Артур Конан Дойл
The Wanderings of a Spiritualist

Reading the alleged exposure, one is struck, as so often in such cases, with its unsatisfactory nature. There is the difficulty of the language and the money. There is the disappearance of the third bird and the cage. Above all, how did the birds get into the carefully-guarded seance room, especially as Bailey was put in a bag during the proceedings? The committee say the bag may not have been efficient, but they also state that Bailey desired the control to be made more effective. Altogether it is a puzzling case. On my applying to Bailey himself for information, he declared roundly that he had been the victim of a theological plot with suborned evidence. The only slight support which I can find for that view is that there was a Rev. Doctor among his accusers. I was told independently that Professor Reichel, before his death in 1918, came also to the conclusion that there had been a plot. But in any case most of us will agree with Mr. Stanford, Bailey's Australian patron, that the committee would have been wise to say nothing, continue the sittings, and use their knowledge to get at some more complete conclusion.

With such a record one had to be on one's guard with Mr. Bailey. I had a sitting in my room at the hotel to which I invited ten guests, but the results were not impressive. We saw so-called spirit hands, which were faintly luminous, but I was not allowed to grasp them, and they were never further from the medium than he could have reached. All this was suspicious but not conclusive. On the other hand, there was an attempt at a materialisation of a head, which took the form of a luminous patch, and seemed to some of the sitters to be further from the cabinet than could be reached. We had an address purporting to come from the control, Dr. Whitcombe, and we also had a message written in bad Italian. On the whole it was one of those baffling sittings which leave a vague unpleasant impression, and there was a disturbing suggestion of cuffs about those luminous hands.

I have been reading Bailey's record, however, and I cannot doubt that he has been a great apport medium. The results were far above all possible fraud, both in the conditions and in the articles brought into the room by spirit power. For example, I have a detailed account published by Dr. C. W. McCarthy, of Sydney, under the title, "Rigid Tests of the Occult." During these tests Bailey was sealed up in a bag, and in one case was inside a cage of mosquito curtain. The door and windows were secured and the fire-place blocked. The sitters were all personal friends, but they mutually searched each other. The medium was stripped naked before the séance. Under these stringent conditions during a series of six sittings 138 articles were brought into the room, which included eighty-seven ancient coins (mostly of Ptolemy), eight live birds, eighteen precious stones of modest value and varied character, two live turtles, seven inscribed Babylonian tablets, one Egyptian Scarabæus, an Arabic newspaper, a leopard skin, four nests and many other things. It seems to me perfect nonsense to talk about these things being the results of trickery. I may add that at a previous test meeting they had a young live shark about 1-1/2 feet long, which was tangled with wet seaweed and flopped about on the table. Dr. McCarthy gives a photograph of the creature.

My second sitting with Bailey was more successful than the first. On his arrival I and others searched him and satisfied ourselves he carried nothing upon him. I then suddenly switched out all the lights, for it seemed to me that the luminous hands of the first sitting might be the result of phosphorised oil put on before the meeting and only visible in complete darkness, so that it could defy all search. I was wrong, however, for there was no luminosity at all. We then placed Mr. Bailey in the corner of the room, lowered the lights without turning them out, and waited. Almost at once he breathed very heavily, as one in trance, and soon said something in a foreign tongue which was unintelligible to me. One of our friends, Mr. Cochrane, recognised it as Indian, and at once answered, a few sentences being interchanged. In English the voice then said that he was a Hindoo control who was used to bring apports for the medium, and that he would, he hoped, be able to bring one for us. "Here it is," he said a moment later, and the medium's hand was extended with something in it. The light was turned full on and we found it was a very perfect bird's nest, beautifully constructed of some very fine fibre mixed with moss. It stood about two inches high and had no sign of any flattening which would have come with concealment. The size would be nearly three inches across. In it lay a small egg, white, with tiny brown speckles. The medium, or rather the Hindoo control acting through the medium, placed the egg on his palm and broke it, some fine albumen squirting out. There was no trace of yolk. "We are not allowed to interfere with life," said he. "If it had been fertilised we could not have taken it." These words were said before he broke it, so that he was aware of the condition of the egg, which certainly seems remarkable.

