THE UNENDING QUEST

Autobiographical Sketches

By Sir Paul Dukes, K.B.E.

Cassell & Co. Ltd.

First published 1950

Printed in GREAT BRITAIN by

NORTHUMBERLAND PRESS LIMITED

GATESHEAD ON TYNE l.65o

We are such stuff as dreams are made on

The Tempest

Glorify God in your body

St. Paul

By what men fall, by that they rise

Kularncwa Tantra

I am always suspicious of writers who,

having found truth, attempt to convert others

before they have tried for years to live by

that truth themselves

Desmond MacCarthy
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The Author and Publishers wish to express their indebtedness to the following for permission to include
in this book quotations from copyright works:

Messrs. Jonathan Cape Ltd., The Royal Institute of Philosophy, Messrs. George Allen & Unwin Ltd., The
Times Publishing Co. Ltd., Messrs. William Heinemann Ltd., The British Broadcasting Corporation, and
Messrs. Phoenix House Ltd.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. FIRST LAP 9

2. 'LON. MAT.'-THE ROAD TO ST. PETERSBURG 17

3. INTO THE WORLD OF MUSIC 35

4. INTO THE SPIRIT WORLD 49

5. ANOTHER KIND OF SPIRITS 63

6. 'HOLY CHARLATANRY' 79

7. THE LORD'S PRAYER 99

8. NOAH'S ARK 114

9. YOGA 128

10. YOGA II 135

11. THOUGHT FOR FOOD 144

12. 'ACROBATITIS' 159

13. THE WHITE LADY OF THE STARS 171

14. EGYPT 191

15. AS'TRA NECESSITANT? 201

16. SEARCHING FOR METHUSELAHS 209

17. THE REAL GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN 234

CHAPTER ONE

First Lap

WHEN I WAS A CHILD among my greatest joys was to be allowed to accompany on his rounds one
Moses Turner, a local carrier who plied his trade with horse and van between the Somerset town of
Bridgwater and the outlying districts. Moses would stop at our door, and my mother—an angel long
before she was taken to grace heaven at an all too early age—would hoist me to his side dressed in a
blue smock and clutching a precious package of sandwiches. Moses would click his tongue and jerk the
reins, his hefty dray-horse tugged obediently, and off we jogged on pilgrimages that were to me an
adventurous escape from the restricted atmosphere of a somewhat strait-laced home. In my childish
fancy Moses Turner was associated with supernatural wisdom and incredible age. He was really neither
educated, nor very old, though his face was wrinkled and his pointed beard grey; but from the day when
at family prayers I heard my father read out solemnly that Moses died and was gathered to his fathers at
the ripe age of a hundred and twenty, 'his eye was not dim nor his natural force abated', I conceived the
fanciful notion that in some inexplicable way this might refer to Moses Turner, despite the fact that that
good soul was still alive and drove me about in his delivery van.

My parents supplied no solution to this problem, for my father, who was a minister of religion, was
dogmatic and inelastic in thought, and my mother, though infinitely kind, was of kindred puritanical
stock. No romancing was permitted in the field of religion. But my conception of Moses Turner was
reinforced by hearing him sometimes referred to as 'Old Moses'. He also possessed a lively eye which
was quite undimmed, and the way he handled packing-cases testified to his natural force being
unabated. From his pocket he would bring forth sticky sweets called 'dumps', which to me were manna
in the wilderness, and I was quite sure he was a magician who could, if he wished, make frogs appear in
the muddy river that ran through the town, or by striking the rock at Kings Cliff have brought forth
water—or ginger beer if he had chance forgotten the bottle or two he always had tucked away in his
wagon. He conjured up a crude fairy world by chanting nursery rhymes in a croaky voice. After long
silences—lazy, sunlit silences broken only by the soft clump-clump of dray-horse hoofs on the dusty
road and the chirrup of birds in the hedges—he would burst into 'Little Jack Horner', or 'Miss Muffit', or
'Hey-diddle-diddle', and point over a fence and say, 'See that there cow? That's the cow what jumped
over the moon, I saw 'er do it with me own eyes!’ Then he would tell me of the elves and pixies he had
seen for years and years in the copses and glens we drove by. Alas, when I insisted upon exploration
they were always hiding, but this did not diminish my belief. 'They's restin' after gambollin' under the
harebells,' said old Moses. I would look up at him, full of wonderment, and as he flicked his whip I
speculated as to whether he could yet be a hundred and nineteen years old, and whether when he
reached a hundred and twenty as recorded in the Scriptures he would suddenly fall off the driver's seat
and be 'gathered to his fathers', whatever that might mean. I built up round Moses Turner a mystical
aura which was a source of much comfort and strange speculations. But I kept them strictly to myself,
for the atmosphere in the family circle was not such as to foster confidences.

The circumstance that created a special bond between Moses Turner and me, a relationship that did not
exist with others whom he sometimes took in his wagon, was love of music, for Moses Turner croaked
bass in the choir of my father's church, while I was the only one of a family of five who exhibited musical
talent. This singularity had the effect of intensifying my natural shyness and reserve, for when I was sent
to the preparatory form of the town grammar school I felt myself regarded as a 'sissy' for being a star
pupil of one of the female lights of the local musical world. But I received some encouragement from my
mother's brother-in-law who was organist at my father's church; to listen to his playing was the one
relieving feature of the Sabbath services. Sometimes I was allowed to sit by his side, and after service to
finger the keys and explore the stops. On such occasions I was sure to find Moses Turner standing by,
listening. And afterwards he would say: 'I heerd ye. I watched ye pull them stops in an' out. An' d'ye
know what I see1d when I look up? I see'd a little cherub peepin' out from be'ind them big pipes. And
when 'e see'd me lookin' at 'im, d'ye know what 'e sez? 'E points at you an' 'e sez, "'E'll be a orginist one
day, 'e will."'

Ah, Moses, Moses, what music your words were to me! I believed them quite literally, and even climbed
inside the organ when no one was looking to see if I could find the cherub and ask him to tell me with
his own chubby lips that I should one day be an organist.

When, as the consequence of a little mischief, a parental veto was imposed upon my sitting by my uncle
at service, Moses Turner was the only person from whom I received any sympathy. What happened was
my own fault. I used to fill up the dreary minutes of the sermon fancying heroic marches played with all
the stops out, or the vox humana reducing the very angels of heaven to tears. One day, seeing my uncle
had left several stops open when he slid off the seat to take a nap during the sermon, I simply could not
resist the temptation to press two or three keys down surreptitiously just to imagine what sound they
would make if the air were blown. I had no idea the bellows were still full! The result was a shrill
whine—and bread and water in solitary confinement for me for the rest of the day. And no more sitting
at the organ. My parents were not unkind—quite the contrary—but they had immutable notions of
Sabbath observance and church behaviour. Only Moses Turner bewailed the change, and poured out
words of comfort. 'I see'd the little cherub peepin' out and lookin' for ye on the orgin seat, an' I see'd 'im
cryin' cos ye wasn't there.'

Thinking of Moses Turner always in terms of the biblical Moses, I liked to imagine that he hadn't just
grown up like other people, but had always been, always existed, from the beginning of time. One day I
put the direct question: 'Mr. Turner, are you very old? He looked down at me and smiled a smile of
tenderness such as could only have been distilled through aeons of time, and spake somewhat as
follows: 'Old, my son? Well, I be and I bain't. There be zum as is old when they's young, and there be
zum as is young when they's old.'

The full depth of this cryptic observation was lost upon me then, but it left its mark none the less, and I
have always regretted that Moses Turner somewhat diminished the effect by proceeding to statistics:
'Me? I'z seventy come Zeptember, an' the Lord's bin good to me except for the rhumatiz.'

How, Moses Turner a mere seventy? I shriveled with disappointment. And though my, arithmetical
abilities were limited I calculated with dismay that Moses Turner would have to go on driving his horse
and wagon and delivering packages and parcels for another fifty years before he would fall off the
driver's seat and be gathered to his fathers.

Yet Moses Turner, I reflected with awe, thinking really of his biblical counterpart as we pored over the
Old Testament in Sunday School, was a mere chicken by comparison with his associates. Abraham and
Isaac, who were some kind of distant relatives or ancestors of his, had lived, so it was written, to be a
hundred and seventy-five and a hundred and eighty. But I had less respect for them than for Moses
because it was not recorded of them that their eye was undimmed or their natural force unabated. On
the other hand, the combined ages of Adam, Seth, Enos, Cainan, Mahalaleel, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah,
Lamech, and Noah totaled the stupendous figure of eight thousand five hundred and seventy-five years,
which made a batting average of eight hundred and fifty-seven years each per innings, with Methuselah
scoring top with eight hundred and ninety-five and Enoch at the bottom with a paltry three hundred and
sixty. (I worked out this calculation when I went to the Grammar School.) Moreover, all these
phenomenal old fellows begat sons and daughters when they were hundreds of years old. This took my
breath away. I did not need to be precociously initiated into the facts of life to appreciate that their eye
could not have been dim or their natural force abated if they could do a thing like that. Compared with
such prowess Moses Turner was not even in the running. A sound instinct taught me, however, to take
the book of Genesis with appropriate saline seasoning, and my suspicion of the validity of these ages
was confirmed when I discovered one day that in the twelfth chapter of Exodus God found it necessary
to do some reforming of the calendar. So from Adam to Noah they were all disqualified. Moses
continued to make an excellent showing with his score of a hundred and twenty, and old Moses Turner,
as his reincarnation, remained my hero in the flesh, his eye undimmed and his natural force unabated.

Inspired by Moses Turner I regarded the psalmist who launched the phrase about three score years and
ten being all a man has any right to as an ignorant mischief-maker. If he had known of Moses he
wouldn't have talked that nonsense, or the no less stupid nonsense about an extra decade being
inevitably loaded with sorrow. I could understand a fellow like Job, covered with boils, saying he didn't
like living, but The Preacher in Ecclesiastes definitely annoyed me with his assertion that the only really
lucky people were those who had never been born. If he had ever had the good fortune to go for drives
with Moses Turner he would have thought differently. Perhaps The Preacher lived at a time of business
slump when carriers were out of work and there were no parcels to deliver. But my faith in biblical
philosophy, if shaken by these pessimisms, soared again at Jesus' declaration that he had come into the
world so that people should have life and have it more and more abundantly. Perhaps Moses Turner
would come in for a share of this happy dispensation, Jesus would cure his 'rhumatiz' and he might even
live to a hundred and fifty!

When I was nine my mother died and my father moved to the north of England. But I continued to think
of Moses Turner growing older and older, scrutinizing his delivery lists with eye still undimmed and
hoisting packing-cases with his natural forces still unabated. Alas, the spell was rudely broken when,
visiting my birthplace a few years later, I found old Moses had already been gathered to his fathers, very
prematurely from my point of view, long before he was a hundred and twenty years old! But I clung to
my earlier picture of him, whimsical though it was. In my memory he remained 'a-hundred-and-twenty-
years-old Moses', a legendary figure who had stimulated my inborn liking for the unusual and fanciful,
an inner secret channel of escape from the stifling air of narrow-minded surroundings. He kindled in me
a fondness for old folk and curiosity as to how long people should or can live, which in its turn, many
years later, as described in this book, led to a search for people authentically over a hundred years old.

When I was sent to a small public school my musical ability ceased to be a singularity and became a
distinction. I was happier. Yet many circumstances both of home and school conspired to reinforce the
tendency to reserve, not to say secretiveness. Among these were the unwelcome attentions of a master
whom I dared not antagonize by open repulsion and whose fondling I suffered for a long time in
agonized frigidity until he at last gave up and transferred his attentions to another. He was a highly
cultivated man whose friendship I otherwise valued, which only made the position more difficult. There
was nobody in whom I could confide about this problem or any other. My father, who should have
suspected that the gifts and letters the master showered on me during holidays could not be devoid of
ulterior motive, was quite blind to such matters and only aggravated the situation by inviting my pursuer
to visit us and reproaching me for my churlish reception of him. Such episodes are not uncommon in
boys' lives, of course, and I mention it only because, in the circumstances, it loomed larger in my
experience and terrified me more than it would have done had I been able to mention it to somebody.
But it taught me a valuable lesson all the same—the efficacy of the defense mechanism I evolved. I
discovered that despite my timidity I could often achieve my aims by patience, dissimulation, and
pretence—qualities which at a less sordid level often become known as tact, diplomacy, and resource—
and these served me well in later years, even after I had acquired a bit more pluck, though I am bound
to confess that during boyhood I made use of them in their baser form for purposes less justifiable than
deceiving an importunate master!

Taken all in all, these experiences inclined me at an early stage towards the mystical, and created the
need to evolve a philosophy of my own, independent of upbringing. Soon after I left school the feeling
gripped me that I must break away—anywhere—in any direction. Yet the merest hint of a desire to go
abroad to complete my studies encountered a parental veto of totalitarian severity. My father had no
money with which to help me and didn't believe me competent to go on my own account. There was
nothing left but to run away. But I resolved to do it quietly, without a scene, for despite my father's
autocratic disposition I was fond of him and respected him. Unwittingly, he himself very soon provided
me with my opportunity. Even Victorian and Edwardian divines were in the last analysis human, and my
father, being made willy-nilly in God's image like the rest of us, had promptings at about sixty which
caused him once again to covet a wife. He remarried at short notice, and swept his spouse off to France
for a honeymoon. I was not going to let slip the golden chance. Before he was back I too would be off to
the Continent—but in a different direction—as quickly and secretly as possible—on any pretext.

Where should I go? And what should I do when I got there? All this was nebulous, but I was resolved to
study music and anything else I wanted, and to do it in my own way. In daring moments I dreamt of
Russia as the seat of my studies—Saint Petersburg Moscow—whence emanated the alluring strains of
the music of a new age. And not only music, for in those days, in the decades at the turn of the century,
Russia was giving to the world in the sphere of art and philosophy that galaxy of geniuses who were
quickly coming, until stifled by the revolution, to lead the philosophic and artistic thought of the world.
But my first and vital step was just—escape. Plans would come later. Escape—that was all that was in
my mind when, surreptitiously and alone, I boarded a train at Liverpool Street station, armed with a
steerage ticket to Rotterdam, a trivial sum in cash, a small handbag containing my worldly belongings,
and a shy but dogged disposition. Despite schooling, my conception of the Continent was such that I
thought they spoke German in Holland, so I had spent an ill-spared sixpence in Charing Cross Road on
one of those little volumes which guarantee mastery of German, or any other language under the sun, in
a week. I passed the night, which was warm and beautiful, on a deserted deck, leaning over the stern of
the vessel, not because I was sick, for the sea was calm, but because the muffled roar of the propellers,
the churning of the waters, the scintillating phosphorescence of the retreating wake, trembling on the
deep unchanging note of a moonless, starlit sky—all this to me was a new symphony, a new fairy tale
well worthy to be shared with Moses Turner if only that good soul had not been gathered to his fathers.

I was not without a vague plan for the immediate morrow, based on some notice or other I had seen in a
scholastic paper saying there was an English school at Rotterdam that was doing well and might need an
assistant. It was necessary to earn a living—this seemed as good a way as any. I had written a letter to
the address indicated but received no reply. What would happen if the newspaper notice turned out to
be a dud, like the brazen sixpenny booklet that I threw away within a few minutes after arrival? On one
thing I was resolved—my little fund of cash should never be spent on a return ticket.

It took me all next day to find the address, though that was largely due to the allure of the colourful
quays of Rotterdam swarming with barges, quaint costumes of sailors and market-women, the vivid life
of the continental city on a warm September day. But towards evening I found it. The nameplate
announced: 'English School: Director, Mr. W. E. Birkett.' A private house with a narrow flight of steps
leading up to the front door. A pleasant outlook on a gardened avenue with a canal running down it.

Before bearding the lion in his den I stepped into a nearby café to tidy myself. My appearance was
decent, my hair neatly parted, my cheap, ready-made suit still looked new. I put on, spotlessly clean, a
high stiff linen collar specially bought for this fateful moment. The collar was a desperate attempt to add
a year or two to hopelessly boyish looks. Then I returned to the house, mounted the steps, took a deep
breath, and rang the bell. The door opened. I was shown into a bright little office with a characteristic
continental smell. And in a few minutes Mr. Birkett in person, a dapper, very intelligent, business-like
gentleman in his mid-twenties, was sitting opposite me, saying quietly but decisively 'I regret. There
must be a misunderstanding. Thank you for inquiring. I do not need an assistant.'

But Mr. Birkett changed his mind. To this day I am convinced it was largely out of kindness of heart, for I
had little enough to recommend me. The high stiff collar was quite ineffective!

'You're so young. You've had no experience. How can you teach grown-ups? What exams have you
passed?'

'London matric. Honours.'

'Hmm.'
Mr. Birkett scratched his chin. Had this .. I scarcely dared hope.

'Main subjects?’

'Literature, history, French, maths, physics.'

'Hmm. . . . But you've no references. . . . You say your father is a parson?

'Yes.'

‘Hm’

Mr. Birkett pondered. Mr. Birkett proved to be something more than a mere business man. The upshot
of his cogitations was:

‘I don't like to send you back. I'll give you a trial for a month in some small towns near the frontier of
Germany.'

‘Both sides of the frontier?’

'Yes. Why?'

'I want to learn German.'

'You'll have a chance.'

Though diffident and self-conscious I think there must have been something in my manner to suggest to
him that I would at least do my best.

I started next day. The adventure was a little more realistic than outings with Moses Turner. It was even
more romantic. And as the train sped eastwards I said to myself: 'First lap.'

My headquarters for the time being were in the town of Enschede, which the Dutch like to call 'Little
Manchester'. It was on the borders of Holland and Germany, and my work was in places on both sides of
the frontier which I used to cross several times a week on my bicycle. I picked up both Dutch and
German.

Pupils were many and varied. I used to teach mainly by the direct method, that is, pointing out objects
and naming them. It led at times to misunderstandings. I recall two sedate ladies to whom I had given a
lesson in articles of clothing. One of them, looking for her gloves, said on leaving: 'Where are my
trousers? ' I dared not shock her by correction, so I said limply: 'Are you sure you haven't got them on?'
To which she replied: 'No, I took them off and put them by the radiator because they were wet.'

After some months, when things began to prosper, Birkett sent a Frenchman and an Italian to join me.
The Frenchman, whose name was Caillarec, turned out to be a deserter from military service. He
ordered clothes and decamped without paying the tailor. The Italian, Corsini, was a good fellow but
riotous. Though much younger, I was their senior, having come first and been put in charge. With both
there were disputes, which in Caillarec's case once came to fisticuffs. I little dreamt it then, but it was
good practice for experiences further east which were to come later.

Eventually I told Birkett I wanted to go on to Germany, and, though he was reluctant to part with me,
when he saw my determination he not only put no obstacles in my path but helped in every way. He
recommended me to a certain Dr. Kummer who had Sprachinstituten at Cologne and Dusseldorf and
who wanted to open a school also in Poland. This suited me down to the ground. It would be a jump in
the right direction—towards Russia, my secret goal. Altogether Will Birkett behaved like a prince. Out of
that early association there grew a high mutual regard and a lifelong friendship.

So the train once again bore me eastwards, and as it crossed the German frontier, this time without
return, I said to myself: 'Second lap.'

CHAPTER TWO

Lon. Mat.'—The Road to St. Petersburg

TIME: Summer of 1909.

Place: Riga, capital of Latvia, then still a province of Imperial Russia.

Scene: A bright airy office in a modern building in the Theatre Boulevard. Windows look pleasantly out
over the city gardens with a glimpse of the Opera House. The furniture is new: a large desk with
telephone, leather armchairs, a leather divan against the wall beneath a map of Europe.

A young man, neatly dressed, sits at the desk. Opposite him in one of the armchairs, with his back to the
front entrance, sits a visitor—a thirty-year-old business man—commercial traveler, to judge by his looks.
They converse in German, the city's business language.

VISITOR: I have come, having seen this advertisement in the paper. (Reads) 'Newly opened. Riga
Institute of Languages. Instruction in modern languages by experienced native teachers. Classes or
private lessons.'

YOUNG MAN: Yes, mein Herr. In what language do you wish instruction?

VISITOR: In English. (Uncertainly, consulting the advertisement again) Have I the honour of addressing
the Director, Dr. E. Kummer, Ph.D.?

YOUNG MAN: No, I am the deputy director.

VISITOR (reading again): Herr Paul Dukes, Lon Mat

YOUNG MAN: At your service.

VISITOR: You give the instruction in English?

YOUNG MAN: Yes.

VISITOR: Pardon my ignorance, 'Lon Mat' stands for?

YOUNG MAN: Matriculate of London University.

VISITOR (impressed): Of course I should have known. You speak good German.

YOUNG MAN: I have been in Germany. You wish to take your lessons privately or in a class with others?

VISITOR: I should prefer private lessons

YOUNG MAN: (handing him a prospectus): Here are the terms.

(While the visitor reads the prospectus two men enter the door behind him. One is an Italian, about
twenty-five years of age, with a short clipped moustache, and wearing a soft slouch hat. The other is a
Spaniard, a dapper little fellow with a sallow complexion. The Italian stands for a moment at the door
and pulls a grimace at the Young Man, putting his fingers to his nose. The Spaniard suppresses a guffaw.)

YOUNG MAN (to the newcomers): Signor Ferrari, your pupil is waiting in your classroom. Señor Lopez,
yours has not yet arrived.

(Sniggering, the two men pass into an inner room, removing their hats.)

YOUNG MAN (continuing to the visitor): Pardon me.

VISITOR: Don't mention it. I will take a course of twenty-five lessons.

YOUNG MAN: Here is a form of agreement. You will observe that payment is in advance. When would
you like to start?

VISITOR: To-morrow, if possible.

YOUNG MAN: At this hour, if it suits you.

VISITOR: Perfectly.

YOUNG MAN: I shall await you. Good morning.

With variations, this little scene was enacted fairly frequently—yet not nearly often enough (so far as
the business part of it was concerned) to make the flamboyantly advertised Institute pay. Pupils had not
queued up in crowds to cram the classrooms, they were not toppling over each other in their zeal to
learn languages as had been anticipated. For, let it be admitted, the enterprising Dr. Kummer, promoter
of the Institute—of whom more presently—had made a grave mistake: he opened it at the beginning of
the summer season when he should have waited until the autumn. Warm weather set in. The gardens in
front of the pretentious premises were bathed in sunshine. The thoughts of the populace of the
charming old city of Riga were on other things than study. The wealthy business and professional,
classes were migrating for the summer to villas and bungalows by the sea, nine miles distant. So I, alas,
dispirited director-incumbent, had all too many hours in which to sit on the balcony and ponder on how
I got there.

'Lon. Mat.!' I snorted to myself. Why did the egregious Dr. Kummer insist on this ridiculous qualification
being put after my name? I knew very well why. For show. Because in the eyes of Dr. Kummer any
distinction, even the humblest, was better than none. Yet I must admit, absurd though it sounds, that I
owed a great deal to 'Lon. Mat.' It carried me right across Europe in the direction of my secret goal—
'secret' because if I told my employers I intended to leave them at the first chance to move on to St.
Petersburg they naturally wouldn't give me a job!

Strange chap—Kummer. His very name was peculiar. 'Kummer' —German for grief, worry, trouble.
'Doctor Trouble! 'A bearded, mouse-eyed German with a philosophical degree—and the name of
'Trouble'. There was something fishy about him. Like me, he wanted for some reason to make out he
was older than he really was. Probably that was why he cultivated that beard—counterpart of my high
stiff collar. And a curious line of business for him to launch into—schools of languages—for he could
scarcely speak a word of anything but German! Restless too. Erratic. Suddenly took it into his head that
Lodz and Warsaw offered a more profitable field of exploitation than Cologne and Dusseldorf, so packed
up quickly and moved to Poland. However, I should kummer! —he was very useful to me—'Lon. Mat.'
sufficed for him to invite me to join him—right in the direction of my goal! And what should he decide
when I had been with him but a few months, but that he wanted to move on still further to Riga,
another stage along my very path—perhaps the penultimate stage, for I had visions of saving enough
money to move on to St. Petersburg and enter the Conservatoire in the autumn.

I was a bit nervous when he announced that he wanted to put me in full charge of the new Institute at
Riga. I was still more nervous when he, said he was going to send with me a rascally pair of teachers, the
Italian Ferrari and the Spaniard Lopez. They would be furious at being put under a youngster like me.
'Why do you need them there at the start?' I protested. 'Let me advertise the School before they come.'

Kummer's eyes narrowed. He didn't like being argued with. 'It will look good to have them. I want to
start with a flourish.'

It seemed silly to me, but I supposed he knew what he was doing. And as for who was to be boss,
though he didn't say so I knew there was a good reason for putting me in charge rather than the Italian
or Spaniard—they would have played hell with the till.

About the venture as a whole Kummer was enthusiastic 'Riga is the big thing I've been waiting for,' he
said after a visit to make preliminary arrangements. 'That's the place to make money. A big commercial
port where you hear every language. Cosmopolitan. The very city's tri-lingual—Russian the official,
German the business, and Latvian the local tongue. Everyone will want to learn commercial languages
English, German, Spanish, as well as French and Russian. I'll leave you to find German, Russian, and
Swedish teachers on the spot. For French I've engaged a distinguished Frenchman who will arrive soon
from Paris. I'll come myself as on as I can. You get the place known during the summer and we’ll make
our fortunes in the winter.'
He added characteristically: 'Remember I want plenty of show—plenty of publicity—" high class" as you
English say. That's the way to catch big fish.' But as an afterthought: 'Ferrari and Lopez —they're a crafty
pair. Look out. Don't let them lord it over you because you're younger.'

That's how I got there—at twenty years of age acting director of a swanky Institute that could only pay
its way if subsidized by Doctor Trouble.

Lopez and Ferrari were the bane of my existence. Good teachers, getting on well with the few pupils
they had, but—crafty? 'Crafty' wasn't the word! And how they hated me, the English ' babe'. Their
lessons finished, they would show their pupils to the door with exaggerated courtesy, then look for me. I
knew what was coming, it happened every day. Ferrari would light a cigarette, swagger out to the
balcony, blow a cloud of smoke into my face, snap his fingers under my nose, and say in the execrable
linguistic jumble in which we conversed: 'Time for suckling babe to have its mother's milk, isn't it? '—or
something equally amiable.

There was nothing I could reply. I dare not quarrel or threaten to report them, they had as little respect
for Kummer as for me. It was they who did the threatening: they said they would desert the Institute on
the first pretext and take the pupils with them. Hence their courtesy to the pupils—they were preparing
the ground.

'Don't forget, 0 lordly Englishman,' the Spaniard would say (I adjust the linguistic jumble), 'that to-
morrow is Saturday and if I don't get my pay on the dot -' He would make a gesture to indicate that I
should see the last of him. 'Me too,' Ferrari would add, 'I've already told two of my pupils I will teach
them privately for ten per cent less.'

To talk of violation of contract if they did any such thing would only provoke a shout of laughter. 'Miss
one single week to pay our salary,' they gloat, 'and it's you who will have violated the contract! ' 'Then—
good-bye! ' says the Spaniard. 'The learned "Lon. Mat." will be left all alone,' says the Italian, 'unless he
gets a nurse to come and hold his hand.' 'And give him his bottle,' says the Spaniard. 'And put him to
bed,' says the Italian. 'You mean go to bed with him,' says the Spaniard, 'to teach him . . .' And reveling
in coarse ribaldry they would saunter out arm-in-arm.

They tired of this after a while, surprised to find their salaries paid with scrupulous regularity. They
thought Kummer must be sending me funds. But that was not how the doors remained open. In
response to my urgent appeals Kummer replied with promises that did not mature, coupled with frantic
requests to hold out, so I forewent my own salary to pay the others. It was not easy. Business hours
were ten to ten. Besides teaching English. I had to be my own secretary, even my own cleaner at first,
dusting and sweeping the rooms in the early morning to save the expense of a charwoman.

Things eased slightly after a time. A little gentle diversion was introduced into my existence by discreet
attentions to a pretty girl who managed an attractive coffee pavilion in the gardens opposite my
balcony. I took her to the sea on Sundays, the one day I could count on escaping from Lopez and Ferrari.
It was a pleasant trip by boat, and very cheap. We strolled along the hot sands, looking out over the
glistening waters, and ate our sandwiches under the pines, while I told her about Moses Turner and
water sprites. She was soon bored. She was probably much more interested in mermen than mermaids!
Besides, my scale of entertainment was necessarily modest, which didn't help, and to make matters
worse, besides being poor and romantic, I was also shy—a very inadequate combination of qualities in
the circumstances. After a few weeks she transferred her attentions to one who perhaps gave her more
lavish entertainment—plus the etceteras.

There were other feminine interludes of a more comic order. One of my pupils, a bulky woman of about
thirty, after unsuccessful advances during lessons finally lay down on my office floor one evening at ten
p.m. to faint. I brought her water which I handed at arm's length, then sat down on the divan to wait.
Eventually, after demanding water three times, she suddenly got up, spat one word at me—'Fathead!'—
and strode out in fury never to return.

My growing resentment at Kummer's apparent neglect of the Institute was whipped into youthful ire
when one morning there walked into my office without notice a gaunt figure in a shabby black cape with
soft hat to match, carrying an old travelling bag.

'Monsieur Dukes?' he asked in a tone that suggested that I was in his eyes a menial with whom it was
scarcely in keeping with his, dignity to deal.

'Oui, monsieur. Avec qui ai'je l'honneur

He fished in his pocket and produced a crumpled letter. I motioned him to a chair. He sat down without
removing his hat.

The letter was from Kummer. 'Dear Herr Dukes, this is Monsieur de Lazarec, the French professor—a
distinguished man. Hope all goes well. In haste. Greetings. E. Kummer.'

Good God, I wanted money, not more teachers! None enclosed? Not a copeck! Teachers galore, but
nothing to pay them with I eyed my supercilious visitor dubiously. A man over fifty, down-at-heel, thin,
greying hair, sallow, drawn face, and patronizing manner looking as if he had Just stepped out of an old
print of Montmartre in the nineties.

'Enchanté, monsieur,' I said gloomily as I picked up the soiled card which he placed on my desk with a
grandiloquent gesture:

'Andre" de something de Làzarec.' I have forgotten the middle part of the name, but I soon learned that
I was expected to bear in mind that he belonged to the ancient French aristocracy.

'Enchanté, monsieur,' I said again, weakly, 'but did Herr Kummer not entrust you with anything else to
be remitted to me?'

Monsieur de Lazarec raised his brows in surprise. 'Nothing, monsieur,' he said with an air of offence at
the suggestion that he should be regarded as a messenger boy. 'You will be so kind, monsieur,' he
proceeded with the same condescension, while he drew off gloves that had once been white, 'as to
accommodate me with an advance of salary.'
'I regret, monsieur, but I have no funds nor authority to pay an advance of salary. Didn't you ask Herr
Kummer?'

'Certainly. He said I might count on you.'

This was the point at which suspicions about Kummer began to take definite shape in my mind. De
Lazarec, I found, was really penniless. Something had to be done about it. It ended by my lending him
ten roubles, the equivalent of about a pound. He thought it was an advance and received it disdainfully
and with bare acknowledgment. He also seemed to expect lodgings to be found for him, indeed to be
looked after generally. This was a bit too much. But Lopez and Ferrari entering during the interview I
introduced him and wished him on to them, and they all went out together. Five minutes later the
Spanish-Italian alliance came dashing back in fury. 'You driveling little whipper-snapper,' they snarled,
'you've given him an advance of ten roubles. Dish us out a tenner each too—presto! 'They were still
more furious when I refused, saying it was personal. But de Lazarec said next day, without affectation: 'I
didn't know it was a personal loan. That was chic of you. Thank you.'

It was the beginning of a strange friendship. De Lazarec was a marked contrast to the others. Down and
out now, he was at least a gentleman, and though his haughty mannerisms were ridiculous the
fragrance of erstwhile culture still hung about him. For a time I had difficulties with him no less great
than with the Spaniard and Italian, though of a different nature. For I soon discovered de Lazarec's
weakness: when he tasted vodka for the first time he applied himself to that potent liquor with all the
passion of an old roué for an undreamt-of amour. There were not many pupils for him, so barely enough
to pay to keep him in food and lodging, yet he would often turn up the worse for drink, with tie askew,
clothes unbuttoned, unshaven and disheveled. His patronizing tone soon descended to cringing
entreaties for further loans of one rouble—even a few coppers. I was driven to tell him I would not
admit him to the premises unless he came washed and sober. One day I did literally refuse to let him in
until he had gone away and made himself presentable. Lopez and Ferrari found his weakness a source of
endless diversion, and I strongly suspected them of aiding and abetting him, especially of getting him
the worse for wear just before a lesson.

At last a shameful incident occurred—a lady pupil walked out from her lesson in disgust. Now really
furious I strode into the classroom and said: 'C'est fini, Monsieur de Lazarec, vous ne viendrez plus, vous
êtes congédié.'

He made a ludicrous attempt to draw himself up with dignity. 'Pardon, monsieur,' he began, 'je suis un
de Lazarec. On ne congédie pas un de Lazarec.'

I pushed him unceremoniously towards the door. 'I shall report you to your Consul—you can get him to
repatriate you.' I hustled him as far as my office. Thank heaven, the Spaniard and Italian were not on the
premises, so I was alone with him. As we neared the front entrance he suddenly realized that I was
serious and that he was in my power. He slipped from my grasp and stood with his back to the wall.
Sudden terror shone in his sodden eyes.
'Non, non!' he gasped, 'don't throw me out—I implore you! For the love of God, don't throw me out! It
won't occur again, I swear!' And all at once he crumpled up, sinking on his knees, seizing my hands in
supplication. 'Don't dismiss me! I am old—have pity—for the love of God!'

What a situation—the old wreck of a French aristocrat pleading on his knees for mercy from the English
'babe', almost young enough to be his grandson!

What was I to do? I melted. I melted partly perhaps because I would have been reluctant not to give
anyone a last chance, whoever he had been. But in his case also for another reason. In the few weeks
since his arrival I had developed an affection for this wretched naufragé, who still exuded an aroma of
former culture, an echo of long-lost learning. De Lazarec was an educated man, a cultivated man. The
vulgarities of the Spaniard and Italian revolted him. But for his incurable failing he would have scorned
their company. Once upon a time his world had been that of letters, the arts. He adored music. Though
he could no longer play—his gnarled fingers' stumbled over the keys of my hired piano while he held the
pedal down to conceal the defects of his performance—yet he knew how to impart new vistas of
interpretation to me, well over thirty years his junior. When Lopez and Ferrari had left the building for
the day he would sit around waiting till I was free. We would play the piano together, and spent happy
hours at a second-hand music shop, picking out things familiar to him but that I had never yet heard of.
He had also studied esoteric mysticism, believed firmly in the supernatural, had his own explanation of
spirits, hobgoblins, ghosts, and what-not; and could discourse engagingly in polished language about the
great religions of the East. He was a theosophist, and would enlarge for hours on subjects such as
reincarnation, the astral aura, and non-material bodies. I drank in his words avidly. They opened up
endless horizons for which my inquisitive soul was searching. I was too young to question the doctrines
to which he introduced me, too unsophisticated to inquire their practical value. I did not ask whither
they led. I demanded one thing only— emancipation from the stifling English respectability in which I
had been brought up. But not emancipation into a vacuum. I sought a wider, saner, more beautiful and
more generous belief than that of conventional religion. Nearly two years of teaching in continental
cities had done much to weaken the bars of my prison; but de Lazarec was my first intimate, he helped
to break down the door.

Even while he now groveled abjectly at my feet I recalled how, one day, with a gesture of impressive
solemnity, he had presented me with a well-thumbed copy of Edouard Schur's Les Grands Initiés which
he found in a second-hand book store. The fact that he must have paid a rouble for it touched me
almost as deeply as the gift itself. This book, as the reader may know, is a comparative study of the great
religious teachers from Moses to Mahornet from an esoteric standpoint. 'I present it to you, my young
friend,' he had said, forestalling my offer to pay for it. 'Let it be your guide and counselor.'

'That is what you are, maître,' I had replied sincerely. He was flattered and delighted when I called him
'maître'.

Yet this was the man who now cringed before me, craving mercy, gripping my hands in despair, his
outburst trailing off in a fit of sobbing.

‘Have pity on me, for God's sake! It will not occur again, I swear!
I lifted him gently and led him to a chair. On my desk lay the copy of Les Grands Initié's. I pushed it in
front of him.

'Eh, bien, mon vieux. Jurez.'

With a slavish look of gratitude he placed his hand on the book and whispered: 'Je jure—je jure—je jure!'
And had I not caught him in time he would have thrown himself again at my feet with further
protestations.

He did mend his ways greatly for a time. But one Monday he failed to turn up. Three or four days
passed. I began to feel anxious. Not only on personal grounds, but also because I needed desperately
even the small sums his lessons brought in; the over-pretentious Institute was floundering in a financial
morass, and, as I shall shortly relate, the amiable Lopez and Ferrari had discovered an unusual means to
administer the coup de grace. So I decided to go in search of de Lazarec. He had given me an address but
never invited me to visit him. I always supposed Ferrari and Lopez had helped him find lodgings. To my
inquiries whether he was' bien logé" he would answer vaguely, 'pas mal ', and change the subject.

On the following Sunday. I set out to look for him. The address he had given proved to be on the
outskirts of the town, and though part of the journey could be made by tram I thought with dismay of
the number of times he must have trekked it on foot without a copeck in his pocket. But I found it at
last, in a cobbled street with uneven pavements, a shabby, mean wooden house with a short flight of
rickety steps up to the door.

A woman answered my knock, stared at me angrily when I asked for Lazarec the Frenchman, pointed at
a house opposite, and slammed the door in my face. I crossed the road to an even meaner dwelling.
Again a woman answered my knock but stared blankly at my question. Then, as if with dawning
comprehension, she pointed at the basement below and shut the door.

I descended into a cellar area beneath the steps. Pushing the door open I found myself in an
indescribably dirty room, dimly lit through a low window. A disheveled, sluttish woman, gipsy type, with
shaggy black hair and small, black, shining eyes, sat at a table surrounded by three or four grimy
children. It was a warm day and the atmosphere was stifling, thick with an oily, sweaty smell that stung
the nostrils. The woman rose inquiringly. The children stared agape.

'Can you tell me where Monsieur de Lazarec lives?' I asked in German.

The children started to gabble among themselves in Latvian. The woman continued to regard me with
suspicion, but something in her look told" me she knew where de Lazarec was.

'Are you friend?' she asked in broken German, staring at me very hard.

‘Yes.'

She pointed at a door at the side of the room.

'Sick,' she said.

The door led into a small coal cellar. The inner part was piled half-way to the low ceiling with coal in one
corner, logs of wood and old tin cans in the other. The unswept floor was covered with coal-dust and
chips of wood. At the street end was a little grid-window, lower than pavement level, through which a
shaft of blackish-grey light cut obliquely downwards into the cell like a dagger. And there, beneath the
window, on the remains of a broken truckle-bed whose bent iron girders sagged almost to the floor, lay
de Lazarec.

I should hardly have recognized him even had the place been properly lit. His drawn face had
lengthened, his cheeks sunk, the lines become deep furrows. His thin grey hair drooped in disorderly
wisps over his forehead and he was unshaven, which gave him a horrible bestial appearance. His filthy
torn shirt was open at the neck, disclosing a hairy, skeleton-like chest that shook like a sack of pebbles
when he coughed. For bedclothes he was covered with coarse sacking and a coverlet which had once
been a quilt. The cellar window did not open, and consequently the only air was a second-hand version
of the foul and sweaty vapours penetrating from the neighbouring room, rendered yet more acrid by
the emanations from de Lazarec's diseased lungs. To complete the picture I should have to describe one,
thing that defies all description—the look that came into the Frenchman's fever-ridden eyes when he
recognized me standing in the doorway, a look first of incomprehension, then astonishment, then fear,
and finally, drowning all other emotions, shame, overwhelming, devouring shame.

With an effort he heaved himself on his elbow, uttering a laboured groan as he fixed his eyes on me
helplessly. His lips quivered, vainly seeking words. Large tears trickled silently down his furrowed,
unshaven cheeks.

I stepped to his side, not knowing how to begin. He gripped my outstretched hand with hot fingers and,
breaking down completely, sobbed desperately over and over again one word: 'Par-don! Par-don!

I turned to the woman standing behind me in the doorway with the gaping children.

'How long has he been ill?'

'A week'—and she made a jerking gesture with her thumb to her mouth to indicate that it had begun
with drink.

I signaled to her to close the door and leave us.

Before trying to say any more I took a block of wood from the pile on the floor and with it - smashed the
window. The noise brought the female charging in with a loud protest.

'I'll pay for it,' I said, and pushed her back.

A stream of exquisitely fresh air floated into the cell. I sat down on a rickety packing-case that served as
bedside table.

'Eh bien, mon vieux, comment ca va?'

He gripped my hand again and pressed it to his lips. Little by little he found words, and I was able to
piece together the story of how he had fallen to this pass.

He had lodged originally at the house opposite, but about three weeks ago had been turned out for not
paying his rent. Incredible though it sounded he had established concubinage with the hag who was
presumably the mother of the brats in the neighbouring room, and she gave him refuge. Forgetting his
oath to me he had given way to a drunken bout, then fever had set in and he had been bedridden since.

His crumpled clothes hung on a nail in the wall. On another packing-case stood a cup without a handle
and a jug containing cold tea. The hag had fed him as best she could with what she could spare from the
children. There was no water or sanitation in the basement. For lavatory she served him with a pail,
emptying the contents in the yard at the back.

'I'll have you taken to a hospital,' I suggested.

Ah ça non,' he bristled with a look of apprehension. 'It's a trifle, I shall be all right to-morrow.' His glance
slid involuntarily in the direction of the neighbouring room. Was he afraid of leaving his companion?

'Anyway,' I insisted, 'I'll bring a doctor to see you. I'll ask one of my pupils to tell me of a lung specialist.'

But this was just as ill-received. Shame was now the deterrent. 'That the pupils should find out about
me? Ah, non!'

'But you must see a doctor.'

'She may know of one.'

I called her. She said she knew a feldsher—a sort of unqualified doctor's assistant or male nurse—who
lived near by. I sent her to fetch him. He wasn't in. I told her to leave a message for him to come the
moment he returned. 'And meanwhile I'm going to get you some food. I'll be back in an hour or two.'

My head ached. I needed a respite from the sickening atmosphere, only slightly relieved by my smashing
the window.

Being Sunday it was too late to get him any proper food even in the Jewish quarter which was a long
way away. But at a chemist's I procured quinine, soap and a towel, and told the woman to sweep the
floor and on no account to attempt to block up the window. I left some money and said I would come
again next evening.

It was not easy to come on weekdays, for the evenings were normally the busiest time at the Institute.
Not having a secretary I had to be on the job the whole day. Nevertheless, having no lessons the
following evening I locked the door early and hurried back to see the sick man.

I found him worse. The male nurse had come in the morning and said nothing more helpful than that
the patient 'had fever'. However, the place looked tidier—if that adjective could be applied at all. The
debris on the floor had been swept into the fuel heaps in the corner, soap and towel had been brought
into play, the sick man wore another shirt, very inadequately washed, but at least another. The feldsher
had assisted with the ablutions and also administered a purgative, which was probably as far as his
medical knowledge went.

De Lazarec greeted me with forced gaiety and an effort to sit up. 'Eh bien, mon cher, me voilà rétabli.
To-morrow I shall be up again!'

He fell back in a fit of ominous coughing. It was clear that he would never recover in these surroundings.
What amazed me most was that he didn't want to leave the woman. For some extraordinary reason he
seemed genuinely attached to her. She had a good heart, he assured me, and mustn't be judged by
appearances. Was be perhaps afraid of her? He believed she was 'psychic' or 'clairvoyant.' or something
of the sort. 'Let her tell your fortune, mon cher,' he persuaded me. 'She'll tell you the truth, you'll see.'

To humour him I let him call her in. Soothsaying amused me. To me it was still a novelty, one of those
things that seemed to belong to the world of elves and fairies. I still had to learn that that world, like
this, is also subdivided into monde, demi-monde, and immonde.

He called her in stumbling German, using some name I had never heard before. Neither of these strange
lovers knew more than a few broken words of the only language in which they could converse, yet they
seemed to understand one another.

'Hand lesen,' he ordered.

Without a word she took my hand and bent over, it, peering into its lines with her piercing, black eyes.

'Good read,' he went on in his broken German. 'Right. Say truth. Not say nonsense.'

She examined my hand a long time, saying nothing. The silence grew eerie, interrupted only by the
rasping noise of the sick man's breathing. There was something terrifying about this woman, something
wild. The touch of her fingers gave me the creeps. Glancing around, waiting for her verdict, the whole
setting appeared to me grotesque, fantastic, unreal—the cellar with its heaps of coal and logs, the grimy
walls, the sick man's clothes hanging on their nail, the sagging truckle-bed, the rickety packing-cases
serving for stools and table, and the three figures so contrasted—the haggard, gasping invalid, the wild,
disheveled gipsy, and the inquisitive, searching youth—the whole illumined by the quivering, dust-laden,
and now failing light of the little grid-window. The atmosphere seemed charged with some tortured
force that vainly sought release. My eye fell again on the crumpled mass of de Lazarec's clothes hanging
on their nail, and for a moment I was seized by the grisly notion that that was de Lazarec—he had
hanged himself in despair—and there he would go on dangling, while we three, all dead, pretended in
mockery that we—all three of us—were still alive . . .

'Well? 'grunted the invalid, growing impatient. His voice broke the spell and brought relief.

'Good,' mumbled the woman in a harsh bass, without raising her head. 'All good . . . will travel . . . will
have money . . —and more of the usual fortune-telling jargon.
'Eh, voilà, mon cher!' exclaimed de Lazarec, delighted. 'You'll be rich—she knows. What more?'

She muttered on. 'Only love . . . not good . . . erste—zweite —dritte

'First—second—third!' guffawed the sick man, promptly collapsing in a racking fit of coughing. But when
he could speak again he persisted in a hoarse whisper: 'Eh bien. First—second, third.. . . . But twentieth?
Fiftieth?

'In end all good,' said the woman in the usual formula and refused to add anything more.

Dusk had fallen. The woman brought a candle, dropped a blob of hot grease on one of the packing-cases
and fixed the candle in it. The picture became still more weird.

'You'll come again to-morrow?' de Lazarec begged as I left. I promised, and walking home in the warm
summer night I resolved that I must see about getting him moved to a hospital urgently.

But de Lazarec's illness coincided with the moment when final disaster befell the Institute. A couple of
weeks earlier I had been unable to pay Lopez and Ferrari their full salaries. Ominously they said nothing,
simply taking the part pay and walking out. They did not come back the following week—neither did
their pupils.

But one evening some days later they unexpectedly strolled in again, greeting me with suspicious
affability. I watched them cautiously. Exchanging glances, they put a crumpled sheet of paper on my
desk.

'Rub your eyes and take a look at that,' they said.

I recognized Kummer's handwriting. I read—and rubbed my eyes indeed. It was a sort of contract,
marked 'secret', signed by Kummer, Lopez, and Ferrari, and the final clause ran: 'It is understood that
the contents of this agreement shall remain absolutely confidential between the signatories.' The
agreement stated that the two men were to hand over to Kummer a certain document in their
possession upon a lump sum payment by Kummer of five hundred roubles to each of them, and that
until such payment, in addition to the salaries openly paid them by the Institute, they were to receive a
supplementary monthly sum sent secretly by Kummer.

'What is the document referred to?' I asked.

The Spaniard tapped his breast pocket significantly. 'Ah, that I will not show to anyone until I hand it to
Kummer. I am a man of honour,' he said with a theatrical gesture, 'but I will tell you the substance if you
like.'

'Tell me.'

'Firstly, Kummer has no right to call himself "Doctor", and secondly he is evading military service. That's
why he quit Germany.'

'You have proof?'

The man of honour tapped his breast pocket again with an air of satisfaction. 'That's what he wants to
buy back,' he said.

I looked again, at the pathetic sheet of paper in my hand, and though it was obvious that Kummer stood
self-accused, yet I couldn't suppress a twinge of pity for him at having fallen into the clutches of these
amiable men of honour.

I asked: 'Why do you show this to me now, especially as it says it is confidential?'

'Has the agreement not been violated?' said the Spaniard, returning the wretched contract to his
pocket. 'We have not been paid our due salary, or the other money either. Have you received any
further funds from him?

'No.'

'Remember, if you do, we have first claim on it.'

‘It seems to me you've helped to wreck this show,' I said.

The two men flared up in unison. 'You're going to take his side, you measly little pimp? Well, if you do,
remember we've got you too, because you'll be an accomplice to a man you know is a fraud and an
impostor.'

I argued desperately: 'I can't see why in your own interest you don't help him keep the place open till
the autumn. When the money starts coming in you'll get yours quicker.'

They howled with laughter. 'You fool! Don't you see the business is kaput already? Sunk—kaput—foutu!'
And tumbling over one another in their zeal to spit forth villainy they went on that the Institute had got
a bad name before it had started—they knew what the debts were, with the bills mounting, advertising
and furniture and rent unpaid—why should money due to them be pitched into it? No, they were going
to get theirs out of Kummer direct; and as much as he'd got or would have for a long time, they had also
photographed the incriminating document, ha-ha-ha, and after he'd bought it back they would start
asking him what he would pay for the photographs! And linking arms the merry fellows rollicked
towards the door, but turned for a parting shot: 'If mother's baby wants to go on working, that's your
own affair, but we shall know if you get the money from him—we've bribed the doorman to tell us every
time a post boy comes—tra-la-la, tra-la-la! And the men of honour frisked gaily down the stairs, not
forgetting to put their fingers to their noses and shout up a few choice epithets from the street.

The long summer shadows descended, the warm night set in. I was still at my desk staring blankly at
hopeless accounts, re-reading the one communication I had received from Kummer in response to
telegraphic ultimatums, a rambling letter saying he was himself in difficulties (I could now believe it!),
yet promising early assistance and imploring me once again, as he had done in several telegrams, to
hold on until the autumn.
There was a ring at the bell. My heart gave a thump. A possible pupil! But it was too late—ten o'clock.
More likely the—

I opened the door with misgiving. As I feared, there stood the landlord, the most difficult and pressing of
all the many creditors. He was a podgy little man with a black, clipped beard, Peplin by name. I have
every reason to remember Herr Peplin.

Without greeting he walked in, fuming. 'I've heard about your Dr. Kummer. Do you know what he is?
He's a deserter! He is evading military service and his government is after him. That's why he came to
Poland, and that's why he wanted to move to Riga—further away from Germany!’

So the men of honour had been on the job with Peplin too.

I suggested feebly that it was merely a report which might not be true and in any case it didn't concern
his business affairs in Russia. 'But has he sent you any money?' he persisted.

Desperately, I said I had his promise in a recent letter. Herr Peplin snorted. 'I'll give you till next
Saturday, then either you pay up or out you go.' And out he stamped.

I sat there in despair, alone, praying that some new applicants for English lessons might miraculously
turn up next day. I didn't dare leave the premises lest someone should come. But none did. In the hot
weather no one wanted to study. Nor was there a word from Kummer. And there was not one single
penny in the till. The small sum I had left with de Lazarec's woman had been my last.

Saturday arrived, and with Saturday the landlord as threatened. 'Well, what about my money?'

I apologized as humbly as I could.

'I was sure of it!’ he fumed. 'Well, out you go. Let's see what furniture you've got.'

There was nothing he could seize because it was all hired. But in one of the back rooms he found my
piano.

'A piano!' he thundered. 'A piano in a Sprachinstitut! So perhaps you teach singing too!

'It's not for the Institute,' I explained, 'I hired it for myself.'

'Money for pianos! he went on sarcastically, "but no money for rent!''

‘I owe a month's hire for the piano too,' I said.

'How much?'

'Three roubles.'

He grunted, 'You play?'

'A little. I want to study when I can afford it.'

'Sit down and play something,' he ordered curtly.

The atmosphere was not inspiring and I was feeling anything but well, but I struggled through a Chopin
Nocturne or something. He leaned on the piano staring at me, which made me more nervous than ever.

'Where do you live?' he asked abruptly when I stopped.

I explained that I lived on the premises because I had not yet been able to afford lodgings.

'Where do you sleep?'

'On the couch in the office.'

'How much money have you got? '—and when I hesitated—'Come, turn out your pockets.'

I turned them out obediently—a notebook, a pocket knife, a pencil, one or two letters, but not a coin.

'When did you last have a decent meal?'

I was obliged to admit that I had been living for some days on bread and tea.

‘Young man,' he said gruffly, 'come along with me.'

I thought he was going to take me to the police. But no, he took me to his home, a few doors away.

'Maria,' he called to his wife, 'this is the young rascal who has been giving me so much kummer—ha-ha-
ha! '—and he burst into laughter at the easy pun. 'He's staying for dinner and he'll eat enough for three.'

Actually I could hardly eat at all for sheer emotion.

'Kummer! Kummer!' he kept on bursting out throughout the meal. 'I'll 'say his name is Kummer! Let him
show his face in Riga and I'll give him Kummer!'

After dinner I was made to play my limited repertoire on the landlord's grand piano, very different from
my hired instrument. When I took my leave he said to me severely: 'Young man, I give you three more
days to quit those premises.' I thanked him for the respite, grateful to have three days in which to think
what to do. At the door he stuffed something into my pocket, and with a gesture to me to be off, shut
the door. Dazed and very tired, I started slowly to walk the few steps back to the Institute, fumbling to
see what the landlord had put into my pocket. When I found a roll of money I stood stock still, utterly
bewildered. My first impulse was to rush straight back to thank him again and again and tell him I would
repay it soon, very soon! But the manner of his giving it showed he would not like any such
demonstration. I would write him a note. Besides—I remembered de Lazarec. Now he should be moved
to a hospital whether he liked it or not. And I dashed off at a run, clutching the money.
The moment I opened the basement door I had a presentiment—something in the woman's face. She
was sitting at the table and did not get up. Without a word to her I pushed open the door of the coal
cellar. It was empty. The broken truckle-bed was in the same place, but on it was nothing but dirty
sacking. The packing-cases had been pushed on one side near the coal and logs, and the invalid's clothes
had been removed from the wall. A heap of waste paper and torn books lay behind the bed.

I turned to the woman.

'Dead,' she said curtly.

'When?'

'Three days.'

'Why didn't you come and tell me?'

She shrugged her shoulders. 'I told police. They come next day —took him.'

'Where is the police station?’

She told me. I hurried to it. De Lazarec's body,' the police informed me, had been removed to the
mortuary and his papers sent to the French Consul. The 'Consul had arranged for a funeral and de
Lazarec had been buried that morning.

I went straight to the Consulate, but there was no one there on a Saturday evening. I had to wait till
Monday. Then I learnt that nothing had been found among the dead man's meagre possessions that
gave a clue to his occupation, and the woman with whom he had been living either didn't know or
wouldn't say: at all big commercial ports wanderers got stranded destitute; they either found jobs, or
repatriated, or, if they died, were buried---that was all.

Why had the woman not come to tell me of his death? This puzzled me, because I could hardly believe
that de Lazarec had really not told her where he worked. I made up my mind to go back and question
her further.

Neither she nor the children were in. I waited in the street. After a few minutes she returned—alone.
She seemed anything but pleased to see me. She denied knowing either de Lazarec's occupation or my
address. I went into the cellar, and from the heap of rubbish salvaged some torn and soiled pages of
Baudelaire. I would keep them as a souvenir.

He was a' good man,' I said, placing some of Peplin's money on the table. 'Thank you for looking after
him.'

In a sharp, rapid tone she shot at me what sounded like a question, but in a language I didn't
understand—Latvian perhaps, or some dialect—following it up with a torrent of incomprehensible
words. She looked wilder than ever with her shaggy black hair shaking on her low forehead. Suddenly
she broke off and pointing at my hand said in German: 'Hand . . . lucky? . . . no, unlucky!' and she burst
into mocking laughter.

I felt afraid, and made a move towards the door. There was now a look of madness in her eyes. Her
fingers twitched as if she wanted to seize me. 'Liebe!' She laughed horribly, repeating her prediction of
unlucky love. 'Erste –zweite-dritte - ungluclich! Ungluclich! Unglucklich!'

She slipped round the table as if to get between me and the door. Now genuinely terrified, I darted to it,
reached it first, dashed out, and ran—ran—ran.

What had the hag read in my hand? That at twenty, despite travel and flirtations, I still had not yet had
my first love affair, destined—according to her prediction—to be an unhappy one? And was it perhaps
her intention to offer me initiation? I did not bother my head long with those questions at the time,
having much more material fish to fry. But the incident of de Lazarec and the hag taught me one great
lesson, a lesson I was later to learn in ever deeper measure, namely, that he who seeks mystery has no
need to pry into what is called the supernatural, for it is found in its most impenetrable form in the
human heart.

I never saw the hag again. Neither did I ever again see or hear from Kummer. I did run into Lopez and
Ferrari in the street; they told me Kummer was paying up, though it was like drawing teeth to get it out
of him. Moved by some vague sentiment they invited me to join them in the gentle sport of Kummer-
baiting, suggesting that I should use the information they had given me to extract from him arrears of
salary—' with interest, why not?" Perhaps they thought their own blackmail would find justification in
my support. I declined the magnanimous offer.

When the Institute closed I had to start again from scratch, but I quickly got on my feet. Several people
helped me, not only the gruff but kindly landlord, but others whom I got to know, such as the vicar of
the English church, pupils who stuck by me, and creditors whose bills I undertook to settle though the
obligation was not mine. I shall never forget the manager of one of the local papers when I walked into
his office with the money for an advertising bill he had long written off. He was so impressed that he put
in several short insertions for me as a private teacher free of charge. The result more than covered the
bill I had paid. For the first time in my life I opened a bank account. At the end of the winter season I
packed up once again and went to the station with all my worldly belongings in a suit-case, as I had once
gone to Liverpool Street. But the ticket I now bought was marked 'St. Petersburg'. And as the train sped
northwards I said to myself: 'Last lap.'

CHAPTER THREE

Into the World of Music

THAT EVENING I sat in the waiting-room of the Baltic station at St. Petersburg. In response to my order
of tea and sandwiches a shabby waiter ambled sleepily to the buffet, received the watery beverage from
a huge samovar, floated a slice of lemon on it, and placed it before me with a plate of snacks. The
spacious, high-ceilinged hall was almost deserted. Most of the travelers had taken droshkis to their
homes or hotels. I too could have gone to a hotel, I no longer lacked money, there was no further need
to welcome the costless shelter of railway stations. But I had other designs. The late April night was
warm and fine, and was now shortening. Dawn would break early, and with it I was resolved without a
moment's delay to view the city of my dreams.

As at every large station a portrait of His Imperial Majesty Nicolas the Second, Tsar of all the Russias,
looked down from the wall. His aspect was anything but bloodthirsty. In another frame the Tsaritsa,
beautiful and tragic, bore her coronet like a crown of thorns. Between them, a little boy in sailor's
costume, handsome but delicate. And in another picture father, mother, and son, together with four
comely daughters—a simple and homely family group, domestic, not at all imperial. Who could foresee
that, ere a decade was out, all seven would be brutally murdered, shot one by one in a cellar, and their
corpses, hacked to pieces, thrown into a kiln to be burned?

In a corner, in a gilt icon, hung a dark picture, of Christ painted on wood, with a little red lamp aglow
before it. Those who were to murder the homely family would spit on that face too. Only a few years to
run before the great unforeseeable upheaval. Only a few years in which to study. Though the future was
hidden, it was as if in some recess of my soul I felt time pressing urgently. Nearly three years spent to
reach here from Liverpool Street station. The failure of the Sprachinstitut, compelling me to remain at
Riga and start all over afresh, had prevented my moving on to St. Petersburg earlier. Alas for the loss of
time. Yet who could say it had really been 'lost'? I would not for anything have missed de Lazarec and
his hag. Anyway, I would not now lose another hour, be it but to view the city in which I was henceforth
to live.

I had travelled from Riga by the day train and it was now nearing midnight. On the table before me lay a
plan of St. Petersburg. With the first streaks of dawn I was resolved to start a pilgrimage from end to end
of the city, to see the most I possibly could of the places of which I had read. Here was the Winter
Palace—here the Fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul—here the Kazan Cathedral—here St. Isaac's—here
the Church of the Resurrection built on the spot where Alexander the Second was assassinated—and so
on and so on. And here, marked with a cross, the Imperial Conservatoire, the institution that was to
become my alma mater, with the famous Marinsky Theatre opposite, the home of the imperial opera
and ballet.

It was in the pale light before dawn that I first saw these two structures with which my fortunes were to
be intimately though briefly linked. The big square in which they stand was deserted. In the gloaming I
deciphered slowly the announcement of a concert to be held in the great hail of the Conservatoire. The
names of the artists were unfamiliar. With equal curiosity I crossed to the Imperial Marinsky Theatre.
The names on the posters were also unknown to me, but I scrutinized them with special interest
because I had recently read in a Riga paper of a series of Wagner performances given at St. Petersburg
with phenomenal success under the leadership of a young English guest conductor, by name Albert
Coates. But the Wagner season was now over. The name I sought was not on the posters.
The hand of fate works in strange and devious ways. If at that moment a voice had whispered in my ear
that only a few years hence Albert Coates, no longer 'guest', but far and away the most outstanding
conductor in all Russia of Russian as well as German opera, would invite me, on completing my studies
at the Conservatoire across the Square, into the Marinsky Theatre in an official capacity to assist him in
coaching his singers in their operatic parts, I should have been inclined, viewing such dizzy heights from
the present obscurity of a student belatedly commencing his studies, to say to the whisperer: 'You must
be cracked!' Yet it came to pass.

The sun rose in a burst of golden glory over the delicate spire of the Cathedral of the grim island fortress
of St. Peter and St. Paul, igniting in a myriad shimmering flames the ripples on the vast expanse of the
most beautiful river in the world. A few glittering ice-floes still floated lazily towards the sea, basking
their way to annihilation in the spring sun. They lent a truly fairy-like quality to the scene. It was by far
the loveliest sight I had ever beheld - a miracle, as every lovely thing is. I found it hard to tear myself
away from the embankments of the Neva, even to start my tour of exploration of all that I longed to see
of the rest of the capital. But I made the sight-seeing pilgrimage, and at the close of the day, having seen
hastily much of what I wanted, I returned, weary but happy, to lean once more upon the sturdy parapet
and watch the sun sink gently into the thousand-coloured waters of the west.

I sat in a little curved alcove, jutting over the river, with a stone seat running round it. In the surface of
the parapet I noticed a small round hole, a couple of inches wide and about half a foot deep. These
holes, occurring at intervals along the parapet, had been used at one time for flagstaffs on festive
occasions, and also for iron stakes to which barges could be moored. When I had finished my
sandwiches (for I would not spend even an hour of this day in a restaurant) I was about to throw the
paper in which they had been wrapped into the river, when I halted, with the thought that to disfigure
the beauty of the river with even a handful of paper was sacrilege. To throw it on the pavement was as
bad. I crumpled it tightly, squeezed it into the hole, and pressed it down with my finger.

But had I been able to peer into the future, letting year by year slip by until the ninth, what should I have
seen at that very spot? A man with a rough black beard and shaggy hair, wearing glasses, 'dressed in a
coarse jacket and a Russian shirt, black leather breeches and black top boots, walking slowly along the
embankment until he reaches this alcove. His air is preoccupied, his manner furtive. He settles himself in
the alcove and opens a packet of food, as if that was what he had come there for. He eats, and
meanwhile looks around him with a forced air of nonchalance. Satisfied that he is alone and
unobserved, he digs in the little hole in the parapet and extracts a letter, which he reads, then tears into
small fragments and drops into the river. Next he takes from his pocket a few banknotes, rolls them into
a little scroll, wraps them, together with a hastily scribbled message, in a piece of food paper, drops it
into the hole, and presses it down into the dust Finally from another pocket he produces a handful of
extra dust which he sprinkles into the hole lest the paper should still be visible Then he walks away.

And if anybody had said to me on that first day of my arrival in St. Petersburg 'That man, with beard and
shaggy hair and goggles and strange appearance, is you nine years hence!—your brief career of music is
over for ever—the Russia you have come to love is torn to shreds by war and revolution—her new
government has made a separate peace with the Germans at the very moment when Britain and France
are well-nigh overwhelmed in the struggle against Kaiserism—the Communist usurpers of power have
deserted the field and are casting former allies into prison—but it is essential for Britain to know what is
going on and to assist the resistance of those who remain true to the cause—and you, because you love
Russia and know the language, you are to go back to serve this cause, though it means the life of a
fugitive—and that strange-looking man is you, nine years hence, exchanging notes with other
conspirators in this same little hole in the parapet which you never forgot—yes, indeed, if anyone had
whispered that to me on this superbly peaceful evening of my first arrival in the city, should I have
retorted merely that the whisperer was 'cracked'?. I should have said he was stark, staring mad! Yet it is
exactly what did come to pass, down to the very last detail.

But this book does not deal with those events, which I have recorded in my book Secret Agent 'ST 25'.

After my wanderings, emerging into the musical and artistic world of St. Petersburg was like reaching
after long climbing a summit revealing a boundless vista of unknown panoramas. Giants whose names
had been vague symbols were now seen and encountered in the flesh either at the Conservatoire or at
private houses: Glazunov, Arensky, Scriabin, Rachmaninov, Siloti, Coates, Tcherepnin, Lyadov, Lyapunov,
and others. Not immediately, of course. It took me a year to find my feet, both as a humble student and
no less humble teacher of English. But eventually two persons played a dominant role in broadening my
education. The first was Anna Essipova, the principal professor of piano at the Conservatoire, among
whose pupils at that time were Serge Prokoviev and Alexander Borovsky. In her prime Essipova had
been the most eminent woman pianist of her day, as renowned in Europe and America as in Russia. She
was not my first teacher at the Conservatoire; I was first placed under Professor Stein, but after a year,
when I had orientated myself in the artistic Who's Who, I resolved to fly higher and ask Essipova if she
would accept me as a pupil. I expected a refusal, as I knew she accepted but few. Nevertheless I took a
chance and wrote to her, and received an invitation to call at her home in Ofitzerskaya Street, near the
Conservatoire. For some reason she had thought I must be on the staff of the British Embassy, and was
disappointed to find I was not. My heart sank at this explanation of her invitation. However, she listened
to one or two pieces, graciously allowed that I 'had possibilities', and when I told her I gave instruction in
English at the Lyceum, the school of the nobility (I had got a job there merely as a temporary 'extra', but
I didn't mention that), she said,: 'I will accept you as a pupil, but you will also become my teacher. I wish
to brush up my English I will give you your lessons here at my house, and afterwards you will stay and
help me read English and correct my pronunciation.'

Her tuition was an education in itself. At first appearance her manner was stern, even overawing, for as
a disciplinarian she was exceedingly strict. There was much of the masculine in her, her most famous
pupils were renowned both for the power and delicacy of their performance. The poetry in her flowered
from virile roots. She told me once that her teacher and ex-husband, Leschetitzky, had impressed upon
her that every artist 'must be both man and woman'.

