Seen and Unseen Part 31

I think poor Gifford came again more than once to me; but I had done all I could for him, and explained this, adding that he must now leave me alone, which he did.

Later my cousin returned to Paris, and I went on to Rome, where I received a letter from Dr Richard Hodgson enclosing some Piper script.

_F. W. H. Myers communicating_, said that he had come to me on the evening of 4th February, that I seemed to recognise him, and that he thought he had "got his message through to me," and hoped that I should write to Dr Hodgson to that effect.

In answering Dr Hodgson's letter I denied the Myers' episode _in toto_, so far as _my_ consciousness was concerned. In fact, the Gifford incident put all else so entirely out of my mind that I fear I did not even mention to Dr Hodgson that my _first_ thought that night had been connected with Mr Myers.

Anyway, the next letter from Boston enclosed an account of a sitting, where Mr Myers came and apologised for having misled Dr Hodgson about my recognition of him.

His words were almost literally as follows:--

"I am extremely sorry, my dear Hodgson, about that affair with Miss Bates. I should not have thought of mentioning it to you had I not felt convinced that she recognised me. _Her astral body was quite aware of my presence_, and I quite thought she had realised it on the physical plane" (the italics are mine).

It would seem that the Myers' message was in the very act of transmission from my astral to my normal consciousness when this man Gifford must have come, switching off the telephone for Mr Myers, and getting on to it himself. Probably his great distress of mind would have made him the stronger force of the two for the time being.

There must always be many disappointments of this kind in our research.

There is always something which so nearly succeeds and then just fails at last. This _must_ be the case where conditions are so fine and subtle and so easily disturbed, and where our own ignorance of many necessary factors is so profound. This makes it none the less disheartening at times!

Later I made an attempt with my friend Baroness Rosenkrantz of Rome to get a message through the other way--_i.e._ from Mr Myers and myself to Dr Hodgson, _via_ Mrs Piper.

The Baroness and I had a little "sitting" alone, wrote one or two short messages with a couple of extracts from Mr Myers' own writings, sealed up the envelope carefully, and I forwarded it to Dr Hodgson.

But the test failed. Two years later Dr Hodgson spoke of the letter as being still intact.

CHAPTER XIII

A SECOND VISIT TO INDIA, 1903

My second visit to India took place in the early months of 1903, and I approached it this time from Burmah. Fielding Hall's "Soul of a People"

had thrown its magic spell over me, and Miss Greenlow and I were both anxious also to see the far-famed Shwe Dagon Temple.

I came to the conclusion from what I saw, and still more from what I heard, that Mr Fielding Hall must have appealed sometimes to his imagination for his facts, and allowed an exquisite poetical fancy to cast its glamour even over these. But the beautiful Golden Temple of Rangoon defies all powers of exaggeration. We went there again and again, and wandered amongst its endless small temples, representing various forms of wors.h.i.+p, including even a Chinese joss-house, which is stamped upon my memory through a disaster, which I have always connected with this special temple; rank superst.i.tion though it be.

We had spent several weeks upon the Irrawaddy River; had wandered through beautiful, dusty Mandalay; had explored Bhamo and marvelled over the exquisite visions of fairy-like beauty, painted anew for us morning and evening, on this most glorious river; and had finally returned to Rangoon for a few days' rest before starting for Calcutta.

It was an exquisite evening, just before our departure, when we went, towards sunset, to say farewell to the Shwe Dagon. At that hour it is to be seen at its best, for the level rays of the Eastern sun, light up the golden cupola into startling and fairy-like magnificence.

Having watched this glorious spectacle for some minutes, the air grew chilly, compared with the intense heat of the day, and darkness was coming on apace as we turned to retrace our steps.

A few days before, we had noticed a Chinese joss-house, standing in one corner of the huge elevated platform upon which the Shwe Dagon rests. In the maze of buildings, and owing to the swiftly falling darkness, we could not at once locate this temple; and most unfortunately for _me_, with the stupid persistence which such a failure sometimes brings, both Miss Greenlow and I were determined to find it out before leaving the Golden Temple. At last a joyous exclamation warned me that my friend had been successful in her quest.

The first time I had seen this joss-house I had run up the steps heedlessly, but felt such an unpleasant influence on entering it that I came away at once, and only regret not having been equally prudent a second time.

Miss Greenlow was gazing at some grotesque carvings in one corner of the temple, still dimly visible, and called out to me to come and look at them also. Very reluctantly I joined her, and stood for a few minutes waiting, till she was ready to leave.

There was something so gloomy, so uncanny, and depressing--I must even say _malignant_--in the building at this twilight hour, that I could stand the influence no longer, and as Miss Greenlow seemed inclined to linger, I hurried down the stone steps, saying: "_I can't stay in that place! I will wait for you at the top of the marble stairs._"

Now these steps, broken and dirty, and lined by small booths selling every imaginable toy and bit of tinsel, including small models of the various temples, led by steep flights up and down from the huge platform of ground I have mentioned. Some small link-boys were crowding round as Miss Greenlow rejoined me, clamouring to be allowed to light us down the steps--a very necessary precaution, for the darkness was quickly replacing the exquisite sunset colouring.

I am, as a rule, rather a remarkably sure-footed person, and the lanterns of the boys threw ample light upon the steps, yet the first moment of my descent I was considerably surprised to find myself at the bottom of the first whole flight of hard marble steps! I had no recollection of a slip even--one moment I was standing, carefully prepared to descend; the next I was lying on my back at the bottom of a long flight of steps, with the link-boys gaping in astonishment. They could not have been more astonished than I was! The very swiftness of the fall was probably my salvation; otherwise I think my spine _must_ have been injured. As it was, I was very much hurt, however; the pain was intense for a time, and the muscles of my back were so swollen that they stood up in ridges as big as a good-sized finger, for some time after the escapade. In fact, it was quite six weeks before all local trouble was over, and many more weeks before I had recovered from the unexpected shock.

