The Book of Dreams and Ghosts, Andrew Lang [free children's online books txt] 📗

waking (illusions hypnagogiques).  The singularity is that they are seen by people wide awake in glass balls and so forth.  Usually the seer is a person whose ordinary “mental imagery” is particularly vivid.  But every “visualiser” is not a crystal seer.  A novelist of my acquaintance can “visualise” so well that, having forgotten an address and lost the letter on which it was written, he called up a mental picture of the letter, and so discovered the address.  But this very popular writer can see no visions in a crystal ball.  Another very popular novelist can see them; little dramas are acted out in the ball for his edification. {58}

These things are as unfamiliar to men of science as Mr. Galton found ordinary mental imagery, pictures in memory, to be.  Psychology may or may not include them in her province; they may or may not come to be studied as ordinary dreams are studied.  But, like dreams, these crystal visions enter the domain of the ghostly only when they are veracious, and contribute information previously unknown as to past, present or future.  There are plenty of stories to this effect.  To begin with an easy, or comparatively easy, exercise in belief.

UNDER THE LAMP

I had given a glass ball to a young lady, who believed that she could play the “willing game” successfully without touching the person “willed,” and when the person did not even know that “willing” was going on.  This lady, Miss Baillie, had scarcely any success with the ball.  She lent it to Miss Leslie, who saw a large, square, old-fashioned red sofa covered with muslin, which she found in the next country house she visited.  Miss Baillie’s brother, a young athlete (at short odds for the amateur golf championship), laughed at these experiments, took the ball into the study, and came back looking “gey gash”.  He admitted that he had seen a vision, somebody he knew “under a lamp”.  He would discover during the week whether he saw right or not.  This was at 5.30 on a Sunday afternoon.  On Tuesday, Mr. Baillie was at a dance in a town some forty miles from his home, and met a Miss Preston.  “On Sunday,” he said, “about half-past five you were sitting under a standard lamp in a dress I never saw you wear, a blue blouse with lace over the shoulders, pouring out tea for a man in blue serge, whose back was towards me, so that I only saw the tip of his moustache.”

“Why, the blinds must have been up,” said Miss Preston.

“I was at Dulby,” said Mr. Baillie, as he undeniably was. {60a}

This is not a difficult exercise in belief.  Miss Preston was not unlikely to be at tea at tea-time.

Nor is the following very hard.

THE COW WITH THE BELL

I had given a glass ball to the wife of a friend, whose visions proved so startling and on one occasion so unholy that she ceased to make experiments.  One day my friend’s secretary, a young student and golfer, took up the ball.

“I see a field I know very well,” he said, “but there is a cow in it that I never saw; brown, with white markings, and, this is odd in Scotland, she has a bell hanging from her neck.  I’ll go and look at the field.”

He went and found the cow as described, bell and all. {60b}

In the spring of 1897 I gave a glass ball to a young lady, previously a stranger to me, who was entirely unacquainted with crystal gazing, even by report.  She had, however, not infrequent experience of spontaneous visions, which were fulfilled, including a vision of the Derby (Persimmon’s year), which enriched her friends.  In using the ball she, time after time, succeeded in seeing and correctly describing persons and places familiar to people for whom she “scried,” but totally strange to herself.  In one case she added a detail quite unknown to the person who consulted her, but which was verified on inquiry.  These experiments will probably be published elsewhere.  Four people, out of the very small number who tried on these occasions, saw fancy pictures in the ball: two were young ladies, one a man, and one a schoolboy.  I must confess that, for the first time, I was impressed by the belief that the lady’s veracious visions, however they are to be explained, could not possibly be accounted for by chance coincidence.  They were too many (I was aware of five in a few days), too minute, and too remote from the range of ingenious guessing.  But “thought transference,” tapping the mental wires of another person, would have accounted for every case, with, perhaps, the exception of that in which an unknown detail was added.  This confession will, undoubtedly, seem weakly credulous, but not to make it would be unfair and unsportsmanlike.  My statement, of course, especially without the details, is not evidence for other people.

The following case is a much harder exercise in belief.  It is narrated by the Duc de Saint Simon. {62}  The events were described to Saint Simon on the day after their occurrence by the Duc d’Orléans, then starting for Italy, in May, 1706.  Saint Simon was very intimate with the duke, and they corresponded by private cypher without secretaries.  Owing to the death of the king’s son and grandson (not seen in the vision), Orléans became Regent when Louis XIV. died in 1714.  Saint Simon is a reluctant witness, and therefore all the better.

THE DEATHBED OF LOUIS XIV.

