1924
Oct 14 - Dec 28
At the sitting of October 14, 1924.
Trance script:
"My father, far away in Edinburgh, sent a substantial sum ... My wife ... Fanny de Grift."
Trance vision:
"I saw my friend. I saw his wife, too. They were away on that island. The place was not furnished at all. I saw his carpet bag. He looks awful poor and yellow. I went up a Hill and I met people, and one man seemed as he was going to hold me up. Stevenson told me his wife's name, but I can't remember it!"
Verification:
Clearly, here R. L. Stevenson is representing memories of his honeymoon spent in an old abandoned mining house. R. L. Stevenson and Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne were married May 17, 1880, in San Francisco, and "immediately went to the country fifty miles north of San Francisco, there to seek health in the mountains. How they took possession of all that was left of a mining town, and lived in isolation among the ruins, is told, once for all, in "The Silverado Squatters." ("Balfour, volume I." Page 176)
Father's kindness remembered.
"Early in April a telegram came from Thomas Stevenson in Edinburgh) announcing to Louis that in future he might count on two hundred and fifty pounds a year. His gratitude was unbounded; he realized very clearly what his extremity had been and the fate from which he had been reprieved..." ("Balfour, volume 1." Page 175)
(At that time in his marriage R. L. Stevenson was a mere "bag of bones" ill with tuberculosis. (See biographies). As yet he had earned very little with his pen, although he was now 30 years old. Thus, his father's generosity, and forgiveness for him marrying a divorced woman, filled him with gratitude.
Comment:
Remarkable use of representative imagery here:
1. The unvarnished room, and the "hold-up" man, suggesting California mining days.
2. R. L. Stevenson's appearance suggests bad health. (True).
3. The carpet bag - meant to suggest a recent arrival.
Note that the imagery does not illustrate the text; it deliberately indicates the background circumstances which made the father's help necessary. Our communicator does as he wills; remembers and builds his new pictures as he sees fit.
Note that Elizabeth M. based her picture and experience on the island (Samoa). This is her interpretation.
For all the years that she worked with R. L. Stevenson, she had the fixed idea that this island was somewhere off the coast of California. Her knowledge of geography was practically nil, as was her knowledge of literature in general and Stevenson in particular.
October 19, 1924,
the sitters were Mrs. Poole, Lillian Hamilton, and Mr. Reed with hands on table top. Other sitters (names not given) join hands.
R. L. Stevenson's trouble with his father for choosing letters and writing as a profession is indicated.
Medium entranced - writes - writing poor. Can make out only:
"father and son ..."
Vision:
Mrs. Poole sees R. L. Stevenson as a young man, his father "giving him an awful talking to - told him he was lazy."
Medium regains consciousness - dazed:
"I can't get settled, and there is a man there ... in the cabinet ... he is dark, long cheeks, a hump on his nose ... small mustache ... now he is showing his teeth. I felt his finger and thumb on my neck. He is gone. I don't know who he was. He was ever near Mr. Reed."
"I saw my friend and his father; he seemed a lad in his teens. The father was talking to him. He was giving him an awful talking to. His father wanted him to do something but I don't know what it was ...
"I was in this house before; it was out from the city. The father had a ship ... a little one ... a sample one. It was hanging on the wall. The father said he was "lazy" ... lecturing him in some way."
Physical phenomena:
The light turned on; the medium comes out of the cabinet. The hands of the medium, Lillian Hamilton and Mr. Reed in contact. Other hands in chain formation.
The table levitates violently. Inverted and legs thrust up through the ceiling of the cabinet.
Singing to assist physical phenomena.
Medium falls into the second trance.
Second trance script:
"... he was at the time planning for himself." ...
(Draws a picture of a three-tiered something)
(The medium is perplexed about this picture of pillars and the blue cloud around Stevenson.)
Second trance vision.
"I was in the same place but I had an awful pretty picture of Stevenson. I saw it was like him but older. I saw his face but it became covered as by a blue cloud from the neck down. He was awful pretty. (There is an awful lot of people around here the night. I feel them all around me). Stevenson talked to me; I don't know what he said; something his father is wanting him to do. I saw a fountain or something like a fountain on a hill ... my it was a beautiful picture. It was so clear. I saw a blue light over it.
All the sitters were weighed before and after the sitting.
October 21, 1924.
Second reference to Cummie's dramatic influence. R. L. Stevenson is seen as a lad of eight in his nursery, writing.
October 26, 1924.
First attempt to give literary dictation.
Script: "Nevertheless it is proper to appease the appetite of the reader."
Vision: R. L. Stevenson at a table writing. Verification: "A Gossip On Romance."