"Where did it come from?" I asked.

"From India."

"What bird is it?"

"They call it the jungle sparrow."

The nest remained in my possession, and I spent a morning with Mr. Chubb, of the local museum, to ascertain if it was really the nest of such a bird. It seemed too small for an Indian sparrow, and yet we could not match either nest or egg among the Australian types. Some of Mr. Bailey's other nests and eggs have been actually identified. Surely it is a fair argument that while it is conceivable that such birds might be imported and purchased here, it is really an insult to one's reason to suppose that nests with fresh eggs in them could also be in the market. Therefore I can only support the far more extended experience and elaborate tests of Dr. McCarthy of Sydney, and affirm that I believe Mr. Charles Bailey to be upon occasion a true medium, with a very remarkable gift for apports.

It is only right to state that when I returned to London I took one of Bailey's Assyrian tablets to the British Museum and that it was pronounced to be a forgery. Upon further inquiry it proved that these forgeries are made by certain Jews in a suburb of Bagdad – and, so far as is known, only there. Therefore the matter is not much further advanced. To the transporting agency it is at least possible that the forgery, steeped in recent human magnetism, is more capable of being handled than the original taken from a mound. Bailey has produced at least a hundred of these things, and no Custom House officer has deposed how they could have entered the country. On the other hand, Bailey told me clearly that the tablets had been passed by the British Museum, so that I fear that I cannot acquit him of tampering with truth – and just there lies the great difficulty of deciding upon his case. But one has always to remember that physical mediumship has no connection one way or the other with personal character, any more than the gift of poetry.

To return to this particular séance, it was unequal. We had luminous hands, but they were again within reach of the cabinet in which the medium was seated. We had also a long address from Dr. Whitcombe, the learned control, in which he discoursed like an absolute master upon Assyrian and Roman antiquities and psychic science. It was really an amazing address, and if Bailey were the author of it I should hail him as a master mind. He chatted about the Kings of Babylon as if he had known them all, remarked that the Bible was wrong in calling Belthazar King as he was only Crown Prince, and put in all those easy side allusions which a man uses when he is absolutely full of his subject. Upon his asking for questions, I said: "Please give me some light as to the dematerialisation and subsequent reassembly of an object such as a bird's nest." "It involves," he answered, "some factors which are beyond your human science and which could not be made clear to you. At the same time you may take as a rough analogy the case of water which is turned into steam, and then this steam which is invisible, is conducted elsewhere to be reassembled as visible water." I thought this explanation was exceedingly apt, though of course I agree that it is only a rough analogy. On my asking if there were libraries and facilities for special study in the next world, he said that there certainly were, but that instead of studying books they usually studied the actual objects themselves. All he said was full of dignity and wisdom. It was curious to notice that, learned as he was, Dr. Whitcombe always referred back with reverence to Dr. Robinson, another control not present at the moment, as being the real expert. I am told that some of Dr. Robinson's addresses have fairly amazed the specialists. I notice that Col. de Rochas in his report was equally impressed by Bailey's controls.

I fear that my psychic experiences are pushing my travels into the background, but I warned the reader that it might be so when first we joined hands. To get back to the earth, let me say that I saw the procession when the new Governor-General, Lord Forster, with his charming wife, made their ceremonial entry into Melbourne, with many workman-like Commonwealth troops before and behind their carriage. I knew Lord Forster of old, for we both served upon a committee over the Olympic Games, so that he gave quite a start of surprised recognition when his quick eye fell upon my face in the line of spectators. He is a man who cannot fail to be popular here, for he has the physical as well as the mental qualities. Our stay in Melbourne was afterwards made more pleasant by the gracious courtesy of Government House for, apart from attending several functions, we were invited to a special dinner, after which I exhibited upon a screen my fairy portraits and a few of my other very wonderful psychic photographs. It was not an occasion when I could preach, but no quick intelligence could be brought in contact with such phenomena without asking itself very seriously what lay behind them. When that question is earnestly asked the battle is won.

