Delphi Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated) (1561 page)

“I am going to try. Trying is the life of me. Ask Aunt Netta if it is Jack who speaks that.”

“Here I am alive, feeling myself to be myself, yet nothing I say or write can identify me to those who know me best.”

“Death has taught me what earth held from me. My spirit is plunging forward with more vigour than wisdom, as in my earth days. But I know now the way and the life. Oh, I have much, much, that I must undo.”

He sends a long, connected communication which is an essay in itself, headed “What Life means to me now.” In it he says, “I am a soul — a living Soul. I followed the lost trail of materialism, and sickened in the foul mists of error.” The whole composition, which is too long for quotation, is most powerful, and might serve as a warning from the grave, to those millions who so heedlessly tread the very path which led London to his misery.

“My soul, though I knew it not, was dyspeptic with the materialistic fodder I crammed into it.... Death caught me unawares. He snapped me up when my face was not turned his way. I almost regret this. I believe it made my transition the harder.

“I awoke. Dreaming? I was sure of it. I dreamed on and on. I dreamed myself into eternity. I am vague. I was vague to myself. My powers returned. I could think. I hailed my old brain like a returned friend. I fumbled and groped. My earth blindness was on me. It hazed me about. I fought my way through it. I had no goal. I had passed the only goal I had ever admitted. I was on the other side of it. I struggle to seize the correct term. I try vainly to translate the experience into terms of earth which has no utterance for it.

“I died. I am looking at death from the other side — the tame friendly side of him. And Life is indestructible.... I see man face his destiny as I saw him on earth. I see him fall. I see him rise again and go on. He fights his way and when his place is ready here he comes. There are no catastrophes. All is in order.

“I am a stranger to this tongue. I am but learning to speak. What faculty I possessed on earth is disrupted by a condition it was never trained to meet. I shall strive to re-establish it and then I shall speak, and, friends of earth, you shall recognise my voice.”

These short strong pregnant sentences are Jack London at his best. As in the case of Wilde, his posthumous work will bear comparison with anything he has done in life.

He has a horror of his old point of view.

“That which was my truth of yesterday, which I hugged to me as the quintessence of my distilled thought, becomes a volatile poison to me here and I must ... distil a new thought out of the fires of my previous experience, and by this thought shall I rise. Renaissance of soul is a labour shot with pains of remembrance, held by fetters of past error which are burst with a sweated toil while the heart strains with its propulsion ... I feel that I have got right with God — I am no longer worshipping myself.”

When asked what specific work he was doing, he answered, “I have to direct those lost or bewildered, as I was when I came. I labour to show them the way I would not take.”

These last words seem to me to mark the beginning of Jack London’s regeneration. He understands that his work is impersonal, unselfish and humble. Before that he had wished to reassert himself on the old earth terms, and the realisation that he could not do so was a bitter one. He kicked hard against the pricks.

“God! I am annihilated!” he cried; “my earth life is stamped out, blotted from time by this passage. I can’t puzzle it out. My hand fumbles. Did Death rob me as I passed through his clutch. Did he steal the face of me that those who knew me see me strange, feeble, pitiful. Who or what has cut the tap-root of my power? I am befogged.”

The child still cried for its toys and refused to understand that it had left the nursery. But it cries in a voice that is familiar. The man himself never spoke in such a vital strain as does his ghost. He ends at last on the note that he is not to look back and that the future only should concern him. “The messages” he said, “come from Jack London, the damned soul, struggling out of his own hell of materialisation.” But there was light ahead. He had but to persevere. “I am a soldier of the eternal march.” Who but Jack London would have written those words? He winds up, “What is more important than to let the world know I am busy undoing what mischief I did.” Alas, Jack, the world is too busy with its games and its pleasures, too immersed in its wooden creeds and its petrified religions, to give ear to what you have learned. They, like you, will only realise when it is too late.

It may be gathered from the above that I accept Jack London’s return as being a genuine one. I can see no other possible conclusion. The message is there, and it is easier to account for it by the return of London’s activities to this sphere, than to torture the theory of multiple personality or subconscious activity, until it is twisted to cover a case which is so much beyond its limits.

There is one other writer who has claimed that he has been able to get messages back to us. This is Lord Northcliffe — or Alfred Harmsworth, as the alleged spirit prefers to be called. In life Harmsworth had no distinctive style, but only the pen of the ready writer, so that it is far more difficult to identify him than in such marked cases as Wilde or London. But if he had not style he had character, and this of a very forcible and individual kind. Judged from that angle his return is convincing, though I would not say that it is so conclusive as in the case of the two men of letters. The great journalist claims to have come through many times, and I have myself had experiences in that direction which cannot possibly be explained away. Hannen Swaffer has given his own account of the matter in his forcible narrative “Northcliffe’s Return.” For the purpose of this essay, however, I will confine myself to a single long article, said to be dictated by Northcliffe, and coming through the hand of a lady living in a small town in New Zealand, and quite ignorant of her control’s character, or of his methods of thought and expression.

He also, like the others, most bitterly regrets the want of true guidance which he had found in his lifetime, and the absorption in material things which stunted his spiritual development. At the same time it is easy to see that the spirit which is struggling for expression is really, as I should judge, upon a higher plane than either of those which have been already discussed. Service is his one ideal and that is the sign of progression. He speaks of his powers humbly enough.

