Works of E F Benson

by E. F. Benson

  After all, what wonder? Were there the slightest chance of establishing communication between the living and the dead, what subject (even the war) would be worthier of the profoundest study and experiment? Nothing more interesting, nothing more vitally important, could engross us, for which of the affairs in this world could be so important as the establishment, scientifically and firmly, of any facts that concern the next world? For there is one experience, namely, death, that is of absolutely universal interest. Everything else, from my little finger to Shakespeare’s brain, only concerns a certain number of people; whereas death concerns the remotest Patagonian. However strongly and sincerely we may happen to believe that death is not an extinguishing of the essential self, with what intense interest we must all grab at anything which can throw light on the smallest, most insignificant detail of the life that is hereafter lived? Or, if your mind is so constructed that you do not believe in the survival of personality, how infinitely more keenly you would clutch at the remotest evidence (so long as it is evidence) that there is something to follow after the earth has been filled in above the body, from which, we are all agreed, something has departed. Without prejudice, without bias either of child-like faith or convinced scepticism, and preserving only an open mind, willing to be convinced by reasonable phenomena, there is nothing sublunar or superlunar that so vitally concerns us. You may not care about the treatment of leprosy, presumably in the belief that you will not have leprosy; you may not care about Danish politics in the belief that you will never be M.P. (if there is such a thing) for Copenhagen. But what cannot fail to interest you is the slightest evidence of what may occur to you when you pass the inevitable gates.

  There are only two things that can possibly happen: the one is complete extinction (in which case I allow that the subject is closed, since if you are extinguished it is idle to inquire what occurs next, since nothing can occur); the other is the survival, in some form, of life, of yourself. This falls into three heads:

  (i) Reincarnation, as an earwig, or a Hottentot, or an emperor.

  (ii) Mere absorption into the central furnace of life.

  (iii) Survival of personality.

  And here the personal equation comes in. I cannot really believe I am going to be an earwig or an emperor. To my mind that sounds so unlikely that I cannot fix serious thought upon it. What shall I, this Me, do when I am an earwig or an emperor? How shall I feel? The mind slips from the thought, as you slip on ice, and falls down. Nor can I conceive being absorbed into the central furnace, because that, as far as personality goes, is identical with extinction. My soul will be burned in the source of life, just as my body may perhaps be burned in a crematorium, and I don’t really care, in such a case, what will happen to either of them.

  But my unshakeable conviction, with regard to which I long for evidence, is that I — something that I call I — will continue a perhaps less inglorious career than it has hitherto pursued. And if you assemble together a dozen healthy folk, who have got no idea of dying at present, you will find that, rooted in the consciousness of at least eleven of them, if they will be honest about themselves, there is this same immutable conviction that They Themselves will neither have been extinguished or reincarnated or absorbed when their bodies are put away in a furnace or a churchyard. There is the illusion or conviction of a vast majority of mankind that with the withdrawal from the body of the Something which has kept it alive, that Something does not cease to have an independent and personal existence.

  Well, there has been lately an enormous increase in the number of those who seek evidence on this overwhelmingly interesting subject. The book which I have been reading and wondering over treats of it, and Francis has gone with his Aunt Aggie to seek it. There has been, too, it is only fair to say, an enormous increase in the exasperation of the folk who, knowing nothing whatever about the subject, and scorning to make any study of what they consider such hopeless balderdash, condemn all those who have an open mind on the question as blithering idiots, hoodwinked by the trickery of so-called mediums. Out of their own inner consciousness they know that there can be no such thing as communication between the living and the dead, and there’s the end of the matter. All who think there possibly may be such communication are fools, and all who profess to be able to produce evidence for it are knaves.... They themselves, being persons of sanity and common-sense, know that it is impossible.