Reason and logic were the basis of her system. From Anna Essipova I learnt the great truth that in art—
and by analogy in life—the most convincing expression of emotion is achieved through thought and
calculation and the careful measurement of effect. In listening to any exquisite performance the wonder
of its musicianship became infinitely enhanced when I realized that the perfection which I had formerly
imagined to derive exclusively from some vague principle called 'feeling' was in fact the product of
meticulous thought and deliberation guided by taste. Proportionately as 'school' is established in the
performer calculation is less laborious; in the end it becomes second nature.1 'School' is a combination
of style and technique based on a cultivated taste that can only be acquired by long and patient
observation and exercise. Anna Essipova gave you the most minute instructions both as regards the
effect she wanted and the mechanics of producing it, and exacted their execution with merciless
severity. She left nothing to chance. You had come to her to be moulded, and you could either submit or
(in my case) 'go back to the Conservatoire'. That was her own expression, for she could be very cruel.
Her methods were sometimes of the meticulously plodding, sometimes of the bulldozer type, but her
bulldozer was a precision instrument that always achieved the exact amount of clearing, not an iota too
much or too little. She loathed the style of playing permitted by some of her less-distinguished
colleagues at the Conservatoire, which arose from letting the pupil 'express himself ‘ too early. She was
scathing in her sarcasms, and the most bitter of her taunts was: 'You played that like a sentimental'
konservatorka '—konservatorka being a female student of the Conservatoire. One of her most rigid
principles was that one's sense of judgment in deviating from tried rules could only mature through long
submission to those rules. On this secure foundation, however, she encouraged the emergence of
individual style. I remember how, at the first hearing of a new work, she would let me play a movement
half through, then take my copy of the music and cover it with markings, some of her own invention,
sometimes minutely detailed, for instance little arrows indicating the exact mathematical point at which
the pedal was to operate. She would then say: 'That is the interpretation, work it out and play it to me
next time.' Following these detailed indications I always felt that this indeed was what the composer
really meant; and yet, at the next hearing, provided she was satisfied, she would as likely as not say:
'Good. From now on you may play it however you like.' But this was only after long tuition, when she
knew her schooling was immovably inculcated, when she knew in fact that however the pupil played it it
would always bear the stamp of her training. At first she was simply the severe drill-master, allowing no
deviation from fixed principles for which she always gave clear and convincing explanations.

Anna 'Essipova first opened my eyes to the logic of beauty and to the beauty of restraint, both strange
doctrines to me, for I had imagined the basis of artistic expression to be 'emotion let loose'. The
principles she laid down for music I found no less applicable in other domains. 'Abandon should come
last, not first,' she said, 'in music as in love.' It was remarkable to find her, a pure Russian, advocating the
principle of restraint in music 'as in love', for it is characteristic of Slav women to measure feeling only in
terms of 'emotion let loose', so that restraint is often mistaken for indifference if not falsity; such

1
A striking illustration of this perfected artistry was told me by a ballet, dancer who was a protégé of Chaliapin.
She was standing in the wings while Chaliapin was playing the death scene in Boris Godunov. His performance was
to all appearance divinely inspired, the audience were spellbound, many were in tears. Those watching from the
wings were no less deeply moved. Suddenly, at the most tragic point, during an instant when his head was turned
from the audience, catching the eye of the young woman all but weeping in the wings, Chaliapin from the stage
pulled a grimace and stuck his tongue out at her in sheer devilry, and then proceeded to finish dying with even
greater ' inspiration ' than before!
women are like those who interpret 'absolute truthfulness' as blurting out whatever happens to be on
the tip of the tongue. I often had cause in later years to recall Essipova's precepts as applied to other
spheres than music, and would have saved myself and others much distress had I more strictly obeyed
them. I know that every time I let this kind of spontaneous expression have free rein it led to trouble,
and I was always, forced to a recollection of Essipova's teaching that in music, and by analogy in life as a
whole, first impulses should be suspect and be given free rein only after careful scrutiny and analysis.

Among the faculty at the Conservatoire Essipova was held in awe as much for her manner as for her
undisputed pre-eminence. She had only one equal, Leopold Auer, the greatest violin teacher of that era,
whose pupils came to St. Petersburg from the four corners of the globe after graduating from their
home academies to have the finishing touches put to their playing in a few lessons under his private
tuition. In her last years Essipova confined her public appearances to one concert a year, a soirée of
sonatas with Auer, and the occasion was one of the great artistic events of the season. Auer's English-
speaking private pupils who knew no Russian—English, American, Australian and others—were a
godsend for me, for Essipova naturally recommended me as the only 'compatriot' accompanist with
whom they could talk. As a matter of fact there was one other Englishman studying at the Conservatoire
contemporarily with me, a man of outstanding talent who was later to become a brilliant light in the
English musical world—Lawrance Collingwood—who was to play so distinguished a role in building up
the musical organization of Sadler's Wells; but Collingwood had had the vision from the outset to do
what I began belatedly to do only when my view was broadened, he had at once gone in for
composition and orchestra without restricting himself to any single instrument. He was thus always far
more advanced than I, and our studies did not run parallel. But my limitations had temporary
advantages. I became a good accompanist, almost as conversant with violin as with piano literature, and
many were the little concerts I helped to give at private houses. They were not only valuable experience,
but a useful source of income.

I was under no illusions, however, as to my ability to compete in the top rank of concert pianists. I soon
became aware that I should never be in the running with Essipova's front-line pupils. I had lost too much
time in starting. 'You can become a very good "salon" pianist, you shine in the lyric and the dramatic,'
she said kindly. I accepted the innuendo, and yet in a way it was no mean compliment, for by any other
standards than hers a 'salon' pianist would have been a concert pianist of quality. But if—as actually
happened—the moment I had taken my finals at the Conservatoire I dropped the piano forever, the
reason was not only that I recognized my limitations in that sphere but that by then my musical horizon
had opened up in new directions.

For Albert Coates, the other person who most strongly influenced the course of my studies, had entered
my life. Albert Coates was born, in St. Petersburg in 1882, and was twenty-nine when I first met him. He
was trained at Leipzig Conservatoire, where he was the favourite pupil of the renowned director of that
institution, Arthur Nikisch. After a meteoric career at the opera houses of Elberfeld, Mannheim, Leipzig,
and Dresden, he was invited to St. Petersburg in 1909 to conduct a season of Wagner, and achieved
such success that in the following year he was asked to conduct Russian and Italian opera also, although
this was encroaching on the domain of the Russian staff of conductors. When the aged principal
conductor, Napravnik, dropped out, Coates, despite his youth took his place. The rigid protocol of the
old regime did not really permit the official appointment of a foreigner (Coates though born in Russia
was a British subject) over the heads of all the other conductors of the Imperial Theatres, among whom
were figures such as Tcherepnin and Malko, yet in actual practice Coates as chief conductor acquired a
position of dominating authority comparable only with that of Chaliapin on the stage. A difference of
view between those two titans was indeed a tussle of the gods. It happened occasionally, for they were
both men of strong temperament and self-willed. It usually ended in understanding, because Chaliapin,
like everybody else, found that for Moussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov as for Wagner and Puccini, there
was not a conductor in the whole of Russia to equal this Russian-born Englishman, who was so very
English despite his Russian birth and German training. With orchestra, chorus, and artists alike Coates
was popular by reason of his boyish good-nature and informal way of dealing with everybody, while the
general public were carried away by his term temperàrnent—a word which in Russian conveys much
more than the corresponding English term. This temperàrnent swept all before it, yet revealed a superb
finesse of interpretation. Until the revolution and for many years after it the name of Coates was one to
conjure with in Russia. In official relationships he stood his ground with old and new regimes alike.
When the first revolutionary ruler of Petrograd, the demagogue Zinoviev, turned up in the theatre to
demand of him personally that for the first anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution he should be careful
to choose music that had 'political significance' Coates replied blandly: 'You may ask me for "political
music" when I ask you for "musical politics ", but not before'—and calmly went on with his rehearsal. At
which the bombastic president of the Soviet retired much discomfited, to the delight of the orchestra
and artists who had witnessed the incident.

I had been living in St. Petersburg about a year and a half before I dared to approach Albert Coates. But
one morning shortly after I had begun working under Essipova I took my courage in both hands and rang
the bell of his flat.

'Can I see Mr. Coates for a minute? Please say I am an Englishman studying at the Conservatoire.'

I was shown into the music room, with a grand piano piled high with scores and sheets of music. I
waited nervously. At length the great man appeared, tall and muscular, with wavy black hair,
exceedingly handsome, clad in a silk dressing-gown.

He eyed me curiously. 'Who are you?'

I told him. The fact that I was studying under Essipova impressed him, but beyond that he didn't seem
very interested. But he did say: 'If I can help you, let me know.'

I said: I see from posters that you are going to conduct one of the Siloti concerts. May I come to a
rehearsal?

‘Of course. Be at the concert hall on such-and-such a morning and I will see you are let in.'

Siloti was the foremost figure in the St. Petersburg musical world, a wealthy patron of the arts. He had
his own symphony orchestra, and organized a series of concerts every season at the Dvoryanskoye
Sobranye, the largest concert hail of the city, some of which he conducted himself, but also invited guest
conductors and soloists from all over Europe. At the same time he was himself a distinguished pianist, a
pupil of Liszt.

I turned up as arranged. But Coates had forgotten all about me. When I presented myself at the artists'
entrance the doorman refused admittance. Dare I send in word? Nervously I asked if I might. A young
man who had something to do with Siloti was called. He looked at me with some annoyance and said
outsiders were never admitted to rehearsals. Coates appeared at that moment, caught sight of me, said:
'Oh, yes, I forgot', and asked the young man to let me in and said he would put it right with Siloti
afterwards. Hesitantly the young man showed me to a seat in the hall.

(The young man turned out to be one of Siloti's Sons who was an art expert. I little imagined at that
moment that not many years later, after having lost sight of him in the revolution which ruined his
family, I should encounter him at the Gare Saint Lazare in Paris in the uniform of a Cook's guide, while
his father, who as I took my seat in the hall was giving orders to his orchestra on the platform, would be
earning his living at a music school in New York.)

At first sight Siloti appeared to be in a towering rage with somebody in the orchestra, but nobody
seemed to be taking the tempest too seriously. After a while he caught sight of me sitting in the hall and
exclaimed in indignation: 'Who the devil is that and how the hell did he get in? Coates appeared in his
shirt-sleeves to start rehearsing, and I heard him say to Siloti: 'Let him stay, I'll explain later.' Then he
stooped and said to me in English: 'Don't mind if he roars, that's only his manner.'

It was the first orchestral rehearsal I had ever attended. I knew a little about the instruments, for an
elementary knowledge of the orchestra was required also of piano students and I had started reading it.
But to see and hear the instruments separately at close range, to observe the intricate course of
rehearsal, to be given the opportunity of following the score while the players were frequently stopped
and the performance perfected, all this opened up a new wonderland. Before the morning was out I
knew that the restricted world of the piano would be too narrow for me. I never regretted entering it,
for Anna Essipova was herself an artist of universal outlook and the principles she propounded often
applied far beyond the world of the piano, but I knew at once that the new and wider world I was now
entering was to become my chosen habitat sought Coates afterwards to ask him if Siloti would allow me
always to come to rehearsals. He spoke to Siloti aside, evidently explaining that I was a compatriot, for
Siloti suddenly turned on me with a strange combination of menace and astonishment, a riotous
manner which I soon learnt disguised a golden heart: ' What! Another Englishman? The devil! As if one
wasn't enough! Look here, young man, I let nobody into my rehearsals—you understand? —nobody—
nobody! . . . But you may come all the same, devil take all Englishmen! '

Next day at the rehearsal I found a lady sitting alone in the hall. 'Are you Mr. Dukes, who is studying with
Essipova? I am Mrs. Coates. Won't you sit here? '—and she indicated the seat beside her. She was very
kind, but I excused myself, saying I wanted to go into the gallery where I could look down on the
orchestra from the side. During rehearsal a question arose about a cut that had been wrongly made in
one of the orchestral parts, so that it needed recopying, but the usual copyist was ill. Coates turned
round and said to his wife: 'Where's that young fellow Dukes?' She pointed up at me, and Coates called
up in English: 'Can you copy music?' I said I could, not knowing what I was letting myself in for. I hurried
down, and Coates gave me the defective part. 'Bring it to me at the Marinsky Theatre to-night.'

To the Marinsky Theatre! That meant I should penetrate the artists' quarters of that sacred institution!
What a prospect. I hastened away to copy the part. But copying parts is really a specialist's job, and I had
never even seen a separate instrumental part before. At first I could hardly make head or tail of it.
However, the correction to be made was short and a second part had been given me as guide. I suppose
I must have done the job more or less satisfactorily, for when I delivered it I heard no more about it.
Still, it was with trepidation as well as excitement at being able to visit the great man in the sacred
precincts of the imperial opera house that I presented myself that evening at the stage door.

Coates was conducting the Meistersinger. I was shown up to his room and waited outside it in a bare
corridor. I could dimly bear the strains of music coming from the main part of the building. Costumed
artists singing snatches of their parts passed to and fro. After a while the music gave way to applause.
An act was over. I heard Coates's voice as he mounted the stairs, and in a moment he appeared,
perspiring and mopping his brow. When he saw me he exclaimed: 'Hello, Dukey,'—thenceforth I was to
be 'Dukey' or 'the Dukelet' to him and his relatives for the rest of my life—'what are you standing in the
passage for, you silly? Come in.'

He was the only conductor who had a private room for his exclusive use. The other conductors, and
there were several, when on duty used a cubby-hole just off the stage. I sat on the couch while he
changed his shirt. People came in to speak to him, and then he was called for the last act. 'Come along,'
he said, 'I'll put you where you can hear, even if you can't see. I'll say I've told you to bring that down'—
and he shoved a bundle of music into my arms. I learnt later that it was very strictly forbidden for
strangers to be anywhere near the stage or in the adjoining passages during a performance. But Coates
took me down and put me in a corner near the entrance to the orchestra. The players were already in
their places, so the approaches were empty except for a man to whom Coates said something about me.
The man protested, but Coates said: 'I'll put it right if there's any question '—and he disappeared into
the orchestra. I stood there and listened to the discomfiture of the absurd Beckmesser. When the
performance ended Coates was called on to the stage to take a curtain with the principal singers. In
passing he snapped his fingers to me to hurry back upstairs before the orchestra came out.

The copying of that part was the first of many odd jobs I did for Coates—sorting out manuscript, copying
and corrections of one sort or another. I became a frequent visitor both at his house and Siloti's, for they
were bosom friends, and either there or at the theatre I met some of the greatest artists and musicians
of the day: among the composers, Glazunov, Rachmaninov, Scriabin, Arensky, Stravinsky; among the
artists, Chaliapin, the greatest actor-singer of all time; Yershov, a magnificent Wagnerian tenor; Zbrueva,
who made your blood run cold as the old lady in Dame de Pique; Cherkasskaya, who made you weep in
The Legend of Kitezh; and many others.

I was now able to attend all the Siloti concert rehearsals, and indeed the concerts themselves; for Siloti,
after tempestuously protesting against the extravagant demands of pestiferous Englishmen, none the
less told his son to let me stand in an inconspicuous corner in the hall (every seat for every Siloti concert
was sold for several seasons ahead). But that was not the greatest favour I was lucky enough to enjoy.
To explain my coming and going at the Marinsky Theatre Coates passed me off as his 'musical secretary'.
After a time, when everyone was used to seeing me about, he asked Tartakov, the general manager of
the theatre, if he would allow me to sit in the orchestra pit whenever he (Coates) was conducting, on
the ground that he wanted me to make certain notes. This was regarded as a truly revolutionary
demand in view of the severity of the rules, but Albert Carlovitch, as Coates was known to everybody, by
then possessed to all intents and purposes the authority of a dictator, and Tartakov knew that if he
refused he would probably be overridden by the chief Director of all the Imperial Theatres, Count
Teliakovsky, with whom also Coates was a favourite. The concession was made, and I was allotted an
inconspicuous seat in a corner of the orchestra next to the harps, whence I could see about three
quarters of the stage. But I did not always sit in the orchestra. Coates had relatives living at St.
Petersburg who from time to time took a box and invited 'Dukey' into it. There, of course, I had to deck
myself out in white tie and tails. It was nice to see the operas from the front occasionally, but I was
always pleased to be back in my secluded corner of the orchestra pit.

From the moment of that first rehearsal at the Siloti concert the orchestra became my passion. I joined
the conductor's class of Tcherepnin at the Conservatoire and studied orchestration under Steinberg,
who had inherited the chair of Rimsky-Korsakov. I revealed a talent for orchestration, and great was my
pride when orchestral arrangements I made for charity concerts given during the First World War were
performed at the Marinsky Theatre. Eventually the pretext-appellation of 'musical secretary' to Coates
took on a more concrete form. After I had passed my finals at the Conservatoire Coates asked me if I
would like a real job as solo repetitor at the opera, which would consist in coaching singers in their parts;
I should work exclusively with him and was not to be at the disposal of any of the other conductors. Of
course I jumped at it. I was accordingly put on the official staff at a small commencing salary, and from
then on had the run of the theatre at all times. Besides the singers, I got to know also the scenic artists
who had a vast studio on the roof of the theatre, and I had access to ballet as well as operatic
rehearsals. The training of the soloists in two new operas was entrusted to me—Taneiev's Metel (The
Blizzard), and Stravinsky's Solovyci (The Nightingale). I was successful with the coaching because I
understood Coates's temperament and taste, and on the stage I accompanied at all the rehearsals of
these operas.

I was just getting thoroughly into my stride in this congenial and promising work, which would have led
in course of time to the conductor's desk, when the European storm broke which culminated in
Germany's simultaneous declaration of war on France and Russia in July 1914.. A wave of patriotic
fervour swept the country. There had been grave political and industrial disturbances throughout the
spring and summer, and barricades had been erected in the capitals. But this unrest ceased as by magic.
In demonstrations of almost hysterical patriotism the Tsar was hailed as the leader and 'little father' of
his people, his portrait was borne at the head of spontaneous street processions, and the cathedrals
were crowded with devout and fervent worshippers praying for victory.

Britain was not yet 'in'. She was hesitating, with the eyes of the world upon her. But Germany's violation
of Belgian neutrality turned the scale. Britain declared war, and the French-Russian British alliance was
complete. I went to the British Consulate and entered my name as a volunteer for active service, but
medical examination revealed a slight pulmonary defect, trivial, but sufficient for me to be passed over
in the first recruitment. So for the first winter of the war I continued to work at the Marinsky Theatre. I
had now discarded the piano as a solo instrument and looked forward only to the conductor's desk.

But it was not to be. In 1915 the Anglo-Russian Commission—a bureau of information attached to the
British Embassy—was established under the leadership of the eminent author, Hugh Walpole, who had
come out to Russia on behalf of the Red Cross. Assistants were required who knew Russian, and I was
the first to be appointed. I was given the job of making a daily précis of the Russian Press for the
Ambassador, Sir George Buchanan, and the Foreign Office. For a time I tried to combine this with part-
time work at the theatre, but the combination soon proved impossible. The number of newspapers
increased enormously in Russia during the first half of the First World War, and my job grew in volume
and importance. I was obliged to relinquish my post as repetitor at the opera, but it was a source of
much satisfaction to be told very agreeably by the general manager, Tartakov, that my salary would
continue to be paid and my place would be kept for me to return to after the war.

But who could foresee the tragic future? After triumphs against Austria in 1915 the tide turned against
Russia. Military disasters succeeded one another, and, the political and economic situation rapidly
deteriorated. Corruption and treachery were rife. Ministers were changed with such frequency and lack
of method that the liberal press—that is, practically the entire press—openly described it as 'ministers'
leap-frog'. (The press, though shackled, was very free and vocal under the Tsar by comparison with the
later iron tyranny of the Bolsheviks). Everyone talked about the 'dark forces' conspiring behind the
scenes, meaning, of course, the infamous Rasputin and his minions. On the night of 16th December
1916, Rasputin was murdered by close relatives of the Tsar who shared the common loathing of the
depraved upstart. The rumour of the assassination spread like wildfire among the populace, though
nothing about it could appear in print. A feeling of elation prevailed on the following evening Siloti was
giving an orchestral concert, and I was playing the piano part in one of the items (I was still able to
combine incidental engagements such as that with my official work). I shall never forget the inspired
enthusiasm with which he strode to the conductor's desk, turned to the audience, and struck up the
national anthem, which was not customarily played at concerts. The audience understood the gesture
and sang with fervour, for the Tsar was personally not unpopular, it was the Tsaritsa and her favourite
Rasputin who were unpopular, and it was thought that, with the removal of the unspeakable Rasputin
the Tsar's hands would be freed, a more liberal regime be established, corruption be rooted out, and the
war regain its successful course.

Alas, vain hopes! The Tsar had no will of his own. Instead of a more popular government being
established, the Tsar, instigated by his wife and with the assistance of the insane minister of the interior,
Protopopof, one of Rasputin's minions, sought forcibly to curb the remaining vestiges of liberty and
clamp the country down beneath new restrictions. Popular feeling soared to boiling point, and within
three months of the death of Rasputin the old regime was swept away forever, in the cataclysm of a
revolution which shook and still shakes the world. It wrenched millions of lives asunder, including my
own. I was to be cast up eventually like a scrap of jetsam on unknown and undreamt-of shores.
Such was the course of the brief musical career to which I never reverted. But the story of those student
years is not yet complete, for there were other subjects that engaged my attention. I must not leave
them out, for I sometimes wonder whether they were not really the most important of all.

CHAPTER FOUR

Into the Spirit World

I MENTIONED that, my genial professor, Anna Essipova, anxious to brush up her English, asked me to
stay after my piano lessons to read with her and correct her pronunciation. She was fond of ghost
stories. A friend of hers used sometimes to join us, and they would argue about whether the stories
were true or not. Essipova said she didn't care as long as the stories were good, but her friend took the
matter more seriously. She was a theosophist, like my old friend de Lazarec of Riga, and brought me The
Secret Doctrine and other books by Madame Blavatsky to read. I was ripe for this reading. So while by
day I pursued my musical studies and earned my living by teaching English, at night I delved deeply into
The Secret Doctrine, The Veil of Isis, and books of that ilk. The founder of the Theosophical Society,
Madame Blavatsky, had many followers in her native land. Dear old de Lazarec would have been
completely at home among them. Not a few there were who reveled in theories about other worlds
because they fitted so ill into this one. I suppose that is so always and everywhere.

It fascinated me to read about 'astral bodies’, ‘auras’, 'elementals' and what-not. To me, at that time, it
was all an extension of the elves and pixies and denizens of the other world of my childhood fancy. I had
not yet come to appreciate the fact that the term 'supernatural’ contains within it a fundamental,
contradiction, that nothing in nature can be supernatural. Captivated by the exciting term 'hidden,
knowledge', and in a flush of youthful zeal which was polarized, by an inborn predilection for the
unusual and unconventional, I still looked outwards rather than inwards to find the wondrous.

Thus it came about that when one day I received an invitation to join a group of people who were
experimenting with spiritism I jumped at it.

The invitation came from a seeker much older and more experienced than I, and intensely sincere.
Sidney Gibbes was then English tutor, to the Imperial family, including the ill-starred Tsarevitch, heir to
the throne. At Cambridge Gibbes had been destined for holy orders, but went to Russia by special
invitation. Eventually, after the tragedy of 1918, he became a monk in the Orthodox Church, discarded
his English name and was thereafter known as the Abbot Nicolas. For a time during my student days I
shared his Petersburg flat. It was situated near the Tsarskoe Selo railway station, so that he could travel
with convenience to and from the Imperial residence at Tsarskoe Selo. It was not a large flat, but it had a
commodious sitting-room adjoining the dining-room, and by means of sliding curtains separating them
Gibbes transformed the two rooms into a little theatre where he used to give readings of English
literature, interspersed with music. These literary evenings became a well-known feature in the English
colony. Not a few Russians of the intelligentsia also attended them. The bulk of his selections, apart
from Shakespeare, were from essayists and novelists; but he had a keen sense of drama and would
make his audiences shudder when he read Poe. My modest contribution to these evenings was to
provide the musical interludes and accompany singers who contributed to the programme.

Sometimes at his readings Gibbes would include topical articles on the subject of psychic research in
which he was interested. It was as the result of a discussion that ensued between us following one such
reading that he said: 'Would you like to attend some spiritualistic séances? I know an American lady who
is a medium and wishes to experiment with a few friends she can trust.'

I needed no second invitation.

A cold night of early winter —fitting setting for a ghostly adventure. Wraiths of dry, sandy snow flitting
before angry gusts of wind tearing round corners. With upturned collars we huddled in the droshky that
bore us to a distant part of the city. We were glad of the protection of the broad back of the izvostchik in
his bulky cape.

We arrived at a plain, middle-class block of flats, mounted several flights of stairs, and were admitted to
a small and simply-furnished dwelling. Introductions. 'Mr. Dukes—Mrs. Holey—Mr. Holey—Miss Holey.'
I already knew from Gibbes that Mrs. Holey was the medium. She was a cheerful little woman of about
forty, American by birth, European by education, Russian by custom, and therefore brimming with
hospitality. Mr. Holey was a business man, representative of some American firm, a large-built, kindly
gentleman, completely Europeanized. Miss Holey, Russian by education, was eighteen years of age,
buxom, somewhat lethargic. Mr. and Mrs. Holey thanked us for coming, hoped we should not be bored,
informed me that Mrs. Holey discovered her mediumistic powers some years ago but had never
developed them systematically, they welcomed an opportunity to experiment together with friends they
could trust, but of course it was always possible that nothing would happen, it might not prove very
entertaining. I assured them I had come in no mood of idle curiosity. I wished to join them as a student.

Mr. Holey suggested we should divide the séance into two sessions, with an interval for supper. We
prepared to sit, in a rather bare sitting-room with a carpetless floor. A plain table with tripod support
stood prepared. Four ordinary cane chairs round it, with a more comfortable armchair for Mrs. Holey.
The only other furniture was a sideboard with decanters, etc., and a small table at the window. A few
pictures and photographs on the walls. Very bourgeois.

'In what order shall we sit?’

Gibbes had prompted me in this matter. He had no reason to mistrust the Holeys, but nevertheless he
thought we ought to separate Mrs. Holey from her husband and daughter on principle. He therefore
suggested that I should sit on one side of Mrs. Holey and he on the other.

This arrangement was agreed to. Mrs. Holey took the armchair. Gibbes sat on her right between her and
her husband, I on her left between her and her daughter. Mrs. Holey's chair was in a corner the room,
and the arrangement was such that she could not get it, nor could anyone approach her, except by
Gibbes or myself getting up to make way.

'All ready?’
'Yes.'

'Then lights out.'

Holey switched off the light and groped his way to his seat. 'Hands laid on the table, please, everyone
touching their neighbours' fingers.'

We formed a chain of hands on the table. The only link not controlled by Gibbes or myself was that
between father and daughter.

'If you feel my hands slipping off the table when I sink back in my chair,' said Mrs. Holey, 'you must
continue to hold them. The chain mustn't be broken.'

We sat in darkness. Conversation was about Mrs. Holey's earlier experiences. They were often
remarkable, we were told, but it was not always possible to sit with congenial companions. People were
often frivolous about the matter. Or scared. Wrong mood created wrong atmosphere. A circle of five is
not large, but the 'power' generated may still be considerable granted congeniality and unity purpose.

'Why do we sit in darkness?' I asked.

Holey explained that light was an obstruction to phenomena.

'Why?'

'It just is so. The spirits say so.'

They knew best, I supposed. After a while I felt Mrs. Holey's hand slipping. Gibbes noticed the same. We
grasped her hands firmly as she sank back.

'She may be going into a trance,' Holey whispered, 'or she may just be making herself more comfortable.
We won't speak to her any more.'

The rest of us continued to talk about this and that. Holey gave instructions, with occasional comments
by the lethargic Miss Holey. Light, he said, was not only an obstacle, it might even constitute a danger to
the medium if she is in a trance. To my persistent 'Why?’ he replied again that it just was so, which again
settled the matter. So lights might be switched on only by permission. 'Whose permission? ' The spirits'.
'How obtained?' By asking. 'How?’ One just asks—aloud—and awaits the answer—in raps—on the table.
A single peremptory rap means No—for Yes one must await a double rap. I was still inquisitive. Do the
spirits always answer? Are there always manifestations? Does the medium always drop off into a
trance? What would happen if she didn't? Should we go on indefinitely sitting?

But my pertinacity was checked. When Mrs. Holey had been very still for some time and Holey said she
had probably dropped off, suddenly the table gave a little jerk.

'It's beginning,' said Holey.

We became tensely expectant. The table seemed to be tilted. Not surprising, I thought to myself
skeptically. Since both Mrs. Holey's hands and one of mine and Gibbes's were removed the three
remaining pairs of hands were all on one edge of the table. It was tilted again—yes, definitely on that
side. But it righted itself and tilted slowly in the other direction—not directly opposite but obliquely, as
it had three legs. It might be pushed, I said to myself. Or somebody's knee -

Very gently I raised my leg, intending to explore with it the space beneath the uptilted side. And, sure as
life, I encountered a foot—in mid-air! But it was hastily withdrawn—and a movement and muffled
exclamation from Gibbes revealed that it was his—we had both had the same idea! Afterwards we had a
good laugh about it. We lowered our feet—but the table remained tilted at the same angle.

Gradually its motion increased. It tilted this way and that, and after a while it was raised an inch or so
from the floor, subsiding with a little thud. Finally, after some time, with a quick motion it rose vertically
a foot or so into the air and remained poised.

Several raps were distinctly audible, apparently coming from the middle of it.

We waited in excited expectation, our hands resting awkwardly ace about the level of our eyes.
Eventually it descended, as it rose. There was a double rap, then silence.

‘A double rap like that—that usually means we may switch on the light,’ said Holey. But before moving
from his place he inquired precautiously: 'May we light up?'

In the ensuing stillness a soft but distinct double rap sounded from the middle of the table. We removed
our hands. Holey got up and switched on the light. We looked strange to each other, blinking in the
sudden brightness. I turned first to see what had happened to Mrs. Holey. She was apparently asleep in
her chair. The mysterious table stood inoffensively in front of her as if nothing had occurred. I already
had the feeling that it was infused with a secret life of its own, and that it was now merely pretending to
be a piece of furniture stuck together with nails and glue. I tipped it up underneath it, half expecting it to
protest. But it didn't. It was lifeless. Just a very ordinary table, solidly built, with a leg in the middle and
tripod feet.

Mrs. Holey opened her eyes sleepily, then got up and demanded to know what had happened. 'Didn't
you know anything about it?’ I asked. 'Not a thing,' she replied.

We repaired to the supper table, spread with zakuski. Miss Holey served and tended the samovar. The
servant had been given the night off—she might imagine the proceedings in the sitting-room to be of
the devil, black magic or wizardry.

‘You must be very psychic,' Mrs. Holey said to me. 'You helped me to drop off very quickly.'

‘And more happened than I expected at the first sitting,' added her husband. I felt pleasantly gratified,
like a schoolboy receiving a good mark.
After supper we resumed the session. Again Mrs. Holey dropped off. And again the table twisted and
turned. But it didn't rise high anymore, and after a time two raps were heard and everything stopped.
Mrs. Holey, returning to life, said she was very tired. The séance was over.

Gibbes and I took our leave. Our hosts pressed us to continue the experiments. Many interesting things
might happen if we persevered. They wanted to probe the possibilities.

Outside a blizzard was blowing. Battling against it while we sought a droshky I asked Gibbes what he
thought of the night's work. ‘Do you believe it is done by spirits?

But he refused to commit himself. 'Let's see what happens next time,’ was all I could get out of him.
However, he did add: 'If it were not genuine I can't conceive what motive they could possibly have for
deceiving us.'

It was three o'clock in the morning before we arrived home. I went to bed, but hardly to rest. Gibbes's
library, where I slept on a divan, had lots of woodwork—cupboards and bookcases. They all conspired to
creak and crackle in the darkness, while raps seemed to resound from every corner! Spirits? Rot! But I
couldn't sleep, for all that. Finally, in desperation, I switched on the light, and thus obtained a little fitful
rest.

A week or so later we forgathered again, already like old friends. The proceeding was identical. The table
performed its antics, a little more readily, perhaps, but nothing new occurred. I was again full of
questions during the period of waiting. Suppose 'they' wished to ask us something, or make a
communication other than yes or no, how would they do it? To this I received a halting reply—
something about letters. Alphabetical letters designated by raps? Or written messages? With some
hesitation Holey and his daughter revealed that at earlier séances something in the nature of written
communications were received, but they appeared reluctant to go into details. Tact decreed that I
should not persist, but curiosity got the better of me. From whom were the communications? At this
point I became conscious that Gibbes was coughing at me significantly in the darkness, and I felt a
pressure on one of my legs—which made me jump, not unnaturally in the circumstances—but it turned
out to be Gibbes kicking me under the table to make me shut up. There was a mystery here. Perhaps
Gibbes would throw some light on it afterwards.

He did. He had forgotten to tell me that the Holeys had told him earlier about a written communication
received from the spirit world at a prior séance, purporting—so he had gathered—to come from Mrs.
Holey's first husband, deceased these twenty years or so. (Or was 'husband' a euphemism? Anyway that
was none of our business.) We couldn't help speculating about Holey's attitude in the matter, but came
to the conclusion that he doubtless thought that a competitor dead twenty years couldn't be much of a
rival. They had been very vague about it all, but what they had said suggested that the people with
whom they had then been holding the séances were not of a type to whom they would like intimacies
revealed. This was why they had been dropped. Subsequent experiments en famille à trois had not been
productive, the circle was too small. Hence the welcome accorded to ourselves.
We continued the meetings. If Mrs. Holey felt tired or unfit little happened. This was the case at the next
sitting or two. But one day she announced that she was feeling fit as a fiddle again. Lots would happen,
she hoped. Sparks might now be expected to fly on this shadowy edge of two worlds.

Duly expectant, we settled ourselves in darkness round the table. Mrs. Holey dropped off. Conversation
was monosyllabic, we were too keyed up to chat. The minutes passed, but nothing occurred. Not a jerk.
Not a rap. Father and daughter conferred. Perhaps Mrs. Holey was still off-colour.

An hour passed. We sat wondering what to do. This was the contingency I had speculated upon. Lights
must not be switched on without permission—but suppose there was no permission—no
communication at all?

I was about to raise the point when Holey uttered an exclamation. 'Hst! Do you hear that?'

In the tense silence we detected a faint scratching sound. 'Sounds like a mouse,' I ventured.

'A mouse! Do mice scratch on ceilings?'

We listened again. He was right. The sound came from the ceiling, not the floor. A faint, irregular,
persistent scratching.

'That's writing,' said Holey with conviction.

In the dead silence the little soft noise continued. It was indeed like a pen or pencil on paper. And it was
certainly overhead—sometimes as if it were on the ceiling, sometimes in mid-air.

An interminable time passed. At last the scratching ceased. It was followed by a gentle rustle of paper.
And a moment later, with startling suddenness, something dropped on the table—something small and
light—followed by two clear raps.

In feverish haste Holey jumped up and switched on the light. There, in the middle of the table, lay a little
folded slip.

He picked it up and opened it. Mrs. Holey began to stir, sat up abruptly, watched him studying it.

'A letter? From-

There was no mistaking the anxiety in her voice. But her husband's brow was puckered. He turned the
paper this way and that, looked at the back, tried again.

'I can't make out a thing.'

He passed the paper to his wife. She too examined it without result, and handed it to Gibbes. He also
studied it in vain. 'Neither can I,' he said.

By this time I was ready to tear it out of his hand if Holey hadn't said: 'Let Dukes have a try.'
Shall I ever forget the strange feeling when I first touched that mysterious sheet of paper? Written—by
whose hand? . . . Come ...whence? ... . How? .. . Why?

It was a sheet of rough writing paper of poor quality covered with irregular scrawls in pencil. It was
totally illegible. The scrawling began at the very top, tiny at the start, increasing in size in the middle,
trailing off again in a confused blur at the bottom. Part of the scrawling was over the top of the rest. It
was quite impossible to make head or tail of it.

'Well?' asked Holey. 'Suppose you had been shown that without knowing anything about it what would
you have said?'

I already had an impression. 'I should have said it was someone trying to write, say, with the left hand—
perhaps an injured hand—and in the dark—very unsuccessfully.' Not very helpful, but it was as good a
description as I could give.

'Let's have a drink,' said Holey, relieving the tension.

At the supper table the paper was passed round again. Holey produced a magnifying glass.

'Is there no signature?' Mrs. Holey asked.

The paper was once more handed to me for an unbiased view as the newest member of the circle.
Through the magnifying glass I studied the confused writing at the top and bottom. A few letters
seemed to emerge. In the bottom corner, very small, there appeared to be a single word. It looked as if
it began 'Ed. . . .'

'If I had to guess,' I said, 'I should guess it was the name Edwin or Edward.'

The announcement had an electric effect.

‘Edward"?' asked Holey.

'"Edward"?' said Miss Holey.

'"Edward"?' repeated Mrs. Holey, adding slowly: 'So it is Edward.'

Recalling what Gibbes had told me about a prior communication, supposedly from Mrs. Holey's first
husband, I maintained a discreet silence. After supper we endeavoured to resume the session. But Mrs.
Holey was too exhausted. She could not pass into trance.

But at the next sitting another letter was received, written much quicker and more legibly, enough to
show the language was English. A few words were separately decipherable, though it was impossible to
make sense of the whole. Thereafter with each succeeding séance the messages improved, until after a
time they came with remarkable rapidity. Hardly had Mrs. Holey fallen into her trance when scratching
would be heard in various parts of the room, now apparently on the ceiling, now on the walls, now in
mid-air, sometimes on the table in front of us, and a letter would be deposited accompanied by the
authoritative raps, followed by others as soon as one was read and the sitting resumed. Some of the
writing was also in Spanish. Mrs. Holey said she had lived several years in Spain, and that Edward was a
Spaniard.

To me the communications meant little. To the Holeys they appeared to mean something, references
perhaps to things of which Gibbes and I were ignorant. Moreover some of the letters, closely folded and
with Mrs. Holey's name written on them, remained unread by Gibbes and myself, for Mrs. Holey put
them in her bag and we never saw their contents. Into the darkness Holey projected questions verbally
on matters of interest to him and his family, but whether the answers were satisfactory or not I couldn't
judge. He also asked personal questions, such as: 'Tell us please what you think of Gibbes and Dukes.'
The verdict was to the effect that we were 'good' for the séances, by our presence we helped the
manifestations, and so on. I was told my 'psychic fluid' or whatever it was, mixed well with the others.

Edward was not the only visitant, though for a long time he remained the star performer—master of
ceremonies, as it were. He had several companions of whom the two most prominent were known as
'Incognito' and 'Long Ching' (apparently the denizens of the shadowy world beyond the veil frequently
adopt noms de plume). Their handwriting was quite different from Edward's, their communications
crude and pointless, and their treatment of the table—and eventually of us ourselves—quite
unceremonious. They would jerk it about and thump it on our feet without regard for our feelings, or
amuse themselves by tugging at our chairs; not in any spirit of mischief, Edward assured us
apologetically, but because they were rather like a couple of schoolboy toughs. Some of the written
communications were unsigned, or signed 'Unable to be signed'. The intriguing explanation for this was
that the writer had committed some offence for which he was undergoing punishment 'and was
forbidden to sign his name for a certain time'.

'Perhaps he's "wanted" by the infernal police,' I suggested flippantly, and was duly reproved by Holey
and his daughter. They took the proceedings very seriously.

The most curious of the letters was one in Russian, written so small that we needed a magnifying glass
to read it. It was then found that, though so tiny, all the letters were perfectly formed. This letter had
five signatories: Edward, Long Ching, Andrusha, Carrie, and Nadia Busch. Who Andrusha and Carrie were
(if known) I did not record in my notes, but the name of Nadia Busch was recognized by Miss Holey as
that of a school companion who had died two years earlier. This name was also recognized by the father
of a pupil of mine, Professor Danilevsky of the Academy Of Science, who was interested in psychic
research and to whom I used to give accounts of the séances.

I put to the 'spirits' a number of personal questions on my own behalf, but the replies I got were not
very satisfactory. Once I said 'I have mislaid an important book'—which I described—'can you tell me
where I lost it?’ The answer was: 'We will look for it.' But when I asked at later séances if it had been
found the reply was always 'Not yet', or no answer at all.

One day I said: 'Eighteen months ago there died at Riga a great friend of mine, a Frenchman, Andre de
Lazarec', and I gave particulars of his death; 'I am sure if he could he would like to communicate with
me.' The reply was always that they couldn't find him.
On the whole it seemed to me that our mysterious communicants were more interested in showing off
what they could achieve in the way of phenomena than in entering into serious discussions. The
phenomena were, however, startling. Sounds and noises were produced all over the room; what felt like
cold, soft, spongy fingers slid over our hands or stroked and patted our faces and necks; the most
unexpected solid objects were deposited on the table. Here is an entry from my séance diary dated 6
May 1911: 'Edward wrote that he was bringing a birthday present for Mrs. H. After some time we heard
a clinking of china near the floor on my right, followed by the rustling of paper. This lasted about five
minutes, then suddenly a paper parcel was deposited on Mrs. H.'s hand (holding mine). On permission
being given to make a light, the packet disclosed a beautiful little china cup and saucer, 'Wrapped
carefully in cotton-wool and paper. The accompanying letter from Edward declared that it had been
given to his mother by the King of Spain, who had admired her, and that when she died he (Edward) had
gone and taken some things which she valued, among them this cup and saucer which he now brought
Mrs. H. as a birthday present.'

We were all the recipients of gifts at one time or another. The evening when 'a present for the musician'
(that was me) was announced I heard something placed on the table in front of me and found it was a
curiously worked old bronze stamp box, the sort one might pick up in an antique shop. I kept postage
stamps in it for some years until I lost it with other possessions in the revolution.

We were not allowed to keep all the objects that appeared. An amusing instance was that of coins. A
large number of antique coins were dropped on the table with a clatter. An accompanying message said
we might handle them during supper, but only on the strict understanding that when the session was
resumed they should be replaced on the table to be returned whence they had come. The reason given
for this attitude to the currency question was that 'the old man with the coins' (whoever he was) was a
'miser'. He liked to show off his collection, but it was all he possessed and he refused to part with it.
Accordingly Holey conscientiously gathered together all the coins—as he thought—and put them back in
the middle of the table before turning out the light. But I had slipped a couple of them into my pocket
just to see what would happen. We heard the coins being shifted in the darkness. There came an
ominous pause. All at once the table made several sharp lunges at me, I felt my chair being tugged at,
and Mrs. Holey groaned in her trance. Genuinely frightened, I restored the missing coins from my pocket
with a feeble excuse about an 'unintentional oversight'! The incident was forgiven, but I was careful not
to try any more pranks, and eventually after many requests we were each presented with a single coin
as a mark of favour. Mine was a five-copeck piece of the reign of Nicolas I, and I kept it in the stamp box
as long as it was in my possession.

Other things deposited and left were some plants in pots, as well as a miscellany of trivial objects. The
room was also scented with various perfumes. When this happened a gentle but quite perceptible
draught of wind was wafted across the table from Mrs. Holey's corner, bearing the perfume. Once a
letter announced that something special was to be performed 'for the musician'. Close to my ear, faintly
at first but growing louder, I heard a little jangling sound like a musical box. In turn it was played near
each of us, then seemed to float off into mid-air. This was followed by the blowing of a whistle, also in
mid-air. It seemed to be a difficult feat, for the effect was that of somebody blowing who had hardly any
breath. Then came the playing of a guitar. Of this I noted in my diary: 'It was apparently played on my
knee, for I felt the pressure on my knee, and the sound appeared to come also just from my knee, but,
especially, every time the sound came made by fingers being drawn across the strings I felt a
corresponding movement along the underside of my sleeve.' In the end a weird orchestra was in full
swi1g, consisting of the jangling musical box and guitar and, the whistle performing all together, to the
accompaniment at some distance from the table of the tinkling of vases on the dresser which sounded
as if they were being rattled with pencils or spoons. An eerie orchestra indeed!

Not all the phenomena were so entertaining. Less pleasant was the emergence from Mrs. Holey of the
cold arm and spongy fingers that stretched across the table and fondled our skin and were sometimes
substantial enough to poke us in the chest or back. Miss Holey disliked these attentions so much that
when the stealthy shadowy, limb touched her she made a sudden gesture to ward it off, receiving a
sound smack on the cheek in return. Whatever these peculiar materializations were they objected
strongly to being tampered with. The slightest attempt resulted in such incidents. The mysterious
emanation was withdrawn and laboured groans were emitted by the unconscious Mrs. Holey.

Except in such cases, which seemed to cause her headache or other discomfort, Mrs. Holey was
apparently unaffected by what took place while she was in trance. She showed afterwards a childlike
pleasure in the objects which had so mysteriously appeared, and listened with delight to our accounts of
the other phenomena, proudly conscious that she was responsible for them. But her chief interest
always lay in the letters from Edward. Allowing that these may possibly have had meaning for her, the
thing that struck me most about the séances was their general futility as far as the rest of what
happened was concerned. I wanted something a little more serious from contact with 'the other world'
than nursery tricks and roguish pranks. I voiced my mind to Gibbes, who entirely agreed with me, but we
said nothing to the Holeys lest we hurt their feelings.

When summer came we interrupted the séances, and when we resumed them after a few months'
interval they took a new turn. It didn't take long to 'generate the psychic fluid' or whatever it is that is
generated in spiritistic practices, but the supremacy of Edward's control was not restored.

The first symptoms of disorder were broken context in the letters and sudden alterations in handwriting
and language. The interpolations were critical of Edward, so we gathered that he was having trouble
with competitors who, as it were, wanted to butt in. Now and then he would succeed in reasserting his
dominion: Mrs. Holey was his preserve, he was her 'control' or 'guide' or whatever the term is, and,
though he seemed to require help in the production of phenomena he wasn't going to let anyone else
boss the proceedings or circumvent his censorship of the correspondence. On our side of the veil we
naturally supported Edward, who was now an old friend whom we all knew. We applauded his efforts
and did all we could by vocal encouragement to back him up. His difficulties seemed to increase for all
that. Repeatedly he warned us against a certain 'Three Xs', who he said was an enemy. No explanation
was given as to who this strange newcomer was (or had been) or why he was so designated. As I have
remarked, nicknames appear common in those spheres. All we could infer was that he was some unruly
fellow, a sort of spectral gangster, who was definitely bent on mischief, so we were warned, against
Mrs. Holey personally, though for what reason was never explained.
The interventions of this objectionable entity took the form of very disorderly antics on the part of the
table, much worse than the pranks of Incognito and Long Ching. After a prolonged period of inactivity,
during which we could but speculate as to what was going on beyond the veil, the table would vibrate
convulsively, or lunge at one of us, or stamp violently on our feet. These manifestations usually subsided
as abruptly as they appeared. Then Holey would ask 'Was that "Three Xs " '—and the affirmative raps
would sound. 'Shall we break up?' One rap. 'Shall we wait?' Two raps. And a letter would drop after a
while, giving us to understand that a tough tussle had been taking place to get the better of the
unspeakable 'Three Xs' and push him out of the way. There was something indescribably eerie and
fantastic, something monstrous, about these invisible contests going on about us, around us, in us,
through us, in which we could take no part though we might well become victims. We were like blind
men in the front row at a prize fight where the contestants and seconds get out of hand and start a free-
for-all.

Is it surprising that we began to forgather at our séances with some misgiving? True, Edward wrote after
a time that he had the situation in hand—that he and his friends had in some way outwitted 'Three Xs'—
but it became evident that that turbulent spirit did not accept his defeat lying down. Apparently, like the
devil in the Bible, he went off and collected seven others worse than himself, who formed a gang and
plotted to storm the Holey fortress. Incidents multiplied. The table sometimes became unmanageable,
our chairs were tugged and jerked from beneath, us in an alarming manner. We stopped the séances for
a time to let things calm down, debating as to the wisdom of pursuing them, the more so as they were
proving very tiring to Mrs. Holey. Though she was unaware of what happened until she was told
afterwards, the effects on her were noticeable. Yet it was she herself who insisted upon our resuming
them. Her faith in Edward was profound. She declared that her mediumistic powers were by now so
developed that she was beginning to receive messages from him when quite alone—in what way was
not clear. To achieve this private link seemed to be a fixed ambition on her part.

So we forgathered once more. And this is what occurred as I recorded it in my diary at the time. We sat
as usual, the lights were put out, Mrs. Holey dropped off. We waited, not without anxiety, for an
interminable time. It seemed as if nothing at all was going to happen. I was relieved. Then, all at once,
without any warning, Mrs. Holey's hand was wrenched from mine, and the next thing I was conscious of
was that she had been thrown or dragged on to my right shoulder. I could feel the weight of her body
pressing heavily on me. Something was violently pulling her by the arm behind my chair. She had
apparently come out of her trance, for she was giving vent to a combination of shrieks and groans into
my ear. Gibbes called out: 'Turn on the light! ' But from his seat Holey cried: 'No, no, not before
permission is given -it might kill her!' Miss Holey, on my left, was having hysterics. Meanwhile Mrs.
Holey was being pulled harder and harder on to my shoulder—she could not be dragged past me
without dislodging me because the space between my chair and the wall was too narrow. I managed to
disengage my right hand and pass it along her extended arm behind my chair. When I reached her wrist
my hand encountered something—what, I do not know, and I suppose I shall never know. But whatever
it was it released its grip, and Mrs. Holey fell back into her chair. I called out: 'Turn on the light! Gibbes
sprang to the switch. We found Mrs. Holey in a dead swoon. Her husband and daughter were still
trembling in their seats in a state of panic.
'Brandy—quickly!’

Mrs. Holey slowly came to her senses. We examined her wrist. On it were several marks, red, turning
bluish. There was no mistaking the marks. We looked up at one another, perplexed and rather terrified,
reluctant to utter the words—then uttered them all together: 'Fingers! Nailmarks!’

The arm was swelling and Mrs. Holey complained of the pain. Husband and daughter took her oil to put
her to bed.

But Holey hurried back with an insistent question. 'I've looked at her wrist again—what, precisely, was it
you felt when you passed your hand down her arm?'

I could only repeat that my hand to the best of my belief had touched something—what, I couldn't
possibly say—something that immediately let go.

He turned to Gibbes, 'What would you say made those marks?'

'I should have said fingers,' said Gibbes, 'didn't you say the same?' But noticing a peculiar look in Holey's
face: 'Why? Have you another theory?'

Holey held up one hand, crooking his fingers, stiffly, menacingly. 'Or—claws? '

The mystery remained unsolved. We never sat again.

CHAPTER FIVE

Another Kind of Spirits

I MUST MENTION in parenthesis that during the latter part of my student days and up to the outbreak of
the revolution my life was secretly dominated by a remarkable and very beautiful woman whom I shall
call simply Vera, a relative of a family to which I was attached as tutor to the children. She sprang from
an ancient line and her youthful marriage had been one of convenience to a man who turned out to be a
confirmed drunkard. She never actually quit her debauched and degenerate husband—out of pity more
than anything else—but it was many years since they had lived together. She was fifteen years older
than I, but I was never conscious of the difference in age.

Vera was the most beautiful creature I have ever seen, with perfectly formed, classic features, green-
grey eyes, sensuous but delicate lips, and a wealth of red hair so profuse that, though she was above
medium height, when let down it reached the ground. Across a crowded room where, I was meeting
everybody for the first time, I saw those extraordinary eyes fixed on me, quietly, questioningly. For a
moment I stared, then turned away out of shyness. I might not have admitted it, but in my heart I must
have known at once that my fate was sealed. I found myself edging here and there to catch another
glimpse, if possible without her noticing it and without approaching nearer, only to encounter
repeatedly that quiet, unsmiling face whose eyes said so much. Yet when I was formally introduced she
gave no sign whatever, and it was in a forest hundreds of miles away, while staying at the same country
house, that we first met alone and walked side by side until our hands touched and I felt her trembling
with the same tremors that seized me.

She was inordinately passionate and possessive. For many reasons our liaison had to be secret, our
meetings were clandestine and not easy to arrange, especially in to for she had many admirers who
watched her like lynxes. She played cat-and-mouse with them, and their mutual hatreds and jealousies
were in some measure a protection. Little did they suspect where lay the choice of their seemingly frigid
and unresponsive idol. The extreme conspiratorial aspect of the affair, though often exasperating to
both of us, lent it a zest which simultaneously poisoned and enhanced its delights. In the circumstances
the poison was akin to nectar, so that while we chafed we laughed. Such relations cannot be maintained
without accomplices, and we owed much to her faithful German housekeeper.

Vera exerted a powerful influence on my sensitive and malleable nature, and it is impossible to record
the events of that formative period without occasional reference to her and the complications that
arose as the result of her attitude towards activities in which she could not participate. Indeed, to be
strictly accurate I should have to interpolate with tedious frequency that I hesitated to do this or that
because of Vera, or that I did such-and-such in spite of Vera., For as my interests widened she became
jealous of my broadening life. In early days when intensive musical studies and English tutoring were my
main occupations it was not difficult to satisfy her devouring curiosity regarding the details of my
existence; the Holey séances also had begun before I met her, and to my first accounts of them she
listened with fascination. But after a time I began to detect a note of irritation at my absorption. In the
unserious, amateurish way characteristic of so many of the idly curious she herself dabbled in the
subject with friends of hers who indulged in experiments in table-rapping and automatic writing that
were so absurdly childish and fraudulent that I could not conceal my impatience. It was my thinly veiled
sarcasm, and the coincidence of one of my séances with an evening she had wanted me to spend with
her, that led to her first furious outburst.

'You fool! You're just being taken in like a babe! And how do I know you haven't got your eye on that
precious Miss Holey?'

She was magnificent and terrifying in her scorn. The shot about Miss Holey was merely a barb which I
knew she didn't mean, yet the idea of my ogling the podgy Miss Holey with ulterior designs was so funny
that I burst into laughter, which, of course, didn't help the situation. It was the first of many tempests.
She always calmed down after them, but I found them very wearing, and inevitably had recourse to
prevarication to evade them. I let her think my interest in spiritism was waning, and invented other
occupations for the nights when I had actually been at the Holeys.

It was not Vera who 'cured' me—if that is the correct term—of what had been for a time an absorbing
interest in the subject of spiritism. It was a new discovery which gave me another outlook on the matter,
and incidentally led to further scenes as soon as I threw myself into it deeply. The new interest also
concerned 'spirits', but of a very different order indeed. Vera said to me one day: 'Let's go to one of
those demonstrations of hypnotism being given at the Basseiny Hall.' Accordingly a little party was
formed, consisting of Vera and myself and one or two of those friends of hers who did the table-rapping.
I had little respect for their opinions, but was curious to see the hypnotic demonstrations about which
there had been a good deal of publicity.

The professional hypnotist who was giving them was dressed for the part in a long black coat with black
stock cravat in harmony with a shock of black hair and a neat black moustache. His manner was precise,
his air self-confident. The proceedings followed the usual course of such performances. After a
preliminary lecture he invited volunteers from the audience as subjects for experiment. Several people
offered themselves, both men and women. He hypnotized them by making passes or telling them to fix
their eyes on a bright object, and then proceeded to make them act in the most absurd ways, such as
believing a tennis ball to be an apple and declaring how nice it tasted, or a handkerchief to be a
newspaper and studiously reading it, or depriving them of the power to speak or move a limb, or making
them flap their arms thinking they were birds, or crawl about on all fours imagining themselves to be
quadrupeds. It was diverting, but not very uplifting. It was indeed rather repellent. Even our friends
thought it undignified and refused to offer themselves for experimentation.

On the way out a conversation arose regarding a certain 'healer' they had heard of, referred to as the
'Lion', who was reputed to cure by hypnotism. One of them said: 'They say the Lion can do all that too,
but he doesn't make fools of people, he cures their illnesses.' And further: 'The doctors say he is a
charlatan, of course, and try to prevent his practicing.' I paid no particular attention, especially as the
miraculous Lion, whoever he was, was also reported to 'evoke spirits'. I had visions of a weird magician
chanting incantations and conjuring swarms of 'Three Xs' out of an Aladdin's lamp. I had had quite
enough of 'Three Xs'!

But I was destined to meet the 'Lion' and find him very different from the professional whose
demonstration I had attended, and very different from the picture I had conjured up from my friends'
chatter. The encounter came about accidentally, in rather curious fashion.

At one of the houses where I was engaged as tutor, behold me seated at a piano, at the side of a good-
looking and intelligent pupil of twelve. He showed signs of musical ability, and I was putting him through
his paces with an easy Bach courante. Teaching him English as well as music, I addressed my injunctions
in English with Russian explanations when required. Propped against the piano were a pair of crutches,
for Serge was a cripple with one leg paralyzed by an accident. But he could manipulate the right pedal, it
was the left leg that was lifeless.

His parents had been trying to get him cured, and bevies of specialists had, been consulted at much
expense. All in vain. Quite incongruously the boy's mother fell back on (of all things) patent medicines,
with which she soused him at frequent intervals throughout the day. To my astonishment Serge
remained alive. I liked him anyway for his intelligence—now I respected his physique. But, of course, he
began to wilt.

His mother appealed to me. 'Pavel Paviovitch, don't you know anybody who could help?'
But how should I know? I didn't believe in her patent nostrums but I had no authority to support my
criticism. As far as I myself was concerned I took a pill for my insides when needed, and an aspirin at
night if I had been overworking, or thinking too much about 'Three Xs', or had a row with Vera, but
that's all I then knew about medicine. I was cold comfort.

One day at the tea-table there was a discussion. Papa and mama were talking about somebody they had
heard of who seemed to enjoy a questionable reputation. In a derisive tone papa used all unusual
Russian word which I didn't know—znakhar. I looked it up in the dictionary afterwards and found it
meant ' charlatan, sorcerer, mountebank, quack'. I pricked up my ears next day—they were still
discussing the 'quack'. Mama said it would get them in wrong with the family doctor if they called in the
quack to treat Serge. Besides, So-and-so had said he was certainly a mountebank, and So-and-so is a
privy councilor. Hmm. Serge's papa was an aspiring civil servant who hoped one day to be a privy
councilor himself—he was that kind of person. He said heavily: 'Da.' And again: 'Da.' (Da only means Yes,
but you can't possibly say Yes like Russians say Da.) 'And yet,' he added hopefully, 'they say he was an
officer in the army for years. That means something.' 'Besides,' pursued mama with comical naïveté, 'if
he were a mountebank how could he charge such fees? Twice as much as Doctor So-and-so, and he's a
specialist! ' 'Da,' said papa. The point about the fees was even more impressive than the army career.

Serge listened indifferently. He was making wry faces at me across, the table because I had refused to
ask his mother to let him off his tea-time tablespoonful out of the nasty bottle that stood threateningly
beside his plate.

Mama and papa went on arguing. They couldn't make up their minds. 'What do you think, Pavel
Paviovitch?' mama appealed to me again, longing for anyone to give a responsible opinion except
herself. Of course, in those circumstances I was all for the mountebank, but didn't like to say so in so
many words. I already guessed it might be the mysterious Lion whose fame was spreading. I ventured
cautiously : 'If you are sure all else has failed, perhaps - '. Just enough, I hoped, to tip the scale without
committing myself.

In the end they decided to invite the 'quack'. I asked if I might meet him. Mama was only too pleased.
She couldn't quite reconcile herself to the situation and was glad to leave as much as possible of the
dealings to someone else. Accordingly I arranged to be present when he came, and was introduced.

'Lev Lvovitch,' she said to him, 'this is Serge's tutor who teaches him English and music.'

Lev Lvovitch was a man of medium height, well formed and erect, greying hair and moustache, keen
blue eyes beneath shaggy brows, wearing riding breeches and boots and a black tunic of military cut but
with black buttons and without shoulder-straps.

He greeted me affably. 'How is your pupil to-day? Thoroughly mischievous, I hope '—and seeing mama
bristle because she had strict notions of propriety—'all children should be mischievous, madam, there's
something wrong with them if they aren't.'

'Perhaps you'll take Lev Lvovitch into the music room, Pave! Pavlovitch,' said mama rather stiffly.
I caught a look in the eye of the 'quack'. I understood it, and he saw that I understood. A bond of
sympathy was established between us.

'Be so kind,' he said.

Serge was still at the piano. The 'quack' approached from behind on tiptoe and covered the boy's eyes
with his hands.

‘Who is it?’

'I don't know,' said Serge, sitting still.

'Guess. Big man? Little man? Fat man? Thin man? White man, yellow man, black man, green man? '

Serge giggled. 'Nice man,' he said without moving.

The quack' removed his fingers and held out his hand. 'Good afternoon,' he said.

'Good afternoon,' said Serge, shaking hands. 'What's your name?'

'Serge.'

‘And I'm called Lev—'(which besides being a Christian name also means lion) '—because I roar like one.'

'You don't,' protested Serge.

'I can though. Would you like me to?'

'Yes.'

Whereupon the Lion opened his jaws and roared—realistically enough to bring the horrified face of
Serge's mama to the doorway. But neither of them noticed her. The Lion was too busy roaring

And Serge too busy laughing. I ran over to reassure her and she withdrew, though with grave misgiving.

'I bet you can't play that piece," said the Lion, pointing at the music on the piano.

'I can,' said Serge with assurance.

'Have a bet on it? How much?'

Serge weighed the matter.

'Look here,' said the Lion, sitting down. 'We'll have a sort of bet. If you can play that piece, I'll make your
bad leg move. All right?'

'Can you?' said Serge, wide-eyed.

'Yes,' said the Lion, 'if you can play that piece.'
(Of course, I said to myself, he knows he can play it because he heard him from the other room.)

Very solemnly Serge played it through from start to finish. 'Very, very good,' said the Lion. 'Now I must
keep my part of the bargain.'

Serge made a gesture towards his crutches, but Lev Lvovitch stopped him. 'No, no, the piano stool will
do,' he said, swinging it round. The boy sat, back to the piano, his right leg bent, his left stiffly extended.

The 'quack' pulled off the stocking and looked at the leg, taking the bare knee in his hands and stroking
it. 'All around us,' he said, in a rich, suddenly serious voice, 'in the air, in this room, and close to us now
though we can't see them, are good spirits, friendly spirits, trying to help us.'

I gave a start. Spirits? I still thought of 'Three Xs'.

'Are there?' said Serge.

'Yes. I can feel them coming closer and closer.'

Cupping the knee in his palms he began to chant in a low, singing tone. 'Good spirits, come and help.
You must help. You will help. Serge's knee must move—it must shake—vibrate!’

He continued his invocations in a voice that gradually grew louder and more authoritative. In a few
moments he was no longer inviting or appealing, he was commanding, addressing his orders to the knee
as if it were alive and could hear.

'Move! Move!'

Repeatedly he passed his hands up and down the paralyzed limb, every now and then cupping the knee
and shaking it gently. After a while he got up. 'They are working on it now, little son. They are working
inside it, and when the right moment comes your knee will move.'

He went to the window, lit a cigarette, and looked out into the street.

I sat still and waited. Serge looked up at me and smiled. In the timeless moments of silent waiting,
disturbed only by the sound of a vehicle now and then passing in the street below, an atmosphere of
extraordinary power seemed to grow, warm and penetrating.

'Lev! Lev Lvovitch!'

He turned. The boy was staring hard at his knee.

'Well?'

'I can feel something!’

The Lion squashed his cigarette and came back to his patient. 'Of course,' he said, as if it were the most
natural thing in the world. 'What did I tell you?'
He knelt again and looked closely at the knee. 'What is it you feel?

'A sort of tingling—inside.'

'Of course,' he said again. Then, abruptly and in a loud voice: 'Shake! Vibrate!’

The boy shivered and his eyes opened wide. 'It shook!'

'Didn't I say it would?' The Lion continued to look fixedly at the limb. 'It will again—it must—it can't help
it-, Go on vibrate—vibrate!’

Again the leg jerked slightly, rather as one's limbs do sometimes between waking and sleeping. The
spasm was repeated at short intervals.

'I feel tired, Lev Lvovitch.'

'Enough, then.' The Lion took the knee in his hands again and bent over it, muttering something I
couldn't catch. 'That's all for to-day,' he said finally, helping the boy on with his stocking. 'Next time it
will shake more. And in a few weeks we'll have you skipping!'

Same proceeding at each visit, beginning by making the boy laugh. The adventures of a fly in a snoring
man's mouth or an ant in a fat man's pants were subjects that appealed to them both. He brought funny
pictures and comic toys. And at each treatment the leg loosened more and more. Sometimes the boy's
whole frame vibrated, quivering like a leaf in the wind. The child had no control over the movement. It
started of its own accord, always quite suddenly, and he was powerless to stop it. In a few days the boy
limped without crutches, and the Lion suggested that from now on Serge should go to his house.

As he went out he said to me: 'Would you like to bring him yourself? The boy likes you, and I would
prefer not to have his parents—I think you understand why. Let him walk. It's not far.'

It was the furthest the boy had walked since his accident, but he hobbled along bravely, even down one
flight of stairs and up another.

Several people were seated round the walls of the room into which we were shown by a young lady
secretary who wrote our names at a table in the hall. I planted my ward in a vacant chair and looked
round. The people were mostly of the poorer class: Some of them were chatting one or two sat silent.
Shortly after our arrival a man entered carrying a boy of about Serge's age on his back. They were
greeted by those present, who had evidently seen them before.

Peculiar sounds emanated from behind the closed doors of a neighbouring room. The Lion's resonant
voice could be heard saying: 'Go on—more—more!' In response to his promptings there were noises
that might be taken for sighing or groaning if they hadn't been accompanied by laughter. Someone in
our room laughed too and said: 'There they go.'
A little woman dressed neatly in black sitting next to me asked what was the matter with Serge. I told
her and she said, jerking her head towards the neighbouring room: 'He'll cure him. He's a miracle
worker. Christ sent him—that's what we all think.'

'Has he helped you?'

'My dove, after three doctors could do nothing he stopped my pains at once. He's told me if I come ten
times I shall never have them again.'

'Can you afford it?' I was thinking of the fee the Lion charged Serge's parents.

She looked surprised. 'He doesn't charge anything. Didn't you know? You just put what you like in a box
at the door. Some can't afford to put anything. It doesn't make any difference.'

The door opened and the Lion appeared. He looked round and said in a tone of feigned severity: 'What's
this mean? Have you come to a funeral? Why do you wait for me before you begin work?' He nodded to
Serge and me, and went on: 'Well? What about it? Now! All together!’

An astonishing scene ensued. Rather shamefacedly everyone began to yawn and giggle, but when the
Lion said 'All together' they yawned more daringly—brazenly, one might say—stretching their arms
overhead, and either yawning naturally or doing their best to simulate, ending their efforts with
spontaneous laughter.

