1923
Dec 6 - Dec 16
"We then proceeded with singing as before to await developments and shortly it was realized, according to the sensations of the medium, that phenomena were probably under way; for after a few minutes, on turning on the red light, a finger form, the largest yet, was found within the water pail. (Photo -5). This form is especially good from the fact that it possesses in minutest detail over a large portion of its surface all of the markings of the normal skin. On the palmar surface the whorls are beautifully shown; the transverse creases at flexion of the joint and the longitudinal creases all come out in perfect detail. The finger tip in this sample would appear to have been very suddenly deprived of its inner materialized form.
"Judging from the fact that it has become flat, which I assume was due to the still soft condition of the wax at the time it was deprived of its materialized support. We have noted this as a common incident in connection with these wax experiments, whatever the materialized form on which the wax is lifted and deposited in the water, it seems to be in existence as a solid support for a small fraction of a second only.
"This collapsed condition is, moreover, another proof of the genuineness of the phenomena, in that, not only is it impossible in the experience of attempts made scores of times by us to duplicate these forms on the normal finger, the nearest approximation to a duplicate is easily detected since it can only be secured when the wax is well hardened by chilling, and possesses the necessary amount of thickness secured by repeated dippings.
"Of the genuineness of these wax productions we have not the slightest doubt but I am having very special precautions made by the strictest of test conditions which will be reported later to definitely and positively settle this point."
December 9, 1923,
the regular members of the group at that time - Dr. and Mrs. Glen Hamilton, Mr. H. A . Reed, Mr. D. B. MacDonald, Miss Edith Lawrence and Mr. James Leslie,were present.
There were also in addition four guests present; Prof. and Mrs. W. T. Allison and Mr. and Mrs. Isaac Pitblado.
By hand-slaps the message:
"It was a dream of father ... son ... a great engineer."
By hand script: "Haphazard schooling." (True. See biography.)
Also memories of his (R. L. Stevenson's) wife:
Let us take a rather simple example as an illustration. On the occasion of this transmission (which was the forty-eighth to come from this alleged source,),
During the trance sleep the medium's hand pounded the table on the necessary letters and spelled out:
"It was a dream of father, Thomas Stevenson, for son to be a great engineer.
The vision, related during the post-trance stage, was as follows:
"I was away in an old place, Edinburgh, but it was an office I was in; and that round-faced man with the side whiskers was having some talk with the young man. The young man was displeased. He threw his papers down with a bang, didn't want to do what the old man asked him to do. It was an office, for I saw a letterpress, then a couple of pictures of sailing ships."
Those who are familiar with the life of R. L. Stevenson will know that the communicator is in this message reminding us of the fact that the author's father, Robert Stevenson, desired his son to follow the family profession of lighthouse engineering, and that Stevenson himself was determined to be a writer. The purpose of the pantomime thus becomes clear: we see a young Louis acting a part that depicts this rebellion - " The young man was displeased; he threw his papers down with a bang; he didn't want to do what the old man asked him to do". An "act" has been put on in the mind of the medium based on a fragmentary section of the past of R. L. Stevenson, and in line, evidently, with the artistic and dramatic conceptions of the communicator.
Curiously enough, the most striking clue to the real nature of the method of communicating used in this case, is to be found in one of Stevenson's own essays, "Memoirs of an Islet"; an essay, however, which none of the communications touched upon. In the introductory paragraphs of this work the author reveals how he saw the memories of his past vividly in his mind's eye in the form of pictures which he could turn to advantage in his work as an imaginative writer:
"Those who try to be artists use, after time, the matter of their recollections, setting and resetting little colored memories of men and scenes, rigging up (it may be) some special friend in the attire of a buccaneer, and decreeing armies to maneuver, or murder to be done, on the playground of their youth ... After a dozen services in various tales, the little sun-bright pictures of the past still shine in the mind's eye with not a lineament defaced, not a tint impaired ... So that the writer begins to wonder at the perdurable life of these impressions ... and looking back on them with ever growing kindness, puts them at last, substantive jewels, in a setting of their own. One or two of these pleasant specters I think I have laid. I used one the other day; a little Islet of dense, fresh-water sand ... two of my puppets lay there a summer's day ... in time, perhaps, the puppets will grow faint; the original memories will swim up instant as ever; and I shall once more lie in bed, and see the little sandy isle as it is in nature, and the child (that was once me) wading there in butterburrs; and wonder at the instancy and virgin freshness of that memory; and be pricked again, in season and out of season, by the desire to weave it into art.
On December 13, 1923,
some information came through on R. L. Stevenson's courtship days at Grez, in France.
In the first trance, by hand-slaps: "Grez ... lady ... head ... sketch of future husband ... Reno widow."
The vision shows R. L. Stevenson in a glen with a lady who is painting. This also was accompanied by a picture of a lady painting in a glen with her two children.
Verification: (See Balfour.) True. R. L. Stevenson met Mrs. Osbourne in 1877 at Grez where she was painting. The words "Reno Widow" exactly describe Mrs. Osbourne's status: at the time she was separated from her husband, but not yet divorced. (A bit of whimsy characteristic of R. L. Stevenson.)
The second trance depicts his first journey to the U.S.A. to be with Mrs. Osbourne.
In trance II, Elizabeth writes: "Slow express wagon ... freight train."
The vision: "I was in a large city ... I came off a boat ... It was pouring and raining. I saw a donkey; but I couldn't get on it ... I saw a wagon and straw in it ... a man lying in the straw. I went on till I came to a station to a train. It was a freight train. I went a long way. The man got on, too. He came to a city ... There was no pride about this man. Why had I to follow this fellow?"
