AN INTERLUDE OF PEACE
Hindhead--“A Duet”--A Haunted House--A Curious Society--Preternatural
Powers--The Little Doctor--The Shadow of Africa.
When we returned to England I found that the house in which we
hoped that the cure would be completed was not yet ready. It was a
considerable mansion planned upon a large scale, so that it was not
surprising that it had taken some time to build. We were compelled to
take a furnished house at Haslemere until the early months of 1897,
when we moved up to Moorlands, a boarding house on Hindhead close to
the site of my building. There we spent some happy and busy months
until the house was ready in the summer. I had taken up riding, and
though I was never a great horseman I was able from that time onwards
to get a good deal of health and pleasure out of it, for in that woody,
healthy country there are beautiful rides in every direction, and
the hunting, in which I joined, was at least picturesque. About June
we moved into the new house, which I called Undershaw--a new word, I
think, and yet one which described it exactly in good Anglo-Saxon,
since it stood under a hanging grove of trees.
I have said little, during these years spent in the quest of health,
concerning my literary production. The chief book which I had written
since “The Refugees” was a study of the Regency with its bucks and
prizefighters. I had always a weakness for the old fighting men and
for the lore of the prize-ring, and I indulged it in this novel. At
the time boxing had not gained the popular vogue which I have been
told that this very book first initiated, and I can never forget the
surprise of Sir George Newnes when he found out what the new serial
was about. “Why that subject of all subjects upon earth?” he cried.
However, I think that the readers of “The Strand” found that I had not
chosen badly, and the book is one which has held a permanent place as a
picture of those wild old days. I wrote a considerable number of short
tales during those years, and finally in 1898 a domestic study, “A
Duet,” which was an attempt at quite a different form of literature--a
picture in still life, as it were. It was partly imaginative and partly
founded upon early experiences of my own and of friends. It led, I
remember, to a public bickering with a man who has done good work as
a critic, Dr. Robertson Nicoll. He took exception to some passage in
the book, which he had every right to do. But he wrote at that time
for six or seven papers, under different names, so that it appeared as
if a number of critics were all condemning me when it was really only
one. I thought I had a grievance, and said so with such vehemence that
he stated that he did not know whether to answer me in print or in the
law courts. However, it all blew over and we became very good friends.
Another book of those days was “Uncle Bernac,” which I never felt
to be satisfactory, though I venture to claim that the two chapters
which portray Napoleon give a clearer picture of him than many a long
book has done, which is natural enough, since they are themselves the
quintessence of a score of books.
So much for my work. I had everything in those few years to make a
man contented, save only the constant illness of my partner. And yet
my soul was often troubled within me. I felt that I was born for
something else, and yet I was not clear what that something might be.
My mind felt out continually into the various religions of the world. I
could no more get into the old ones, as commonly received, than a man
could get into his boy’s suit. I still argued on materialist lines. I
subscribed to the Rationalist Association and read all their literature
carefully, but it was entirely destructive and one cannot permanently
live on that alone. Besides, I was sure enough of psychic phenomena to
be aware that there was a range of experience there which was entirely
beyond any rational explanation, and that therefore a system which
ignored a great body of facts, and was incompatible with them, was
necessarily an imperfect system. On the other hand, convinced as I was
of these abnormal happenings, and that intelligence, high or low, lay
behind them, I by no means understood their bearing. I still confused
the knocking at the door with the friend outside, or the ringing of the
bell with the telephone message. Sometimes I had the peace of despair,
when one felt that one could never possibly arrive at any conclusions
save negative ones, and then again some fresh impulse of the soul would
start one upon a new quest. In every direction, I reached out, but
never yet with any absolute satisfaction. I should have been relieved
from all my troubles could I have given heartfelt adhesion to any form
of orthodoxy--but my reason always barred the way.
During all the Egyptian and other periods of our exile I had never
ceased to take the psychic subject very seriously, to read eagerly
all that I could get, and from time to time to organize séances which
gave indifferent but not entirely negative results, though we had no
particular medium to help us. The philosophy of the subject began
slowly to unfold, and it was gradually made more feasible, not only
that life carried on, enclosed in some more tenuous envelope, but that
the conditions which it encountered in the beyond were not unlike those
which it had known here. So far I had got along the road, but the
overwhelming and vital importance of it all had not yet been borne in
upon me.