To say that I was taken aback by this strange spectacle would be putting it mildly. But I realized at once
that both the laughter and the stretching and yawning were designed for a purpose—to break down any
stiffness or embarrassment the patients might feel in each other's company or that of strangers, and to
put everyone at their ease. It certainly achieved this purpose, for the laughter was infectious. When I
had got over my astonishment I joined in heartily with the rest. Serge, too, was busily imitating the
others. 'Stretch yourself, little son,’ urged the Lion. 'Like this '—and he stretched his arms overhead and
opened his mouth in a gaping yawn, bursting into merry laughter at the end of it. 'Doesn't it make you
feel good?'

'Oh yes,' exclaimed Serge with tears in his eyes.

The Lion allowed the merriment to continue for a few moments, then said to Serge: 'Watch me now. I'll
do this other boy first. He's got a leg like yours, only worse. One leg was shorter than the other, but the
good spirits are making it grow.'

An atmosphere of carefree gaiety had been created, and this feeling remained, though voices subsided
as treatment began. The boy who had been carried in after us was sitting on a chair in the middle of the
room, still chuckling. The Lion knelt on the floor before him and began to stroke and pat him from head
to foot.

'Have you prayed night and morning as I told you to? Have you asked the good spirits to help?'

'Yes, I have.'
The Lion said something in a low voice, then sat back on his heels as I had seen him do with Serge. 'The
good spirits will come and help. You will shake. It will begin the moment it has to.'

He got up, leaving the boy sitting quite still, and asked the woman sitting next to me how she was. She
leant forward and whispered.

'Just go into the next room,' he said.

He turned to the next patient, a working man. 'With you it's indigestion. Is it any better?'

'Not yet.'

'It will be. Have you laughed as much as I told you to?'

'I've tried.'

'Laugh more. Laugh at yourself trying to laugh. Isn't that funny enough? Do it in a mirror.'

There was a broken exclamation from the boy in the middle of the room. 'It's b-b-beginning!'

The lad was quivering from head to foot so that he had to hold on to the chair.

'Spirits working,' said the Lion in a matter-of-fact tone, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
'Let them work.'

He turned to the next patient, leaving the boy to shake in his chair. Soon another woman was sitting
with an arm outstretched, and a man with a leg extended, both quivering in the same way. 'You call, it
rheumatism,' he was saying to them, 'but I'm telling you it's evil spirits; and the shaking, that's the good
spirits fighting to throw them out.'

'I'm—g-g-getting t-t-tired,' stammered the boy, quaking in his chair, red in the face and perspiring.

'All right. Shtob perestalo—let it stop!' the Lion turned and called loudly and commandingly from where
he was kneeling in front of another patient. The movement ceased at once. The boy sank back in his
chair, exhausted.

'Rest a bit.' The boy's eyes closed. He apparently fell asleep immediately.

When all the other patients had been treated Lev Lvovitch came to Serge. 'Now it's your turn, little son.'

It was very quiet in the room by contrast with the boisterous opening. The Lion knelt in front of my ward
and stroked him, and the child shook as he had done at home—as the other boy had done —and
dropped off into a coma when the vibrations were ordered to cease.

Lev Lvovitch turned to me. 'What do you think of it?'

I said I thought it very extraordinary and that there were many questions I wanted to ask.
'Come back when you have taken your pupil home,' he said. 'Let him sleep fifteen minutes now, then
wake him up like this 'and he pressed my wrist, stopping the pulse. 'Au revoir '—and he went into the
next room.

In fifteen minutes I pressed the boy's pulse as instructed. He opened his eyes. We went out quietly,
leaving the remaining patients still dozing in their chairs.

When I returned an hour later I was shown into the dining-room, where I found Lev Lvovitch having tea.
With him were the secretary who had marshaled the patients, another young lady serving the samovar,
and a young man in student uniform, whom the Lion introduced as his niece and nephew.

I wanted to bombard him with questions, and not knowing where to begin plunged in bluntly: 'It seems
to me like a miracle. What is the secret behind it?’

He was clearly amused by the question, and replied provocatively (as I soon discovered was his manner):
'You call it a miracle? Isn't everything in the world a miracle? Have some tea and cake—in an hour it will
be talking. Aren't you and I what was yesterday in the grocer's shop? Isn't that a miracle? Why look
further for miracles?’

I tried another approach. Having in mind the biblical phrase 'Virtue is gone out of me', I asked if it took
much energy to give the treatments.

To my surprise he answered: 'None at all. The good spirits do all the work.'

'Where are the good spirits?'

'Everywhere—all around us—in us. . . . Like the evil spirits, too, of course,' he added waggishly.

I was not to be put off. 'All mixed up?’ I persisted.

'Yes.'

'Then how do you pick out the good ones from the bad?'

'You've got to know how to call them out.'

His secretary announced that another patient was waiting. 'Count So-and-so.'

'He's a court chamberlain,', observed, the Lion, adding with a touch of sarcasm: 'The noble Count
doesn't like to mix with the herd and insists on private treatments, although I've told him that private
treatment always takes longer. I'll let him wait. Let's have a little music. Andrusha, my nephew here, has
brought his violin. Would you like to do something together?'

He led the way into a sitting-room where there was a piano. His nephew played quite well, and while we
did two or three pieces the Lion sat back in a chair with his eyes shut. When he got up to go to the court
chamberlain I jumped up and said: 'May I see this patient treated too?’
He hesitated. 'Hm. . . . He wouldn't like it. . . .' But after a moment: 'Well . . . all right . . . come along. But
you must be as quiet as a mouse.' -

'Another paralytic?'

'No. A toper. Wants to be cured of his drunken habits.'

No wonder the court chamberlain didn't like to have an audience. Still, the Lion led the way to the room
next the one I had been in the afternoon. In him, I felt, there was a certain boyish, kindly mischievous
streak that enjoyed anything in the nature of a prank. As he opened the door I saw a screen just inside.
He put his fingers to his lips and motioned me to slip behind it. I did so, and stood there like a statue.
Through the chink of the screen, I could see a man of about forty-five, with heavy features, lying on a
couch, dozing.

The Lion roused him. 'Good day, Vasili Ivanitch. How are you?'

The man opened his eyes. 'Better, thanks, Lev Lvovitch. I heard music and dropped off.'

The thought occurred to me that the Lion had deliberately made us play for that purpose. His handling
of this patient was very different from those of the afternoon. He made him close his eyes, and in a soft,
soothing voice, rather like cooing, put him to sleep again. During sleep, by suggestion conveyed in varied
tones, and speaking as if to a child, he imparted a horror of alcohol. I heard no invocation of spirits—at
least not audibly. But the sound of his voice had a potent effect even on me, listening wide awake
behind the screen, for he manipulated it as an artist mixes his colours and selects his brushes, to
produce specific effects. He began by whispering in his patient's ear, gradually raising his voice and
changing the tone from time to time with dramatic abruptness, now commanding with authority, now
softly assuring, with pauses superbly timed. After about fifteen minutes he got up, left his patient
asleep, and beckoned me out of the room.

'More music?' he whispered, making playing motions with his fingers in the air and leaving the door ajar.
'Something melodious.'

His nephew and I tuned up again. While we played I heard the Lion's voice coming in little resonant
bursts from a further room. He was evidently treating other patients but had left the doors ajar. I asked
Andrusha if he often played for the treatments, but he replied: 'It's the first time. I expect he's trying it
out.'

Andrusha said the Lion had a good many clients among society people, but they came surreptitiously,
and wouldn't join the crowd. The Lion charged them very high fees, and sometimes refused to take
them at all, but he treated the poor for nothing.

It was about nine o'clock when the last patient left and I prepared to go. But the Lion wouldn't hear of
my leaving. As we sat down to supper several friends came in, among them a doctor, a podgy little
fellow, jovial and lively. The Lion was full of anecdotes about doctors who had tried to prevent his
practicing, and others who had tried to trip him up. 'Look at Ivan Stepanich,' he said, pointing at the
podgy doctor, 'he's only a spy! Comes here to report all my evil doings to the medical fraternity!

Ivan Stepanich laughed as heartily as the rest. . He was, as a matter of fact, a warm admirer—one of the
few in his profession.

To my many questions the Lion sometimes gave direct but more often evasive answers. For instance, he
kept putting me off every time I asked: 'What really made Serge's leg vibrate?' There was a queer oddity
in some of the things he said. When I asked if he could cure all complaints he replied that he could cure
nothing that was already dead—' and more people are walking about dead and rotten than you would
believe.' Again: 'The number of people who don't want to be healed but merely treated is legion—
doctors would starve without them.' And again: 'I can help nobody whom I cannot turn into a child.' And
when I asked for explanation—'Don't you know the saying, "Except you turn and become as little
children you cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven"? I can only take people as far as the gates of the
kingdom of heaven. When they peep in they get cured. That's why I make them laugh. Then they forget
for a moment who they are and become children again. Every child stands at the gates of the kingdom
of heaven until parents or teachers drag it away.' And further: 'There are many gates, as there are many
mansions. I just prefer the gate of good humour.'

'You didn't make the court chamberlain laugh,' I reminded him, and you didn't invoke the spirits.'

He replied: 'You are observant, but I'll make even the court chamberlain laugh one day when I catch him
off his guard. And as for the spirits, there is more than one way to invoke them.'

The guests left one by one and still the Lion wouldn't let me go.

‘We are going to have some more music,' he insisted.

At last, after midnight no one remained but his nephew and me. Andrusha became ambitious and we
played the first movement of the Mendelssohn concerto. The Lion was enthusiastic. 'Bravo, bravo! The
fingers are obedient.' And turning suddenly to me he said:

'You see Serge's leg was only on strike.'

'On strike?' I couldn't understand what he was getting at.

'On strike,' he repeated.,

'Like a worker in a factory?'

'Yes—or a rebellious member of a family.'

It was a novel idea which took some getting used to.

‘Think of it this way'—and he launched into a picturesque presentation of the human body as
constituting a family of members, each possessing its own personality, consciousness, and even
conscience. If the link between any member and the rest becomes deranged—as in Serge's case had
happened as the result of his accident—then the part-personality may go off on a tack of its own.

'Either it does nothing—that's what the doctors call paralysis—or what it does is not in the family
interest. It has to be brought back into the fold.'

'How?'

'Well, how would you deal with strikers'?'

'Force them back?'

'The very worst thing you could do. Don't you know the proverb, V chuzhoi monastir s svoim ustavom
nie vkhodish?' (which means,'When you visit another monastery than your own you don't insist on
introducing your rules').

'How then?'

'Don't you send someone to reason with them? I call in the good spirits.'

'Could anyone call them in?'

'If they learn the call. But that's not so easy.' He became rather metaphysical. You must find the right
approach to them, he said, and the right approach lies in the kind of sound you make—with your
voice—and sometimes other kinds of sound.

'Do you mean you, so to speak, pronounce "charms ", or weave spells "?

‘If you like to put it that way.'

'Isn't that sorcery?'

'Call it what you like—the name doesn't matter.'

Sorcerers usually had a bad name, I observed.

He readily agreed. ‘Of course. The priests and politicians saw to that. In the old days they always burnt
sorcerers out of spite, just as the frock-coated pundits would do with me to-day if they could.'

‘But the sorcerers called up evil spirits,' I argued.

'That's what the priests and politicians said. And, of course, there were bad sorcerers as well as good
ones, just as in any profession. The good sorcerers called up good spirits, as I do, but the priests and
politicians persecuted them just the same.'

With every mention of the word 'spirits' I itched to ask him what he thought of spiritualist spirits. I told
him of the séances at the Holeys' and how they had ended. He listened attentively, and when I asked if
in his opinion the phenomena were really produced by disembodied spirits, as commonly meant by the
term, he replied:

'Perhaps—and perhaps there is another explanation. What you have to ask yourself is, how much does
it matter to you? And to answer that, I would advise you to recall what Jesus said to the man who
wanted to bury his father: "Leave the dead to bury their dead." If that was how Jesus felt about the
freshly dead, even when it was the man's own father, is it likely he would ever have bothered with the
stale?’

This certainly was a point of view as striking as it was unexpected. Nevertheless I argued that Jesus had
taken the trouble to raise Lazarus, and the official's dead daughter.

‘Were they dead?' he replied. 'Perhaps Jesus knew more about cataleptic conditions than his
contemporaries.'

I left the Lion's house in the small hours of the morning. Andrusha walked part of the way with me.
When I asked him how long his uncle had been practicing he said that when Lev Lvovitch had been on
military service in Central Asia he had fallen victim to an obscure malady from which he had been cured
by the medicine men of some nomadic tribe. He himself sometimes said he had 'died', then' come back',
and when he came back it was with the mission to heal the sick as he had himself been healed.

'Everybody must want to bombard him with questions,' I said. 'Does he always answer readily?'

'I have never heard him open up so much in my life,' Andrusha replied. 'I wish I could understand half of
what he says.'

But I felt I had begun to understand. At least I had a new angle on the 'stale dead': both those that tilted
tables, pretending to be dead; and those that walked on earth, pretending to be alive.

That was not the last of our talks about spiritualist 'spirits '. I gathered that he did not deny the
continuity of personality in some form after death, but he put a very different interpretation on it from
that adopted by most spiritualists I had met then or have met since. His reasoning, as I noted it down at
the time, was something like this: 'The psychic world is as proper a field for scientific research as any
other, but as in chemistry or physics it may be very dangerous to make haphazard experiments. If
communication at spiritistic séances is with the dead, then either you have to assume that in the post-
mortem existence the personality continues fixed, which would mean stagnation, and in that case why
have anything to do with it if you yourself hope to progress during this life?—or else you must assume
that it continues to develop in some way, and in that case why molest it by dragging it back to contacts it
has discarded? How do you know you may not be doing irreparable harm for which you may have to
answer when you yourself arrive at that state?’

I had the feeling that the Lion really knew very much more about this subject than he was willing to put
into words, or than I perhaps was then capable of grasping. For he appeared to believe in 'guardian
angels'—but they must be trusted to know their own business best. 'Live one life at a time,' he used to
say, 'and worry about the next when you get to it.'

Vera displayed less jealous animosity towards my unexpected friendship with the Lion than she had
towards my interest in the Holeys. She met him herself and was much impressed. Thus she was better
able to share my interest. This was a great relief to me, for I loved her and was very much her slave. But
not to such an extent that at her whim I was willing to cut short an interest that gripped me profoundly.
Had the Lion not helped by sensing the situation between Vera and myself and handling her accordingly,
I should have been very miserable indeed. Even as it was our relations became subjected to severe
strain when Lev Lvovitch initiated me into metaphysical aspects of his learning which were beyond her.

I became a frequent visitor at his house and saw him treat many people suffering from various physical
and mental complaints. If, as his nephew said, he felt he had a 'mission' to heal, I sometimes wondered
at his charging even the rich such high fees, and I once asked him delicately about it. His reply was that it
was absolutely necessary for psychological reasons to charge some people a high fee—' Even if you give
it away or throw it down the drain when they pay it'—because of the type of mind that puts a money
value on everything. 'Look at Serge's parents, for instance. I made them pay more than the specialists,
and they at once told their friends I must be a good doctor even if my methods were comic.'

'It's funny and it makes me laugh,' he said on another occasion, 'but I buy the goodwill of such people by
making them pay to give it to me! I either charge a lot or nothing. I prefer to charge nothing, because
the people you can safely treat for nothing are always the most worthwhile.'

The pundits and the specialists called him a charlatan and a quack. But the proof of the pudding was in
the eating. The Lion had a high measure of success with his patients. It may be that the disorders he
treated successfully were mainly of a specific category, and I have no doubt medical psychologists and
psycho-therapists would apply their own terminology to explain his achievements. He made no claim to
cure everything and everybody, always declaring that it depended largely on the patient. I myself once
saw him turn from his door an incensed gentleman occupying an important official position after taking
one look at him. But his enemies never succeeded in suppressing him. The Lion healed while the pundits
wrangled. Serge's paralyzed leg was normal in a few weeks. The boy who came with one leg shorter
than the other went out with legs of equal length ten months later. Some results were achieved much
quicker, some instantaneously. The failures were mostly among the highbrows and the proud, those
who could never learn to laugh, especially at themselves. The scribes and pharisees rejoiced when they
heard of a failure, but of course it is always difficult for those who pride themselves on their learning or
breeding to turn and become as little children.
CHAPTER SIX

'Holy Charlatanry'

MY FRIENDSHIP with the Lion had a serio-comic sequel.

In 1913 I spent a long summer at the country estate of a wealthy landed squire in the district of Yeletz,
province of Tula, as tutor to his children. I did not like my employer, who was a selfish landlord of the
type that was well swept away in the revolution. Neither were the children attractive. The attractions in
accepting the post were a high fee, which I needed, a long six-months' engagement with plenty of free
time in which to pursue my studies (I took my own piano with me and was given a studio apart), and,
last but far from least, the fact that Vera was to be there for a good part of the summer. Indeed, it was
Vera who had got me the engagement.

The manor-house was an old rambling building, situated among trees on the sloping bank of a small
river. On the opposite bank was a straggling village of a few hundred thatched mud and timber huts. It
was a district in which Rimsky-Korsakov had collected some of his best folk songs, and when I heard the
peasants singing on fine evenings to the accompaniment of a concertina I strolled over the nearby
wooden bridge to sit unobtrusively near them and watch their dancing on the grass. To ingratiate myself
I would sometimes go over during the day with pockets full of candy for the children, whom I also used
to take out in parties in a boat on the river.

The children, perhaps noticing the difference in my speech, asked me where I came from. A happy
inspiration prompted me to reply: ‘From the moon.' 'No, but really.' 'From the moon,' I persisted. 'What
is your name?' they demanded. 'Dyadya Luna—Uncle Moon,' I replied. From that moment I was very
popular and became 'Uncle Moon' to the whole village. 'Dyadya Luna,' the children would ask when I
was rowing them in the boat, 'what is it like in the moon? Is it like here? And I would answer quite
solemnly: 'Oh, no, it's not so nice, it's cold and bare, and there aren't any pretty little girls or
mischievous little boys.'

One of the youngsters, named Petka, used to do odd jobs in the manor garden and fag tennis balls when
the guests played tennis. When he had missed coming for some days I inquired after him and was told
he was ill, so I promised to go and see him. He lived with his family in one of the huts in the centre of the
village. I found his mother, with his sister helping her, busy with pots and pans at the huge brick stove in
the corner of the cottage.

'Health to you, Uncle Moon!'they exclaimed in welcome, brushing their clothes down with their hands.

'Health to you! Where's Petka?'

The woman pointed up at the gaping hole between the stove and the ceiling where the whole family
slept in the winter.

'But he must be roasted up there! It's hot even outside—in here it's an oven!
'Open a window, Masha,' said the woman, and while the girl pushed open one of the two tiny windows,
she called up at the hole: 'Hey, Petka, it's Uncle Moon come to see you.'

From the hot depths of the hole a grimy face peered out. 'What's the matter, Petka?

'My leg hurts.'

'We've missed you at the manor. No one to fag the tennis balls. No one to hang out the swimming suits.
And the garden paths aren't swept these three days. All your jobs.'

'My leg hurts.'

'It's swollen,' said his mother.

'Climb down. Let's have a look at it.'

Two legs dangled over the edge of the aperture, preparing to descend. One was fatter than the other
and slightly, reddish. I helped him down, clad in ragged shirt and shorts.

'What's the matter with it? How did it happen?'

'I don't know.'

'Been like that some days,' said his mother.

I knew very little about such matters. Had he sprained it? Or got an infection? The peasants never
stopped scratching themselves. Their cottages swarmed with vermin.

'Perhaps you could do something, Uncle Moon? 'said the woman. 'I'm not a doctor.'

‘But still---‘

'Hm.' I pondered a moment. Perhaps she saw my sly smile. I had thought of the Lion and what he might
do in the circumstances. 'Try, please,' she persisted.

I said 'Hm' again, while I thought, shall I try? Then I laid Petka gently on the bench by the wall, with his
head propped on a bundle of clothing. I sat down beside him.

His mother and sister watched expectantly. I felt a touch of nervousness glancing at them. At least I
can't do any harm, I thought.

'Comfortable, little son? . . . Now, do what I say. First, arms overhead—like this . . . there . . . stretch . . .
more . . . still more . . . that's right. . . . Now have a good yawn . . . like me’.

‘…A-a-a-ah. . . .’

‘Fine—only don't swallow me. . . . There. Doesn't that feel good?’ (Not a bad imitation of the Lion, I said
to myself.)
'It feels awfully good, Uncle Moon.'

I must make him laugh too.

'Do you remember the garden party at the manor? Who had the funniest mask?'

'You did,' he chuckled. I had made a mask with a protruding tongue which had been a killing success
with the children.

'Your eyes rolled,' he giggled, while I massaged his leg gently. 'And your tongue—he, he, he!'

I went on massaging. 'Is this pleasant?'

'Yes.'

(Good. Now for the real stuff.)

'Listen, Petka. Do you know there are spirits, good spirits—kind spirits—round us, now, right here, in this
cottage, close to us? Good spirits that can put your leg to rights in no time. I'm going to ask them to
help, and you'll see, to-morrow your leg will be better. Shut your eyes and I'll call them.'

The door opened and his father and elder brother, a hardy peasant and a lad of about sixteen, came in.
The woman made frantic signs to them not to disturb. They sat down to watch, wide-eyed. I was glad
they had come in. I couldn't tell why, but somehow it helped to have more people in the room—all
believing, or at least trusting.

The boy lay still. I went on massaging and crooning. 'Good spirits, come and help. . . . Good spirits, stop
the pain. Take away the swelling. . . . Good spirits, you will help. . . . You must help....'

(And while I crooned I asked myself, I wonder what is really wrong with his leg?—and, Shall I tell it to
vibrate, like the Lion does?—and, But it can't be paralysis or rheumatism—perhaps vibration wouldn't
be the right thing even if it happened. Better go gently and let the good spirits do their stuff of their own
accord!)

I drawled on: 'Good spirits, do this—good spirits, do that. .. From crooning I went on to commanding—
always thinking, what on earth would the Lion say if he saw me at this game?

'And now, little son, you're going to sleep—to sleep—sleep —s s-l-e-e-e-p. . .' My voice drawled away
into nothingness.

I stroked his face and hands when I had massaged his leg. Was he asleep? I stopped to make sure,
touching his eyelids.

'Let him sleep as long as he wants,' I whispered, getting up to go. 'And you're not to put him back in the
stove-hole. What's the good of cooking him?'
Outside I took a deep breath of relief—with a chuckle of amusement—tainted with a lurking misgiving.
Silly ass, leading 'em on like that—to-morrow they'll think you a fraud. Then, excusing myself, as one
always does: Oh, heck, it can't do any harm. I'll go and see him again in a few days and if it's worse I'll
drive him to Yeletz to see a doctor. . . . Now for a swim! . ... And. I ran down the slope and plunged into
the deep cool water.

I little thought what I had let myself in for. A couple of days later a delegation appeared at the back door
of the manor.

'We want to speak to Uncle Moon.'

The servants tittered. The valet called me. 'Monsieur Dukes,' (he knew French and thought it more chic
to use it on foreign guests).

'des paysans demandent à parler à "Dyadya Luna ". C'est vous?'

'I'll see.' (Asses, what the devil do they want to come to the house for!)

There were four of them, three women with kerchiefs round their heads and a middle-aged mouzhik
twisting his cap in his hand.

'What's up?’

'Uncle Moon, please come and see Petrov,' said one.

'And Sidorov,' said another.

'And the Karpov girl,' said the third.

'And my back hurts too,' said the mouzhik, starting to pull his shirt up there and then to exhibit his sores.

"Put your shirt back. What the devil are you all talking about?' 'You healed Petka,' said the first. 'Please
do the same to the others.'

'And to me, please,' said the man, tugging his shirt up again.

'Stop it. What do you mean, "healed Petka"?'

'He's all right since you did something to him—since you called the good spirits.'

When I'd got my breath I said: 'If Petka's all right again why isn't he here?'

They looked at each other sheepishly. I guessed at once: either they were lying and had come out of
sheer curiosity, or else, if Petka was really better, they must have said: 'Petka, you go and ask Uncle
Moon to come and see us too--but Petka was probably shy —or else his parents had said: 'Go and ask
him yourselves.'
I must get rid of them somehow. The valet and two or three servants were standing there sniggering in
the hall.

'I'm coming to see Petka again this afternoon,' I said, as if that had been my intention. 'Then we can see
about, the rest of you’.

They shuffled gawkishly away, loud with thanks, and I went indoors, running a gauntlet of grins.

I had wanted to go out riding that afternoon and was annoyed at the interruption, but I feared the
peasants would come back, persisting. Better go as promised. Besides, I was intrigued. Petka's leg. . . ?

Quite a crowd was waiting at the cottage. I cleared them all out. Petka, hero of the day, looking very
important, sat on the bench where I had left him two days before.

'Well?' I said gruffly. 'Show your leg.'

He thrust them both forward. The bad one was almost normal. The redness had gone and the swelling
greatly subsided.

I knelt down and touched it. 'Does it hurt?'

'No. Not since you came.'

I looked at the silent faces watching—no longer merely expectant.

(Shall I tell them what I think?—that it's just the sleep and rest and not being roasted in the stove hole
that's put it right? No. It's hopeless. They wouldn't believe me. I shall have to go on with it!)

'Didn't I say you'd be better?'

'Yes, Uncle Moon.'

'Well, there you are.'

I got up.

'Uncle Moon' He looked up appealingly.

'Well?'

'Please do it again.'

'What?'

'Call the good spirits.'

'I've got some other kind of spirits here,' I said—and I took out of my pocket a tin of insect powder with
which I was resolved to purge the cottage. I felt pretty sure he'd had an infection from scratching
himself.
The tin was one of those with a blower. I plied it vigorously into the hole over the stove, behind the
bunks and benches, into the chinks and crannies of the ceiling and walls. The result was startling. A
veritable deluge: of vermin descended, an unbelievable host of lice, fleas, bugs and beetles. Never had I
seen such a variety of horrid creepy-crawly things. The insects lay on the floor, stupefied by the powder.
It literally rained bugs! I turned up my collar to prevent, their falling down my neck. At last, gasping and
unable to stand it any longer, I ran out into the air, yelling: 'Sweep them up! Sweep them into a pail and,
throw them into the fire!'

An awestruck crowd waited outside. .' I'll be back in an hour,' I called to them, 'go and help sweep! '—
and I dashed down to a secluded spot on the river, stripped to shake out my clothing, and plunged into
the water.

I did go back, little though I wanted to be pestered by their importunities. I was intrigued to see the
effect of the insect powder—and curious, too, to have a closer, look at Petka's leg which had so
unexpectedly recovered.

It was a subdued, wondering, well-nigh worshipping group of peasants that awaited me, restraining
their children from their accustomed familiarity with Uncle Moon. With a pang I realized that relations
had changed—no longer was I just Uncle Moon, the children's playmate. I had sealed my own fate—
there could now be no turning back. I had become a wizard, a miracle-worker! I read it in their faces.
One or two made gestures towards me as if to press their plea, muttering: 'Uncle Moon, help me too,
please. . . .'—or: 'Uncle Moon, me first. . .’

I pushed my way into the cottage. They were still sneezing from the insect powder. I, too, sneezed, and
laughed, breaking the tension. 'Better,. eh? ' I, said between sneezes. The place felt quite different
despite the sneezy atmosphere. 'Now let's have a proper look at that leg.'

Petka, who had hobbled outside while the vermin were being swept up, sat down on the bench and held
out his legs again. Indisputably the swelling had gone down to almost nothing.

'Uncle Moon, please do it again,' he pleaded.

I didn't want to go through the whole rigmarole with the gaping crowd pushing and staring. I massaged
the leg a bit, and simply said: 'See, little son, the good spirits helped, didn't they? Tomorrow this leg will
be as well as the other.'

I got up. Immediately there was a general assault. The day was ending, the workers were coming in from
the fields, the crowd was growing. 'Uncle Moon, I've cut my foot '-' Uncle Moon, look, at my arm '.
'Uncle Moon, I've got toothache '-'Uncle Moon, please come and see my mother.' Babel! All
simultaneous. All clamorous. Pains in eyes, ears, nose, throat, chest, back, tummy —everybody suddenly
had a pain somewhere! Luckily I detected at once that half of them were sham. 'Uncle Moon, please put
me to sleep'--' Uncle Moon, put the good spirits on me.' They wanted to see what it felt like. And the
shams saved the situation. I picked out one husky young fellow whose guilty expression betrayed him
and said: 'You have a pain in the stomach? This will cure it'- and I put my hand on his tummy and
exclaimed': 'Abracadabra! Abracadabra! See, it's gone!' He admitted sheepishly that the pain had gone.
'Because you never had any,' I said, and everybody laughed loudly at him. A second, not wishing to be
made a fool of, insisted after the same procedure that his pain persisted. "Ah, that's very serious,' I said,
'I'll cure you to-morrow. I may have to cut you open.' He looked at me with apprehension, ready on the
spot to proclaim a sudden cure.

I escaped somehow, promising to return next day. I should never have got away otherwise. I didn't know
whether to laugh or to curse myself. A pretty kettle of fish you're cooking, you ass; what the hell are you
going to do about it?

What I did about it was help myself to the large medicine cupboard at the manor, and next day, bracing
myself, set out armed with castor oil, quinine tablets, a jar of some kind of antiseptic ointment, soap,
towel, bandages, a bottle of distilled water in which I dissolved a little common salt, and a hunting-knife
with an impressive handle. These were my magician's paraphernalia. With these the médecin malgré lui
would open his miracle-mongering dispensary in Petka's cottage.

Villagers were waiting for me already at the bridge. From there my progress was in the nature of a
triumphal procession. The crowd surged into the cottage behind me until it was crammed to
suffocation. I had to insist on most of them clearing out before starting. They swarmed at the door and
windows, disputing who was to be the first candidate for treatment.

But I had no intention of having my programme dictated to me.

"Where's 'that poor fellow who had that pain in his stomach yesterday? I am going to cut it out as I said I
would '—and I whipped out the jack-knife and flourished it so that those at the doorway and windows
could see.

'A shout went up for the victim, skulking discreetly in the background. When his name was called he
turned and scuttled off as fast as his legs would carry him amid howls of derision.

'Let that be a lesson,' I announced. 'No one can deceive me. If anyone says, "My arm or leg hurts" and I
see he's shamming, off it comes'—and I brandished the knife like a tomahawk. 'But if you really have
something the matter and if you promise to do what I say, you'll all get as well as Petka did.' And I
proceeded to work --hoping for the best.

I called the first woman, the one limping with a cut foot. It was tied up in filthy rags. The cut was already
beginning to fester.

A pail of water was fetched. Soap and towel came into play. A smear of antiseptic ointment—and in a
trice the foot was cleanly if not expertly bandaged. But I realized full well that these were not the things
the patient believed in most. It was me—and I was to them a wizard. They wanted magic—without that-
nothing would work. I simply must throw in a shovel-full of abracadabra for good measure! What I did
was this: holding the foot between my palms after bandaging it, I recited in English, of which, of course,
they understood not a word, in a sing-song voice, the first two or three lines of the first thing that came
into my head, which happened to be the Lord's Prayer. They had no idea what I was saying. They
thought it was a charm—which perhaps it was. Anyway it did as well as anything else. The good spirits
flocked around in droves and blessed my labours abundantly!

One by one my patients came forward. About half of them were children. First I took the simple cuts,
bruises, and stomach troubles, and made those wait who needed massage or a heftier dose of
suggestion—sprains and toothache, for instance. The modus operandi was thus: 'Pain in the stomach?
Take this.' And when they had gulped down a spoonful of castor oil I put my hand on their tummy and
chanted: 'Our-Father-who-art-in-heaven-hallowed-be thy - name - thy - kingdom - come - thy - will - be -
done - in - earth - as - it - is - in-heaven.' Then reverting to Russian: 'There! That's the magic charm. To-
morrow your stomach will be all right.' And so on, according to the case.

Some complained of sore eyes. This was what the distilled water and salt were for. 'Sore eyes? Sit down
here.' And I dabbed the eyes with cotton-wool soaked in the liquid, then covered the eyes with my
fingers: (English) 'Our Father etc.' (Russian) 'Your eyes will be all right now.' And they generally were!
And if not at once, I found that another application a day or two later was pretty sure to do the trick.

Sprains and rheumatic pains I handled slightly differently. They seemed to call for a bit more of the
Leonine technique—laughing, yawning, relaxation, then a bit of massage on each separately, and
sometimes a tight bandage. Plus the 'charm', of course.

One of them asked: 'What are those words you chant? And I replied gravely: 'Moon language.' They
asked no more.

Its power was potent. Once I forgot to say it, and was promptly reminded of the omission. So I said it
twice to make up—and the fellow was quite sure he had got double value.

About toothache cases I felt unsure until I found that charm plus salt water worked wonders. I made
them hold the salt water in their mouths, took the patient's face in my hands, told them to stare straight
into my eyes, assured them my cure was infallible, and pronounced the charm slowly in a loud voice. It
was enough to hypnotize anybody. They said they felt better—and they probably did.

'That's enough for to-day,' I said abruptly, after treating some twenty-odd cases. There were still
clamourers, but I didn't believe they were serious, and if they were I wouldn't know how to handle
them. So better cut it short and get out before I'm found out. 'I'll come back to-morrow or the day after,'
I promised.

I hurried off, thankful to have got away with it at all and evading the importunate. But as I was nearing
the bridge I heard soft, hasty footfalls behind me. A woman was trying to catch me up.

'Uncle Moon—please.'

'What is it?’

She looked round to make sure no one was within earshot. 'I had a baby three weeks ago. I haven't been
right since. Please help me.'
Good God—trapped! Must I turn gynaecologist too?

'I can't to-day,' I said firmly. 'You'd better go and tell Bátushka about it.' Batushka, or 'Little Father', was
the name by which the village priest was familiarly referred to, and addressed.

It was not for her spiritual consolation that I suggested that she should tell him of her trouble but
because it fell to the lot of the priest or his assistant deacon to send for the nearest medical help when it
was really needed.

'That takes a long time,' she replied, 'and I trust you more.' 'Leave it till to-morrow,' I said resolutely, and
left her standing crestfallen.

Had I better go and tell the priest myself? He might think me foolishly credulous: how could I know
whether the woman was really ill? Should I urge him, perhaps for no sound cause, to drive the forty
miles or so to Yeletz, where he might have to wait some time before the local doctor or an assistant
were free to absent themselves? However, perhaps I'd better in any case tell him about my visit to the
village lest he should resent my butting in without asking permission on what was really his domain.

The priest's abode was a modest brick cottage with a slate roof, on the same side of the river as the
manor and not far from its gates. With some diffidence I knocked on his door next morning. A woman of
peasant type with an intelligent face—his wife—opened it.

'Bátushka is working in the fields. He will be back only in the evening.' And when I returned in the
evening: 'Btushka is washing in the kitchen. He asks you kindly to wait in the parlour.'

The parlour was a tiny room with plush-covered chairs and an icon in the corner. I could hear Bátushka
splashing in the kitchen, arguing about something with his wife in little spurts of talk. He came in
eventually, combing his beard and apologizing for keeping me waiting. He was a bulky, good-natured
fellow with a thick, brown, curly beard of which he was not unjustly proud, long, flowing, yellow-brown
hair, and a magnificent bass voice. In his religious office be was assisted by a deacon, to whom I should
have had to apply had the priest himself been away—a less-imposing personage, thinner, with black
locks and a trimmed black beard much less impressive than the priest's. Both had a decent education.
They were prone to the bottle, of course, like all the country folk, but were they the less human for
that? Quite the contrary, a few weeks earlier after some celebration or other they were both drunk for
three days. But they never missed a service at church, and their weakness for the bottle, far from
offending, served only to endear them to their parishioners. They were the more human, too, in that,
like all the village clergy, they did not derive their main income from their religious office but had to earn
it by the sweat of their brow, either plying a craft, or cultivating a small-holding, or toiling in the fields
like other peasants. Their income as clergy came almost entirely from the pittance they were entitled to
collect for the occasional celebration of masses, christenings, weddings, burials, and so forth, plus a few
extra roubles from the squire when invited to the manor to serve a mass or bless a new room with holy
water or some other such occasional rite. But every such service, as also the fetching of medical
assistance, meant time taken from their personal labours.
'Btushka,' I said, 'I thought I had better I tell you I have been helping a few of the villagers who had some
cuts and bruises.'

'I know,' he said, 'they've been telling me.' (Does he approve, I wondered.) 'You are very good,' he
added. (He's bound to say that, of course.)

'There is one woman,' I proceeded nervously, 'who says she had a baby three weeks ago and —‘

'I know. Proskurova.'

'I told her she should ask you to send for the nurse.'

'I know,' he said. (They'd evidently told him everything.) 'But it is often hard to say whether they really
need attention. Some of them shammed to you—but they tell me you know just what to do with
shammers,' he added with a laugh.'

'I don't know what to do with Proskurova.'

'Don't you?' He eyed me quizzically. 'Do you really wish me to send for the nurse? '.

I hesitated. It meant two days at least out of his life or the deacon's. And suppose after all there was
nothing wrong with the woman? There might be, though. How could I face her again without some
assurance of help?

'Please send for the nurse. I will pay the expenses.'

'As you wish. But it may be some days before she can come.'

I thanked him and left, cursing myself for ever having started the ball rolling.

Next morning again I asked myself: Should I go to the village, or back out? But I thought: No, better go
quickly, before they send another delegation! So off I went with my sack full of nostrums.

Once more Petka's cottage became the magician's dispensary. Once more castor oil, soap and ointment
did their bit—supplemented by liberal doses of abracadabra—'the mixture as before'—without which,
of course, nay ministrations would never have been accepted, certainly not believed in, and probably
remained quite ineffective. And once again I had to admit to my own astonishment that my labours
were singularly successful. Petka ran about as if nothing had ever been the matter. When I removed the
bandages from the woman who had cut her foot I found that one more application would probably heal
it. And everybody was grateful, everybody awestruck. No more shamming. And all the time, look, there
was the woman Proskurova hanging about in the background, eyeing me with doglike appeal. I could not
escape her.

She waylaid me as I left the cottage. 'Uncle Moon,' she implored. I surrendered without a struggle,
hoping desperately for some lucky break.

'Show me the way to your cottage,' I said.

It was exactly like Petka's, like most of the cottages in the village. Her husband was sitting there alone,
waiting. I shut the door, pushing back the children clamouring to be taken for a trip in the boat. 'Later,' I
promised them. 'Run away now, and if I catch any of you listening outside I'll tip you into the river.'

I had thought out more or less what I should say. I announced with firmness: 'There are some
complaints for which I need assistance, so I have asked Bátushka to send for the nurse.'

'I believe more in you.'

'No. I insist. You must wait for the nurse.'

She stared at me with mute appeal. I could see she was really ill and in pain.

'But you can put me to sleep,' she persisted. 'Like you did Petka. If only I could sleep.'

I wondered would she fall asleep if I tried? Well, at least it could do no harm, and it might soothe her
even if she didn't go off to sleep. 'Lie down on your bunk. Close your eyes.'

I stroked her forehead, arms, and hands a long time, silently. She sighed heavily. Her breathing became
slow and even. After a while I began to croon softly. 'My dove, it will all come right. . The pain is
vanishing . . . vanishing.. . . The good spirits will take it away. . ... They will send you to sleep, to such
sweet sleep. . . Uncle Moon is going to utter the charm that brings all the good spirits to help. . . .'—and
out it came, softly, crooningly, drifting, away in a murmur. I observed her closely. I touched her lids.
They were like lead. She was fast asleep. The lines had gone out of her face.

Her husband, gawky and confused, sat looking on in silence. I beckoned him to the door and
admonished him in an undertone: 'Let her go on sleeping as long as possible and let no one enter the
cottage.' And as I slipped out: 'What happened to the baby?'

'It died.'

I continued to go to the village, but I added an important point to my modus operandi. I said to myself: I
will enjoin upon every one of my patients that they shall go to church and give thanks if they feel better.
'Remember,' I said to them, 'it isn't Uncle Moon who heals you. It is the good spirits. They are like
angels. When you feel better you must say thank-you to them.'

Was it religious devotion that prompted me to do this? Let me be frank. It was rather a form of
reinsurance—and perhaps also a sound psychological instinct. For just as it is not the revered but the
reverer who is benefited by an attitude of reverence, so also with the thanks giver. I detected already in
those early years that gratitude was the meeting-point of psychology and religion. Sending my patients
to church to say thank-you would double the value of my ministrations. And at the same time it was a
form of insurance, because I would be able to lay any failure at the door of insufficient devotion,
otherwise known as faith. And who shall say that in this there was not truth as well as cunning?
It turned out to be a brainwave. And the proof of it was simple. I found that a group of them had asked
the priest to hold an extra service to say thank-you to the angels, and I nearly wept when he told me
afterwards that, among the angels, they had insisted upon a special reference to Uncle Moon.

The nurse came a few days later. I kept out of her way on the day of her visit. She would probably regard
me as an intruding impostor, which, of course, I often felt I was. But Bátushka sought me at the manor in
the evening. 'Won't you come and see the nurse? She would like to meet you.'

I went with him to his house. The nurse was a pleasant person and looked capable and efficient.

'I hope I haven't done too much harm,' I said. 'How is the woman Proskurova'

'She might have been very ill indeed,' said the nurse, 'but you seem to have put her to rights. She says
you send her to sleep and she is always better when she wakes. She says you have magic hands.'

I didn't want any false pretensions. 'Of course it's all just their trusting nature,' I said, and added
facetiously, 'I suppose they told you about the magic charm too!'

She caught the flippant note and looked at me with surprise.

'You laugh?' she said in a tone of reproach. 'A secret has been revealed to you with which to help others.
Why do you laugh?'

Abashed and perplexed, I stammered an excuse and came away.

I was much worried by the reaction of my host and certain guests at the manor to my doings. They
regarded them, to put it mildly, as highly unconventional and were inclined to frown on them. To go
doing good deeds among the peasantry was the sort of thing done by young people of 'dangerous'
views. Vera had not arrived, and I wished she were there, for I felt that she at least would not have
protested. She did not arrive until after I had got thoroughly launched on my career of miracle healer.
My employer was quite indifferent to the welfare of the peasantry. In his view I was 'spoiling' if not
'subverting' them by my attentions. In his estate provision of a sort was made for tenants and farm
hands who fell ill, but his land was all on the manor side of the river, which formed a boundary, and to
him the village on the far side, which was my haunt, was to all intents and purposes foreign territory
whose inhabitants were no concern of his. For this reason, though he disliked my activities, he made no
attempt to interfere with them.

By the time Vera arrived the company at the manor had formed into two camps, for and against me. At
first Vera took my side staunchly as I expected she would, for there was nothing in my activities which
was concealed from her or could possibly arouse her jealousy or resentment. She was intrigued by my
hypnotic experiments, and required a detailed account of them. Her support particularly infuriated one
of the guests, a certain Trofimov. Trofimov was one of her most fawning admirers, who conceived a
malignant hatred of me. He was ill-shaped and stunted, squat and broad-faced; with the expression of a
disgruntled frog. He pestered Vera with his attentions and with complaints against me, provoking her to
retaliation, so that she delighted in publicly defending me, and drove him to fury by addressing asides to
me in German which he didn't understand. I think he would have committed murder had he known how
she spoke of him to me in private. She would refer to him as 'Small-fat-and-ugly', or else simply as 'The
frog'. Look out,' she would say to me if she saw him approaching in the garden, 'here comes the frog!'
And I would slip away, for we had to be careful not to, be seen so much alone together as to excite
gossip.

The frog used to charge me with being a self-confessed humbug—'and you make it worse by laughing
about it.' The worst row occurred when, describing in lighter vein my adventures in the field of
hypnotism, I spoke of my use of the Lord's Prayer. The frog gasped and turned red in the face. Thumping
the table, he got up and spluttered: 'Excuse me, I cannot sit at the same table with a hypocritical
impostor who even indulges in sacrilege to deceive his dupes!'

From that moment he cut me dead, refusing even to say good morning or good night. Although I had as
little use for him as he for me, yet, actually, his behaviour did affect me, although I kept telling myself it
was foolish to allow it to do so. He went so far as to try to put the two young boys whom I was tutoring
against me, but for this he was told off even by my employer. I asked Vera whether she thought I had
better leave if I was such a disturbing element. But she dissuaded me. 'The frog would only croak in
triumph,' she said, 'and tell everybody you had fled because he had exposed your impostures.'

After a time, when the novelty of my village visits had worn off, Vera's interest in them began to wane.
Once when a convenient opportunity appeared to her to have presented itself for our stolen intimacies
and she had sought me accordingly she had found me on the river with a boatload of children. Little by
little her jealous nature got the upper hand; resentment grew against my absorbing interest in which
she took no part. I urged her to accompany me to the village, or at least share my boat trips with the
children. I should have loved to transform her idle interest into a practical concern for the peasants'
welfare. But I did not succeed, and it ended by her making the same kind of scenes about the peasants
as about the Holeys, even throwing out insinuations that I must be seeking clandestine meetings with
the village girls!

I was relieved when I was obliged to return for a time to St. Petersburg to make preparations for exams
at the Conservatoire. I did not tell the villagers I was leaving. To the servants, who by then knew all
about my doings, I said: 'When the village children come asking for me tell them I've gone back to the
moon, but that I may drop down again."

I was delayed in the capital longer than I expected, and when at last I returned the short autumn, never
more than a month long, was passing abruptly into premature winter. Though it was only early October
the mud tracks on the dirt roads were frozen in the mornings and a cold wind drove wildly across the
open spaces. The long drive from the nearest station was made in sleet which flew in under the raised
hood of the carriage and cut my face. I huddled behind the fat coachman, who clicked his tongue and
pulled at the reins first of one then another of the three horses as they stumbled over the rough tracks.
Most of the guests at the house, including Vera, had left, but the unspeakable Troflmov was still there.
He condescended to shake hands with me, but at dinner he blurted at me across the table: 'I trust you
have no intention of renewing your hobby of fooling the innocent villagers with your sacrilegious
mumbo-jumbo.'

As soon as I could I went to pay my respects to the priest and ask him how the villagers, were, for I was
told there was 'flu in the village’. Bátushka was not at home, so without waiting I set out at once across
the river, armed with medicaments. A fine sleet was driving. The village seemed deserted. I encountered
no one until I pushed open the door of Petka's cottage. Petka's mother was handling her pots and pans
at the stove. She gave a shout: 'Oh, my God—it's Uncle Moon! '—and a pan clattered to the floor. She
ran to the door of the outhouse. 'Hey, Fedyal. Vanya! Uncle Moon has come back!" Her husband and
elder son shuffled in, bowing awkwardly and smiling, unable to find words.

'What about Petka?' I asked. 'Where is he, and his sister Masha?'

His mother pointed at the big hole over the stove. 'Up there,' she said—and a guilty expression came
into her face as she remembered what I had said about his sleeping there when he was ill in the
summer. 'Masha's up there too. They're both ill. Fever.'

'Hey, Petka! Masha! 'I called up. Two flushed and dirty faces appeared in the aperture. 'Come down, you
young rascals—I don't believe you're ill at all! Anyway, you'll be all right when I've done with you.'

I helped them down. And while I did so I heard a hasty bustling noise behind me. 'Quick—hide that! '
Petka's mother whispered. I caught her pushing into her husband's hand a bottle that had been on the
table. He hid it quickly behind the curtain of one of the windows. ("Vodka,' I said to myself and paid no
more heed.)

Both Petka and his sister had a temperature, but their attack was not serious. I made them wash, gave
them a couple of quinine tablets each, and—of course—recited the "charm" with due solemnity. Then' I
told them, to their delight, that they might climb back into the stove-hole. It was the right place in
winter, where they would be thoroughly warm and out of the draught from the door every time it was
opened.

The news of my return, spread quickly and several neighbours came in to ask me to visit them. Among
them was the woman Proskurova, looking hale and hearty. I was about to go when something prompted
me to peep behind the window curtain to see what the husband had hidden away so furtively. I was
sure it was vodka and I was going to make a joke about it. But it wasn't vodka. It was a bottle of
medicine, and when I took it out to look at it I found it had the label of a chemist at Yeletz, the town
from which the nurse had come in the summer. The label had a recent date and injunctions regarding
the quantity to be taken.

'Hello, what's this?’

The whole company stared abashed.

'The nurse gave it us,' mumbled Petka's mother with a guilty look. 'She came three days ago. Bátushka
sent for her.'
'Why didn't you tell me?'

'We don't want her medicine when you are here,' she answered. A chorus of approval arose from the
group of visitors. 'Yes, yes, Uncle Moon—yours is better—yours is magic!’

I thought hurriedly: 'I'm putting my foot in it if they refuse to take the proper medicine '—and I decided
to visit no more of the villagers until I had seen the priest.

Crossing the bridge on my way back I was overtaken by Bátushka himself, driving home for his dinner.
His beard and flowing locks were enveloped in the wide collar of a sheepskin coat and his cheeks were
aglow from the cold wind. He pulled up his horse and greeted me cordially.

'Welcome back, Uncle Moon!' (He's laughing at me, I thought, calling me Uncle Moon like the villagers.)
'You haven't been long getting to good works,' he said jovially.

I hastened to tell him what had happened. 'They tried to keep secret from me that you had sent for the
nurse.'

He laughed loudly. 'They prefer you! ' he said. 'And I don't blame them!'

'Look here, Bátushka,' I protested, 'they don't need me when you can get the nurse.'

'If you will forgive my presumption,' he replied with some emphasis, 'I wouldn't have sent for the nurse
at all if I had known you were arriving.'

I had a sinking feeling inside. I had always assumed that the priest and deacon, being educated and
intelligent men, realized that any success I had with the villagers was due not to a knowledge of
medicine or charms but to the simple faith of the trusting peasants.

'But I---‘

He would listen to no protestations. 'The nurse is an ordinary woman,' he said, 'but through your fingers
the Lord God works. Nurse said so herself. . . . May I drive you to the minor gate? It's on my way.'

He shifted to make room for me. At a loss what to say, I clambered beside him and the impatient horse
cantered rapidly up to the gate.

'Allow me to thank you on behalf of my parish,' he said as we parted.

I regretted having gone to the village. I felt certain that I should only hamper the work of the trained
nurse if I persisted.

But a still more embarrassing surprise was in store. On Sunday morning, after service, the deacon
stopped me at the church door and said: 'My wife is ill. Will you please come and see her?’

'With pleasure.' I didn't think for an instant that he wanted anything more than just a friendly visit.

Together we trudged over the rough ground to his little house near the priest's.
'I hope it's nothing serious,' I said.

'Influenza. High fever.'

'Have you had the nurse?'

'The nurse came to see her when she visited the village last week, but my wife is no better. Perhaps you-
' We were nearing the gate, and he stopped to look me full in the face. I saw a pair of glistening, hopeful
eyes peering at me out of a pallid, bearded countenance beneath tangled hair falling outside his long
black cassock.

'Perhaps you,' he said appealingly, 'would be so kind as to hold her hand and say the same as you say in
the village.'

'But you must understand,' I protested, 'I don't really know anything at all about medical matters.'

'Perhaps you don't need to,' he replied simply.

Torn within, myself, I hesitated. Towards people whom I respected I hated to go through with what the
froglike Trofimov was telling everyone at the manor was my 'charlatanry'.

'I beg of you,' urged the deacon, making a gesture towards his house.

I followed him, clenching my fists and blinking to suppress something that was not just watering of the
eyes from the wind.

Indoors the deacon relieved me of my fur jacket, cap, and gloves, and then, with hurried steps as if there
was no time to lose, led me into an inner room. His wife, a little woman, flushed and breathing heavily,
lay with closed eyes on an iron bedstead amid ruffled cotton sheets. On a table at hand were things
provided by the nurse. A fitful streak of broken sunlight, streaming through thin curtains, caught her
rough-skinned face, enhancing its unnatural colour and imparting to the scene a certain beauty.

'I beg of you’, the deacon whispered again.

How could I refuse? Stepping to the bedside I laid my hands on her forehead. Her skin was burning hot,
my palm icy cold. I blessed the nervousness that made my hands refreshingly cool. She opened her eyes,
smiled, closed them again, and heaved a sigh of relief.

'There—there--you see!' whispered the deacon in my ear encouragingly. "And now—please—what you
say—in the village.

I sat on the side of the bed and enclosed the hot face with both hands, stroking the forehead and
cheeks.

'Tak horosho—tak horosho—so good—so good!' the sick woman whispered.

'And it will be better still,' I said gently. 'You will be quite well very quickly. I'm going to say the secret
charm that brings all the good spirits to help and chases all the evil spirits away.' And off I went with it—
'Our Father’, etc. in English—several times—and I can say, charlatan or not, it came from the heart. I
trailed off with the usual injunction: 'Sleep—sleep—sle-e-eep. . .’

When she was fast asleep I drew the curtains. The deacon stood motionless with wet eyes, crossing
himself and muttering prayers of gratitude beneath his breath.

'Let her sleep as long as she can,' I whispered.

We tiptoed out, running into his two daughters who had evidently been eavesdropping at the door.

'Bátushka is here,' they said.

The, priest was at the front door. 'Will you do my house the honour of coming in for a glass of vodka,' he
said sonorously.

The deacon and I followed him. When we arrived, Bátushka's wife, spluttering words of welcome,
bustled about importantly and withdrew after placing bottles, glasses, and zakuski on the table.

'We are very grateful to you indeed,' said Bátushka. 'Your health!’

I still felt keenly that I was there under false pretences. I wanted to say something about it, but couldn't
think exactly what; and after we had all tossed down a few glasses of vodka nothing I could have said
would have served any useful purpose at all. So I made my excuses and said I must go.

'We do not dare to impose on your kindness,' said the deacon tremulously, 'but if to-morrow you could
see your way to call again.'

I promised to return—and made good my escape.

My visit to the deacon's wife would inevitably become known at the manor in the course of the day. I
had been seen going there from the church door. Should I face up to the offensive malice of the froglike
Trofimov? I knew it was silly to be affected by it but I couldn't help it. And something had taken place at
the deacon's, something indefinable had been created—or revealed—that I didn't want to lose. So I kept
to myself for the rest of the day. Should I visit my new patient on the morrow or not? It would be
churlish and cowardly to yield to the fatuous opposition—that must not deter me—but should I know
how to regain that subtle atmosphere? Perhaps it would be lost. Perhaps my visit had been quite
ineffective anyway.

But I had given my word—I must keep it. Next day I went to the village in the morning, impressing on
the villagers that they must take the nurse's medicine, and then, later in the afternoon, I slipped round
unobserved to the deacon's house.

I noticed at once a slight, and for a moment somewhat baffling change in the deacon's manner, a sort of
timid urgency.
'We were afraid you had forgotten,' he said. 'Or perhaps'

‘Perhaps what?'

'Perhaps you were too busy.' (That's not what he was going to say, I said to myself.)

'How is your wife?’

'Much better, thanks to you, I beg of you to do as you did yesterday, once more.'

His wife was sitting up in a bed, looking a different woman. Her temperature was down and she had just
had a meal. ‘You see?’ said the deacon with suppressed excitement. 'We believe in you. I sincerely beg
of you—just once more—as you did yesterday.'

The little woman sat propped against the coarse pillows, with her rough hands lying on the sheets. Her
eyes glowed with faith and trust. 'I am so much better,' she said.

I braced myself, swallowed something in my throat, took her face in my hands, and said: 'You see, you
slept, and while you slept the good spirits chased out the evil ones.' At the close I said: 'Now shut your
eyes and don't speak for an hour.' I got up gently and motioned to the deacon to leave her to doze
alone.

In the little hall one of his daughters was once more waiting with a message.

'Bátushka invites you again for a glass of vodka, if agreeable to you.'

I was firmly resolved to put things straight at least to the extent of telling them that the famous 'charm'
was nothing but the English version of the Lord's Prayer. As we trudged along to the priest's house I
thought how best to express it.

Bátushka received me again with cordiality, but in his manner, as in the deacon's, I noticed a subtle
change.

I said at once, apologetically: 'I don't want to appear in a false light, Bátushka, so I think I ought to tell
you that my so-called "charm" is only the Lord's Prayer in English, my native tongue.'

'We know that,' he replied promptly.

'You know? How do you know?'

'Mr. Trofimov came this morning and told us,' said the priest.

Seeing my expression he went on hastily, while the deacon nodded energetic approval: 'We paid no
attention to what he said. He said you were a charlatan, that your healing was humbug, and that it was
mockery to say the, Lord's Prayer in a foreign language pretending it is some kind of charm. But we paid
no attention to him, I assure you.'

'None at all,' said the deacon.

'You are a good man, you want to help people,' said the priest.

'And you do,' said the deacon.

'We believe in you,' said the priest.

'Implicitly,' said the deacon.

'We should still trust you if a hundred people came and told us not to,' said the priest.

'If a thousand came,' said the deacon.

I was incapable of replying. With a lump in my throat I blurted: 'Spasibo! Spasibo! Thank you!’

I gulped down a glass of the proffered drink and hurried to leave.

'We beg you to honour us whenever you have a moment,' the priest said in parting, and as I walked
quickly towards the gate I caught behind me this exclamation, uttered not to me but to themselves:
'Charlatanry? '—and with great irony: 'Charlatanry indeed! If it is charlatanry, it is sviatoye
sharlatanswo—holy charlatanry!

I hurried out—away into the wide spaces of the fields—with the frosty air cutting my face—with drifting
clouds driving helter-skelter across the full moon—to be alone—to escape from my fellow-men —from
those that love too much, and those that hate too much, and from those, more merciful, who are
indifferent. 'Holy charlatanry —holy charlatanry—holy charlatanry! ' For a long, long time, long
afterwards, those words rang like a peal of bells in my ears: 'Holy charlatanry—holy charlatanry —holy
charlatanry!

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Lord's Prayer

THESE NAIVE EXPERIMENTS in the art of healing had a sequel, for me an important one. I told the Lion
about them, of course in the same facetious vein that I told anybody else. But the manner of telling
belied my feeling, I had really been surprised and impressed. The full gamut of emotions had been
struck, in the childlike trust of the peasants, the deeper and rather overwhelming faith of the priest and
the deacon, the malice of opponents. I had acquired a little wisdom. It would have been difficult to
define, but the Lion understood. He perceived the emotion lurking beneath my camouflage of flippancy
and though he too laughed and cried 'bravo' and bade me repeat my story to his friends, always in the
same vein, I could see that to him, as to me, it was not just merely a humorous adventure.

One evening, rather late, he said: 'There is someone I want you to meet. Come along with me.'
He gave no explanation except to say that the person we were going to see was one 'of whom there are
but few in the world'. He also enjoined strict secrecy regarding our visit, because the man concerned
was 'in hiding'. Why, he didn't explain.

He led the way to a house at the bottom of a small street not far from the Nicolas station. Here at a door
on a bare staircase suggesting modest bourgeois dwellings he rang a bell. We were admitted to a very
plain apartment. Lev Lvovitch greeted the woman who let us in but did not introduce me. He walked
straight down the passage of the flat and opened a door at the end. This doorway appeared to have
been knocked through the wall of the flat beyond, which was larger and more sumptuous. There was a
marked oriental touch in its decoration's. The walls of the hall were adorned with carpets, wrought-iron
lamps with coloured glass hung from the ceiling. Evidently completely at home, the Lion peeped into
one of the rooms, then signaled to me to follow.

The room fairly large, was draped with curtains and other hangings, with lamps to match. In one corner
was a large low divan piled with coloured cushions. On this divan two men sat cross-legged, playing
chess with a set of ornamental pieces. On an octagonal table beside them were coffee and cups. From
time to time the players reached out to take a sip. Judging from their looks neither of them was
European. One, wearing a patterned silk dressing gown and a turban, was thickset, dark, with a short,
bushy black beard. The other, dressed in a slack lounge suit with a scarf in place of collar and tie, had
tan-coloured leathery skin, high cheek-bones, slanting eyes, and a little goatee beard. Except for a curt
nod neither of them paid the slightest attention when we entered. They went on playing their game,
exchanging comments in a language I couldn't understand.

'Coffee?' asked Lev Lvovitch, signaling me to a stool.

He poured it out and then looked on at the game. It was soon over, amid a discussion presumably as to
what the loser ought to have done at a critical juncture. Apparently the man in the turban had won. He
turned, and, seeing me, said, as if I had been there all the evening: 'You play?' He spoke Russian with a
marked accent. . . .

'Not very well,' I replied, 'but I like it.'

For answer be made a gesture inviting me to take the place of his late opponent, who got up to make
way for me and started to talk volubly to Lev Lvovitch.

'Take your shoes off if you would be more comfortable,' said my host.

I did so, and was ashamed to find I had a hole in my sock. I tried to hide it when I doubled my feet under
me, but to my embarrassment he pointed at it, smiled, and said: 'You believe in ventilation! Good
thing—nothing like fresh air! . . . Black or white? ‘—and he held out his closed hands with two pawns in
them. When I had picked white I noticed that the other hand had held a white pawn too.

Now that I sat opposite him I saw that his dark eyes, piercing in their brilliance, were at the same time
kindly and sparkling with humour. I was flustered, but in any case no fit player for him. He won easily.
'Nichevo—no matter,' he said. 'I hope you will make many occasions to take your revenge.' He bowed
slightly, spreading his hands to indicate that I would be welcome.

A long talk ensued between the three men. From his gestures I gathered the Lion was telling the other
two about my handling of the peasants. He turned to me after a while and asked me to repeat for the
benefit of my host the lines of the Lord's Prayer in the way I had said them to my patients. I did so,
rather self-consciously.

'You are English?’ my host asked, speaking in English.

'Yes.' ..

'Please say your Lord's Prayer again.' He spoke English better than Russian, fairly correctly and with less
accent.

I repeated the “charm”.

'Very, very in-ter-est-ing,' he said, staring at me so intently that I turned away. I caught the Lion's eye as
he was settling down to chess with the man with the slanting eyes. He nodded at me with a look that
seemed to indicate that I should pay particular attention to anything my host said.

We continued to talk in English, and the conversations which I have good reason to remember,
proceeded somewhat as follows. I reconstruct it as best I can from the notes I made at the time.

'Who taught you to say the Lord's Prayer like that?'

'Nobody. It just came into my head.'

'Say the whole prayer through in the same manner.'

I did so with one or two hesitations.

'You interrupted it. You said the first lines without stopping, but then you took a breath. That's wrong.
This is the way your Lord's Prayer was meant to be said. Listen, and watch,' '

He folded his hands in his lap, fixed his eyes on me, and began to breathe in slowly and deeply, holding
his breath a few moments, sitting motionless. It was very quiet in the room. Lev Lvovitch and the other
man were engrossed in their game. They seemed already to belong to another world. I felt I was
entering a new one.

A low, rich, musical bass note, about G2 below middle C, began to sound in the room, pure and dry amid
the muffling hangings.

My host had begun to chant the 'Lord's Prayer.' The words came slowly and softly, the syllables flowing
evenly and equidistant on the stream of the single note. The consonants just sufficed to articulate the
words. From start to finish there was no stop, no hesitation, no 'halt for breath, no rise or fall in tone; it
was one single sound, integral and self-contained, imparting to the prayer a meaning far deeper than
the words themselves. The "amen "—pronounced, of course, 'ah-meen '—trailed off into inaudibility in a
way that merged the fading musical note with the ensuing silence. Chanted slowly in a single breath it
seemed to last a very long time. '

I was spellbound, and sat waiting in expectation. The sound of the chanted note had a singularly
penetrating effect. I felt as if it had entered right into me. After a while he said: 'You see, though the
words have deep meaning they are not the most important thing. It is even doubtful whether the words
have been transmitted to us accurately. Versions differ and nuances are introduced by translation. The
most important thing about the prayer is that it is a convenient measure of a single trained breath.'

I was puzzled. ‘What has breath to do with it?'

He replied at some length. I can transmit his words only imperfectly. ‘The Lord's Prayer’, he said, always
referring, to it as ‘your Lord's Prayer', was designed 'as a devotional breathing exercise to be chanted on
a single even breath'. The same was true of other ancient prayers composed in the East in the distant
past. Subtle advantages of far-reaching value, he said, are derived from the vibrations caused by correct
incantation, polarized mentally by the words of the prayers. To intone them as they were intended to be
intoned equal attention must be devoted to the three elements: the breath, the sound, and the words.
In the modern religion of the West, which has degenerated into hopeless institutional formalism, the
words are mistaken for the whole thing. 'I have been in many churches in England and America,' said my
mysterious host, 'and always heard the congregation mumble the Lord's Prayer all together in a
scrambled grunt as if the mere muttered repetition of the formula were all that is required2. Have you
read your scriptures? '

I told him the Bible had been rammed down my throat as a child, and consequently I had at times been
on the verge of hating it.

'It is better to hate than to be indifferent,' he replied. 'It means you may come to love it when you
understand it rightly.'

'My father was a parson,' I explained.

2
The crude and depressing manner in which the Lord's Prayer is customarily repeated in western churches, either
as a dismal intonation or a ' scrambled mumble', is typical of the factors inculcating the indifference, if not positive
disrespect, for church forms which characterizes the younger generation of to-day who are looking for something
real as a guide in life. In the foreword to his striking volume of illustrations to the Lord's Prayer, The Lord's Prayer
in Black and White (Jonathan Cape), Arthur Wragge has this to say: . . . the Lord's Prayer should be prayed alone.
Jesus urged us to pray "to thy Father which is in secret ", closing the doors of our rooms and surrendering
ourselves to the poetry of prayer. Yet to-day this advice is almost forgotten, for usually this particular prayer of all
prayers is said in a dull sing-song voice in company with a crowd of others, most of them either bored,
conventional, or indifferent. The poetry of the prayer is destroyed by over much repetition so that it has almost
ceased to mean anything.'
'Ah, you had a bad start. One does not expect divines to understand the Bible. They cling to the text. You
will find that though Jesus dictated openly the words of his model prayer, when he wanted to show how
they were to be uttered—the more important part of the matter—he took a few chosen disciples apart
into a desert place and gave them special instruction. That was never recorded.'

‘Why not?’

'It cannot be recorded. It is an individual matter. However alike in appearance, we are all constructed
more or less differently from each other. It is closely concerned with how a man breathes, and no two
persons breathe exactly alike. Each disciple had first to be taught how to breathe, and then to find the
note and the tone peculiar to him on which to intone with best effect.'

'But doesn't nature teach us how to breathe?' I argued.

He replied to the effect that nature, of course, compels us to breathe, breathing, is that by which we
live, but we habitually perform the function in a limited way, without studying it, merely enough to keep
soul and body together. Even singers and athletes only study breathing to suit their particular activities.
'We also crawl on all fours, make noises, and perform many actions without special instruction, but to
walk, to speak, to sing we have to learn. Yet nobody thinks of teaching children how to breathe—
nobody, that is, outside certain limited circles. A technique attaches to everything before it can be done
to best advantage, and this is especially true of the breath of life, though singularly few people seem to
realize it.'

I still argued that breathing was a natural function like digestion or the circulation of the blood, and that
the more we left these things to take care of themselves the better. 'Besides,' I said, 'prayer is not a
physical thing, it is spiritual.'

