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Introduction Notes Introduction 1. It is possible that Sinclair’s image of the author as medium is influenced by T. S. Eliot’s ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’ (1919). Not so long after the heyday of spiritualism, we can see echoes of mediumistic discourse in Eliot – ‘What happens is a continual surrender of himself as he is at the moment to something which is more valuable. The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.’ (Eliot, 1951, p. 40). 2. Throughout spiritualist discourse, the concept of authorial voice is explored in relation to mediumistic practice. This becomes explicit in the large number of mediums who claimed to be possessed by literary figures such as Shakespeare, Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe and Henry James – sometimes even producing ‘spectral texts’ bearing the names of these deceased authors. For a discussion of the problems of authorial identification, library categoriza- tion and mediumship, see Sword (2002, pp. 49–75) and London (1999, pp. 150–78). Also see Thurschwell for the relationship between Henry James and his typist Theodora Bosanquet after his death (Thurschwell, 2001, pp. 86–114). 3. By ‘neo-Victorian’ novel, I mean the novels written in the twentieth (or indeed twenty first) century that are set in the Victorian past, often blurring the distinction between historical scholarship and the literary imagination. I first encountered the term in Dana Shiller’s article, ‘The Redemptive Past in the Neo-Victorian Novel’ (1997). 4. Our identification with the Victorians is a rich and problematic topic which has found expression in a wide range of analytical forms – from critical theory and philosophy to the study of popular culture. A good example of this range would be the contrasting ways in which the so-called repressive hypothesis, the image of the stilted Victorian prude, is rejected by both Michel Foucault in volume 1 of The History of Sexuality (1990) and Matthew Sweet in Inventing the Victorians (2001). Through the specific question of spir- itualism, this book is also trying to address the extent to which the Victorian ‘other’ is encompassed within us, in our own sense of cultural, historical and gendered identity. 5. Although a substantial amount of historical and archival material regard- ing spiritualism comprises a large bulk of this study, it is not my intention to produce a history of British spiritualism here. For full-length studies of spiritualism, see Doyle (1926, volumes 1 and 2) and Podmore (1902). Janet Oppenheim’s The Other World: Spiritualism and Psychical Research in England, 1850–1914 (1985) is also an invaluable resource. For a history of the forma- tion and experiments of the SPR, see Gauld (1968). 6. The influence of Psychical Research on modernism is not the main focus of this book and deserves a lengthy study in itself. However, it is of interest to note the conceptual overlap between the theories of the SPR and modernist 204 Notes 205 language experiments – the stream of consciousness, epiphanic visions, the fragmented self and so on. Furthermore, writers such as W. B. Yeats and H. D. were actively involved in séances and closely followed the work of the SPR. See Sword (2002). 7. With the exception of Elizabeth d’Espérance, who wrote about the effects of mediumship on her understanding of consciousness and sense of self. See d’Espérance, Shadow Land or, Light from the Other Side (1897) and Northern Lights and Other Psychic Stories (1899). 8. See Lodge (1916, p. 3). For a discussion of World War I and the resurgence of spiritualism, see Doyle (1926). Both Doyle and Lodge were accused of lax observational skills, overtaken with emotion after both lost their sons in the war. For spiritualism in World War II, see Hazelgrove (2000). Paul Fussell also describes the exaggerated representations of spiritualism during World War II in works such as Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow (1973) in The Great War and Modern Memory (1975, pp. 328–35). 9. By ‘physical’, Adshead refers to mediums who could materialize the spirits of the dead during séances, a manifestation that was particularly popular in the 1870s and subsided towards the end of the century. 10. For a contemporary description and discussion of spirit photography and its methods, see Podmore (1902, pp. 118–25). See also Sidgwick (1891); Bush (1920); Price (1922) and Glendinning (1894). For a discussion of spirit photography, from its beginning as a Victorian tool against mourning and loss through to its legacy in popular modern films such as The Sixth Sense and The Others, see Thurschwell (2003, pp. 20–31). See also Marina Warner, who examines the role of the medium as a ‘photographer-telepathist’ in Phantasmagoria: Spirit Visions, Metaphors, and Media into the Twenty-first Century (2006, pp. 221–36). 