Fox states in an article he contributed to that magazine that he knew Lady Wilde and baptised Oscar.

We then come to the passage where the village of Bernaval is mentioned. At that time my daughter had her hand on Mr. V's; she knew nothing whatever about Wilde's life, neither did Mr. V. nor I know that Wilde stayed at Bernaval when he left prison. Then comes the point about the name Melmoth or Melnotte, to which I referred previously. The little story about Whistler is so trifling that I hardly hope to confirm it. Here therefore, in this one small section, we have evidence in several instances of the cryptesthetic power of the mediums.

In another short script, speaking of work, Wilde says: “I once trundled the barrow for poor old John Ruskin.” This referred to his Oxford days when Ruskin used to invite his students to work in the garden. When the writing came through the fact was unknown to us.

In his final chapter Professor Richet says:

Every phenomena of cryptesthesia must be preceded by an exterior energy that has started it; some unknown vibration, that has set in motion the latent energies of our human mind, unaware of its powers.” Therefore even mental mediumship must be in a sense objective, if we allow that it is due originally to an “exterior energy.” Strange that any energy or vibration should start two uninterested persons, quite unpremeditatively, on these long plagiarisms of Oscar Wilde, unless that vibration comes from something that was once the Oscar Wilde we knew. In another passage Professor Richet says: “In certain cases, rare indeed, but whose significance I do not disguise, there are, apparently at least, intelligent and reasoned intentions, forces and wills in the phenomena produced.” I cannot help feeling that Richet has almost admitted that an external influence is responsible in some cases at least. He mentions that Geley, who no doubt would prefer to attribute all phenomena to the sub-conscious, states that “the high and complex phenomena of mediumship seem to show external direction and intention that cannot be referred to the medium or the experimenters.”

I have tried, as far as is in my power, to put the case fairly to my readers. I feel, personally, that it may well be attributed to cryptesthesia in conjunction with the sub-conscious. The original suggestion puzzles me, however. I fail to see what started us so unexpectedly on this line, if we leave out the spirit hypothesis. In judging these scripts, the greatest weight should be given to the theories of Professor Richet, who is undoubtedly, one of the most important living thinkers on this subject. He is so frank and definite in his statements that we know exactly where we are with him. He has admitted far more than I should have dared to expect, and he has placed at our disposal a very logical explanation of the most difficult points in Psychical Research. He has found an argument to clear up the mystery of psychometry, that power by which through unknown means the history of an inanimate object may be gathered by certain persons. I incline to disagree with him that the presence of an object is not a necessity, and I speak from extended experience. My point is that the suggestion should be there to awake this super-normal power. Again, Richet recognises it as a demonstrated fact that under similar conditions we can see future events. “There are premonitions,” he says. He explains this as cognition of future events through cryptesthesia; how these suggestions reach the clairvoyante he cannot conjecture. With respect and gratitude to Professor Richet, I feel that his theory is too incomplete to warrant our accepting it in its entirety yet awhile. Myers, who admitted the survival of personality as an explanation of our messages and visions, asked less of our imagination than Richet does. Although we know how important is the part which the sub-conscious plays in our work, we naturally look for some raison d'etre for visitations like this of Oscar Wilde. If Professor Richet could explain why and from where the original suggestion came, we should listen to the rest of his argument with more conviction. In reading his concluding chapter, I felt that on one very important point he and I take different roads. He speaks most reasonably when he says: “Why should there not be intelligent and puissant beings distinct from those perceptible by our senses? By what right should we dare to affirm, on the basis of our limited senses, our defective intellect and our scientific past, as yet hardly three centuries old, that in the vast Cosmos man is the sole intelligent being and that all mental reality always depends upon nerve cells irrigated with oxygenated blood?”...He speaks again of “mysterious beings, angels, or demons, existences devoid of form, or spirits which now and then seek to intervene in our lives, who can by means entirely unknown mould matter at will...and who, to make themselves known (which they could not otherwise do) assume the bodily and psychological aspect of vanished personalities-all this is a simple manner of expressing and understanding the greater part of metapsychic phenomena.”

Now here Professor Richet and I part company. I am as ready as he is to believe in the existence of angels and demons and mysterious beings, but that it should be supposed more conceivable that a case such as the one we are dealing with is an impersonation by an angel or demon, rather than a communication from the discarnate mind of Oscar Wilde, is quite unreasonable to my thinking and simply complicates our difficulties. I am ready to admit that in the early stages of the development of mediumship, impersonations are common. These, however, can be easily recognised by any experienced sitter, and seem to me, if I may speculate, to be of the poltergeist order. The messages are vague and foolish and lead nowhere. The case we are considering is of a different nature.

I believe therefore that, if we are ready to accept Professor Richet's theory in its entirety, we may regard the Oscar Wilde script as a very notable case of cryptesthesia aroused in both the mediums.

CHAPTER VI. THE SPIRITIST EXPLANATION

IT may be well now, as we have discussed two possible explanations of Oscar Wilde's appearance, to consider a third. It may be Wilde himself who is speaking to us again. It is the obvious and simple explanation, but many of us set it aside; perhaps because, in accepting it, our imagination is not sufficiently excited. Why are our scientists so slow to admit the possibility that we survive death? Professor Richet's theory of cryptesthesia is difficult. I do not agree with him that it is proved as yet; it does not cover all the phenomena which he admits are genuine. In arriving at this stage he has suffered actual “pain” as each fresh proof forced itself on him; and yet he states that he considers belief in survival superfluous when applied to the hundreds of cases he quotes. I can follow his argument, and I believe he will go further. In my long course of slow, humble experiments I have experienced no “pain” in advancing towards faith in survival. I HAVE found very great difficulty in believing that, through my pencil or the ouija board, I am actually in communication with the dead. It has taken me twelve years to arrive at a stage when, reviewing my own work, I can see that it is of some real value. Until a mass of evidence has been piled up, there is little or no use in applying criticism to any psychic subject. A few cases teach us nothing and prove as little.