“I would probably not have risen above the rank of private yet had it not been for some executive ability. For the will power and the dynamic force necessary to achieve success in my old line of endeavour has helped me considerably here.”

His review of his own earth life is interesting and instructive:

“I had a tremendous lot of power in public affairs, and I now see to how much better use I might have put that power. But I could only act according to my light at the time, and as that light was very dim indeed, on matters pertaining to the more real and lasting things of life, I made many mistakes. We do not suffer for our mistakes, except in witnessing the results of past actions, which is suffering enough in many cases, God knows! What I mean is, that this suffering is self-inflicted, and the only escape from it is in honest toil to try and right some of the wrong we have unwittingly done in the past. In this way only can we wipe the slate clean and start life afresh on a higher level.”

Now and again he breaks out into that impetuous and loud-spoken anger which was one of his earth characteristics. Here is an example when he talks of our present misleaders of public opinion:

“The colossal ignorance and arrogant pride of so many of those whose privilege it is to help to form public opinion is my especial bugbear at present. If they would not be so smug and self-satisfied about it I could bear it better. But, as things are, I often long to prick the highly-inflated bubble of their unholy conceit with one of my sharp, old-time, vigorous denunciations of humbug.”

And again he has a word to say to those who imagine that to commune with those who are gone can in any way be harmful or disagreeable to those who come to us.

“Poor silly, deluded folks! If they only knew what I, and millions like me know of the heart-hunger for those left behind, which exists over here, they would open their minds and hearts, and make their dear ones as welcome in their lives and concerns as they were before death overtook them. They could do it easily, too, if they would only allow themselves to be properly instructed in these matters of great moment to all concerned, by those who know, instead of being content to listen to those shrill, oft-repeated, parrot cries of religious humbugs, who tell of the sin and danger of tampering with these things, whilst knowing nothing whatever of the help and consolation such intercourse can bring to loving, suffering beings on both sides of the veil.”

Can anyone imagine that these forceful words, which can be matched in unpublished communications from the same source in England, could have really come from the mind of the lady in far New Zealand.

In theoriginal form of this essay, which appeared in the
Fortnightly Review
, I devoted some space to considering a continuation of Edwin Drood, which professed to come from Charles Dickens through the hand of one James who was foreman in a printing office in Brattleborough, Vermont. No one who reads it can deny that it is an excellent imitation of the great author’s style, but the most unconvincing part was the narrative itself, which was clumsy and improbable. My conclusion was “that the actual inspiration of Dickens is far from being absolutely established.” I added, however, “No one with any critical faculty would say that the result was an entirely unworthy one, though if written by the living Dickens it would certainly not have improved his reputation. It reads,” I added, “like Dickens gone flat.”

There was an extraordinarily interesting sequel to this. Shortly after I had written as above I had a sitting with Florizel von Reuter the celebrated violin virtuoso, and his mother. Their (or rather her) mediumship is of a most convincing nature, as its technique is in itself of abnormal power. She sits with her eyes tightly bandaged, and her hand upon a small pointer which darts very rapidly at the letters of the alphabet, while her son writes down the result. There is no question at all about the bandage being adequate, and she does not turn her face down to the board. The letters too, are so close together that she could not learn to touch them with accuracy. Yet the messages come through with extreme speed. Whatever their value there is no question that they come in preternatural fashion.

Imagine us there, seated, these two at the centre table, my wife and I in the corner of our cottage room. Dickens and Drood had been in my mind, but our visitors had no means of knowing that. Florizel von Reuter had never read
Edwin Drood
. His mother had read it years ago but had a very vague memory as to the book. Suddenly the pointer begins to dart furiously and Florizel reads off each sentence as he notes it down Some of them, I may add, came in looking-glass writing and had to be read backwards. The first was, “Boz is buzzing about.” Boz, of course, was the nom-de-plume of Dickens, so I asked if it was he. He eagerly declared that it was. After a short interchange of dialogue I said, “Will you answer some questions?”

“I hope I know enough,” was the answer.

“Was that American who finished
Edwin Drood
inspired?”

“Not by me,” was the instantaneous and decided answer.

Now von Reuter knew nothing of this matter, and my own opinion was, at the utmost, neutral, so that this positive answer reflected none of our own thoughts.

Then came a further message.

“Wilkie C. did” [or would have done] “better.”

There was, I believe, some talk after Dickens’ death of Wilkie Collins finishing the book. So far as I know he did nothing in the matter. The von Reuters knew nothing of this.

“Was Edwin Drood dead?”

“No, he was not.”

That was certainly my own opinion so I make a present of it to the telepathist.

Then after a pause, the message went on:

“I was sorry to go across before I got him out of his trouble. The poor chap has had a hard time. I don’t know which is better, to solve the mystery in your note-book or let it remain a mystery for ever. If you make good with Conrad I will put you on to Edwin.”

“I shall be honoured, Mr. Dickens.”

“Charles, if you please. We like friends to be friends.” The reader will smile at this. So did I. But facts are facts and I am giving them. I asked:

“Have you a clear recollection of the plot?”

“I have.”

“Who was Datchery?”

“What about the fourth dimension? I prefer to write it all out through you.”

What the fourth dimension has to do with it I cannot imagine. I think it was meant as chaff, since the fourth dimension is what no one can understand.