WCP4301

The Dell, Grays, Essex

July 9th. 1874

My dear Sir¹

I must apologise for not thanking you earlier for the copy of your book "Planchette"² wh[ich]. you were so good as to send me, and which I have read with great interest. It seems to me an excellent [resume] of the whole subject, and especially of the varied themes, teachings, &c. that have arisen out of it.

I also have to thank you for the papers you have sent me & the carte of yourself with the spirit faces. I enclose you in return one of myself. You will see that I do not depend on paid [2] photographers for evidence as to the validity of Spirit photography, & I think the evidence I have adduced on that head is as strong as any part of my paper. Writing in such a paper as the "Fortnightly Review" I endeavoured to adapt my facts & arguments to reach the educated & scientific public; & being also limited in space I could not deal with the evidence very fully. I am informed that Prof. Huxley³ still accounts for the whole, by deception [3] and delusion, acting through a "love of the marvellous". No facts or arguments can reach men such as him,— nothing but some startling facts occurring in his own family,— & they ^such are very unlikely.

I have just been reading, with interest but yet with disappointment, the American conclusion of "Edwin Drood."⁴ The impression on my mind is, that the story, plots, characters & scenes may all be Dicken’s,— but that the language and expression has been filtered through a channel which has [4] taken out of them all Dicken’s brilliancy, humour, & pathos, & left them utterly flat & commonplace. It will do us good to the cause of Spiritualism. I was disappointed because I consider the poems purporting to be "Poe", given through Lizzie Doten⁵ are actually superior to any that Poe himself wrote during his Earth life. It is to be hoped that Dickens (if it is Dickens) may improve. I suppose there is no doubt about the work being a mediumistic production, not an imposture.

I am a bad correspondent, so you must excuse my writing unless I have something definite to say. I have a scientific work in hand from which my miscellaneous correspondence takes too much of my time.⁶

Believe me | Yours very sincerely | Alfred R. Wallace [signature]