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Page 60
"I longed to see gardens and trees, flowers, etc. I no sooner had
the desire than they appeared.... Such beautiful flowers no human
eye ever gazed upon. It was simply indescribable, yet everything
was real.... I walked and moved along as easily as a fly would
pass through a ray of sunlight in your world. I had no weight,
nothing cumbersome, nothing.... I passed along through this
garden, meeting millions of friends. As they were all friendly to
me, each and every one seemed to be my friend.... I then thought
of different friends I had once known, and my desire was to meet
some one of them, when like every other thought or desire that I
had expressed, the friend of whom I thought instantly appeared."
How much all this is like dreams!
_March 27, 1897._ (A good deal of confusion, out of which appears)
"He will insist upon calling me Miss, but let him if he wishes. I
am very much Mrs. Never mind so long as it suits him....
"I have a desire for reading, when instantly my whole surrounding
is literally filled with books of all kinds and by many different
authors.... When I touched a book and desired to meet its author,
if he or she were in our world, he or she would instantly appear.
[Is this purely incidental reiterated claim for female authors, by
one of them, 'evidential,' or was Mrs. Piper ingenious enough to
invent it? Ed.]...."
The change of the instrument below is a specially dreamlike touch.
_March 30, 1897._ "I wished to see and realize that some of the
mortal world's great musicians really existed, and asked to be
visited by some one or more of them. When this was expressed,
instantly several appeared before me, and Rubinstein stood before
me playing upon an instrument like a harp at first. Then the
instrument was changed and a piano appeared and he played upon it
with the most delightful ease and grace of manner. While he was
playing the whole atmosphere was filled with his strains of
music."
She wanted to see Rembrandt, and he came, with a quantity of pictures. She
wanted a symphony, and an orchestra "of some thirty musicians" at once
appeared and gave her several, which she enjoyed to the full.
Now George Eliot was a remarkably good musician. If she wanted an
orchestra, she would have wanted at least sixty, and probably more than a
hundred. Perhaps they do these things with more limited resources in
Heaven? Such an incongruity as this, and the inane dilution of the writing
(which of course does not appear at its worst in the selected passages)
make a genuine George Eliot control hard to predicate, and yet this
control, like virtually every other one, is an individuality, and is less
unlike George Eliot than is any other control I know. Will difficulties of
communication or any other _tertium quid_, make up the difference? I first
read the record with repulsion, and now find in it some elements of
attraction.
Do you care for a little more? She wanted to see "angels," and gives a
very pretty picture of an experience with a bevy of children. Telepathy
from the sitter will hardly account for the following, especially the
strange turn at the end, which is signally dreamlike.
"I being fond, very fond of writers of ancient history, etc., felt
a strong desire to see Dante, Aristotle and several others.
Shakespeare if such a spirit existed. [An odd bunch of 'writers of
ancient history'! Ed.] As I stood thinking of him a spirit
instantly appeared who speaking said 'I am Bacon.' ... As Bacon
neared me he began to speak and quoted to me the following words
'You have questioned my reality. Question it no more. I am
Shakespeare.'"
_June 4, 1897._ "... Speak to me for a moment and if you have
anything to say in the nature of poetry or prose would you kindly
recite a line or two to me. It will give me strength to remain
longer than I could otherwise do. [R.H. recites a poem of Dowden's
beginning,
'I said I will find God and forth I went
To seek him in the clearness of the sky,' etc. Excitement.]
G.E.: 'I will go and see G. and return presently (R.H.: Who says
that?) I do. (R.H.: I do not understand what you mean by G.) I do.
My husband. Do you not know I had a husband? (R.H.: Do you mean by
G. Mr. George Henry Lewes?) [Hand is writing Lewes while I am
saying George Henry] Lewes. Yes I do. Oh I am so happy. And when I
did not mistake altogether my deeds I am more _happy than tongue
can utter_."
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