WCP3425

[1]

1 St Mary’s Terrace¹

Feb 19. 1874

My dear M^r Wallace

Your books which have given Mama much pleasure will come back to you in a few days. I shall ask M^r Clanton² to send them off to you from the Fenchurch Street Station³. ^{No! on second thoughts I find they will go by post —} I wish I could write as quickly (though rather smaller!!) normally as I do now abnormally for I have a great deal to tell you since I wrote last.

I have been four times to M^rs Woodforde⁴ but with what appeared to be very little benefit for — much to her surprise — [2] after making a few passes she was made to stop & since that has scarcely been allowed even to lay her hand on one — at the third visit she was sent into a trance almost the whole time I was there. She was rather uncomfortable about it, being afraid I think that I should think she did not do her best. Meanwhile my writing was very slow, halting & contradictory; the only remarkable thing being that M^rs Rowan⁵ (who was a Dane by birth) tried to write Danish through Janie⁶. Some few words were intelligible to the Bowans chiefly those which were the same as German; but as neither Janie nor I understood a word of Danish it was not to be wondered at with my imperfect mediumship [3] that it was unintelligible.

The fourth time I went to the medium last Monday I told her there was always a struggle on the part of Uncle John⁷ to write & she suggested that it might be as well to get permission for him to do so. So she asked, & Janie gave permission & we got a little writing but slow and halting.

So far I was rather out of heart especially as on Monday evening I could not write at all[.] My hand dragged & dragged hopelessly & the same on Tuesday morning before breakfast but just at the end I wrote — Write soon you are very busy but you must try[.] [4] So as soon as I reached home at 3 o'clock I sat again & wrote eagerly but indistinctly "We want to weswerize [sic] you" — & this was repeated in five or six different ways till they had explained it & then the right word "mesmerize" came. I went into a little dark room & though I remained perfectly conscious my head nodded as when one drops off to sleep, & fell lower & lower till I supported it on my hand — after about ten minutes I roused but my head ached for an hour afterwards; since that, in the last two days I have been mesmerized in this way four [for] several times, & after each writing has been easier — Yesterday I wrote five large pages of perfectly coherent writing in less than twenty minutes — Since writing the above I have been again to M^rs Woodforde & was [5] mesmerized nearly the whole time, she not being allowed to have anything to do with it, till just the end when she made some passes which however did not avert the headache[.]

By the bye I am getting under discipline! When I sat down to write to you after coming home I was stopped & told I was tired & must not write. The whole thing is most marvellous to me & I quite understand why mediums are not eager in making converts or publishing their mediumship [6] the more advanced the thing becomes the more hopeless you feel it ever to convince anyone the things do happen.

Even in myself I have two people[;] one who knows the thing must be true, the other which argues that reason could make them out to be delusions —

I have come now to a state of quiescence waiting to see what will happen next[.] Janie tells me I am "a strong medium" & they ^are promising convincing tests in time though they cannot tell whether I may see & feel them. [7] M^rs Rowan, Janie & Uncle John all write with apparently equal ease — the latter tells me he longed to communicate with me nearly a year ago but though I sat a little it was not long enough — he says "I never believed I should live again but I soon found I was not dead. I could see you & Aunt Fanny⁸ (his wife) but not Janie for she is not a medium —"

I shall tire you out with all this but it has taken hold of my thoughts just now — It seems so strange to me that I should have this power[.] By & bye I shall be used to it & it will I suppose fall in naturally [8] with my life —

M^rs Woodforde is very pleasant kind & earnest — she is quite pleased that I have taken a start[.]

With best love to M^rs Wallace⁹ & the children.

Yours very sincerely | Arabella B Buckley [signature]

Friday Feb 20

PS. Not having sent my letter last night I open it this morning to tell you that before breakfast I begged off mesmerizing because of the headache & was set to write great dashes instead, my hand soon becoming too high to hold the pencil & moving most wildly till finally both hands & arms were kept in rapid motion[,] my chair rocking with the vibration, after a time I stopped, to be asked if I could bear more, & then it began again for some minutes — Things are moving very rapidly with me now. Decidedly D^r Carpenter¹⁰ would say I was a victim to hysteria [9] or mania. But though I should despair of explaining it to a sceptic I am so glad my own reason shows me that I am not excited mentally in the least & can reason upon it as if it were some one else while at the same time being the agent I am able to convince myself that there is no deception. Two or three time this morning in the the middle of the movement I considered in myself whether my personality was quite passive & felt sure that I was not [10] making any movement, any more than a person with the ague — I prefer this last kind of mesmerism for a fatigue of muscles is better than a heavy head.

I need not tell you they are most loving & gentle; very grateful for my extreme passivity, which I believe one can accord all the more easily, for bringing clear reason to hear upon it — I have complete trust in my sister & indeed for affection & care, equally [11] so in my old friend Uncle John, & they say they always work together (N.B. in his lifetime he ^had practised mesmerism)[.]

I have bought a diary & am looking up from my rough notes what has happened up till now & hope for the future to keep it regularly.

Goodbye[,] I am told to stop because writng of it excites me[.]

If I did not know you were prepared for all this I should be afraid you would think me crazy — I tell just little by [12] little to Mama¹¹ & my brother¹² but am afraid of alarming them

Yours truly | A B Buckley [signature]

Please keep this letter[;] there may be some points for use by & bye