Now and then I had a psychic experience somewhat outside the general
run of such events. One of these occurred when I was at Norwood in
1892 or 1893. I was asked by the Society of Psychic Research whether I
would join a small committee to sit in and report upon a haunted house
at Charmouth in Dorchester. I went down accordingly together with a
Dr. Scott and Mr. Podmore, a man whose name was associated with such
investigations. I remember that it took us the whole railway journey
from Paddington to read up the evidence as to the senseless noises
which had made life unendurable for the occupants, who were tied by a
lease and could not get away. We sat up there two nights. On the first
nothing occurred. On the second Dr. Scott left us and I sat up with Mr.
Podmore. We had, of course, taken every precaution to checkmate fraud,
putting worsted threads across the stairs, and so on.
In the middle of the night a fearsome uproar broke out. It was like
some one belabouring a resounding table with a heavy cudgel. It was
not an accidental creaking of wood, or anything of that sort, but a
deafening row. We had all doors open, so we rushed at once into the
kitchen, from which the sound had surely come. There was nothing
there--doors were all locked, windows barred, and threads unbroken.
Podmore took away the light and pretended that we had both returned to
our sitting-room, going off with the young master of the house, while
I waited in the dark in the hope of a return of the disturbance. None
came--or ever did come. What occasioned it we never knew. It was of the
same character as all the other disturbances we had read about, but
shorter in time. But there was a sequel to the story. Some years later
the house was burned down, which may or may not have a bearing upon the
sprite which seemed to haunt it, but a more suggestive thing is that
the skeleton of a child about ten years old was dug up in the garden.
This I give on the authority of a relation of the family who were so
plagued. The suggestion was that the child had been done to death there
long ago, and that the subsequent phenomena of which we had one small
sample were in some way a sequence to this tragedy. There is a theory
that a young life cut short in sudden and unnatural fashion may leave,
as it were, a store of unused vitality which may be put to strange
uses. The unknown and the marvellous press upon us from all sides. They
loom above us and around us in undefined and fluctuating shapes, some
dark, some shimmering, but all warning us of the limitations of what
we call matter, and of the need for spirituality if we are to keep in
touch with the true inner facts of life.
I was never asked for a report of this case, but Podmore sent one
in, attributing the noises to the young man, though as a fact he was
actually sitting with us in the parlour when the tumult broke out. A
confederate was possible, though we had taken every step to bar it,
but the explanation given was absolutely impossible. I learned from
this, what I have often confirmed since, that while we should be most
critical of all psychic assertions, if we are to get at the truth,
we should be equally critical of all negatives and especially of
so-called “exposures” in this subject. Again and again I have probed
them and found them to depend upon prejudice or upon an imperfect
acquaintance with psychic law.
This brings me to another curious experience which occurred about
this time, probably in 1898. There was a small doctor dwelling near
me, small in stature, and also, I fear, in practice, whom I will call
Brown. He was a student of the occult, and my curiosity was aroused
by learning that he had one room in his house which no one entered
except himself, as it was reserved for mystic and philosophic purposes.
Finding that I was interested in such subjects, Dr. Brown suggested
one day that I should join a secret society of esoteric students. The
invitation had been led up to by a good deal of preparatory inquiry.
The dialogue between us ran somewhat thus:
“What shall I get from it?”
“In time, you will get powers.”
“What sort of powers?”
“They are powers which people would call supernatural. They are
perfectly natural, but they are got by knowledge of deeper forces of
nature.”
“If they are good, why should not every one know them?”
“They would be capable of great abuse in the wrong hands.”
“How can you prevent their getting into wrong hands?”
“By carefully examining our initiates.”
“Should I be examined?”
“Certainly.”
“By whom?”
“The people would be in London.”
“Should I have to present myself?”
“No, no, they would do it without your knowledge.”
“And after that?”
“You would then have to study.”
“Study what?”
“You would have to learn by heart a considerable mass of material. That
would be the first thing.”
“If this material is in print, why does it not become public property?”
“It is not in print. It is in manuscript. Each manuscript is carefully
numbered and trusted to the honour of a passed initiate. We have never
had a case of one going wrong.”
“Well,” said I, “it is very interesting and you can go ahead with the
next step, whatever it may be.”