Those who believe in annihilation are among the credulous; they have fixed a dogma for themselves on very slight grounds, so far as we can see, and every day, I think, will lessen their numbers. I was never one of them, so naturally I fail to understand their attitude. Neither can I understand the attitude of those who accept all the vapid messages we get from what they call the other side.” Professor Richet says that we cannot PROVE survival, and I think he is right. What we can do is to review our evidence fairly and without prejudice; thus each of us can come to his own conclusions. This is demanding a great deal, for prejudices are deeply rooted complexes in the sub-consciousness, which have such a firm hold that we cannot consciously shake them off. Granting that we have a mass of evidence before us, how should we deal with it? The only really satisfactory method is to MAKE our own results; in other words, to arrive at them through our own experiments. We cannot all do this; many of us must take the word of those who have had the power to act as mediums, even in a small way, and who have devoted a great deal of time for a number of years in order to evolve some theory on the subject.

Proof of survival varies with the minds of individuals. I meet a great many people who are most anxious to get in touch with the dead; the proofs they desire might be placed roughly into two classes. They demand either messages of an emotional nature, or a number of small and unimportant details connected with the supposed communicator's earth life. Few are interested in allowing an entire personality to reconstruct itself slowly through the medium. Of course the ideal should be to combine an accurate memory, of the earth life with the mentality that we were familiar with and through a number of sittings to heap up evidence that the personality survives. These ideal proofs, however, are very rare; we generally get a few small details of the earth life or a number of rather vapid messages of a consoling order from our mediums. Now, if I may express an opinion on such an entirely metaphysical point as to the value of these messages, I should say that the recollection of small details of the existence on earth constitutes, by itself, but a very imperfect proof of continued personality. Still less does evidence such as The Times “tests,” which, though of enormous value as proving Professor Richet's theory of cryptesthesia and of very great interest, seem to me to be ludicrous as evidence of an after life. In Professor Richet's words, I feel that spirit intervention is superfluous here, unless it is ascribed to the mysterious entity which we call the “spirit guide.” If I were at the telephone, anxiously trying to prove my identity to some near friend or relative, I would scarcely be inclined to tell him that the shop window round the corner was broken or that in The Times of to-morrow morning he would see on the third column, near the bottom of the page, the name of some place where he and I had stayed, or of some person we had met. It seems to me, looking at it from the rational point of view, that this would be outside probability. Neither do I take it as a proof of survival that the dead are supposed to be occupied in superintending the business affairs of the living. It is inconceivable that a discarnate mind can trouble itself about the investment of money, the terms of a lease, the taking of a house, etc. Indeed, accuracy in giving names of people and places is no proof either. These can all come through super-normal cognition of the medium or through the “guide.” Yet these are the results which convince many persons. To me, even the emotional or sentimental message, if characteristic, is worth more than this. All these cases to which I have alluded are of more value to the student of psychology than any evidence of the after life which we can offer him, and he will do well to devote time and trouble to the study of such surprising phenomena; but, to my thinking, he need not connect this type of evidence with the discarnate spirit of any dead person.

If I were asked, then, to state what I consider proof of an after life, I should reply reconstruction of personality. If we ever really attain to this it cannot be ascribed to cryptesthesia from the medium. If, in twelve sittings with X., I am satisfied that I have been in touch with my father's personality, if his train of thought and ideas have been reconstructed and the style of his conversation preserved, I have a more definite proof that his mind is still alive, than if he told me I ought to invest £100, which I happen to have at hand, in war bonds, or that I should see a sentence in a certain position, on a certain date in The Times, in which the word “cork” would occur, which is the name of the town in which he was born. The reconstruction of personality coming through a medium, who had not known my father, would require powers quite beyond the scope of Professor Richet's cryptesthesia. It would require sustained powers, lasting through many sittings, if the subtleties of the human mind were revealed. The proof we demand is that MIND survives; small details could at best be merely an indication that somehow a memory remained. If, however, we believe that inanimate objects retain memories, which I consider an indisputable fact, as I have proved it through dozens of experiments, then it seems possible that any person who retains memories may convey them to the medium telepathically, or that cryptesthesia may be aroused. Trifling details do not necessarily indicate that a discarnate personality is there.

Sir Hugh Lane spoke to Mr. Lennox Robinson and me on the evening on which the news of the loss of the Lusitania reached Dublin, and before either of us knew he was on board the wrecked vessel. That message was, in a sense, very convincing, although some of the details given were incorrect. I confess it did not convince me. A good deal of what came through was personal and could have been constructed by our subconscious minds. The subsequent sittings, however, shook my faith in the worthlessness of this first message. At every sitting for months afterwards, Sir Hugh came pressing through impetuously with messages about the return of his pictures (now in the London National Gallery) to Dublin. Again, I could have constructed the matter, but the manner of the communication and the character were so definitely Sir Hugh's that I have now no doubt that he survives, somewhere, somehow!

