The communications of Mr Robert Hyslop—Peculiar expressions—Incidents.

After we have read the report of Professor Hyslop, weighed the slightest facts with him, discussed the arguments for and against with him, we cannot be surprised at his having ended by adhering to the spiritualist hypothesis; in other words, we cannot be surprised that, in spite of his previous prejudice, he should have ended by exclaiming, "I have been talking with my father, my brother, my uncles. Whatever supernormal powers we may be pleased to attribute to Mrs Piper's secondary personalities, it would be difficult to make me believe that these secondary personalities could have thus completely reconstituted the mental personality of my dead relatives. To admit this would involve me in too many improbabilities. I prefer to believe that I have been talking to my dead relatives in person; it is simpler." This is the conclusion at which Professor Hyslop has arrived, and he takes the reader with him, in spite of himself. As may be imagined, I do not pretend to do the same in a hurried sketch like the present. Here, as was the case with George Pelham, the incidents quoted are only examples selected from a great number; some important detail of the said incidents may even be accidentally omitted. If the forgotten detail lays the incident open to some great objection, the reader must blame me only for it, and turn to Professor Hyslop's book for himself.[78]

Professor Hyslop's father, Mr Robert Hyslop, was a private person in the strictest sense of the word; he never did anything to attract public attention to him; he did not write in the papers, and never, or hardly ever, lived in towns. He was born in 1821, and lived on his farm in Ohio till 1889, when he went into a neighbouring State. He returned to his old home in August 1896, ill with a sort of cancer of the larynx. The old home then belonged to his brother-in-law, James Carruthers, and he died there on the 29th of the same month. In 1860 he had contracted a spinal affection, the result of over-exertion, and this had degenerated, some years later, into locomotor ataxy; he lost by degrees the use of one of his legs and used a crutch; there was afterwards an improvement, but he could never walk without a stick. In 1876 he had a slight attack of apoplexy, which affected his hearing, one ear being quite deaf. Three years before his death he further had the misfortune to lose his voice, probably from paralysis of the larynx. A year before his death a fresh affliction was added to all the others; he thought it was catarrh, but it was probably cancer of the larynx; and it was accompanied by frequent spasms which threatened his life.

In short, for thirty-five years at least, Mr Robert

Hyslop was an invalid. His life was by necessity passed indoors, or at least on his farm. This life was necessarily without events calculated to attract a stranger's notice. There was consequently very little possibility that the medium could obtain information about him by normal means. But when an obscure man like Mr Robert Hyslop returns from the Beyond to establish his identity by relating a number of small facts, too slight and unimportant to have been observed outside his intimate circle, such a man furnishes us with a much stronger presumption in favour of a future life than a personage in public life could do. Even if the latter only reported incidents of his private life, it would be easier to suppose that the medium had been able to procure them. During nearly all his life, but principally during the last twenty years, the thoughts of Mr Robert Hyslop turned on a small number of subjects—his solicitude for his family; the administration of his farm, which gave him much care; the fulfilment of his religious duties, in which he never failed; and lastly, political events, which much interested him, because they naturally reacted upon his private affairs. Consequently the greater part of the facts I shall quote belonged to one or other of these four categories of his preoccupations.

But, to begin with, it will be useful to speak of a point which characterises an individual as clearly as his features do—I mean his speech. Each of us has his own language, his familiar expressions; each of us expresses himself in his own way under given circumstances. When Buffon said "the style is the man," he expressed an absolute truth. When somebody talks to us by telephone, without giving his name, we say, without a shade of hesitation, "It is So-and-so. I know him by his style." I repeat that everybody has this individuality of expression; it is, however, less marked in educated people. But men only slightly cultivated use stereotyped expressions, above all when they are growing old; the language of some of them is almost entirely composed of aphorisms and proverbs. If Mr Robert Hyslop did not altogether belong to this class, he yet, his son tells us, used particular expressions, and always the same in analogous cases; some of them indeed were altogether peculiar to him.

Now, when he communicates through Mrs Piper, he uses the same language that he used when alive. Professor Hyslop has incessantly occasion to remark, "This expression is quite like my father; he would have used it when he was alive in such a case." There is even a passage of the communications so characteristic in this way that it is nearly too much so; it would almost suggest fraud. I will reproduce one of these passages.[79] "Keep quiet, don't worry about anything, as I used to say. It does not pay. You are not the strongest man, you know, and health is important for you. Cheer up now and be quite yourself. Remember it does not pay, and life is too short there for you to spend it in worrying. What you cannot have, be content without, but do not worry, and not for me. Devoted you were to me always, and I have nothing to complain of except your uneasy temperament, and that I will certainly help."

When a father has repeated the same advice in the same terms hundreds of times in his life, and when, after his death, he repeats it again through an intermediary, it must certainly be difficult to say, "That is not he; it is not my father."

I should much like to give the reader the greatest possible number of these small facts, which convince us almost in spite of ourselves. But it is impossible to do so without surrounding them with commentaries indispensable to bring out all their importance. Thus, Mr Robert had a horse named Tom, an old and faithful servant. It had grown too old to work, but he would not kill it. He pensioned it, so to speak, and left it to die a natural death on the farm. At one sitting he asks, "Where is Tom?" and as James Hyslop did not understand what Tom he was speaking of, the communicator added, "Tom, the horse, what has become of him?"