Some little time later--it may have been a week--I awoke in the very
early morning with a most extraordinary sensation. It was not a
nightmare or any prank of a dream. It was quite different from that,
for it persisted after I was wide awake. I can only describe it by
saying that I was tingling all over. It was not painful, but it was
queer and disagreeable, as a mild electric shock would be. I thought at
once of the little doctor.
In a few days I had a visit from him. “You have been examined and
you have passed,” said he with a smile. “Now you must say definitely
whether you will go on with it. You can’t take it up and drop it. It is
serious, and you must leave it alone or go forward with a whole heart.”
It began to dawn upon me that it really was serious, so serious
that there seemed no possible space for it in my very crowded and
pre-occupied life. I said as much, and he took it in very good part.
“Very well,” said he, “we won’t talk of it any more unless you change
your mind.”
There was a sequel to the story. A month or two later, on a pouring
wet day, the little doctor called, bringing with him another medical
man whose name was familiar to me in connection with exploration and
tropical service. They sat together beside my study fire and talked.
One could not but observe that the famous and much-travelled man was
very deferential to the little country surgeon, who was the younger of
the two.
“He is one of my initiates,” said the latter to me. “You know,” he
continued, turning to his companion, “Doyle nearly joined us once.” The
other looked at me with great interest and then at once plunged into a
conversation with his mentor as to the wonders he had seen and, as I
understood, actually done. I listened amazed. It sounded like the talk
of two lunatics. One phrase stuck in my memory.
“When first you took me up with you,” said he, “and we were hovering
over the town I used to live in, in Central Africa, I was able for the
first time to see the islands out in the lake. I always knew they
were there, but they were too far off to be seen from the shore. Was
it not extraordinary that I should first see them when I was living in
England?”
“Yes,” said Brown, smoking his pipe and staring into the fire. “We had
some fun in those days. Do you remember how you laughed when we made
the little steamboat and it ran along the upper edge of the clouds?”
There were other remarks as wild. “A conspiracy to impress a
simpleton,” says the sceptic. Well, we can leave it at that if the
sceptic so wills, but I remain under the impression that I brushed
against something strange, and something which I am not sorry that I
avoided. It was not Spiritualism and it was not Theosophy, but rather
the acquisition of powers latent in the human organization, after the
alleged fashion of the old gnostics or of some modern fakirs in India,
though some doubtless would spell fakirs with an “e.” One thing I am
very sure of, and that is that morals and ethics have to keep pace with
knowledge, or all is lost. The Maori cannibals had psychic knowledge
and power, but were man-eaters none the less. Christian _ethics_ can
never lose its place whatever expansion our psychic faculties may
enjoy. But Christian theology can and will.
To return to the little doctor, I came across him again, as psychic
as ever, in Portland, Oregon, in 1923. From what I learned I should
judge that the powers of the Society to which he belonged included
that of loosening their own etheric bodies, in summoning the etheric
bodies of others (mine, for example) and in making thought images (the
steamboat) in the way that we are assured is possible by will-power.
But their line of philosophy or development is beyond me. I believe
they represent a branch of the Rosicrucians.
All seemed placid at this time. My wife was holding her own in winter
as well as in summer. The two children, Mary and Kingsley, were passing
through the various sweet phases of human development, and brought
great happiness into our lives. The country was lovely. My life was
filled with alternate work and sport. As with me so with the nation.
They were years of prosperity and success. But the shadow of South
Africa was falling upon England, and before it passed my personal
fortunes, as well as so many more, were destined to be involved in it.
I had a deep respect for the Boers and some fear of their skill at
arms, their inaccessible situation, and their sturdy Teutonic tenacity.
I foresaw that they would be a most dangerous enemy, and I watched
with horror the drift of events which from the time of the ill-judged
Jameson Raid never ceased to lead to open war. It was almost a relief
when at last it came and we could clearly see the magnitude of our
task. And yet few people understood it at the time. On the very eve of
war I took the chair at a dinner to Lord Wolseley at the Authors’ Club
and he declared that we could send two divisions to Africa. The papers
next day were all much exercised as to whether such a force was either
possible to collect or necessary to send. What would they have thought
had they been told that a quarter of a million men, a large proportion
of them cavalry, would be needed before victory could be won. The early
Boer victories surprised no one who knew something of South African
history, and they made it clear to every man in England that it was
not a wine glass but a rifle which one must grasp if the health of the
Empire was to be honoured.