I have tried to explain what I consider the only logical method of criticising evidence of human survival, and if we analyse the cases which have been made public we shall find that very few of them are reconstructions of personality, and of course much of the evidence is of such a private and personal nature that the public is unable to follow it. Some communications from celebrated persons have a tinge of what we might expect, but I have not come across anything really valuable in this line. And yet it should be very much easier to reconstruct a public character if the sub-conscious mind is capable of reproducing personality. In Professor Richet's book he quotes several extracts from communications of supposed celebrities, and in reading them I felt he was justified in attributing them to the sub-conscious mind. They seemed hardly more than conscious plagiarism.

The case of Oscar Wilde differs, I think, from those quoted by Professor Richet. Our script is long and continuous; the same personality is there from beginning to end; a personality which is unmistakable, with which we are familiar to an unusual extent because of the strange vicissitudes of his career. We have three separate proofs in this script of the identity of our communicator. First, similar handwriting; secondly, his style, or rather his two styles, and thirdly, his ideas; his mind, in other words.

If we had this handwriting alone, it would be very curious and interesting, because here, many of the characteristics of Oscar Wilde's writing are to be found, and his was no ordinary hand which could easily be imitated. It has all the flow and irregularity characteristic of the artist. Of course if this had been our only proof it should of necessity be attributed to sub-conscious memory. Even if a vague resemblance of style were added, we should still reject it as a proof of survival. What we demand is that, added to this handwriting, there should be the style of Wilde's writings, and, above all, the mind behind it. Now, if we analyse these scripts I think we shall find that we have one of the rare cases where evidence can be said to be complete. Let us imagine that in the Unseen, Oscar Wilde is making an attempt to convince us that he is still alive. He seizes the pencil from another writer at the mention of the word Lily and proceeds to give us a proof of his existence by an essay, in which he continually inserts passages which might remind us of his work. He is naturally rather annoyed with me when I interrupt him and ask questions; he is only experimenting with his mediums and finds them clumsy tools at first. He is not thinking of reproducing his style at its best, he is anxious to force his identity on us.

At the second sitting, he has realised how difficult it is to convince those who are still alive; he therefore finds in the Society for Psychical Research, that society of “magnificent doubters,” a fine opportunity. He is in the same position over there as we are here; why should he not found a “Society of Superannuated Shades” for the investigation of the living. Who but Oscar Wilde could have written this little message; he cannot be said to have lost his sense of humour in the twilight. In the literary talks, again we have all the characteristics of Wilde's mind. His play of words on the ideas of others is a game which he finds irresistible. He shoots out his remarks without any feeling of veneration for his literary brethren; these impish phrases trip off his tongue, grazing the surf ace of things; even here he is not occupied so much with the writers he is criticising as with his power to dock them off with a few well-selected words.

The spiritist should be interested by some ideas in the ouija script of the life beyond, which are, I think, unusual. I have not come across them myself before. The nakedness of mind, of which I have previously spoken, is new to me, also the fluid mental conditions, which Wilde does not explain, are unlike what we meet with in the usual automatic message. On what plane or sphere are we cast into twilight, shut away from light and beauty and given dull and monotonous tasks to perform? We may well ask why this further punishment has been inflicted on a soul who has suffered so deeply in his earth life. We can only speculate. Perhaps through his too highly developed senses, Wilde failed to reach his spiritual part except during those dreadful years in prison when he realised for the first time what the beauty of sorrow meant. His spirit may have found expression for the first time within the walls of his cell; it may have owed its birth to misfortune. Two years are a short time out of prison, a long time there. The spirit of Oscar Wilde left Reading Gaol an infant; an infant proud and glad of its birth, if we are to take “De Profundis” as a sincere expression of Wilde's feelings. It left its sterile nursery to face a bitter wind of scorn and disappointment and to realise the supreme misery of mental impotence. Poverty of mind, added to poverty of the material things that had made life a too heavily scented garden, drove poor Wilde towards a new weakness, the drowning of mental sterility with the anaesthetic of drink. He felt instinctively that he had come to the end of everything; his wife and children, social position, property, good name and most of his friends were gone. When the door of his prison opened for him at last, he looked forward to shelter from the few faithful friends who had still the courage to be seen in his company; and he believed that a fresh spring of literary work, growing out of the birth of the spirit, which had come to him through his fall, was to be his. He found the bread he had to earn, “salt” indeed; the earning of it more irksome when he discovered that an intellectual winter was upon him. The infant spirit shivered and sank away once more.

We, who are human, can hardly blame poor Wilde because weakness overtook him a second time; the moral strength was not there, that was all. We make our own fate perhaps, or perhaps it is shaped for us through our degree of spiritual development. If Wilde had arrived at a surer realisation of his spirit, a glimpse of which he caught in Reading Gaol, he might have passed into a more serene light than most of us, when he put off the garment of his body. As it is he has been cast again into twilight and it is infinitely pathetic to find that he still cries for objective beauty.

He speaks of the wonderful revelation that came to him in prison; there he was able to throw off his body and set his mind free, now there is no body to escape from; he is fluid mind and nothing more. He knows his term of dimness will be long, but he will rise again as the “wheel” revolves; that certainty is given him that he may endure. In his earth life he experienced more good and evil than the average human being; more evil than good, unfortunately. Now he must complete that experience and pierce to the innermost retreats of good and evil. The dimness in which he withers is not the dimness of his cell) for now he has the power of “knowledge such as all the justice that has tortured the poor world since it was born cannot attain.”

