Dickens, Charles (1812-1870)

The great novelist Charles Dickens, born on February 7, 1812, had a keen interest in the supernatural, although he was skeptical of Spiritualism, and wrote several thrilling ghost stories, notably To Be Taken with a Grain of Salt and The Signalman.

His novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood was interrupted in its monthly publication by the death of Dickens on July 8, 1870. Shortly thereafter, T. P. James, an uneducated American mechanic of Brattleboro, Vermont, obtained messages in automatic writing that he claimed emanated from the author.

Between Christmas 1872 and July 1873, scripts came from under his hand that continued Dickens's unfinished novel. The posthumous section was longer than the first and presented a surprising continuity of the manner of thought, style, and peculiarities of Dicken's writing. The two sections were published together in 1874 as The Mystery of Edwin Drood, with Charles Dickens given as the author.

Spiritualists the world over hailed the book as a most convincing proof of spirit return. However, psychologist Theodore Flournoy, in Spiritism and Psychology (1911), undertook to demonstrate that Dickens himself had nothing to do with the affair and that everything was easily explained by processes of latent incubation and subconscious imagination within the medium himself. He quoted the conclusions of Mme. K. Fairbanks, a distinguished member of the Geneva University, who observed that "there are certainly very successful passages such as the scenes between the two women, Billickin and Twinkleton. But there are others which are just the contrary."

Furthermore, John Forster, author of The Life of Charles Dickens (1911), discovered among the papers of the deceased author a whole scene in Edwin Drood, written in advance and destined to figure later in the novel. Flournoy found it incredible that the "spirit" of the author, who remembered so clearly the part of the volume already published that no more than three new persons are introduced in any part of the second section, should have completely forgotten the chapter written and left in manuscript.

Forster averred that as a striking proof of identity Dickens would have made an allusion to it from the spirit world. In the book itself and in the cover blurb, T. P. James does not pretend that he has not read Dickens and his last novel. "Now it is evident," stated Flournoy, "that if he had not read Dickens he would most probably have boasted of his accomplishment, because that would have rendered his performance much more extraordinary. Let us not forget," he finally remarked, "that the medium had two and a half years to imbibe the original work of the author, and in letting this 'simmer'—without counting the six months afterwards employed in automatic writing— three years in all were completed. We must confess that this greatly reduces its marvelous character."

Even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in his book The Edge of the Unknown (1930), concludes that "the actual inspiration of Dickens is far from being absolutely established…. It reads like Dickens gone flat." In the same book he recorded some personally obtained automatic contributions to the solution of the mystery of Edwin Drood.

Dickens had a special interest in mesmerism or animal magnetism, through his friendship with John Elliotson. In 1838 Dickens witnessed a demonstration by Elliotson of the "mighty curative powers of animal magnetism." During his tour in Italy in 1844, Dickens became acquainted with the family of Emile de la Rue, a Swiss banker residing in Genoa. Dickens actually practiced mesmerism on Madame de la Rue as a treatment for her neurasthenic disorders, even experimenting with treatment at a distance. On one such occasion, while he was concentrating on sending this force over a distance, his wife, Catherine, seated nearby, fell into a "mesmeric trance," her senses numbed and her extremities cold. When Dickens awakened her, she said she had been "magnetized."

Dickens's interest of in such occult subjects was often masked by his popular writings in a jocular vein. In 1848 he practiced mesmerism on the artist John Leech, who had suffered from a severe fall. Afterward, Dickens wrote to John Forster with the jocular comment, "What do you think of my setting up in the magnetic line with a large brass plate? 'Terms twenty-five guineas per nap."'

Sources:

Fairbanks, K. "Le Cas Spirite de Dickens." Arch. de Psychol. T.I. (June 1892).

Jacobson, Wendy S. The Companion to "The Mystery of Edwin Drood." London: Allen & Unwin, 1986.

Kaplan, Fred. Dickens and Mesmerism: The Hidden Springs of Fiction. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975.