October 26, 1924.
A Literary Dictation from the essay "A Gossip on Romance." ( R. L.'s first attempt through E.M. to be literary).
October 27, 1924.
About his wife's inspiration for him.
October 29, 1924.
Reference to wife's inspiration. Vision notes lost.
October 31, 1924.
Reference to date of death, and to "Blue Picture."
Trance script:
"passed at eighteen ..."
Trance vision:
"In the bluish light I get him tonight. It is not like our light at all. I have not seen his books in his blue pictures. I often see his hands in the other pictures when he appears about his house. His hands and his fingers are long and thin ..."
Comment: (By Lillian Hamilton.)
"From time to time R. L. Stevenson shows himself in this strange blue light. We take it to be his attempt to represent his present existence in the second state. As all of the R. L. Stevenson pictures (imagery) are based on reality, I feel that we are entitled to assume that the blue pictures have also a basic reality."
October 31, 1924.
R. L. Stevenson's death, and the Land of the "Bluish Light."
November 6, 1924.
Reference to R. L.'s death and the Waverley matter.
Script:
"He lived less than forty-five years. Passed near Apia. Would have been many Waverley novels."
[ Photo ]
Visions:
"I was away on that island. I saw him lying dead. He was lying on a kind of stretcher the night. He had something white on him and a big red and black merled (mixed colors) cover. There was a name I got, "Wave" something. I heard a man say something about "Wave".
Another report of the vision:
Vision of November 6:
"I was away on the island and I saw Stevenson lying dead. He was lying on a kind of stretcher. (True) He had something white on and a cover. I saw three of four red men standing by him. There was a name I got: "Wave" something. I heard a man say something about "Wave" (I)
Verification:
The corpse. "Late at night we washed his body and dressed it in a soft white linen shirt and black evening trousers ... Placing the body on the big table we drew over it the red English ensign ... then a little party of our Samoans ... took on themselves the self-appointed duty of spending the night beside the bier." ( From Lloyd Osbourne's "Intimate Portraits.")
November 9, 1924.
Trance script:
"Until now have been content to write about an inn at Burford ... describe scenery ... word painter ... the sedulous ape ..."
Trance vision:
"I was away in a pretty place. I was at the shore and I left the shore and went along the road, and there were hills on the right-hand and a low-land on the left. I went on a long road till I came to a hotel. I saw the name of it - it had "Ford" in it - it was not Hurtford. Then I went on till I came to a little house on the left hand. I was in it - a small cottage with a thatched roof. I was in there and my friend and two or three others were there. He looked about twenty years ... He had a tweed suit with knickerbockers on. They had a lot of books ... they were writing. The hills were all green, the low-land was green with trees and rocks and quite a nice shore of the ocean showing."
Verification:
It is one thing to write about the Inn at Burford, or to describe scenery with the word-painters; it is quite another to seize on the heart of the suggestion and make a country famous with the legend ..." (See R. L. Stevenson's "Gossip on Romance", and "Memories And Portraits", page 238.)
"... I have played the sedulous ape to Hazlett, to Lamb, to Wordsworth, to Sir Thomas Brown ..." ("A College Magazine." See :Memories and Portraits", page 57).
From the point of view of the communicator: he is now thinking of how he taught himself to write, and what he said about this method in two of his essays - "A Gossip on Romance", and "A College Magazine." He had tried to describe scenery, and he thinks of Burford Inn, in a county in England, which he visited in his twenty-third year. (Here he met the novelist George Meredith for the first time), and how, at this date (1873) he was still aping various masters. He seems to hint now that at that point he was no longer content with this method of learning to write; but was to move on to more vigorous creative efforts.
We have not found any biographical evidence that fully upholds this intimation, but it is true that some charming essays were written: "Road", in 1873; "Ordered South" in 1874; "Viginibus Pueresque" in 1876, essays loved to this day.
The words "until now" (the year of his visit to Burford Bridge, and his meeting with Meredith) may denote a true memory of this time of transition. (Lillian Hamilton).
November 16, 1924.
Elizabeth M. feels a cold wet touch on the back of her neck. Dr. Hamilton verifies that her neck is wet. Later a wet wax mold of two attached fingers is found on top of the cabinet when the light is turned on..
See report by Dr. William Creighton below:
"The door of the room was locked on the inside, making it impossible for any person from without to enter.
"A glass container of wax and a pail of cold water were placed on a table within the cabinet.
"The medium, Mrs. Poole, went into trance and transmitted by automatic writing while unconscious, and by description of her vision after consciousness was recovered, an R. L. Stevenson message, (so called).