If we are to believe in the sincerity of the Wilde of “De Profundis,” we may recall what he says of humility. “Humility in the artist is the frank acceptance of all experiences, just as love in the artist is simply the sense of beauty that reveals to the world its body and soul.” I fear the Wilde of these scripts has scarcely attained to humility in the sense he uses the word here. All through, even in speaking his spiritual revelations in prison, there is a loud note of egoism and hauteur. He has not “frankly accepted experiences,” they have been forced upon him; he has revolted against them and still is revolting. He is not meekly accepting his place of dimness. “Pity Oscar Wilde,” he says, “one who in the world was a king of life. Bound to Ixion's wheel of thought I must complete forever the circle of my experience.” He uses the same simile when in, “De Profundis,” he speaks of sorrow: “Before sorrow had made my days her own and bound me to her wheel, etc.” “justice,” he says, “is the completion of experience, nothing more.” Human justice, according to Wilde, is merely the storing up of remorse which is anguish more acute than human beings can attain to. To torture your fellows as a benediction secures you this remorse at the other side.

We cannot hope that the author of “De Profundis” has remained even on the shoulder of the mountain to which he had climbed towards the end of his time in gaol. It is twenty-three years since he died in sordid poverty and degraded by drink, and he still bemoans his condition. He knows his term will be long; perhaps he has not realised humility or love as he has explained them in his moment of vision.

Through this chapter I have spoken as if I were entirely convinced of human survival. I can say sincerely that no case I have come across has done so much for my belief in the spiritist theory, as this of Oscar Wilde. Hitherto I have felt, and indeed I still feel, that the work of Mr. Bligh Bond at Glastonbury is the most interesting page in the book of Psychical Research. We cannot, however, take the Glastonbury scripts as a proof of human survival. We might describe them better as the most overwhelming cases of cryptesthesia in existence and further, cryptesthesia in four different persons, wholly unconnected with each other, concerning the same subject. It certainly proves the survival of memories, but it can scarcely be described as proving the survival of personality.

This case appeals to me because of its completeness. My critics will no doubt attack it from the literary standpoint and prove again that the dead Wilde is vastly inferior to the living Wilde. These literary critics will not take our difficulties into consideration; they will probably be prejudiced in spite of themselves against the improbability of my tale. The spiritualists and students of metapsychics will merely differ in their explanations of results. The script should appeal to all who take any interest in psychic phenomena.

If Oscar Wilde from the twilight realises that he is the subject of discussion once more it must afford him some amusement that he, who is now a fluid mind, can still make his bow to the public. He will no doubt find entertainment if he can “leap into the minds” of my critics; and, if I give him a sitting at the ouija board, I am sure he will be ready to answer them. For I am almost tempted to believe that the soul and mind of Oscar Wilde still live and will continue to develop, until, having pierced to the innermost retreats of good and evil, he rises again to ecstasy.

CHAPTER VII. TO THE PUBLIC

IT is time that I drop the role of lecturer on psychic phenomena and put myself into the position of those to whom the terms automatic writing, ouija board, sub-conscious and cryptesthesia mean little or nothing, but in whom the fact that we seem to be talking again to so prominent a figure as Oscar Wilde is an adventure which arouses surprise and interest. When portions of these scripts appeared in the Daily News, the Occult Review, etc., I was infinitely amused at the diversity of criticism which they brought forth. Our first critic, Mr. 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 he did not consider the style convincing. He cited various expressions which were “not like" Wilde, notably the cruel manner in which he describes the modern woman as “a wart on the nose of an inebriate” and dismisses the writings of the Sitwells by stating that he does not spend his “precious hours in catching tadpoles.” 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 criticise 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 had 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 subtle 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 poor 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 poor Oscar forced his company on Mr. V. and myself. He seized the pencil from another communicator and 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.

That first little essay, written probably to convince his mediums, is almost the only case in which Wilde has indulged in what are practically quotations from his works. If he has failed to select his words as happily as he used, we must allow for distinctly trying circumstances. He pushes in on our sitting, I am taken by surprise and I continually interrupt his flow of language with annoying questions. He even complains of finding unsuitable words in his medium's mind; the only simile he can seize on to describe the moon is a “great golden cheese.” He can't bear this and writes, “stop, stop, stop, stop, you write like a successful grocer, etc.”

The next time we sat Wilde was determined to let fly at something. He dropped his pathetic tone and used the Society for Psychical Research as a means of expressing his indignation at my having questioned his identity. Really this script cannot be described as the work of a dreary ghost. Are there many persons in the literary world to-day who could improve on the discarnate Wilde's wit when he speaks of the “Society of Superannuated Shades”?

Then, quite uninvited, he begins to criticise modern authors. He prefaces his first criticism by another appeal to our pity. There is real pathos in his description of the chances that offered themselves to him from time to time to see the world again. It is a fantastic idea and quite characteristic of its supposed author, I think. He says: “In this way I have dipped into the works of some of your modern novelists.” These criticisms are all written, it must be remembered, from the standpoint of thirty-five years ago, for, though Wilde may have tasted modern literature, he can hardly be expected to have moved with the times. This “age of rasp” is a positive pain to the Apostle of Beauty, he is glad to have escaped it. “In your time the main endeavour of the so-called artist is to torture the senses.... Pain is the only quality which is essential to any literary work of the present day.”...It is from that angle he speaks of Wells, Bennett, Philpotts, and Joyce. His other criticisms are levelled at Shaw, Hardy, Meredith, George Moore and Galsworthy. The latter is the only author who escapes lightly. All the others, even those who were practically his contemporaries, come in for a share of pepper from Wilde's caustic tongue. The note of a colossal egotism is prominent in all these scripts, it never varies. When he speaks of his prison life it is positively shameless: “I was a fallen God, a fallen King,” etc. He views his brothers in literature with a certain jealousy, I fear. His fall and the bitter and cruel misery of his last years appear to have sent him on to further miseries. His literary career stopped dead three years before he died himself; it was short, and fame has come to him, as to many others, after he passed into twilight. He speaks of “having conquered London, partly by his 'supposed crime.'“ Wilde was not a great writer and his work might possibly have attracted less attention if he had gone down to posterity as a fashionable poseur. It is true that his life in prison brought out a side of him which otherwise would probably never have seen the light. In fact the discipline of gaol held down his baser nature for a time and gave us “De Profundis” afterwards and the “Ballad of Reading Gaol.”