One asks oneself what will be the end of this system of little viceroys in each State and a big viceroy in the Capital – however capable and excellent in themselves such viceroys may be. The smaller courts are, I understand, already doomed, and rightly so, since there is no need for them and nothing like them elsewhere. There is no possible purpose that they serve save to impose a nominal check, which is never used, upon the legislation. The Governor-Generalship will last no doubt until Australia cuts the painter, or we let go our end of it, whichever may come first.

Personally, I have no fear of Britain's power being weakened by a separation of her dominions. Close allies which were independent might be a greater source of moral strength than actual dependencies. When the sons leave the father's house and rule their own homes, becoming fathers in turn, the old man is not weakened thereby. Certainly I desire no such change, but if it came I would bear it with philosophy. I hope that the era of great military crises is for ever past, but, if it should recur, I am sure that the point of view would be the same, and that the starry Union Jack of the great Australian nation would still fly beside the old flag which was its model.

If one took a Machiavelian view of British interests one would say that to retain a colony the surest way is not to remove any danger which may threaten her. We conquered Canada from the French, removing in successive campaigns the danger from the north and from the west which threatened our American colonies. When we had expended our blood and money to that end, so that the colonies had nothing to fear, they took the first opportunity to force an unnecessary quarrel and to leave us. So I have fears for South Africa now that the German menace has been removed. Australia is, I think, loyal to the core, and yet self-interest is with every nation the basis of all policy, and so long as the British fleet can guard the shores of the great empty northern territories, a region as big as Britain, Germany, France and Austria put together, they have need of us. There can be no doubt that if they were alone in the world in the face of the teeming millions of the East, they might, like the Siberian travellers, have to throw a good deal to the wolves in order to save the remainder. Brave and capable as they are, neither their numbers nor their resources could carry them through a long struggle if the enemy held the sea. They are natural shots and soldiers, so that they might be wiser to spend their money in a strategic railway right across their northern coast, rather than in direct military preparations. To concentrate rapidly before the enemy was firmly established might under some circumstances be a very vital need.

But so long as the British Empire lasts Australia is safe, and in twenty years' time her own enlarged population will probably make her safe without help from anyone. But her empty places are a danger. History abhors a vacuum and finds some one to fill it up. I have never yet understood why the Commonwealth has not made a serious effort to attract to the northern territories those Italians who are flooding the Argentine. It is great blood and no race is the poorer for it – the blood of ancient Rome. They are used to semitropical heat and to hard work in bad conditions if there be only hope ahead. Perhaps the policy of the future may turn in that direction. If that one weak spot be guarded then it seems to me that in the whole world there is no community, save only the United States, which is so safe from outside attack as Australia. Internal division is another matter, but there Australia is in some ways stronger than the States. She has no negro question, and the strife between Capital and Labour is not likely to be so formidable. I wonder, by the way, how many people in the United States realise that this small community lost as many men as America did in the great war. We were struck also by the dignified resignation with which this fact was faced, and by the sense of proportion which was shown in estimating the sacrifices of various nations.

We like the people here very much more than we had expected to, for one hears in England exaggerated stories of their democratic bearing. When democracy takes the form of equality one can get along with it, but when it becomes rude and aggressive one would avoid it. Here one finds a very pleasing good fellowship which no one would object to. Again and again we have met with little acts of kindness from people in shops or in the street, which were not personal to ourselves, but part of their normal good manners. If you ask the way or any other information, strangers will take trouble to put you right. They are kindly, domestic and straight in speech and in dealings. Materialism and want of vision in the broader affairs of life seem to be the national weakness, but that may be only a passing phase, for when a nation has such a gigantic material proposition as this continent to handle it is natural that their thoughts should run on the wool and the wheat and the gold by which it can be accomplished. I am bound to say, however, that I think every patriotic Australian should vote, if not for prohibition, at least for the solution which is most dear to myself, and that is the lowering of the legal standard of alcohol in any drink. We have been shocked and astonished by the number of young men of decent exterior whom we have seen staggering down the street, often quite early in the day. The Biblical test for drunkenness, that it was not yet the third hour, would not apply to them. I hear that bad as it is in the big towns it is worse in the small ones, and worst of all in the northern territories and other waste places where work is particularly needed. It must greatly decrease the national efficiency. A recent vote upon the question in Victoria only carried total abstinence in four districts out of about 200, but a two-third majority was needed to do it. On the other hand a trial of strength in Queensland, generally supposed to be rather a rowdy State, has shown that the temperance men all combined can out-vote the others. Therefore it is certain that reform will not be long delayed.