Verification: "... By noon of the second Sunday we sighted the low shore outside of New York Harbor ... and by six o'clock Jones and I issued in to West Street sitting on some straw in the bottom of our open baggage-wagon ... it rained miraculously." (From R. L. S. The Amateur Emigrant, page 107.)
[Note: After spending the night in New York, R. L. S. went west to San Francisco on an emigrant train, a terrible journey which R. L. S. describes in "Across The Plains." The vision experience omits the night in New York and takes the observer straight on. Always an economy of imagery. Apparently the medium can absorb only so much. (L.H.)]
Story of "Across the Plains" is continued. Stevenson's illness on arrival, is mentioned.
On December 16, 1923,
during Trance I - by Hand-slaps:
"Amateur Emigrant ... Thoreau."
Elizabeth's trance vision:
"I was away the night on that horrid train ... it was more like an old boxcar. But I landed in a nice place with lots of flowers. I looked in a house. And there was a man there and he was very sick ... seems he was lying down ... out; there was a man with him attending him; not much in their room either. He looked as if he had just got there. The train was awful rough, kind of black box seats. I just looked at him; he was lying on a form made-up; and a grip and the carpet bag where lying beside him ..."
Verification: "On the 30th of August Stevenson reached San Francisco; but so much had the long journey shaken him that he looked like a man at death's door. Mrs. Osbourne was better, but that was all. To recover from the effects of his hardships he went another hundred and fifty miles to the south and camped out by himself on the coast range of mountains beyond Monterey. But he had overtaxed his strength, and broke down. Two nights he lay out under a tree in a sort of stupor; and if two frontiersman in charge of a goat ranch had not taken him in and tended him, there would have been an end to his story. They took him back to the ranch... and he made a recovery for the time ... (Balfour, volume 1. Page 166-7)
Thoreau: Why is this name added in here with the memories of his first visit to California? The answer lies in the fact that it was shortly after his recovery, in San Francisco, that he read Thoreau's Essays for the first time. In turn, this led to R. L. Stevenson's own Essay on Thoreau which he sent home to England, where it was published in the Cornhill Magazine.
R. L. Stevenson bitterly regretted that his father had died without receiving the recognition that was due him for his scientific work and inventions connected with lighthouses and their lighting systems. Accordingly he wrote, a few weeks after his father's death, an article about him, "Thomas Stevenson, Civil Engineer", which was published in the "Century". This same article was two months later included in his collected essays and published in book form. The work of preparing these was finished while confined to bed at his home in Bournemouth, shortly before he left for America in his search for health; and so, in point of time, we can see that the communicator has made no mistakes in grouping these references together.
The vision:
As will be seen, the vision is complementary to the signaled message, giving a 'picture' of Stevenson as an invalid, with him, his wife, his step-son and his physician. The latter, the medium "hears" saying something about "going away". He does not go with his family to their meals; his hair is very long; his face is 'awful' white and he impresses the medium as being unusually 'poor'. His step-son, Lloyd Osbourne, has this to say of Stevenson's health and appearance in his 37th year - the year in which Thomas Stevenson died and in which R. L. Stevenson returned to the United States. "His health throughout was at its lowest ebb; never was he so spectral, so emaciated, so unkempt and tragic a figure. His long hair ... his eyes so abnormally brilliant in his wasted face, his sick-room garb picked up at random and to which he gave no thought ... (Scribners, 1923)
The presence of the easel would suggest that someone in Stevenson's home was an artist: this is correct, Mrs. Stevenson being an amateur painter.
But there is one part of the vision that cannot be said to be complementary to the main message - the 'picture' of the inn and its name 'Burford'. This at first was very puzzling and hours were spent searching to find some verification that would explain its inclusion in a communication purporting to be from R. L. Stevenson. As shortly before this the inn of Treasure Island fame had been visualized to the medium, it was expected that this inn also would prove to be a mythical inn of some Stevenson story.
However, a search in this direction proved futile; it was at length found to exist in fact, it being an inn in Surrey, situated at the foot of the hill as seen in the vision.
Here Stevenson first met Meredith, here he visited for some time in the year 1882; and later in an essay, "A Gossip on Romance" he records his memory of this charming little place. As far as can be learned, this would seem to be the extent of his connection with the Burford Inn.
As Surrey lies adjacent to the Shire in which is the town of Bournemouth, it might be called another South England memory of R. L. Stevenson. It will also be noticed that the vision of the inn and that of the home in which he was a sick man was separated by a 'long walk!'
Seven sittings - extending over a period from April to December, 1923, - were devoted to 'lighthouse' messages. In one came two remarkably evidential words, found to be technical names of two of Thomas Stevenson's inventions, one of which had to do with the lighting system of lighthouses. Other points in these messages could only be verified after a careful reading of the Encyclopedia articles on lighthouses.
[Note: the R. L. Stevenson output from this point on, and for some twenty experiments, was devoted to giving condensed brief excerpts from the "Dedication to Underwoods", and from "A Note on Spelling Scots" from Underwood's. The visions were general pictures representing "Skerryvore", his Bournemouth home, where these notes had been written; and general pictures of a young man, R. L. Stevenson in a Scottish setting, which furnished a background for the "Note on Spelling Scots."
These can be omitted from our study. We suspected at this time that R. L. Stevenson was experimenting with two motor automatisms, hand-slaps and writing, which he used alternatively during these weeks. One example is given - a clever play on 'oor' and 'our'.]
1923.
8. Deep trance occurs for first time.
9. Hand-signal automatism begins. (R. L. Stevenson. said to be communicating.)
10. Writing automatism begins (Again said to be R. L. Stevenson.)
11. Violin lifted by psychic power, and strings are plucked.
12. Two trance states appear during sitting.
13. Direct writing (In deep trance, medium's hand is activated to write.)