I feel it is quite natural that Wilde should be revolted by a work like “Ulysses.” It is entirely out of harmony with his time and ideas. He might easily fail to see what the admirers of Joyce call the “vastness of the book.” It is completely ugly; that is enough. His horror of probing into the “inside” of a human being would naturally be aroused by a book which, I believe, practically deals with nothing else.

I am not altogether surprised that Galsworthy appeals to Wilde. There is little real kinship between these two, but it is true that Galsworthy, in a different sense from Wilde, deals with the surface of social life; that his feeling for form is fine and that his sense of selection is often exquisite. Galsworthy, however, uses the surf ace of society as a medium through which he expresses intense emotions, emotions which sometimes tend to become sentimental. Wilde never rouses our emotions, he certainly cannot be accused of being a sentimental writer, he never gets the full value out of a moving situation, he is too deeply interested in the “human pattern,” as he calls it, to worry about such futilities as joys and sorrows.

The gibes thrown at George Meredith were surely flung off in an airy fashion. Oscar Wilde was in reality a great admirer of Meredith, and if he cracks a joke at his involved sentences he has the later works in mind, which perhaps deserve chastisement. No one can deny that in “One of Our Conquerors” words are inclined to occupy the reader so fully that ideas do perhaps retreat into the distance. The effort to unwind the “plait” certainly requires strenuous effort.

In his criticism of George Moore, Wilde dwells on the even flow of his prose, suggesting that Moore holds his readers rather through style than through the clear-cut personality of his characters. It is true that Wilde and Moore are opposites, both perhaps more fully occupied in using the English language than in introducing us to a fresh series of acquaintances. Wilde must, of necessity, feel Moore dim; their mediums of expression are far apart. The pastel artist produces his effects less emphatically than the painter who uses colour boldly.

In several of the ouija scripts, Wilde speaks to us about his own “play-making.” He dwells on the idea of “pattern,” a pattern woven, not from words as in his poems, but from humanity as it presented itself 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 the intestines.” It is interesting to compare this determination to remain on the surface of things with his change of thought in “De Profundis.” “The external things of life seem to me now of no importance at all. Nothing seems to me of the smallest value except what one gets out of oneself.” In speaking of his own plays in the script he says again: “I had a different thought from my fellows when my plays were shaped and consequently I cannot absorb their attitude to the stage.” And further: “I have never swerved from my ideas. I have served the theatre in my own way and from my own standpoint I succeeded.”

We pass on to Wilde's memories of his sufferings in prison. I rather hesitated to ask him about that time, but to my surprise he seemed eager and willing to talk of it. In reading this script it must be borne in mind that I had not read “De Profundis” for over twenty years. Wilde as he was when he left prison was not the Wilde who played with the “surface of society,” the” flaneur,” as he calls himself. He had learnt the value of humility and love, and was, as he says, a richer man after he had come to realise the sacredness of sorrow. His life, after he left gaol, was more tragic perhaps than while he was there. His present condition seems a continued tragedy. It is painful to feel that after twenty-three years he is still without the beauty and sunlight for which he thirsts. Yet he has the certainty, which few of us have here, that his state is temporary; that he will achieve again all and more than he possessed in his earth life.

In criticising these writings it must be remembered that between the Wilde of the nineties and the Wilde of 1923, two great gulfs are fixed. The gulf of his imprisonment and the gulf of his death. It cannot reasonably be expected that he is unchanged since he wrote “Intentions" and “The Importance of Being Earnest.” In his letter to Robert Ross with instructions regarding the publication of “De Profundis,” Wilde says: “Of course I need not remind you how fluid a thing thought is with me-with us all-and of what an evanescent substance are our emotions made.” Here again we find the idea of “fluid mind,” which came through at the sitting at Andre Gide's and again to me several times at the ouija board, before I knew he had used the expression before.

In the automatic writing which followed on the script about his prison life, Wilde begins with a quotation from “De Profundis,” “Society sent me to prison,” and again he quotes from it when he says, speaking of the bread he was forced to earn, “like Dante, how salt the bread when I found it.” This script is completely clear and logical from beginning to end. The astronomical knowledge displayed here is merely used as illustration and does not in any way detract from the characteristic turn of the sentence or the application of ideas, which are more in the style of “De Profundis” than his earlier works.