  But other shining examples of sanity and common-sense would undoubtedly have affirmed thirty years ago, with the same pontifical infallibility, that such a thing as wireless telegraphy was impossible, or a hundred years ago that it was equally ridiculous to think that a sort of big tea-kettle could draw a freight of human beings along iron rails at sixty miles an hour. But wireless telegraphy and express trains happened, in spite of their sanity and common-sense, and it seems to me that if we deny the possibility of this communication between the living and the dead, we are acting in precisely the same manner as those same sensible people would have acted thirty and a hundred years ago.

  Another favourite assertion of the sane and sensible is that if they could get evidence themselves (though they foam with rage at the very notion of attempting to do such a thing) they would believe it. That is precisely the same thing as saying you will not believe in Australia till you have been there. For the existence of Australia depends (for those who have never seen it) on the evidence of others. The evidence for the existence of Australia is overwhelming, and therefore we are right to accept it, even though we have not seen it ourselves. Kangaroos and gold, and Australian troops and postage-stamps, and the voyages of steamers, makes its existence absolutely certain; there is no doubt whatever about it. And the evidence in favour of the possibility of communication between this world and another non-material world is now in process of accumulation. It is being studied by people who are eminent in the scientific world, and it seems that there are fragments, scraps of evidence, which must be treated with the respect of an open mind by all who have not the pleasant gift of the infallibility that springs from complete ignorance. It is no longer any use to quote from Mr. Sludge the Medium....

  There are a great many gullible people in the world and a great many fraudulent ones, and when the two get together round a table in a darkened room, it is obvious that there is a premium on trickery. But because a certain medium is a knave and a vagabond, who ought to be put in prison, and others are such as should not be allowed to go out, except with their minds under care of a nurse, it does not follow that there are no such things as genuine manifestations. It would be as reasonable to say that because a child does his multiplication sum wrong, there is something unsound in the multiplication table. A fraudulent medium does not invalidate a possible genuineness in those who are not cheats; a quack or a million quacks do not cast a slur on the science of medicine. In questions of spiritualism there is no denying that the number of quacks exposed and unexposed is regrettably large, and, without doubt, all spiritualistic phenomena should be ruthlessly and pitilessly scrutinized. But when this is done, it is only a hide-bound stupidity that refuses to treat the results with respect.

  Other reservations must be made. All results that can conceivably be accounted for by such well-established phenomena as telepathy or thought-reading must be unhesitatingly ruled out. They are deeply interesting in themselves, they are like the traces of other metals discovered in exploring a gold-reef, but they are not the gold, and have no more to do with the thing inquirers are in quest of than have acid-drops or penny buns. Many mediums (so-called) are not mediums at all, but have that strange and marvellous gift of being able to explore the minds of others....

  What is the working and mechanism of that group of phenomena, among which we may class hypnotism, thought-reading, telepathy, and so forth, we do not rightly know. But inside the conscious self of every human being there lurks the sub-conscious or subliminal self, which has something to do with all these things. Every event that happens to a man, every thought that passes
through his mind, every impression that his brain receives makes a mark on it, similar, perhaps, to the minute dots on phonograph records. That phonograph record (probably) is in the keeping of the sub-conscious mind, and though the conscious mind may have forgotten the fact, and the circumstances in the making of any of these marks, the sub-conscious mind has it recorded, and, under certain conditions, can produce it again. And it is the sub-conscious mind which without doubt exercises those thought-reading and telepathic functions. In most people it lies practically inaccessible; others, numerically few, appear, in trance or even without the suspension of the conscious mind, to be able to exercise its powers, and — leaving out the mere conjuring tricks of fraudulent persons — it is they who pass for mediums.

  What happens? This: A bereaved mother or a bereaved wife sits with one of those mediums. The medium goes into a genuine trance, and probing the mind of the eager expectant sitter, can tell her all sorts of intimate details about the husband or son who has been killed which are already known to her. The medium can produce his name, his appearance; can recount events and happenings of his childhood; can even say things which the mother has forgotten, but which prove to be true. Is it any wonder that the sitter is immensely impressed? She is more than impressed, she is consoled and comforted when the medium proceeds to add (still not quite fraudulently) messages of love and assurance of well-being. It is not quite conscious fraud; it is perhaps a fraud of the sub-conscious mind.