'Where is the borderline?' he retorted. 'If prayer has nothing to do with physical functions why should all
the great religions, including those founded on your Bible, insist on the association of prayer with
fasting? ‘

I was stumped by that.

'So you see, prayer in its highest form would seem after all to have something to do with the digestion,
and even with the quality and circulation of the blood.'

This revolutionary thought needed some digestion itself. I switched the immediate issue. 'Why need the
prayer be intoned at all? Why can't it just be recited?’

For answer he bared a powerful chest and, taking my hand, said: ‘Put your finger there.' I placed the tips
of my fingers, as he indicated, at the base of his chest. He drew a deep breath and began to intone on
approximately the same note as before. I felt his entire torso vibrating, and the vibration was
communicated to me rather like a mild electric current.
I withdrew my fingers and after a decent interval said: 'You didn't chant words. You chanted a single
sound "0" and you trailed off on an "M".'

'Nothing misses you,' he chuckled encouragingly. 'This is an exercise with which to begin. Would you like
to try? Chant the word "home "3.

I slipped my finger-tips inside my shirt, held them to my breast-bone, and started chanting. But how
different from his was the effect! I could only just feel a feeble vibration, while my incantation sounded
like a broken growl.

'No matter,' he said kindly. 'I will show you how to practice, and in a few years if you are diligent you will
get results.'

'Years?' I exclaimed with dismay.

'Well, how many years does it take to become proficient in music? Prayer is an art like music, or
painting, or acting, or sculpture, and at least as difficult. Some spend a lifetime acquiring it.'

'A lifetime! What's the good of it at the end of a lifetime?’

'Young man,' he said gravely, ' much that I am telling you now you will fully understand only later.
Remember this, that to pray is an art, and in art there is no final goal. There is always further to go. It is a
voyage of unending discovery, and, as in all such voyages, what is gathered by the wayside is often as
valuable as what is found at the destination.'

The two-men playing chess at the far side of the room had finished a game. Lev Lvovitch came over and
said something to my host, who shook his head and answered curtly, as if he wanted to go on talking to
me. The Lion turned to his companion and started another game.

'Please say the Lord's Prayer again,' I begged, rather like Petka saying to me: 'Uncle Moon, please do it
again!

Once more my host folded his hands, drew himself up, breathed in slowly and deeply. And again the
deep note rolled out, bearing the familiar words in its course like a tide bearing ships slowly into
harbour.

'May I try?' I ventured.

3
The sound ' home' is practically the same as the sacred syllable ' Om '. I was to discover in practice that though it
may well be true that the Lord's Prayer is the convenient measure of a single trained breath, this can only be
regarded as an approximate rule, for the duration of a breath in chanting is affected by both volume and pitch. I
have no doubt that, had our acquaintance not been cut short as will be described, Ozay would have introduced
nuances into the principles he laid down for me . As it was, I was left in later years to work them out for myself,
dovetailing them into the teachings of others which, often unexpectedly, proved to have a bearing upon them.
'Of course. You must learn.'

But again my voice in comparison with his sounded thin and rasping, the tone wavered and broke.
Trying to pronounce the words as slowly as he had done I was gasping half-way through.

'No matter,' he said again. 'Come back another evening and I will show you how to begin.'

'Shall I too have to fast?' I asked.

He looked at me for a moment and burst out laughing. ’Yes. You will. But not now!' He clapped his
hands, a servant entered, he gave him an order, and the servant brought in a tray with an assortment of
zakuski and drinks. My host filled two glasses. 'Try my own concoction,' he said, 'much better than
whisky. Here's to ourselves!' He drained his glass in Russian fashion, and, not to be outdone, I followed
suit. It was a good thing I was in practice—the stuff was potent. He jerked his thumb at the Lion and his
companion. 'Those old fogies have got stuck in their game. Let's have another.'

After a second glass he called over to the two men and they interrupted their game to join us.
Conversation was inevitably disjointed, for the man with the slanting eyes spoke little Russian and no
English, so I could not talk to him at all, and the three talked among themselves only in their own
language. To me the Lion spoke in Russian, while my host preferred English. Ribald stories made up part
of the conversation, some of which my host translated to me with gusto. I knew one or two myself,
which he translated back with much approval.

After supper the Lion and his companion resumed their game and my host said: 'I'll sing you some
Eastern songs.' He clapped his hands and the servant brought him a kind of guitar, on which he played
plaintive oriental tunes, sometimes humming, sometimes singing softly in a rich baritone.

'What language are you singing in?' I asked.

'A language of the rocky wastes and inaccessible hills,' he said. Eventually the two other men finished
their game, and after a few more drinks the Lion said it was time to go.

‘You will come back?' said my host. '

'I would like to very much indeed.'

'Lev Lvovitoh will bring you," he said, and he got up from the divan to show us out. I then saw that he
was of about medium height, sturdily built. The grip of his hand as he said good night was warm and
powerful.

We left as we had entered, passing through the connecting door into the first flat and so into the narrow
back street. The city was asleep. Our footsteps were softened by a thin fall of snow. Tiny flakes fell
silently, glistening beneath the arc-lamps.

'Well?' queried the Lion. 'How did you like the Prince?'

'The Prince?'
‘We call him the Prince.’

'Prince who? Is he a prince?'

The Lion hesitated. 'Call him Prince Ozay,' he said. But his name doesn't matter. How did you like him?'

I could find no words to express what I felt, and I plied the Lion with questions about him. But he would
say no more—only that we should go again in a few days.

We went several times. At first I was as much intrigued by the identity of 'Prince Ozay' as by his words
and actions—the natural curiosity of youth. Who was he? Why the secrecy? I had not yet escaped from
the inhibitions of a skeptical society that demands conventional qualifications as security for authority.
But I had already seen in Lev Lvovitch that conventional qualifications matter very little. I have since
found them often to be highly misleading. There are plenty of fools with academic degrees. I had reason
to think my strange host was, nominally at least, a Moslem or a Parsee. He always spoke of the Bible as
'your' scriptures, but whether he was Turk, Tartar, Teuton, or Tibetan; whether his profession was
tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, or tramp; whether his reclusion was voluntary, forced, or prompted by
political, social, commercial, or religious motives—what did any of these matter as long as I could glean
from him something I needed and that he was willing to impart? He was a very learned and much-
travelled man, with a deep knowledge of comparative religion and philosophy—the philosophy not only
of the university but of life—about which he spoke in terms so unconventional that it would be difficult
to convey them, so mixed up were they with running commentaries on events and anecdotes of one
sort or another. I found it difficult to note down more than a fraction of what he said. As for his formal
profession, for all I knew he might have been a merchant, or a leader of some rebellious tribe, or a
journalist, or (as I at one moment suspected) was visiting the Russian capital on some religious errand. I
never found out and as it was none of my business I ceased to bother my head about it. Lev Lvovitch
always spoke of him with the deepest respect. He accompanied me on each visit. We were admitted in
the same mysterious manner through the back flat, and stayed until about three in the morning. The
man with the slit eyes and the goatee beard was the only other person I met there, except the servant, a
mulatto, who used to bring in drinks and food.

Ozay loved music and took an interest in me not only for my experiments with the peasants but also for
my having come all the way from England to study at the Russian Conservatoire. It was the musical side
of what he had to say—the subject of chanting on a single breath—which most engrossed me, though I
soon learned that this was bound up inextricably with everything else—physique, physics, philosophy.
But he was not always easy to draw out. As a rule he was provokingly evasive until I produced some
unusual or challenging remark.

For instance. Behold me once more squatting cross-legged facing him—chela at the foot of the guru, I
suppose those would want it put for whom the words 'pupil' and 'teacher' are not good enough (such
people are legion). My guru is certainly divine—in the best sense, which means thoroughly human—and
his first question is not about the chela's soul but his socks. But I've made sure this time—my socks are
new. 'No ventilation holes? Too bad! Reminds me of the man who …' and off he goes on one anecdote
after another. I try to get a word in about the matters that so much interest me—but he wants to play
chess. Later I try again—but he insists on testing a new drink he has concocted, more potent than the
one at the first visit. About two a.m. I murmur: 'Excuse me, Prince, but - ’. Quite ineffectually. In come
more refreshments. But I am not to be cheated. I wait for my chance and blurt with my mouth half full:
'Prince, if the Lord's Prayer is tied up with fasting, why does it say "Give us this day our daily bread"?'

That was the kind of remark that would get him going. ‘You've got it wrong. It isn't with the Lord's Prayer
that fasting is tied up, but with the discovery of the note on which such prayers should be chanted.
Without fasting you can't discover the Name.'

'What Name?'

'Well, when you say "hallowed be thy Name" what do you mean?’

I had to confess I had never thought about it.

'In your Church nobody does think about it. They beg the question by saying it is the name of "God" and
leave it at that. Yet the key is in your scriptures: "In the beginning was the Name and the Name was
with God and the Name was God."'

'In the beginning was the "Word ", not "Name ",' I corrected.

‘”Logos ", if you want to bicker,' he retorted. 'The point is that when there wasn't yet any language there
can't have been any words and there can't have been any names in the ordinary sense.'

'Then what was the "logos"?

'A sound. The first sound. The deepest sound. What you might call the world's tonic note.'

'A sound we can hear?'

'Feel. Not hear in the ordinary sense. The most penetrating sound is inaudible, just as the most
penetrating light is invisible. But by training you can produce an audible echo of the sound because
every octave is a replica at a different level of every other octave, as everybody knows. The function of
prayer is not to beg or to extol, but to attune.'

'To attune what?'

'The body. Or the soul if you prefer that metaphor.' (He often used this expression, 'body—or soul if you
prefer the metaphor')

'You are a musical instrument as a piano is, and you need to be kept in tune. That's where fasting and
other exercises come in; you can't possibly reflect finer vibrations when your body—or soul, if you
prefer—is loaded with a lot of food gurgling in the stomach, or while the blood makes a din chasing
about in the veins and arteries.'

'The blood? Making a din?'

'Like a cascade. You can't hear it when you're always listening outwards. You've got to listen inwards—
and that alone is an art in itself. As long as your main thoroughfares are noisy with traffic how can you
expect to hear?'

'Then what are we shoveling food in for now? ' I said in genuine dismay, laying down my knife and fork.

The gesture was quite unaffected and it made him roar with laughter. He stopped to tell Lev Lvovitch
and the other man what I had said. The Lion looked at me sympathetically, as if wondering whether I
would be put off by our host's manner. But I felt sure I had merely to wait.

'Listen, young man. How many subjects do you study at the Conservatoire?'

I enumerated them: piano, harmony, counterpoint, orchestration, conducting, history of music,

aesthetics, etc., etc.

'Yet together don't they make one whole?' he went on. 'Well, it's exactly like that with the art of prayer.
The amateur thinks he can do it as an amateur makes music, by some kind of "instinct ", or as his "soul"
directs, or some other such nonsense, when it is precisely the "soul" that needs direction. "Soul ", or
feeling, as it ought to be called, does enter into music, but none the less the connoisseur knows that, to
be perfect, the most moving music requires trained technique.'

Wasn't this just what Essipova said?

'Fasting is one branch of the art of prayer,' he went on, 'but it is also an art in itself and needs to be
studied systematically, not in an amateurish or haphazard way.'

Breathing was another art, he said. So was sex. 'Nobody can ever hope to attune himself perfectly in
whom sex is weak, or undeveloped, or unbalanced, or abnormal.'

'Then what about celibacy?' I demanded.

At stages of the training temporary celibacy, is as essential as fasting, he replied, but it would be stupid
to make asceticism an end in itself. The fanatic who becomes a permanent celibate is like a musician
who spends his life doing one exercise.'

'God,' I recorded him as saying on another occasion, "is achieved not through activity, but through
cessation of activity. Cessation to the utmost limit of diet, breath, and sex. These are the 'three pillars on
which prayer is built. Each has to be trained and disciplined by restraint—there is no other way because
they are all runaway horses. Only when the ground is cleared can true building commence. Only from
that point can you begin to act consciously. To say that prayer is "mental" or "spiritual" is to beg the
question. Prayer is physiological. Your own scriptures imply it, but formalism has dulled the ears of most
of your priests so that they cannot understand, and their eyes so that they cannot perceive.'

A lot that he said was above my head at the time and I came to understand it only later. He must have
seen the look of despondency that sometimes overcame me, for he repeated more than once: 'Young
man, remember what I told you about its being a voyage of discovery. There is as much to be learned
along the path as at the end, and a few steps are better than none, even if you stumble.'

Ozay's interpretations opened undreamt-of and unending vistas. The point of first importance to me
then was that the biblical gospel was to be studied in a manner utterly different from that in which it
had been thrust upon me in childhood. It had meaning which was to be discovered only by diligent
search, to be treasured because the key to its application lay in the simple and practical things of daily
life, beginning first of all with the training of the physical body to become a fit temple of the spirit.
Viewed not as an open book but as one to which it was necessary to find a key, the gospel became
intensely personal, free of any kind of dogma whatsoever, a living message, with the Lord's Prayer its
emblem, the parables its illustrations. 'Seek and ye shall find' sounded like a clarion call out of the deep,
a challenge to enterprise and adventure, a call to do and dare, firstly towards oneself.

Ozay encouraged me to try my hand at composing my own one-breath prayers as exercises, taking the
Lord's Prayer as a standard of length, to be chanted in the same manner, on the deepest convenient
note, each time on a single unwavering breath. I composed a number of such prayers, of which the
following, with which he was very pleased, was the first:

Lord of Life, whose almighty power dwells in the least cell of this body, manifest Thy glory
therein to full perfection. Let those radiant forces that pervade Thy universe purify and uplift
me. Through cheerful observance of Thy laws may I acquire, divine strength and health,
therewith to consecrate myself to Thy service all the rest of my days.

The incantation of prayers in this special manner, said Ozay, was practiced in the earliest Christian
Church, which inherited it from the ancient Egyptians, Chaldeans, Brahmins, and others in the East,
where it is known as the science of Mantra. This esoteric side of Christianity was lost in the Western
Church centuries ago. The standardization of creeds and dogmas tended to stifle it, and the use of
organs in churches hastened the decline of mantric chanting. A vestigial echo, proving its erstwhile
existence, remains in the custom of intoning prayers on a single note. But the art of breathing that
properly controlled it has been completely lost. There remains nothing but that dismal and depressing
drone which makes of every prayer a lamentation. Most present-day officiating priests of Anglican or
Roman Catholic churches would be very surprised, not to say shocked, to be told that the practice they
perform is a gross degradation of what was intended to be a devotional physical exercise of high
spiritual value, designed to train the breath of life by which we live, and to be executed with this intent
in certain clearly defined postures very different from the cramped attitude which is the debased
custom of to-day. A greater measure of the mantric art survived in the Greek Orthodox Church,
especially in its Russian branch, on account of Its devotion to pure song without instrumental
interference; the Orthodox Church has never allowed its singing to be crippled or debased, by organ
'support', and indeed does not permit organs to be placed in churches.4'

But the Orthodox Church itself became vitiated by political association and subservience to the secular
power, and the knowledge once preserved behind its dogmatic façade was largely lost. True, its priests
are still trained as singers, and this involves voice production and some control of the breath, but the
original conception of an essential and inseparable connection between the spiritual and the
physiological has long vanished.

Nevertheless, Ozay said to me one night when he had been speaking on this subject: 'Would you like to
hear an echo of the sound I have been telling you about?'

There was, of course, nothing I desired more.

'Then go to the services this week at the Alexander Nevsky Abbey,' he said, 'and observe particularly
everything you hear.'

It was the beginning of Holy Week and the great pre-Easter services were being held daily in every
church in the land. I put off everything to go to the Abbey early next morning.

The vast interior of the Abbey is dim. Only a few candles glimmer here and there in front of brass-
encased icons whose dark-painted faces peer mysteriously from behind their ornate metal dressing.

4
Quite apart from the question of mantric chanting, 'the detrimental effect of habitual organ ' support' on church
choir singing in general is particularly noticeable in England. (I am not referring to congregational or community
singing, which is merely an inartistic noise, but to the making of music which should be worthy of our most
beautiful cathedrals and churches, by trained choirs, not by the musically illiterate crowd.) However noble an
instrument the organ may be in itself and however grandiose as an occasional supplement to choral song, when it
is relied upon habitually to lead the singing it inevitably emasculates it, becoming a sort of glorified prop, like a
golden crutch for a man too lazy to walk. Hence the thin, soulless, spectral character of most English church choir
singing, observable particularly in the vast spaces of our cathedrals. So low has our sense of appreciation fallen in
this matter that even musical people sometimes do not notice how bad it is; or else they take it for granted that
church music, for some unexplained reason, must remain on the same inartistic level to which our worship has
generally sunk. That the English are capable of a high standard of choral singing is shown by the work of some
choral societies who specialize in unaccompanied song, and particularly by the concerts—alas, all too rare—of the
B.B.C. singers, who occasionally give performances that could vie with Russian choirs; indeed I have heard them
perform superbly even the religious choral works of Gretchaninov, Rachmaninov, and other Russian composers
who wrote for the Church. If a determined effort were made, first and foremost 'by the elimination of organ
'support ', to restore the standard of English church choir singing, and if at the same time a stop were put for ever
to the miserable, dirge-like droning of prayers by lugubrious priests whose sepulchral manner often seems
designed to reduce the unfortunate worshipper to the last depths of gloom and despair, it would be a great step
towards restoring our cathedrals and churches to their original high status of theatres of religious art, and towards
reviving religious sentiment in the masses by supplying that truly spiritual inspiration which is so sadly lacking in
present-day services.
Distantly a monotonic incantation floats from behind the great iconostasis. Worshippers are beginning
to gather, bowing and crossing themselves as they enter, placing candles before their favourite icons.
Candles are being lit also in front of the iconostasis and at the golden lectern standing on a dais in the
body of the church. The distant chant, long-drawn and plaintive, goes on and on without ceasing, itself
destroying all sense of time and materiality.

The church is filling now, the worshippers stand or kneel, singly or in little groups. The chant comes to
an end. The service is about to begin. There is a pause, and suddenly the choir bursts into song,
magnificent, angelic. The Alexander Nevsky Abbey was noted for the superlative beauty of its singing
even among a galaxy of cathedrals. While the divine strains peal through the Abbey the great gates of
the iconostasis are thrown open, and the archimandrite with several assistant priests, mitred and clad in
gorgeous robes, advance with thuribles to sprinkle the congregation with incense. Music, colour,
perfume—wise indeed were those who, for an artistic people, devised this sensuous background to
religious exercise!

The elaborate office runs its course. The rich deep bass of one priest after another rolls out the
invocations, the choir peals the responses. At last the moment arrives for the reading of the scriptures.
A young priest—it is difficult to assess his age through his flowing locks and beard, but I should guess
him to be about thirty—mounts the dais and takes his place at the lectern. The remaining officiants
range themselves on either side. The pageantry is impressive. A momentary hush descends. The young
priest adjusts his robes, bows to the altar, crosses himself, and prepares to read. To 'read'? The first
indication that he is 'reading' is the reverberation in the stilled vastness of the church of a sound—low,
even, prolonged. With each long-drawn-out breath he chants a single phrase, very slowly and with even
articulation of the syllables. The voice is a rich baritone, similar in pitch to the voices of his colleagues,
but more polished, more vibrant. He begins on a note about an octave below middle C, rising one
semitone with each phrase, at the same time swelling the volume. Already at the dominant his voice
resounds in mighty waves among the vault's and arches. When finally, at the octave, he reaches the
climax of the 'reading' the note is like a last trump—triumphant, exultant, majestic, overpowering.

At first I was struck only by the richness of a voice that might have earned for its owner world fame had
he cared to exploit it on the operatic stage. That in itself, however, was nothing exceptional in the
Russian Church. Chaliapin was not the only great Russian singer who started in a village choir. Nor was
the mode of reading unusual. It was the established practice, at that moment the scriptures were being
read in the same manner in every church in the land. Yet this young priest's voice was different from all
others. When he reached about E-flat I noticed something quite extraordinary happening in his voice. He
appeared to be 'directing' it in a certain way (that is the only expression I can find to describe it).

He had gripped the lectern with both hands, drawn himself very erect, raised his head slightly, and
seemed to be projecting the sounds he produced towards some point in the vast spaces above. I did not
hear the effect, I felt it—piercingly, almost like a pain, analogous to the pain one feels in the eyes when
moving abruptly from gloom into a brilliant light. He achieved this strange effect only on certain vowels,
and on these I felt the sound as if it was being produced in my own head and throughout my own body. I
seemed to be identified with it, and its effect was to make everything around appear to swim and for a
moment to become unreal and ethereal. I was afraid I might totter and fall, and had to pull myself
together with an effort. It was a disconcerting experience.

When the young priest reached his exultant concluding note I found the sense of being carried away
well-nigh unbearable, though I would not have done anything to stop it or escape from it. But I
experienced a feeling almost of relief when the choir again burst into song. I soon recovered my wits
and looked round to see if others had been similarly affected. Whether anyone else had 'felt' the same
sounds as I had I cannot tell, but that the whole congregation had been powerfully impressed was
beyond question. Most of them were on their knees and in tears.

The young priest descended from the dais and the pageantry proceeded. I came away, knowing I had
heard what Ozay wanted me to hear, and anxious to keep the recollection fresh in my mind. I went two
or three times more during the week and had the same experience, just as eerie, though less
disconcerting as I grew to expect it.

I told Lev Lvovitch about it first. 'You must tell the Prince,' he said.

The mere fact that Ozay had known of the priest inevitably established in my mind a connection
between them.

'Is that young priest a pupil of the Prince?' I asked the Lion inquisitively, but received no encouragement
to pry into what was none of my business.

He took me to Ozay, and one of the first questions I posed was whether others in the congregation
could have had the same experience as I. He replied that it was unlikely, though any sensitive person
would be struck by the unusual quality of the voice.

'You should take your experience as an encouraging sign,' he said. 'It means that, even from the few
exercises you have done, your body—or soul, if you like—has begun to be receptive to the Name—or
the Word, if you prefer. In a few years, if you are persistent, you will note the results.'

'Nevertheless,' I argued obstinately, 'I won't say it was exactly pleasant, especially the first time.'

'Young man,' he answered severely, 'do you condemn the sun because it blinds you to look at it, or fire
because it burns if you to touch it, or your muscles if they ache from strain? Truth must always be
revealed in small doses, greatly diluted. And sound, too, has to be rationed, especially the Name which is
above every Name, as your scriptures express it.That is why the Name must be hallowed. An overdose
might easily kill you before you're trained for it.'

'Might it have killed me in the cathedral?' I asked, awed.

'Yes, if it had been more concentrated, much as a violin string may snap if plucked too hard, or musical
notes of a certain quality break solid objects at a distance.'
I began to think I had got off lightly. My face must have betrayed the thought, for I saw his expression
change. 'Young man,' he said, sternly reproving, 'I could kill you in an instant, sitting here, without either
of us moving a muscle.'

I stared at him in amazement, unbelieving for a moment. But there was that in his tone and manner
which carried conviction. I sat abashed, gravely disconcerted.

'Are you afraid of risks?' he said, gently once more, but still with a note of reproof. 'Understand this
clearly. No man can acquire this kind of knowledge without risking death. God, misapplied, is the Devil.
There is only one force in creation. Good and evil lie merely in its application.'

CHAPTER EIGHT

Noah's Ark

IN THE TURMOIL and confusion of the period preceding the outbreak of the revolution in 1917 I lost
contact with Lev Lvovitch and Ozay and never saw them again. For me, the revolution tore time in two.

Treasured connections were ruptured, but on the other hand the cataclysm completed my personal
emancipation; my meeting with Ozay was the first major circumstance of my life that I succeeded in fully
concealing from Vera. When I visited her after the revolution she made one last despairing attempt to
reassert her dominion. It ended in what might have been a grave incident. I have forgotten what the
particular cause de guerre was, I only remember, that when I made it clear that I intended to go my own
way she seized a large metal vase from the mantelpiece and hurled it at my head. I dodged Just in time
and the vase crashed into a glass case, destroying it. She could not understand my enthusiasm for a
dawning new era. She belonged ineradicably to the old world, in time and soil, whereas with the
revolution I began life anew.

My revolutionary ardour lasted as long as the revolution remained Russian, but when Lenin and his
associates, profiting by the freedom they had taken so little part in establishing, returned some weeks
later from their homes abroad with the deliberate aim of annihilating the liberties of the revolution and
transforming it from a Russian into a German-Marxist one, denying the Russian genius in favour of the
envenomed philosophy of the German outcast whose body rotted in Highgate cemetery, then my
youthful revolutionary ardour received a rude shock indeed.

I had been sent to the Foreign Office as a specialist on Russian affairs some months after the revolution,
so was not in Petrograd at the moment of the Bolshevik coup d'état in November, but I lost no time in
returning. My chief at the Foreign Office was john Buchan (later Lord Tweedsrnuir), who readily acceded
to my proposal that I should be sent on a roving commission to Russia to report on the new conditions.
Once the catastrophe had occurred it was no use merely decrying it or shedding useless tears over it. It
was necessary to make the best of the position, carefully to study the workings of the new regime, and
above all to see whether Lenin could be dissuaded from making a separate peace with the Germans
(much as, twenty-two years later, we sought to dissuade Pétain and Laval from casting France to the
same fate). With this mission Mr. (now Sir Robert) Bruce Lockhart was sent to Moscow, and it was
through no fault of his that his earnest efforts failed. Allied intervention from that moment became
inevitable (as in France in the second world war).

My own task was to travel as far afield as possible and report on conditions as I found them, and I spent
most of the next two years on this job. Beginning as a modest foreign office temporary assistant, I soon
found myself, when conditions no longer allowed foreigners to travel about Russia freely, drafted into
the secret service, and then began that long series of strange adventures which I have recorded in detail
in Secret Agent 'ST 255’—slipping to and fro across the frontier in various disguises, living with false
papers, eluding pursuit by the Cheka, eventually joining the Red Army and escaping by deserting from it
into Latvia, and meanwhile collecting and secretly dispatching across the frontier the information so
badly needed by the Allied governments after the expulsion of all Allied missions by the Bolshevik
government. When, at the end of it all, I returned to London I was informed that I was to be decorated
for these services. King George V received me very kindly and required a long account of my various
adventures; he was particularly amused by the fact that I had been obliged at one time to hide for
several days and nights in a cemetery where I slept in an old tomb.

I was introduced to the journalistic world by Mr. Winston Churchill at a large gathering at the War
Office. I do not think I came up to expectations on that occasion. 'Bolshevik atrocities' were the burning
topic of the moment. Bolshevik atrocities were real enough, like those of many of their opponents, but I
regarded the violence and brutality of both sides as an inevitable concomitant of revolution in a semi-
barbarous country. I said nothing about them, but sought rather to expose the dangers of the
exportation of Bolshevism which had already become the Soviet's chief aim through the agency of the
Comintern. The significance of this, however, was as yet little appreciated in London. My warnings
missed their mark and were next day pooh-poohed by a large section of the Press. At the conclusion of
my remarks Mr. Churchill got up and said with characteristic forcefulness all the things I had left out, and
these received, greater prominence. One or two papers did, however, give me some notice, notably The
Times and the Daily Telegraph. Lord Northcliffe invited me to stay with him at his country house and
informed me kindly that if I got rid of my 'foreign mannerisms' I might make a useful contribution to the
discussions of the moment. I wrote an article for The Times which was immediately followed by a
request by the editor (then Wickham Steed) to write a series of a dozen; and it was then that I
discovered somewhat to my surprise that despite my 'foreign mannerisms' I had not entirely forgotten
how to string a few English phrases together. At the conclusion of the dozen articles, and a lot more that
I was asked to contribute to other papers and magazines whose editors suddenly began to think there
might be something in what I was saying, The Times sent me as special correspondent to Poland and the
Ukraine at the moment when it was thought that Boris Savinkov (leader of the Social-revolutionary party
which had played the largest part in the revolution and which, being purely Russian, was strongly anti-

5
Casseli's Pocket Library. First published as The Story of 'ST 25'.
Communist) might make a dash to Moscow and supplant the German-Marxist Soviet by a Russian
socialist administration. But the 'White' Russians representing the old regime objected to this project
almost as much as they objected to the Bolsheviks. It was not supported, and the 'White' Russians by
their internecine quarrels and lack of understanding of the Russian peasantry wrought their own
downfall. Indeed they served by their blindness and stupidity to buttress the Bolshevik regime as
nothing else could have done, and Lenin shrewdly profited by their mistakes to come to terms with a
rebellious populace in 1921 by his concessions of the New Economic Policy, thus at one stroke fortifying
his shaky position internally and paving the way for acceptance of Mr. Lloyd George's offer of a trade
pact with Britain in 1921.

When I again returned to England a group of political friends pressed me to stand for Parliament, a job
for which I regarded myself as totally unfitted since I knew nothing of British domestic politics.
Nevertheless I might weakly have succumbed to these suasions had it not been that I was saved in the
nick of time by an invitation to go to America on a lecture tour, which appealed to me much more than
becoming what I should almost certainly have become in Parliament, a very ineffective and probably
very restless and undisciplined politician. So off I went to America, wondering mightily at the curious
fate that in a few years had tossed me from a humble post at the Imperial Marinsky Theatre first to the
august precincts of the Foreign Office, then back to Russia as a bearded and disguised fugitive, thence
again to London to have an unexpected prefix hooked to my name, then back to the wilds of Poland and
the Ukraine, and now suddenly across the Atlantic.

I was booked to address, on the day after my arrival, the Boston Chamber of Commerce, which I was
told was one of the most important bodies in the United States, and I was very nervous about this. But
as luck would have it, while I was crossing the Atlantic, there broke out at Kronstadt the historic revolt of
the Kronstadt Communists against Lenin and the Soviet. On my arrival in New York I found that
everyone was bewildered by this event. America, like Britain, was divided into violently opposed camps
of pro- and anti-Reds with nobody possessing a balanced view or any profound knowledge of the
subject. I was apparently the only person who had seen the process of the revolution during its crucial
early years from the people's point of view, and was consequently able to give a logical explanation of
the Communist revolt, the most dramatic incident of that universal uprising of the people against the
Bolshevik regime which compelled Lenin to introduce his New Economic Policy. When I explained the
matter to the reporters who bombarded me on my arrival at New York it was headlined in the papers
next morning and I found myself hailed as 'the man who knew'. There was no need for me to have been
so nervous about the Boston Chamber of Commerce; to them also I was 'the man who knew'. And when
at further lectures I discovered that American audiences were very human and loved to have a dose of
adventure thrown in—especially the bit about having to sleep in a tomb ! —my tour became easier
going than I had anticipated. At the end of my first season my manager offered me a contract for the
next three years.

The term 'easy going' requires some qualification, as any who have been through the ordeal of a high-
speed American lecture tour will agree. Rush travel and lavish entertainment, the non-stop repetition of
the same things day after day, with endless answering of identical questions posed by exactly similar
people in town after town gets a bit wearing. At the end of the season I wanted a rest. Besides,
publishers were demanding a book. I sought seclusion, even isolation. And that is how—to make a long
story short—having a few shekels in the bank, I stood one day in a shipbuilding yard at Huntingdon, Long
Island, with a wistful eye cocked on an antiquated thirty-foot motor launch hoisted on the stocks for
painting and caulking. I was pondering its possibilities as a floating refuge from the world. Appropriately,
it was named The Ark. It looked a curious old bark, but the more I stared at it the more I coveted it. Just
it. None of those smart modern craft for me with furnished cabin and all that. I wanted just this old
carcass that had taken my fancy, with its girdered roof and an antediluvian engine amidships. To buy or
not to buy? I offered four hundred dollars. 'Five hundred,' insisted the Scotch-Irish shipmonger, spitting,
'and ye're gitting a bargain. Though she's ould she's seaworthy fer innywhere in the Sound, and the
ingine wurrks like clockwurrk. If I'm lying, swelp me I'll take her back.'

I climbed in once more to have a good look all over her. Heavy looking clockwork! Yet there was
something cozy and appealing about her. A friend had told me I could trust the old Shipman. 'Throw in
the dinghy and it's a deal.'

'Oy, ye're sure a hard haggler, son!' But when I added a bottle of whisky, which in the idiotic days of
American prohibition was of more value than rubies, the boat plus dinghy became mine.

Painting and caulking completed, she was duly launched. The heavy fly-wheel of the engine was hard to
swing, but once going she chonked along sturdily, doing about seven knots. Henceforth I was captain,
mate, bo'sun and crew of the good ship The Ark, now to be my hearth, home, and habitat for the rest of
the summer.

Elated by an exhilarating sense of deliverance I steered her down the bay. The dull chonk-chonk of the
motor, the gentle rustle of the wash, were music in my ears. The Ark and I, at once the best of friends,
floated out into the open waters of Long Island Sound. The Huntingdon shipyards that gave her birth
(about the time of the deluge?) and nurtured her since, disappeared round a point of the coast. The
wide expanse of the Sound shimmered in the afternoon sun. In the distance the coast of Connecticut
was pleasantly indented with little seaside resorts. I twisted the helm in the direction of New York. But
not for far. The gaping mouth of Cold Spring Harbour came into sight to port, I put about again, and
chonk-chonk-chonk the Ark plugged her way steadily up its long stretch of water, past the opening of
Oyster Bay, towards the white building of the Coidspring Harbour Beach Club near the head of the inlet.

My arrival was expected. I knew several people in that delightful district and had stayed week-ends at
their charming country homes. They had made me an honorary member of the Beach Club. My plan to
live on an old motor launch in the bay sounded to them fantastic. They didn't quite believe it, and
thought I was daft. So I was—in that way. But the children believed it. And as the Ark chonked nearer
with a Stars and Stripes at her prow and a Union Jack astern they crowded on the pier, buckets and
spades and sand-hills for the moment forgotten. I hardly had time to pull alongside before they were
clamouring to come aboard, demanding 'to see the animals'. 'You are the animals,' I told them. 'Clamber
in elephant—crawl in, crocodile—hop in, flea! So now I was Noah.

Some of the parents too were on the beach. They viewed my craft with misgiving. It was indeed of
unusual design, especially to live in. 'Where is the cabin?' they wanted to know. And when I pointed to
the stout awnings attached to the girders that supported the roof as my only protection against the
elements they thought me crazier than ever. But it suited me well—the, boat could be completely open
or completely enclosed. And capacious lockers provided plenty of store space for clothing, books, food,
kitchen utensils.

I took about a dozen children aboard and off we went to the opposite shore, a mile or so away, then out
towards the Sound, a sophisticated version of the Uncle Moon who once took loads of peasant children
for boating trips on a river in the wilds of distant Russia years ago. It was to happen every fine
afternoon, and each time the thought was forced upon me: 'What can have become of my Russian
peasant children, now grown up? Is Petka a commissar, or a komsomol, or a politruk, or something else
equally forbidding? Would they remember their not very proletarian but very human Uncle Moon?'

At the end of the trip Noah deposited his dozen animals at the pier of the Beach Club, much as Uncle
Moon used to push his rowboat into the village bank; and, as Uncle Moon would once row back to the
manor, so Noah now piloted his Ark half a mile out from shore and there dropped anchor. By sundown
she was ship-shape, goods sorted into lockers, wardrobe on one side, library on the other; pantry and
kitchen for'ard of the engine; aft, the 'saloon', where I would sleep on the floor. And I had built a
removable table to fit over the engine in the middle. For the rest, a primus stove, a lamp swinging from
the roof, an air-mattress for bed, a fleabag and rugs for bedclothes—in a word, paradise. The daily
routine was to be reveille and swim at six, breakfast at seven, work at eight, lunch at one, then up-
anchor and alongside the pier for provisions and a trip for 'the animals', tea at the club, back to
anchorage, another swim, then work again till eight and supper; or else, change for dinner, to be fetched
from the Beach Club to friends of the neighbourhood, 'home' about ten, row out to the Ark, a night-cap
plunge and then sleep of the just. Paradise, absolute paradise!

The work I hoped to accomplish in floating isolation was enormous. I surveyed my bundles of papers and
notebooks with dismay. I was commissioned to write a book about revolutionary adventures and
political events, and it was on the Ark that I wrote Red Dusk and the Morrow, which some years later I
amplified into The Story of ‘ST 2.5' (and later into Secret Agent 'ST 25’). But besides that, it was on the
Ark that I began to collate the notes which were destined eventually to form the chapters of this book
up to this point. I often asked myself which of these two subjects was really nearest my heart. For
though Lev Lvovitch and Ozay had vanished from my horizon in the convulsion of the revolution, they
had lit a torch that never ceased to burn even at the tensest or most distressing moments of those tragic
and exciting years, and, as with, a lighthouse, the purpose of the light became clearer the wider the
range of objects lit.

The manner of my reintroduction to this line of study was as odd as my earliest approach through elves
and elementals and 'Three Xs'. As everyone knows who has lived there, America is the abiding home of
queer cults. In the twenties and thirties they flourished in particular profusion, everything from End-of-
the-Wonders (there were lots of them) heralding the day of judgment at stated intervals, to Dukhobors
ploughing their fields stark naked; from Satanists to Holy Rollers eating dung for the salvation of their
souls; from Fundamentalists with their finger eternally on the first chapter of Genesis to hot-gospellers
like Aimee Macpherson and her bottle-party Christianity; William Jennings Bryan saving America from
Darwin; Pussyfoot Johnson saving America from booze; Billy Sunday saving America from sex and sanity;
freaks, faddists, fetishists of every kind, not to speak of societies like the Theosophists, also split into
mud-slinging factions, and the endless variety of churches gone advertising-mad, selling American
Christianity with flashing neon signs like 'Jesus Wept'. And among them all, of course, were not a few
claiming to interpret to the Western world the mystic philosophies of the East, including Yoga.

I first encountered the term Yoga in the theosophical circles of St. Petersburg, but though the literature
about it was intriguing I was prevented from falling too much a prey to it by the somewhat caustic
reaction of Ozay. Ozay did not deny or disparage Yoga— quite the contrary—but he had no use for
dreamy theosophical speculations about 'thought-forms' and 'astral bodies', and nothing but scathing
contempt for 'intellectual dabblers in the occult who were so enamoured of their "subtle" bodies that
they let this one rot'. It was a harsh saying, but not unjustified in instances I had myself observed. 'Read,
by all means,' he once said to me, 'if only to see what nonsense people can sometimes write, but there
is only one book to study—this one '—and he gave me a whack on the chest to indicate that he meant
the Book of You. In other words, 'Know thyself.' How can we expect to comprehend the mysteries of our
'subtle' bodies before fully understanding this one with which we are operating?

With time and experience the value of such blunt warnings was borne in on me in other fields than
Yoga, in a manner that enhanced their application to that particular subject. The word Yoga is often
abused, just as is the word Christian. In the sphere of religion are not mad or mountebank mystagogues
galore to be found peddling counterfeit wares and trading on the ignorance of dupes? So it is of course
also with oriental 'mysticism '—and since so many are ready to be deceived is it surprising if purveyors
of fraud come forward to supply the demand?

For instance, shortly after my arrival in America I picked up on a New York bookstall a volume entitled
How To Be A Yogi, by an author with an Indian name ending in 'swami '-' Jamaraswami' or something of
the sort. The publishing headquarters were announced at an address in Chicago, and the fly-leaf
advertised about a dozen books on Bhakti Yoga, Raja Yoga, Jriana Yoga, Matha Yoga, Karma Yoga, and
others by the same author. The volume I had picked up was somewhat of a hotch-potch, and was badly
written, but so, I have noticed, are many books on these subjects from the pens of writers who have not
completely mastered the English language. A few days later I was lecturing at Chicago and took
advantage of the occasion to call at the address given with a view to seeking the author's acquaintance. I
had expected to find either a publishing house or some recognized society. What I found, in the back
room of a rather shabby building, was a very tough young lady assiduously chewing gum and directing
the packing of parcels of books for the post. The walls were stacked with volumes which I recognized as
those advertised. I asked if I could meet the learned author. The young lady looked at me dubiously and
replied.’ You mean Mr. Atkins?' 'No, Mr. Jamaraswami.' 'That's Mr. Atkins,' she said. 'No, I mean the
Indian gentleman who wrote these books,' I explained, pointing to the name on the title-page. The
young lady regarded me with a mixture of pity and contempt. 'That's the name he uses for the books,'
she replied, as if it were the most natural thing in the world; 'who'd read 'em if they was written by a Mr.
Atkins? '—and her eyes added all too clearly, 'You poor goof!' Since she was so communicative I went
on naïvely: 'This Mr. Atkins, is he of Indian birth? He must at least, have lived there a long time to know
all he does.' 'If you ask me,' she replied with conviction, 'he's never been there in his life '—and with a
gesture at the stacks of volumes she added: 'He writes it all up from other people's books because it
pays.' I picked up one or two of the volumes: Mysteries of Yoga, How To Be A Yogi, and so forth.
'Anyway,' I persisted, my curiosity now aroused for a new reason, 'can I meet Mr. Atkins?' But she
replied: 'He never sees anybody.' I gathered from her tone that she meant in the capacity of author of
How To Be A Yogi, and was not surprised. 'Besides,' she went on, 'he's away in Florida doing deals in real
estate.'

There was another visit I paid while at Chicago. In my childhood I remembered my father speaking of
one, John Alexander Dowie, a Scottish preacher who got it into his head that he was the prophet Elijah
returned to earth. As nobody in Scotland would believe him he migrated to America. There he
established a community called Zion City, a few miles north of Chicago. His followers confidently
expected him to end his days by being spectacularly whisked up to heaven, Elijah-like, in a whirlwind,
but he let them down badly by dying prosaically in his bed. In spite of this the sect persisted. The new
Elijah, successor to Dowie, was a certain Wilbur Gwenn Voliva who just about that time was attracting a
good deal of public attention by his denunciation of the wicked theory that the earth is round; it is flat,
he said, and square, because otherwise the Bible wouldn't say it had four corners or talk about the
pillars that support it. He also fulminated against the iniquity of eating oysters, and as I am rather partial
to oysters I was curious to know why anyone should single out that particular delicacy for special
disapproval. So one Sunday I took a car and drove out.

At Zion City you didn't have to ask whether you were welcome or not. You were told all about it as you
entered the place. A row of vast hoardings greeted you, so placed as to strike the eye of every chance
traveler and impress him for the rest of his life. The first of these hoardings ran word for word as
follows:

NOTICE TO INTRUDERS. IF YOU ARE AN INTRUDER, GET OUT, WE DON'T WANT YOU HERE. NO
RELIGIOUS BUMS, TRAMPS, OR VAGABONDS WANTED HERE. GET OUT BEFORE WE KICK YOU OUT. FOR
ALL SUCH WE WILL MAKE ZION HOTTER THAN HELL.

A few yards further you received this additional admonition:

NO OUTSIDERS OR BUTT-INSKYS WANTED. IF YOU ARE A GENUINE INQUIRER YOU ARE WELCOME, BUT
DON'T COME TO BUTT IN ON OTHER PEOPLE'S BUSINESS. THERE ARE PLENTY OF OTHER TOWNS FOR
YOU TO GO AND LIVE IN. GET OUT OF ZION AND GO AND FOUND A ZOO FOR YOURSELVES.

The next gave the answer to the absorbing problem of oysters:

ZION IS A CITY OF GOD. NO OTHER CITY IN THE WORLD LIKE IT. EVERY FAMILY A FAMILY OF GOD, EVERY
HOUSE A HOUSE OF PRAYER. WITHIN CITY PRECINCTS THERE SHALL BE NO PROFANITY, NO VULGARITY,
NO SMOKING, NO ALCOHOL, NO DOCTORS, NO THEATRES, NO GAMBLING HELLS, NO DRUGGISTS, NO
VACCINATION (THE FOULEST CRIME EVER INVENTED BY CRIMINAL POLITICIANS AND DIRTY DOCTORS),
NO HOUSES OF ASSIGNATION, NO EATING OF PORK (SCAVENGERS OF THE EARTH), NO EATING OF
OYSTERS (SCAVENGERS OF THE SEA) OR OF ANYTHING FORBIDDEN IN DEUTERONOMY, CHAPTER XIV.
I might have turned back at this, but I was curious to get a glimpse if possible of the genius upon whom
the mantle of Elijah had descended, the author of these homely greetings. But there was no one to ask.
The town seemed deserted. I had, of course, arrived at the moment when, every house being a house of
prayer, the entire population were at their devotions. So I parked my car and ambled along the untidy
and ill-kept main street. After a few steps I came to what looked like an empty shop where, through the
window, I saw some twenty people holding a meeting. I figured that if I stared long enough through the
window someone would come out either to shoo me away as an intruding 'butt-insky' or else invite me
in as a promising candidate. I proceeded to stare, trying to look as if I loathed oysters. A man came out.
I expected him to demand challengingly: 'Do you eat oysters?' and was prepared to deny such a thing
vociferously. But no: the large plate of oysters I had consumed the evening before had left no guilty
traces in my countenance. He gave me the once-over, and said: 'Come in, brother.' I followed him and
he thrust a Bible and a hymn book into my hand. But the leader of the meeting, who was about to
announce a hymn, seeing me enter, at once said: 'Let us pray.' The congregation fell on their knees, I
with them, and the leader, with his eye on me (the corner of mine was open too) for the space of about
twenty minutes eagerly invoked the Almighty's favour for 'the erring stranger whom the finger of
Providence had thus guided into the true fold'. When the meeting ended, in loud singing of the doxology
with all eyes fixed upon the 'erring stranger', I learnt that the 'true fold.' was a dissenting offshoot of the
parent community, objecting very strongly to the absurd pretensions of the notorious Voliva. Voliva, I
was told, was a 'usurper' with no claim whatsoever to the mantle of Elijah, which I was assured should
rightly have descended upon the gentleman who had just been entreating the Almighty so eloquently on
my behalf and was conversing with me now. I expressed proper commiseration and was promptly
invited to lunch in the bosom of his family. I needed no second invitation. What would they eat instead
of oysters? While my host had been praying I had succeeded in surreptitiously consulting the fourteenth
chapter of the book of Deuteronomy, referred to on the hoardings, and in that dietetic guide read that,
as regards sea-food, 'whatsoever hath not fins and scales ye shall not eat'—which, of course, cut out
oysters—and as for the rest, 'every beast that hath the hoof cloven in two and cheweth the cud, that ye
shall not eat'. This left a pretty wide range for the menu. Besides the commonplace ox and sheep one
might still be regaled, so the scripture said, with 'the hart, the gazelle, the roebuck, the wild goat, the
pygarg, the antelope, and the chamois'. So, of course, I stayed to lunch.

My would-be Elijah lived in a small house with a large wife and enormous family, all very ordinary
looking. While he said grace for ten minutes the soup got cold, and the pièce de résistance that followed
turned out to be not gazelle, nor, even pygarg, whatever pygarg is, but mutton. Before lunch was over I
was itching to escape, the more so as I quickly tired of the sole topic of conversation, namely, the
extreme depravity of the unspeakable Voliva and the enormity of his many misdeeds. I learned
furthermore that my host and his associates were by no means the only dissidents. There were
apparently at least a dozen such rebel clans, each of them claiming the mantle of Elijah for their
particular leader and none of them on speaking terms with any of the others.

My host refused to tell me where the iniquitous Voliva lived, so I had to ask someone in the street, who
was probably a Volivite, for he told me it was almost next door. Voliva's house was large and shabby. So
was the darkie servant who opened the door. When I asked to see Mr. Voliva she said: 'And what is your
business with 'the General Overseer?' (This was evidently Elijah's earthly title.) 'My father knew Mr.
Dowie,' I replied boldly, thinking this would be a good gambit, but at once wondering whether it was
wise in view of the disputed succession. She looked at me doubtfully and disappeared within. I was soon
conscious of more than one pair of inquisitive eyes peering at me through chinks of doors. There was
much whispering, and eventually the darkie servant reappeared and said: 'The General Overseer is just
going to service at four o'clock at the Shiloh Tabernacle. If you come back afterwards he will see you.'

I calculated that this would amply suffice to have a chat with the General Overseer and still get back to
Chicago in time for dinner. But I little knew Zion. The service at the Shiloh Tabernacle, a huge wooden
structure, had already lasted nearly two hours and seemed only about the middle when I decided to quit
without the hoped-for interview. But I was rewarded by the service. First a large choir entered in
procession attired in white robes and black mortar-boards, and eventually the General Overseer himself,
with red fringes to his white robes and a red tassel on his mortar-board, mounted pompously to the
pulpit, while behind him twelve apostles ranged themselves, distinguished by blue fringes and tassels.
The twentieth-century Elijah was not wanting in theatrical sense. He was a thickset man of about fifty,
with sensuous features and a loud voice. First there were hymns and prayers, then the prophet braced
himself for the sermon. It was when he had been going for about an hour and seemed just to be getting
into his stride that I decided to sneak out and repair to the first oyster bar. But the sermon was
memorable. The world was going to end in 1935, the prophet proclaimed, when the heavens would
open and God would call upon him, Elijah, to lead the saints of the earthly city of Zion (Illinois) to its
heavenly counterpart above. 'The vanity of those who think themselves wise and learned in this world
will be revealed,' he fulminated. 'The Bible says the heavens will open and voices be heard from it, so
how can the sky be as far off as the astronomers say? ‘I saw four angels standing at the four corners of
the earth' (he quoted), so how can the earth be round? ‘The pillars of the earth are the Lord's (he
quoted again) and He hath set the world upon them’ There!' he cried, 'the scientists are confounded!
The earth is fiat—flat—and square—and the angels that stand at the four corners shall shake the pillars
so that the earth shall be dissolved, as the scriptures say. But we—you and I, the elect—shall be caught
up to heaven. Pray and prepare, therefore, brethren, for the time is soon at hand. We have but a few
years until nineteen-hundred-and thirty-five!’

'Hey, mister sir! Mister sir!’

By this novel appellation the old salt who looked after the Beach Club hailed me from the pier.
'Telephone—urgent!' he yelled at the top of his voice. I jumped into the dinghy and pulled ashore. A
friend of mine wanted to know if I would address some musical society at a place called Nyack, some
thirty miles up the Hudson River from New York, on the subject of 'The Influence of the Revolution on
Russian Art'. I told him I was doing no more public speaking until the winter, I wanted to finish a book.
But he was pressing—said the audience would be select—wealthy New Yorkers at their villas for the
week-end--offered, a high fee—promised every convenience—So-and-so would meet me in New York
and drive me out—and he himself would put me up for the night. Fee plus friend plus topic tipped the
scale. I liked the subject: I would sit half the time at the piano playing all sorts of things from folk tunes
to the Internationale by way of illustration.

Accordingly on Saturday morning, grouching none the less at this interruption in my work, I packed a
bag, stowed away my papers, fastened down my awnings, deserted the Ark, took train to New York, met
the promised gentleman who drove me out—some big banker with a Dutch name—delivered my
lecture, and was subsequently entertained at the Dutch banker's house prior to spending the night with
my friend.

At the banker's supper table the conversation was first about the lecture I had delivered, but after a
while a lady said: 'Tell me, please, the sect of the Dukhobors, does it still exist in Russia?' I was unable to
enlighten her; there had been many queer sects in Russia; I had no idea what had happened to the
Dukhobors. 'Why are you particularly interested in the Dukhobors?' I asked. She replied that some of
them had settled in a western American state, where they had caused a sensation by demanding to
plough their fields stark naked.

'You Americans are hospitable to people with strange beliefs,' I said, and I told them of my visit to Zion
City, and also of the spurious Yogi Jamaraswami Atkins.

No sooner had I breathed the word 'yogi’ than I felt the atmosphere suddenly tense. After a moment's
silence someone said: 'You don't have to go as far as Chicago to find charlatans preaching yogi stuff.
We've got them right here in Nyack.' 'Awful people,' said another. 'Monstrous,' said a third. 'Absolutely
indecent,' exclaimed a fat lady loaded with diamonds, adding as if it were a particularly scandalous
offence: 'Why, the women wear slacks! 'They stand on their heads!' said another oleaginous female, as
if this feat were especially obscene. 'They stand on their heads, men and women together!' 'The fellow
who runs it is a notorious rascal,' said someone else. And so on. Only my friend sat silent, obviously ill at
ease. ‘Mr. So-and-so,' said somebody, turning to him, 'seems to think they are quite all right. We think
they are immoral.' 'There is nothing immoral about them,' said my friend. At this point the hostess
tactfully changed the subject and no more was said. But the moment we had left the house I, of course,
plied my friend with questions. 'It's true there is a club here where they study Yoga,' he told me, 'and I'm
a member of it. It's untrue that it's indecent. If you'd like to visit it to-morrow I'll take you.'

We sat up late while he talked with a good deal of enthusiasm of the benefits he had derived from 'the
Club'. Of its head, one Dr. Pierre Bernard, he spoke with great respect. The basis of the Doctor's
teachings, I gathered, was a sort of cult of health and the adaptation of Yoga philosophy to modern
practical life. 'Of course, he is hated in New York society,' said my friend, 'because he has no use for
social conventions. Some of the women members do wear slacks. Is that immoral? And they practice
standing on their heads —it's good for the health. And the women play baseball—in slacks, of course.
Nyack society thinks it immoral for women to play baseball, let alone in slacks!

Next day he took me to visit the Club. It was situated near the top of the hill behind the little town, with
a superb view over the Hudson River. A crowd of people were gathered at one side of a large baseball
field, where two teams were preparing to play. Several of the players were women, dressed either in the
offending slacks, or, still better, in the same playing suits as the men. I admired the skill and confidence
with which they entered into the spirit of the very masculine game.

My friend pointed to a man near the nets, waiting for his turn to bat. He was squatting on his haunches
and chewing a cigar. 'That's the Doctor,' said my friend.

When the game was over I was introduced. Dr. Pierre Bernard was rather curt and uncommunicative. He
was a man of about fifty, of very athletic build, almost bald, with a high forehead and quick, keen eyes. A
Club meeting was to be held that evening at which he was to hold forth on the philosophy of the
Vedanta—the system founded upon the Vedas, the ancient Indian books which are said to be the oldest
in the world. Not being a member I was not permitted to attend, but my curiosity was already
stimulated to the point of wishing to join. When my friend showed me some scurrilous articles about the
Club from the gutter press of New York I had no further hesitation. I at once recognized in these articles,
as in the comments of the Nyack social elect on the previous evening, precisely the attitude of St.
Petersburg society to the Lion, the unvarying attitude of 'polite society' everywhere to thinkers and
darers.

I returned to Cold Spring Harbour and the Ark, packed up my work, spent a day or two saying good-bye
to my Long Island friends, then hove anchor early one morning and started on my sixty-mile journey,
chonking my way up the Sound, through Hell's Gate and the Harlem River, to the Hudson. The Ark
acquitted herself nobly. The trip was without mishap, and late that evening I dropped anchor in the little
harbour of the Nyack Yacht Club.

CHAPTER NINE

Yoga I

IT WAS A GORGEOUS Saturday afternoon. The air shimmered in the radiant sunshine of an October
Indian summer. Vast and placid, the Hudson stretched north and south below us, its surface dotted here
and there with river craft. An old fashioned double-funneled ferry boat crawled across the two miles of
water towards Tarrytown on the far shore. The villas of the little town of Nyack nestled among the trees
bordering the cliffs of the west bank. Above, the hill rose steeply, capped at the crest with wooded
crags.

My friend and I trudged up the slope. 'We'll see if the Doctor is at his home, and if not we'll go up to the
Club,' he suggested.

Bernard's house was a beautifully placed villa overlooking the river and intervening rise. I waited in the
study while my companion made inquiries. On the walls were several charts in oriental lettering.
'Sanskrit testimonials,' my friend explained, 'the Doctor studied in the East.' The Doctor was not in. We
climbed further to the Club House where I had attended the baseball match. Again a game was in
progress, and again I was struck by the spirited atmosphere, the pluck of the women standing up to the
hard pitching, the keenness and enthusiasm with which they entered into the game. 'The Doctor
believes you can learn a lot about living by learning a lot about playing,' my companion observed.

We proceeded to look for the Doctor. Someone said: 'P.A. is round at the garage, there he is, working on
his steam car.' Bernard was apparently familiarly known by his initials 'P.A.' Three or four men in overalls
were bent over the engine of an enormous car standing outside the garage. Their conversation, from
what one caught of it, consisted of a stream of highly-coloured invective. Eventually the examination
ended, the men stood up. The Doctor recognized me. 'We met before, I think. Would you like a look
around?'

He led me into a large building close by, part of which was a spacious room, attractively fitted out, with
walls lined with bookcases and a billiard table amidships. 'Used to be a barn,' he explained. 'Now we
hold meetings here. Kind of open forum. Discussion of subjects of general interest. Folks here interested
in philosophy—as you see.' He pointed at the library which must have contained several thousand
books, largely on science, philosophy, and psychology. Works about India and Yoga were prominent.
'Good many books on health, too,' said the Doctor. 'Folks here crazy about health. Believe in keeping fit.
Good citizenship.'

Peculiar noises sounded from behind large sliding doors at one end of the room. 'Something going on,'
said the Doctor and slid the doors open, revealing a small hail with a platform at the end. The floor was
spread with acrobatic mats, and on these about a dozen people, men and women in bathing costumes,
were engaged in precisely that exercise which the highlights of Nyack society found so offensive—they
were learning to stand on their heads! One or two were unsteady and were being assisted by an
instructor who helped them to find their balance.

'Old Father William wasn't the only one, as you see,' the Doctor chuckled.

'I should like to know why standing on the head is important.' I said.

'If you stick around here a bit you'll see,' he replied. 'That isn't the only thing that's important, lots of
things are important. Would you like to ask the instructor? He's a countryman of yours, from
Birmingham or some place. Hey, Corbin,' he called, 'meet a fellow countryman. . . . If you'll excuse me I'll
just get on with my car.'

I watched the class. Some of the head standers remained perfectly motionless for several minutes.
Afterwards there were other exercises and strenuous breathing practice. Class over, the instructor
Corbin talked to me with enthusiasm about his work, explaining the exercises. 'You want to know why
people should stand on their heads? Look here'—and he pressed a vein on his arm, then on his leg, so
that the blood bulged in the valves. 'You know what those valves do, don't you?' I replied that I knew
the valves assisted the return of the venous blood to the heart. He went on: 'But do you know that in
the abdomen, where we need such valves badly, they don't exist?' On the walls were anatomical charts
of the human body and also of various quadrupeds—cows, horses, rabbits, and so on. 'Our "innards" are
arranged very much like theirs,' said Corbin, 'although they walk on all fours. It looks as if our structure
hasn't yet completely adapted itself to our erect posture. Our guts hang loosely like theirs do, and like
them we have no abdominal valves. They don't need such valves because their blood flows horizontally.
But in us gravitation drags everything downwards' —and he detailed the various complaints resulting
from prolapse of internal organs.

'So you make people stand on their heads to let gravitation work in the opposite direction?'

'Exactly. Of course all good exercise helps to keep things in their right place. Pulling the tummy in does
it, too '—and with a jerk he pulled his stomach up under his ribs so that he suddenly looked like a
skeleton. 'But the headstand does it quickest and with the least expenditure of energy. And it gives the
brain a blood bath at the same time—you know the brain requires more blood than the rest of the body.
To stand on the head for a few moments is a sort of physiological cocktail whenever you feel fagged.'

Head standing was not new to me, for I had read about it in my Russian days, and tried it out. What was
new, and immeasurably welcome, was the logical explanation of it, which my St. Petersburg
theosophists had been quite incapable of giving (Ozay might have given it had I asked him, but because
of his attitude towards the theosophists I never did) and also the enthusiasm with which these
adventurers in Yogic practices went about it. To their delight I joined them on the floor at once.

I was invited to stay to the evening lecture. Some sixty or seventy people forgathered in the large billiard
room. The night was growing chilly and a huge fire blazed in the open hearth. 'P.A.', chewing a big cigar,
was finishing a game of billiards. He had changed from overalls into flannels with an open shirt. The play
over, he settled himself in an arm-chair near the hearth. The Club members sat about informally, many
squatting on the floor.

The Doctor picked up some slips of paper from a table by his side. They contained questions. I forget
what the questions were that evening, but I soon learnt that they might be on a very wide range of
subjects, from 'Why did Buddha desert his wife?' or a request for clarification of some aphorism of
Patanjali, to a query about digestion, or 'How often ought one to take an enema?' Taking his cue from
something in the questions, and discoursing in conversational style picturesquely coloured with slang,
the Doctor explained that Yoga should not be enshrouded in mystery, but should be regarded as
something eminently practical and applicable to everyday life. Unfortunately some imagined that it
ought to be shrouded in mystery, particularly those who love to think in terms of the 'occult' - 'their
minds exist in a kind of perpetual fog, envisaging secret rites or magic or other such bunkum'.

When rightly understood, he said, the word 'Yoga' explains itself: it is the Sanskrit word from which our
word' yoke' is derived, not in its secondary sense of a burden, but in its, primary sense of a link,
something that unites. 'Yoga is that which links, or yokes, man to the ' Universe—to God, if you like.' The
first stage of Yoga, be said, was ethics, right attitude of mind and heart, right behaviour. Idle dabblers
give anything a bad name. Some folks like to spout a lot of Sanskrit terms like Prana, Pranayama, Karma,
Nirvana and what-not, as if there were some virtue in foreign words; but it would do their souls a power
more good to be put on a course of household drudgery, scrubbing floors and so forth, if they've never
done such things before, especially tasks commonly called menial; because the first step towards
merging with Brahm or God or the Infinite or the Universal Spirit, or whatever you like to call it, is a
sympathetic understanding of one's fellow-men, especially those of so-called lower station. Society folk
don't like that, of course. They think it's beneath them. The background of true Yoga is not book-lore or
metaphysics, but character. Without character all the book-lore and metaphysics are as sounding brass
or tinkling cymbals.'

With this essential, he explained, Yoga practice consisted of posturing and movements—the Indians
called them asanas and mudras—designed to train the nervous system, develop power over the internal
physical organs and produce a state of health and bodily control undreamt of by the world at large,
training of the breath, discipline of senses and mind ('the mind is not a machine, it is a mirror'), leading
to higher states of consciousness known as meditation, concentration, and isolation.

I was soon admitted to Club membership. I understood, of course, that it was not an ordinary country
club. Candidates were not proposed, seconded, or elected by ballot; they were vetted by 'P.A.' and by
him alone. The qualifications were not primarily wealth, station, or class, but the genuineness of an
applicant's desire for knowledge. Nevertheless I noticed that wealth, station and class were often
important subsidiary considerations, for it was obviously desired to give the Club good standing in the
eyes of the world. Moreover, I found with time that the philosophy taught was an adaptation of the
ancient teachings of the Vedanta to the prevailing atmosphere of America in the nineteen-twenties,
consequently a strange blend of the ideal and the mercenary, for the idealism of America in the twenties
was subordinated first and foremost to worship of the almighty dollar. Eventually the fact that Bernard
had become a man of wealth as a result of business undertakings was cited in Club prospectuses as a
recommendation. In this matter I had the feeling that he was not acting spontaneously but was allowing
himself to be influenced by those nearest to him in the running of the Club.

He did not need such a recommendation. Indeed it detracted from his stature. Physiologist, philosopher,
occultist, and athlete (he was the idol of sportsmen for miles around), there was hardly any sphere of
activity into which he had not delved, no religious or philosophical system with which he was not
conversant. Vedanta was his special province, but he was skilled also in sensational practices associated
usually with fakirs and such-like------suspended animation, the sticking of knives and needles into his
body without apparent harm or subsequent trace, and so on. But he himself regarded that sort of thing
as vulgar gallery play, and indulged in it only rarely as a stunt to mystify the gaping curious.

I took down many of his lectures in shorthand, but they lost in transcription, for, as I have mentioned,
'P.A.' preferred to talk in street language that anyone can understand without highfalutin mumbo-
jumbo: thus, for instance, this picturesque description of death-bed absolution: 'A guy can be a first-
class son-of-a-bitch for seventy years, then, when the capacity to sin is lost, have a few magic words
mumbled over him while he croaks, and lo, he spends eternity in the bosom of Abraham!' His language
and mannerisms were nothing if not colourful, and his talks did not lose but gained in effect by them.

Preaching the doctrine of Karma, the inescapability of cause and effect, Bernard had no use for dogmatic
religious ideas such as the sudden remission of sins. 'Yoga doesn't tell you always to be ready for death
as ordinary religion does. It tells you always to be ready for life. Any fool can die, but it takes a wise man
to live well and happily, to the benefit of himself and those around him. Anyway, if you know nothing
about life, how can you understand death? So for God's sake leave dying to take care of itself, and get
on with living! Living rightly, of course, and not in the haphazard way most people do, just dragging
themselves along till they're croaking and then asking a priest to put everything, right at the last
moment..'

It would be difficult to convey briefly all the fields covered by Bernard in his lectures. Perhaps the
dominant recurrent theme was that in themselves experiences are nothing, it is the reaction to them
that matters, and reactions are subject to mental control to a much greater degree than is generally
admitted. The main value of the teaching to the bulk of the Club members lay in the increased
knowledge of and respect for their own bodies—' so fearfully and wonderfully made', as Bernard never
tired of quoting. This in itself was sufficient to effect a salutary revolution in the outlook of many on life
and thought as a whole. Bernard's way of driving his points home was not exactly poetic but it certainly
achieved its purpose: 'Ninety per cent of people are constipated without knowing it, which means their
blood is more or less fecal, so how can their thinking be anything but fecal too? ' — 'For such folks the
path to divinity begins in the bowel ' — ' As the gut, so the thought' —and so forth.

The institution bore some resemblance to similar schools that acquired prominence in a number of
European countries after the first world war. Though in these schools the approach to study and the
terminology used in verbal explanations differed widely, they had the same aim—a profounder
understanding of man and the development of his hidden potentialities—and were mostly headed by
some very exceptional person, obviously possessed of more than ordinary knowledge and insight,
whose wisdom had its source in Eastern philosophy. To these schools flocked not a few students of the
mystical, particularly from the literary and artistic world. The Country Club at Nyack was likewise
frequented by visitors from distant parts. From England the writer Francis Yeats-Brown, the composer
Cyril Scott, the conductor Leopold Stokowski, were at one time devotees. Indian swamis sometimes
lectured. A few brave figures from New York society, defying the prejudice that existed against the Club,
were associated with it. It was said that, among others, the elder Mrs. W. K. Vanderbilt and Miss Elsie de
Wolfe (later Lady Mendi) largely owed to P. A. Bernard their knowledge of how to preserve health,
spirits and general efficiency into advanced years. The courageous and enterprising Lady Mendi in her
autobiography proudly exhibited a photograph of herself standing on her head.

