WCP4345

[1]

Wald[r]on Edge, Duppas Hill,

Croydon

Feb[ruar]^y. 9th 1880

My dear D^r. Ingleby

I am sorry for your want of success,— but it is what almost every one was to go through. I do not believe you will get any thing satisfactory by charging about, or by simple seánces. If you arranged for 6 seánces with Haxby¹ or Mrs. Corner[?] that would be a fair trial. As to what happened (as stated) at Crooke's^{2, 3} I very much doubt it — thought suppose it had happened once — what then?, when he had scores of seances & often saw & felt the medium & the spirit [1 word illegible] [2] two separate beings, & photographed the latter showing her to be quite another being from the medium.

If you will look upon true materialization as a most difficult operation, only to be performed when conditions are most favourable, & that the state of body & mind of the medium, & in a less degree of all the sitters affect the result, you will see that such failures over & over again are to be expected. If the thing were easy why sh^d. it have remained till now to be proved? It has occurred, I believe, in all ages under favourable conditions; but the very cause of its having been always disbelieved in by so many [3] is, that it could not be produced at pleasure, & that the conditions were so complex & difficult to understand. Still I think it is too vast & portentous a fact not to be worth a good deal of trouble, & as to the expense, what would a dozen seánces be compared with many other expenses for far less worthy ends?

Yours very faithfully | Alfred R. Wallace [signature]