Walker: The Bridge
Nea Walker: The Bridge: A Case for Survival. With a Prologue and an Epilogue by Sir Oliver Lodge. Illustrated. Pp. 314, London: Cassell & Co., Ltd., 1927 (out of print).
Book Review – Eleanor Mildred Sidgwick
(From Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, 1928;38:10-17, reproduced with permission)
This important book gives an account of attempted communication and its gradual development between a Mrs. White and her deceased husband, with some further experiments after Mrs. White's own death in 1924. The case has already been in part before members of our Society, for Sir Oliver Lodge (whose secretary for psychical matters was and is Miss Walker, the compiler) gave an outline of it, quoting extracts from the evidence at an S.P.R. meeting in November, 1925. It deserves, however, more serious study than an hour's discourse affords opportunity for, and all who are really interested in psychical research will be well advised to read the book carefully, though they will not find profitable study of it altogether easy nor probably get from it sensational thrills.
There are two characteristics of the case to which special attention may be called. The first is that it is in a sense complete. The compiler has not only had before her fragments and episodes of apparent communication from Mr. White; she is cognizant of all that Mrs. White experienced in that way or that was obtained on her behalf through mediums, and Miss Walker to a large extent herself directed the experiments. She has very properly not given us in this volume full records of all the sittings and communications, nor even the whole of what has any apparent connexion with Mr. White. To have done so would have drawn it out to inconvenient length and have involved unnecessary repetition and the inclusion of matter of doubtful interpretation and uncertain evidential value. But Miss Walker herself has known it all and has only omitted for the sake of brevity what seemed irrelevant. To make the selection in such ft manner as to present the case adequately and fairly and in as readable a form as possible, with the necessary comments, and verifications, was not a very easy task, even with the assistance Mrs. White was able to give, and I should like to congratulate Miss Walker on the success with which she seems to me to have accomplished it. I am to some extent a better judge of this than the ordinary reader, because I have seen a somewhat larger portion of the records than appears in the book.
The second and more important characteristic is that what one may call the backbone of the case, from a research point of view, is a systematic and very successful attempt to get evidence in a form which eliminates the mind of the sitter as a possible source of the knowledge shown by the communicator, knowledge of things of which the medium and sitter were both ignorant. This was accomplished largely through sittings taken by Miss Walker as proxy for Mrs. White. Miss Walker who, as explained in the book, at first only knew Mrs. White by correspondence and knew nothing of her circumstances and surroundings except that her husband had recently died and that she was very anxious to feel in touch with him, suggested that she (Mrs. White) should ask her husband to communicate with her (Miss Walker), giving evidence of identity which could be subsequently verified. Mrs. White entered into the experiment gladly and with results satisfactory to herself and valuable to all students.
The following (see pp. 227-229) is an instance of the kind of result obtained—in this particular case knowledge shown of Mrs. White's thoughts. It occurred in the course of a sitting; taken with Mrs. Leonard by Miss Walker, on behalf of Mrs. White; but Mrs. Leonard was not informed that Mrs. White, who indeed was not known to her by name at all, was concerned in the matter. By the time the sitting in question, took place, however, Mrs. White had personally sat anonymously with Mrs. Leonard several times with interesting results, so that it may be supposed that some sort of rapport had been established between them. Feda (Mrs. Leonard's well-known control) speaking for Mr. White said among other things:
"... She wasn't very near the window, but she could see from where she was. She was looking specially at a peculiar formation in the sky. And she wondered if it had anything to do with us. He says, I'll put it this way—if we were there. If that had anything to do with our place [in the other world]. And I tried to impress upon her, that, in a strange and peculiar way, it had to do with us, and that she would not quite understand that till later..."
Mrs. White gives particulars of such an experience which she had one Sunday evening before the sitting, and she had as a matter of fact, before she received the record of the sitting included in a list of impressions, placed for evidential purposes in the hands of a friend, "Thoughts in connexion with a golden cloud—is it where they are?" She was very ill at the time and unable to write more fully. It must be admitted that the corroboration of a friend is not always forthcoming as it is in this case. But of Mrs. White's bona fides there is no doubt and I do not think any reader of the book will question it.
A single example such as I have given does not really represent the case, for the effect of the evidence is cumulative. There were numerous instances of apparent supernormal knowledge—not of course all of equal evidential value—shown through various mediums, professional and private, concerning Mrs. White; and after her death, concerning a friend of hers, Mrs. White herself being the ostensible communicator. Mrs. White, moreover, with an ouija-board got some facts concerning Miss Walker and her sisters at a distance.
The attempt was made to obtain from Mr. White evidence of memory of things unknown to any living person. In particular he on one occasion professed to describe a childish recollection which may quite well have been true; confirmation up to a certain point was forthcoming, but no one was found who remembered the actual facts described. It is, of course, a well recognised difficulty in obtaining evidence of this type that if the alleged fact was known only to the deceased communicator, it can seldom be verified.
It may be asked: In seeking evidence of survival, how does elimination of telepathy from the sitter help us if after all the source of information is perhaps telepathy from a distant living person? There are two answers to this. The first is that it adds to our knowledge of telepathy, which is, I think, the most promising line of advance in psychical research. We at present know extremely little about it, and if we could discover its modus operandi, its conditions and its limits and possibilities, that would in itself greatly contribute to the understanding of questions of survival and communication with the dead. One reason why this book is valuable is that it is a distinct contribution to the study of telepathy.