Mr Robert Hyslop wrote with quill pens, which he trimmed himself; he had often trimmed them for his son James. He recalls this detail about the quill pens at one of the sittings.

He was very bald, and had complained of feeling his head cold during the night. His wife made him a black cap which he wore once. At one of the sittings he spoke of this cap. James Hyslop, who had been away from home a long time, had never heard of any black cap. But he wrote to his step-mother, who corroborated the statement.

At another sitting the communicator, Robert Hyslop, said that there were always two bottles on his desk, one round and one square. Professor Hyslop was ignorant of this detail, as of the preceding. His step-mother, when questioned, had difficulty in remembering this, but his brother recalled it at once; the round bottle held ink and the square one contained gum.

Another time Robert Hyslop asks, "Do you remember the penknife I cut my nails with?" "No, father, not very well." "The little penknife with the brown handle. I had it in my vest and then coat pocket. You certainly must remember it?" "Was this after you went west?" "Yes." Professor Hyslop was unaware of the existence of this penknife. He wrote separately to his step-mother, brother and sister, asking them if their father had possessed a brown-handled penknife with which he cut his nails, without telling them why he wanted this information. All three replied, "Yes, we have it still." But it appears that Mr Robert Hyslop did not keep the knife either in his coat or waistcoat pockets, but in his trousers pocket.

These little facts will suffice as examples. I will go on to more important ones.

Mr Robert Hyslop had a son who had caused him much anxiety all his life. He had often talked of these anxieties to his favourite son James, and had died carrying them with him into the grave. He speaks of them repeatedly during the sittings exactly as he did in life. "Don't you remember, James, that we often talked of your brother and the trouble he gave us? Don't worry about it any more, all will go well now, and if I know that you do not worry I shall be all right."

He remembers all the members of his family and names them correctly, except for two odd mistakes of which I shall speak later. He alludes to incidents in the lives, and traits in the characters of each of them. He sends them expressions of affection, "Have I forgotten anybody, James, my son? I should not like to forget anybody." He specially asks after his youngest child, Henrietta; he wants to know if she has succeeded in her examinations, and he expresses delight when he hears that, on the whole, life promises well for her.

Mr Robert Hyslop was an orthodox Calvinist; he belonged to the small, very strict sect of Associate Presbyterians and refused to join the United Presbyterian Church in 1858. He was extremely rigid in religious matters. When he caused his son James to be educated, he hoped the latter would become a minister, though he left him free choice. When he saw his son modify his religious beliefs he was very much pained. By degrees, however, he became resigned. It is easy to understand from all this that religious preoccupations were in the foreground in his mind. He often talked of religion to his family, he read the Bible and numerous commentaries on it, and sometimes, rather than allow his family to go to the church of a less orthodox sect, he himself preached to them at home. Consequently, if he had not alluded to his former religious life during the sittings, the omission might have caused a grave doubt of his identity. But this is not the case; he constantly alludes to his ancient religious ideas.

At one of the first sittings he says, for example, "Do you remember what my feeling was about this life? Well, I was not so far wrong after all. I felt sure that there would be some knowledge of this life but you were doubtful, remember you had your own ideas, which were only yours, James."

This last phrase, "You have your own ideas," Professor Hyslop remarks, had been often repeated to him by his father in his lifetime. "He meant that I was the only one of his children who was sceptical, and this was true." Robert Hyslop's former religious ideas were the cause of a strange incident. One day Dr Hodgson said to him, "Mr Hyslop, you ought to look for my father and make friends with him. He had religious ideas like yours. I think you would understand each other very well, and I should be pleased." At a following sitting the communicator said to Dr Hodgson, "I have met your father; we talked, and we liked each other very much, but he was not very orthodox when he was alive." Dr Hodgson's father was really a Wesleyan—that is to say, he belonged to a very liberal sect. But in another place Robert Hyslop adds, "Orthodoxy does not matter here; I should have changed my mind about many things if I had known." In another sitting he says to his son, alluding to the telepathic hypothesis, "Let that thought theory alone. I made theories all my life, and what good did it do me? It only filled my mind with doubts." In short, it appears that Robert Hyslop, the rigid Calvinist, has greatly modified his views since he has been disincarnated.

At the last visit Professor Hyslop paid to his father, in January or February 1895, a long conversation took place between them on religious and philosophical subjects. Professor Hyslop spoke of his psychical studies. The possibility of communication between the two worlds was discussed at length, and Swedenborg and his works were mentioned. During the sittings Robert Hyslop constantly returns to this conversation, which had made a profound impression on him; much more profound than would have been expected, considering his religious views. He recalls the points which were discussed by him and his son one after another, and adds, "You remember I promised to come back to you after I had left the body, and I have been trying to find an opportunity ever since." Now, no such promise had been made explicitly. But James Hyslop had written to his father on his deathbed, "Father, when all is over, you will try to come back to me." Robert Hyslop must from that moment have resolved to return if possible; and he must have believed he had told his son so, which was not the case.