"Subsequent to this her position, which at first was with the back to the entrance of the cabinet, was moved so that she sat upon the side of the cabinet, having it adjacent to her right hand.
"A few minutes after assuming this position she suddenly jumped and looked around exclaiming that something cold and wet had touched the back of her neck; and when she felt the back of her neck she verified her suspicion. Dr. T. G. Hamilton, who were sitting on her immediate left, also felt and verified the moisture, as it were, drops of water still on her neck, located just below the hair line, and above the collar.
"The moisture present was also verified immediately by Mr. H. A. Reed and Mrs. J. D. Young.
"After the breaking up of the sitting, Mrs. Poole, who had not at any time left her chair previously, insisted on feeling that there must have been some phenomena in the way of wax forms produced.
"Lights being turned on, nothing was to be found in the water or on the table or the floor within the cabinet. Mrs. Poole insisted that we look on top of the cabinet. And upon doing so we found a double wax mold slightly over an inch in length with every detail of finger form: nail, whorls, creases, etc., and the nail margin of the finger form does not correspond with that of any finger of any of those present."
[ Photo of wax fingertips of November, 1924 ]
"We, the undersigned, being all and the only ones present at a sitting held between 9:35pm and 11:10pm, at the home of Dr. T. G. Hamilton, Elmwood, certify that the following circumstances and incidents are true to the best of our knowledge and belief.
The signatures:
Mrs. I. W. Doig(?) Mrs. J. A. Poole
William Creighton M. D. Mrs. J. D. Young
Florence Creighton H. A. Reed
J. D. Young Lillian Hamilton
T. G. Hamilton
November 20, 1924.
Unclear reference to Kidnaped. "In school-boy tongue."
Vision:
"I was away in a big city; he was there and some others, but I did not get looking at them, for him. He was young, between 20 and 30. He was writing. I wish he would get his hair cut and leave his writing alone! Then I was away in the home on the island. He was writing. He had white pen holders on the table. They are too busy talking to themselves.
Verification:
White pens can be seen in some R. L. Stevenson photographs. His untidy appearance when he was writing was noted by many. (Elizabeth told this, chuckling to herself. She found her R. L. Stevenson very amusing at times. - L. H.)
November 23, 1924.
Literary dictum from essay "A Gossip on Romance."
Script: "Forget the character ... push aside ... even narrative ... action something is right to me in the right place ..."
Verification:
"It is not character but incident that woos us out of our reserve. Something happens as we desire to have it happen to ourselves ... then we forget the character ... then we push the hero aside ... then we plunge into the tale ... and say we have been reading a romance ... The right kind of thing should fall out in the right kind of place." (This was given in two separate trance states. See "Memories and Portraits" and "A Gossip on Romance", P. 236, 247 - 48)
Vision:
"I was away at that house on the island. The first time that ever I seen them all around the table. I saw R. L., his wife, and a boy, about 12. And two strange men. They were eating just as natural as you do. R. L. had a glass of milk. They were all talking. I heard some words, but don't mind them. I was standing behind the two men ..."
Comment:
The medium is in error again as to the place represented by the imagery. The boy's age, the glass of milk are there, apparently to remind us that "A Gossip on Romance" ( from which he will shortly lift his dicta ) was Davos in Switzerland, where R. L. Stevenson went in 1881 - 2 suffering from tuberculosis.
Surely these little internal signs were placed in the imagery to help us solve the R. L. Stevenson literary-biographical riddles. So much in so little - we never ceased to be amazed at the ingenuity - R. L. Stevenson was indeed a very great and very gifted imaginer. We also noted that the selected portion is not quoted, but is indicated in new sentences, or reduced wording.
Conversational raps. Contact table levitation, recorded by flash light photography. Violent table movements.
Entities questioned re the large wax molds. By independent raps came "W. T. S." (William T. Stead).
November 25, 1924.
Our Scotsman Returns. (Foreign ports)
Script: "On many foreign ports I have been. Many ferlie seen and unco ... ".
Verification:
"In many a foreign port I've been, An' mony an unco' ferlie seen."
Verification:
Excerpt from Scots poem, ("Underwoods" page 60)
(First two lines from the poem "A Scotsman's Return from Abroad".) ("Underwoods", page 163). Written shortly after R. L. Stevenson's return to Scotland with his wife, early 1881.)
Vision:
"I was away in a different place. I saw Stevenson laughing; he was reading a book and grinning to himself. He was reading in a room; it looked to me a foreign port. I don't know how I got into that place. It minds me of Ireland."
November 30, 1924.
Script poor, memory of vision impossible to discover.
Trance II. Vision: R. L. Stevenson laughing and rhyming it off about "Praise the Lord Himself", His proper praise. (Script.)