1. Theatres in the Skull: The Society for Psychical Research and Actress Narratives 1. Florence Marryat was a woman of many talents. She was a popular novelist, mostly of sensation fiction, an actress, opera singer, playwright, editor for the London Society (1872–6) and an avid spiritualist whose experiences recorded in There is No Death and The Spirit World provide a vibrant account of Victorian spiritualism. For biographical information on Marryat, see Black (1893) and Sutherland (1988). 2. Henry Sidgwick, Edmund Gurney, Frederic Myers, Arthur Balfour and his sister Eleanor had test séances in 1875 with the materialization mediums Miss Wood and Miss Fairlamb that were inconclusive. Although a commit- tee was established to investigate physical phenomena after the SPR was founded, the focus of the investigations was on ‘mental’ or ‘interior’ forms of mediumship. For a discussion of the early investigations in physical phe- nomena that might have contributed in the SPR’s subsequent interests, see Gauld (1968, chapters 4 and 5). 3. For details of the predominant Victorian theories of acting and the represen- tation of emotion through bodily imagery, see Taylor (1989). 206 Notes 4. For information on Myers’ definition of telepathy, see Thurschwell (2001, chapter 1), and Luckhurst (2002, chapter 2). 5. For a discussion of these actresses (including their lives, roles and acting techniques), see Stokes, Booth and Bassnett (1988). Also see Knepler (1968). 6. For more information on the history of the SPR and biographical notes on its founding members, see Gauld (1968). Also see Oppenheim (1985) and Thurschwell (2001). In addition, Luckhurst (2002) discusses the SPR’s formation and the careers of its members – with backgrounds in disciplines ranging from classics (Myers) and music theory (Gurney) to physics (Oliver Lodge), chemistry (William Crookes) and philosophy (Sidgwick). 7. Members of the British National Association of Spiritualists (BNAS) had joined the SPR but were increasingly dissatisfied with the scepticism with which Psychical Researchers were reviewing mediums. Following the assessment of William Eglinton’s mediumship by Eleanor Sidgwick between 1886–7, many spiritualists left the Society and were diametrically opposed to Sidgwick’s harsh criticism of the medium. See Oppenheim (1985, pp. 135–41). Also see Luckhurst (2002, pp. 57–8). 8. For the links between Psychical Research and Chemistry and Physics, see Luckhurst, op. cit. For new developments in Psychology and Freud’s theo- ries, see Thurschwell, op. cit. See also Noakes (1998). In the following chap- ters of this book, I discuss the metaphorical relationship between scientific discourses and spiritualism in more detail, especially in Chapters 4 and 5. 9. In 1897, Lodge wrote a letter to The Times commenting that he had made a plan similar to Marconi’s (who used electromagnetic waves to signal across space). The letter is reproduced under the title ‘Telegraphy without Wires’ in Borderland (Anon., 1897b, p. 314). 10. Both Luckhurst (2002) and Noakes (1998) analyse the careers of Crookes and Lodge through the interconnection of their disciplines and interests in Psychical Research. 11. Oppenheim entitles one of her chapters on Christianity, Spiritualism, Agnosticism and Psychical Research ‘A Surrogate Faith’ (1985, pp. 59–103). 12. Binet states that Myers’ work on this issue ‘summed up the theory of multi- ple personality’, quoted in Luckhurst (2002, p. 112). 13. See, for example, Myers’ ‘Binet on the Consciousness of Hysterical Subjects’ (1889–90, pp. 200–5). 14. In ‘The Unconscious’, a paper that was published in the PSPR, Freud empha- sizes the importance of the unconscious in ‘Psychoanalysis alone’ and tries to extricate his discourse from Psychical Research. However, his theoretical interest in telepathy and in forms of influence between the living reveal that the ties between Psychoanalysis and Psychical Research were closer than Freud would perhaps like to admit. See Luckhurst (2002, pp. 270–8). For discussion of the importance of ‘psychical’ reality in both Psychoanalysis and Psychical Research and, more specifically, the way that these discourses are based on similar themes of the dead existing within us and ‘telepathic’ communication, see Thurschwell (2001, pp. 4–7 and chapter 5). 15. Also see Thurschwell (2001, chapter 5). For Flournoy’s experiments in sub- liminal psychology and mediumship, see Sonu Shamdasani (2006). 16. Rather than causing fear and panic, the ghost’s first appearance is portrayed in following manner: ‘Mr. Otis began to suspect that he had been too dogmatic Notes 207 in his denial of the existence of ghosts. Mrs. Otis expressed her intention of joining the Psychical Society, and Washington prepared a long letter to Messrs. Myers and Podmore on the subject of the Permanence of Sanguineous Stains when connected with Crime. That night all doubts about the objective existence of phantasmata were removed forever’ (Wilde, 1998, p. 63). 17. The letters relating the sightings of phantasms are held at the SPR Archives, University Library Cambridge. 18. Although Gurney, Podmore and Myers were extremely careful in selecting which cases to include and which to omit, their study was, inescapably, based on narrative testimony rather than any kind of repeatable scientific tests.
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