  Now all this, these reminiscences, these encouraging messages from the other world, have to be ruled out if we want to get at the real thing. They are phenomena vastly interesting in themselves, but they are clearly accountable for by the established theory of thought-reading. They need have nothing whatever to do with communications from discarnate spirits, for they can be accounted for by a natural law already known to us. They do not help in the slightest degree to establish the new knowledge for which so many are searching....

  Francis had come back from his lunch and his séance with Aunt Aggie, and a considerable part of these reflections are really a précis of our discussion. It had been quite a good thought-reading séance: Uncle Willy, through the mouth of the medium in trance, had affirmed his dislike of parsnips and mushrooms, had mentioned his name, and nickname, Puffin, by which Aunt Aggie had known him, and had described with extraordinary precision the room where he used to sit.

  “I was rather impressed,” said Francis. “It really was queer, for silly though Aunt Aggie is, I don’t think she had previously gone to Amber — yes, the medium was Amber, just Amber — and primed her with regard to this information. Amber read it all right out of Aunt Aggie’s mind. But then Uncle Willy became so extremely unlike himself that I couldn’t possibly believe it was Uncle Willy; it must have been a sort of reflection of what Aunt Aggie hoped he had become. He was deeply edifying; he said he was learning to be patient; he told us that he had improved wonderfully. Poor Aunt Aggie sobbed, and I knew she loved sobbing. It made her feel good inside. All the same — —” He let himself lie inertly on the sofa, in that supreme bodily laziness which, as I have said, gives his mind the greater activity.

  “It was all a thought-reading séance,” he said, “quite good of its kind, but it had no more to do with the other world than Matilda.... But why shouldn’t there be a way through between the material and the spiritual, just as there is a way for telegraphy, as you said, without wires? Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, no doubt, a so-called message from the other side is only a subtle intercommunication between minds on this side. It’s so hard to guard against that. But it might be done. We might think of some piece of knowledge known only to a fellow who was dead.”

  Suddenly he jumped up.

  “I’ve thought of a lovely plan,” he said. “Go for a walk, if you haven’t been out all day, or go and have a bath or something; and while you are gone I’ll prepare a packet, and seal it up in a box. Nobody will know but me. And then when the next bit of shrapnel comes along and hits me instead of the potted-meat tin, you will pay half-a-guinea, I think it is — I know I paid for Aunt Aggie and myself — and see if a medium can tell you what is in that box. Nobody will know except me, and I shall be dead, so it really will look very much as if I had a hand in it if a medium in trance can tell you what is in it. A box can’t telepathize, can it? The Roman Catholics say it’s devil-work to communicate with the dead; they say all sorts of foul spirits get hold of the other end of the telephone. Isn’t it lucky we aren’t Roman Catholics?”

  “And what about the War Office?” I said, chiefly because I didn’t want either to go out or have a bath.

  “Oh, I forgot. I’m going to be sent out to the Italian front. We’ve got some people there, and it seems they don’t know Italian very well. I don’t know what I shall be quite: I think a sort of Balaam’s ass that talks, a sort of mule perhaps with a mixed Italian and English parentage. Duties? Ordering dinner, I suppose.”

  “Lucky devil!”

  “I’m not sure. I think I would sooner take my chance in the trenches. But off I go day after to-morrow. Lord, if I get a week’s leave now and then, shan’t I fly to Alatri! Can’t you come out, too, to look after your Italian property? Fancy having a week at Alatri again! There won’t be bathing, of course; but how I long to hear the swish and bang of the shutters that Pasqualino has forgotten to hitch to, in the Tramontana! And the sweeping of the wind in the stone-pine! And the glow and crackle of the wood-fire on the hearth! And the draughty rooms! And the springing up of the freesias! And Seraphina, fat Seraphina, and the smell of frying! Fancy being heedless again for a week! I feel sure the war has never touched the enchanted island. The world as it was! Good Lord, the world as it was!”

  He had sat and then lain down on the floor.