My second answer is more direct. The communications here recorded do not merely consist of statements of fact which turn out to be true. There is an atmosphere about them. A personality is presented which is like Mr. White, showing thoughts and feelings and associations of ideas like his, possessing his memories apparently, and sometimes using his expressions. Mrs. White gradually became so strongly convinced that this was so that she ceased to doubt that she was really in communication with her husband; and I think any careful reader will feel this atmosphere. Now, though at present we know little of the limits of telepathic power, it certainly would seem, other things being equal, prima facie more likely that a vivid and veridical presentation of a personality is derived from the person represented than by telepathy even from the sitter, and still more so if the alternative is telepathy from a distant person. But this argument assumes that communication from the dead is a possible alternative, and rigorous proof of continued memory and affection is not attainable without exclusion of telepathy from the living as a possible source of communications. There are, however, degrees of probability, and accumulation of carefully examined evidence such as this case affords would I think gradually produce practical conviction that the source is the minds of the dead. Nevertheless, we rightly desire scientific proof of so momentous a conclusion and we must not relax our efforts to add to the evidence we already have showing memory and intelligent action clearly independent of minds still in the body; for such evidence, adequate in amount, would furnish the proof required.
I should like to call attention to two curious instances of apparent foreknowledge which occurred casually, as it seemed, in the course of the investigation—though the subject of foreknowledge is rather off the main line of the book. The first occurred at a sitting with Mrs. Leonard taken by Mrs. White herself anonymously (see pp. 208, 9). The communicator talked about the Quantock Hills in Somerset, where the Whites had spent many holidays. Then after conversation about other matters, Feda said:
“That place he spoke of—the place you planned to go to again . . . You have a sort of picture or description of that place. He's got such a strange feeling; he feels you're going to get another picture, sort of picture, quite by accident, you'll think it's a sort of coincidence." Mrs. White annotates:
“Whilst sitting in the train in the evening at Paddington, just after the sitting, with my friend [who corroborates], and waiting for its departure, two ladies, one in the carriage and the other standing on the platform, began to talk about the Quantocks. The one told the other of a long stay she had had in a village where we had stayed . . . and finally gave a vivid description of the view from the .top of the hills, across the Severn sea to Cardiff." The second prediction is even more definite and its fulfilment more improbable (pp. 285, 6). The medium was Mrs. Warren Elliott. The sitting took place after Mrs. White's death with no friends of hers present, but it was understood that communication with Miss Walker was desired. Mr. Elliott, the husband of the medium, kindly took the notes. Both Miss Nea Walker and her sister Damaris (who has psychic powers, and had herself been one of the channels through whom Mr. White had appeared to communicate), were absent from home. Topsy (Mrs. Elliott's control) said :
"Spirit says . . . Dame ( = Damaris) made cake, sort of spotted inside, and the blue fell in."
When the record was sent to Miss D. Walker for comment, she wrote:
"I made some pastry, but it must have been [some days] later than the date of the sitting. The blue (blue for blueing clothes) did fall into the basin." Later she added, in answer to further inquiries:
"It was pastry I was making. ... I filled the scraps with a mixture of currants and brown sugar. ... It does give a ' spotty ' appearance where you bite into it; and I suppose they might be called small pastry cakes."
There was no conceivable reason why the fall of the blue bag, or even its presence on the shelf from which it fell, should have been anticipated by the persons concerned.
I must not leave the impression that, successful as the experiments were on the whole, the communications were all that could be desired. As is generally the case with telepathic communications, they are apt to lack the fullness which we should expect in conversations between living persons face to face, and there are not only curious gaps and omissions, but what is said is not always free from error. Even if we may assume that the dead are able to be in complete touch with us spiritually, and to know all our thoughts and actions, experience seems to show that telepathic communication expressed in language is almost always incomplete and often confused. As Feda puts it on one occasion after Mrs. White's death (p. 273):
"There's some slipping point between us—what she was going to say, and what she tried to say/ and found it 1 wasn't given."
Another difficulty will be felt by some readers. There are in the course of the book attempts to describe things in the other world in terms of the material world we live in—rooms, gardens, etc. E.g. on p. 146 Feda says for Mr. White:
"Tell her that in our house [in the other world] we have everything that she would like, everything. . . . He says, tell her our piano is an Erard, but if she likes I'll change it. That's what it is at present."
Common sense tells us that such descriptions, if they represent anything beyond the fancy of Feda or other control, cannot be intended literally. If students kept this in mind, a difficulty in estimating the value of statements through mediums would perhaps be removed. A statement that the emotional effect of music is experienced on the other side would, of course, whether true or not, be in a different category.
Mr. and Mrs. White were both very musical, and Mrs. White was a good pianist. Her playing to him on the pianoforte was an important feature in their married life. That appears clearly in the book, with many other intimate details of their life together. The reader must be prepared for an atmosphere full of tender sentiment and poetic ideas, in what Mrs. White calls "a true after-death love-story." The book is not merely a dry description of a scientific investigation, though the sentiment has not been allowed in any way to interfere with the carefulness of the investigation or the accuracy of the report. Mrs. White left to Sir Oliver Lodge and Miss Walker all the psychic material, and the right to use it, including her most intimate messages, as they thought best for the widest possible public.
"I would like the White case," she wrote, "to be used to help others to realize that Love does conquer all" (p. 12).
We owe a debt of gratitude to Mrs. White for thus allowing her inmost feelings to be revealed, and both to her and to Miss Walker for the trouble they have taken in presenting the evidence in what undoubtedly is, as the title intimates, "a case for survival," and a valuable one.
Eleanor Mildred Sidgwick (1845-1936)
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