The other curse of the country, which is a real drag upon its progress, is the eternal horse-racing. It goes on all the year round, though it has its more virulent bouts, as for example during our visit to this town when the Derby, the Melbourne Cup, and Oaks succeeded each other. They call it sport, but I fear that in that case I am no sportsman. I would as soon call the roulette-table a sport. The whole population is unsettled and bent upon winning easy money, which dissatisfies them with the money that has to be worked for. Every shop is closed when the Cup is run, and you have lift-boys, waiters and maids all backing their fancies, not with half-crowns but with substantial sums. The danger to honesty is obvious, and it came under our own notice that it is not imaginary. Of course we are by no means blameless in England, but it only attacks a limited class, while here it seems to the stranger to be almost universal. In fact it is so bad that it is sure to get better, for I cannot conceive that any sane nation will allow it to continue. The book-makers, however, are a powerful guild, and will fight tooth and nail. The Catholic Church, I am sorry to say, uses its considerable influence to prevent drink reform by legislation, and I fear that it will not support the anti-gamblers either. I wonder from what hidden spring, from what ignorant Italian camarilla, this venerable and in some ways admirable Church gets its secular policy, which must have central direction, since it is so consistent! When I remember the recent sequence of world events and the part played by that Church, the attack upon the innocent Dreyfus, the refusal to support reform in the Congo, and finally the obvious leaning towards the Central Powers who were clearly doomed to lose, one would think that it was ruled by a Council of lunatics. These matters bear no relation to faith or dogma, so that one wonders that the sane Catholics have not risen in protest. No doubt the better class laymen are ahead of the clergy in this as in other religious organisations. I cannot forget how the Duke of Norfolk sent me a cheque for the Congo Reform Movement at the very time when we could not get the Catholic Church to line up with the other sects at a Reform Demonstration at the Albert Hall. In this country also there were many brave and loyal Catholics who took their own line against Cardinal Mannix upon the question of conscription, when that Cardinal did all that one man could do to bring about the defeat of the free nations in the great war. How he could face an American audience afterwards, or how such an audience could tolerate him, is hard to understand.

CHAPTER V

More English than the English. – A day in the Bush. – Immigration. – A case of spirit return. – A Séance. – Geelong. – The lava plain. – Good-nature of General Ryrie. – Bendigo. – Down a gold mine. – Prohibition v. Continuance. – Mrs. Knight MacLellan. – Nerrin. – A wild drive. – Electric shearing. – Rich sheep stations. – Cockatoo farmers. – Spinnifex and Mallee. – Rabbits. – The great marsh

In some ways the Australians are more English than the English. We have been imperceptibly Americanised, while our brethren over the sea have kept the old type. The Australian is less ready to show emotion, cooler in his bearing, more restrained in applause, more devoted to personal liberty, keener on sport, and quieter in expression (as witness the absence of scare lines in the papers) than our people are. Indeed, they remind me more of the Scotch than the English, and Melbourne on a Sunday, without posts, or Sunday papers, or any amenity whatever, is like the Edinburgh of my boyhood. Sydney is more advanced. There are curious anomalies in both towns. Their telephone systems are so bad that they can only be balanced against each other, for they are in a class by themselves. One smiles when one recollects that one used to grumble at the London lines. On the other hand the tramway services in both towns are wonderful, and so continuous that one never hastens one's step to catch a tram since another comes within a minute. The Melbourne trams have open bogey cars in front, which make a drive a real pleasure.