I have had several falls in my life, but never one other where there was absolutely _no_ preliminary warning or sense of slipping, however swift.

The experience was exactly that of being suddenly _hurled down_ the steps by some outside force. I can only add that I deeply deplored my unguarded words to Miss Greenlow, when I told her I was sure there was some malignant spirit in the joss-house.

Perhaps he wished politely to demonstrate the correctness of my remark.

The short voyage from Rangoon to Calcutta was made pleasant by the kindness of a European friend in Rangoon, who came "to see us off," and asked if he should introduce to me a little Burmese lady, very rich and very _devote_, who was on board with us, going to Calcutta to pay a visit to her husband, who lived in that city.

"She is one of our princ.i.p.al native residents," my Rangoon friend explained to me before introducing her. "She is also intensely interested in her Buddhist religion, and I think this may interest you, from what you have told me of your investigations."

So the little lady was duly presented, and thinking to open our conversation pleasantly, I remarked that Mr Rowell had told me that she was much interested in religious questions, and that although not a theosophist myself, I numbered several of them amongst my friends.

But I found myself quite on the wrong tack. She screwed up her little mouth, as if tasting some nasty medicine, and then said in excellent colloquial English:

"Oh, they are no good at all. They have muddled everything up, and got it all wrong. That is why we are beginning to write tracts and send out missionaries. The great Buddha made no propaganda; neither did we for many, many centuries. We believe that people must grow into this knowledge; but now when you Western people come and take little bits of our system, and piece them together all wrong--well, then, we are forced to show you what is the truth! It is like a puzzle map, and all you theosophists are trying to fit the pieces in, wrong side upward." And she finished with a merry and apologetic laugh, remembering, no doubt, that I had spoken of having friends amongst these "stupid muddlers"!

She gave me quite a number of the "tracts" of which she had spoken, setting forth the true Buddhism, and mostly printed in Mandalay, and I made a point of pa.s.sing these on to some of the friends I had mentioned to her.

I can only trust they were appreciated, and efficacious in reducing the confusion resulting from trying to adapt Eastern mysticism to Western consumption!

Our conversation became still more interesting when I discovered that a mysterious fellow-pa.s.senger of ours on board the _Devons.h.i.+re_, sailing from Ma.r.s.eilles to Rangoon, had taken this voyage at the expense of the Burmese lady, and, I am sorry to say, had occasioned her a great and quite inexcusable disappointment.

This man, whom I will call Dr Grone, was a professor at a celebrated university in the south of Europe, and was certainly a scholar--if not a gentleman!

He had studied the Buddhist writings very deeply, and his name had been conveyed to this Burmese lady as that of one eager to throw off all ties of kins.h.i.+p, and retire--like the great Buddha himself--from the world, and find repose and enlightenment in a Burmese monastery. The only thing lacking in carrying out this excellent resolve was--as usual--_money_.

The native lady, delighted to hear of so learned a gentleman, and one holding such an honourable position in Europe, being converted to the tenets of her religion, and thus wis.h.i.+ng to give the best example of their influence upon him, agreed joyfully to forward the funds for his journey and to make arrangements for his stay in Rangoon before proceeding to Mandalay, where he was to be received as a Buddhist priest after a certain course of initiation.

We had all remarked Dr Grone on board--partly because he was so thin and tall, and walked the deck so persistently in fine weather or foul; partly because he owned an exceptionally fine and long beard, which parted and waved in the breeze as he pa.s.sed to and fro in his lonely perambulations. I never saw him speak to anyone on board except my own table companion, Dr Gall, the Secretary of the Church Missionary Society, and a very interesting and intelligent man. This latter was also a distinguished Arabic scholar, and had lent me some striking monographs he had written on the Mohammedan faith, striking both by the scholars.h.i.+p and breadth of view and tolerance, which one does not generally a.s.sociate with the Society that he represented.

I had seen him more than once in the company of Dr Grone, and when we reached Colombo, and read in the papers handed to us on broad that our s.h.i.+p contained the famous European professor who was journeying to Mandalay to become a Buddhist priest, after a touching farewell with wife and children, Dr Gall expressed both astonishment and incredulity.

"He never said a word about it to me," was his remark. "I know he has studied the Buddhist religion very deeply, and he is anxious to get access to some MSS., which he hopes to find in Burmah; but that is not the same thing as becoming a priest. I expect the papers have exaggerated the facts."

As a matter of fact, Dr Grone certainly gave a lecture on Buddhism in Colombo on the day of our arrival, for one of our fellow-pa.s.sengers had the curiosity to be present, but he, also, told me nothing had been said about the lecturer becoming a priest.

The matter did not specially interest me; but on arrival at Rangoon, the only decent (?) hotel was crowded, and most of us had to put up with a very inferior cla.s.s of accommodation.

A few hours of this establishment sufficed for most of the pa.s.sengers, who promptly went up country or on the river; but Miss Greenlow and I were obliged to spend three or four days in Rangoon, and Dr Grone was at first our only companion.

So, of course, we spoke to each other in self-defence. He talked of his home life and university work, and casually mentioned the death of his wife, _five years previously_, and the children who were awaiting him at home.

This certainly tallied more with Dr Gall's ideas than the sensational Colombo newspaper account of his wife and children, to whom, like the great Buddha, he had bidden an eternal farewell! Naturally one did not touch upon this delicate subject, but I asked him how long he expected to remain in Rangoon. To my surprise, he said at once that his stay was quite uncertain--he might even be returning by the _Devons.h.i.+re_, which was to sail within a week of her arrival.