The weakness of the institution lay not in its philosophy—though the mercenary aspect of this was often
overstressed by the less understanding among its students—but in its management. In moments of
confidence 'P.A.' would frankly admit that, as regards administrative assistants, he had to make shift
with what he could get; for the first indispensable essential was unqualified devotion, and of this, as also
of their practical capability, there was no question in those to whom he entrusted the running of the
place. But their knowledge and understanding of human-kind was often inferior to his; some of them,
entrusted with authority, possessed a talent for antagonizing people whose continued association might
have been of much service to the Club but who were driven to sever connection with it. There was a
strong note of bigotry about the institution, a tendency to regard all other pretenders to knowledge as
inferior or counterfeit. So I was careful never to breathe a word about any observations l had ever made
elsewhere. Furthermore, though some found at Bernard's feet a solution to their thorniest problems,
which were often in the marital sphere, it could not be said that all the matrimonial experiments that
had their origin in the Club proved an unqualified success. But whatever might be said in criticism, the
attacks launched against the Club by the snobs of Nyack society and the gutter press of New York was
idiotic and absurd, a measure merely of the malice and hypocrisy of the detractors. 'Immorality' was one
of the favourite charges, perhaps because sex was as naturally discussed as physics, psychology,
reincarnation, astronomy, anatomy, sport, dietetics, phrenology, or anything else. Certainly during the
period when I frequently visited the place, and that was when it was being constantly reviled, I saw
nothing more 'immoral' than that the women wore slacks and sporting togs! It was not this that moved
me eventually to allow my connection with the Club to lapse. It was, more than anything else, to see
Bernard turn business man on a large scale, even banker, and use his ascendancy over others as a means
to amass material wealth. And I was not surprised, years later, to discover that the friend who
introduced me had severed his connection with the Club for very similar reasons.

CHAPTER TEN

Yoga II

THE AMERICANIZED YOGA of Nyack, helpful though it was to many of its students, differed greatly from
other interpretations of the same subject.

Among others versed in various branches of this system I formed a close friendship, also in America,
with an Indian ascetic, by name Somesh Bose, for whom I had great respect and affection. Somesh was a
mathematician with a phenomenal head for figures. Sums such as the multiplication of twenty digits by
twenty digits, which might take trained arithmeticians a long time to work out on paper and which
involved many thousands of figures, he did in a few seconds mentally, with his eyes shut, by
concentration in a kind of trance. I saw him subjected to several exacting tests, and the longest time I
ever knew him to take, over a particularly difficult problem involving multiplication, subtraction and
division of vast arrays of figures which it had cost experts several days to prepare, was about two
minutes. He ascribed this high development of a specialized faculty to his general training in Yoga. He
earned a living by teaching mathematics, but charged no fees, merely accepting whatever was offered
him by his pupils.

To say that his mode of life was ascetic would be putting it mildly. He occupied an attic for which he paid
a few dollars a week, and as it was against his principles to kill any living thing the bugs and fleas of his
shabby lodging had a free run in his room, though he personally was scrupulously clean. He preferred
these quarters to better ones that he could have had for the same price at the Y.M.C.A. because at the
Y.M.C.A. there were no locks or bolts on the inside of the doors and the routine of the institution would
have to be observed, whereas for his practices he required absolute privacy and protection from
disturbance, above all during a long fast and vigil which he imposed upon himself for purposes of special
meditation every week from Sunday night to Tuesday morning. Even during the rest of the week he slept
only two hours out of each twenty-four, going to bed just before midnight and getting up between one
and two; from that hour until about seven he sat absolutely motionless, in the Yoga posture called
sidczsana, hands folded in his lap, with his eyes crossed and fixed on the end of his nose, in a state of
deep trance, which doubtless took the place of sleep in this state, he asserted, he conversed with his
dead wife and with his guru, who he was convinced had been about two hundred years old when he
died. His diet was the most remarkable thing of all, for though very active he subsisted on nothing but
one quart of milk a day only for five days of the week, fasting totally during the remaining two days' vigil,
which he spent largely in trance. Incidentally, he called this trance state 'prayer', and it was the only kind
of prayer he recognized. When travelling and unable to get fresh milk, as when he crossed the Atlantic
with me, he subsisted on a handful of nuts instead; but I never knew him to take a single mouthful of
anything else, even when he stayed with me in London for several weeks as a guest.

His story, as he told it me, was a curious one. He was betrothed as a child, according to Hindu custom, to
a bride proposed by his parents, yet who was at the same time a girl of his own choice though he had
never seen her. This, he said, was because he had become enamoured of a certain name, but he had
never met any girl or woman possessed of that name. When his parents suggested a bride he at once
asked her name: it turned out to be the one that obsessed him. There was a strong spiritual affinity
between them, but he was not without occasional misgivings, for his fiancé used to lock herself for an
hour daily in the temple of Vishnu, and Somesh, peeping through the keyhole out of curiosity, saw her
sitting in the posture called pudmasana, meditating before the image of God. 'I shall be an unhappy
husband,' he complained to her, 'because if you so devotedly meditate on Vishnu you will never think of
me, your husband, and I shall be neglected.' But she replied: 'Now I meditate on Vishnu, but from the
moment we are married I shall meditate only on you.'

They were married when they were both twenty. A few months later some fellow students taunted him
that his mathematical powers showed signs of waning as the result of sexual indulgence, so Somesh and
his wife agreed to prove the taunts unfounded. For six years they observed complete voluntary
celibacy, and during this period Somesh developed his remarkable faculties to their highest point. Then
husband and wife resolved to have a child, but without reverting to the unbridled love-life of their
honeymoon. The propitious days for sexual intercourse were determined by certain astrological and
other rites, the act itself being made an object of meditation and treated as a sacrament. Thus two sons
were born to them.

One day his wife suddenly said to him: 'One month from to-day I shall die' He protested loudly against
her suggesting such a thing, especially as she appeared to be in perfect health, but she repeated it
persistently. About three weeks later she fell suddenly ill of a fever, which carried her off on precisely
the day she had predicted. The loss of his wife plunged Somesh into profound despondency. He was
ready 'to curse God and die'. It was at this point that he most radically changed his mode of life. Till then
his dietary habits had been those of others: he ate large quantities of meat and everything else and slept
six or seven hours a night. But at the death of his wife he became an ascetic, vowing himself to spiritual
communion with her. He adopted a restricted diet of milk and nuts, reduced his sleep to two or three
hours, and gave himself up, as he put it, to the intensive search for Yoga. He begged his parents'
permission to set forth in search of a guru who could initiate both him and his deceased wife together
into the spiritual life. As the supreme test of this ability on the guru's part, Somesh demanded to see his
wife restored in the flesh before his eyes. Religion and tradition forbade his leaving home on this quest
without parental blessing, which was long withheld; but Somesh had a premonition, of which he warned
his parents, that if they remained stubborn some new sorrow would befall. And indeed, a few weeks
later the younger of his two Sons died. Whereupon the parents yielded.

Setting out in search of his special guru in Northern India at the foot of the Himalaya mountains, Somesh
encountered numerous gurus, and many remarkable fakirs, some exceedingly aged (200-300 years old,
he believed), but none able to fulfill his request regarding the simultaneous initiation of himself and his
departed wife. At last he heard of one, Swami Volananda (or Bholananda), at Hardwr, reputed to be a
great master who had achieved liberation. Thisguru acceded to Somesh's request and took him into a
secluded cave. Placing him in the sidasana posture, and seating himself facing him, the guru told
Somesh to look beside him. Somesh looked, and there was his wife, as if in the flesh, sitting by his side.
With various rituals lasting about half an hour the Swami initiated them together, whispering the secret
mantra in their ears. The wife then vanished. At this Somesh uttered loud laments, demanding to be
permitted to see her whenever he wanted. The guru replied that this power would come in due course if
Somesh diligently pursued the line of study he indicated. Somesh was then instructed in various
postures, breathing practices, and exercises in concentration. 'Within a few weeks,' he said, 'I acquired
the power to evoke the image of my wife, exactly as if she was in the flesh, and to converse with her:
but I was strictly enjoined not to touch her.'

Somesh was convinced that Volananda was one of the greatest masters of recent times, possibly greater
than the renowned Ramakrishna. He 'expired', pronouncing the name of God ('I am Brahm '—the 'I am
that I am' of the Old Testament) about the age of 200. He was of Brahmin caste, but of his early life little
was known. He had set out when young with staff and begging bowl to live the life of a mendicant, and
in his twenties was said to have been incarcerated by a southern queen who became enamoured of his
good looks. The mendicant not responding, the queen became importunate, whereupon Volananda, to
effect his deliverance, smeared himself with his own excrement and presented himself before her thus.
Horrified, she cast him out.

Volananda, according to Somesh Bose, was one of the few sages who had achieved complete liberation
in all Yogic branches, including the most advanced forms of physical Yoga. His disciples were numbered
by thousands. His teaching was mostly by parable, and was delivered to groups at all hours of day or
night. He was very active, a fast walker, an expert swimmer, very abstemious, living almost exclusively
on fruit, and Somesh never saw him sleep or met anyone who had seen him sleep. Somesh was quite
certain that his guru had possessed powers usually regarded as supernatural, such as thought-reading,
clairvoyance, levitation, the ability to become physically larger or smaller, to appear in several places at
the same time, to commune with higher spirits, and to introduce others temporarily to superior planes
of existence and consciousness. Somesh himself refused to use the term 'supernatural' about these
things. He believed they were perfectly natural faculties lying latent within each one of us, to be
developed by appropriate training by any normal individual when interest and energy became directed
inwards instead of outwards.

Somesh's mode of life interested me deeply. However far-fetched his beliefs sometimes appeared, I had
every respect for his religious convictions, but on the physical side I was not surprised to learn that not
everything about him was in perfect condition. His teeth, for instance, were very defective, and was it
any wonder when they never got any exercise at all! His bowels, too, were of course under exercised. I
wondered that he had the remarkable energy that he did have, but he always said he derived it 'from
the divine source within'. As for his bowels, he admitted to me that they moved only about once in
every four days. This led to another curious discovery. One day in my New York quarters he went into
my bathroom and I heard him tearing off some toilet paper. 'Now I've caught him! 'I chuckled to myself,
'just now he told me his bowels moved yesterday, and there they go again to-day!' I decided when he
came out to twit him with the discrepancy. Believe it or not, he was in the lavatory the best part of half
an hour—long enough for anybody and anything, I thought. At last he emerged, 'and I went for him at
once. 'Somesh, you told me you go to the toilet only once in four days and that you went yesterday.
How come that you go again to-day? 'He looked at me with surprise. 'I wasn't doing that,' he said simply,
'I was doing the other thing.' 'The other thing! ' I exploded, 'for nearly half an hour? ' 'Yes,' he replied,
astonished at my surprise; 'in our religion we are enjoined to urinate slowly, drop by drop, the slower
the better. It trains us in control.' 'Control of what?' 'Everything. Patience—physical restraint—training
of the nervous system.' 'Now listen, Somesh,' I expostulated, ' why are you trying to put one over on
me? You say you only urinated, but I heard you using the toilet paper!' I was sure I had him on the spot.
But no, not at all. In his religion, he said, there were certain objects they were not allowed to touch with
bare fingers. Among these were toilet seats and flushes—'so I made a glove with the paper.'

From Somesh Bose I learnt some things to imitate and some things to reject—as also from two others of
his kind, one of whom instructed me in special breathing exercises supplementing those Ozay had
started me on, while the other taught me those slow-motion exercises of which I have given television
demonstrations. (Some persons have expressed surprise that I was able with ease to do these exercises,
which do not look easy, twenty-five years later, having learnt them only in my middle thirties, but that
point will be dealt with later.) I had the curious feeling, which some may think fantastic, that in a strange
and inexplicable manner Ozay, whom I always regarded as the most profound of my spiritual masters
(perhaps because he was the first), had invisibly arranged, from wherever he was, that I should
encounter these different varieties of Yoga not somewhere in the Orient where I did not intend to live,
but in the West amid the conditions in which I should have to apply them, so that I might make my own
observations, draw my own conclusions, and exercise discrimination in the selection of material.
Whatever may have been the philosophic or scientific explanation of the things these Indian Yogis said
and did, and however necessary to them their mode of life was and however sincere an expression of
their religion, I still remembered Ozay's dictum that a lifelong ascetic is like a man who spends all his
days doing one exercise.

I have used the term 'Americanized' Yoga with disparagement only as applied to the exaggerated
mercenary aspect sometimes encountered. In other respects it would appear that there is much to be
said for the adaptation of Yoga, especially its physical practices, to geographical and other special
conditions. Methods suited to a hermit, whether in Occident or Orient, may differ radically from those
applicable to men and women who have to live in the circumstances of ordinary business and social life
in the West. The path of the recluse is not necessarily that of the hero; solitude as an exercise is
indispensable to every student, but the lifelong recluse escapes the testing batterings of life in
protective isolation.

Furthermore, the fact that India, Tibet, Chaldea, and Egypt were cradles of this ancient lore does not
mean that these territories are the only, or even the most fruitful, sources of it to-day. It might as well
be maintained that Palestine is the best country in which to study Christianity. The travelling student
who, for Western conditions of life, relies on instruction given by even the most learned of teachers
whose whole existence has been passed in an Asiatic fastness runs an obvious risk: This applies
especially to that branch of the subject known as physical ('Hatha') Yoga.

The religion to which Vedanta philosophy stands nearest is Buddhism. On one occasion a Buddhist
festival was organized at the Nyack Club, and for it, borrowing a few phrases from Edwin Arnold, I
composed the following invocation, consisting of a mixture of Vedanta and Buddhist precepts, leading
the recitation of it myself at the ceremony in the role of First Priest. (In these lines, Brahm is the
Universal Spirit; Maya, the goddess of appearances and forms; and Nirvana, the state of absorption of
the individual into the Universal Spirit.)

INVOCATION

First Priest:

O brothers, let us contemplate

The eternal laws of Brahm; whose bounteous hand

Dispenses with benevolence the gifts

Of nature; whose mind inscrutably

Directs the stars and planets, holds our sun,

And binds this puny world upon its course;

Who hath laid down the inflexible Law of Deeds,

Of action and reaction, the wheel of change,

And cycling involution-evolution.

Amid the myriad wonder-works of Maya—

Enchanting daughter of the Nameless Breath,

And deity of Substance, Sound and Form—

Is there aught fairer, godlier, more sublime,

With powers fraught beyond our present ken,

Than this corporeal frame in which doth burn,

Torch-like, the sacred flame of Consciousness?

Say therefore, brothers, by what rule shall men

Be guided and controlled, that in this life

They may attain the blessed goal Nirvana,

Loss of false self, deliverance from illusion,

And oneness with the all-pervading Brahm?

Second Priest:

Many the paths there be that gain the crest

Of virtue's white-capped mountain: the strong may scale

The rugged crags that bar the rising road,

And, 'spite frustrations, storm the dazzling peak;

The weak must wind from easier ledge to ledge,

With many a halt of respite, many a rest.

Therefore let him who climbs come well-equipped

With perseverance, patience, cheer and courage,

Upheld by boundless and unswerving faith.

No pilgrimage is this for timid hearts,

Or faint and faltering, languid, plaintive minds.

For such, the vale of sorrows here below;

For such, the endless cycle of rebirths;

For such, the aches of sense, of passions, age,

The thrall of cankering thirst and lust of dreams;

For such, deceits of earthly loves and hates,

Of glory, honours, triumphs, failures, death.

But he who seeks to tread the upward road.

Must turn his back on these, forswear all transient lures,

And burst the bonds of callous, selfishness:

Then only can he, armed with perfect faith,

Step bold upon the noble Eightfold Path.

Third Priest:

The noble Eightfold Path! Behold the way

That leadeth to serenity and peace!

Its first step is Right Knowledge: learn to walk

n fear of Law, undeviating, fixed,

Inviolate since time was given birth.

The next step is Right Purpose. Let your thoughts

Towards all that lives be seasoned with goodwill:

Quell greed and ire, and to all beings be

Unselfish, gentle, merciful, and kind.'

The third step is Right Discourse; and of all

Entanglements upon the Eightfold Path

This is the greatest; for to rein the tongue,

Govern, control, and harness it, indeed,

Is hard: therefore be, jealous of thy words:

He is a god, whose speech rings ever true.

The fourth step is Right Conduct. Let your mien,

Your look, behaviour, poise, and gait

Bespeak the upright man: in dealing with

Your neighbour be straightforward, true, and just:

To slander give no hearing, and, when wronged,

Disdain reply: bear with men, shun harm,

And help the weaker brother in the path.

The fifth is Purity. Be not enslaved

By lusts, desires, or cravings of the flesh.

The sixth, Right Thinking. With the sword of Reason

Destroy all doubts, misgivings, inward strife;

Master of self, and freed of schools and, books,

Pierce through the veil of Maya's luring cheats.

The Seventh, Solitude. Who would attain

The Buddha's high indifference and light

Must enter into Silence, and, alone,

In quiet self-communion prepare

For the last step along the Eightfold Path.

This is the ecstasy of Meditation,

'One-pointed self-annulling contemplation

And blending with the Universal Breath.

0, for a tongue to sing its boundless rapture,

The beauty of sublime and perfect Love,

That knows no time, no space, no name, no form,

No end and no beginning—only bliss!

This is the blessed goal Nirvana,

Loss of false self, deliverance from illusion,

And transcendental merging with the Infinite!

First Priest:

Hail, Buddha, hail! Enlightened One, all hail!

Who rescueth man from blindness and from night;

Who hast made clear the everlasting truth

That pain and ill are one with ignorance,

And wisdom born of knowledge one with good!

Now do we know that virtue's not God-given,

But must be striven for, pursued, and earned,

That 'every man may win it if he have

Due courage, perseverance, patience, faith.

These are the five degrees of sacred learning—

Silence, then Listening, then Remembering,

Thereby to Understand, and thence to Act.

Seek first to still the troubled sea of thought:

Subdue the mind and let it rest, quiescent;

Waveless, unrippied, let it listen, listen,

Until it sense the voice of perfect peace.

Thus shall you learn the mysteries of the universe,

And glean the evidence of things unseen;

Which, finding, treasure in your memory,

Enrich the measure of your understanding,

And thereby beautify all mortal deeds.

Thus building on the rock of changeless Law,

Erect the noble edifice of Character,

Illumined by the light of selfless Love.

For heaven or hell are yours here on this earth

According as you do obey or thwart

The Law of Love which is the Law of Life.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Thought for Food

ONE DAY in the late summer of 1928, in the station square at Geneva, a rather haggard individual,
wearing an overcoat in bright warm weather, might have been seen boarding a motor bus marked
'Divonne-les-Bains'. The bus runs along the lakeside road, past the palace of the League of Nations, and
about half-way to Nyon turns off to mount the hillside. In a few minutes the French frontier is reached.
Brief halt for customs inspection. In another few minutes the bus disgorges its passengers in the square
of the little spa, Divonne. There the haggard individual makes his way slowly towards a hotel, stealing
glances at himself in the mirrors of shop windows. He smiles at his sunken cheeks, and his amusement is
tinged with an odd pride—it is just two weeks since he—that is, I—had the last morsel of any kind of
food. Two weeks is not a long period, but there were other disciplines attached.

Fatigued, a little despondent, I sat down in the hail to rest, pretending to read a paper to evade
attention, and after a while mounted to my room in an isolated wing of the first floor.

I had made the pilgrimage to Geneva to procure books that were unobtainable in the village of Divonne,
whose visitors did most of their shopping in the Swiss city, twenty minutes distant by bus. I felt a bit
unsteady walking to and from the bookshop. Not that I was hungry—oddly enough I experienced no
sense of hunger at all. Staring at the delicacies in the foodshops I pondered on their taste without
yearning, even enjoying the thought of them without wanting them now. Only once, feeling thirsty, I sat
down at a café table and asked for an unsweetened lemon squash. The lemon disguised the taste of the
water.

Outstretched on a couch, I now felt the strain. The journey had upset the established rhythm which
should relieve the severity of the test I was undergoing. Every day this was the most difficult hour —
from about four to six—when the physical organism really ran down, its diminished powers touched
their nadir, each day a little lower than the day before. Now was the time when the spectre of desire
appeared, pointing temptingly at a plate of fruit waiting over there in a glass closet against the moment
when I must eat, when in the nature of things I should have to cry quit to further experimentation. For
all the world it was as if the top one of that little pile of oranges detached itself and dangled before my
eyes. It did it every afternoon about this time. It had become a routine joke. Eventually, when I fell into a
doze, the dangling orange returned disappointed to its dish and went on patiently waiting. 'You reject
my advances,' it seemed to say, 'but I shall win in the end!' And of course it will, the minx! The contest is
quite unequal.

I was by that time, to tell the truth, skilled in this practice, having already done several preparatory fasts,
but the experiment I am describing was the most severe and exacting of its kind I made. A few months
earlier I had prepared for it by a training fast of nearly three weeks, followed by an intensive diet mainly
of milk. The idea was that, being considerably under normal weight by accepted standards, I had better
build up reserves. This part of the plan failed; for though by dint of pretty well drowning myself in milk I
did succeed in putting on extra weight for a short time, I lost it all again in a few days when I stopped
drinking milk and long before coming to Divonne. I thought at the time this was a disadvantage. I was to
learn that it wasn't. It was a good sign. 'Standard' weights are always too high, a concession to average.

Two questions used to engross me at this time. The first: the abstract one of how long people ought,
speaking very generally, to live; or, to put it differently, how much time ought ordinary people to have (I
am not considering exceptional geniuses) in order to achieve what they want to do in life. The second
(which I vaguely felt was in some way linked with this question, though the connection was not
obvious): why did all great religions, including Christianity, always associate prayer with fasting? I tried
many experiments and racked my brains for many years before approaching an answer. By the time I
was near the half-century mark ideas did at last begin to take shape, and I endeavour to record them
here on the chance of somebody else finding them of interest and pursuing them further. Perhaps in
another half-century I shall succeed in formulating a complete answer, at least for myself.

Like any other special study, the perpetration of such experiments requires suitable circumstances and
environment. It was not easy to regulate this satisfactorily. Writing, lecturing, and keeping up with
international affairs left little time for practices which might require long periods of isolation. Nor did
marriage simplify life—rather the contrary. But I made the most of small opportunities, and waited
patiently for the time when I could organize my existence for a sufficient period with reasonable hopes
of complete isolation and secrecy, and therefore freedom from disturbance or interruption.

Meanwhile I enjoyed the game of fasting on a small scale from the first, even the sheer fun of it. For
example, one day in the summer of 1927 I broke in on somebody's birthday party at my father's house
in north London, where he lived in retirement, greatly mellowed with age. I was not expected, and
arrived when a joint of roast beef was being demolished. I was invited to fetch myself a plate and tools.

'Thanks, I'll sit out.'

'Have you had dinner?'

'No, I'm not eating.'

'Aren't you well?'

'Perfectly.'
'Then why?’

'I haven't eaten anything for ten days.'

They thought I was leg-pulling, of course.

'Fact. Last mouthful I had was ten days ago. I'll have a glass of hot water with a slice of lemon in it.'

'You're spoiling our dinner!'

'Am I? I can enjoy it,' and I took a good sniff at the joint which smelt delicious. 'You don't even know
what that smells like. You can't. Stop guzzling for a few days and try. Then you'll really know.'

'Are you kidding? How can you move about? How did you get here?’

'By car.'

'Who drove you?'

'I drove myself.'

'After starving for over a week? Where have you come from?'

'Champneys.'

'Where's that?

I explained that Champneys, which already then was beginning to attain great renown, was a nature
cure establishment where, under the direction of one of the greatest living authorities on diet, Stanley
Lief, people went for dietetic treatment—fasting, and so on—though most of the patients let
themselves down gently by eating a bit of fruit.

'Don't you eat even a bit of fruit?'

'No.'

'Why not?'

'I want to do the thing thoroughly.'

'Why? What are you being cured of?'

'Nothing.'

'Then why?’ '

'It's an experiment.'

'What sort of experiment?'

Should I suddenly mention 'prayer and fasting'? No. It would offend my aged parent, surveying me
already with a glassy, disapproving eye. To him I was always 'harum-scarum'. Though softened in his
ninth decade there was in him still a trace of that same autocrat from whose austerities I once took
refuge in secret friendship with Moses Turner. The Bible was his preserve. To mention 'prayer and
fasting' here would be just as anomalous as saying grace at a Mayfair dinner-table.

'For fun,' I replied.

There was an outcry from the younger, generation. 'Fun? But you look positively awful! . . . Ghastly! . . .
Cadaverous! You're crazy. . . . Give me some more pudding, please. . . . Me, too, lots. . . .'

My father addressed me sternly. 'And how long are you going to persist in this so-called "experiment"?

'Another few days, perhaps.' And to satisfy the incessant demands for explanation I could still find
nothing better to say in the circumstances than: 'For fun.'

Nevertheless, though I usually spoke jocularly when I spoke about them at all, I practiced my
experiments very seriously, increasing their severity at each repetition, and keeping detailed records of
observations and reactions. I devoured whole libraries on the subject of diet, pored over the chemical
composition of foodstuffs, the advocated balances of proteins, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, mineral
salts, and all the rest of it, the various theories of popular systems of the time—Hay, Macfadden,
Kellogg; Miles, and dozens of others—their name was legion. But I was more intrigued by those who
departed much further from the beaten track, sometimes by being less faddist, paradoxical though that
may sound to some.

For instance, in the twenties there lived in France an Egyptian fakir by the name of Tara Bey, who
attracted a good deal of attention by demonstrations of hypnotism and suspended animation. An
English doctor, writing later in Philosophy, the journal of the Royal Institute of Philosophy, said of him:6
'Tara Bey put himself into a condition where he claimed to abolish the pulse and respiration. . . In this
condition of catalepsy he allowed himself to be put in a coffin-shaped box, sand thrown over him, and
the box fastened down with sand heaped over it, and he was ready to remain in that box as long as his
audience wished.' I had seen him do this several times for periods of about an hour, and he claimed that
he had once been buried, as dead, for a month.

In a modest fiat of a house in the Rue de Babylon, Paris, I faced this man of middle-age, dressed in an
Arab toga. There were some particular questions I wanted to ask him.

'Does the practice of frequently "dying" tend to prolong your life?

'No, it shortens it.'

6
Article by Dr. Wm. Brown., April 1931.
'Then why do you do it?'

His answer was that it was 'his duty'. He had been brought up and trained to be a demonstrator, he said,
to show others that such things can be done.

'Also to commercialize it?' I asked. He had appeared for payment in o public theatres.

'I must earn my daily bread, and I must show as many people as possible.'

His 'daily bread' did not appear to differ from any ordinary moderate diet. That he was as fond of the
good things of the table as I was I had occasion to see for myself when we subsequently dined together.
He frequented a Russian restaurant in the Avenue Georges V. Apparently he dieted only before giving a
demonstration.

He spoke of his training, which had begun at the age of three and was designed to develop higher states
of consciousness. Fasting had been part of it.

'Does fasting shorten life?'

'On the contrary, practiced carefully fasting prolongs life. Without fasting you cannot learn to control
the breath—that is, what I they call in religion the "Holy Spirit”’

'The "Holy Spirit" is simply—breath?'

He replied: 'So it says in all the great religions.'

I told him I had been taught in the Church that we have to let the Holy Spirit control us, not the other
way round.

Formal religions, he answered, always sought a one-sided solution to the problem. 'They draw a
distinction between the physical and the spiritual. It is a false distinction. There is no dividing line.'

He gave me a little book to read which he had written. Through it shone the light of a simple faith, a
belief in the essential divinity of man.

I often thought back much further also to the time when the Lion used to exclaim: 'Looking for miracles?
Aren't we miracle enough —what was yesterday on the grocer's shelf thinks and talks to-day!

In book after book I sought, but in vain, to discover how and why what was in the grocer's shop
yesterday can think and talk to-day. But no books can tell you that. They can only tell you the chemistry
of the groceries. They also tell you, most engagingly, how you are constructed inside, and the observed
processes of digestion. But they do not tell you what will happen if you subject those interesting
insides—that is, yourself—to exceptional discipline and training. You can only find that out by trying. I
began experimenting at first by living for weeks on sour milk (shades of Metchnikov!) or fruit. I soon
found myself regarded by others as a crank—and rightly—for is there any greater bore in the world than
the food faddist? But 'crankiness', after all, only represents a relationship to society. I quickly realized
that there was nothing wrong with experimenting, but for heaven's sake do it in secret, in seclusion,
behind closed doors, don't bore your friends with it, and don't court disturbance! That was how I came
eventually to pick on a place like Divonne, where I could practice in perfect isolation. I had visited it once
when in Geneva. Its seclusion was ideal, the modesty of its pretensions a protection against the hordes
of social cure-takers (almost a professional class) that invade the larger and better-known spas. I had by
then mastered the technique of fasting. I must now develop the art, linking fasting with the special
exercises I had been taught by Ozay and others.

When I arrived the hotel manager asked: 'Monsieur prendra ses repas à l’hôtel?. I replied: 'No, at the
baths.' But at the baths I allowed it to be assumed that I was en pension at the hotel. So at neither did
they know I was eating nothing.

For the first few days I took the usual hydropathic treatment, standing up against the wall like a victim
about to be shot while the water was propelled at me with a fire-hose, first hot, then at its natural
temperature as it issued from the wells, slightly above, freezing-point. After a week, when I was
beginning to get thin, this became too drastic. Besides, the operator, perhaps noticing how skinny I was,
asked awkward questions about my diet. So I gave up being fire-hosed and went to the baths only to
weigh myself.

I preferred to take my baths in my own way, at the hotel. That is, as hot as could be borne, perspiring in
the water and for half an hour afterwards, making up for it with draught after draught of water, the
limpid Divonne waters whose virtue lies not in mineral content but their plain purity. Nevertheless I
flavoured the water with lemon, for to the hyper-sensitive palate of the non-eater even this water had a
taste. Besides, lemon juice is a solvent of calceous deposits and a counter-agent against noxious acids,
and one object of fasting is to cast out these physiological devils, which are an impediment to prayer,
being impure.

That done, I would read myself to sleep. And I resolved not to go to Geneva any more until I went for a
roaring good dinner!

Dawn... .. . Dreaming when dawn's left hand is in the sky. What cries the voice within the tavern? To fill
the cup? Yes, a thousand times yes, to fill and quaff before life's liquor in its cup be dry!

But what is 'life's liquor'? Ah, that's the question!

Pascal said: 'Events are the clear waters from the well of life coloured only by the vessels into which they
are poured.'

If we accept that, then perhaps life's liquor is always elixir, perhaps it is only the vessel that needs
purifying?

It comes to me to think it out in terms of art and music. Can a painter express himself adequately with
soiled brushes, inferior colours, on rotting canvas? Or, what is a Beethoven symphony without the
means to perform it? Is the skill of the conductor all? Is the perfection of the individual players all? What
about the quality of their instruments? Can Toscanini evoke the same strains froth a band of tin
trumpets as from the Scala orchestra? In the end—or rather, the beginning—isn't it a matter of good or
bad wood, metal, leather, even catgut? From catgut to conductor there cannot be first or last, they are
one, the first last, the last first.

'Think of yourself, as a musical instrument,' Ozay used to say, 'a musical instrument that needs regular
tuning and, occasional repair.'

So let us begin by repairing and tuning the instrument, such as it is. Let us begin by giving The Player a
chance.

I love this early hour when dawn's left hand is in the sky, when the mind is clear as the unruffled waters
of Lake Leman, the lightened body fresh and spring like. The wear and tear of the fifteenth day of
discipline are not yet felt. So hay while the sun thines I—as brightly and silently within as, look, it steals
down the slopes of the Alps. To work! More water, more hot water outside and inside, more purification
without and within, more cleansing of the whole alimentary tract, more perspiration, more casting out
of sin —that's all it is, though those with a vested interest in conventional morality may dislike such a
description.

Next, cleansing the nasal passages. Into each nostril in turn I insert a thin catheter, push it through into
the throat, draw the end out of the mouth, and then massage the nasal passages by pulling the
protruding ends to and fro, finally drawing it out through the mouth.

Now stretching exercises, in slow motion, the slower the better: that's a tip from Dame Nature who
never made anyone yawn or stretch in hurry. (We needed modern civilization to invent 'physical jerks'!)

Then breathing exercises in the prescribed postures—forced breathing, slow chanting, retention of
breath. These exercises take a long time, hours. With carbon, in the system reduced and the ratio of
oxygen increased, it is easy to stop breathing for prolonged periods. And it is very pleasant, very
pleasant indeed. Breathing exercises begin with bastrika, forced inhalations and exhalations. Other
exercises follow.

My favourite is the last. Now lying prone, little by little the breaths are lengthened, long, deep, and
even, until the number per minute, normally twelve to sixteen, is reduced to eight, then to four, three,
two, until there is but one single breath in sixty seconds; then still slower, half a minute inhalation, half a
minute exhalation, with a pause. Still slower, slower, slower. The whole organism becomes limp and
flaccid, the sole effort is that of observing the seconds and keeping track of the pulse beats; normally 74,
they, "diminish little by little to 6o, 55, 50, 45. . . . The breathing is now so slow that a minute and a half
elapses from the beginning of one inhalation to the beginning of the next. Down, down, slower and
slower, but firm and marked, the pulse slackens to forty. The brain quiescent and receptive, things stand
out with exaggerated clearness, little sounds seem very loud—the ticking of the clock, for instance.
Enough. I give up counting and slip into a sort of coma, awaking an hour or so later to find pulse and
breath restored. A great peace has descended.The objects in the room, the air, the sunlight, and
myself—everything has an extraordinary appearance and feeling of newness.
In this coma, or perhaps in its intermediate stages (it is difficult to say precisely) pictures of the past
surge up with startling vividness. Events sort themselves out in new perspectives and relationships,
sometimes unexpected. Tara Bey, talking about hypnotism and higher states of consciousness, somehow
appears in a direct line of descent from Moses Turner talking about cherubs. But the recording angel,
turning the pages, is not always kind. The prospect is at moments appalling. Together with successes,
failures and follies are revived with ruthless poignancy, almost too cruel to be borne. Heaven and hell
interchange, overlap, coincide. A peculiarity is that the normal propensity to console and deceive
oneself with the best interpretation of things completely evaporates, things reappear simply, as they
really were, so that some imagined successes, stripped of tinsel, emerge as ghastly, grinning skeletons.
The business side of life—politics and vocation—adventures of wars and revolutions—friendships and
enmities—loves and drama—the images of women, fleeting attachments, serious romances, the tragedy
of broken bonds—all these and a myriad more come up for review and reassessment, the jig-saw puzzle
is refitted in a new pattern, and as the pieces are re-shuffled so are the values. The picture often
terrifies, but it has its compensations. If successes are often revealed as failures, the reverse is
sometimes true as well. And there is always hope. There is always the parable of the husbandman
whose labourers, hired at the eleventh hour, none the less received full pay. There is always the voice of
Ozay, to whom Life and Prayer were synonymous, saying of the voyage of discovery: 'There is as much
to be learned along the path as at the end, and a few steps are better than none, even if you often
stumble.’

I hear a knock at the door. The maid is coming to do the room. It must be past noon. She, of course,
takes me for an invalid. We have the same little bit of conversation every day. "Monsieur va un peu
mieux?' 'Beaucoup mieux, merci.' 'Monsieur n'en a pas l’air.' 'Non?' She sticks her fingers into her cheeks
to show how skinny I look and says dubiously: 'Monsieur mange bien?' 'Pas très bien, mais ça viendra.'

Warmly clad—for when the ribs stick through the skin you feel chilly even in summer—I stroll slowly to
the baths to pretend to have a shower as an excuse to weigh myself stripped. Spa pump rooms are
never gay. All these people have something the matter with them, they are ill, whereas I know I am well,
quite remarkably well, and the experiment I am perpetrating is designed not to cure a disease of which I
have none but to impart to good tissues something of a new quality. Judging by several 'trial runs' I may
achieve it within a month if I work hard enough. Or it may need yet further attempts. Only the event will
show. To go without material sustenance for a prolonged period is in itself a simple matter provided it is
done in the proper circumstances, as those know who have tried it. I remember a man of some bulk who
went for ninety-six days with never more than a very small quantity of fruit a day. Fat people ought to
be able to go months without eating anything at all—they can live on their fat just as hibernating
animals do. Yet they are often the ones who complain loudest at the privation! To transform fasting into
prayer depends on the attitude of mind, and heart. But cleanliness is proverbially next to godliness, and
those who do nothing more than merely clean themselves out have thereby become, by definition,
more godly. Yet that is but the beginning of the road. The tissues will not begin to transform themselves
in the sense at which I aim until every ounce of possible superfluous matter is cast off, and that may
mean much more than mere fat, of which I had none anyway, having had the great advantage of starting
already 'minus'. Now I have shed a further twenty pounds, and as nature sheds voluntarily only what she
can discard with benefit, it means that, although I started in exceptionally good condition, even so
twenty pounds of unwanted matter has been cast off. It will all be replenished, of course, but the
material will be different. The organism will know how to choose. It will have become selective.

Other thoughts, more disquieting, often obtrude when pondering on the discipline. I know it is like
taking out an old engine from a car and putting in a new one, or like renovating a house with improved
plumbing, and so on. But everything is relative nevertheless. I have begun late in life—I cannot escape
the penalties of early ignorance and neglect—I must not delude myself with exaggerated expectations. I
recall for instance—horrible memory —how, shortly after I first left England, I lost my toothbrush, and
having very little money I let weeks go by before buying another, and all those weeks I never once
cleaned my teeth, so meagre was my knowledge of even the most elementary hygiene; and at that very
same time, the old-fashioned toilet of my humble lodgings being at the bottom of a very long garden, I
deliberately resisted visiting it for days on end in extreme winter when I had a bad cold. Four years
elapsed after that before I met Ozay and was given my first glimpse of understanding. And then again
there was a further period of ten years of war, revolution, upheaval, and domestic trouble (including an
unsuccessful experiment in matrimony) during which I could only practice sporadically what I had been
taught. Those are sins of omission and commission for which there is no forgiveness, you can only pay
the penalty. But there is the prospect of redemption self-redemption—by consciously accepting the
arduous process of rebirth. 'Knock and it shall be opened to you, seek and you shall find’, runs the
promise, but it does not say how persistently you must knock, how long you may have to seek. I may
have to try again, not once but many times, and still be at the mercy of factors I cannot foresee. Have
you noticed the context of that promise about knocking and seeking, as told by Luke?7 First the disciples
ask: 'Lord, teach us to pray', and Jesus obliges with the Lord's Prayer; but he immediately follows this
with the story of the neighbour who lent his friend food in the middle of the night only because of his
importunity; and it is in this context that the promise is given about the door being opened if you knock.
It doesn't say at the first knock, or even, the second or third you may have to go on knocking all night, all
next day, all your life. It was Jesus who first suggested that prayer is a voyage of discovery.

The afternoon wears on. The flood of life, reduced by abstention and exertion, touches its lowest ebb.
The hour of doubt approaches. Again I shall have to play Saint Anthony to that minx of an orange when
she flaunts her charms—or to, that meretricious jar of yogurt ogling from the refreshment stall in the
park. Other doubts, too, assail. All these exercises I am doing, aren't they perhaps just stunts, perhaps
more harmful than good? Simply because a cranky fellow called Ozay, years ago, seeing what a ninny I
was, thought he'd make game of me by inventing a fairy tale about the Lord's Prayer.

These spectres come by fits and starts, reminding me that I cannot, in the nature of things, go on
indefinitely. I must stop at a certain moment and let myself down gently—perhaps to-morrow—then
why not to-day? For it is not permitted to die, to die would indeed be cheating, a truly senseless thing to

7
Luke xi
do, a throwing away of chances; for if there is anything at all to be sought it is for life, a better way of
living, not death. Dying will always take care of itself. 'Any fool can die', as Bernard used to say. But I
have an answer to my spectre. I tell it that even if we reduce the fruits of experiment to the minimum,
to the lowest plane, to spring-cleaning the physical apparatus and renewing the plumbing, even if, say,
discipline brings nothing more in its train than an indescribably increased joy in sheer existence—and
this at least I know to be a fact, for I have been through the mill before—isn't it still worth while? So to
hell with the orange or the sip of milk! I'll hang on till the alarm bell rings, and then, within a few days,
I'll be tasting—tasting—tasting (no one knows what that word means who hasn't starved)—tasting food,
drink, light, and air in a way to make any spectre green with envy! And off the spectre goes, hoist with
its own petard. This little tragi-comedy happens now every day in the late afternoon.

About six o'clock a revival of spirit returns, the tide of the life-stream re-enters the flood, albeit
languidly. Shall I go for a walk? Or to the cinema? Or to listen to the band in the park, scan the papers
for news of a world that seems infinitely distant, and pass the time of day with chance visitors at the
open-air concert? If it's a good programme I'll go to the concert. But I shall be back in my quarters soon
after sundown. By the time it is dark I shall be asleep.

16th—17th—1 8th—19th—20th— 21st day. I am approaching the end of the tether. The severity of the
discipline has worn me down far quicker than if I had merely I abstained from food. Several signs are
perceptible, difficult to describe, but unmistakable. The ebb of the life-tide is too prolonged. The stream
struggles to regain the flood.

I watch the dawn, but the sunshine looks duller. There is no morning spring in the limbs. I don't want to
stir. When I do, motions are very slow. At moments the eyes fail to focus. The skin, of an alabaster
whiteness, has lost the characteristic odour it emitted as long as the organism was purifying itself. I
bathe, and embark on routine exercises, but it is difficult to concentrate. I know I shall not last out the
day. It is as if a Voice within me ordered right-about-turn. I know I must break the fast. The great
moment has come and I must prepare for the change-over.

The ritual is already rehearsed. The return to 'normality' will be rapid but must not be forced. The desire
for food becomes overwhelming, but it must be controlled. I lay a little cloth, with plate, knife, and fork,
on my window-table overlooking the mountains, and slowly—partly because all my movements are now
slow, but partly also because there is in what I am about to do something of a profoundly religious rite—
I remove the orange that has so often dangled before my eyes and place it on the plate. The minx—it
knows its power over me—it smiles triumphantly as a woman smiles who yields to the lover she has
enticed!

In four rich succulent quarters the sacrifice lies on the altar. Appropriately, it is a blood orange. . . .

Half an hour later the altar is empty. The sacrament—for it was a sacrament—is over. Even the peel is
eaten. It has taken some time because ravenous desire must needs be 'tempered with restraint. Besides,
the taste is inconceivably delicious—voracity would tarnish it.
In the afternoon the sacrament is repeated in the park. The oblation is a small glass of yogurt.

Sleep does not come to-night. Having reached the nadir, then turned the corner, life suddenly demands
her rights with insistence. I resist until after midnight, for gradualness is essential, then surrender again.
Another orange vanishes. This carries me through 'till next morning, but by evening the plate of fruit is
empty. A day or two later the stall-keeper in the park smiles and says she is ordering extra yogurt to
cope with my demand!

The hotel maid regards me with astonishment. 'Monsieur à l'air tout a fait rajeuni,' she exclaims on
about the third day, adding, after blowing her cheeks out, 'comme un nouveau né.' Literally true!- if she
but knew. 'J'avais peur, il y a quelques jours,' she adds, touchingly. The waiter stares incredulously when
I order coffee, and says hurriedly: 'Mais avec plaisir, monsieur, avec le plus grand plaisir.' He brings
enough for half a dozen. I have evidently been an object of curiosity to the staff.

Soon I moved to Geneva and had my first real dinner, in idyllic surroundings overlooking the lake. My
menu, carefully chosen, consisted of potage Saint Germain, gruyère cheese with a French salad
flavoured with garlic, followed by a compote of fruits, and coffee. Strictly vegetarian, as you note. I had
become a very strict vegetarian already before Divonne. That also was an experiment which lasted eight
years8.

Reveling in food, as indeed in everything, with an indescribable joie de vivre, as if each separate bite and
sip were a complete feast of Lucullus, I was struck by the pervading sense of newness—the same feeling
I had when emerging from the coma following breathing exercises—as if everything I heard, saw, and
did, however simple and familiar, were being experienced for the first time. It may appear an odd way to
express it, but there was in my sensations about everything, even the most ordinary things, something

8
VEGETARIANISM. War and its consequent austerities have wrought a salutary change in the dietetic habits of the
British. Apart from the sentimental or religious approach to the subject of abstention from consumption of animal
food, the erstwhile weighty arguments against excessive meat-eating as a general practice have 'lost much of their
force through the imposed reduction of flesh-consumption to a more balanced place in diet. It is now in the ' how'
of eating, rather than the ' what', that most people need to correct themselves, above all in the matter of 'sheer
speed, and such pernicious habits as drinking during mastication. The number who gradually and imperceptibly but
none the less certainly impair their digestion through these faults, overtaking the rate at which the stomach can
cope with its intake, is legion. Not one person in a 'thousand troubles to study the important and fascinating
subject of the categories of foodstuffs which receive their main digestion in the mouth, stomach, and small
intestine respectively, and, armed with this simple knowledge, make the slight adjustment in manner of eating
which will not only enhance the delights of the table but make all the difference in course of time between
prolonged enjoyment and indigestive misery. In the end it boils down to the old principles of common sense and
moderation. Just as with drink. It is not the person who occasionally 'goes on the binge' that is a fool. It is the
pitiful creature who habitually has recourse to the 'quick one' and cannot do without it. Slow erosion is 'the most
insidious of all forms of destruction, being the least noticeable.
of the infatuation of new love, the happy conviction of the lover that 'never lover loved as I love'! The
sensation of newness applied equally to the inside of the body. The external feeling wore off gradually
as the normal routine of life returned, but the inner changes, including perfected digestion and
enhanced resistance to disease, were more permanent. Even if that had been all, was it to be despised?
But it was far from all.

I used to think the link between fasting and prayer could only be revealed in some sudden burst of
vision, with the hearing of 'voices', the sight of 'angels', or other manifestations such as have been
described by many saints and mystics after the practice of severe austerities and meditation. Such things
may indeed happen, but I believe now that the matter is essentially much simpler. It is certainly a
question of realization, for it is possible—it happens every day, indeed it is the most frequent case—for
patients to take a cure to purify themselves physically by fasting and yet never for one instant suspect
that there is anything more to it, or that they have missed anything, just as it is possible for a person to
walk through a garden without noticing the flowers. I have talked to many people 'doing fasts' at nature
cure establishments (excellent institutions—would there were more of them!) and who as far as mere
abstention from food was concerned were able by taking things gently to abstain longer than I did in my
rigorous manner, but I generally found that though the question 'Have you ever thought why fasting is
linked with prayer? ' might arouse a flicker of theoretical interest, it faded quickly, so engrossed were
they in merely ridding themselves of some physical trouble and thereafter reverting to their former
mode of existence, much as a person might seek to remove an unsightly heap of rubbish without
considering new uses that might be made of the clean space. They lacked the inspiration, which is, of
course, as much a condition of realization as is the clearing away of obstacles. An instrument that has
been repaired and tuned is certainly capable of truer response to the Player's touch than one that
hasn't, but it is still necessary for the instrument to be placed unreservedly in the Player's hands.

The link between fasting and prayer should present no difficulties to those who accept prayer not as a
matter of words but as a state of being. From this point of view, to tolerate premature degeneration,
through ignorance or neglect, of the instrument with which the Creator has provided us to do His will—
this is the real sin against' the Holy Ghost, the one sin that cannot in the very nature of things be
'remitted '. 'Repentance' consists in a resolute effort to put it right, to retune the shabby instrument so
as to give the Player a better chance. 'Ye must be born again.' This is not the only interpretation of that
dictum, but it is the most fundamental one, assuredly truer than the casuistic sophistries of moralists
who treat the soul as if it had no relation to the quality of blood, nerves, and tissues, in a word, to the
body, with which actually those same moralists are inevitably dealing all the time, even while denying or
ignoring it! Nor is this interpretation refuted by reference to the incurably infirm, since infirmity is
relative; we are all incurably infirm in so far as being incurably mortal; we are all weaklings, invalids, and
beggars by the standard of ultimate perfection. The point is, is it worth while striving after improvement
or not? The fact that high spiritual power often manifests itself even through an imperfect medium
merely suggests that its manifestations would be still more effective through a perfected one. The
Messianic message for which the world thirsts to-day is that of the spiritual aspect of physical values.
The enfeebled Christian Church will never fill its empty pews until it appreciates this truth and its
votaries act upon it, even though this might entail the resignation of three-fourths of the present
priesthood as incompetent to practice it and unworthy to preach it. Not necessarily in temples made
with hands is the highest communion to be achieved. To-day, unquestionably, greater inspiration is to
be found in mountainside and sea, playing-field, gymnasium, and club—or even 'one glimpse of it within
the tavern caught, better than in the temple lost outright'. After all, did not Jesus himself often prefer
publicans to priests, and the seashore to synagogues?

CHAPTER TWELVE

'Acrobatitis'

I needed a particular degree of physical fitness at that time also for an immediate purpose.

In the First World War, through a mishap in the extreme north, I acquired a pair of frostbitten feet which
gave me trouble every winter. Massage and other treatments availing little, I decided on a drastic
measure: I would take up tap-step dancing as a means to loosen up the stiffened joints. I little thought
this would lead to a year on the stage as an acrobatic dancer, doing it on a strictly vegetarian diet, all
part and parcel of the same craving for experiment, the same 'voyage of discovery'.

It started in a gymnastic studio in New York, near Times Square, early in 1924: a small dancing hail, and
through a communicating doorway a gymnasium outfitted with trapeze, bars, rings, mats, and all the
rest of it. I always came early in the day, when the place was still deserted except for my instructor, a
dapper little man in a white open shirt and black, close-fitting pants. Just look at his expression as he
watches my efforts—contempt beyond words for this worried highbrow in his thirties, with puckered
forehead and set teeth, shuffling clumsily through a few steps and every now and then hobbling to a
chair to rub his toes!

'Say '—his sarcasm is cutting—' what you wanna come here for? You're no good. It's a sin to take your
money. You'll never learn.'

True, I've made no progress at all. I do my best to explain.

'I told you, I want to cure my feet. They're stiffened from frostbite, in the war. This may loosen them up.'

'Alrighty, alrighty,' he says, only slightly less caustically, 'as long as I know I'm a doctor and not a tap-step
teacher.'

I do a little better at the next attempt, but—desperately—have to rest again. I've a brainwave, though.
With a brisk movement I whisk myself into a headstand and shake my feet in the air. Relief to the foot
nerves follows quickly.

'Gee,' says my professor when I'm once again the right way up, 'what's that for?’

I take full advantage of the impression I have created. I explain indulgently that there is a force in nature
known as gravitation which operates also on the circulation of the blood and therefore if the body is
turned upside down, etc., etc. He listens skeptically. All he says is: 'Gee, but you're a queer guy.'
Someone comes in just then, a friend of his, and watches from the doorway. After salutations my
instructor says: 'Say, Jimmy, look here,' and turning once more to me: 'Listen, Mister What's-yer-name,
nip into your headstand again.'

Pleased to oblige, I remain poised in that posture listening to their comments. 'Ever see a guy nip up
niftier?' my instructor says—and my heart so swells with pride that I nearly topple over. 'Can't do two
steps on the floor and nips up like that!'

I descend, modestly.

'You oughta learn tumblin', not tap-step,' says my instructor.

I didn't need a second prompting. 'Okay, I'll learn tumbling too!'

'Like to start right now?’

We went into the gym, where pupils had begun to arrive and things were beginning to hum. But my
professor neglected the others. He had acquired a new interest in me which I felt it was up to me to
justify. 'Let's turn that headstand into a handstand,' he said, and caught my legs to steady me as I threw
them into the air. .I soon got the trick, and walked a step or two on my hands. 'Gee, you're a queer guy,'
he repeated, scratching his head.

'I'll come again Thursday, eight o'clock in the morning, before the crowd gets here,' I said, leaving.

I came again many times, when in New York between lecture tours. I never learnt tap-step, I never
completely overcame the effects of frostbite, I never even became good at shuffling round a ballroom
floor; but I did greatly improve the condition of my injured feet, I got so that I could run and jump easily,
and I learnt quite a lot of acrobatic tricks—walking and running on my hands, snap-ups, cartwheels, flips
and what-not, and got a great deal of fun out of it, even achieving a degree of proficiency sufficient to
give a demonstration at some private theatricals. And this, one thing leading to another, happened to
lead to a very strange bet.

The bar of the Casino at Monte Carlo, early spring, 1926. A burly, good-natured man looking like a
Manhattan broker (not surprising, since that is just what he is—my own stockbroker) sipped his aperitif
and counted a few thousand-franc gambling plaques, which he slipped into his pocket.

'Hello, Steve! '

'Hello, Paul! You here?'

'Down here writing a book in between losing at roulette.'

'Roulette! Why don't you play an intelligent game? Baccarat' —and he slapped his pocket.

We chatted about this and that, then: 'Stuffy in here. What about a breath of air?'
It was a lovely spring evening. We leant on the parapet of the terrace overlooking the sea. After a while
he said: 'Bin doin' any more of your acrobatics?' He had seen me at the private theatricals in New York
and was duly impressed. Variety shows with acrobatic numbers were just his cup of tea.

I said: 'Sure', and as the terrace was deserted I did a few cartwheels there and then to show I was in
form.

'Boy, that's swell! Fancy you learnin' that stuff at your age! After a moment he added provocatively:
'Course, it's amateur. You'd never get away with it on the professional stage.'

Feeling in a devilish mood I said: 'What d'you bet?' 'Bet you a thousand bucks you wouldn't! ' he replied,
slapping his knee. 'What's a thousand bucks!' I sniffed, thinking I might as well be hanged for a sheep as
for a lamb. 'Make it pounds and I'll, take you on.' He looked at me and said: 'You're kidding.' I assured
him in appropriate American that nothing was more distant from my mind than kidding. 'Thousand
pounds is a lot of money,' he countered. But this was a bad pass after the boasts of his luck at baccarat.
'You'll win it in a week,' I said, 'and then you can pay me in advance.'

In the end he said: 'Okay.'

'Two conditions,' I stipulated. 'Number one, I choose my own time and place.'

'Okay by me.'

'Number two: you don't breathe a word about this to anybody.'

'Why not?'

'Well, I don't want what I do to be talked of for one thing, and, for another, folks would only think me
crazy if they heard about it.'

'Sure they would,' he agreed, still eyeing me unbelievingly, and added slowly, 'Okay.'

But the real reason I didn't want anything said about it was that I wasn't really quite sure whether I
meant this proposal seriously, and anyway I didn't want to look a fool if I flopped!

Yet the madness was not without a certain method. As a matter of fact the idea of my appearing
professionally, even if in a very minor role, had already been tentatively rooted.

The Russian Ballet company of Serge Diaghileff were giving their season at the Monte Carlo Casino,
trained by the celebrated maestro, Nicolas Legat, whom I had known as a great figure from St.
Petersburg days, and whom I had met at his studio in London shortly before he went to Monte Carlo. I
told Legat about my foot trouble and how tap-step and acrobatics had helped, and I asked him if he
would further the good work by giving me some lessons in ballet technique. I discovered that his
talented and intrepid ballerina wife, Nadine Nicolaeva, who was starring in Petrushka and other roles at
the Casino, had taken up the acrobatic dancing that was such a craze in the twenties and thirties and
had begun to train a young partner, by name Serge Renoff, to work with her. I tried one or two
'combined ops' with them, and though I was very inexperienced it was suggested, at first perhaps as a
passing idea but after a time more seriously, that we should form a trio, which would be far more
effective than a duo—'two boys to throw the girl about'.

Another thing I could never have explained to a Manhattan stockbroker whose sole passions were food,
golf, and gambling, was a deep-seated resolve to subject myself to physical training and tests embodying
those principles which I had imbibed from various sources since student days. There may seem at first
sight little enough connection between acrobatic dancing and 'prayer and fasting', but to me they were
two sides of one coin. To become a stage acrobatic dancer, even for a short time, would surely be a
pretty stiff disciplinary test. I kept the matter of the wager strictly to myself not only in case I failed to
win it, but also because people might think it frivolous. I sometimes thought it frivolous myself. Of
course I did not tell my partners of it.

For some years, having other occupations taking me far afield, also a host of domestic (including marital)
complications, and eventually those dietetic experiments to perform which I have already described, I
could do little about it except that I continued when in Paris to take lessons from Legat at his school.
Meanwhile, Nadine Nicolaeva and her partner travelled about Europe, performing as a duo. But in the
autumn of 1928, when they spent several months in Paris, the proposition of my joining them was
revived, and my interest received additional stimulus through the discovery that Nadine had been
impelled to embark upon the daring path of her new art largely by motives similar to my own, I mean as
a physical test. She was a pupil of those masters of esoteric philosophy, G.I. Gurdjieff and P. D.
Ouspensky, and to her the feats in which she sought to perfect herself were not mere show-work, they
were actions to be studied for the 'special states of consciousness' which they engendered. She had a
strong ascetic strain, ate little, never touched meat and rarely alcohol, slept only about four hours in
twenty-four, and yet had the energy to cope not only the exceedingly strenuous work of a professional
dancer, but also (what was psychologically even more exhausting) a whole network of domestic and
family problems as well. She was a very remarkable person.

The idea that by this kind of work 'special states of consciousness' can be developed, to be employed
when needed at other moments, is novel to most dancers. Thinking only in terms of external effect and
display, the great majority ignore the more valuable and lasting part of the matter, the physiological and
psychological changes which can be wrought through a more enlightened approach, and thereby they
miss a great opportunity9.

Serge Renoff was a good-looking young man, tall, well-built, devoted to his work, grateful for the good
fortune which placed him under such teachers as Nicolaeva and Legat.
Our work, was divided equally between ballet technique and acrobatics. The former was continued
under Legat's tuition, the latter at the Montmartre studio of a gymnastic trainer by name Saulnier. He
was a tough little Frenchman who had been a prize boxer and gymnast. To be accepted by him for
tuition-in acrobatic dancing was something of a distinction, for he was much in demand. But I think he
was interested in us, we must have been unlike anyone else he had ever trained. For his benefit I, of
course, took fifteen years off my age—and he never doubted it!

I shall always value the hours spent at Saulnier's acrobatic school in Montmartre. Naturally there were
moments when I was ready to back out—it is no light matter to be constantly reminded that one
mistaken gesture or one false timing might leave another person crippled for life. Serge Renoff, having
performed with Nicolaeva for some years, inevitably bore the brunt of the work. He was the strong man,
the lifter, the thrower. He was always partner 'number one’, and I the 'spare'. I became the catcher
rather than the thrower, but also, of course, the participator in 'combined ops' when we two men
whirled our victim about together. The catcher's responsibility lies in the fact that the greater the
distance the girl falls or is thrown

the greater the effect on the spectators; he must save her from crashing to the floor at the very last split
second, and still endeavour to do it gracefully, as if there were nothing in it at all. And she, entrusting life
and limb to her partners in one operation after another, must still do so with a smile, in studied postures
and poses, making light of difficulty and danger.

The various feats to which we aspired had to be learned gradually and cautiously, with maître Saulnier
constantly on the alert to forestall accident. It was a great tribute to him that in many months of
practice we suffered nothing worse than a few scratches and an occasional slight strain of wrist or ankle.
One of my most curious observations was the value in its effect on myself, a 'highbrow' by nature, of
unbridled abuse. I have often thought some expert should write a treatise on 'The Use and Abuse of

9
'Over twenty years later, when Nadine Nicolaeva-Legat had opened a school after the death of her husband and
her own retirement from the stage, I was grateful to be able to employ pupils trained by her to assist me in my
series of television broadcasts on the 'subject of applied Yoga. Some pictures taken during these performances
appear in this book. Madame Legat's own ideas on the subject, with special relation to ballet, are expounded in
her book, Ballet Technique (Geoffrey Bles, 1946), 'to which Mr. John Masefield contributed a dedicatory poem and
I a foreword. On the occasion of the opening of her school the Poet Laureate, who has followed the artistic, and
philosophical activities of Mme Legat for many, years, wrote to her: 'The thought of your School beginning is to me
a light showing that the tide of darkness has turned. '. . . May you find this really a time of the rebirth of beauty
and grace, and countless glad young souls coming to you to know of these things.' See also Ballet Russe, by N.
Legat, translated with an introduction by myself. (Methuen.)
Abuse', for abuse is an art in itself. Saulnier's violent outbursts of florid invective, quite unprintable,
discharged at me like showers of javelins, had the effect, through their shock, of jerking me into efforts
of which I had never believed myself capable, and I was so grateful that I really didn't need the kindly
'Forget what I said I didn't mean it' with which he usually sought, post factum, to sugar the pill!

Little by little, as we acquired proficiency, we pieced our feats together into sequences that could be
used in scenes which we designed and for which I wrote the music. Early in 1929 Nadine received an
offer for us to appear in a touring revue in England under a Russian producer with whom she had
previously worked. But my companions decided, quite rightly, that I had better first be put through my
paces in some out-of-the-way place to see if I could stand the gaff on the stage. So Renoff, who knew all
the Continental agents, set out to arrange a short engagement at some spot discreetly off the beaten
track.

Spring, 1929. The stage of a theatre at Liege, in Belgium. The curtain is up for rehearsal, the empty
auditorium has the ghostly air peculiar to theatres in the early morning, balustrades covered with
sheets, charwomen prowling about with broom and duster. Vague individuals—scene shifters,
electricians, carpenters—appear in the wings and look gloomily at the arriving artistes as if they were a
lower order of beings scarcely deserving a 'bonjour'. Musicians assemble yawningly in the orchestra pit,
tuning violins; blowing oboes, piping flutes, tapping drums. They are bored, or look it. But to me it is
drama. At last I am about to be 'blooded'.

What is our contribution to the programme? A Spanish dance à trois for the first half, just straight stuff
in picturesque costumes, and for the second half the pièce de résistance starred on the bill: 'La Célèbre
Ballerine, Nadine Nicolaeua, avec ses deux Partenaires, Serge Renoff et Paul Dukaine, dans "Le Jardin
Exotique ", Scene de Danse Acrobatique Sensationelle. Musique par Paul Dukaine.'

As you see, I, 'Paul Dukaine', have written the music and I am almost as eager to hear it as to acquit
myself in the dance, for I have composed and scored it in frisky mood to suit the frisky action of the
story. This last my partners and I devised together. Let me first describe how the act ought to have been
performed as we envisaged it. Picture a decor of roses of fabulous size and hue, among which flits what
the programme notes refer to as a 'Papillon Fantasque', to the delight of a 'Jardinier Romantique', who
catches the Papillon in his net. But lo, here comes the Gardener's employer ('Le Prince' on the
programme), and for his special benefit the Jardinier, who practices sorcery as a sideline, transforms the
Papillon into a Princess who suddenly appears among the fabulous roses. The Prince, after one look at
her, decides she's 'the goods' and makes passes at her accordingly, to the annoyance of the Jardinier
who falls for her himself and thinks he is entitled to author's rights (Nicolaeva plays the Princess, Renoff
the Prince, Dukaine the Gardener.) At first the rivals support their claims with innocent showing-off in
the form of pirouettes, tours-en-l'air, and odds and ends of tumbling; but these inoffensive diversions
develop into a contest in which the poor Papillon, even in the more material form of a tough little
Princess, gets all but torn to shreds the way the rivals throw her about and seemingly endeavour, to
whisk her away. Hoisted to dizzy heights by the Prince who starts to carry her off in an overhead
arabesque, she blows a coquettish kiss to the despairing Jardinier below and, holding herself straight as
a ramrod, falls with a cartwheel motion towards him, he catching her, head downward, within an inch of
the floor and an ace of killing herself (to the accompaniment, we of course hope, of gasps from the
audience). The rivals then seize the persecuted Papillon by her arms and legs—an arm and leg each—
and whirl her violently, round and round in the air like a wheel, they, themselves also turning with each
revolution, enough (we hope) to make the whole audience feel giddy, and this whirling business goes on
until (we also hope) the spectators either burst into deafening applause or else the mayor or chief of
police or somebody secures a full house for the rest of the run by shouting protests against the danger
of such perilous antics— suppose the intrepid lady were to slip from her stalwarts' grasp and be hurled
on to the heads of the spectators in the stalls! ' Eventually the Princess, or what is left of her, decides
she's had her fill of that sort of thing for one performance, and contrives, another dramatic leap plump
into the bosom of the fabulous roses, preferring after all the existence of a Papillon to the tender
mercies of the lovelorn Prince and Jardinier.

That's how it all should have gone. But what actually happened? Alas.

Paul Dukaine, composer and part-author of this masterpiece, stands anxiously near the footlights
waiting for the rehearsal to start. What on earth are they doing to his music? With expressions of
disgust the musicians try single passages and contemptuously turn the page to see if it's any better
further on. The first violin, scraping away, says very audibly: 'Qu'est que ça veut dire, merde!' and when
the conductor arrives passes his part up to him with a 'Regardez ça, c'est de la musique, ça?' The
conductor looks at it and turns the pages of the score. The orchestra titter. 'Vraiment, ça à l’air bizarre,'
the conductor observes, adding: 'Nous allons voir.' He taps his desk. I have a sinking feeling in my
tummy.

The orchestra begins. Ghastly sounds emerge from the strings. The oboe comes in a bar late, the flute
misses his cue. But the conductor doesn't notice it. He looks as if he's never seen a score in his life
before. His eyes are glued to the paper and his arms wave sidewards like the wings of a condor. The
orchestra comes to a stop. 'The oboe was a bar late,' I put in desperately from the footlights, 'and the
opening notes of the violins are harmonics---it represents evening in a magic garden.'

The conductor looks up blankly. 'Who are you?'

'I wrote it,' I replied.

'Harmonics?' said the first violin. 'We don't play harmonics here. We'll play it ordinary.'

The conductor says brightly: 'You are the composer? You haven't got a piano arrangement, have you?’

'Yes,' I said. 'Would you prefer to conduct from it?' 'No. You accompany the act on the piano.'

'But I'm performing in it myself!’

The conductor slapped the score with the back of his hand. 'We never have this kind of music here! But
let's have one more try.'
The musicians shrugged and applied themselves anew. Making horrible noises they got through about
twenty bars, then downed tools all together.

'Call the manager,' said the conductor.

The manager arrives. 'Qu'est qu'il y a?'

On ne peut pas jouer ça,' says the conductor, 'c'est trop difficile —c'est horrible—c' est du futurisme.'

Nadine and Serge come alongside. The manager says: 'Ecoutez, madame, changez la musique, je vous
prie.'

How can we change the music at the last moment? I am in despair. There seems no way out. Shall we
call the number off? But no, 'Le Jardin Exotique' must go on, the manager says. It's been billed
prominently because of Nicolaeva's name. In the end, when we found that the orchestra played our
popular Spanish dances tolerably well and were willing to put their best efforts into anything with which
they were familiar, we forgathered with the conductor and orchestral pianist when the other rehearsals
were over and out of their library we pieced together a pot-pourri of scraps of stuff they knew. There
was no time to rehearse properly. We merely went through the general motions. In the evening at the
first performance both Nicolaeva and Renoff were marvelous in the help they gave me. From the easy
Spanish dance in the first half I acquired my first feeling of confidence, and in the second half, when the
curtain went up on 'Le, Jardin Exotique', disclosing the Jardinier capturing and then exhibiting to the
Prince the Papillon he has caught in his net, I was barely conscious of the audience beyond the glaring
footlights, and strove not to hear the music which might have put me off; my whole attention was
focused on Serge's directions as he spoke them audibly for me to hear, despite the fact that he bore the
brunt of the difficult work. I made many mistakes which he skillfully covered up. But the major
'combined ops' towards the climax I managed to do without error, even with a verve born of
desperation which I had never known at rehearsals. When we reached the end there was loud applause.
And except for ourselves none knew of the little drama which that day had been enacted. That was my
baptism of fire. That's how I was blooded!