“Here is a strange story that the Duc d’Orléans told me one day in a tête-à-tête at Marly, he having just run down from Paris before he started for Italy; and it may be observed that all the events predicted came to pass, though none of them could have been foreseen at the time.  His interest in every kind of art and science was very great, and in spite of his keen intellect, he was all his life subject to a weakness which had been introduced (with other things) from Italy by Catherine de Medici, and had reigned supreme over the courts of her children.  He had exercised every known method of inducing the devil to appear to him in person, though, as he has himself told me, without the smallest success.  He had spent much time in investigating matters that touched on the supernatural, and dealt with the future.

“Now La Sery (his mistress) had in her house a little girl of eight or nine years of age, who had never resided elsewhere since her birth.  She was to all appearance a very ordinary child, and from the way in which she had been brought up, was more than commonly ignorant and simple.  One day, during the visit of M. d’Orléans, La Sery produced for his edification one of the charlatans with whom the duke had long been familiar, who pretended that by means of a glass of water he could see the answer to any question that might be put.  For this purpose it was necessary to have as a go-between some one both young and innocent, to gaze into the water, and this little girl was at once sent for.  They amused themselves by asking what was happening in certain distant places; and after the man had murmured some words over the water, the child looked in and always managed to see the vision required of her.

“M. le duc d’Orléans had so often been duped in matters of this kind that he determined to put the water-gazer to a severe test.  He whispered to one of his attendants to go round to Madame de Nancre’s, who lived close by, and ascertain who was there, what they were all doing, the position of the room and the way it was furnished, and then, without exchanging a word with any one, to return and let him know the result.  This was done speedily and without the slightest suspicion on the part of any person, the child remaining in the room all the time.  When M. le duc d’Orléans had learned all he wanted to know, he bade the child look in the water and tell him who was at Madame de Nancre’s and what they were all doing.  She repeated word for word the story that had been told by the duke’s messenger; described minutely the faces, dresses and positions of the assembled company, those that were playing cards at the various tables, those that were sitting, those that were standing, even the very furniture!  But to leave nothing in doubt, the Duke of Orléans despatched Nancre back to the house to verify a second time the child’s account, and like the valet, he found she had been right in every particular.

“As a rule he said very little to me about these subjects, as he knew I did not approve of them, and on this occasion I did not fail to scold him, and to point out the folly of being amused by such things, especially at a time when his attention should be occupied with more serious matters.  ‘Oh, but I have only told you half,’ he replied; ‘that was just the beginning,’ and then he went on to say that, encouraged by the exactitude of the little girl’s description of Madame de Nancre’s room, he resolved to put to her a more important question, namely, as to the scene that would occur at the death of the king.  The child had never seen any one who was about the court, and had never even heard of Versailles, but she described exactly and at great length the king’s bedroom at Versailles and all the furniture which was in fact there at the date of his death.  She gave every detail as to the bed, and cried out on recognising, in the arms of Madame de Ventadour, a little child decorated with an order whom she had seen at the house of Mademoiselle la Sery; and again at the sight of M. le duc d’Orléans.  From her account, Madame de Maintenon, Fagon with his odd face, Madame la duchesse d’Orléans, Madame la duchesse, Madame la princesse de Conti, besides other princes and nobles, and even the valets and servants were all present at the king’s deathbed.  Then she paused, and M. le duc d’Orléans, surprised that she had never mentioned Monseigneur, Monsieur le duc de Bourgogne, Madame la duchesse de Bourgogne, nor M. le duc de Berri, inquired if she did not see such and such people answering to their description.  She persisted that she did not, and went over the others for the second time.  This astonished M. le duc d’Orléans deeply, as well as myself, and we were at a loss to explain it, but the event proved that the child was perfectly right.  This séance took place in 1706.  These four members of the royal family were then full of health and strength; and they all died before the king.  It was the same thing with M. le prince, M. le duc, and M. le prince de Conti, whom she likewise did not see, though she beheld the children of the two last named; M. du Maine, his own (Orléans), and M. le comte de Toulouse.  But of course this fact was unknown till eight years after.”

Science may conceivably come to study crystal visions, but veracious crystal visions will be treated like veracious dreams.  That is to say, they will be explained as the results of a chance coincidence between the unknown fact and the vision, or of imposture, conscious or unconscious, or of confusion of memory, or the fact of the crystal vision will be simply denied.  Thus a vast number of well-authenticated cases of veracious visions will be required before science could admit that it might be well to investigate hitherto unacknowledged faculties of the human mind.  The evidence