One of our pleasant recollections in the early days of our Melbourne visit was a day in the bush with Mr. Henry Stead and his wife. My intense admiration for the moral courage and energy of the father made it easy for me to form a friendship with his son, who has shown the family qualities by the able way in which he has founded and conducted an excellent journal, Stead's Monthly. Australia was lucky ever to get such an immigrant as that, for surely an honest, fearless and clear-headed publicist is the most valuable man that a young country, whose future is one long problem play, could import. We spent our day in the Dandenong Hills, twenty miles from Melbourne, in a little hostel built in a bush clearing and run by one Lucas, of good English cricket stock, his father having played for Sussex. On the way we passed Madame Melba's place at Lilydale, and the wonderful woods with their strange tree-ferns seemed fit cover for such a singing bird. Coming back in Stead's light American car we tried a short cut down roads which proved to be almost impossible. A rather heavier car ahead of us, with two youths in it, got embedded in the mud, and we all dismounted to heave it out. There suddenly appeared on the lonely road an enormous coloured man; he looked like a cross between negro and black fellow. He must have lived in some hut in the woods, but the way his huge form suddenly rose beside us was quite surprising. He stood in gloomy majesty surveying our efforts, and repeating a series of sentences which reminded one of German exercises. "I have no jack. I had a jack. Some one has taken my jack. This is called a road. It is not a road. There is no road." We finally levered out the Australian car, for which, by the way, neither occupant said a word of thanks, and then gave the black giant a shilling, which he received as a keeper takes his toll. On looking back I am not sure that this slough of despond is not carefully prepared by this negro, who makes a modest income by the tips which he gets from the unfortunates who get bogged in it. No keeper ever darted out to a trap quicker than he did when the car got stuck.

Stead agreed with me that the Australians do not take a big enough view of their own destiny. They – or the labour party, to be more exact – are inclined to buy the ease of the moment at the cost of the greatness of their continental future. They fear immigration lest it induce competition and pull down prices. It is a natural attitude. And yet that little fringe of people on the edge of that huge island can never adequately handle it. It is like an enormous machine with a six horsepower engine to drive it. I have a great sympathy with their desire to keep the British stock as pure as possible. But the land needs the men, and somewhere they must be found. I cannot doubt that they would become loyal subjects of the Empire which had adopted them. I have wondered sometimes whether in Lower California and the warmer States of the Union there may not be human material for Australia. Canada has received no more valuable stock than from the American States, so it might be that another portion of the Union would find the very stamp of man that Queensland and the north require. The American likes a big gamble and a broad life with plenty of elbow-room. Let him bring his cotton seeds over to semi-tropical Australia and see what he can make of it there.

To pass suddenly to other-worldly things, which are my mission. People never seem to realise the plain fact that one positive result must always outweigh a hundred negative ones. It only needs one single case of spirit return to be established, and there is no more to be said. Incidentally, how absurd is the position of those wiseacres who say "nine-tenths of the phenomena are fraud." Can they not see that if they grant us one-tenth, they grant us our whole contention?