Fifteen months later. A Sunday in June 1930. A large open Buick, piled high with luggage, travelling from
Nottingham to Hull. Occupants two men and a woman: Serge at the wheel; Nadine at his side, dozing; I
in the back seat, ruminating. These Sunday journeys by car from city to city were a godsend, a chance to
escape. Not that the rest of the touring company were anything but agreeable; the sixteen girls were
good-looking and well-behaved; Harry Angers10 and Bert Escott, comedians who did funny sketches,
were delightful fellows; the rest of the troupe were also very pleasant. But for one day of the week one
likes to be alone.

It was a time for reflection and recollection. My mind went back to Liege and subsequent vicissitudes.
After Liege 'Le Jardin Exotique' had been included, with easier music, in the promised revue under

10
Father of the well-known comedienne Avril Angers.
Nicolaeva's Russian producer friend. The show was called The Crazy Caravan. It was crazy, caravanish,
and a resounding flop.

A second 'improved' version, incongruously entitled Dreams of Delight, was a nightmare. It lasted about
a month. But we learnt a lot—also about managements. Two flops, third time lucky. In both the flopping
shows our acrobatic number attracted attention, so that we had been included in a new creation of
Wallace Parnell, of touring revue fame, with the distinguished musician Vladimir Launitz as musical
director. We were about to enter the eleventh week of Beauty on Parade, a winner.

'Le Jardin Exotique' was completely transformed. More highly developed acrobatically as the result of
over a year's work, it had now become 'Revels of Flame and Smoke', with scenery designed and painted
in Paris by the Estonian artist Albo. Instead of a setting of fabulous roses, behold the flat roof of an ultra-
modern skyscraper, drawn in cubist lines. Instead of the Jardinier Romantique I was a sentimental
Chimney Sweep, ruminating, far above the madding crowd, preparing with rope and tackle to perform a
(usually) not very romantic task. But lo, what darts from that projecting chimney-stack? It is Flame, in
the person of Nicolaeva, alive and radiant, bristling with little tongues of fire. The astonished Sweep
makes a motion towards her. But hot on her heels comes her pursuer, Smoke —Renoff—a sort of murky
Mephistopheles bent on mischief and possession. The infatuated Sweep seeks to defend the fiery lady
from Smoke's stifling grasp. Flame, the coquette, dailies with them both. A pas de deux between Flame
and Smoke impels the jealous Sweep to divert her attention by a display of tumbling, which amuses her
but arouses the envy of Smoke; a contest ensues in which poor Flame is torn to tatters as ruthlessly as
was her erstwhile predecessor, the Papillon Fantasque. Far more ruthlessly, indeed, for the feats of 'Le
Jardin Exotique' were childish by comparison with those of 'Revels of Flame and Smoke'. In the end
Smoke seized Flame, and the two of them made a sensational leap back into the chimney-stack amid
clouds of ascending sparks, leaving behind them the prostrate body of the stifled Sweep.

So far, at Birmingham, Oxford, Nottingham and other places, this number was the climax of the bill, but
at Hull, whither we were now bound, we were making a change. Amy Johnson, a native of Hull, had just
completed her epoch-making flight to Australia in a Moth aeroplane, a feat which in that day was as
astonishing as crossing the Pacific in an open boat with a jigger motor. The papers were full of it, she had
won the big prize offered by the Daily Mail, honours and congratulations were being showered on her in
Melbourne from every quarter of the globe. So we were going to have an 'Amy Johnson Week' in her
own city.

The enterprising Wallace Parnell went to Hull in advance to fix it all up. The officers of Brough airport
just outside the city, keen to co-operate, lent us a Moth, which with one wing removed was to be placed
on the stage for the final scene. It was not easy to place an aeroplane even of the Moth's diminutive
dimensions on the stage, but the management, foreseeing crowded houses, were only too eager to co-
operate. The Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress, together with Amy's parents, were to be in the royal box
on Monday night, and the local press were already giving the occasion a boost.

We arrived at Hull and drove to the theatre to see the billboards. 'Special Amy Johnson celebrations. The
successful revue Beauty on Parade, featuring Nadine Nicolaeva and Partners in a sensational scene
"Revels of Flame and Smoke ", Harry Angers and Bert Escott in comedy sketches, and large cast. Moth.
Aeroplane kindly loaned by the Commandant of Brough Airport. Production by Wallace Parnell.
Conductor, Vladimir Launitz.'

On Monday night the theatre was crammed. Through the curtain peephole the Lord Mayor could be
seen in his regalia with the Johnson family entering the decorated royal box. Launitz struck up the
rousing overture. The curtain rose on the entire company singing a special song about Amy for which
Launitz had written the music. It was followed by a curtailed first half, leading up to 'Revels of Flame and
Smoke', to-day ending the first half on account of the aeroplane scene which was to conclude the show.

The curtain came down in a roar of applause, and rose again a few moments later to reveal the Lord
Mayor with Mr. and Mrs. Johnson on the stage in the centre of the company. Resounding cheers. One of
the girls presented Mrs. Johnson with a bouquet. Speeches. And something the Lord Mayor said in
thanking the company for organizing the celebration indicated that he had been told there was a certain
member of the troupe, who, he understood would prefer to remain incognito—(I always did my best to
keep my identity dark)—but, in view of the special occasion, perhaps… Embarrassed, I was pushed
forward to reply on behalf of the company. The performance then proceeded. The final scene was
reached. The Moth, somehow concealed in the flies above, descended swathed in a Union Jack, filling a
large part of the stage. Even with clipped wings it more than achieved its purpose. The company
grouped themselves around it to repeat the Amy Johnson song with which the show opened, followed
by 'Rule, Britannia' and 'God Save the King'.

And so to bed. I never heard what Amy thought of it when she read about it. But there were broad
smiles in the box office.

Beauty on Parade ran—without the aeroplane of course—for fifty-six weeks with 'Revels of Flame and
Smoke' always the big hit. It did not, alas, pass without mishap. At Glasgow Nadine had a serious
accident caused by a misplaced piece of scenery. Refusing doctor's advice, she insisted on going on again
next night and for the rest of the week—she was that sort, not without reason she was known in the
troupe as 'the Mighty Atom '—but by the time we were playing London suburban theatres with a view
to transference to a West End production she was suffering intensely and at specialist's orders had to
take several weeks off. Later she rejoined the show and played to the end. I did not rejoin it, being
obliged at that time to go to America on business. My role as Sweep was taken over by Keith Lester, who
had been partnering Tamara Karsavina but was so attracted by the new branch of work on which
Nicolaeva had embarked that he jumped at the opportunity of attempting it himself. He played the role
admirably, but in view of the danger to Nadine's knee the act was never restored in its entirety.

The bet? Oh yes, I won it. But by the end of the tour I had almost forgotten about it, so engrossed had. I
become in the work for its own sake. Altogether, including Liege and the two unsuccessful shows,
followed by seven months in Beauty on Parade, I played about sixty weeks. So when I went to America I
took with me a sheaf of programmes and newspaper cuttings and duly cashed in amid revels of
champagne and smoke. But it profited me nothing in the end. Steve was my financial adviser, and he
counseled 'hanging on' in the great American collapse of that time. He, of course, could not foresee the
cataclysm that came any more than anyone else could. But the net result for me was that not only my
five thousand bucks but a good deal more went up in flame and smoke!

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The White Lady of the Stars

I THINK I ought to include in this book a series of events which started by being an intended inquiry into
the subject of astrology, V but ended in a blaze of glory, a tragic suspected suicide, a sinister burial, and
bitter tears of grief.

The very name 'White Lady of the Stars', I know, must have a melodramatic ring. But it came naturally, it
was thus that I thought of her, and thus that I shall always think of her.

She lived and died a recluse in a South London suburb. She never publicized her name, and in view of
this and the strange story that follows, not to speak of how it all ended, it would be cruel and invidious
to publicize it posthumously.

I was rather surprised that certain people of social standing to whom she was related neglected her
completely when her precarious livelihood of miniature portrait-painting failed, and allowed her to
perish in tragic circumstances in utter destitution. Perhaps they knew that, had she wished, she could
have earned a fortune by casting horoscopes, and resented her poverty as unnecessary. As an astrologer
she was consulted by distinguished people all over Europe, including to my certain knowledge more
than one crowned head. But, to her, the science in which she shone was sacred, and though when she
undertook to cast a horoscope she would spend infinite pains over it, she would never accept a penny of
recompense. She belonged to astrological lodges in Paris and Vienna whose members stood in the same
relationship to the bastard commercial 'astrologers’ of the popular press as Leonardo and Raphael to a
pavement artist or Beethoven to a jazz crooner.

The person through whom I made her acquaintance said: 'Her telephone number is such-and-such if you
can get through; it's sometimes off for weeks when she hasn't been able to pay her account.'

I had been told she was a friend of Rudolph Steiner, several of whose books I had read, and I decided to
make this an excuse to approach her. A slow musical voice with a slight break in it answered the
telephone. I asked if I might call. There was a long pause, so long that I thought my interlocutor must
have deserted the phone. But the voice said eventually: 'Please say that again.' I repeated it louder.
Another long pause, then: 'Thank you, I hear quite well, but would you mind saying it once more?' Again
I repeated my introduction. Yet another pause, but I could faintly hear breathing. At last she said: 'Why
do you want to come and see me?' I replied that I understood she had known Steiner, whose books I
admired. At this there was a long-drawn-out '0-oh', and a further wait. I began to feel embarrassed by
these eerie telephonic silences. I was still more embarrassed when she said next: 'Will you please say
something more?' 'Something. more?' 'Yes, anything.' 'I'm afraid I don't quite—is there something
particular –‘ ‘No. Say what you said at the start.' So I repeated my introduction all over again. Another
prolonged silence almost made me hang up the receiver, but just in time the voice said languidly; 'Will
Wednesday do? Come after dinner, not too late.'

I arrived at a small, dilapidated, semi-detached house near Streatham Common. I had to knock more
than once before I saw, through the coloured glass of the front door, the figure of a woman approaching
along the passage. 'The door is unlocked, you might have come in,' she said, admitting me. I could hardly
see myself trying the front door of a house I was visiting for the first time and then walking in uninvited.
I said limply: 'I'm sorry, I didn't know.'

She was dressed entirely in white except for a blue scarf. From the first glimpse in the flickering light of a
gas jet in the hall (there was no electric light) I judged her to be in her early thirties. In youth she must
have been very good-looking—she was still so. The slight break in her slow voice was more marked in
direct speech than over the telephone. It conveyed an impression of weariness.

'Come in. I am alone in the house with my mother. Will you have a cup of coffee?'

The little sitting-room, suburbanly furnished, was lit by an oil lamp whose shade bisected the walls
horizontally, leaving the upper half in deep shadow. Various effigies—crucifixes, Egyptian statuettes —
stood among masses of photographs and miniature portraits on side tables and the mantelpiece. A
sphinx had a pedestal to itself in one corner. One small table was littered with paints and brushes and an
unfinished portrait.

'Why have you come I know who you are… You needn't tell me… you couldn't tell me… Have you come
to talk about Egypt?’

The voice was languid, the words disconcerting, the idea of Egypt never having entered my head I told
her again of my interest in Steiner, and was at once called upon to give a detailed account of the books I
had read and what I thought of them.

‘He was a very great man,' she said. 'I knew him closely I was present when the Goetheanum was burnt.'

The Goetheanum, as many will remember, was the vast temple constructed near Basic by Steiner, from
his special design and of special materials selected by him as best suited to express his religious and
philosophic ideas. It was burnt to the ground on the day of the opening festival. The White Lady
described how, on the morrow, Steiner stood looking impassively at the smouldering ruins, saying
simply: 'It will be built again.'

'The burning was predestined and symbolic,' she said. 'Rudolf Steiner lived before his time. How great a
man he was will be understood only centuries from now. Very few of his followers understood him, his
most organized admirers not at all.'
It was not only to discuss Steiner that I had come. I wanted to hear her discourse on the subject of
astrology, but I found it very difficult to draw her out, partly because before answering any question she
had to be satisfied in great detail regarding the motive of the inquiry, and partly because she had a way
of breaking off suddenly and throwing out a remark entirely out of context, yet always bearing, on
something that was lurking latent in my mind. Thus on this first evening, when she had begun to speak
of the astrological science of the Chaldeans, she broke off, paused, and—though I had not consciously
been thinking of our peculiar telephone conversation—said: 'You see, I always judge people first by their
voices.' Then she carried on again about Chaldea.

Eventually I ventured: 'Would you consent to do my horoscope?'

She replied with sudden warmth: 'Are you sure you know what you are asking? Are you perhaps
intrigued by the charlatans of the press? Do you know that, even for experts, to work out a single
horoscope conscientiously is long labour probably taking several days and perhaps weeks?

I sat silent.

' Besides,' she went on in the same manner, not one person in a thousand knows when they were born.'

'Don't know their birthday?' I exclaimed.

'They know the day, but there are twenty-four hours in a day. An error of even a few minutes in the
moment of birth may make a vast difference, especially when calculating for middle life. One hour out
may upset things altogether. Anyone who says a correct chart can be drawn for a day is either a fake or
a fool.'

'I was born,' I said with conviction, 'on a snowy Sunday morning precisely at thirteen minutes to eight.'

'How do you know?' she asked, evidently struck by my assurance.

'It happens to be inscribed to the minute in our family Bible. The times, for my brothers and sister are
given fairly precisely, but mine is noted to the minute - 7.47. I reminded myself of it before coming to
see you. The Bible is at my brother's house where I am now living.'

She took a large sheet of paper and a drawing board, and began rapidly sketching a chart, noting the
year, month, day, and minute of my birth, and also the latitude and longitude of my birthplace. I sat
watching her while she wrote cryptic signs in her zodiacal circle. At last she looked up with an odd smile
and said: 'I will do it if you wish, but I'm not at all sure you will like it. Few people want to hear truth. . . .'
and she broke into a ripple of gay laughter, repeatedly looking up at me from the chart. 'You are a most
awful fibber! But you are probably right—you mustn't cast pearls before swine. . . . Jesus set a good
example by clothing truth in parables and teaching his disciples secretiveness. . . . But you are a naughty
boy all the same—you ought not to tell your lady friends you love them unless you really do!'

I was just swallowing this carminative to my vanity when I heard a sound behind me and, turning, saw
standing in the doorway a woman dressed in black, with a stern expression on heavy, square features.
She stood there silently, looking questioningly at the White Lady and me with lowering dark eyes. I rose,
wondering whether I ought to leave. But without getting up the White Lady said in a chilly voice: 'I
cannot see you this evening.' The dark woman stood awhile in the doorway, swathed in the shadows
cast by the shade of the lamp. Her heavy eyes swung from the White Lady to me, then, she turned and
went out without having uttered a word. My White Lady offered no explanation. She merely waved to
me to sit down, and turned again to the chart.

'What a mixture!' she said, speaking as if to herself in her earlier languid tone. 'I shall never get to the
bottom of it. . . . You wouldn't like it if I did, I can tell you that. .. . . Heavens, what a scamp you are! . . .
Or are you only a madcap? . . . Or both'? . .'Seeking,' seeking, seeking—and fibbing, fibbing, fibbing—to
hide your designs and intentions from those around, I suppose. . . . Perhaps you're right, I can't see a
single one who would understand’.

She went on making marks on the chart, and said suddenly:

‘When were you last in Egypt? I knew you wanted to come and talk about that.' I was soon to discover
that she had what ladies sometimes call a 'thing' about Egypt, a sort of complex.

'I've never been to Egypt in my life,' I said.

'Then you'd better 'hurry up and go.'

'Why?'

'I don't know why,' she replied dreamily. 'I only see that you ought to go. Aren't you intending to go?’

'No.’

'You will probably change your mind.' She pointed at the Sphinx in the corner, and returning to the chart
went on disjointedly:

'Out of Egypt have I called my son. . . . At least I think so. . But it is a terrible struggle. . . . Heavens, the
casualties strewn on the battlefield. . . . With you near mortal death—of soul rather than body. . . . I can
warn you, but you will go your own way anyway.. . . . Do you really want me to do your chart?'

'I do indeed,' I said, more and more fascinated by this strange lady. 'I would like you to tell me the whole
truth as you see it written in the stars.'

She looked at me gravely and said: 'Yes. I believe you would. But you will have to regard me as a kind of
godmother who wants to do her best to put you right when wrong.'

'That I will gladly—godmother,' I replied.

It was midnight when I left, with a promise that I might come again, after she had sent me a draft of my
horoscope.
About three weeks later I received by post a little booklet in a blue-green cover with an astrological
design hand-painted in gold and bound with gold thread. The first page was inscribed with the words in
inverted commas: 'Up out of Egypt I have called my son.' The booklet of some twenty pages contained
horoscopic notes, not very consecutive, written in a clear, strong hand interspersed with various
astrological indications and accompanied by a letter which ran: 'Dear little madcap scamp—" little"
because you are a child to your very ancient godmother who is many thousand's of years old'—here is a
beginning of what you asked for, but it is very imperfect because you have a bewildering chart—all the
bads and goods are hopelessly mixed up—it would take months to unravel it if it can be done at all—I
have only been able to spend a couple of hours a day on it. If when you have read it you are still
interested, come and see me.'

A few days later I sat again in the little sitting-room. Again, in her dreamy voice, she discoursed brokenly
on my chart, the margins of which were now covered with signs and symbols quite unintelligible to me.
'The panorama of men and women!' she began. 'Why can't you discriminate? Why don't you pick and
choose better?'

But I'm not going to try to record her full analysis—it would be like morbid exhibitionism. Suffice it to
say that her intuition—if that is what it was—was uncanny. Again while I was there the front door
clicked and the dark woman stood in the shadows of the threshold, glowering. Again the White Lady
dismissed her, and after staring hard at us the intruder went out without a word.

These were the first of many visits spread over several years, but often with long intervals as I was
mostly abroad. (This first visit was shortly before my sojourn at Divonne.) The intruding dark woman
ceased to intrude after a time—my hostess locked the front door. When I ventured to ask who she was
the White Lady said she was an old friend of her mother's who disapproved of astrology; she was a
theosophist, 'hypped' on the subject of astral bodies; she believed she could see the White Lady's astral
body disintegrating and that this would bring disaster upon her through her 'diabolical' practices.

'I once argued with her,' said the White Lady. 'I said the whole story of the nativity of Jesus sets the seal
of New Testament authority upon astrology, but it made little impression. She thinks Theosophy has
superseded Christianity.'

One day I said: 'You astrologers say things are "predestined". What about free will?'

'Up comes the old bad penny!' she laughed, but not unkindly. 'Aristotle answered that one how many
centuries ago? Astra V inclinant, non necessitant. The stars reveal not inescapable events, but
inescapable proclivities, some very dominating, others less so. Astrology shows the general chart of the
seas each mariner must sail the rocks and shallows, the prevailing winds and currents he must
encounter. Those cannot be changed or evaded, but it is left to the mariner to navigate the ship. That's
why Henley was so right "I am the master of my fate, I am the captain, of my soul. . . ." ‘Or may be,' she
added whimsically.

On another occasion she said: 'All great religions are designed to help us to escape from the "wheel of
fate ", to which we are tied only if we make no effort Christ was the greatest of the great masters
because he taught us to make the most difficult and self-escaping effort of all, the effort to love our
neighbour as ourself.'

Anyone less 'diabolic' than the White Lady it would be hard to imagine. She was a great woman with
great ideals. Except for the dark, cold-shiver intruder the only people I met at her house were children—
mostly children of neighbours, who evidently loved her dearly—and to be loved by children is in itself a
pretty good recommendation for anybody. Besides her precarious profession of miniature portrait-
painting she derived a small income from writing children's stories for magazines. On the subject of the
possibility, of disaster eventually befalling her, as the dark woman predicted, the White Lady did indeed
say that she knew she had 'a heavy karmic debt' to pay, and that she believed her life would end in
tragic fashion, and that for this reason she never drew up her own horoscope. But she never told me
the origin of her 'heavy karmic debt'.

Every year she brought my chart up to date, with warnings and indications for the ensuing months,
always presented in the same charming little booklets, with the same inscription on the first page. Not
understanding the references to Egypt, I paid no particular attention to them. But it so happened that
about that time I made the acquaintance of certain British-Israelites, who, as is well known, propagate
the theory that the Anglo-Saxon race is descended from the lost tribe of the House of Judah, and that
prophecies regarding the reinstatement of the tribe are contained in the measurements of the
mysterious passages in the interior of the Great Pyramid of Gizeh. That the British people might be the
lost tribe of Judah aroused no enthusiasm in me at all, but I became deeply interested in the mysteries
of the Great Pyramid, of which I read for the first time. The White Lady spoke about it a good deal; she
was not a British-Israelite, but, like many others, she believed that symbolic mysteries were enshrined in
the stonework both of the Great Pyramid and the Sphinx, even that they were a repository of 'wisdom
from Atlantis'. My curiosity was further fanned about the same time by the Russian philosopher, P. D.
Ouspensky, with whom I used to sit up long nights discussing mysticism, in particular the system of G. I.
Gurdjieff, undoubtedly one of the great living teachers, whom Ouspensky acknowledged as master, but
from whom he had none the less parted company. Ouspensky lent me the advance typescript of parts of
his book A New Model of the Universe, in which he describes the Great Pyramid as a living organism. I
looked forward to going to see it, but as it was impossible for me then to visit Egypt I did nothing about
it at the time11.

There was no doubt that on the whole the White Lady's diagnosis of my various environments was
accurate and her advice and warnings justified. I gave her very little information about my diverse
activities, whether in England or abroad, but she guessed a lot and it is possible that she asked questions
of other people, though I had no evidence of this. I felt with the passage of time that personal
relationship and personal feelings began to colour her purely astrological deductions and consequently
to diminish their value. I also had to make allowance for her marked likes and dislikes. She disapproved,

11
Ouspensky's philosophy is expounded in three major works, Tertium Organum, A New Model of the Universe and
In Search of the Miraculous (Routledge & Kegan Paul). His conception of time is also set forth in a novel, The
Strange Life of Ivan Osokin (Faber & Faber).
for instance, of every association I had ever had with the theatre, especially, of course, my acrobatic
dancing, and she was quite nonplussed by my physiological experiments, regarding my strict
vegetarianism as a fad. These prejudices on her part inclined me to take much that she said with the
proverbial pinch of salt, yet I should have done well to heed some of her most earnest and persistent
admonitions. For example, she showered warnings, almost imprecations, on me because 'I would not
promise in advance not to embark upon certain unspecified business ventures in which she said she saw
I was going to get involved and which would lead to disaster. 'And the worst of it is,' she said, almost
sobbing, 'I see that you will surely go pigheadedly your own way.' Alas, she was perfectly right. Some
time after that I did get myself into a serious mess through certain foolhardy business enterprises which
failed. I could only blame myself for going into them.

It distressed me, as the years passed, to see the progressive deterioration in her circumstances, but the
only assistance she would accept was gifts of food. So it pleased me enormously to be able for several
months to keep her supplied with a special kind of bread—'sunshine bread'—from the south of France,
which, she liked very much and which she said did her a great deal of good. This bread was partly of my
own making, and was another of my dietetic experiments.

To digress for a moment, here is the story of it.

Perhaps you know the winding road that leads up into the mountains behind Baumettes at the western
end of Nice? If so, you will remember its little white stucco villas with green roofs, perched here and
there with gardens on the leveled terraces of the mountain slope. In one of these gardens, in the early
months of 1932, you might often have seen about eight in the morning two middle-aged gentlemen—if
forty is indeed the turning point into middle age, (I think this convention quite silly)—busily engaged in
the unusual task of exposing long rows of loaves of bread to the bright rays of the Mediterranean sun.
Both men are clad in spotless white overalls. The elder—his, name is Dr. Lacour—removes the loaves,
still hot, from tins in which they have just been baked; the younger—', myself—operating under his
directions arrays them on a long, table on trestles.

'Voilà,' exclaims Lacour as the last loaf is set out, 'et maintenant,' cher ami, une tasse de café pendant
que le bon Dieu bénit les pains........ avec ses rayons de soleil purifiants.'

The operation really began the evening before. It was in the evenings that the two of us, working alone
in the doctor's kitchen, prepared the dough for baking. The flour was, of course, special flour, whole
meal in the fullest sense, sometimes termed hundred percent extraction, that is, as rich as nature
provides it, without any of the best part of the grain being discarded It was also stone-milled at a
picturesque old mill miles away in the mountains. 'Stone-grinding is very important,' insisted Lacour.
'If the grain is to be curative as well as nutritive it must be kept close to nature, from the stone that
pulverizes it to the rays of the sun which impregnate the finished loaf with vitamins.'

All the other ingredients, must similarly be 'close to nature'—the water must be rain or well water,
never from a tap; 'the salt must be sea salt, never 'refined'; the yeast, of which little, was used, grown by
the doctor himself; and—an important ingredient—the finest Riviera olive oil, the freshest obtainable.
The oil imparted a most delicious flavour. The doctor was no less particular as to whose hands might
come into contact with his bread at any stage of its making. 'Hands,' he would say, pummeling and
kneading a trough of dough, 'transmit magnetism. Never would I allow this bread to be prepared for my
patients by unworthy hands'. Those who touch it must do so with love and reverence.'

One day I asked him why he trusted my hands. His reply, uttered quite simply, was overwhelming. 'Do
you remember,' he said, 'the evening we first met, at Madame So-and-so's? You played to us Chopin and
Rachmaninoff. I wish nothing better than that my bread should be kneaded by fingers that made such
music.' I ask you, would it have been possible after that to resist his invitation to help him make his
bread, even had I not been interested in his dietetic theories?

He was a member of that excellent religio-philosophic society known as 'Mazdaznan'. 'The word
Mazdaznan means knowledge of light,' he explained. 'Our founder was Zoroaster, who worshipped
sunlight as the symbol of the source of life. He first discovered the powers latent in a grain of wheat. He
first made true bread. It is my ambition to make the most perfect bread ever made, truly worthy to be
called the staff of life.'

It is one of the principles of Mazdaznan philosophy that physical fitness is an important condition of
religious devotion. At first encounter this makes its members appear somewhat ascetic, for, like Lacour
they are all strictly teetotal, non-smoking and vegetarian. Their services of worship begin with ingenious
physical exercises designed to bring the brain and nervous system into the proper receptive state. At the
same time the services of the society that, with Lacour's introduction, I attended at various times in
London and Paris, sometimes at half-past five or six in the morning, were nothing if not cheerful, for
besides physical culture the members believe also in the therapeutic virtues of colour and good music. I
mean really good music, not merely the dreary accompaniment of the conventional church organ. To
listen to a Beethoven violin, sonata or a Brahms quartet performed by accomplished players (and at the
meetings I attended the players were very accomplished) in the small hours of the morning as part of a
religious service beginning with physical exercises is a wonderful experience.

But to return to the bread-makers. At last the kneaded dough was ready for the shaped tins in which it
was to be baked. Together we would fill them—about fifty—while Lacour carried on a rapid
commentary. He was a homeopathist, and for this, as well as for his philosophic ideas, he frequently
encountered the hostility of the orthodox medical profession. He was quite unreserved in his comments
on doctors in general. 'Espèces d'idiots;' he declaimed, 'who learn things out of books instead of going
straight to the divine source.' I liked my friend Lacour and was only too pleased to give him a hand at his
bread-making, but I was not entirely surprised at his difficulties with the medical profession.

The fifty tins were at length filled, sufficient to last his patients several days and supply a few
confectioners. And if anybody wants to know how much labour is involved for two people to make fifty
loaves from start to finish let them have a go at it themselves.

Once the bread was ready for the early morning baking, I would drive home down the beautiful winding
road to Nice and along the busy Promenade bathed in the slanting rays of the setting sun, heedless of
crowds, casinos, cabarets, carnivals and the rest of the season's crazy cutter-clatter. Bed for me, please,
for I must be astir, again before four o'clock, driving back along the now-deserted Promenade and up
the zigzag mountain road with the nascent dawn painting the eastern horizon in colours that had to be
seen to be believed.

'Vivent les boulangers!'

It was our customary morning greeting. No time was lost in getting to work. A cup of coffee and we
began stacking the tins in our cars to transport them to a village bakery the doctor hired a few miles
away. The village baker, fat and drowsy, had already heated the ovens. On metal trays we slid our tins
into the gaping apertures and bolted the iron doors upon them. Then back we drove for another cup of
coffee and a snack, returning to withdraw the baked loaves at the stipulated hour. Again the tins were
piled into our cars, we returned to the villa, and the morning sun being now high in the Mediterranean
heaven the loaves were arrayed in the garden to receive its blessed rays to best advantage for a good
two hours, while messieurs les boulangers settled themselves to a leisurely breakfast provided by the
doctor's wife.

By eleven o'clock, the bread was thoroughly impregnated with the sun's curative properties, including
vitamin D. Now I transformed my car into delivery van. Lacour got in beside me. When we arrived in
Nice he made his professional rounds on foot, hatless, with open white shirt, wearing sandals at all
season of the year, carrying a large case containing his phials of homeopathic cultures. Meanwhile,
armed with a list of addresses I delivered the bread, about half of it to private houses and the remainder
to confectioners who took some on trial. Lacour had dreams of turning his sunshine bread into a
commercial enterprise.

For several months I helped in the bread-making two or three times a week, while Lacoür experimented
with its ingredients in varying proportions. When I left he wept lamentations at the loss of his assistant.
I persuaded my old colleague of 'Revels of Flame and Smoke', Serge Renoff, who lived at Nice and at
whose house I had been staying, to take my place. He worked hard at the job until he became engaged
in films at the Nice studios. Then Nadine Nicoiaeva, who was recuperating at Nice and Monte Carlo after
her accident in ‘Revels of Flame and Smoke', volunteered very pluckily to take his place. She would sit up
much of the night mixing the dough, and also helping to prepare a pain d'épice which Lacour added to
his productions. She also did the wrapping in cellophane and the fixing of the labels marked 'Le Bon Pain
du Prof. Lermite (Lacour's trade name). Serge would come back to relieve her after work at the studios.
But though they both sweated away like Trojans with the utmost devotion they found it difficult to
satisfy the exacting 'professor'. In the heat of summer he became testy and short-tempered and was apt
to treat Serge with as scant respect as if he had been a doctor. They parted company, and I was not
surprised later to learn that Lacour had given up his project of launching a commercial enterprise.

I used regularly to send sunshine bread to the White Lady in London. It arrived perfectly fresh, for its low
yeast and high oil content preserved it. She used to write back: 'Thank you. The bread is delicious and
does me a great deal of good. But are you on your way to Egypt?'

It was her frequent question, but as I was not on my way to Egypt I left the question unanswered. A few
months later, however, I was able to write to tell her of another curiosity which did bring me closer to
the subject of Egypt. It was an encounter which came about through Nadine Nicolaeva, who had also
introduced me to Dr. Lacour.

The scene is Beausoleil, the little French town clinging to the Principality of Monaco which you enter by
merely crossing the street. Beausoleil is regarded by the fashionable visitors of Monte Carlo, quite
unjustly, as a rather slummy relation, only to be traversed when taking the funicular to La Turbie or
motor coach to the Hotel Regina high on the mountain slope; but it has many attractions for the less
sophisticated, and its casino, where in those days you gambled for a franc or two, is more human and
entertaining than the gaudy establishment which is the magnet of the Principality. If you are lazy you
will zigzag up its mountain streets in a fiacre; but if you are athletic you will prefer the steep flights of
steps which bisect the town vertically, with alleys and passages issuing right and left.

In the early nineteen-thirties, towards, eleven o'clock of any evening, a little crowd of people could be
seen at the entrance of a modest villa with a small garden in front of it in one of the alleys about halfway
up the steps. Those outside the door are an overflow; through the window you espy a crowded room
and passage. A clock strikes eleven, and somebody says: 'Onze heures—il va commencer à recevoir,
hem?'

They are very patient. These simple people must value something highly to wait like this. At last an inner
door opens a little man with shining eyes, clad in a dressing-gown, looks out into the passage. Speaking
bad French with a strong accent he says: 'Bon soir, mes amis. Premier, s'il vous plaît.'

One visitor enters. The others go on waiting. When the first departs the man with shining eyes says:
'Suivcznt, s'il vous plait.' In goes the next. They follow one another until long after midnight. 'The crowd
thins out only in the small hours of the morning.

'It's no good going till about two,' said Nadine. 'But you must meet him, I've told him about you and he
wants you to come.'

'An Egyptian, you say?'

'Yes. We call him Hassan—" Monsieur Assane" his French patients say. He cures them with herbs he gets
from Egypt and with massage and by hypnotism. He has done my injured knee a lot of good.'

Accordingly, about two o'clock one night we made our way through the deserted streets of Monte Carlo
towards Beausoleil. I noticed with pleasure that Nadine was able to mount the long flights of steps
without the slightest difficulty. The accident she suffered in 'Revels of Flame and Smoke' was grave, it
might have crippled her. 'He would receive me earlier if I asked him,' she said, 'but it wouldn't be fair to
the other patients because he always gives me at least half an hour.’

'Why doesn't he receive in the daytime? ‘

She explained that most of his patients were poor people who couldn't come during the day, and he
could only start late in the evening because after supper he spent an hour in prayer. 'That's part of his
ritual. He prays for two hours at midday too.' But she had had some treatments in the afternoon—' and
then,' she added, 'I've helped him feed his hedgehog and his tortoise and his pigeon'

'Hedgehog, tortoise, and pigeon! Does he keep a zoo?’

'His animals have some special significance for him—he won't say what—but he says he wouldn't be
able to help anybody if he lost his hedgehog or his tortoise or his pigeon!

She turns off to the side of the flight of steps. This is the villa. Look, most of the people have gone—we
shan't have to wait long.'

We sat down with the half-dozen or so still remaining, all ordinary folk, tradesmen and housewives by
the look of them. They recognized Nadine and welcomed her. I soon discovered—not at all to my
surprise, for it was simply characteristic of her—that Nadine had become a personal friend to the
humble people, they confided their troubles to her as to the little man within, and she sympathetically
supplemented his ministrations. Soon the little man with the shining eyes, clad in his dressing-gown,
emerged from his inner room and seeing her cried: 'Ah, chère madame, venez, je vous prie!' 'No, I will
wait my turn,' said Nadine. 'Alors, ici attendre,' he said, opening a door opposite. 'Bientôt. Pas
longtemps. Merci.'

We were in the kitchen, an untidy kitchen, with a cauldron simmering on the stove. 'His special food,'
she said, sniffing the pot. 'Cooks it himself—does everything himself—no servant.'

A pigeon—the pigeon—fluttered in a cage hanging from the ceiling. It eyed Nadine as if it knew her all
right, but me with suspicion. I was under close scrutiny. I whistled and clucked to it with proper affection
and respect. In a moment it puffed out its chest and clucked back. 'I believe I am accepted,' I said. 'You'd
better be,' replied Nadine.

It was stuffy. She threw open the window and looked out into the little garden. 'Come here,' she called,
'listen.' I heard a, gentle rustling among the shrubs. 'That's the hedgehog!' she exclaimed gleefully. 'Must
have heard you come into the kitchen and it's wondering if you're O.K.! Say something to it.'

How on earth does one address a hedgehog? I lean out, made a gesture of salutation into the shadows,
and said: 'Bon soir, Monsieur Herisson, comment allez-tious? Permettez-moi de me presenter… or does it
only talk Arabic? And the tortoise? Am I not to be introduced to 'the tortoise?'

‘The tortoise is in the far corner,' Nadine replied. ‘He is very important—he never moves and he doesn't
condescend to conversation. He just surveys the world like a policeman.'

She took a broom and duster and began to tidy the kitchen. 'I can't think what would become of this
place if I didn't come and look after him sometimes.'

'But why doesn't he keep a servant? Surely he must earn enough from all these patients.'
‘He charges no fee. When you go you leave something on the table if you like, but he won't accept more
than five francs. Most people leave a franc or two. He takes what they give. It makes no difference.'

'But why_____'

She shrugged her shoulders. 'I don't know. . . . You ask him.'

In the passage the last patients were shuffling out. The little man with the shining eyes burst into the
kitchen. Now that I saw him closely he looked remarkably youthful, he was certainly not yet thirty.

'Ah, madame, beaucoup plaisir vous voir!'

Nadine introduced me. 'The, English friend I said I would bring.'

'Beaucoup plaisir, monsieur. Sit please. Now eat avec moi'

His English was as scrappy as his French, but he pieced together ingeniously the few words he knew. He
bustled about the pot, and Nadine winked to me that we'd better try his stew so as not to hurt his
feelings. She laid the table. I conversed with the pigeon.

'I love your pigeon,' I said, wondering if he would say something about it.

From the stove he shot a rapid glance at the pigeon and at me 'Ah. Oui. Bon'—and he turned again to
pot. 'Now—mangez!'

I didn't like the concoction. It was a sort of bouillabaisse into which he seemed to have thrown all the
odds and ends in his larder, plus (he was careful to point out) some special Egyptian herbs -'très bon
pour santé'. Nadine and I ate gingerly, pleading vegetarianism as an excuse. He produced some tarts
with which I got on better.

'Must much eat,' he insisted. 'Madame say you no eat, what, two weeks, three weeks, times? Not here
please! Here eat, please.' And he slammed two or three more tarts on my plate.

We talked of his patients and the ailments for which they came to him, mostly digestive, rheumatic, and
nervous troubles, it seemed. Some came for advice about domestic and marital worries but displayed
the usual waywardness in such matters. He related the case of one if his women patients that evening.

'She say her mari—mauvais mari--drink—battre. I say do a thing—she do other thing —then' pas
content bad happens—ah, gens, gens—how help, she do contraire?

Dawn was breaking as we descended the long flights of steps. Hassan would sleep now said Nadine, if no
one disturbed him, then he would make himself a meal, perform his devotions, and prepare the herbal
concoctions to give his patients next night.

Sometimes he got no sleep at all, at least during the night, owing to the multitude of patients. 'About
three o'clock one morning,' said Nadine, 'when there were still several people in the waiting-room, he
suddenly felt dead tired, so he called me, thrust a watch in my hand, and said: "You, madame, be my
alarm clock, please; wake me in fifteen minutes." In an instant he was fast asleep, and I sat counting the
minutes. I could hardly believe fifteen minutes would be enough, and wondered whether I ought not to
let him sleep longer. But it would have angered him if I had disobeyed. So I woke him in fifteen minutes,
and to my astonishment he jumped up as fresh as if he had slept for hours, and tended his patients for
the rest of the night.'

I asked her if he was not having trouble with the medical profession, always so jealous of intrusion on
ground they consider exclusively theirs.

'That's just beginning.' she said. 'They will probably try to kick him out. But he doesn't advertise, and he
charges no fees, so what can they do?’

He might have had other trouble, more directly with his patients, for he appeared to have idiosyncrasies
that would have gone down badly in Harley Street. He had a way of deliberately teasing and provoking
patients to see how they would react. 'Sometimes,' said Nadine, 'he will offer a man a cigarette and then
pull the packet away just as he is about to take it. Or he will do the same with sweets to the ladies. He
says that's his way of studying people's personalities.'

'And how do they react?'

'Some are hurt and offended and get up and walk out. Some try to see the joke. Others who may have
been warned by friends take no notice, or try to snatch the things from his hands, or even to struggle
with him. And another thing he sometimes does is show himself at the door of the waiting-room, and
then disappear for several hours, either staying alone in his room or slipping out unobserved. I suppose
it is to test how genuinely they really want to see him.'

I went to have a chat with this intriguing individual one afternoon, wondering which of these peculiar
antics he would try on me. But his behaviour was decorum itself. A motive for this soon became
apparent. He opened the door to me himself and showed me into his sanctum, a sort of bed-sitting-
room, very plainly furnished. On a large table near, the window, together with a lot of papers, was an
array of jars and bottles containing his herbs and potions: in a glass cupboard on the wall a small
distilling outfit—retort, spirit lamp, beakers.

He asked what it was in his work that interested me.

'Well, you're trying to help people, you do it by unusual methods, and you don't seem to want any
recompense.'

He pondered this. 'No can help if think recompense. Help-first spirit—generally medicine no help first.
But medicine help spirit and spirit help medicine.'

Then with a certain eagerness he added: 'Madame say me you know people, big people, Paris, London?'

'I know a few,' I replied cautiously. 'Why?'

'I have new medicine—cure all illness—all. Allah help make it. You help me show it big doctors Paris,
London?'

The medicine, I gathered, was a herbal potion the essential ingredient of which was a rare desert plant
growing only in Arabia; but a further essential was that throughout the whole process of distillation and
mixing of this herb with other ingredients a concentrated mental attitude must be maintained, which he
described as 'prayer,'. This didn't strike me as any more strange than the proven fact of vitamin D
entering bread by exposure to sunlight. 'Allah mix, no me,' he insisted. 'No me, but through me Allah mix
when I pray to Allah.' With each mention of Allah he raised his eyes, and from time to time muttered
something to himself in a quick undertone in his own language. I caught only the frequent 'Allah'. He
was expecting to receive some of this rare herb from Egypt shortly, he said. He would then prepare the
potion, and would I introduce it to any medical people I might know? 'Make big money,' he said. 'You
give me half.'

'Then what would you do?'

‘Build clinic.'

I tried to draw him out about his training, his animals, why he was here at Beausoleil. He was not easy to
draw out. But a day or two later an incident occurred which endeared him to me greatly and led to
confidences. I dropped into the Beausoleil Casino to have a fling at the tables with the bourgeoisie, and
found Hassan, gambling at roulette. When I touched him on the shoulder he burst out laughing and said:
'Play?'

He gambled stakes of one or two francs. I did the same. Luck swayed. In the end he was about twenty
francs up. He was as gleeful as a child about it and insisted on treating me to a cup of coffee. Then he
told me, when I asked him how and why he had come to France, that as a medical student, in Cairo he
had got himself into some bad scrape through riotous insubordination and was expelled from the
institute where he was studying. 'He was overcome with contrition, but the catastrophe turned out to
be a blessing in disguise, for just then he met a man who not only caused him to radically to mend his
ways but completed his medical education 'by training him in esoteric instead of orthodox medicine and
eventually sent him out into the world to fend for himself. 'I—what you, call —work passage on ship to
France—arrive without sou— I meet stranger in café—sick--malade--I cure his maladie—he grateful
—lend me villa here Beausoleil.' All this he told me pretty readily, but I could get nothing further out of
him either regarding the man who had so strongly influenced his life, or about the secrets of his science,
or about the animals which were so strangely necessary to him.

He loved to talk about his family in Cairo. 'You go to Cairo?'

'I don't know,' I answered, thinking suddenly of the White Lady. 'Perhaps, some day.'

'Then you visit my family,' he said eagerly, and he made me write down the address and precise
instructions how to reach his home, and the names of all his relatives, and also of his dog. 'Ah, my dog! '
he sighed, 'if only I have she here!’
I wrote to the White Lady telling her about Hassan. She replied: 'I like your Egyptian friend. Why don't
you go and see his family in Cairo as he suggests?’

But for another two years I still stayed in Europe, travelling in the. Baltic States, Germany and the
Balkans. Hassan wrote that he had not received the expected herb. The next time I met him, over a year
later, he was in Paris on a visit. I asked about the herbal panacea. 'I receive only little quantity,' he said,
'too little. Très difficile obtenir, très rare. If come, will send you. You still no visit Egypt?’

'No.'

He was very disappointed. 'You go?'

'Maybe.'

'You no forget see my family?'

'I promise.'

'I write to them about you year ago to say you come.’ he said.

Shortly afterwards I received a telegram from a trade publishing house in London with which I was
connected which had offices in most European capitals, its main business being international trade
advertising. The telegram was from the managing director.

'Important proposition regarding Egypt. Think you can handle it. When will you be in London?’

I came over at once and, in the Fleet Street office, sat listening to what the managing director had to
say. He was a naturalized Austrian Jew, who had come to London University as a student after the First
World War. As an, ex-enemy alien he had received a chilly welcome until one day, at a University sports
contest, one of the runners being disabled, he took the injured man's place at a moment's notice, and
without any preparation won the mile for his side, whereupon he was carried off the field shoulder high.
After he had been some years in Fleet Street he was included by Lord Beaverbrook in the latter's list of
'Fleet Street's Future Millionaires", each of whom (there were about a dozen on the list) was invited to
write an article in the Beaverbrook press expounding his views; but the series never appeared,
apparently because several of the anticipated millionaires-to-be objected to being asked to conform in
the style and tenor of their articles to the lines laid down by his lordship! This particular candidate for
millionairedom was one of the most recalcitrant. He was a man of no small brilliance and great initiative,
with ideas all his own. Alas, not all of them were equally good. A few years later he suddenly vanished,
leaving a number of letters confessing financial irregularities, and his clothes were found early one
morning on a beach on the south coast.

That was not the end that would have been predicted for him on this day in 1935, shortly after
Beaverbrook had selected him as one of Fleet Street's future millionaires. Across the table he handed
me a letter from the Egyptian Government. It was a proposition for an extensive campaign to advertise
Egyptian cotton throughout Europe and the British Empire.
'Would you be willing to go to Cairo to negotiate for us?’ he asked. -

'Yes,' I said.

Once more I sat in the dilapidated sitting-room near Streatham Common. The house was more uncared
for than ever. The telephone being cut off I had sent a reply-paid telegram to ask if I might come. The
door was unlocked and I found the White Lady, very ill, huddled in wrappings over a gas fire. The rain
spattered mercilessly against the French window leading to the garden. I had not seen her for many
months. Her mother had died, she remained alone in the house, and I gathered that, what with illness
and anxiety, she had been unable to paint or write and was left without any means of livelihood. What
help she received was from neighbours who urged her to go to hospital.

'I shall stay here,' she said. "I will pay my karmic debt to the last farthing.'

I never questioned her about her past, not wishing her to question me too much about mine.

She was obviously undernourished. Luckily I had thought of bringing a basket of food. She was grateful,
but said: 'There's something I want more than food. Give me something to send me to sleep.'

I told her she must ask her doctor, then suddenly realized she was begging me to find drugs. 'You have
doctor friends,' she said. 'Ask them privately.'

I managed to turn the conversation. She lay back in her chair with eyes closed, very pale, all at once very
old Silence. Eventually she muttered disjointedly:, 'And how are you? Did you go to Egypt? 'With a quick
effort she sat up, wide awake, and exclaimed: 'No, you didn't go to Egypt! You are in a scrape! I saw it
clearly, in your last chart. You've been trusting the wrong people—especially men. Women might have
helped you see some bad ones but one or two good ones too. But you trusted the wrong men and they
let you down. I warned you, but of course you went your own way! Don't pretend it isn't true. You are a
fool and deserve everything you're getting!’

It was true. I was in a fix as the result of foolhardy business dealings with certain unreliable people
abroad. They don't concern this narrative, so I won't introduce them. I hadn't spoken of them to the
White Lady, but she knew all the same. Again she relapsed, and again came to life abruptly, this time
with a sudden ripple of laughter. 'I'm in a hell of a mess too! We're birds of a feather. How funny! I
wonder which of us has been more pig-headed?' What she had been pig-headed about she didn't
explain.

The front door clicked. I had an ominous presentiment. I turned, and there in the doorway stood the
dark woman, dressed in a wet cape, carrying an umbrella. On her square features peering out beneath
the hood was the same disapproving look as of old.

With a tired gesture the White Lady waved her away. 'I don't want anything, thanks.'
The dark woman stared at us. In her eyes I clearly saw not only disapproval of astrology, but that she
questioned my relationship with the White Lady—and disapproved of that even more. She went out
without a word.

'She often comes in to help,' said the White Lady. 'She means well, but—lock the front door.'

I did so and came back. For a long time there was silence. Then she opened her eyes and said wearily:
'Why haven't you been to Egypt?'

'I'm going,' I said. 'On business.'

'Business? '

'It concerns Egyptian cotton.'

Wide-eyed, she stared at me with withering scorn, apparently unable to find words. Then she cried:
'Business? Cotton? You had to wait for "business"? I told you to go years ago! '

'Yes, but what for?' I said weakly.

'Because it's written in the stars! Isn't that enough? Didn't you beg me to tell you the whole truth as I
saw it written in the stars? I did tell you the truth, but you chose your own path. Why should I cast my
pearls..’

She spared me the remainder of the phrase. I sat abashed, yet obstinately wondering how I could have
thrown up everything years ago and gone off to Egypt on a quest so nebulous.

'You should have faith,' she said, more quietly, with one of those flashes that answered my unuttered
thought. 'But you are stubborn and self-willed and let rogues get round you with sentimental talk…'

She paused, and went on: 'I can tell you for certain, your business in Egypt will not succeed.’

I sat silent.

'And yet . .’

'Yet what? I prompted diffidently.

'You may find it worth while going all the same. What was it you told me once some strolling beggar said
to you, years and years ago when you were quite young, at a railway station in the wilds of East
Europe?, "What you seek you will not find, but you will find more than what you seek.12" Perhaps it's
your destiny,' she said. 'You are easily, misled by false attractions and the glamour of the world, but in
the end a grain of truth may come to you, a crumb from the master's table, because you do at least seek
and never stop seeking, you do at least knock and never stop knocking. From time to time the door may

12
Secret Agent 'ST 25', P. 10.
be opened, even if it's only a tiny chink and then slammed again in your face—which is what you, of
course, deserve. It is for you to preserve the glimpse vouchsafed to you.'

She sank back, exhausted by her outburst. She looked up after a while and added: 'Go and ask the
Sphinx. But you will never find what you most want where you most expect it. Do you really quite know
what you do most want?'

With this cryptic question she appeared to fall asleep. I sat for a long time watching her. At last, without
opening her eyes, she muttered: 'Good night' and I stole out on tiptoe.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Egypt

THE COLOURFUL STREETS of Cairo basked in the warm sunlight of a late afternoon of March 1936.
Mosque and minaret glittered in gold, blue and red. Motley crowds shuffled hither and thither. The
tense political atmosphere, engendered by the difficult Anglo-Egyptian treaty negotiations of that year
and the Abyssinian War raging almost on Egypt's doorstep, was confined to councilors and
cabinets. 'Gyppy' went his way, indifferent, unaffected. The English on the whole were not popular, but
with baksheesh you got what you wanted.

Arriving about seven in the evening I might have thought of strolling through the bazaars, or visiting a
mosque, or leaving my card at the Embassy, or preparing for business interviews on the morrow, or at
least of dinner. But I thought of none of these things. I should be some weeks in Cairo, I had plenty of
time, but there was one thing for which I couldn't wait a single hour. The hotel porter looked surprised
when I asked how I could immediately get to the pyramids.

'Ah, Monsieur wish to dine at Mena House perhaps?' Mena House is the fashionable hotel at the foot of
the pyramids.

'Yes,' I said, 'I want to join some friends.'

'A private bus leaves in fifteen minutes.’

I took the seat beside the driver. We crossed the Nile, passed through the suburbs and emerged on the
long straight road to Gizeh. There it was, now about six miles distant, the great Pyramid, rising from a
desert plateau, fantastically silhouetted against the evening sky, its lesser companions sheltering beyond
it.

I was as excited as a child. Should I find it 'alive', as Ouspensky said? Or a 'repository, of Atlantean
mysteries', as White Lady believed? Or just a dead mass of stonework, deserving by its very vastness to
be called one of the Seven Wonders? At Mena House I slipped from my seat and without entering the
hotel hastened up the curving roadway that dissolves in sand near the base of the Pyramid. The huge
structure towered into the heavens. About a quarter of the way up are two small holes, one a little
higher than the other; I recognized them from pictures, the higher, the real entrance, now closed with a
grid on account of the perilous downward angle of its low, narrow passage; the lower, the artificial
entrance, bored to make the inner passages more accessible. The wide approach from the roadway was
deserted but for a single dirty-looking watchman. 'Can I get in?' I asked, pointing. He shook his head,
prattling in Arabic. I guessed him to mean I must return in the morning.

I placed my hands on the lowest stones and gazed upwards. The blunted apex was lost in the dimness
450 feet above. For nearly 300 yards the base extended on either hand. Two and a half million limestone
and granite blocks averaging two and a half tons each were piled up in that mass. Once its surfaces were
smooth, when the Pyramid was built about six thousand years ago, but they became rough and broken
when vandals tore away the outer casing to build part of the city of Cairo.

It was darkening. Lights flickered at Mena House and in the village of Gizeh. The watchman was no
longer in sight. I clambered hastily up the massive blocks to the lower aperture. Its iron gate was locked.
All right, I'll scramble down again and make for the Sphinx. Though it was now almost dark I
remembered the direction from the maps.

But I hadn't counted with excavations. The whole of the territory between the Great Pyramid and the
village of Gizeh was being explored. I encountered barbed wire, climbed cautiously through it and
promptly tumbled into a shaft leading to some tomb or other probably thousands of years old. Luckily I
fell on sand, and crawled out with nothing worse than a sore ankle. I started to pick my way carefully
round the barbed wire. A tedious and scratchy business in the gloom, for it was now quite dark. The
stars of the indigo sky were unbelievably bright, but they didn't illumine these pits and crevices. Should I
turn back? Something urged me forward, and the glimmer of lights from Gizeh gave me some indication
of general direction.

A shout rent the darkness close at hand. A watchman with a dog challenged—once—twice—three
times. I answered: 'Sphinx, Sphinx! '—pushed some money into his hand and clambered further. It
seemed an endless journey, though it was less than a mile.

And then a miracle occurred. Feeling my way in a gully between the outer huts of the village and the
face of the plateau I noticed a faint reddish glow high overhead. The path mounted and suddenly I
emerged on the very edge of the deep pit of the excavated Sphinx. There lay the monster, outstretched
on its huge brick base, motionless and silent, clutching the doors of its temple between enormous paws.
Whence came the strange dull glow that made it dimly visible? This was in itself puzzling. But it was only
the beginning—the entire setting had the appearance of coming to life. The fantastic Sphinx with its
broken nose moved, swelled, shrank again, took clearer form, shimmered, smiled. But wait. Beyond it,
in the background, some still more unimaginable thing was happening, infinitely awe-inspiring. The top
of the Great Pyramid had caught fire and burnt with a dull red flame. It was incredible, impossible! Yet
there it was, the tip of the flame grew larger, engulfed the upper layers of stone, descended. The blue-
black shadow-line was thrust steadily downwards. I lowered my eyes to the Sphinx questioning. Was
He—She—It nodding to me, ever so slightly, nodding towards the east behind me? I turned, and there
on the far horizon beyond Cairo a tongue of reddish fire seemed to be lapping the crest of the dim
outline of the desert hills. It widened, spread, brightened, and little by little the full moon rose. But what
a moon! Such as I had never before seen—monstrous, oval, fiery orange, quite fantastic—such moons
exist only in the most extravagant, the most fabulous of fairy tales! Turning again, I found the whole vast
Pyramid now aflame, burning with an orange fire against the indigo sky, a sight enthralling beyond
description. Watching it, I was lifted out of myself with rapture. And the Sphinx—yes—the Sphinx had
come to life! He—She—It—whichever it is—was surely smiling, stealthily, terribly confidentially. Into
the stillness of the desert night it spoke with a soundless voice: 'You are viewing one of the great
marvels of the world, given only to those who have eyes to see, patience to seek, and reverence to
understand. Drink it in. It will pass, and you will never see it again.'

Alas, even as the Sphinx whispered, the fire changed slowly to white moonlight, red turned silver.
Pyramid and Sphinx, standing but almost with the clearness of day, sank once more into their immortal
immobility, unutterably beautiful, but lifeless, cold, frozen in their own hidden mystery.

With a certain ingrained obstinacy I refused to believe I could not relive this miracle. On two occasions
later I stood at the same spot to await the rising of a full moon. But, beautiful though it was, it was never
the same. Atmospheric conditions were perhaps different. Besides, by then I knew every inch of the
ground. Familiarity may often breed the very reverse of contempt, yet it destroys the spell of a first
initiatory experience. Though on that first evening I strove not to believe it, the Sphinx spoke truly: 'You
will never see it again.' Out of all eternity it could only happen for me on that day, at that hour, in those
conditions.

Thank God, I did drink it in. I was still drunk with it as I picked my way along the southern edge of the
huge gaping pit, finding my path easily in the pallid glare of the now risen moon, skirting the eastern
base of the Pyramid, past the three dwarf pyramids of Khufu's family, back to Mena House. It was one
o'clock and the last bus was about to leave. Some idiotic people in evening dress got in, chattering like
monkeys about drinks and dancing. I wanted to point at the Pyramid and shout 'How dare you—how
dare you!' But I curbed myself and sat huddled in my seat. When at last I threw myself into bed I could
hardly believe I had arrived at Cairo but a few hours ago. I might have been in the desert for thousands
of years.

A few weeks later I held council with my friend Mahomet, my Bedouin guide. He scratched his beard and
his sly, twinkling eyes narrowed dubiously. So far he had yielded to my every demand, but he seemed to
think there was a limit to breaking rules. To let me spend as much time as I wanted alone on the top of
the Great Pyramid, that was a trifle and I had done it several times. It was against the rules because
there had been rather a fashion in suicides, people throwing themselves over the staggered limestone
blocks. Or to take me down the shafts of newly unearthed tombs, where I picked bones off skeletons in
coffins that had been prised open only the day before—this, too, was easy. (Mahomet, of course, didn't
know about my pinching the bones, for it was only possible to penetrate to the coffins: one person at a
time, crawling on one's stomach. I told him I found the bones lying in the sand, when really I had
slipped, my hand inside the coffins to find out whether the inhabitant was a skeleton or a mummy.
Sometimes the wrappings had disintegrated. I had no compunction about pulling out a bone or two, for I
knew the archaeologists treated skeletons with scant respect.)

Mahomet had also consented, albeit reluctantly, to let me climb, or rather slither, doubled up, down the
slippery, 'sand-strewn surface of the closed descending passage of the Pyramid and leave me to examine
alone the eerie subterranean vault with its smooth, ceiling but 'broken floor, its unexplained sunken
shaft and dead-end corridor. But when I asked to spend several hours alone, at night, in the King's'
Chamber, the innermost sanctuary in the very centre of the Pyramid Mahomet couldn't understand this
at all. It would be difficult to arrange, anyway, for he was not the keeper of the key of the gate. There
could, of course, really be no difference between day and night in the centre of the Pyramid with a
hundred yards of solid masonry on every side. For my purpose daytime would suit just as well if only I
could be assured of solitude. But how could I sit cross-legged on the floor of the King's Chamber and
chant the Lord's Prayer for hours on end, as I wished to do, when, even if Mahomet left me alone, I
might be disturbed by sightseers? No, it must be at night.

I had thought to ask the appropriate Egyptian authorities for this permission, but what reason could I
give, since I did not wish to reveal the true one which would have appeared fantastic? Besides, even if
permission were granted I feared they might insist on someone accompanying me, and a stranger would
be still worse than Mahomet. Backdoor methods alone remained. Couldn't Mahomet square the keeper
of the key? I suggested. He shook his head. But I did not despair. Several weeks acquaintance had taught
me I had only to wait. And look! —that hesitation—that twinkle—some plot is surely, brewing in his
Arab brain. Here it comes, couched in a sort of pidgin English, comic but entirely adequate. How much—
er—would—er----mister have been prepared to pay to—er—square the keeper of the key? A little
delicate bargaining ensued, and, as I foresaw, Mahomet agreed to arrange the whole thing for the
baksheesh I had promised him, plus the share allotted to the keeper of the key!

'Mister meet me corner by steps up.' That meant the north-east corner where rough steps have been
hewn out of the plinths to make it possible to mount.

It was dark—very dark—a moonless night. The vast silhouette loomed dimly, cutting the sea of bright
stars. Groping my way to the corner I almost bumped into Mahomet, sitting on a slab, Instead of his
usual white gown he was dressed in a dark smock. We started at once to climb to the artificial entrance.
Mahomet produced the key of the grid and explained the simple ruse by which he obtained it. 'I say
visitor forget something.' In the darkness I could feel his cunning smile. 'Must come look—ask key—
forget give back.' He chuckled at his guile.

He unlocked the iron gate. I stepped inside. 'Mind you do come back at five,' I urged him pressingly.

'Mahomet no forget. If people find mister to-morrow in Pyramid, much bad for Mahomet.'

He closed the gate and turned the key. Locked in. I could see the black outline of his figure, peering
through the bars. I could not switch on the electric light with which the internal passages are provided:
the whole system worked from a single point at the gate, and the first bulb or two, near the entrance,
would be visible from outside. In pitch blackness I groped my way inwards along the level corridor.
Luckily I knew it pretty well by now.

I reached the hole where the artificial way breaks into the real passage, at the point where a colossal
granite plug was inserted by the builders, six thousand years ago to prevent any human being from ever
penetrating to the interior for the rest of time. Why? That is one of the manifold mysteries. To construct
a geometrical system of passages and chambers, masonically so faultless that even after thousands of
years it is impossible to insert a razor blade between the mighty granite blocks of the perfectly
constructed walls though no mortar was used to unite them—and then immediately to seal it up for
ever! Why? Why? Why?

The builders did not count with desecrators. Or perhaps they thought no desecrators could ever pierce a
hundred yards of solid stone. But they did. The false entrance pierces the ascending tunnel just above
the terrible but futile granite plug. The false corridor takes a slight turn; without fear of being seen I
could use my torch to climb through the desecrating hole. I was safely in the true tunnel. It is too low to
stand upright in and rises steeply. I mounted crouching, and forty yards up emerged into that
extraordinary first chamber, tilted at an angle of about thirty degrees, called the Great Gallery. Who
designed this fantastic sloping hall and for what purpose? When lit by electricity its fifty yards of rising
length are sufficiently illumined, its strangely corbelled ceiling some thirty feet overhead clearly
discernible; but now, clambering out of the narrow tunnel with nothing but a small torch, I hit the jet
blackness of the silent space with terrifying impact. I could not see the Gallery, I could only feel it,
knowing it to be there. I could see virtually nothing, my torch cast its small bright circle only over the
nearest masonry. The rest was a black void and a crushing silence. Fear gripped me, the gloom was too
impenetrable, the silence too awful. This was the Pyramid as it really is, not as visitors see it. These were
the secret recesses as they were designed to be left, sealed up, for, ever, in absolute darkness and total
isolation. I was seized with momentary horror at the intense loneliness and an acute sense of
desecration. Should I quickly slide back down the tunnel and make for the gate? But how to escape? I
was locked in! And if I shouted like a mad-man into the stillness of the night what good would it do? I
should only get Mahomet into trouble. I had chosen my fate for the next few hours. I had come with a
purpose: I must pursue it.

I lit a candle—I had brought a supply as well as a couple of pocket torches. The flare, though it burnt
brightly, did not pierce the deeper shadows, but the immediate surroundings were more widely
revealed. There, branching horizontally beneath the Gallery, was the low passage leading to the Queen's
Chamber. There, to the side, was the opening of the narrow makeshift shaft dug long ago 150 feet
downwards to the subterranean vault either as a way of escape for the workmen whose final task had
been to fit the granite plug, or by desecrating explorers in search of hidden treasure. I passed the
aperture to the Queen's Chamber and climbed up on to the inexplicably raised, slanting floor of the
Gallery. Holding to the stone ramps on either side, notched with geometrical markings, I mounted to the
top of the Gallery. The darkness behind was now a bottomless pit. I clambered further up the next
unexplained obstacle, the 'Great Step', about five feet high, that ends the Gallery, and entered the short
level tunnel, less than four feet high, with an ante-chamber half-way along it, which terminates in the
innermost recess of the Pyramid, the King's Chamber. I had reached my destination.

The Chamber is not vast, but the roaming light of my torch made it appear so. Actually it is rectangular,
seventeen feet wide and twice as long, and just under twenty feet high. It contains nothing but a
massive stone sarcophagus in one corner, standing in a sunken well, empty and lidless. Unlike the
finished masonry of the Chamber, walled with smooth granite and roofed with nine enormous granite
slabs, perfectly jointed, the sarcophagus is rough-hewn out of a single block. It is reputed to have been
destined to contain the mummy of Pharaoh Khufu, otherwise known as Cheops, though it is uncertain
whether it ever did.

I lit another candle, placed it in the middle of the floor, and, crossing straight to the sarcophagus, struck
it with my hand. It emitted a silken musical note, or rather jangle, difficult to define by reason of the
complexity of the overtones, but the prevailing keynote appeared to be D. The sound seemed distant,
perhaps because of the softness of my hands and the great size of the sarcophagus. I struck it again,
harder. The pleasant notes were now echoed for some seconds from the walls and ceiling. Had it been
practicable I would have brought a wooden mallet with me. Failing that, I removed a shoe and, using it
as a hammer, hit the sarcophagus with force. The effect was like a jangle of bells all shaken together. It
was some time before the sound finally died away. The absolute stillness that ensued seemed itself to
be a kind of mute silken music. The chamber was a perfect sound box. It was this that had most
impressed me on my first visit. Was the King's Chamber devised, among other things, as an esoteric
temple for the chanting of sacred mantras?

Manifold are the theories that seek to solve the Pyramid riddle. Some declare that the King and Queen
were buried with their treasure and that robbers broke in by tunneling through the masonry, as in so
many Egyptian tombs, removing everything, including the mummies. Others hold that religious rites
were observed at the shrine of Khufu in the King's Chamber and at that of his wife in the Queen's
Chamber; but this theory leaves unexplained the huge granite plug sealing the opening of the
approaching passages. Others are convinced the Great Gallery and tunnels were devised for
astronomical and meteorological purposes, that the entire Pyramid indeed is of the nature of a vast
observatory and table of weights and measures, and that when a tragic error of calculation in
constructions was discovered—for errors were made, which, according to this theory, resulted in the
apex of the Pyramid never being completely finished—that then, in despair, the builders plugged the
ascending passage with the huge granite block lest succeeding generations should be misled by faulty
application of the instrument. Others, again, believe the sloping Great Gallery to be the most important
part, its proportions embodying a special symbolism, its measurements, when taken in conjunction with
those of the remaining passages and chambers, containing a predictive key to the history of the world.
Others, like my White Lady, think it is a link with pre-historic eras. Yet others, like the late Howard
Carter, the distinguished archaeologist who took so prominent a part in opening up the tomb of King
Tutankhamen (I met him at dinner at the British Embassy and had long discussions with him) pooh-
poohed all such theories as fanciful, and believed the whole structure to be nothing more than a
monument to the stupendous vanity of King Khufu, the complex of internal passages being a result
merely of alterations of plan during construction.
And I, what do l believe? I cannot pretend to any kind of knowledge, especially in face of a galaxy of
differing authorities. But any purely formal explanation leaves a vast array of questions unanswered.
When in the innermost recess of the Pyramid for the first time, something impelled me to strike the
rough-hewn sarcophagus like a tuning fork. Then, though others were present, I chanted various notes
to test the resonance of the chamber, but it was impossible to do it properly in the presence of gaping
sightseers. I began that same day to conspire to be left completely alone in the chamber, in order to
search the gamut of the musical scale for a possible note—the note—to which the King's Chamber, and
perhaps the vast Pyramid itself, might be designed to vibrate. For this was my overwhelming feeling—
call it fanciful if you will—that whatever other purposes the King's Chamber may have served, it was a
kind of sound box, keyed possibly to produce such a note or vibration as Ozay had long ago told me of,
and which I had heard his young priest produce one Easter in the Abbey of Alexander Nevsky at St.
Petersburg.