When he was living in Ohio, Mr Robert Hyslop had a neighbour named Samuel Cooper. One day Cooper's dogs killed some sheep belonging to Robert Hyslop. An estrangement followed, which lasted several years. At one of the sittings in which Dr Hodgson represented Professor Hyslop, he asked a question which the latter had sent him in writing. Professor Hyslop hoped the question would turn his father's attention to the incidents of his life in Ohio. The question was, "Do you remember Samuel Cooper, and can you say anything about him?" The communicator replied, "James refers to the old friend I had in the West. I remember the visits we used to make to each other well, and the long talks we had concerning philosophical topics." At another sitting, when Dr Hodgson was again alone, he returned to the same idea. "I had a friend named Cooper who was of a philosophical turn of mind and for whom I had great respect, with whom I had some friendly discussion and correspondence. I had some of his letters ... you will find them." Another time, when Professor Hyslop was present, he said, "I am trying to remember Cooper's school." The next day he returns to the point, "You asked me, James, what I knew about Cooper. Did you think I was no longer friend of his? I had kept some of his letters; and I think they were with you." In all this there was not a trace of Samuel Cooper, and Professor Hyslop did not know what to think. He therefore put a direct question in order to bring his father back to the point he had in mind. "I wanted to know if you remembered anything about the dogs killing sheep?" "Oh, I should think I did ... but I had forgotten all about it. That was what we had the discussion about.... Yes, very well, James, but just what you asked me this for I could not quite make out as he was no relation of mine ... if I could have recalled what you were getting at I would have tried to tell you. He is here, but I see him seldom." This episode is interesting. All that Robert Hyslop said at first about Cooper has nothing to do with Samuel Cooper, but is entirely true of an old friend of his, Dr Joseph Cooper. Robert Hyslop had really had many philosophical discussions with him, and they had corresponded. Professor Hyslop had perhaps heard his name, but did not know that he was an old friend of his father. It was his step-mother who told him this, in the course of an inquiry he made amongst his relatives to clear up doubtful incidents in the sittings. We see that disincarnated beings are capable of misunderstanding as well as ourselves.

But the following is the most dramatic incident. Professor Hyslop, remembering that his father had thought his last illness catarrh, while he himself believed it to be cancer of the larynx, asked the communicator a question aimed at bringing up the word "catarrh." He asked, "Do you know what the trouble was when you passed out?" The double meaning of the word "trouble" caused a curious misunderstanding, which the telepathic hypothesis will find it difficult to explain.

The communicator replied in distress, "No, I did not realise that we had the least trouble, James, ever. I thought we were always most congenial to each other. I do not remember any trouble—tell me what it was about? You do not mean with me, do you?" "Father, you misunderstand me. I mean with the sickness." "Oh, yes, I hear—I know now. Yes, my stomach." "Yes, was there anything else the matter?" "Yes, stomach, liver and head—difficult to breathe. My heart, James, made me suffer. Don't you remember what a trouble I had to breathe? I think it was my heart which made me suffer the most—my heart and my lungs. Tightness of the chest—my heart failed me; but at last I went to sleep." A little further on he says, "Do you know, the last thing I recall is your speaking to me. And you were the last to do so. I remember seeing your face; but I was too weak to answer."

This dialogue at first disconcerted Professor Hyslop. He had tried to make his father tell the name of the malady from which the latter thought he suffered—catarrh. It was only when he read over the notes of the sitting, a little later, that he perceived all at once that his father had been describing the last hours of his life in the terms habitual to him. Professor Hyslop had been mistaken again. The doctor had noticed pain in the stomach at 7 a.m. The heart action began to decline at 9.30; this was shortly followed by terrible difficulty in breathing, and death followed. When his father's eyelids fell, James Hyslop said, "He is gone," and he was the last to speak. This last incident seems to indicate that consciousness in the dying lasts much longer than is believed.

Soon after Professor Hyslop asked his father if he remembered some special medicine he had sent him from New York. The communicator had much trouble in remembering the very strange name of this medicine, but ended by giving it, though incorrectly spelled.

During the first fifteen sittings Professor Hyslop had asked as few questions as possible, and when he was obliged to do so, he had so expressed them that they should not contain the answer. But at the 16th sitting he abandoned this reserve intentionally. He wished to see what the result would be if he took the same tone with the communicator as is taken with a friend in flesh and blood. Professor Hyslop says, "The result was that I talked with my disincarnated father with as much ease as if I were talking with him living, through the telephone. We understood each other at a hint, as in an ordinary conversation." They spoke of everything—of a fence which Robert Hyslop was thinking of repairing when he died; of the taxes he had left unpaid; of the cares two of his children had caused him, one of whom had never given him much satisfaction, while the other was an invalid; of the election of President M'Kinley and of many other things.

Can it be said that there were no inexact statements made by the communicator during all these sittings? There are some, but very few. I shall speak of them in the following chapter. In any case, there is no trace of a single intentional untruth in the whole sixteen sittings.

[78] Proc. of S.P.R., vol. xvi. In what follows here there is no attempt to give the actual words of Professor Hyslop's communicators. Trans.