  “It’s odd,” he said, “that though I wouldn’t change that which I am, and that which I know, for anything that went before, I long for a week, a day, an hour of the time when all the material jollinesses of the world were so magically exciting. Oh, the pleasant evenings when one didn’t think, but just enjoyed what was there! There’s a great lump of Boy still in me, which I don’t get rid of. The cache: think of the cache we were going to revisit in September, 1914! After all, It, the mystical thing that matters, was there all the time, though one didn’t really know it.... But I should love to get the world as it was again. I don’t want it for long, I think, but just for a little while. Rest, you know, child’s play, nonsense, Italy. I would buckle to again afterwards, but it would be nice to be an animal again. I want not to think about anything that matters, God, and my soul, and right and wrong....

  “I want to rebel. Just for a minute. I daresay it’s the devil who makes me want. It’s a way he has. ‘Be an innocent child,’ says he, ‘and don’t think. Just look at the jolly things, and the beautiful things, and take your choice!’ I don’t want to be beastly, but I do want to get out of the collar of the only life which I believe to be real. I want to eat and drink and sit in the sun, and hear the shutters bang, and read a witty wicked book, and see a friend — you, in fact — and do again what we did; I want to quench the light invisible, and make it invisible, really invisible, for a minute or two. I suppose that’s blasphemy all right.”

  He lay silent a moment, and then got up.

  “Oh, do go for a walk,” he said, “while I prepare my posthumous packet. Or prepare a posthumous packet for me. You may die first, you see; it’s easily possible that you may die first now that they’re not sending me to the trenches again, and it would be so interesting after your lamentable decease to be told by a medium what you had put in the packet. Let’s do that. Let each of us prepare a posthumous packet, and seal it up, and on yours you must put directions that it is to be delivered to me unopened. I needn’t put anything on mine; you can keep them both in a cupboard till one of us dies. And the survivor will consult a medium as to what is in the late lamented’s packet. Only the late lamented will know. Really, it will be a great test. Come on. It will be like playing
caches again. Mind you put something ridiculous in yours.”

  I procured two cardboard boxes, of which we each took one, and went to my bedroom to select unlikely objects. Eventually I decided on a “J” nib, a five-franc piece and a small quantity of carbolic tooth-powder. These I put in my box, put directions on the top that it was to be given on my death to Francis, and went downstairs again, where I found him sealing his up. I put them both in a drawer of a table and locked it.

  “Lord, how I long to tell you what I’ve put in mine!” said Francis.

  More than half the month has passed (I am writing, as a matter of evidential data, on the 17th of January), and I desire to record with the utmost accuracy gleanable in such affairs, the general feeling of the inhabitants of London with regard to the war. Briefly, then, a huge wave of optimism — for which God be thanked — has roared over the town. Peace Notes, and the replies to them, and the replies to those replies have been probably the wind that raised that wave, or, in other words, the super-coxcomb who rules the German Empire has expressed his “holy wrath” at the reply of our Allied nations to his gracious granting of peace on his own terms. But England and France and Russia and Italy have unanimously wondered when, in the history of the world, a nation that proclaimed itself victor has offered peace to the adversary it proclaimed it has conquered. Germany, not only belligerent, but also apparently umpire, has announced that she has won the war, and therefore offers peace to her victims. That was a most astounding piece of news, and it surprised us all very much. But what must have surprised Germany more was the supposedly-expiring squeal of her victims which intimated that they were not conquered. Hence the “holy wrath” of the World-War-Lord, who had intimated, as out of Sinai, that they were conquered. They don’t think so — they may be wrong, but they just don’t think so. Instead they are delighted with his victorious proclamation, and take the proclamation as evidence that he is not victorious. German newspapers have been, if possible, more childishly profane than he, and tell us they are ready to grasp the hand of God Almighty, who is giving such success to their submarine warfare. They said just that; it was their duty to shake hands with God Almighty, because with His aid they had sunk so many defenceless merchant ships. Perhaps that “goes down” in Germany, for it appears that they are short of food, and would gladly swallow anything.