I lit a fresh candle, stuck it on a corner of the sarcophagus, settled down in a comfortable posture,
cross-legged, in the middle of the floor, and began to chant. Various notes to test pitch, volume,
direction. The Lord's Prayer, repeated on single breaths. Then, simply the sound 'O', trailing off into 'M'.
The note never ceased, for the echo continued to reverberate from the end of one breath to the
beginning of the next. Louder tones seemed to billow in waves through the hail like purling musical
thunder.

I cannot recall precisely, and should hardly be able to describe it even if I could recall what later
happened. There was a point when everything began to swim, then vanished. When I awoke I was lying
on my side, quite comfortably, with an extraordinary sensation of peace and satisfaction. It was pitch
dark. The candle must have spluttered out long ago. I remembered at once where I was, and why. I felt
in no hurry to rise. Changing position, I went on lying there, trying to conjure up the exact moment at
which I lost ordinary consciousness. But I couldn't seize it. I only remembered clearly the waves of sound
engulfing me in a kind of vortex, and that the echoes seemed to be many octaves beyond the notes I
actually produced. On the crest of these waves I was borne away into infinite spaces of sound and
colour, beyond sun, moon, and stars to blissful oblivion—oblivion followed by marvelous ease and
relaxation.

How long had I been there—minutes—hours? After a while I sat up in my former posture and lit another
candle. The sparkle of the match was dazzling; the statue-like flame of the candle, burning motionless
on the stone flags, was of an unearthly loveliness. Its halo was enormous; its rays, like an aurora, jutted
far out in every direction. The chamber, utterly bare and empty but for the lidless sarcophagus,
appeared strangely beautiful. An intimacy had been established for which it is difficult to find words.
Ouspensky's belief that those remarkable walls were in some manner alive now seemed quite natural.
Could it indeed be more than a pleasant conceit? I felt that they approved of their lone nocturnal visitor,
that in their companionship I had been impregnated, as it were, with an essence which I would never be
able to define but which I would never lose. I had no desire to move. I felt I could go on sitting there for
ever. I was, of course, a little mad. Thank God. It had been given to me to escape for a time from that
stifler of the soul the world calls sanity or normality. I was reborn, once more, seeing everything again
for the first time. It was a sensation of the complete newness of things such as I had experienced after
prolonged fasts. These walls, this Pyramid, might be thousands of years old and embody the wisdom of
forgotten civilizations yet far more remote, but to me at that moment every particle of them was utterly
new. Everything had only just begun.

I was mad—wonderfully, deliciously, and quite serenely mad. Yet I was not so mad that I forgot all about
Mahomet. The recollection of him came like a shock—I must not get him into trouble. I quickly looked at
my watch. Half-past five. So I had come back to life about five o'clock. Well, that was natural—'five
o'clock' were the last words I had uttered to Mahomet, their suggestion had operated on myself. Or was
it perhaps that these kindly walls of the King's Chamber had taken care of me, brought me round in
proper time, knowing it would have distressed me to get Mahomet into trouble?

Loath to leave, I got up, feeling light and refreshed. I walked round the Chamber, passing my hand
affectionately over the smooth Lace of the walls, saying: 'Thank you, thank you, thank you.' At the low
entrance in the corner I stood for a moment, laying hands, cheek, and forehead all gratefully against the
stone. I left the candle still burning like a beacon in the middle of the floor, and, now using a torch, with
one quick final look round I crouched and passed into the tunnel.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Astra Necessitant?

HASSAN'S FAMILY, whom I had promised to visit, lived patriarchally in a large straggling villa with a
garden courtyard near the end of Roda Island in the Nile on the southern outskirts of Cairo. This island
suburb, about two miles long, formed a little-world of its own. Imposing buildings graced its northern
end, but the middle and southern sections were mainly residential, consisting of numerous villas with
courtyards and small gardens.

At my first visit I was unable to make myself heard at the door for some time. At last a young woman
appeared who spoke nothing but Arabic. The magic words Hassan and Monte Carlo, however, proved an
Open Sesame. Another young woman appeared, then a young man, and several children in the offing.
With much difficulty I was given to understand that Hassan's mother and elder brothers were not in, so I
arranged to return another day.

At my second visit the entire family had forgathered and sat facing me in a semi-circle in a large, rather
bare room. Hassan's mother sat enthroned beside his eldest brother, the head of the family, with
younger brothers and sisters and numerous in-laws arranged on either side, while children gaped and
tittered at the doors. The men wore red fezzes and blue or grey gaberdines, the women very plain and
rather colourless dresses. Coffee and sticky sweets were pressed upon me in profusion.

The occasion was clearly momentous. Conversation could not precisely flow, because to my surprise
there were only one or two among them who knew a smattering of French or English, and I spoke no
Arabic at all. These people lived an existence totally divorced from the sophisticated atmosphere of the
official Cairo with which I was acquainted.
Limpingly but cheerfully we struggled to understand each other. The thing that emerged to astonish me
most was that they seemed to have hardly any news of Hassan nor any idea of his activities. To them he
was clearly an enigma. I gathered that he had, as he himself admitted, been a bit of a scamp, suddenly
changed his mode of life and taken up studies that were quite incomprehensible to them, then as
suddenly vanished, and all they knew was that he had gone to France some years earlier without a
penny in his pocket. His most recent letter, well over a year ago, was to herald my visit, and they had
been looking out for me ever since.

In so far as they understood me they were much impressed by my descriptions of Hassan's success as a
healer of human ills for which he accepted only the most meagre recompense. Nods of approval from
his mother greeted my account of the groups of poor people waiting long into the night to see him and
their gratitude for his help. I did not tell them of the hours Hassan and I had spent together at the
gaming tables of the Beausoleil Casino, harmless enough though they were.

If I had entertained hopes of any significant outcome to my visits to Hassan's family I was doomed to be
disappointed. Besides the difficulty of conversing with them, they seemed to take no real interest in his
curative experiments, or to have any understanding of his character and ambitions. Fond of him they
certainly were, and if I understood them rightly they wanted him to return home. As an envoy from him
they received me with great cordiality, but for the rest regarded me, I think, as a curio. I saw them only
once again, when I paid a farewell call just before finally leaving Egypt. But I had no opportunity of
bearing their messages of goodwill to the errant son. I had to return direct to England without staying in
France, and as things turned out I never saw Hassan again.

Meanwhile my negotiations for advertising Egyptian cotton made no headway at all. The Egyptian
officials obstinately insisted on linking everything, even clear-cut commercial propositions, to the
political discussions for a revised treaty with Britain which had begun not very auspiciously early in 1936.
I decided to return to London for a while. But I did not return entirely empty-handed. I had made
friends with the Director of Tourist Propaganda, Ahmed Siddik Bey, with whom I sketched out a larger
design for advertising Egyptian wares including the tourist trade. This was to take the form of a great
Egyptian exhibition in London, which I imagined being held at the Crystal Palace, Earls Court, or Olympia.
I proposed that we should have an exact replica of the tomb of Tutankhamen (then very much in the
news) together with other tombs from the Sakkara district, with some of the Tutankhamen treasures
brought to England for the occasion from the Cairo Museum. There should also be a replica of the
chambers and passages of the Great Pyramid, as large a model of the Sphinx as would be practicable,
with suitable panoramas of the desert and pyramids, models of ancient temples and mosques, scenes of
Cairo, Alexandria, Port Said and other cities, the Nile, etc. Around the central setting would be side-
shows displaying Egyptian industries, archaeological demonstrations with lectures and cinema shows,
scenes of Egyptian life from the time of Moses onwards, the famous bazaars and fairs with dancing
dervishes and so forth, musicians provided by the Cairo Musical Institute, and a mass of other
picturesque material. I elaborated the plans for this on my way home, and in London showed it to a
friend who worked with the late Philip Hill, then proprietor of Covent Garden and Olympia. A lunch was
arranged at Quaglino's. I only had my rough pencil plans to show, but before I had finished explaining
them Philip Hill smacked the table and said: 'That's a first-class idea for an exhibition. We've got to have
it at Olympia for the coronation next year. When can you go back to Egypt to get on with it?'

The upshot was that I was soon on my way again to Egypt, now at Philip Hill's expense and with Foreign
Office blessing for my plans, commissioned to amplify the scheme by studying the Egyptian temples and
monuments right up to Assuan, and anything else I thought suitable as background. Philip Hill's
colleague followed me to Cairo to conduct the official negotiations with the Egyptian Government, the
proposition being that Hill would organize the whole exhibition if the Egyptian Government would
provide the material and finance. For the Egyptian commercial and tourist trade it would obviously have
been the finest imaginable advertisement.

But the project came to naught. It fell through essentially for the same reason as my earlier
negotiations—the Cairo Government would undertake nothing until the Anglo-Egyptian treaty was
signed. Eventually, thanks to the patient and expert diplomacy of the British Ambassador, Sir Miles
Lampson (now Lord Killearn), the treaty was signed, but only late in the year, already too late even to
think of organizing an exhibition for the coronation in London in the following May. Then international
unrest, and finally war, ruled it out. My project remained stillborn.

Once more back in London, it was with some hesitation that I lifted the telephone receiver and dialed
the familiar Streatham number. Why should I hesitate? I was conscious of a feeling that all was not well
with the White Lady. That should not have caused hesitation, rather the contrary. The truer reason was
that the ever-present underlying sense of rebellion against her admonitions smouldered even when I
knew them to be justified. Had there been no other motive for secrecy in my friendship with her, this
unending inner conflict, which would have been so difficult to explain to anybody, imposed it.

Though my contentious nature and too logical approach forbade blind acceptance of all she said, yet I
wanted to tell her—I felt it was but fair to tell her—how true her predictions about my visit to Egypt had
been. As she had foretold, my projects had come to naught. And yet here too, post factum, in my heart
lurked protest. What ground was there to believe that if I had indeed gone off to Egypt years earlier, as
she urged, anything would have been better? Business perhaps—but then there had been no business
propositions. As for other things, I can hardly imagine that at any other moment than that of the
particular night of my arrival it would have been given to me to behold the Sphinx and Pyramid aflame
in the blood-red moon—burning—burning like a vast Burning Bush—the most awe-inspiring spectacle it
has ever been granted me to witness. It seemed to me that, for reasons which only Providence could
explain, I had to go when I did and in the manner I did. But I did not intend to argue the matter, it would
have been surly been to enter into hypothetical dispute.

But there was no reply to my telephone call, and a visit to Streatham elicited the information from a
neighbour-that the White Lady was away for a few days and had left no address.
I had to go off to Germany on various matters, staying in Berlin for the Olympic Games. When I returned
I found several letters from her addressed to Egypt and sent back to me. These letters were very
disquieting and deterred me from letting her know I had returned from abroad. She wrote that she now
never slept at all, and she made hectic requests to procure drugs for her, heroin in particular, which she
had heard was easily obtainable in Egypt and which she wanted me to smuggle back to England. I waited
to reply from the Continent. I told her I could not procure drugs and endeavored to dissuade her from
wanting them.

But it was not only the demand for drugs that alarmed me. It was also the tone in which she wrote. She
had suddenly and fanatically espoused the cause of the Arabs in Palestine, and wrote urging me to do
something about it. It was much easier to sympathize with her in this matter than in the procuring of
drugs, but her language was so extravagant and she used such strange expressions that I began to
suspect her mind was becoming unsettled. I knew her sufficiently well to know that there was nothing
to be gained for either of us by visiting her in such a condition and allowing an argument to develop
which might lead to reproaches and recrimination. I resolved more than ever to leave her under the
impression that I was still abroad. But knowing something of her circumstances I ordered cases of fruit
and food to be sent to her anonymously from time to time.

The end came dramatically. Arriving one day from Paris, I was informed by my brother at whose house I
was staying that a South London coroner had telephoned, asking me to communicate with him at once.
When I rang up a voice of great kindness asked me if I had known Miss So-and-so. I replied that I had
known her very well. 'She was found dead, alone in her house, in somewhat strange circumstances,' said
the voice. 'It seems she had already been dead for some days. Letters from you have been discovered
among her belongings.'

The body had been removed to a mortuary, and an inquest was to be held. The coroner urgently asked
me to come and see him before it took place.

I found him to be a man of very great kindness and humanity. He asked the usual questions, how long I
had known the deceased, when I had seen her last, and so forth.

'I was obliged to trouble you because of your letters,' he said. 'They show that you knew of her search
for drugs and suggest that she had asked you to help her get them. But they show also that you refused,
and you endeavored to dissuade her. I should like to avoid mentioning this matter in court, and am sure
you would prefer it.'

I thanked him, confirmed my dissuasions, and gave him all the information I knew of her struggle to
keep going by miniature-painting, of her increasing difficulties, of her independent spirit which rejected
direct assistance. But it was well over a year since I had seen her, a fact which was also confirmed by my
letters, and I had no detailed knowledge of what had happened to her since.

'It is a very sad case,' he said. 'She appears to have died quite destitute. The house had not been tidied
for weeks and the bedroom in which she was found was in great disorder. There were dozens of empty
bottles lying about—veronal, bromides, and so forth. I am afraid the circumstances point distinctly in
one direction, but it is a case in which I feel justified in taking the most lenient view possible. You
confirm that you are aware that she suffered from severe insomnia? '

'I firmly believe that to be the case.'

I attended the inquest. There was only one other witness, her niece whom I had met at the house years
before, an orphan without means, who had been away at school and had not seen her aunt for several
months. She confirmed her aunt's failing health and her complaints of insomnia. The coroner returned a
verdict of accidental death.

But the inquest did not pass without incident. On the back bench sat a sinister figure dressed in black.
The dark woman haunted the White Lady in death as in life. When the coroner asked if anyone wished
to identify the body, addressing the invitation I suppose to the niece and myself, we declined. The niece
had seen her already. But the dark woman suddenly rose and announced that she wished to view the
corpse. We waited in eerie silence while this morbid repellent figure went into the mortuary. Though I
had never exchanged a word with her, I alone of all those present knew why she had gone to see the
corpse. It was to remonstrate, even in death, with the astral body of poor White Lady and reprove her
for her sins. When she returned she announced in a low voice that she recognized the deceased but had
nothing more to say.

'Do you know who that woman is?' I whispered to the niece sitting beside me.

'A friend, so far as I know,' she replied. She had been too young to know much about her aunt's esoteric
interests.

After the inquest I went with the niece to help her begin clearing up the house. It was with strange
feelings that I entered the little semi-detached villa I knew so well. The coroner had spoken truly.
Unswept and ungarnished, the ground-floor rooms had the desolate, futile look of a house long
unvisited, long uninhabited. It was difficult to imagine that the White Lady had occupied them but a
short while ago. The bedroom was, as the coroner said, in chaos. She had been found on the floor,
where she had apparently fallen from the bed, and the bedclothes were in the same disarray in which
they had been left when the police had removed the body. Everything in the room was strewn all over
the place. It would have been impossible to count the empty bottles of sedatives and other
medicaments on the shelves or lying about. Biting my lip, I left the niece to begin collecting private
papers from cupboards and drawers, and went downstairs to the little sitting-room.

She had called me her godson. In writing I sometimes addressed her as 'Dear Godmother'. She often
spoke of herself as very, very old, very, very, ancient. Perhaps she was. For all that she could not have
been much over forty when she died.

I sat down in my usual chair and looked around. Dusty and askew, the same pictures and photos were
more or less in the same places. The Sphinx was on the same little pedestal in the same corner. Nothing
was different, beyond the neglect—except that without the White Lady everything, the, very room itself,
was utterly different.
It was in that chair, there, 'that she had always sat and questioned or admonished me in her slow,
musical, oddly quavering voice. It was sitting there that she had sketched out my first horoscopic chart,
and said: 'Up out of Egypt I have called my son.' It was in that chair that she had told me of the 'karmic
debt' she knew she had to pay. That was over ten years since. In every one of those years, except the
last two, a little booklet containing horoscopic readings had been sent me for my birthday—little
booklets in blue or yellow parchment covers, written in green ink in a clear, bold hand and. bound with
gold thread, sometimes with the design of a blazing cross in gold on the cover—containing warnings and
advice and tentative predictions for the coming year (the predictions were generally tentative on
account of the extreme complexity of my chart). But many of the predictions had come true, and I
should have saved myself much trouble and distress had I heeded more of her admonitions.

When I reappeared after long absences she would sometimes ask: 'Where have you been, my wayward
son? What have you been doing?'

I would answer evasively. I would tell her little or nothing of my Continental occupations, political
inquiries, love affairs, gambling, stupid commercial activities, my foolish trust in wrong people, quixotic
and ill-advised ventures that sometimes succeeded, sometimes collapsed—all that medley of doings and
happenings which interlarded the constant and more important quest of which this book is a sketchy
record. Some day I may endeavor to set down these other doings and happenings, but to the White
Lady I spoke of them but little because, with queer contrariness, I wanted to hear her spontaneous
predictions though I rarely heeded them, to listen to her spontaneous admonitions though I rarely acted
on them. Ours was indeed a strange secret friendship, unknown to anyone, full of peculiar
contradictions, guarded reticences, vacant intervals. Yet I believe we loved and respected one another. I
was glad her niece was taking a long time up there on the floor above, rummaging amid the disorder in
drawers and boxes. I should not have liked her to descend abruptly and find me weeping.

The funeral, pathetic in its simplicity, took place next day in Streatham cemetery. The niece and I were
the only mourners. There was no one else in the little cemetery chapel but the priest and the
undertaker—at least so I thought until I chanced to look round. In the back pew sat the dark woman.

The priest performed his office with formal decency. 'I am the resurrection and the life, he that
believeth in me shall never die, etc., etc.' The prescribed words having been read, four shabby mutes,
directed by the cheap undertaker, advanced and bore their simple burden hastily to the graveside. Niece
and I followed, awkward and embarrassed, wishing the ceremony over. The dark woman hovered in the
background.

At the graveside the priest again uttered prescribed words as the men did their business of lowering the
coffin. A mere phrase or two. It was soon finished. We dropped our little bouquets on the coffin. (On the
way down I had said: 'It is customary- for someone to throw a- handful of dust into the grave, I'm sure
she wouldn't like that, let's drop a few flowers.'). They lay sprinkled on the coffin in its deep pit. Then we
shook hands with the priest and came away.

But we were not the last to leave the White Lady. The dark woman, stern and forbidding, had stood at a
distance during the burial, then approached the grave circuitously as we receded. My last recollection is
of seeing her shuffling slowly round the grave, making some sort of passes or gestures with her hands.
She was still there when we emerged from the cemetery.

Poor, dear White Lady of the Stars, was that the end your own stars predicted for you? Was that what
you would have read if you had unveiled the secrets of your own fate which you refused to probe?
Might you not, if you had diligently sought, have found some other less mournful, less desperate way
out, since you yourself quoted the Aristotelian dictum: Astra inclinant, non necessitant? Were you
indeed fated to perish in poverty-stricken solitude and be laid to rest with such scant pomp? Was it
decreed from the moment of your birth that your last sinister mourner should make passes at your
graveside, refusing even to your astral body (if such exists) the peace and rest from torment you richly
deserve? No, no. I cannot believe this to have been your end. I do not believe the morbid machinations
of your pursuer were effective. Your spirit was impervious to such mischievous and ill-placed
persecution! Tragic in your final act of despair, you paid your karmic debt to the full as you always said
you would; and I at least, your adopted godson who always disobeyed but always loved you, will always
think of your liberated soul as soaring free and unfettered among the starry heavens where verily it
always belonged.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Searching for Methuselahs

SPACE AND other considerations oblige me to reserve for a possible later volume further encounters
which threw much light for me on the art of living. I wish now to round off these sketches with an
account of an inquiry into one important aspect of the matter. Like so many of our accepted standards,
those of age are based not on potentialities but existing averages. Properly approached, life, and
especially the prime of life—the period of full maturity—should be susceptible of considerable extension
with physical and mental enrichment. Even ordinary hygiene shows this already. In this connection I set
out to discover how many genuine centenarians there were in Great Britain who had successfully
withstood the relatively disadvantageous circumstances of the nineteenth century, and to make a first-
hand study of their condition.

There is, of course, no virtue in mere length of days, desirable though the Bible sometimes makes it
seem, apparently for its own sake. What matters is whether one is physiologically old, not merely
chronologically aged. When we enter the world we are provided with only two things: a body, and time.
How long can—or ought —the body to last? What indeed are 'life' and 'death'? An Egyptian doctor at
Cairo, a student of esoteric subjects whom I met when I was interested in the Great Pyramid and with
whom discussion roamed also over wider fields, said to me on this point: 'Instead of '.' life" and "death ",
say always "living" and "dying ", and you will have a clearer view of the matter.' According to his school
of thought the body, taken as a whole, has only two stages of existence: growing, which takes about
twenty years, and dying, for the rest of the time, and the art of physiological 'living' consists simply in
staving off physiological 'dying', 'dying' (except by sudden violence or disease) being the effect of the
cumulative impact of wear and tear. 'Dying' is itself an uneven process, since some organs tend to die
more rapidly than others. The nerves, of which the brain is part, normally die slower than, for instance,
the arteries, yet depend upon them for nourishment, so there is truth in the old adage that a man is as
old as his arteries. As for 'soul', people cannot be said to be born with a soul but acquire one only as the
result of a process (usually long and painful) of 'psychic rebirth '; the soul they acquire is both 'theirs' in
the sense that they are conscious of its manifestations in themselves, and yet not 'theirs' in the sense
that its acquisition is merely a state of identification with the universal 'soul' or 'spirit', and to develop a
'soul' in this sense is the real meaning of gaining 'eternal life' or 'salvation'. He expatiated deeply on this
subject, but the point I am reminded of in connection with the question of possible or appropriate
length of life is the idea that from the moment we cease growing physically - we start dying, yet it is only
while slowly dying that the whole process of psychic and spiritual rebirth and growth can take place. It
would seem therefore, in principle, that the more time we have in which to achieve this, the better. It
was this, among other things that piqued my curiosity to observe the condition of those who have
gained the distinction, still rare, of at least existing physically for a hundred years and more.

The general question of possible or appropriate limits of age—the two things being not always
necessarily the same—had intrigued me for many years, and I had already seen one or two people
reputed but without reliable evidence to be a hundred. How was one to be certain how old the very
aged were? My friend Somesh Bose seriously believed his guru to have died at over two hundred. I
asked him how he knew. He replied that when he and other pupils had asked the guru how old he was
he had pointed to some trees and said he remembered when there had been no trees at that spot.
Botanists had then said the trees were about two hundred years old. Perhaps. I did not reject my
friend's belief as an impossibility. But was it the sort of evidence to accept without question in all cases?
I met the famous old Turk, Zaro Agha, who claimed to be 157, but had nothing but vague and
unconvincing data to support the assertion13. The Russian scientist, Metchnikov, extracting the bacillus
acidophilus from sour milk and believing it to be a means of prolonging life, christened it also bacillus
bulgaricus because he had encountered in Bulgaria old people in remarkable health whose diet
consisted largely of black bread and sour milk, and who attributed their longevity to this diet. When in
Bulgaria I inquired into the matter, and found there had been no general registration of births and
deaths until this century! The old peasants were as old as they thought they were: they said they could
remember such-and-such events and they believed they had been such-and-such an age at the time,
and that was that. The first country in Europe to introduce compulsory registration of births and deaths
was England, in 1836, Scotland only in 1854. England was therefore the first country, and 1937 the
earliest year, in which a trustworthy inquiry into the number of living centenarians could possibly be

13
The Times reported on 7th August, 1943, the death of a South African Indian reputed to have been 163 years
old, but again there was no reliable evidence.
made. Entries in parish registers prior to 1837 may fairly be accepted as reliable, but they were far from
complete14.

The subject was becoming very topical as the centenary of the Registration Act approached. Press
articles and correspondence appeared frequently arguing the possible limits of human life and the
authenticity of reputed cases of great longevity. In October 1937 there appeared an amusing leading
article in The Times entitled 'Give Age a Chance', dealing with centenarians in different parts of the
world, which said:

It is to be hoped that the Empire as a whole will make a concerted effort to show the world that
we British can live as long as anybody if we only set our minds to it. It is ridiculous to argue that
this is unimportant. A large and vigorous stock of centenarians represents our surest hope of
being at all times able to show the flag in countries whose Governments discourage news of
democratic achievement.

The writer of this article wrote in jocular vein, but jesters often prove prophets. Is it absurd to imagine
that in the future centenarian statistics may be one criterion of national fitness? Be that as it may, it so
happened that in the summer of 1938 I had a holiday to look forward to. I decided to spend it on the
quest for British centenarians. I would endeavor to find out how many stalwarts we possessed who had
made so gallant an effort to conquer time as to outlive a century. I myself was, not inappropriately, in
my fiftieth year—at half-way house, so to speak. I would see if I could find in Britain a hundred persons a
hundred years old, and learn how they did it. Nobody had ever yet made such an inquiry. I consulted the
Registrar General at Somerset House, Sir Sylvanus Vivian, as to how to go about it. He kindly gave me all
the data up to the census of 1931, but Somerset House had no statistics later than that.

Sir Sylvanus suggested that the list kept at Buckingham Palace of those to whom the King and Queen
had sent centenary greetings might help. This was a happy practice instituted by King George V. Every
case had to be authenticated by a birth certificate or entry in a parish register. Though such a list would
not reveal how many were still living, it would be a sound starting-point for inquiry. The list was
graciously placed at my disposal. And that was how it came about that, armed with it, I packed my
camping kit into my car — for I intended to combine cogitation on the mysteries of age with nocturnal

14
On the reliability of centenarian statistics Dr. A. L. Vischer states in Old Age, Its Compensations and Rewards
(George Allen and Unwin, 1947, pages 78-9): For a long time Bulgaria was reputed to be rich in centenarians. At
the census of 1926 the great number of 1,756 centenarians was recorded. Soon after this a special commission
was appointed by which, these figures were checked case by case. The result was that the data stood the test of
close examination in the case of 51 persons only, 13 men and 38 women. It can hardly be by chance that most of
the reports of especially remarkable longevity come from countries whose registrar's offices until quite recently
were by no means such as to satisfy modern requirements. In the Bavarian census of 1871, 37 persons declared
their age was 100 or more, but it appeared after inquiry that only one was authentic; most of the or
"centenarians" were not even 90 years of age, and one was only 61. In the Prussian census of 188o no fewer than
359 centenarians were registered; in 1885 under stricter control there were only 91, and in 1890 this figure fell to
72.
communion with ageless elves and pixies on mountain and heath or in wayside field—and thus set forth
to search for our British Methuselahs.

I knocked at the door of a small and insignificant house in Pembroke Street, Gloucester, in the poorer
district of the city. A young woman appeared.

'Is this where Mrs. Charlotte Gardner lives?

She looked at me with surprise.

'I mean the old lady who is a hundred and two. I've called to see her. Two years ago, on her hundredth
birthday, the King and Queen sent her a telegram of greeting. It was at Buckingham Palace that your
address was given me.'

Awestruck, the young woman showed me into a dingy parlour. I heard her at the back of the house
calling out: 'Mother, come quick, here's a gent from the King and Queen to see great-granny!'

I tried to correct the impression of being a special envoy, explaining that it was merely by courtesy of His
Majesty's private secretary that the list of those to whom the King and Queen had sent this kindly
message had been placed at my disposal. My old folk and their relatives saw no difference. To them I
was 'a gent from the King and Queen'.

A woman of about fifty came in, wiping her hands on her apron. 'I've called to see Mrs. Charlotte
Gardner,' I repeated. 'Is she your mother?'

'My grandmother.'

I asked for certain information which I was gathering, concerning habits, diet, past illnesses, and so
forth, which the relatives were often better able to furnish than the centenarians themselves, and also
something of the old lady's history. It was not uninteresting. After long and arduous decades of charing
and laundering, and incidentally bringing up eleven children, she had at the age of eighty suddenly come
to the conclusion that it was time for her to expire. Accordingly, though there was nothing noticeably
the matter with her, she had obstinately taken to her bed, presumably to await the call of the Archangel
who should bear her away to a place where chores are unknown. But the Archangel dallied, and twenty-
two years later the old lady was still pretty vivacious, though she had (if I heard correctly) never left her
room since she took so prematurely to her bed.

'She'll give you a lively time,' said her granddaughter.

She did. The great-granddaughter who had admitted me had gone up ahead to 'arrange' the old lady. I
followed upstairs. The room was plain and rather untidy, the air musty. A canary hopped about in a cage
in front of one of the small windows. Mrs. Charlotte Gardner was propped up on pillows, with a bundle
of knitting in front of her. Her face was like leather and very wrinkled, but nevertheless full of
expression, and her eye sparkled.
'The gentleman from the King,' her granddaughter shouted at the top of her voice in her ear, 'come to
visit you.'

She and her daughter then left me alone with 'great-grand granny'.

Without further ado the old lady launched into a recital of the hardships she had endured throughout
her long life, how during her husband's protracted illness many decades ago she had done out-work all
day and sat up with him all night, with a swarm of children to bring up and look after. I was amazed at
her vitality. She spoke in a strong voice, not very consecutively. My eyes wandered round the room.
Suddenly she leaned over and shook me by the shoulder.

'You're not listening to me,' she protested, in tones that would have done credit to a parliamentary
candidate.

Though her eyesight was still fair, she was very deaf and had not understood who I was. I tried to
explain, but she had got the idea that I was a reporter.

'See that you put me on the front page,' she ordered...'In big letters.' And with gnarled fingers she
traced the letters a foot long on her soiled counterpane.

Besides the knitting, she had on the bed a jacket and a jumper that had been sent her in a box. The box
fell off the bed on the other side from me. I sprang up to recover it. But she forestalled me. With a
nimbleness many women forty years younger might have envied she bent over and picked it up from
the floor.

'What are you in bed for? 'I shouted. 'You ought to be running about in the garden!'

But she didn't appreciate the joke, and was quite cross at my remark. She had been dying persistently
for twenty-two years and certainly wasn't going to change this ingrained habit at a hundred and two.

'Do you see that canary?' she said. 'That canary's human. It and me talk to each other as humans.' The
canary, silent until then, appropriately chose that moment to burst into song. 'When I die that canary
will die, and when that canary dies I shall die . . . Do you believe me?' she added suddenly, again putting
her hand on my shoulder and looking at me as if my answer mattered intensely.

'Of course I believe you,' I said with genuine sincerity.

The old lady slipped her arm round my neck and kissed me. 'Downstairs they think I'm a fool,' she said.
'But you don't. Good-bye. God bless you. Come again. You will come again?'

I said I couldn't promise definitely to come again. 'But I promise I will never forget you,' I added.

She fell back on her ruffled pillows with her eyes closed. I went over to the canary and whistled a little
tune. The bird, frightened for a moment by an unexpected approach, cocked an inquisitive eye,
chirruped, and burst again into his roundelay. I whistled for a few minutes, then tiptoed to the door, and
as I stepped gently out of the room I saw a strange smile on the wrinkled lips of the old lady, motionless
in her untidy bed.

I found in 1938 that the number of living centenarians was then about 150, of whom I visited personally
110. Two-thirds of them were women, so I will deal with them first. Many, both of the women and men,
were of no interest beyond providing the general data I was gathering. Nevertheless I was surprised at
the number that were interesting, I mean personally interesting, still able to converse with liveliness and
in a few cases still quite active.

For, instance, there was Mrs. Helen Pearson of Margate who, at a hundred, said of the young women of
to-day that she was all for their short hair and short skirts 'but not their short manners'. I found her
arranging flowers she had just picked in the garden. She was less successful with her fingers when she
tried to play the piano, but this she ascribed not to stiffness but to deafness caused by a cannon being
fired too close to her at a parade she had recently attended. This, she feared, had upset her music 'for
the rest of her life'. She related with pride how in the Napoleonic wars her father, Admiral Gill, with a
very small ship and a dozen men had captured a much larger French vessel by posting a lot of dressed-
up dummies about the deck; the captain of the French vessel, deceived and, believing himself
outmanned, had surrendered without a fight.

'My dear young man,' she said in a sprightly tone when I asked her the secret of age, 'you mustn't think
of it like that. If you think of age you'll feel it. You must love life, music, flowers, animals —and people.
I’ve no other secret.' She had driven the day before to Canterbury. 'I love to sit in the Cathedral,' she
said, 'when the afternoon sun throws slanting beams of light. I see angels mounting and descending.'
And finally: 'I'm going-to have my afternoon nap now, and then off to a whist party. I never smoked or
drank. My vice is whist.'

Another lady, less vivacious, but whose life appeared to have presented a picture of perfect serenity,
was Miss Kinnish of Barrow-in-Furness. Her entire existence had been passed in looking after relatives
and in Church work. She lived in a little villa overlooking the wide reaches of Morecambe Bay. I caught
sight of her through the window as I approached, a charming, white-haired little figure sewing on the
parlour sofa. I thought until I entered that this must be a friend or relative, for she didn't look her
hundred years. Her face was only slightly lined, she worked without spectacles, her fingers moved
deftly. She had at her side an open novel she had been reading. It was called The Morning of Life.

Equanimity of temperament is undoubtedly a factor in prolonging life, yet serenity of environment is not
a necessary concomitant. I found several of our centenarians had travelled widely and had adventurous
experiences. Thus Mrs. Savage of Liverpool, a cultured lady speaking several languages, who was at
school with the nieces of Disraeli and throughout her life had taken a keen interest in public affairs, had
passed through a series of revolutions in the West Indies where her father was Consul. 'And whenever
there was an earthquake I seemed to be on the spot,' she said. She told how she had had to defend
herself, pistol in hand, against rebels in the West Indies. When I asked her how she had withstood so
much disturbance in life she replied: 'it is a great thing to love simplicity and not to fear anybody or
anything. Life played ducks and drakes with me and I escaped—that was luck; but I never played ducks
and drakes with living—that was common sense.'

Most of the centenarians were of humble origin and restricted means and had had to work hard all their
lives, but few of them voiced complaints. One, however, did observe caustically: 'I never had a single
day's holiday through the whole of my life, I've had to wait till I was a hundred years old before anyone
took any notice of me. Now I'm a public character with my name in the paper, and an important person
like you thinks me worth visiting, but why didn't anybody do anything to make it easier before?'

A few, the more well-to-do, had never worked. The monotony of their existence would at first sight
seem appalling. There was a Spinster lady in a Wiltshire village whose century had been divided into two
parts, the first sixty years at Bath and the next forty at her present habitat, the two sections being
divided in her memory by the momentous journey from one place to the other. When I asked her what
she had done to fill up her hundred years all she said, after thinking hard, was: 'Well, I knitted, and I
used to take a book and read at times.'

Tragedy marked the story of a lady of Edinburgh who had been a schoolmistress and who lived in the
bitter memory of an injustice done her nearly eighty years earlier at the outset of her career. She had
started a boarding establishment for the daughters of professional men to whom she had given an
assurance—demanded insistently in those 'classy' days—that the gentility of the establishment should
not be corrupted by the admission of any tradesmen's daughters. She was therefore obliged to refuse
admission to the daughter of a wealthy butcher. But the butcher had an uncle who was an influential
mayor and he used this connection to wreak vengeance on the youthful schoolmistress by inducing
certain of her creditors to distrain upon her furniture and equipment in settlement of debts. The
bitterness of the blow was aggravated by its malice, deliberately aimed to ruin her, for had the creditors
waited two weeks until term commenced she could have paid the debts out of fees. She recovered from
the calamity by hard work, but the wound to her pride had never healed. She constantly reverted to this
theme, as if still seeking another explanation of the long-past tragedy. 'It wasn't prejudice against the
butcher that made me refuse his daughter,' she kept saying, talking partly English and partly French,
c'était que j'avais donné ma parole aux parents de mes pupilles and I couldn't break it. Et qu'est ce qu'ils
pouvaient faire avec my school equipment which was useless to them and fetched nothing? If only they
had waited two weeks, how different my life would have been!'

She had found some consolation in religion, and was concerned lest I should be led astray by new
doctrines 'such as Darwinism'. After about two hours' conversation her mind began to wander, she
confused the tower of Babel with Milan Cathedral on which she said the Devil stood to tempt Christ with
all the beauties of the plains of Lombardy. When I withdrew—much to her disappointment for I had
been a good listener—her parting question was: 'Don't you think the creditors might have waited two
more weeks?'

It is rather uncanny when you knock, at a front door to have it opened to you by somebody over a
hundred years of age, but it happened more than once. Mrs. Sarah Ward of Leamington, well on her
way to her hundred and third birthday, lived entirely alone in a one-room cottage just outside the town.
She invited me to have tea. I offered to help prepare it but she insisted on doing it all herself. So I sat
and watched while, moving very slowly but with a steady hand, she filled the kettle and put it on the
hob, laid a clean cloth, reached down the best china from the top shelf, made the tea, and finally cut
slices of buttered bread as thin as served in any tearoom. She herself ate slowly and frugally, but she
was not content until I had consumed all the bread and butter. She said she spent her mornings doing
housework and cooking her dinner, and her afternoons making up scrap albums for the local hospital.
This was her absorbing interest, but her sight was beginning to fail and this was, of course, a great
tragedy.

"Aren't you lonely?' I asked her.

She didn't reply at once, but looked up at something on the wall. I followed her eyes and saw she was
looking at the Royal telegram of greetings. It hung, as usual, framed on the wall:

The King and Queen are much interested to hear that you are celebrating your hundredth birthday and
send you hearty greetings and good wishes.

'When I feel lonely I just look at that,' she said.

The notification of her coming hundredth birthday had been made to Buckingham Palace by no less a
person than Mr. Anthony Eden, and she showed me, with scarcely less pride, a letter from him in his
own handwriting asking after her.

The October dusk was descending. The little room, with its one window of four tiny panes, grew dim. My
hostess fetched an oil lamp, trimmed the wick and lit it. The milkman came in and left the usual half-pint
and she paid him the coppers out of an old leather purse which she took from a drawer. The delivery
men were the only people she often saw; except the immediate neighbours who looked in. She
contrived to live on her old-age pension of ten shillings, plus five shillings sent regularly by a charitable
lady.

I drove off into the town and returned in an hour with some big bunches of grapes and other things easy
to eat which her budget, calculated to the halfpenny, could not provide. I opened the door myself and
found her sitting in exactly the same position as I had left her, with the lamp burning low for economy.

'A snack for, you, Granny," I said, arranging the things on the table.

'Oh,' you shouldn't 'a done it, sir, you shouldn't,' she said with a little gesture of delighted protest. She
broke off a sprig of grapes and put it on my plate before she would touch one herself.'

'Did you have a doze while I went out? I asked her. 'You haven't moved from your place.'

'No, sir, I wasn't dozing., I was thinking.'

'What about?'
'I was thinking how good the Lord has been to me. I used to think I'd die lonely these last years. But no,
besides the kind lady, what gives me five shillings, the King and Queen thought of me, and Mr. Eden, and
now you.'

Some, left without support, preferred or were compelled to live on public assistance or other charitable
institutions. One old lady at Dundee had asked for admission to a home at ninety-eight because her son
at the age of seventy-five 'had taken to drink'. She herself was still going strong at a hundred and two,
though she suffered from sciatica. 'I mind about forty year ago a chimist gimme a bottle agin the
sciatica,' she said. 'It cost two-and-three pence and did me a power of guid, but I could niver git a second
bottle becase I niver agin had two-and-three pence to spare.'

The extraordinary capacity of a healthy organism to withstand heavy blows was shown in a few special
cases.

Mrs. Ferris of Bristol, since the birth of her youngest child sixty one years earlier, had never spent a day
in bed or had a doctor until, when she was ninety-nine, she fell and received a serious cut on the head.
The doctor feared to administer an anesthetic at her age and stitched up the cut without. Her daughter
held her hands and said all she felt was the tightening of pressure but her mother didn't utter a sound.
At a hundred and one she had a still more serious accident, falling and breaking both arms. The doctor
refused to reset them, but they both healed, one dovetailing without great deformity, the other leaving
the forearm slightly crooked. When I saw her at the age of a hundred and three she had regained use of
both arms and hands, did some of the lighter housework and her fingers were moderately agile at
sewing and knitting.

This and one or two other less striking cases were exceptional. So also was a sour-tempered old lady in a
Norfolk village who was an entertaining exception to the prevailing rule of kindliness and geniality. She
was the hundred-year-old spinster daughter of a money-lender who during his own ninety years of life
had acquired a large fortune and a sinister reputation. The misanthropic propensities which this lady
inherited had been aggravated by disappointment in love, and other people's happiness became a
source of much grievance to her. She refused to shake hands with me; replied when I inquired after her
health: 'That's none of your business'; told me I had no right to come 'molesting decent people';
declared that the King's sending her a telegram of greeting was also 'interference'; and invited me
peremptorily to return whence I had come, 'and stay there'. I finally gave up and took my leave. I
shouted into her ear: 'Good-bye and God bless you,' to which she retorted with malevolence: 'I don't
want no blessings, good-bye and good riddance!'—and from the doorway I caught her parting shot: 'Did
you hear? I said good riddance!'

Very few of my centenarians were still active in business, but Mrs. Pratt of Sunderland still helped in
minding a little newspaper shop run by her daughter. I found her sweeping her back parlour, and I
noticed while she was telling me the story of her life that every now and then she would interrupt the
conversation to say to her daughter who had joined us: 'Someone in the shop, Mary,' and the daughter
would go out to serve a customer. This piqued my curiosity, for the old lady was sitting with her back to
the shop. I finally asked her about it. She pointed to a mirror on the wall behind me. The whole time she
had been telling me of her life her eagle eye had missed nothing of what was to be seen in the mirror.

Mrs. Martha Godwin of Southampton also ran a newspaper store until her hundredth year. She then
sold it, conducting the transaction herself. She was a film fan, and until a hundred went regularly to the
pictures. 'It was worth waiting a hundred years to see Robert Taylor,' she said.

The oldest centenarian I visited was Mrs. Emma Coate of North Curry, Somerset, then in her hundred
and ninth year. She was born in 1830, the date being attested by the parish register. She just failed to
live under seven sovereigns, making her debut shortly after the death of George the Fourth. Being eight
years over the century mark she remembered the death of William the Fourth and the accession of
Queen Victoria. Her whole life had been lived in her native village except for one memorable trip to
London by stagecoach eighty-five years earlier to visit relatives. But 'the lights of London 'dazzled her
(oil-lamps, candles and flickering gas-jets!) the 'dash of traffic' terrified her (though a horse-bus that
moved more than eight miles an hour was a sensation—to cross the street was too much of an
adventure, and the only pleasant recollection she had of the visit was of the fine ladies riding in Hyde
Park on Sunday morning. So Mrs. Coate hied her quickly back to North Curry, there to remain securely
sheltered among its few hundred inhabitants for the remainder of her hundred and eight, years. Widow
of a farmer, she informed me there was nothing she didn't know and hadn't been able to do on the farm
or in the kitchen—'And next time you come, if you'll tell me ahead, I'll bake you a loaf of farm bread like
you've never eaten anything so tasty in your life.'

It took her rather long to dress nowadays, she said. 'I only get up about ten o'clock, I'm ashamed to say!'
—which prompted me to exclaim: 'Tut, tut, lazybones!' She took it quite seriously. 'Yes, that's just what I
feel I am.' Perhaps we should all feel like that if for a hundred years we had got up with clocklike
regularity, Weekday and Sabbath, at three in the summer and six in the winter.

She was brought up in the Church of England, but when she was approaching seventy the village church
was renovated and a dispute arose as to whether she should be allowed to retain the same pew to
which she had been accustomed for over sixty years. Apparently it was a good pew and some rich
upstart local magnate thought he would like it. Be it said to their shame who did it, the old lady was
sacrificed to the upstart magnate. Whereupon I am glad to say she never again set foot in the church but
transferred her allegiance to the Wesleyan Chapel.

'Oh, yes, I remember it all, right back to when I was a tiny tot. I grew up large-built and strong, and when
I was seven or eight I already so tall I could see right over the shoulder of our school teacher without her
knowing it. So when she asked me questions I could see the answers in the book!'

And Mrs. Coate chuckled as if it had happened yesterday instead of in the year when Queen Victoria
came to the throne.
From Land's End to John o' Groats is about a thousand miles, so that the five thousand miles or so that l
travelled between Plymouth and Inverness, Broadstairs, Yarmouth and Aberystwyth were piled up in
endless zigzagging among the Frisby-on-the-Wreak's, Wotton-under-Edge's, Owmby-by-Spitai's and
other queer-named places in which I found many of our centenarians tucked away. They were about
evenly distributed between town and country. Women outnumbered men by three to one.

Making notes in the evenings as I camped for the night, preferably by a river where I could have a dip in
the early morning or a stream where I could at least have a splash, I used often to ponder on the
remarkable fact that quite a number of my poorer centenarians had never in their lives had a bath: Until
their middle age there was as yet no laid-on water supply, little or no drainage, and sanitation was
archaic. Few of them in their childhood knew any form of lighting other than rushlights or tallow dips.
The twisted wick candle that put the makers of candle-snuffers out of business was a great invention.
Gas was a luxury. Miss Mary Davey, who for eighty years managed the little eighteenth-century cake
shop at Poole Valley, Brighton (I bought a cake there the other day) told me at the age of a hundred and
six that the establishment was regarded as very advanced in 1850 because it had one small gas-jet.
Those who did have baths usually dragged a tin or wooden tub in front of the kitchen fire and poured
water into it from a kettle. They lived in Dickensian conditions. Stage-coach and horse-cart were still the
commonest mode of travel. Highway robbery was common. The boneshaker bicycle, forerunner of the
'penny-farthing', was invented when these centenarians were about thirty; the telephone when they
were about forty; the typewriter in their sixth decade; they were getting on for seventy before the first
rattling and creaking motor cars appeared, travelling at the breakneck speed of fifteen to twenty miles
an hour. They were old people already when the first blotchy motion pictures were flashed upon the
screen. The whole miraculous panorama of nineteenth- and twentieth-century progress unfolded itself
before their eyes.

To have outlived a century with such a start was the more remarkable because the death rate, and
especially the infant mortality rate, were appallingly high. For women, things were especially hard. They
were not expected to live over fifty. The conditions of childbirth were medieval. Anaesthetics were only
just being introduced against strenuous opposition, particularly on the part of the Church. 'In that
period,' says Dr. Willett Cunnington, 'to a woman the commonest phenomenon in life was death. As a
girl it embellished the tales she read, and . . . as she grew up the thing itself stalked at her elbow. . . . The
ravages of consumption were beyond record . . . every young lady knew its symptoms and awaited their
onslaught with a sort of peaceful expectancy, for consumption was, above all others, a most ladylike
complaint.15'

For women the chances of living were still further reduced by the universal practice of tight-lacing. Dr.
Cunnington tells of a school where the girls were locked into tight corsets which were unlocked only
once a week for purposes of ablution. Besides living in straitjackets, girls of good family were supposed

15
Feminine Attitudes in the Nineteenth Century by Dr. Willett Cunnington (Wm. Heinemann)
never to see, hear, or know anything of life until they were married. Ignorance and blind subservience to
parental dictation were the measure of virtue and good manners.

For the working classes the conditions of domestic and industrial labour were such as make our blood -
run cold to think of. In the early fifties over fifty thousand women in England were working for less than
sixpence a day, and children worked ten hours a day for half that. When old sexton Thomas Capel, of
Great Glen, described to me how before the age of ten he walked daily several miles to and from
Leicester to earn three pence a day working ten hours at a stocking-frame it filled me with wonder not
only that he had survived a century to tell the tale but still greater wonder that in the hundred and
second year of his life he spent most of his time singing cheerfully. When I approached his cottage the
strains of 'Arise my soul, and with the sun' greeted me through the window, and the last thing I heard as
I drove away was. 'The British Grenadiers'.

Like the women, the men varied greatly in station and occupation. I found Mr. Schofield of Brighton in
his hundred and first year working at the books of his china and pottery business in East Street, run by
his sons. Overleaf is a letter he wrote me afterwards.

60 East Street 15.12.28

Brighton

Dear Sir Paul Dukes

I am in receipt of your letter asking whether I would object to your mentioning my name in the
articles you are mailing/ writing.

With the restricted publicity which you mention, I have no objection.

I am glad to hear that there is a prospect of your visiting Brighton again. I shall be glad to see
you.

My best wishes for a happy Christmas and Kind regards.

Yours sincerely,

W. ? Schofield.

Another still at work was Oliver Chalker of Keinton Mandeville, whom I found checking up the casks of
apples in his barn. Kenny McIntosh of Sterling was plucking a goose in his kitchen when I called. Though
rather deaf he still read without glasses. He had worked in a hotel most of his life, and his passion was
horses. His reminiscences ranged from the Crimean War (when he had escaped 'being took by the press-
gangs' by hiding in a loft) to Bertram Mills' circus which he had visited on his hundred and second
birthday. After an hour or so of conversation he looked furtively at his watch: 'It's time I was goin' down
to the Post Office about, my pension.' I drove him there. Though it was drizzling he wouldn't put on a
raincoat, but clamped on a hat and clambered in beside me. I said on the way: 'Kenny, it's opening time,
will ye no take a wee drap wi' me?' He said: 'I don't mind if I do.' We went, into a hotel and stood at the
bar. 'I'll have a sma' stout thank ye.' He eyed the barman inquisitively and plied him with questions
about the new management. After some preliminary hedging he said: 'And the buxom housekeeper, and
the bonnie maid with the fair hair, have they been kept on?' I dug him in the ribs. It is curious to dig a
man a hundred and two years old in the ribs. 'You old rascal, Kenny, still with an eye on the girls?' At a
hundred and two he was beyond a blush, but his eye twinkled guiltily as he said: 'Mebbe we'd better be
gettin' along.' Later he said: 'I niver got married because I liked all the girls too much to tie meself to
one.' I told him of an old lady of a hundred and one at Edinburgh who had never been married and
asked him if he wouldn't like to repair the omission 'better late than never'. He looked a little frightened
and said cautiously: 'Sir, I'm a confirmed bachelor.' A couple of days afterwards I told the old lady at
Edinburgh about him and asked the same question. She replied solemnly that she had been engaged
when she was twenty but her fiancé had died, she had sworn to be true ever to his memory, she had
been faithful for eighty years and was going to be faithful to the end. 'Besides,' she added, 'fancy an old
man of a hundred and two!' 'Yes, of course,' I said, 'you'd feel he was your grandfather. Will 'you marry
me?' 'Not—even—you,' she replied decisively. Thus my matchmaking efforts came to naught!'

Most of these old folk had received an elementary education in church, village, or national schools. The
fee for schooling was usually two pence a week which the pupils had to bring with them on Monday
mornings. George Barton of Willingham, who had spent most of his century farming, told me his father
had brought up a family of seven on eleven shillings a week, so it was no wonder his mother told him
one Monday morning there was only three ha'pence in the family treasury and she couldn't provide the
two pence for school. 'I said I'd take a chance on it and set out with the other boys and my three
ha'pence. And would you believe it, sir, blest if I didn't pick up a penny on the way! There it lay on the
road and I was the first to see it! So I paid the two pence to the teacher and had a ha'porth of ginger
bread into the bargain!' He said that after he was married, and had a family to bring up on a few shillings
a week like his father, he came home sometimes to find there was no supper. On this we had the
following conversation:

'What did you do?'

Had to go without supper.'

'Without a single scrap to eat?'

'Well, of course, there was always bread and butter and cheese—the wife used to make those herself.

'No tea?'

'Tea? Tea was five shillin' a pound! But I might send one of the children for a pennorth of ale.'

'And how much ale did you get?'

'Not more than a pint.'

Bread and cheese ad lib and a pint of ale for a penny! Perhaps there was something in 'the good old
days' after all!

Though cheerfulness appeared to be a prevailing characteristic among the males as among the females
there were exceptions. Thus. William Wall of Tividale, approaching his hundred and second birthday,
waxed eloquent in complaints of the miseries and woes of age with its attendant aches and infirmities.
'Don't you niver want to be a hundred,' he warned me groaningly, rubbing his knees as he huddled over
the kitchen stove. ''Tain't no joke bein' old. When yer sight's goin' and ye can't hear and yer limbs creak.'
(Hardly an encouragement to his five old-age-pensioner sons who bid fair to follow their father's
example of scoring a century.) 'It's fower year since I walked without a stick, it's nigh on two year since I
went out, and now me son 'as to 'elp me into me clothes. Oh, it's terrible to be old.' But his attention
was deflected by a copious plate of stew placed before him by his daughter-in-law. His infirmities had
not affected his appetite. Telling him I thought him an example to the nation I left him, receiving a
parting assurance of the horrors of age, but the remark was indistinct as his mouth was full.

It is held by some that frugality of diet is conducive to longevity. Our British centenarians do not seem to
have travelled by that path. Not only did they appear to have had, for the most part, no dietetic
idiosyncrasies, but their prevailing habit seemed to have been to eat as much as they could of whatever
they liked whenever they could. I found only one vegetarian and only one lifelong teetotaller among the
men. A good many of them also still smoked.

Another pessimist was Mr. Lemuel Lockie of Kettering. To him this vale of tears here below was but a
sorry place to live in, or so one would judge by the hymn he had written some seventy years before
when he was a Baptist evangelist:

Again doth the autumn appear,

A dull and a drearisome day;
The flow'rs which to us were once dear
Are drooping and fading away;

The trees, with' their branches once green,

Show the last breeze of summer has blown;
The fading leaves now may be seen,
But they too will shortly be gone.

What lesson from this do we learn?

The autumn of life is in view,
To make it our greatest concern:
Our days at the most are but few.

Like leaves of the trees we shall fall;

They wither, so we must decay;
The oldest, the youngest, and all
 Must some day be passing away.

But the autumn of life which came into view so early proved a very protracted season for Mr. Lockie,
and the aggregate number of his days, which he thought 'at the most were but few.', had reached when
I saw him the imposing total of over thirty-six thousand five hundred and fifty, being the days of a
hundred years and some months. Moreover, even in his hundred and first year it would be difficult to
liken Mr. Lockie to withering tree-leaves. He pulled up the legs of his trousers to show me the
remarkably preserved perfection of his calves and knees which showed no visible sign of 'withering or
decay'. Your "some day,"' I told him, 'seems rather to be "this year, next year, sometime, never!"' He
was quite pleased at the flattery.

Yet another apparently cheerless old boy was William Kirkpatrick, a dour Scot of Cumnock. I found him
with his hat on and his feet bound up in oversize carpet slippers, reading the cricket news in front of the
stove. He said he couldn't move for rheumatism. He was not in the least interested in his age and would
have taken no notice of his hundredth birthday if the Cumnock town council, of which he had once been
a member, hadn't made a to-do of it. 'What's the difference between to-day and yesterday, anyway?' he
said. And I wondered as I left what the difference was, and supposed: that by the time you've seen over
thirty-six thousand to-days and yesterdays strung one after the other they probably begin to look much
alike. He was a lifelong bachelor. Perhaps he thought also—what's the difference between one woman
and another16.

By contrast, George Ricketts of Croxley Green in his 'hundr'ed and first year still looked forward and not
back. After a party on his hundredth birthday he went to bed, exhausted but content, saying he had
made a good start on his second century and intended to have as much of it as he could. When I called
to see him a few months later I found him studying a history of Rome, because his knowledge of history
'needed brushing up’. He emphatically attributed his 'age to being a teetotaller. I did not tell him he was
the only lifelong teetotaller on the list. But he was—that is, among the men—there were a few women
who said they had never touched a drop.

George Cole of Watford said he gave up drinking twenty years ago 'because this modern stuff isn't beer,
it's chemical wash—you should have tasted the beer we had forty and fifty year ago—that was beer!' He
made up for drinking with smoking, which he said he was always intending to give up but didn't. He had
been a carpenter-joiner by trade. With the utmost pride he showed me over his house, moving slowly
with a stick, fondling the doors and woodwork. 'I put all the doors and staircases in these houses fifty-
five years ago, they're all good and solid and will last another hundred years and more. Every bit was
turned by hand, I was an old man when electric machinery came in.' When I asked him (as I asked all) if
he was a religious man, he said he wasn't a devout man in the formal sense but he was proud of the
musical part he once played in the church service. Before the local church possessed an organ its singing
was led by a barrel-organ, 'and Ole King Cole used to turn the handle'.

16
Out of 110, 3 were bachelors and 16 were spinsters.
But John Fortnum of Barnet told me he would lay odds that he 'would drink me under the table' even in
his hundred and second year! He had been taken into the Barnet institution at a hundred because his
house burnt down. When I asked him how he had spent his life he replied promptly: 'Drinking whisky
and playing the harp!' The funny thing was that there seemed to have been some truth in it. Starting as
a cattle-drover, he had found a better livelihood playing the concertina at public-houses. He would
sometimes earn as much as ten shillings a day, he said—fabulous money in those times. He married the
daughter of a publican who put him in charge of his house because he crowded it with his extempore
concerts. One day he bought a harp, which a strolling musician taught him how to play. He deserted the
pub, joined various bands, and became a strolling player. 'I carried the harp about on my back—I've
carried it as much as twenty miles.' (I should have doubted this, a harp being a heavy instrument, had it
not been that John Fortnum could still exhibit a muscular arm at a hundred and one: through talking to
centenarians who were deaf I had got into the habit of raising my voice and speaking close to their ear,
but when I did this to old John he gave me such an indignant push that he nearly sent me to the floor!)
Eventually, he said, he sold the harp and reverted to the concertina which he continued to play until a
hundred, but he lost it when his house at Cuffley was burnt down over his head. Firemen carried him
out—kicking, so the Superintendent told me, and shouting 'Where's my concertina?' 'I was a hot one for
the girls,' he boasted, 'and I'm still fit.' But at this his companions cackled. This annoyed him, and to
show how nimble he was he raised his legs and kicked them about in the air. 'Whisky did that,' he
declared. 'The whisky makers ought to give me a pension, the amount I've drunk for them in my time!'

He had never given a thought to how long he might live, he said, and seemed (even after due allowance
being made for boasting in front of his companions) really to have laughed and caroused his way
through his hundred years. Nevertheless, he had his philosophy of life, as I discovered when I tied him
down to a serious question. 'I learnt early in life that it's best to play fair. If you kick a chap, he'll kick you
back, if you don't kick him, he may try to kick you but the chances are more in your favour.' But he said
he had 'no use for religion', and his comments on parsons were unprintable. Music and gaiety and live-
and-let-live were all the religion he had ever known.

Frivolity was the keynote also of John Meredith Bealè Evans of Birmingham. His parents had been well-
to-do, he was given a good schooling, and later served for many years as coroner in Donegal, where he
acquired the soubriquet of 'Lord John'. Snowy-haired and white-bearded, his skin a clear pink only
slightly wrinkled, his hands well preserved, his eyes puckered in a perpetual laugh, he sat in his arm-
chair with a glass of beer beside him and turned every subject to jest. 'They tell me I'm a hundred years
old, there's a certificate to prove it, and that telegram there was from the King and Queen, but how can I
be sure? I used to ask my mother but she used to tell me she couldn't remember when I was born
because she'd gone out that day. Ha, ha, don't you think that's a good one?'

I told him I didn't think much of it, whereupon he informed me I had no sense of humour.

'You're not Irish,' he said, 'so you don't interest me.' Ireland, he said, was the only subject in the world
worth talking about. I told him I thought that was a better one but he didn't catch my point.
'You're a pretty good specimen for a centenarian,' I said. 'Do you think when I'm a hundred I'll look as
good as you?'

'You? Why the worms will have eaten you before you're fifty.'

'Well, give me your autograph before they begin,' I said.

He wrote it; rather laboriously, and said: 'I conduct a voluminous correspondence.' I was surprised.
'With myself,' he explained. 'Oh, I see,' I said limply. 'By telegram,' he added.

In leaving I told him I hoped I might see him again some day. 'The worms will have eaten you,' he
retorted, 'but I'll still be going strong. By the way, was your mother in the day you were born?' And he
subsided in convulsions of laughter.

Another cheerful old boy was William Harris of Lewisham, who claimed to be the inventor of tinsel. He
had started in life as a rope-maker earning half-a-crown a week—'which as often as not wasn't paid'. I
spent a Sunday evening with him, with swarms of grand- and great-grandchildren clambering about his
chair. He had only one eye, but it still had a lively glint. He declared that the prospect of 'being stuck
underground for the worms to eat' didn't attract him at all, and to stave off this unromantic end to a
hundred and two years of existence he intended 'to hang on to life for dear life'. When I left he was
singing to the children, in a croaking voice, a song he said he had sung when he turned the rope-maker's
wheel as a boy ninety years before.

The most noble and impressive figure I encountered was that of the Rev. Frederick Willett of Haywards
Heath, a priest of the Anglo-Catholic persuasion. Using a walking-stick he carried himself erect and
confident. 'What can a young fellow like you find interesting in an old man like me?' was his first
question. His beautiful face, crowned with snow-white hair, lit up as he related how he was 'head of the
water' at Westminster School in 1856, had been instrumental in reviving the Eton and Westminster boat
race, and himself rowed for Leander. The only time he had come near to having a 'drop too much' was
after one of his victories. He had been a public-house reformer and went round holding services in the
pubs, preaching for the last time at the age of ninety-five.

These are a few of the more striking of my centenarians. There were, of course, several who were
decrepit and about to fade out. Some were on the point of departure anyway, but in certain cases their
demise was expedited by the celebration of their centenary birthday. I should think the excitement and
strain of sudden festivity, with visits by mayors, reporters, photographers and all the rest are often
mistimed. But the number of the healthy and even active exceeded my expectation.17

17
Out of 110, 66 apparently enjoyed excellent health even when no longer active, 45 walked without assistance
from others, 28 with assistance. 37 were unable to walk, 27 being bed-ridden (some through accident) and 15
decrepit. 20 stated that they had been frail in youth but their health had progressively improved from middle life
onward. The commonest ailments were rheumatism and bronchial trouble, but several stated they had never had
anything wrong with them beyond an occasional cold. The tendency of the healthy, judging by reports since
received, appeared to be suddenly to fail and die quietly like a lamp going out. The oldest was Mrs. Coate of North
Curry who died at 110.
Some had frequent medical attention, others very little, while a few expressed an aversion to doctors.
Kenny McIntosh said he had always cured himself of everything by fasting, the idea had come to him
'naturally'. Another Scot, a lady quite comfortably off, said: 'When I got bronchitis after my hundredth
birthday my friends persuaded me to call a doctor, but when I found he was charging me five shillings a
visit I told him to keep away and I would cure myself, and I did. He died first, this year,' she added with
great glee.

The number who had had easy lives was few, while many had suffered privation. Able Seaman James
Gray of Southsea, joining the Navy at eighteen, had subsisted for twenty years at sea on an undeviating
alternation of salt beef and salt pork with ship's biscuits, no vegetables or garden produce of any kind
being provided, though he bought small quantities of potatoes and fruit out of his pay of three shillings a
week, increasing these supplements as his pay rose. 'How did you manage to survive?' I asked. 'By
keeping my bowels open,' he replied.

Mrs. Eliza Mitchell of Bath actually took up art needlework after eighty when her husband died, and was
still supporting herself by it when I saw her at a hundred. She came downstairs, work in hand, with
scissors on a tape hanging round her neck.

I classed sixty as cheerful and keen to live longer, twenty-one as resigned or indifferent, and twenty as
despondent, the remainder being on the verge of fading out18. Despondency in several cases grew out of
the knowledge of being a burden to supporters. Heredity is stated to be the major factor in determining
longevity, but cheerfulness and serenity of disposition certainly have something to do with it19. The

18
The retention of mental faculties corresponded approximately, to general physical condition. In 70 cases the
wits were still keen, memory alert, and interest in current affairs maintained. '15 showed a tendency to wander or
were slow. The remainder were unreliable or unintelligible. In the matter of wits and intelligence account must be
taken of education. 30 had had a good (in two cases a university) education; over 6o had had an elementary
education in village, church, national or private schools'; about a dozen had had no education other than what
they had given themselves.

19
The following figures relating to parental longevity may be of interest. Out of 110 cases the father lived to be 8o
in only 38, the mother in only 40; while in 35 cases the father, and in 29 the mother died under 6o.

Father died over 8o 38 cases

Mother died over 8o 40
Father died between 6o and 80 37
Mother died between 6o and 80 41
Father died under 60 35
Mother died under 60 29

There were also several cases of the centenarians being the only member of a numerous family to arrive at old
age, but many of them may, of course, represent a throwback from prior generations.
great majority evinced a natural preference for a simple mode of life, a hearty appetite devoid of
dietetic idiosyncrasies, and a placid, kindly, and conscientious disposition, with the faculty of taking the
rough with the smooth even when there was much more of the rough, and accepting everything as it
came. In religious attitude most were devout, or professed to be. One or two scoffed, but in their
scoffing I suspected an element of showing off.

Most were pretty deaf, but the number whose sight was still effective was surprising. Miss Georgina Hill
of Clifton, with both sight and hearing excellent, kept up a long correspondence with me after a
hundred. Overleaf is a page of one of her letters.

‘I cannot say how thankful I am surrounded by so many loved ones who are such a comfort and
help to me, and to be free from pain and able to enjoy the many blessings given by my Heavenly
Father at my great age.’

Kind regards from

G.E. Hill

There was among these old people so great a variety of temperament, condition, and appearance that it
is difficult to draw general conclusions. But the aggregate number was greater than I had expected to
find, as was also the number of those who were fit and contented, and the fact that so many had
withstood successfully the seventies of their Victorian youth and middle age suggests strongly that with
improved conditions the numbers will henceforth rapidly increase. All these centenarians were, as one
might say, fortuitous. They certainly did not expect to live to a hundred. There may well be now twice as
many as in pre-war days, and the time is assuredly coming when to reach a hundred will no longer be
regarded as a very exceptional achievement. It would seem that if life could really follow a natural
course not only would the years of maturity be greatly prolonged but the termination would be short
and peaceful, rather like a candle quietly burning out.

This matter of the growing number of elderly citizens is obviously related to two important questions:
that of population as a whole, and that of the optimum prime of life. As regards the first, in the minds of
our administrators the claims of quantity and quality seem at the present time to be about equally
balanced. Procreation is encouraged, while improved conditions of education and social welfare are
designed ostensibly to enhance quality. But these two principles are conflicting, especially in these
cramped islands and ultimately everywhere. It was not of modern England that Shakespeare wrote 'This
other Eden, demi-paradise, this fortress built by nature for herself against infection and the hand of
war'; it was of a numerically smaller England, more simple and natural, whose five (instead of fifty)
million inhabitants had room to live and move and, in a far more real sense than to-day, have their
being. Great Britain cannot adequately maintain a larger population than at present, or even the present
population. One or other of these principles must necessarily take second place.