Verification:
Excerpt from Scots poem, ("Underwoods" page 60)
The poem "Enbrio Kirk" referred to.
[No date given:]
"William Oliver Hamilton, my brother's partner, a gentleman, benign, kindly and gracious to every one; of whom I hear very often and talk to occasionally on the telephone, but who comes to our home only on rare occasions"
Crystal Gazer: (Mary Marshall) "A stout gentleman. His death is at hand. His days are numbered. He will pass suddenly, quickly. His death may occur in his office, on the street, or at his home, without his knowing that death is at hand, and possibly unattended by a physician, or without any of his own people near".
One cannot mourn the death of any one so truly kind and generous as Mr. Hamilton, except that the sweetness of their influence is passed.
Your sincere friend
Eva M. Broad
[Note: This arrived about five minutes before W. O. passed on December 3, 1924. W. O. was alone in his room in his boarding house when taken ill (heart attack). An inmate of the home heard him fall - rushed in and phoned T. G. H.]
The Crystal Gazer (Mary Marshall?) Had foreseen all correctly - except T.G. H's(?)last minute contact.
(Signed L. H.)
December 4, 1924.
Reference to Graham Balfour - R. L. Stevenson's official biographer. By a number of literary critics, and Lee particularly (see "Notorious Literary Attack") , Balfour was accused of "whitewashing" Stevenson, making him as saint - when a number of people knew that in his early manhood he now and then slipped into this path of dalliance(?). R. L. Stevenson, through E.M., appears to have this criticism in mind when writing.
"Graham Balfour - conspired"
"this purpose - apparently - my wish"
[ Photo ]
[ Photo ]
December 7, 1924.
Beside the Seashore - Little Louis (Trance 1).
At the Seaside ("A Child's Garden of Verse")
First trance script:
"When I was down, beside the sea shore, we stood my pail they gave me ... dig a hole in the sand."
Verification:
"When I was down beside the sea,
a wooden spade they gave to me,
To dig the sandy shore.
My holes were empty like a cup.
In every hole the sea came up, Till it could hold no more.
("A Child's Garden of Verse", page 4.)
Vision (Trance I):
"I saw Stevenson. He is full of mischief the night! He and another boy were together and they were laughing good! I saw a pail and a cup."
Comment:
"All basic ideas are noted; seashore, sand, holes, cup, shared in vision and script. Two new concepts added: R. L. Stevenson is given a playmate; and he is given a pail, which he did not have in the poem. Yet all seems quite natural.
[A brilliant piece of complexity, for all its apparent simplicity. - L. H.]
Trance II. R. L. Stevenson as a child, at dancing school. Script and vision poor.
Conversational raps. Non-contact table movements. Lillian Hamilton felt touches from unknown source. (All sitters' hands joined.)
December 9.
More literary dicta - "A Gossip on Romance" and "On the Art of Writing."
Script:
"Writing compressed ... strands of the tale woven and interwoven."
Verification:
"The motive and end of any art whatever is to make a pattern, and the true business of the literary artist is to plait or weave his meaning ... so that each sentence, by successive phrases, shall first come into a kind of knot and these, after a moment of suspended meaning, solve and clear itself ... The web, then, or the "pattern", a web of elegant and pregnant texture ... that is style, that is the foundation of the art of literature." (From the essay "On the Art of Writing").
Vision:
R. L. Stevenson walking in the hills, Elizabeth M. remarks that he looks like a Frenchman.
Verification:
See "On the Art of Writing" ("A Gossip on Romance")
Note! Through the Balfours it is now known that R. L. Stevenson had a strain of French blood.
Raps begin again. Stead signals.
Comment:
The vision does not attempt to parallel ideas to come in the basic message. It merely furnishes a Stevensonian background for certain Stevenson literary truisms. This "knot" was to be found in many vision-scripts - one central sentence that gives the memory, or thought, on which an image is built.
December 12, 1924.
First reference to the poem "A Camp" (see "Travels with a Donkey")
Script:
"The room was fit, the bed was made, the Star was lit; the water ran."
Verification:
"The bed was made, the room was fit. By punctual eve the stars were lit. The air was still, the water ran. No need was there for maid or man. When we put up, my ass and I, at God's green caravanserie" ( "Travels with a Donkey" - Chapter IX. "The Camp", "Underwoods", page 131). See also "Script to Dawn", in 1942, in R. L. Stevenson, chapter in "Is Survival A Fact?".)
Vision:
"I was away between mountains in a cottage. I saw my friend and another fellow sitting in a room; Stevenson was sitting in his care-free way. He would be about 30. If he would go to the barber he would look better. He spoke to me."