Let us for a moment try to imagine the present position of Oscar Wilde, allowing it is he who writes these messages. He has suddenly found a means of speaking to the world again after twenty-three years' silence. His mediums are, of course, a matter of indifference to him, he merely wants to make use of any possible instrument. It would be futile to speculate as to how or why he discovered us. The word Lily is written; Wilde seizes the pencil; the emblem of the aesthetic movement gives him his opportunity. “No, the lily is mine, not his,” he writes. When I have identified him he quotes from “De Profundis.” “Twilight in my cell and twilight in my heart.” As he goes on he reminds us of “Intentions” and “De Profundis.” In “Intentions” we have “The white feet of the Muses brushed the dew from the anemones in the morning.” In our first script, “Her white feet brush the dew from the cowslips in the morning.” In “De Profundis” the passage occurs: “There is not a single colour hidden away in the chalice of a flower or the curve of a shell to which, by some subtle sympathy with the very soul of things my nature does not answer.” In the automatic writing we find, “There was not a blood stripe on a tulip or a-curve on a shell or a tone on the sea, but had for me its meaning and its mystery and its appeal to the imagination.”

If any of us had spent twenty-three years in a distant country, and, during that time, had neither visited nor written to our own land, we could scarcely be expected to preserve our memories of it intact, nor could our friends expect us to return completely unchanged and as we were in our prime. Oscar says he is more alive than we are, in spite of the fact that he is confined in a dim Hades. I disagree with one of our critics, who says that the first script is the ghost of Oscar's style as well as of his personality. I quite understand the difficulty presented to the lay mind by phenomena professing to come from the dead. To them the dead are dead in every sense. There may be a vague religious faith in the hereafter deep in the sub-conscious mind, but when it comes to accepting an actual personality which does not approach us with any of the orthodox ideas of the Beyond it seems too preposterous and our criticism of evidence is, very naturally, highly prejudiced. Yet, in all the notices of our script, it is admitted that these communications are not of the order which is generally offered us from the other side. No one can deny that this discarnate Wilde has preserved his sense of humour. He regards his present state as in some ways inconvenient and amusing. Poor Wilde, who loved his outward appearance; to whom costume meant so much; suffered intensely from the hideous garb he was forced to wear in gaol. He speaks of the grotesqueness of his garments more than once in “De Profundis,” especially on that most degrading occasion when, for half an hour, he stood on the platform at Clapham junction in prison dress and handcuffed, the target of a jeering crowd. Now he speaks with regret of that garment which we call a body. It served, whether foul or fair, to fix certain reserves between us and our fellows. He is bored by the continual sight of the ideas of other persons. “They grow stale and one tires of them,” he says. I admit this is an appalling suggestion. It would rob us of half the mystery and adventure of life if we could take the entire measure of every human being we met. Wilde's boredom continues apparently. Probably the only part of his life in which there was no boredom was his time in prison. There his soul must have been so racked with surprise, remorse, despair and indignation, so vitalised that he can hardly have felt ennui which always hung about him in his days of freedom. If we are to take any of the information which reaches us from the “Beyond” seriously, what seems to delay progress here, and there also, is a clinging to material things; worship of beauty in the sense that Wilde worshipped it. There the beauty which is given outwards from the spirit is of supreme value, what is received through the senses seems actually to drive the spirit backwards. The author of “De Profundis,” had he died in gaol, would perhaps have escaped the twilight in which he suffers now.

I should like to make it quite clear that the speed of both the writing and ouija communications was tremendous. I already mentioned that in one instance 700 words were written in about an hour and a quarter. This essay is a long and logical argument. As regards the ouija board messages, it was difficult to keep up with them even in shorthand; the traveller flew from letter to letter with lightning speed at the rate of 60 to 70 words per minute. If we regard the scripts as a case of sub-conscious imitation, it is interesting to note that style and handwriting were sustained through hundreds of pages at this pace.

All things considered, I feel we may discuss the authorship of these writing from any point of view without being considered absurd. In most cases it is very difficult to present automatic script to the public, but here, when to the style and humour we add the handwriting, there seems reasonable ground to admit the possibility that we are again in touch with Oscar Wilde. We find traces of the author of “De Profundis" and also of “The Importance of Being Ernest,” we find the egoism, the cynical smile, even the paradox in which he delighted.

I am sorry that the subjects spoken of are so scattered. In the automatic writing, Wilde chose them himself. At the first two sittings he seemed to exhaust the power in his mediums very rapidly. There was a pause, and when the pencil moved again an entirely different theme was chosen. The later writings have been longer and more continuous. In the ouija work, I suggested subjects, as a rule. I asked a question and it was promptly followed up.

I value the opinions of those who are not conversant with psychic subjects, also those of persons who, like myself, have studied mental mediumship. Both can help us from entirely different standpoints. The literary critics must make allowance for the difficulties in automatic communication and also for the fact that Oscar Wilde has passed on to new conditions. They must not demand exactly the mind they are familiar with. From the psychic point of view these scripts must be of value whether they are considered to arise from the sub-conscious or to be a proof of survival. Their value from the literary point of view is quite another matter. I sincerely hope that no prejudice against the method by which they came will injure their chances of having a fair hearing.

A literary ghost is, I think, a new departure in the psychic world. Messages from the dead are usually very vague as to work and interests on the other side. Oscar Wilde may be occupying his time with “what is little better than picking oakum in gaol,” but his keen enjoyment of ideas seems the same as ever. He is certainly less changed by the “process of dying” than any other ghost I have come across so far.

I have endeavoured to analyse these writings honestly. I am convinced that they are worthy of investigation. They are certainly so to those who are interested in proof or disproof of survival, and they may be useful also to the faithful: those who have accepted the gospel of annihilation. For them Oscar Wilde's return can be regarded as a fresh proof of the credulity of even intelligent persons. The theosophist will fall in with us, I think, for here we have evidence of the punishment that awaits our astral part. The spiritualist will add a very important addition to what confirms his faith; he can hardly produce a more definite instance of continued personality than what is before us.

