The Henson Journals

[130]

Saturday, January 28th, 1922.

I left Bishopwearmouth Rectory at 9 a.m. in a deluge of rain, and caught an excellent train which went through to Bishop Auckland, where I arrived about 10 a.m. The day was frittered away in writing letters &c. Also I paid wages to Alexander & Mrs Berry for the household; & had an interview with Frank Berry, who has been staying here on a visit to his mother for a month past. William gave me a photograph of the Altar in the Chapel taken by himself, very good and clear. I wrote to George answering his questions about "the Resurrection of the body", and warning him against spiritualism. I sent him cuttings from the Yorkshire Post, which give an account of a controversy between Conan Doyle and a man named Tilson Young, who attended some spiritualistic seances, & discovered much fraud. Also I wrote to Gilbert Simpson asking him to make George's acquaintance and to befriend him.

"Spiritualism" is a curiously perplexing, and an extremely exasperating factor. It lays hold of the most unlikely individuals, and has a strangely absorbing interest for anyone who has once dabbled in it. The young are attracted by the suggestion of a terra incognita of Science awaiting exploration: and they are only the more attracted by the suspicion of spiritual 'Bohemianism' which attaches to mediums and seances. Women are completely conquered by the emotional appeal. Their hearts are eagerly engaged from the start, & they are apt to resent any suggestion of imposture as if it professed a Faith rather than cleansed a study. It is quite certain that the effect of dabbling in Spiritualism is mentally & morally unwholesome. Men, and still more women, become completely unhinged, lose their sense of rectitude, and, even when they escape insanity, are quite disqualified for the business of life. This fact might well suffice to justify total abstinence from so unsavoury and perilous an interest: but it does not hold back many people. I cannot personally undertake to investigate the subject, and one is obviously at a great tactical disadvantage in being obliged to preface one's condemnation of Spiritualism by owning that one knows nothing about it?!

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