It is deplorable that, generally speaking, public leaders of religion, whom one would expect to be the
first to place quality above quantity, not only take no open stand to resolve this problem in a sense
favourable to, mankind, but rather the reverse, they are with rare exceptions the principal opponents of
controlled procreation. More enlightened people—and let us gladly admit, among them a few
enlightened divines—are endeavoring to counteract this inhuman attitude by approving controlled
procreation through the wise use of contraceptives, but the Church as a whole, whether Roman or
Anglican, regards the question with suspicion if not hostility, adopting towards it the same attitude as it
adopted last century, when chloroform was invented, towards the introduction of anaesthetics in
childbirth, the Church then struggled desperately to perpetuate the pain and suffering of women by
opposing the use of anaesthetics because it was supposedly contrary to the will of God who in His
wisdom had decreed the pangs of parturition which must therefore not be interfered with.

The modern increased expectation of life further compels us to revise our antiquated notions of what
period of life is the optimum prime. In the middle ages fifty was regarded as old age, few lived to be
sixty. Nowadays sixty is still regarded as the normal retiring age in many professions, but the absurdity
of this standard is becoming daily more apparent. The complete training of professional men and
women to-day takes about twenty-five years and sometimes more, they are then ready to enter active
life. But only to enter it. It takes another ten or fifteen years, on the average, to acquire full
experience—no less important an ingredient of maturity than the preceding training. Leaving aside
exceptional cases which always exist, thirty-five to forty years is required on the average to attain what
may be termed maturity, that is, training amplified by experience. Long before this, of course,
individuals may begin to make valuable contributions to culture and learning, as even schoolboys and
students sometimes do; nevertheless, save in rare cases, their development cannot be regarded as
complete until full training and experience have been acquired. Is it not absurd that their wisdom should
be available to the world for a shorter period of time than it takes, as a rule, to reach maturity? Barring
accident, at sixty normal men and women should have the feeling of just approaching their zenith, they
should be at the height of their powers, looking forward with delight to that long and productive period
which Browning so aptly described as 'the last of life for which the first was made'.20

For this natural condition to become widespread two things appear to be required: firstly, a far higher
degree of selectivity in the creation of human beings, a matter which depends entirely upon ourselves; it
is indeed the highest and most favoured of man's physical functions, and it should be a criminal offence
to leave it to chance; and secondly, intimately linked with this question, a new and more reverent
attitude towards the physical frame the Creator has provided with which to do His will. The conception
of the worthlessness of the body, fostered not only by misguided devotees of religion, goes deeper than
one would think, and wild suggestions are sometimes put forward, even by people who should know

20
It is perhaps worth recalling, that the most troublesome political movements of the past thirty years have all
endeavored to appeal primarily to the young. The communist, fascist, nazi, falangist and other 'Similar groups have
all sought to pit youth against maturity, and some elderly persons have adhered to them in an effort to achieve the
illusion of a prorogation of their own decline. To say to the young: ‘It is your turn now, you take over at once,
because we, the old, will soon be dead ' is merely an invitation to youth to repeat the same mistakes as their
elders. A grain of truth lies in the saying that the six natural political stages of man (prop vided he learn's) are: at 10
an anarchist, at 20 a communist, at 30 a socialist, at 40 a liberal, at 50 a conservative, and at 6o a philosopher!
better, for forcing everybody at some age limit into a lethal chamber! They should recall Longfellow's
lines:

Cato learned Greek at eighty: Sophocles

Wrote his grand Oedipus, and Simonides
Bore off the prize of verse from his compeers
When each had numbered more than four-score years.
Goethe at Weimar, toiling to the last,
Completed Faust when eighty years were passed. For age is opportunity no less
Than youth itself, though in another dress,
And as the evening twilight fades away
The sky is filled with stars invisible by day.

Voltaire and Victor Hugo also produced their most mature work in advanced age, while Titian, still
painting at ninety-nine, declared that he only began to understand his craft after he was ninety! Few
ordinary folk with whom I discussed the matter said they would like to live to be a hundred; but when I
asked how old they would like to live to be I noticed that they were always inclined to move the curtain-
date a comfortable distance ahead of their own age! Nemo tam senex est Ut improbe diem speret, wrote
Seneca truly—no one is so old that he doesn't want to live just one more day. For most the hypnotic
'three-score-years-and-ten' was the accepted standard. One country parson who accompanied me with
some reluctance to visit his oldest parishioner, a crofter aged a hundred and one, was quite convinced
the biblical three-score-years-and-ten was the divinely appointed span of life and that anybody who
exceeded it was really contravening an ordinance of Providence and so deserved that any
supplementary extension should be laden with sorrow as the psalmist declared. 'But look at Bernard
Shaw! 'I said. It was a fatal break. To the gloomy parson Bernard Shaw was anathema and should have
been consumed by fire and brimstone long before attaining even three-score-years-and-ten! He bid me,
a curt good day and left me.

Intensity of experience is, of course, of greater importance than extension of existence, yet we cannot
but attach value to calendrical time, since that and our physical organism is all we are given to work
with. It would make a great difference to our outlook on life if, at its outset, instead of an anticipated
span of seven or more decades, the limit was fixed in nature at some much lower figure at which every
human being knew with certainty that life would terminate, say at 50, or even 30, or a mere 20; and it
would equally affect our outlook, but in a very, different sense, if the normal expectation of life were
100 or 120 years or more, as it ought to be. This matter affects every aspect of our lives, including the
spiritual; and since it is, being painfully forced upon us to-day that if the civilization of Christendom is to
survive there must be not only a revival but a drastic re-examination of our accepted spiritual values, it
may be worth while to inquire whether that drastic revision will not, in the end, turn, out to be nothing
but a return to the values inherent In ancient teachings but long lost amid the fogs of doctrinal
controversy
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The Real Gospel of the Kingdom of Heaven

REFERRING TO THE STRAYING YOUTH OF BRITAIN when addressing a meeting of young parents in
London in March 1949, Field Marshal Lord Montgomery was expressing widely prevalent misgivings
when he said that the young people of Britain have lost faith 'in democracy, in God, and in themselves';
they have no sense of religious truth, and consequently no sure standards by which to regulate their
conduct or aspirations. 'Yet they are first-class material,' he added. It was a wise remark. They are, on
the whole, very excellent material, but from no authoritative quarter do they receive the intelligible and
convincing guidance for which they yearn.

This should, of course, be a matter for the Church to deal with. But one cause of the wide decay of
religious belief, especially among the intelligent young, is certainly that the Church confuses Christians
with churchgoers. Yet the Church has itself made it difficult to identify the two, and it will scarcely
produce Christians, even if it increases the number of churchgoers, by expedients such as 'selling'
Christianity like trade goods through- advertising campaigns; in the 'missionary campaign' organized by
the Bishop of London shortly after Lord Montgomery made the above speech the house-to-house
canvassers in one district were instructed to knock at doors three times, and to explain to irate
householders who asked what the noise was about that it was 'once for the Father, once for the Son,
and once for the Holy Ghost'! A newspaper reporting this carried the headline 'Is this the way to
Heaven?' The Bishop of London, Dr. Wand, replying on the same page, produced historical and biblical,
support for his advertising campaign, and said he 'would use almost any methods to bring people within
sound of the Gospel, so long as those methods did not contradict the, spirit of the Gospel .21 A noble
sentiment, but I cannot help thinking that the inaugurators of that and similar revivalist campaigns
would save themselves a lot of trouble if they more frequently recalled the lines of Francis Thompson:
There is no expeditious road
To pack and parcel men for God
And save them by the barrel load.

However, the most important question is not 'What are the methods? 'It is 'What is the message? ' If
there were a clearer recognition of the relation of the teachings of Jesus to earlier sources, and also of
the role of the bodily instrument through which alone they or indeed anything else can be understood,
it may well be that a fuller, richer, and more convincing message might be uttered, appealing more
deeply both to the reason and emotions of ordinary people, and yet not violating whatever theological
doctrine anybody cares to entertain.

Down through the ages there has been transmitted an Ancient Wisdom which is the core of every great
religion and which every great religion has sought to restate in terms suited to the times and
circumstances. Some call this ancient wisdom the Eternal Gospel, the Perennial Philosophy, the Timeless

21
Daily Herald, 19th May, 1949.
Truth, or employ other expressions to denote its everlasting nature. In conventional Christianity this
gospel has suffered the fate of all over-formalized religions and has become so- incrusted with dogma,
forms, and ceremonies as to be unrecognizable. Yet there is an Eternal Gospel and, nothing is more
certain than that Christ taught it.

A simple aspect of this teaching which may well serve as a new starting-point to-day (especially but not
only in the appeal to the young) is the elementary fact that when we come into the world we come
endowed with only two gifts: the body, and time. This remains true in every environment. The diverse
conceptions of the soul and its relation to the body are not affected by this presentation, whether the
soul be conceived as an entity installed ready-made in the newborn, babe, or as some form of
reincarnation, or as the totality of the personality at any given moment, or as synonymous with mind, or
as the product of a painful process of psychic rebirth, or as the vehicle of subtler 'astral' or 'etheric'
bodies or as a fractional manifestation of a universal soul. According to St. Paul, 'the body is the temple
of the 'holy spirit', and it is my understanding of the meaning of this that I shall endeavor to set forth.
The body is in every case the sole channel of revelation of all the potentialities of the babe, child, or
adult—consciousness at all levels and at every stage; psyche, pneuma, mind, personality, and every
physical, mental spiritual, or psychic attribute. Admitting the reality of phenomena, sometimes termed
'supersensory' or ' para-normal ', their demonstration and interpretation are possible only through
organs of our physical body and depend upon the condition of those organs. At the same time for no
two instants after first drawing breath is the body ever exactly the same body, every particle of it
undergoes ceaseless change. 'We are such stuff as dreams are made on'—but not only the dreams, the
very canvas on which the dreams are woven ceaselessly changes. Yet in spite of this there is for practical
purposes an isolated continuity. However justly it may be argued that we are all members one of
another, I know that 'I', now writing, was born—separately —on such-and-such a day, that 'I' shall die
separately at some date unknown, and that there is a separate continuity of 'me' between those two
instants. A body, and time—these are, our sole gifts, and salvation depends entirely on what is done
with them.

The most vital and significant assertion ever made about our physical body is contained in Christ's words
that, the kingdom of God, or kingdom of heaven, is within it, and that if we seek rightly we shall find it.
The Kingdom of God comes not by watching for it, or saying, 'Look, it is here', or 'Look, it is there': 'for
the Kingdom of God is within you.'22 And Paul repeated, with characteristic forcefulness: 'Know you not
that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit which is within you? Glorify God in your body.'23 The term
'kingdom of God' or 'kingdom of heaven' was one of those sublime flights of poetic inspiration with
which Jesus so immeasurably enriched the Eternal Gospel. The biblical gospels, as every student knows,
have come down to us in a very incomplete and corrupt form, in translations whose adequacy cannot be
verified, because the original language has been lost, from records first committed to writing at least

22
Luke xvii 21

23
I Corinthians vi 19-20
thirty years after Christ's death and probably not by those whom he taught (men in any case of
immeasurably lesser intellect who may often have missed his meaning), and with so many interpolations
and alterations by chroniclers and translators that both substance and interpretation are often in doubt.
Yet there are expressions which one feels cannot but be authentic merely because it is inconceivable
that they should have been invented by the chroniclers. The term 'kingdom of heaven' is one of these,
and can only be synonymous with 'God' or 'salvation'. Salvation lies within you—heaven is within you—
within the human body—seek and you shall find. That is the message from time immemorial.

The poet Jesus employed terms more beautiful and more appealing than any that had been used before,
yet the eternal truths he uttered had been uttered by many predecessors. They were not original except
in choice and manner of expression. Among other forerunners, the fundamentals of Christ's teaching
were propounded in a very trenchant and intensely practical manner by the man who is usually
regarded as the founder, or rather the codifier, of that system of spiritual training which is broadly
termed Yoga—a word which means literally 'Union with God'. Patanjali lived several centuries before
Christ, and his writings have come down to us in a collection of Sutras—rules or maxims expressed in
short verses in aphoristic form—embodying in terse prosaic terms wisdom that had until then been
transmitted for an unknown length of time only orally and the origins of which must be related to an
antiquity so remote as to defy calculation. Yoga—that is, the concept that 'I and my Father are one, he
that has seen me has seen the Father'—is the main subject also of The Song of God (Bhagavad Gita),
which was composed about the same time or slightly later, the authorship, like that of the Christian
Gospels, being uncertain.24

The assertions of the incarnate deity Jesus as recorded in the Gospels that 'I am in the Father and the
Father in me; before Abraham was, I am; no man comes to the Father but by me; I am the Way, the
Truth, and the Life', constitute the basic theme of the incarnate deity Krishna as recorded in The Song of
God: 'I am God within this frame, Life Eternal that shall not perish; I am the Truth and the Joy forever. . .
I am the beginning and the end; I am the knowledge of things spiritual, and the logic of those that
debate. . . . I am the divine seed of all lives, in this world nothing animate or inanimate exists without
me. . . . I am the End of the Path, the Witness, the Lord, The Sustainer, the Place of Abode, the Friend
and the Refuge. . . .' Similarity even of imagery is striking when one notes some of the apocryphal

24
The word Yoga is the Sanskrit original of the English word 'yoke' in the sense of a 'link'. Yoga is that which links or
unites with God. The word is used to represent either actual union with God or the paths by which this is to be
achieved. The most satisfactory method for the inquirer who is not a student of Sanskrit to acquaint himself with
The Song of God and the Sutras of Patanjali is (just as With the Christian Bible) to study several of the translations
that have been made with copious commentaries, from a comparison of which an adequate picture of the original
may be obtained. Over forty translations have been made of the Bhagavad Gita. The quotations here given are
largely from the recent translation by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood, with an introduction by
Aldous Huxley, published by Phoenix House, 1947. The translations of the Sutras of Patanjali which I have mainly
used are those of Charles Johnston (John Watkins, 1949), M. N. Dvivedi (Theosophical Publishing House, Madras,
1947) and Swami Vivekananda (Advaita Ashrama). A free rendering of a selection of the Sutras will also be found in
Yoga and Western Psychology, by Geraldine Coster.
sayings of Jesus; for example, from the Oxyrhynchus Papyri (about A.D. 200), as quoted by the Dean of
St. Paul's: 'Raise the stone and thou shalt find me, cleave the wood and I am there.' And again: 'Let him
that seeks cease not till he finds, and when he finds he shall be astonished; astonished he shall reach the
Kingdom, and having reached the Kingdom he shall rest.25

Just as Jesus exacted faith and love as prerequisites of salvation, so also did Krishna: 'They who have not
faith in my wisdom shall fail to find me', but 'He whose mind is fixed on me in steadfast love,
worshipping me in perfect faith, I consider him to have great understanding of union with God'. And
again: 'To love is to know me . . . through this knowledge he enters at once into my being.'

Christ's insistence on the extreme difficulty of salvation, which is only for the very few—'Strait is the
gate and narrow the way that leads to salvation, and few there be that find it'—followed Krishna's
warning: 'Who cares to seek for perfect freedom? One man in many thousands. And how many of those
who seek shall know the total truth of my being? Perhaps one only.' For just as Christ denounced the
conventionally righteous who, 'seeing, see but do not perceive', and so cannot be saved, so also Krishna
before him uttered the same warning: 'Thus think the ignorant, that I, the unmanifest, am become man:
they do not know my nature that is one with God, changeless, superhuman. Veiled in my maya 26 , I am
not revealed to many. How shall this world, bewildered by delusion, recognize me who am not born and
change not?'

The doctrine of redemption through love is fundamental to Krishna's gospel as to Christ's. About the
time when Isaiah was crying, 'Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow', the writer of
The Song of God was recording the words of Krishna: 'Though he be soiled with the sins of a lifetime, let
him but love me, rightly resolved in utter devotion, I shall see no sinner, for that man is holy. He that
loves me shall not perish, for holiness shall fashion him to peace eternal.'

The poetry of Jesus cannot be excelled, but a similarity is striking even with this sublime passage: 'Come,
all that are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest, take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I
am meek and lowly in heart, and you shall find rest for your souls.' Krishna's words were: 'Turn you from
this joyless world, and take your delight in me. Fill your heart and mind with me, make every act an
offering to me, bow down and surrender yourselves to me. Set your heart upon me, and lo, you will
enter into my very being.'

Christ's insistence on the obligation, when forced, to fight and do violent combat for the right—'Think
not that I came to send peace on the earth, I came not to send peace, but a sword '—followed the lint of
Krishna's Injunctions to his disciple, Arjunã, not to shirk battle when that disciple, feeling his foes to be
his brother, had believed it wrong to fight them. Thus Krishna: 'If you refuse to fight this righteous war
you will turn aside from duty, you will be a sinner, and disgraced. . . . Stand up now, and fight. Realize

25
Christ, by the Very Rev. W. R. Matthews, K.C.V.O., D.D., Dean of St. Paul's. (Blackie id Son), P. 3.

26
In this case, physical appearance.
that pleasure and pain, gain and loss, victory and defeat, are all one —then go into battle. Thus do and
you cannot sin.'

On the other hand the special exercises contained in the Sermon on the Mount and other portions of
Christ's teaching—not to resist evil but turn the other cheek, to pluck out eye and cut off hand that
offend, to confine speech to yea and nay, to take no thought for the morrow—all such exercises are
essentials of Yogic training, like other severe disciplines, and are to be found in one form or another
throughout esoteric teaching of the Ancient Wisdom. Weight and counter-weight may have to be
applied many times before finding the balancing point of that razor-edge middle way leading to the
strait and narrow gate which Christ said so few will enter. Faith in God is the lesson of all such exercises.
In the words of Christ: 'Be not anxious for the morrow, what you shall eat or drink, or how you shall be
clothed, for your heavenly father knows you have need of these things.' Or in the words of Krishna: 'No
man can achieve Yoga who is anxious about the future or the results of his actions. If a man worship me
and meditate upon me with an undistracted mind, I shall supply all his needs.'

In addressing himself to a crude and acquisitive people Jesus often had to cajole his hearers with the
promise of rewards, as the Church does to-day, but a more esoteric aspect of the doctrine is
represented by the phrase about the 'unprofitable servants'27. In The Song of God this same idea, that
whatever the seeker after salvation achieves by his efforts and sacrifice he still remains totally indebted
to his Lord and unworthy of even the slightest recompense, is severely stressed. 'You have no right to
the fruits of your work. Desire for fruits must never be the motive, but perform every act with your
heart fixed on the Lord of Heaven. Be even tempered in success and failure, for it is this evenness of
temper which is meant by Yoga. In the calm of self-surrender the seer renounces the fruits of his
actions, and so attains enlightenment.' And again: 'Perform every act sacramentally, and be free from all
attachment to results.' Some centuries later Paul echoed the thought: 'Whatsoever you do, do as unto
the Lord.' And in another striking phrase, singularly applicable to-day, Krishna says: 'The world is
imprisoned in its own activity except when acts are performed as worship to God.' 'Imprisoned in its
own activity'—is this not precisely the dilemma of twentieth-century civilization?'28

The Song of God abounds in references to Yoga, mainly those branches concerning work and
renunciation, which are clearly, set forth. The other great Yoga scripture, the Sutras of Patanjali, being
written in the form of terse aphorisms, presents a strong contrast in style with The Song of God. But its
message is the same: the spirit of man, housed in the body, is enmeshed, entangled, and stifled by the
workings of the mind in so far as the mind reacts to external stimuli; union with God can never be
achieved by looking outwards; the first objective of Yoga therefore is to free the mind from this external
bondage, curb its 'whirlpool' activity, and render it capable of apprehending and reflecting the universal

27
See Luke, xvii. io. 'We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do.'

28
Other translators have used the terms 'bound' or ,' tied' by action, but the idea remains the same, that of falling
a prey to or, being entangled by all activity that is not performed sacrificially.
divine consciousness. Its natural state is described by Patanjali as almost the exact opposite of the
conception favoured by modern western science, which regards the mind as a machine. That is precisely
what it is not, according to Patanjali, who speaks of the mind as a 'mirror', which, when all its activities
have been stilled, will reflect the divine or universal mind, just as a lake, when all its surface
disturbances have died away, reveals its own depths and reflects the heavens.

To achieve this ideal state long and severe self-discipline is required. Some of the exercises prescribed
inevitably remind one of the Sermon on the Mount: the student is urged to ponder upon and practice
the extreme opposite of his unbalanced character tendencies. Thus the man of aggressive character
must practice turning the other cheek, whatever humiliations this may entail; the man of quarrelsome
disposition must literally reduce his violent speech to terms of 'yea, yea, nay, nay'; the man of over-
impulsive gestures or lascivious eye must be prepared, if necessary, even to deprive himself of offending
organs rather than let them stand in the way of his salvation. Only thus can men, little by little, arrive at
that objective and non-attached attitude to external circumstances, which is the prerequisite of
receiving impulses from the divine source.

Patanjali recommends devotion to God as the best method to achieve emancipation from the illusions
of the world. He appears to conceive of God in personal terms, as in The Song of God, but with broad
tolerance admits the conception of God also in abstract terms. His view is that, at the outset, it is
obviously impossible for the candidate to grasp the things of the spirit which are the object of his search,
so he cannot possibly yet 'know God'. But to accept the hypothesis of a Supreme Being provides an ideal
to be constantly held, in view, a goal towards which to work; whereas those who by nature and
temperament are unable to accept a priori the concept of a Supreme Being are in the position of
explorers in an unknown land about the nature of which they have not even a theory. They may be no
less sincere on this account than the others, and Patanjali in no sense reproaches them. They are
perhaps in the position of the atheist shoemaker in L. P. Jacks's book Mad Shepherds, of whom it was
said when he died that he had 'spent his breath in proving that God doesn't exist, and his life in proving
that He does'. For this reason Patanjali prescribes both for those who prefer to conceive of God as
unlimited by any definable attributes (and therefore logically non-existent) as well as for those who
impart to him attributes, such as, all-merciful, all-wise, God is love, and so forth. Importance lies not in
the description but in the act of devotion.

As in The Song of God and later in the teaching of Jesus, the tragic fact is stressed that but few will ever
achieve salvation, so exceedingly difficult and perilous is the path. But whereas in the Bible records,
Jesus, with his love of hyperbole and exaggeration, not to say violence of expression, sometimes
pictured a truly ghastly fate as the sole alternative to salvation—the alternative which must, if his words
are accepted literally, inevitably befall the great majority of mankind in any age—Patanjali and The Song
of God more tolerantly describe even the unsuccessful effort as worthwhile; the spirit of man is but a
part of the Universal Spirit clothed in external trappings for the purpose of discipline, and according to
the doctrine of karma no effort is ever lost. In sharp contrast to the conception of the sheep and the
goats and of paradise and hell, Jesus himself, of course, also preached the doctrine of karma—'as a man
sows so shall he reap '—which implies a sort of relativity of salvation, and his more violent moods must
always be considered in relation to the crudity of understanding of his audiences and the need to shock
them out of their indifference and hardness of heart.

Some of the Sutras of Patanjali are highly abstruse and require wide commentary, but the following is a
broad paraphrase of a selection of the earlier verses:

‘Union with God is attained by gaining mastery over the mind and the emotions. The seeker then
becomes aware of himself. Yoga results from the control and finally the total suppression at will of all
processes of thinking, a condition which is brought about by determined and sustained effort in the
practice of non-attachment and dispassion. At first, this condition will only be realized by fits and starts,
but with perseverance it will become habitual. The student who desires to reach this goal must be
prepared to sacrifice all other objectives; he must cultivate energy, memory, and discrimination. Few
truly persevere, and still fewer attain the goal. The main obstacles are ill-health, doubt, negligence,
sloth, vanity, and, self-delusion. Pain, mental distress, nervous disorders, and wrong breathing result
from these causes of distraction. They may be prevented by steadfast concentration on some subject,
and by the conscious practice of sympathy, compassion, loving-kindness, cheerfulness, and by the study
of pranayama, the science of breathing. To eradicate wrong thinking and habits of mind and emotion,
the student should meditate upon and deliberately practice their opposites.

To uproot wrong habits of thought and feeling is essential not only to Yoga, but for the relief of misery.
Among the ways of attaining Yoga, one of the most rapid is devotion to God. God is spirit, unsusceptible
to modifications. He is that eternal infinite of which man is naught but a germ. By concentrated
reflection on the idea of God there comes knowledge of Him and conquest of the obstacles of Yoga.29

We know virtually nothing of the studies and education of Jesus, but it is difficult not to suspect that he
was profoundly versed in the wisdom of the East and especially in the literature of the tremendous
religious renaissance that spread all over Asia about the middle of the first millennium B.C. The incident
of the Magi may be legendary, like so much of the reports about the manner of Jesus' birth; but if there
is any foundation whatever for the Bible story that 'wise men from the East', guided by their astrological
knowledge, came to pay homage to Jesus some time after his birth, is it likely that, having been
prompted to this extraordinary errand by higher powers, they would thereafter totally neglect him to
whom they had been sent? Such a thought is inconceivable. Even if the source of the essentials of
Christ's teaching were less obvious than it is, it would, still be difficult to believe that those 'wise men' or
others of their fraternity should not in course of time have carefully undertaken Jesus' education in the
Ancient Wisdom, all the more so if through their occult intuition they recognized in him the culminating
genius of a galaxy of great teachers.

But in the scanty records of Christ's teaching that have come down to us there is one notable omission:
there is no clear reference to the physical training for the way, the truth, and the life. The general

29
The above are selected from Book I. There are 'four Books in all, containing altogether 194 verses.
message of the Ancient Wisdom30 is to the effect that physical life for its own sake has no value
whatsoever, but that the body must still be treated with great care and respect as the temple of the
Holy Spirit and the vehicle through which the Spirit operates during physical life. Indeed there is one
school of Yoga that holds that Godhead can be achieved through the development of what are
commonly called 'psychic' powers by a process of higher physical education alone. It is deplorable that
as the result of fantastic rumours about this aspect of the subject the word Yoga, instead of its only true
meaning of 'union with God', has sometimes become overlaid in the West with false interpretations, so
much so that some think that Yoga has something to do with stunt-performing fakirs or the wild
practices of masochistic hermits, a conception as false and unjust as to judge Christianity by the
dukhobors or flagellants or self-mutilating eunuchs, or to declare Christianity to be a foul, bloodthirsty,
and even cannibal religion on account of the references in the Eucharist to 'eating my body and drinking
my blood', or the popular hymns advocating 'washing in the blood of the lamb', or even the well-known
motto of the Salvation Army, 'Blood and Fire'. With 'Blood and Fire' openly proclaimed as a motto of
Christianity, and with children being taught, as they are, sanguinary hymns and bellicose battle-chants
such as 'Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war', would it be surprising if at first sight outside
inquirers new to the subject drew very strange conclusions? So it is, alas, also with Yoga. A self-
mutilating eunuch or flagellant may say he is a Christian, and masochistic fakirs may call themselves
Yogis, but we need not on that account accept them as typical.

Like other religious and philosophic systems, that of Yoga has come to be presented in many different
manners, in varied forms, and by a variety of schools whose advocates may hold contrasted views as to
its exposition. For western students the simplest division is into seven branches, all of equal importance,
interdependent and overlapping, each representing not an independent study but a predominant
approach. As in the various branches of the Christian Church, considerable difference of view exists
regarding the relative merits of the several paths of approach, without, however, the ultimate goal
being called in question. For the sake of those unacquainted with the subject I will very briefly
summarize them, beginning with the four which are constituent elements of western culture.

Raja Yoga represents the psychological approach, the 'study of the mind in all its aspects (conscious,
subconscious, super-conscious) including the imagination in every form, its control and concentration.
The language in which the teaching is couched is often abstruse, but summed up in simple biblical terms
familiar to us its motto might well be: 'As a man thinks within himself, so is he.'

Karma Yoga, is the path of action, the study of the law of action and reaction in all activities, therefore
the cultivation of right works, not merely in the narrow philanthropic meaning, but in the ,widest sense
that our most trivial and secret acts bear fruit for good or evil. 'Do unto others as you would they should
do unto you: as a man sows, so shall he reap.'

30
A useful compendium of the Ancient Wisdom from other sources than The Song of God and the Sutras of
Patanjali is provided in The Bible of the World, edited by Robert O. Ballou, of which an abridged version also exists
entitled The Pocket World Bible. Many useful quotations will be found also in Aldous Huxley's The Perennial
Philosophy (Chatto and Windus, 1947).
Bhakti Yoga is the path of love and devotion, sometimes referred to as the path of religion, renunciation
and self-sacrifice both in the monastic interpretation and that of the social welfare worker. It is summed
up in St. Paul's words: 'Being rooted and grounded in love, may you apprehend with all the saints what is
the breadth and length and height and depth and know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge.'

Jnana Yoga is the path of knowledge and learning. In this approach the world and universe are regarded
as God made manifest, therefore every step along the path of learning in whatever direction must bring
us nearer to knowledge of God. It is the path of the research worker, the student and the scientist.
'There is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, and hidden that shall not be made known.'

These paths obviously form part and parcel of western culture in its broadest sense, the difference
between the Yoga approach and that of the westerner lying mainly in the fact that the student of Yoga
sets out in every case with an absorbing faith in the possibility of achieving union with the Ultimate
Reality as the highest possible aim of man, and with the abiding belief that every step he takes—even
his momentary false steps, since we must in all things learn by adventure—brings him nearer to that
goal.

For this reason, in every true school of Yoga, under whatever name or, title,31 it will be found that what
are commonly called the basic virtues of Christianity, such as hope and charity, patience and
perseverance, unselfishness and a keen sense of duty and personal unworthiness, are regarded as a
prerequisite to training, to be cultivated before any of the 'mysteries of the kingdom', to use Christ's
own expression, can be opened up to the student. These virtues, which in conventional Christianity are
often regarded as an all-sufficing objective, in Yoga are regarded as a condition for embarking upon the
quest in the first instance. The type of person worthy to enter the path is thus described by Krishna: 'He
is straightforward, truthful, and of an even temper. He harms none. He is charitable. He has a tranquil
mind and an unmalicious tongue. He is compassionate towards all. He is not greedy. He is gentle and
modest. He abstains from useless activity. He is free from hatred and pride.' Only to such the 'mysteries
of the Kingdom' can be revealed.

Christ's statement about the 'mysteries of the Kingdom', which, he said, are not and indeed by their very
nature cannot be given to the multitude or to anybody not specially prepared to receive them,
exemplifies an essential feature of all esoteric schools, namely, the conception of 'inner circles'. There is
a teaching for the 'outer circle' and there is a teaching for the 'inner circles', of which there are bound to
be several before arriving at the innermost, the abode of the Most High. There is really no mystery
about this. The 'circles' correspond in some measure to the classes of any school or college of ordinary

31
It is important to note that the Ancient Wisdom is transmitted also through systems in which the term 'Yoga'
never appears and in which the terminology may differ widely from that of Yoga, yet the paths ultimately meet,
since truth is one, though variously expressed. If, in spite of criticisms which appear in this book, I see great
advantage in the Yoga presentation it is firstly because in its true form it coincides so largely with that of Christ as
recorded in the Gospels, and secondly because the very word Yoga connotes in itself the totality of aspirations of
all religious systems of all time.
education. What would be thought of a school where the pupils were presented with the differential
calculus before they had yet learned simple arithmetic? Even to mention the existence of the calculus to
a child entering preparatory school would be to confuse his mind and prejudice his progress. There is a
metaphysical as well as physical application of the adage about not attempting to cross streams before
you reach them.

Two other branches of Yoga which have unfortunately been completely lost in conventional Christianity
are Laya Yoga and Mantra Yoga. Space allows only cursory reference to them. Laya Yoga is the Yoga of
'fire', that is, power, the manifestation of universal energy which reveals itself as the life force
maintaining the heat of the body, and includes the study of sex, therefore also of ideal sexual
relationships, though it also includes the 'sublimation' of sexual energy as an adjunct to other branches
of Yoga. Mantra Yoga is, broadly, the Yoga of sound. I have mentioned this in earlier chapters. The
theory, in so far as such conceptions are capable of being expressed in any words at all, is that at the
beginning of things the first differentiation in chaos is a vibration, the primeval stirring of creation.
Vibration is necessarily accompanied by sound, not of course audible sound of our infinitesimal range of
hearing, but the fundamental sound which constitutes, as it was expressed to me many years ago, the
'tonic note of the Universe'. We know, even from the very few octaves of our limited range of hearing,
that every octave is a replica, at a different level of vibration, of all other octaves, and that octave notes
vibrate spontaneously in sympathetic unison provided the tuning is precise. The theory asserts that, by
careful search in prepared conditions, series of vibrations can be established which reflect on the human
physical level the tonic note of the universe, with results that are seemingly miraculous, and which, can
produce astonishing transformative changes, within the physical organism. I have referred to one or two
of my own elementary experiments in this field, which naturally appealed to me as a musician. In verbal
sound, the word 'Om" or 'A-u-m', long drawn out on a low musical note, is said to be the sound most
nearly approximating to an echo of the primordial note, and Om is therefore sometimes said to be the
name of God. As I have pointed, out in an earlier chapter, the knowledge of mantra certainly existed, in
the earliest Christian Church, and the practice of chanting parts of the Church service on single notes
even to-day is a relic of it. What has been completely lost is the scientific nature of mantra as a
physiological exercise with a spiritual end, requiring long study and training. All verbal prayer,
invocation, and incantation also are part of mantra.32

Last of the seven branches is Hatha, or physical, Yoga, which may be divided into elementary and
advanced. Elementary physical Yoga is the basis and sine qua non of all the other branches, since only by
our maintaining the physical instrument in a fit state of tuning is it possible for the divine Performer to
evoke those celestial strains which it is the duty and privilege of man to co-operate in producing.

32
Recent scientific investigation lends much support, expressed in western terms, to the theory of mantra, though
it can never attain its practical effects because it proceeds by analyzing instead of directly, using the, organs,
through which the manifestation's occur. But it has proved that 'thought proceeds by electrical disturbances in the
brain, which are accentuated by the concomitant, utterance of words, and that these disturbances result in
physiological changes.
Advanced physical Yoga, in which no instruction can be given except by direct and isolated tuition, deals
with those exceedingly difficult and sometimes perilous practices which, when pursued successfully,
result in the production of 'miracles' and other phenomena. Elementary Yoga embraces the many
varieties of breathing exercises, methods of internal cleansing, postures and movements designed to
stimulate nervous activity, and a study of diet. Greater or less stress is laid on physical Yoga according to
the necessities of the case. No two organisms are ever quite alike. Every man and woman suffers from
some disability or other, often secret, often ill understood, no man may judge another, and in so far as
we are all mortal we are all beggars at the throne of grace. Nevertheless, when every allowance has
been made for heredity, accident, and the voluntary sacrifice of health or limb for a noble cause, the
principle still remains of universal application that it is the first duty of man to co-operate with his
Creator to the extent—which lies entirely within his own power—of providing the Holy Spirit with the
fittest and finest-tuned instrument he possibly can in the given circumstances, and to regard his or her
physical body, even if handicapped or crippled, as the sacred medium through which alone the Holy
Spirit is able to manifest during physical life.33

With this end constantly in view it is not surprising that physical training on Yoga principles is very
different from 'P.T.' as commonly understood and practiced. It is not designed to produce large muscles
or athletic prowess, but aims primarily at purification of the blood and refinement of the nerves. Health
and strength, alertness and agility, enhanced resistance to disease,, greater general fitness, and a vastly
increased enjoyment of physical life, all tend automatically to result, but they are regarded as 'extras',
they are the things which 'are added unto you' when the kingdom of God is sought first. The organs
most immediately concerned in purifying the blood and refining the nerves are the alimentary tract and
the lungs. Consequently internal cleanliness, moderation in diet, and exercises for controlling the breath
are regarded as essential. When the Yogi34 prays 'Create in me a clean heart and renew a right spirit
within me', he interprets the prayer literally. A clean heart can only be one through which pure blood
flows. Blood can only be kept pure by appropriate alimentation and efficient oxygenation. As for 'right
spirit', it suffices merely to note that throughout the Christian scriptures, and especially in the New
Testament, the words 'spirit' and 'breath' are closely allied and often identical in the original.

'Restraining the ingoing and outgoing of the breath' finds specific mention several times in The Song of
God, and is stressed no less in the Sutras of Patanjali. Breath-training is always linked with certain
postures of the body which facilitate the harmonious 'development of the physique and exert pressure
upon various glands and nerve centres in such a way as to stimulate their activity. Other movement
exercises which may be regarded as specifically belonging to Yoga are derived from close observation of

33
For authoritative translations and commentaries of Sanskrit works on Yoga the reader is referred especially to
the writings of Arthur Avalon (Sir John Woodroffe, former High Court Judge of Calcutta and Chief Justice of Bengal,
and later reader in Indian Law to the University of Oxford until 1930) Shakti and Shakta, The Serpent Power, and
Studies in Mantra Shastra are three of his major works (Luzac & Co., London, and Ganesh '& Co., Madras).

34
A student or practitioner of Yoga is known as a Yogi or Yogin.
the body's natural spontaneous impulses when these are not impeded or corrupted by perverted habits
or inhibited by social convention.

It may be objected that, if the truth of this identification of spirit and breath be admitted, it can only
contain a message of hope for the comparatively young and must be a counsel of despair to the middle-
aged or elderly who are confirmed in their habits. This is a very mistaken view. As if by special grace of
Providence, the texture of the lungs is the most elastic of the whole body, and while the advantage of
early training is not disputed, any normal person can still begin to explore his or her hidden possibilities
at any age, with the common sense provisos of gradual approach and patience and perseverance in
application.35 Some elementary indications can he obtained from books on the subject, but after a
certain point guidance is advisable since no two persons are constructed alike. An analogy is found in
psychology: what psychologist or psychiatrist would dream of handling all patients exactly alike
according to a set book of rules? Discrimination is needed; mistakes may lead to misfortune in one case
as in the other, especially as physical Yoga is intended ultimately to lead to an expansion of
consciousness, and this expansion of consciousness sometimes takes the form of what are commonly
called 'psychic' powers.36 The ignorant and misinformed, hearing of these things, are liable to imagine,
very mistakenly, that the acquisition of such 'powers' is one of the chief aims of Yoga, whereas they
should be regarded rather as concomitants serving as pointers, to be used exclusively for further
progress. Every true Yoga teacher will enjoin strictly upon his students that the appearance of such
'powers' must never be revealed, or even spoken of, except to those who have already reached the
same or a higher level of development.

35
An observation by Professor Schede, Director of the Orthopaedic University Clinic of Leipzig, in his Hygiene des
Fusses, is worth noting: 'I am always astonished how rapidly and thoroughly, even in advanced age, the muscular
system can be revivified if it is only given what it needs—abundant alternation between extension and contraction,
tension and relaxation'. The italics are mine. This comment concerns the muscles in general, but must have
peculiar application to those which, in the nature of things, never cease to function at least partially during life.

36
In a broadcast on the Physical Basis of Mind (the Listener, 9.6.49) a Physician stressed the important fact,
fundamental in Yoga, that awareness is always fluid, a matter of degree. 'There is no such entity as consciousness,
we are from moment to moment differently conscious. Consciousness is a state of awareness, absolutely
dependent on the information our senses provide. The awareness we have of our own bodies plays a quite special
part. .. . . Consciousness and intellectual powers depend above all on the brain, and on its nourishment by blood of
exactly the right quality. This is true for all such aspects of consciousness as perception, attention, memory, and
reasoning. Alteration of the brain's blood supply causes changes in consciousness. . . .' This is precisely the starting-
point for the spiritual adventure of Yoga. In the same talk the speaker pointed out also some of the ways in which
consciousness is affected (unpleasantly at first, if uncontrolled) by altering the mod of breathing. After admitting
the still experimental stage of this study he concluded: 'What we already know does however suggest that the
relationship between body and mind is so intimate that they are best regarded as one. . . . The lower limits of mind
we can see in infants, domestic animals, sleeping man, and the mentality of affected patients. Of what its upper
limits may be we have no conception.' It is these upper limits that Yoga aspires to explore.
The acquisition of such 'powers' has been part of the common experience of religious mystics in all
times. After severe austerities and prolonged prayer and meditation which consciously or unconsciously
involved restraint of the breath and mantric exercises of great penetrating power, coupled with intense
concentration, many great mystics have seen 'visions', heard 'voices', received 'revelations', and
acquired powers beyond those ordinarily known on the physical plane. Yoga embraces the orderly and
scientific study of the means by which these states are arrived at, and the proper cultivation of their use.
The art and science of breath finds no specific mention in the New Testament as it does in The Song of
God and the Sutras of Patanjali, but the fact that secret information of a personal nature was imparted
by Jesus to, a chosen few is clearly indicated. Not only were the twelve disciples told that they were the
recipients of ' mysteries' which must not be communicated to ordinary people, thus forming an 'inner
circle', but there was another inner circle within the inner circle of the twelve, consisting of only two or
three of the most favoured disciples to whom further mysteries were imparted which were not for the
remainder of the twelve. The circumstances of the transfiguration illustrated such a case, and the naïve
observations of the witnesses of that event (or possibly the writers) showed how little even they
understood of what took place. The total loss of all this side of Jesus's teaching may well be due, of
course, if modern research is correct, to the fact that in all probability the Gospels were written, many
years later, not by any of the disciples but by unknown authors who used the names of Matthew, Mark,
and John for authority. The writer of Luke in any case is known never to have seen Jesus. Nevertheless a
specific reference to the sanctity of physical breath is found in verses 21 and 22 of the twentieth chapter
of St. John's Gospel: 'Jesus said [to the disciples], "Peace be unto you: as my Father has, sent me, so also
I send you." And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and said: "Receive ye the Holy Ghost."'

If these verses are accepted, the relation between physical breath and the holy spirit is clearly
established by Christ himself, and it becomes permissible at least to suspect strongly that the missing
parts of Jesus's teaching may have been of such a nature as to confirm that the terms 'breath', 'holy
spirit', and 'holy ghost' merely refer to different aspects of the same thing. The term most often
employed in Yoga texts is prana, which represents both the universal essence which is supposed to be
the primordial matter of creation, the source of all existence, and at the same time physical breath as its
most obvious physiological manifestation. Christ's conception is thus shown to be identical with that of
Yoga. In this conception all duality vanishes primordial matter and primordial spirit are identified, 'I and
my Father are One’ takes on a new and intensely real and practical meaning.37

37
In the Listener of 3oth June, 1949, there is recorded the summing-up of the series on the Physical Basis of Mind,
by Lord Samuel, Professor A. J. Ayer, and Professor Gilbert Ryle. Lord Samuel, clinging to the old duality, frankly
confessed his belief that the problem of mind and body was insoluble. Professor Ayer said: 'My conclusion is that
mind, and body are not to be conceived as two disparate entities between which we have to find, some 'sort of
amphibious bridge, but that talking about minds and talking about bodies are different ways of classifying and
interpreting our experiences.' Professor Ryle denied that a 'mind coupled with a body' was the correct description
of a human being, and regarded mind purely as a function of physical life. The philosophy of Yoga admits that
mental activity is a department of physical life, but asserts that not through activity but through cessation of
activity—the stilling of the mind so that it becomes a mirror—the ultimate unity of all creation is at last realized.
The duty to perform the act of breathing as we are truly intended to perform it thus acquires a
significance which places it in the very forefront of religious exercises, since it is that by which verily we
live, move, aspire, and have our being. The very word 'aspire' means to 'breathe towards'. To breathe
wrongly is to defy the Holy Ghost, for by diminishing through ignorance or neglect our intake of the
divine life-force we to that extent impede its operations in our physical, mental, and spiritual life.

Yet how many people do breathe properly? Without some extra stimulus breathing in most people
simply takes the line of least resistance and consists of a feeble motion of the bellows to and fro at
about the middle of their range. It is positively appalling to reflect that the vast majority, including the
medical profession, and—still worse—the leaders of the Church, are content to regard such 'breathing'
as quite normal. Many experience unpleasant symptoms at the first attempt to use properly the lungs
with which the Creator has provided them so that they may aspire, that is, breathe towards Him, and
they decide on this account that such breathing must be bad for them, much as a confirmed drug addict
might claim that it was wrong to give up his vice because of the immediate resultant discomfort. Or they
will argue, as I used to argue with one of my earliest teachers, that breathing is a 'spontaneous' function
which is best left to take care of itself, a purely 'physical' activity which can have nothing to do with the
spiritual side of life.

From the point of view of Yoga, to restore breathing to its natural fullness is essential but is still merely
the beginning of the matter. There are many different modes of breathing, each of which has a specific
purpose. Among the most important is mantric breathing and incantation, of which the present-day
chanting of Church prayers and responses is a debased relic. Some of these modes of breathing require
instruction to practice them properly, but some of the most valuable for the purposes of everyday
exercise are derived simply from those different ways of breathing which are a matter of daily
observation, so commonplace that they are for the most part entirely overlooked, as so often happens
with the obvious. Laughing, sobbing, sighing, gasping, panting, sniffing, and yawning are all modes of
breathing with special effects, some of them of great value, all of them remedial, defensive, or
exhilarating and clearly designed by nature for some good purpose; yet how many people take the
trouble to examine them with a view to constructing from them exercises that will accentuate their
remedial, defensive, or exhilarating effect? It sometimes seems that the Delphic motto 'Know thyself',
often sententiously quoted, is in practice as studiously disregarded by the physio-psychologists as is 'The
kingdom of heaven is within you' by the moralists.

Yoga practices are of great variety, but whether the exercise takes the form of faster, slower, or
interrupted breathing the objective is always the same, namely, to obtain control over the breath and
thus over the mind. Control implies restraint. As has already been indicated, the theory is that, the mind
in its ideal state being not a machine but a mirror, by restraining the breath the fluctuations of the mind
can be controlled and reduced, eventually to complete quiescence; and this is truly to 'awaken' to
Reality. The idea that our ordinary state of consciousness resembles 'sleep' and that our ordinary mental
operations are of the nature of 'dreams' is inherent in the philosophy of Yoga. To realize these
operations as 'dreams' is to begin to open the door to Reality. The Song of God puts it thus: 'You dream
you are the doer, you dream that action is done, you dream that action bears fruit; it is the world's
delusion that gives you these dreams. . . When the light of the soul drives out darkness, then that light
shines forth from us, a sun in splendour, the revealed Deity.'

'Be still, and know that I am God' is the very essence of Yoga. In this condition the universal spirit is at
last clearly reflected; the apparent dualism which consists in regarding the Holy Spirit now as the breath
itself, now as the indweller in the kingdom of God that is within us, is resolved, the seeker becomes
identified with the sought, and Yoga is achieved. Exceedingly few, as Christ insisted, ever realize this
degree of salvation, but, as Krishna said, no effort is ever lost, and it is impossible not to believe that
Jesus meant exactly the same thing by saying that as a man sows so shall he reap. Moreover, 'effort'
sometimes takes the form of doing nothing, a strange conception to many in this age of crazed activity.
To achieve stillness is not easy.38 Some of Jesus's most difficult sayings have new light shed on them
when thus approached. Cases in point are the parable of the husbandman who paid all workers alike,
even though some had sweated in the field all day and others but one hour, and the saying: To him who
has shall be given and he shall have abundance, but from him who has not shall be taken away even that
which he seems to have.

The link between physical and spiritual salvation can be pictured even in strictly chemical terms which
may perhaps shock the conventionally righteous (that class of the pious whom Jesus so heartily detested
but may possibly appeal to the more scientifically minded. The process of life in the 'human' organism
consists, in the final analysis, in the combustion of carbon by oxygenation, all other chemical processes
being subsidiary to this. The never-ending struggle between oxygen and carbon in the body is in
chemical terms the struggle between 'good' and 'evil'. Oxygen is God and carbon is the Devil, and the
speed and thoroughness with which one consumes the other determines the degree in which we are
truly alive.

In this pleasant and appropriate metaphor the remaining chemical elements appear as the 'angels', of
light or darkness according to the role they play in the perennial drama of metabolism. The symbolism
of this chemical simplification is worth pondering upon, for carbon is as necessary to life, and so to our
development, as oxygen. Which of them then is really the more 'divine'? This is an ancient philosophical
dilemma, and it is paradoxes such as this that may have inspired the author of the Yoga prayer which
begins:

‘Throughout all worlds, 0 Lord of all worlds, teach me to discern the laws of resemblance and
correspondence; to perceive the great in the small, the high in the lowly, the good in the ill, and Thyself

38
The means to achieve quiescence are by no means always passive. To learn 'to think of nothing' itself involves
initial effort. To stop abruptly in the middle of any action or movement and examine one's detailed position,
mental and physical, and how one arrived at it requires conscious effort, but it is an exercise leading to control and
stillness. Such exercises derive from the spontaneous natural impulse to hold the breath and stiffen the body at
any moment of sudden concentration, such as listening intently for an expected sound, and show once again how
grossly negligent we are in our observation of our own selves and the lessons that can be learnt from 'the obvious
that we never see'.
in all.' Expressed in chemical terms, the conquest of carbon by oxygen is the alpha and omega of the
science of breathing. As indicated in earlier chapters, marked physiological effects amounting to
permanent modifications (in other words, to being 'born again') can be wrought by altering the normal
ratio of carbon and oxygen in the body, consciously reducing the carbon through special dieting while
consciously increasing the oxygen through special modes of breathing; and this may be the key,
expressed in chemistry, to the association between prayer and fasting insisted upon in all great religions.
Having drawn this analogy, however, it is necessary to reiterate that Yoga texts stress the
indispensability of certain character-qualities—broadly those commonly referred to as the 'Christian
virtues '—as a basic prerequisite for training, for success depends upon a high ideal being clearly fixed in
view from the outset.39 But from the outset also, it is no less necessary to reiterate, the intimate link
between the spiritual and the physical must never be lost. Even the crudest popular wisdom—often
profound in spite of crudity—recognizes this in the creation of such expressions as 'a man of guts',
'bowels of compassion', 'hardness of heart', 'splenetic', 'breath of life', ‘full-blooded’, 'chicken-livered' 'in
good vein', 'stomaching' a thing, 'a spineless individual', or Shakespeare's 'man of my kidney', and so
forth. Aristotle, indeed, thought the kidneys were the seat of the soul!'40

Although, strictly speaking, Yoga is not a religion but a method of approach or a system of training
applicable in any religion, nevertheless in so far as it is founded on a belief in the possibility of achieving
union with God it is infused with the character and fervour of a religion, even when, in seeming paradox,
a state of complete dispassion is cultivated as an essential stage along the path. In the sense that it is
selective it can never be 'popular' or 'social', it can only be personal. It is the study of a man's immediate
relationship to God, in whatever terms he wishes to think of God. If the anomalies of formalized religion
cause, as they do even in persons of sincerity, a revulsion against the very word 'God', it is the study of a
man's immediate relation to the 'life force' or 'life principle' or 'nature', or whatever anybody likes to call
it, which is, of course, only saying the same thing in other terms. One thing is inescapable. Whatever we
may prefer to call the supreme power of the universe, its manifestations in man take place throughout
physical life entirely through the medium of the physical body and the flowering of the potentialities
latent therein. The messianic message for which the world thirsts is the spiritual and sacred nature of
physical values.

39
The necessity of this becomes clear when it is remembered that the 'powers' acquired by the great mystics were
usually stumbled upon by accident in the course of their devotions and through practicing certain austerities. The
same powers may, of course, be stumbled upon by anybody, and the direction in which they will be applied will
depend upon the quality and direction of the practitioner's thoughts. If these are low and selfish they will be
employed for evil ends, and their use to such ends leads to what is sometimes called 'satanism' or 'black magic'.
The foolish are prone on this account to condemn the 'powers', which is just as absurd as to condemn the faculties
of sight, speech, or thought because some misuse them.

40
An exhaustive account of man's search for the soul and the many theories that have been entertained regarding
it from primitive times to the present day will be found in In Search of the Soul, by Bernard Hollander, M.D. (two
vols.; Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co.)
It is astonishing to observe the limits of equivocation and self-delusion to which some will go, even
people of marked intellect, to deny or ignore this assertion. If challenged they will argue (quite
justifiably) that 'the body is not all', there is 'something more', and (no less justifiably) that this
'something' is much more important; but they then jump to the totally unjustifiable conclusion that
therefore only this 'something' need be considered, and that the degree in which the body is enfeebled
or diseased is of no consequence whatever to the 'soul', or 'psyche', or whatever term they choose to
apply. And yet, even while arguing, they may be heard to complain of fatigue, indigestion, headache,
insomnia, constipation, colds, or more serious ailments which are rendering their treasured 'something'
as good as null and void! People of this type will go to almost any lengths to avoid facing the (to them)
unpalatable but inescapable fact, with all its implications, that their 'something' operates entirely
through the physical organism which is its sole channel of revelation, and that man's first duty to his
Maker and himself, not to speak of friends, relatives, and society, is to maintain not merely in good but
in the highest possible condition the instrument which is God's operating medium. With this as starting-
point, the man of intelligence and courage, when reflecting with awe upon the miracle instrument which
he is, is bound to ask himself whether there may not lie within it further latent possibilities, to be
discovered not merely by the external approach of dissection and analysis, but by direct experiment and
exploration within himself. Physiology and biology, endocrinology and embryology, all daily reveal,
marvels of the human mechanism which cannot but strengthen the suspicion of further potentialities,
but the external analytical approach alone can never unearth the ultimate secret. The western
physiologist is somewhat in the position of an intelligent and enterprising mechanic who, being
presented with a car he does not fully understand, dismantles and examines it piece by piece to see how
it works. The explorer in Yoga, finding himself in what he suspects to be the driver's seat, by dint of
cautious, patient, and often risky and adventurous experimentation with the controls, discovers that he
can, as it were, identify himself with the genius of the maker to the extent of causing the car to move at
his own will, provided he strictly obeys the maker's laws regarding care, maintenance, and manipulation.
Having discovered this awesome secret he is less concerned about the structure or nomenclature of the
parts.

What can we do to recover this Ancient Wisdom with which western civilization has so sadly lost touch?
To restore to God the thing that is God's, where shall we begin? The straight and narrow path of severe
self-discipline can only be trodden by the solitary individual, but the crowds that wait in the outer courts
may yet gather crumbs that fall from the Master's table, and thus their appetite may be whetted. The
Masters of the Ancient Wisdom leave their outer doors wide open, even if they screen further in-goers.
Those who treasure the demagogic slogans of to-day may console themselves 'with the thought that the
outermost portals of the innermost temple are unreservedly democratic in their 'welcome to all'. How
can we assure to a larger number of inquirers the prospect of possible salvation?

I mentioned earlier that the immediate aim of Yoga physical culture is not the acquisition of great
muscular strength or athletic prowess but the purification of the blood and the refinement of the
nerves, coupled with the inculcation of certain traits of character and a devotion to self-study, but this
should not be taken as disparagement of athletics. An athletic training indeed is an admirable
preparation for Yoga, and those who have received it in any form are at an advantage. The cultivation of
the team spirit and a sense of chivalry towards opponents, the atmosphere of simultaneous contest and
co-operation, the aspiration to excel while remaining one of a fraternity, obedience to accepted rules,
the code of 'playing the game '—all these help to build up those very traits which are regarded as an
essential prerequisite for initiation. From the Yoga standpoint, the athlete imbued with the generous
spirit of 'playing the game' stands very near the gates of the kingdom of heaven.

Such also was the Greek ideal in the greatest days of Grecian glory. Why have we lost the essentially
religious attitude towards physical beauty, prowess, and efficiency as the groundwork of mental and
spiritual training which so distinguished the Greeks at the height of their civilization? It was the custom
for the Greek artists and philosophers to be trained in the stadium at the same time as the schools.
Their thinkers were sprinters, their astronomers wrestlers, their mathematicians high-jumpers and
throwers of the discus. Plato contended regularly in the games. Pythagoras won the wrestling
championship at the age of eighteen. Socrates underwent severe physical training, and Lempriere41
observes that consequently Socrates as a warrior 'fought with boldness and intrepidity . . . he was fond
of labour, inured himself to suffer hardships and thus acquired that serenity of mind which the most
alarming dangers could never destroy nor the most sudden calamities alter'. The ideal is admirably set
forth by Lucian in a dialogue between Solon and Anarchasis, a stranger who had deprecated the
exercises he had witnessed at Athens.42' 'You have no idea,' the great lawgiver is reported as saying,
'what is a good political constitution or you would not deprecate the best of our customs. If you ever
take the trouble to inquire how a state may best be organized and its citizens best developed you will
find yourself commending 'these practices and the earnestness with which we cultivate them. . . . Our
first and engrossing preoccupation is to make our citizens noble of spirit and strong of body. …Our
young fellows are ruddy and sun-burnt and steady-eyed, there is spirit and fire and virility in their looks,
they are in prime condition, neither shrunken and withered nor inclined to corpulence, but well and
truly proportioned. They have sweated out the waste superfluity of their tissues. 'Purged from all
inferior admixture, the stuff that gives strength and activity remains part of their substance. Our
gymnastics are like a winnowing fan that blows away the chaff and collects the clean grain. . . .' And
speaking of the rewards to be reaped by this training, Solon pronounces these noble words: 'Our view is
not directed to the carrying off of prizes. The indirect benefit we secure is of more importance. There is
another contest in which all good citizens get prizes. Its crowns are not of pine or wild olive but of
complete human happiness, including individual freedom and political independence, wealth and
repute, security of our dear ones, and all the choicest boons a man might ask of heaven. Of these
materials are the crowns woven, and they are provided by those contests for which this training and
these labours are the preparation.'43

41
Classical Dictionary. Article on Socrates.
42
Lucian: Anarchasis.
43
In an article 'Art and Athletics' (Observer, 11.7.48) at the time of the Olympiad Of 1948 in London, Mr. James
Layer echoed this ideal 'All great epochs have this moral and artistic unity, and it is because we so conspicuously
lack it that we are but clever barbarians at best. . . We must be whole men before we can become whole nations.
To "make whole" is to cure, and the world is very sick. Where shall we find the men to call us to our spiritual
Olympiad and to proclaim throughout Europe the Truce of God?'
There is much talk nowadays about reviving physical values, but not much appears actually to have been
done. Already several years ago, in reporting the discussion on education of the Psychology Section of
the British Association in September 1937, The Times stated that 'there was general agreement that the
syllabus of the school-leaving certificate should be modified so as to make the examination a test of
preparedness for life rather than of preparedness for a university'. But what constitutes 'preparedness
for life'? Of what use are intellectual attainments without at the same time improved physique, not to
speak of character, or of the ability to cope with the commonest physical emergencies? The physical
actions most called for in common emergencies are running, jumping, throwing, lifting, and swimming,
together with a knowledge of first aid. Why, in the interest both of ordinary health and 'preparedness
for life' was a minimum standard in these accomplishments not included in the school-leaving
certificate? Eleven years after that pious resolution, in May 1948, when a government that claimed to
be particularly concerned for the welfare of the masses had been three years in power, a Labour peer,
Lord Lindsay of Birker, Master of Balliol College, Oxford, felt constrained in a debate in the House of
Lords on the quality of candidates for the Civil Service, to protest strongly against the number of boys
entering universities, mostly state scholars, 'who were no good at all, whose health was hopeless, they
had no physique, they just made one despair. . .... The competition for state scholarships had ruined
their health and usually ruined their minds'. Yet they could pass examinations! And Lord Lindsay added:
'I don't think we shall get this put right until local authorities have a qualifying examination in health and
personality and spirit.'44

A year later the Ministry of Education published a pamphlet entitled Citizens Growing Up, which gave
much excellent advice on the subject of training for citizenship: 'All school subjects should contribute to
developing character as well as intellect'; 'the greatest general contribution science can make to the life
of a good citizen is a sense of wonder'; 'while good citizenship implies good intent, it equally implies
competence; it demands certain qualities of character—integrity, purposiveness, public spirit; it needs
practical good sense—wisdom and judgment in affairs . . a recognition of and respect for quality; a
vigorous spirit of adventure and enjoyment learning to shoulder responsibility, make decisions, take
action and acquire practice in intelligent leadership.' And yet the fundamental question of physique, on
which the successful practice of the art of private and public life must depend, was dismissed in a single
sentence: 'Our health is our own business, and so is our religion' and there it was left!

Such a qualifying examination as that recommended by Lord Lindsay is certainly most desirable, but on a
deeper view of the matter, is this a question for the local authorities alone? If the body is the temple of
the Holy Spirit, as the Scripture asserts, is the matter not one in which the Church might be expected to
display some interest? Yet not one representative of the Church took any part in the long and
interesting debate on the condition of our youth from which I have quoted. Are we to take it that
though the Church makes frequent appeals for the upkeep and improvement of temples made with
hands, when it comes to the upkeep and improvement of the temple of the Holy Spirit its leaders regard

44
Hansard Report, 26.5.48.
this as of lesser consequence? Even athletics and games receive but qualified, support. Speaking on
athletics from the pulpit of Canterbury Cathedral45 at a service in aid of the Playing Fields Association of
which the Duke of Edinburgh, who was present, is President, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Geoffrey
Fisher, did admit that 'bodily health and spiritual being are closely intertwined', and granted that to
provide facilities for athletic development was 'a work of charity in its proper sense', but his address on
the whole was anything but the 'stirring appeal for a revival of the Greek ideal which might have been
expected from the occasion. Yet if bodily health and spiritual being, are 'closely intertwined', should not
those who train our moral instructors insist on their being exemplary instruments in their own persons?
And consequently, if for this purpose athletic training is admitted to be of any value at all—and the
Archbishop did at least concede some value both for character and health—should not the priesthood
be among the most efficient exponents of it? If indeed they were, if every minister of the Gospel were
the natural captain of the, local cricket or football team, or an accomplished exponent of the arts of
wrestling, boxing, or athletics, bow much mightier would be the appeal of their moral message to the
young who, as Lord Montgomery was constrained truly to say, have lost faith in God and in themselves
for lack of guidance and leadership that they can understand. There are many ways in which
conventional Christianity needs to be revivified by adopting the broader attitude to life so richly
illustrated in Yoga. In Yoga no conflict exists between its various branches; the study and refinement of
mental processes, right action, every variety of learning and science, a devout and aspiring attitude to
the Creator and His manifestations, all based on the cultivation of a highly trained, resourceful, and
responsive physical organism through which to work. The leaders of the Church will probably not
quarrel with this universality of outlook, but it is strange to find the organization which claims to give
the nation a moral lead in all departments of life allowing that the condition of the sole instrument
provided by our Maker to do His work is a matter of secondary consequence.

Will conventional Christianity ever recover its lost vitality? There is at least a widespread feeling that
much is wrong and that sweeping revaluations are needed. The pamphlet Citizens Growing Up from
which I have already quoted states aptly that 'if religious, aesthetic, and humane experience is willing to
reinterpret its basic values in the light of scientific knowledge and of the changing forms of social
organization, the schools can play apart in restating acceptably truths that may yet set society on a
steadier course'; and adds, especially, that,' the doctrine of the Kingdom of Heaven is full of
consequences for all who are interested in framing or keeping the rules of a good society'. But it makes
no attempt whatever to explain what that doctrine is! On that the reader is left in the dark.

In ancient times the, custodians of 'inner circle knowledge' were the inner circle of the priesthood, who
dispensed it only to those who were capable of receiving it and proved themselves worthy of it. It was
they who were the most highly 'trained initiates, who in turn initiated neophytes into the mysteries of
the body and time, the keys to the, soul and eternity. The secrecy with which the knowledge was
guarded was the secrecy of expediency, for though in one sense the Gospel is open to all, yet, as Jesus
said, it is useless to cast pearls before swine. The Ancient Wisdom is at once the most democratic and

45
On 31 July, 1949, as reported in the press of I August, and verbatim report from Lambeth Palace.
aristocratic of doctrines; the way is open to all who have the courage to enter it, but the prize is only for
those who prove themselves the best. 'As above, so below—as below, so above'—the old hermetic
principle is part of the Eternal Gospel.

Meanwhile, though the situation is rendered difficult and precarious for the people as a whole by the
absence of a convincing and inspiring message from our recognized leaders, it is fortunately not
hopeless for the earnest and, determined individual seeker. The Eternal Gospel is being transmitted in
many forms among many groups presided over by men of varied race, nationality, and origin, trained in
schools of the Ancient Wisdom and capable of guiding and instructing those who are willing and able to
accept it and make the necessary effort to assimilate it. And since the number of those who are
hungering and thirsting after truth is very great such groups are on the increase. Some of the teachers
are known, and advertise themselves either openly or through their followers. Others remain in the
background, and strictly enjoin upon their favoured disciples respect for their anonymity. The door is
unfortunately open also to false prophets eager to exploit the credulity of the naïve or idly curious, so
that not every one who cries 'Yoga, Yoga!' necessarily has the truth. That is so in all ages and in all
religions. But it is equally true that the intelligent seeker quickly learns to distinguish the true from the
false.

It is often said that a devotee who enters the path, of the Ancient Wisdom must bind himself
unconditionally to one teacher, one 'guru', whose precepts and instructions must have for him the force
of sacred law, as is the practice in many monastic orders of the Church. This is certainly necessary in
some cases and perhaps for long periods, but it still remains true that in the end 'the highest
compliment the pupil can pay to his teacher is to render himself independent of him'. In Yoga, as in any
other study, there are some who, after a grounding in basic principles, can be safely left to themselves,
perhaps to achieve realization in very simple ways, finding tongues in trees, books in running brooks,
sermons in stones, and good in everything'. In a universe whose law in outward manifestation is infinite
diversity and ceaseless change no two individuals can ever be quite alike.

In tracing throughout these pages some of the steps of my own search along these lines I have not tried
to be exhaustive, or always even to stick to the point. For myself at least, and I should like, to think for
the reader as well, the digressions have always been as absorbing as the main adventure. I have no
desire to appear dogmatic 'about my conclusions, nor claim exclusivity for them, indeed I write with an
acute sense of my own failings and personal insufficiency as an advocate of this cause. I can, however, at
least declare that my observations, for what they are worth, are the product not merely of reading or
hearsay, but of a good many years of study and experiment, in which I had guidance and assistance from
persons (some but not all of whom are mentioned in this book) to whom I owe an unrepayable debt of
gratitude. Theirs is the credit for: whatever virtue lies in my exposition, mine the fault for its
shortcomings and inadequacy. Companions also have often been a source of help and stimulation. But
in the last analysis the road to salvation is a lonely road; there comes a point where each individual must
make a choice, absolutely alone. It is inherent in a scheme of things based on infinite diversification that
it should be so. Every man starts from scratch, and learns to run only .during the race. But the direction,
coupled with an abiding and ineffably inspiring promise, is clearly and unmistakably given to us by the
greatest of all the great teachers of union with God: 'The Kingdom of Heaven is within you: seek and you
shall find.'