I hope that Oscar, in his state of twilight, may be comforted if he realises that some of us are conscious he still exists. He may give us further evidence that he is still a living mind. If so, I shall publish a sequel to this book. He is still quite willing to talk and write. He has suggested that he is in a position to resume some of his literary work again; but, knowing as I do the difficulties and uncertainty of automatism, I dare not promise anything definite.

Appendix I

These communications came through from time to time since the first batch of scripts went into press. I add them, although they are slight, as I think the ideas very characteristic of Wilde. The criticism of the production of “The Importance of Being Earnest,” at the Haymarket, is reprinted from The Sunday Express.

[missing illustration]

FAC-SIMILE OF MR. V'S HANDWRITING.

Appendix II

REPRINTED FROM “THE SUNDAY EXPRESS”

Mrs. T.S.-Is that Oscar Wilde?

O.W.-Yes; why doubt my identity, dear lady, before I have spoken even a doubtful word?

Mrs. T.S.-Did you come with me to the Haymarket Theatre to see “The Importance of Being Earnest” last Thursday?

O.W.-It was a most amusing experience. I looked through your eyes and saw my children again, and realised for the first time that they were merely marionettes, not human beings. You, who have an idea of what the value of humour is, could hardly grasp, as I could, the attitude of the audience that night. I was pleased to note in their laughter a feeling that, after all, although he had made mistakes in his life, he could still entertain. I could see a slightly contemptuous colour in these minds. They felt that he was a shade demode, but they looked on him as a curio worthy of a dark corner in the drawing-room.

The spectacle presented to me through your eyes was very different from the productions of my time. I had, of course, to superintend my own rehearsals, more especially because the balance of my plays was so delicate. And even in those days, when my ideas had all their reality and freshness, there was difficulty in impressing the players with my own conception of these characters. For, although as I said, they seemed to me to have the quality of marionettes, I intended them to represent the actual outward surface, slightly magnified, of the various ingredients that made up the social pattern of my time. Here, I fear, I was mistaken. In “The Importance of Being Earnest” I had intended to overstep all possible limits and present an entirely unreal problem to the public, but I never intended my play to be taken as a farce.

That night I saw the producer's thought. He had evidently the conception that the play should be smartened for the modern stage, and he has my entire sympathy here. For my presentation was probably too preposterous for an age of realism. He has done his work competently, no doubt. But I must speak to the players singly, and ask them to remodel their work a little, in deference to the author's wishes.

First, please ask Mr. Worthing to step up to me and listen to my criticisms of his performance. Worthing takes himself perfectly seriously, of course, but he does not try to force that feeling on his audience. He does not fill the centre of the stage with solemn pomposity; rather, he imbues the public with his own inward sincerity. Ask the gentleman who plays Worthing to FEEL the part a little, not to act it quite so arduously.

For Algenon I have a sincere admiration, but let him take into consideration the fact that he is not a mere lay figure. He utters his words as if he were the doll used by a ventriloquist. Ask him, please, to modify his voice a little, and also to modify his general behaviour. He seems to me to move on hinges.

Gwendolen is fairly satisfactory. She gives me the impression of having played the first act with great care and precision, but as she goes on, a delicate diminuendo brings her to total blankness at the end. Urge the lady to keep her mentality on the alert until the play is ended.

Mrs. T.S.-What about Lady Bracknell?

O.W.-She is not exactly the dame of the 'nineties. The dame of that period certainly might have had some mannerisms, but what really entertained us in her was her complete faith in her own sincerity. Now this lady who plays her, is absolutely convinced of her own insincerity. This is so obvious that it fails to amuse me. I should be amused by the child of my own brain; but hers is only a pose which is feeble in the interpretation of this part of my pattern.

To continue, I think our little Cicely is excellent. I liked her, and more especially her intonation. She need not speak so definitely to the audience. That seems to me, even from my own demode standpoint, a mistake. For your young girl should hold all her impudence of mind with a certain hypocrisy which is only seemly in a maiden.

I think my pleasant rector was not a horny person. He was, on the contrary, smooth and well liking. I feel that the right note has not been struck here. He is far too angular. It is just the smoothness of skimmed milk that is required in him. He does not achieve it.

Miss Prism was quite agreeable to me. I think she got my idea better than the others. I felt she had been memorising my lines with an inward appreciation of my intentions. I should like to tell the lady this, for I feel grateful to her. One is so seldom taken with understanding.

The costumes do not matter much. I should certainly like my own period better. But undoubtedly that is a prejudice with which it would be foolish to comply.

The author is very grateful to the management and cast for putting his poor ideas again before the public. He finds it difficult to enter into the present time. But so far as he is permitted to see the Haymarket production, it is smartened beyond his powers and given to the present day with a sauce which should make it palatable to all.

He feels that the ingredients of his entremets have been carefully weighed; and the result is an agreeable flavour without any undue spicing which might make it difficult of digestion. He wishes to convey to all those concerned his pleasure in having attended a performance in the theatre once again....

I have already spoken to each of the players personally, and now I should like to repeat what I said before. Let them all and the producer also, be assured of my surprise at seeing their own complete misapprehension of my play.

It is delightful at any time to stand in an ecstasy of observation before what is absolutely perfect; the complete whole, as it were. Here I beheld my own child, and almost failed to recognise it. Its new gown and its new attitude were so unfamiliar.

I do not wish to cavil at the present age, but the Haymarket company and its producer must forgive me if I am surprised rather than enchanted by what they have accomplished.