These remarks are elicited by a case which occurred in 1883 in Melbourne, and which should have converted the city as surely as if an angel had walked down Collins Street. Yet nearly forty years later I find it as stagnant and material as any city I have ever visited. The facts are these, well substantiated by documentary and official evidence. Mr. Junor Browne, a well-known citizen, whose daughter afterwards married Mr. Alfred Deakin, subsequently Premier, had two sons, Frank and Hugh. Together with a seaman named Murray they went out into the bay in their yacht the "Iolanthe," and they never returned. The father was fortunately a Spiritualist and upon the second day of their absence, after making all normal inquiries, he asked a sensitive, Mr. George Spriggs, formerly of Cardiff, if he would trace them. Mr. Spriggs collected some of the young men's belongings, so as to get their atmosphere, and then he was able by psychometry to give an account of their movements, the last which he could see of them being that they were in trouble upon the yacht and that confusion seemed to reign aboard her. Two days later, as no further news was brought in, the Browne family held a séance, Mr. Spriggs being the medium. He fell into trance and the two lads, who had been trained in spiritual knowledge and knew the possibilities, at once came through. They expressed their contrition to their mother, who had desired them not to go, and they then gave a clear account of the capsizing of the yacht, and how they had met their death, adding that they had found themselves after death in the exact physical conditions of happiness and brightness which their father's teaching had led them to expect. They brought with them the seaman Murray, who also said a few words. Finally Hugh, speaking through the medium, informed Mr. Browne that Frank's arm and part of his clothing had been torn off by a fish.

"A shark?" asked Mr. Browne.

"Well, it was not like any shark I have seen."

Mark the sequel. Some weeks later a large shark of a rare deep-sea species, unknown to the fishermen, and quite unlike the ordinary blue shark with which the Brownes were familiar, was taken at Frankston, about twenty-seven miles from Melbourne. Inside it was found the bone of a human arm, and also a watch, some coins, and other articles which had belonged to Frank Browne. These facts were all brought out in the papers at the time, and Mr. Browne put much of it on record in print before the shark was taken, or any word of the missing men had come by normal means. The facts are all set forth in a little book by Mr. Browne himself, called "A Rational Faith." What have fraudulent mediums and all the other decoys to do with such a case as that, and is it not perfectly convincing to any man who is not perverse? Personally, I value it not so much for the evidence of survival, since we have that so complete already, but for the detailed account given by the young men of their new conditions, so completely corroborating what so many young officers, cut off suddenly in the war, have said of their experience. "Mother, if you could see how happy we are, and the beautiful home we are in, you would not weep except for joy. I feel so light in my spiritual body and have no pain, I would not exchange this life for earth life even it were in my power. Poor spirits without number are waiting anxiously to communicate with their friends when an opportunity is offered." The young Brownes had the enormous advantage of the education they had received from their father, so that they instantly understood and appreciated the new conditions.

On October 8th we had a séance with Mrs. Hunter, a pleasant middle-aged woman, with a soft South of England accent. Like so many of our mediums she had little sign of education in her talk. It does not matter in spiritual things, though it is a stumbling block to some inquirers. After all, how much education had the apostles? I have no doubt they were very vulgar provincial people from the average Roman point of view. But they shook the world none the less. Most of our educated people have got their heads so crammed with things that don't matter that they have no room for the things that do matter. There was no particular success at our sitting, but I have heard that the medium is capable of better things.

On October 13th I had my first experience of a small town, for I went to Geelong and lectured there. It was an attentive and cultured audience, but the hall was small and the receipts could hardly have covered the expenses. However, it is the press report and the local discussion which really matter. I had little time to inspect Geelong, which is a prosperous port with 35,000 inhabitants. What interested me more was the huge plain of lava which stretches around it and connects it with Melbourne. This plain is a good hundred miles across, and as it is of great depth one can only imagine that there must be monstrous cavities inside the earth to correspond with the huge amount extruded. Here and there one sees stunted green cones which are the remains of the volcanoes which spewed up all this stuff. The lava has disintegrated on the surface to the extent of making good arable soil, but the harder bits remain unbroken, so that the surface is covered with rocks, which are used to build up walls for the fields after the Irish fashion. Every here and there a peak of granite has remained as an island amid the lava, to show what was there before the great outflow. Eruptions appear to be caused by water pouring in through some crack and reaching the heated inside of the earth where the water is turned to steam, expands, and so gains the force to spread destruction. If this process went on it is clear that the whole sea might continue to pour down the crack until the heat had been all absorbed by the water. I have wondered whether the lava may not be a clever healing process of nature, by which this soft plastic material is sent oozing out in every direction with the idea that it may find the crack and then set hard and stop it up. Wild speculation no doubt, but the guess must always precede the proof.