Comment:
Here the vision is fanciful, yet factual. During his travels through the Cevennes Mountains in France, R. L. Stevenson stayed several nights at various Inns. Two nights were spent out-of-doors. The little poem grew out of his experience of his second night of camping, which is described in prose, as well, In Chapter IX, in "A Night Among the Pines." R. L. Stevenson was 28. The script is a telegram-like version of the original.
"... I set out to scale a portion of the Lozer... I struck leftward by a pass among the pines until I hit on a dell of green turf where a streamlet made a little spout over some stones to serve me for a water tam... the day was already beginning to decline. I backed myself to the knees into my sack and made a hearty meal; and as soon as the sun went down I fell asleep. When I awoke, many of the stars had disappeared; only the stronger companions of the night still burned visibly overhead ... Day was at hand... I hastened to prepare my pack and tackle the steep ascent that lay before me ... I had been most hospitably received and punctually served in my green caravanerai. The room was airy, the water excellent, and the dawn had called me to the moment ..." (Excerpt from Chap. IX)
Trance II. Script gives name of a place in Burns Country. R. L. Stevenson is seen in a farmhouse, talking.
Vision not clear. Good writing.
December 14.
Very strong raps. Two violent levitations.
Mrs. Poole receives touches from unknown source.
Non-contact table movements keeping time to music being sung. Four times the table moves out of the cabinet, jumps into the air toward Dr. Hamilton, then falls to the floor.
December 21, 1924.
Reference to "whitewashing" R. L. Stevenson's memory, after his death.
Script:
"Sir Graham Balfour conspired ... the purpose apparently my wish ... R. L. S.".
Vision of burial spot on Mount Vaea, but no stone.
E.M. reports:
"I climbed up that mountain ... there was no tomb there. He was not there. I don't remember seeing him."
Comment: Is this an oblique reference to the fact that critics of R. L. Stevenson pointed out that certain indiscretions of his youthful days in Edinburgh have been glossed over by his own official biographer, Graham Balfour?
The wording of the script and vision suggest R. L. Stevenson's present awareness of this suggestion. Note also that "Sir" Graham Balfour was knighted some years after R. L. Stevenson's death. Balfour lived with R. L. Stevenson at Vailima for two years, from 1892-1894.
For attacks on his official biography, see "Steuart Literary Attacks", by Henley. See also "New Poems" for self-revelation.
December 28, 1924.
Excerpt from A Gossip on Romance.
Script:
"To seize the heart of every suggestion."
Vision:
Scenery ... R. L. Stevenson walking in a beautiful glen. (Trance I)
Trance II. The Scot Returns. The medium sees into the church through the keyhole!
Script:
"the Kirk was filled, the door was shut. I saw the minister himself."
Vision:
"I wanted in that church! The church was filled and the door was shut. They did not let me in, but I saw in ... through the side, or a keyhole. I could hear them singing. I didna see Stevenson. The minister was white-headed."
Verification:
See "A Scotsman's Return from Abroad", verse 8., and "R. L. Stevenson poems", page 165.
Comment: The Elizabeth M. vision is full of facts, "something" white is the evening dress shirt; the "merled" cover is a flag; the "red" men are Samoan servants.
Curiously enough, Lloyd Osbourne is in error on one point, on which the communicator is correct; the body did not remain on the table all night, but was placed on a low stretcher bed. This claim is verified by a photograph of the dead R. L. Stevenson, found in the book "Robert Louis Stevenson, His Work and Personality" (Methuen and Company. Page 218). It shows a Samoan man keeping vigil. The nearby table is laden with flowers.
Re the "Waverley" reference: That R. L. Stevenson in life admired Scott's Waverley novels is suggested by the biographer J. A. Steuart: "In English fiction the place of honor was assigned to Meredith and Henry James; and hard by were the Waverley novels." (Volume II, page 235).
In life, R. L. Stevenson used the word "Waverley" as a synonym for a literary masterpiece. "I am grinding singly at "The Ebb Tide ... I have only struggled from page 55 to page 82; 24 pages, et encore, sure to be re-written in 21 days. This no prize-taker, Not much Waverley Novels about this ... R. L. Stevenson." (From "The Letters", volume 5, page 24. Letter to Sydney Colvin, April 25, 1893.)
And "The amanuensis has been ill... I must return to my own lone Waverley." (From letter to Colvin dated October 6, 1894.)
Thus, eighteen months and one month before he died, R. L. Stevenson used this work whimsically to denote his own book.
Thirty years after his death, he used the same title again, and in the same sense. The two R. L. Stevensons appear to be one.