Art, after all, has many aspects, and this entire perversion of a literary effort is so adequately accomplished that it may be regarded as a striving towards perfection. It has the quality of the exquisitely curved Greek vase-absolutely without life, but perfect, in its entire abstraction from the intention of the author.

Perhaps you would teach me something about the present time. It seems to me to be so far removed from mine. The world of London looks as if it had cast off all its beautiful clothing and adopted the grimy garments of the artisan. That is how it strikes me. The whole theatre wore a “useful” aspect that night when I saw it through your eyes. There was no illusion nor any glamour thrown out from the audience to the stage. It was all in keeping, and all presented a practical and tradesman-like appearance. In my time the actors were helped and inspired by the perfumed and gowned attendants at their work. Now they gain no inspiration to carry them through. The plaudits of the house that evening were pale and gave me the impression that they were there, merely to carry the evening on to its conclusion. This is evidently not an age of leisure. The leisured age is the age which gives the dramatist his opportunity.

I feel now that it would be futile to write a comedy. My own little play is so totally away from its own element that I should like to cover up the poor little nursling and lead it away from the footlights. They make its colours pale and dim. A sad little effort this, to revive the feelings of a different age.

Mrs. T.S.-Will you go on with the new play.

O.W.-I have been considering it, and it is certain it will be written, and in a manner different from my poor little “Earnest.”

Appendix III

December 14th, 1923, 11.45 p.m. Present-Mr. Bligh Bond, Miss G., Miss Cummins. The medium was Mrs. Travers Smith.

Oscar Wilde. I have been summoned here. May I ask why such an honour is done me?

(Mrs. T.S.-We want you to communicate an interesting message to us next Sunday, when we are having a special sitting.)

I assure you, dear lady, the garland of my thoughts is withered; the scarlet exotic does not stand a long period in the Arctic winter. I wither because my thoughts are broken on the stem. (The traveller was pointed towards Mr. Bligh Bond.) A curious restoration this. Here I find a mind in whose intricacies I should like to plunge. Permit me, sir, to probe your ideas.... This is a strange construction. Here I find the mediaeval mind, and on it is perched, like a pert bird, the spirit of the twentieth century. A poet could indeed make sport of you, but I have other feelings. For my deep pity is excited-that this intricacy of mind is placed in this dim age of toilsome work. Sir, will you permit me to discourse with you.... It would give a shade, who shuns the light, great pleasure to share ideas of twenty years ago with you.

(Mr. Bond-Surely the glimpses of the world you obtain through this medium must be helpful and refreshing to you?)

It is as if a rose had opened in my path; for what can such as I, find in a world of shadows and of dimness. This is not punishment, as you believe, but a portion of my experience, which floats by me like a grey cloud, and which will consummate the full expansion of my soul.

I know that ecstasy is mine. But here I am confined and the rich day is hidden from me. Never can I gaze again upon the blue waters of the sea, or feel the wind come whispering by me in the dim evening light. I am a shadow and the life here, the shadow of a shadow. Can you imagine what I am?

(Mr. Bond made some further remarks.)

No, my dear sir; not for a mind like yours the dimness and confinement. Yours is a nature which has not spent its richness in the world.... (Mr. B. made a remark about the eternal life.) Here the eternal life spreads out before us like a silken stuff shaded from grey to gold.

(But you obtain glimpses of the world at times?)

A sunbeam dying on the clouds, a rift within a deep abyss. This is what comes to me from looking once again at the fair world whose beauty was a rich intoxication for my senses. And for this ecstasy of joy, joy in the day, joy in the night, joy in the paleness of the dawn and the grey twilight and the sound of words and company of my fellows, for this I am confined in a dim place of shadows.

(Mr. Bond-But there is hope for you and for all?)

Hope, my dear sir, is simply breath; the power of breathing comes from hope, hope that the next breath follows on the present. But hope grows pale with waiting. I know that this will come again-this richness and this joy. I feel as if I, a worm, had burrowed in the earth and the damp soil had filled the eyes, the mouth, and all I am. I believed on earth, and now, I believe in eternal joy. This is my consolation.

(Mrs. T.S.-I am publishing your messages. I have written a book about you.)

Pray spare me. These little moths that flew from out my lips are scarcely worth recording.

Appendix IV

Copy of a Communication received at the Ouija Board through Mrs. Travers Smith's hand, July 19th, 1923.

(Mrs. T.S.-How do you study the work of the modems?)

I can look into their minds and gather collectively what is worth recording in their work.

(Talk to us about painting and its connection with literature.)

Dear lady, pause a moment. Let your imagination strain itself a little. Take one word and let its sound sink deep into your mind and conjure up at the same time a deep and richly coloured tone. Take the word purple. Let the infinite depths of that rich colour penetrate your being and listen to the word and let its music bring to your mind the depths of tone that comes from perfumed violets till word and colour merge into each other. This gives you some idea of how my work was wrought and fashioned, of how my music sprang from word and colour both. For as I wrote I held the picture ever in my mind, of pattern wrought from colour and from sound. And as I wove the web I added richness as I went by, ever fashioning, moulding and forming, until a perfect shape rose from me. This was my own particular form of art-an art which gave me life, which has not vanished with my good name and all that fame the false world heaped upon me. For my art had sprung direct from nature, nature was the force that gave it being. I was the priest who fashioned from it the thing created, perfecting the form with care and infinite pain, until the children of my being had grown to their full stature and like stately swans had floated out upon the waters and escaped from me into the infinite, where they shall never perish.