TCDE-Team at 16:59, 25 February 2026

2026-02-25T16:59:45Z

TCDE-Team at 10:30, 21 February 2026

2026-02-21T10:30:42Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 12:30, 21 February 2026
Line 8:		Line 8:

	This archival study examines the forty-year correspondence between [[Sir Arthur Conan Doyle]] and Sir Oliver Lodge, tracing the development of their friendship and shared commitment to psychical research between 1889 and 1917. Drawing extensively on letters preserved in the Society for Psychical Research archives, it analyses their views on mediums, survival after death, fraud, and the intellectual tensions within early twentieth-century spiritualism.		This archival study examines the forty-year correspondence between [[Sir Arthur Conan Doyle]] and Sir Oliver Lodge, tracing the development of their friendship and shared commitment to psychical research between 1889 and 1917. Drawing extensively on letters preserved in the Society for Psychical Research archives, it analyses their views on mediums, survival after death, fraud, and the intellectual tensions within early twentieth-century spiritualism.

			__TOC__

TCDE-Team: Created page with "{{Cargo_Research_Articles |date=1993-01-01 |author=Kelvin I. Jones |topic=Spiritualism |summary=This archival study examines the forty-year correspondence between Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Sir Oliver Lodge, tracing the development of their friendship and shared commitment to psychical research between 1889 and 1917. Drawing extensively on letters preserved in the Society for Psychical Research archives, it analyses their views on mediums, survival after death, fraud..."

2026-02-21T10:30:01Z

Created page with "{{Cargo_Research_Articles |date=1993-01-01 |author=Kelvin I. Jones |topic=Spiritualism |summary=This archival study examines the forty-year correspondence between Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Sir Oliver Lodge, tracing the development of their friendship and shared commitment to psychical research between 1889 and 1917. Drawing extensively on letters preserved in the Society for Psychical Research archives, it analyses their views on mediums, survival after death, fraud..."

New page

{{Cargo_Research_Articles
|date=1993-01-01
|author=Kelvin I. Jones
|topic=Spiritualism
|summary=This archival study examines the forty-year correspondence between Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Sir Oliver Lodge, tracing the development of their friendship and shared commitment to psychical research between 1889 and 1917. Drawing extensively on letters preserved in the Society for Psychical Research archives, it analyses their views on mediums, survival after death, fraud, and the intellectual tensions within early twentieth-century spiritualism.
}}
''A Pair of Spiritists'' is an article written by [[Kelvin I. Jones]] published in the [[A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society]] (Vol. 4, 1993).

This archival study examines the forty-year correspondence between [[Sir Arthur Conan Doyle]] and Sir Oliver Lodge, tracing the development of their friendship and shared commitment to psychical research between 1889 and 1917. Drawing extensively on letters preserved in the Society for Psychical Research archives, it analyses their views on mediums, survival after death, fraud, and the intellectual tensions within early twentieth-century spiritualism.

== A Pair of Spiritists ==
[[File:Acd-society-journal-1993-vol4-p181-a-pair-of-spiritists.jpg|thumb|250px|right|[[A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society]] (Vol. 4, 1993, p. 181)]]
[[File:Acd-society-journal-1993-vol4-p182-a-pair-of-spiritists.jpg|thumb|250px|right|[[A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society]] (Vol. 4, 1993, p. 182)]]
[[File:Acd-society-journal-1993-vol4-p183-a-pair-of-spiritists.jpg|thumb|250px|right|[[A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society]] (Vol. 4, 1993, p. 183)]]
[[File:Acd-society-journal-1993-vol4-p184-a-pair-of-spiritists.jpg|thumb|250px|right|[[A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society]] (Vol. 4, 1993, p. 184)]]
[[File:Acd-society-journal-1993-vol4-p185-a-pair-of-spiritists.jpg|thumb|250px|right|[[A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society]] (Vol. 4, 1993, p. 185)]]
[[File:Acd-society-journal-1993-vol4-p186-a-pair-of-spiritists.jpg|thumb|250px|right|[[A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society]] (Vol. 4, 1993, p. 186)]]
[[File:Acd-society-journal-1993-vol4-p187-a-pair-of-spiritists.jpg|thumb|250px|right|[[A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society]] (Vol. 4, 1993, p. 187)]]
[[File:Acd-society-journal-1993-vol4-p188-a-pair-of-spiritists.jpg|thumb|250px|right|[[A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society]] (Vol. 4, 1993, p. 188)]]

'''Sir Arthur Conan Doyle & Sir Oliver Lodge: 1889-1930'''

=== Part One: 1889-1917: The Forming of a Friendship ===

In the archives of The Society for Psychical Research lies a large box containing a wealth of correspondence between two men whose names were, in their day, closely associated with the cause of spiritualism. The correspondence runs from the December of 1893 to 1930. It is a fascinating find for anyone interested in the spiritualist movement of the period and likewise for the student of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as a campaigner for the acceptance of the invisible world.

Both men were avid students of spiritualism from their youth and both possessed the moral courage to make a public stand about their beliefs. The life of ACD has been well documented and does not require elaboration. However, since few people today will remember Sir Oliver Lodge, a brief outline of his work and life is perhaps justified.

Lodge was a physicist by profession and enjoyed world renown for his work in the field. His first experiences in psychical research date from 1883-4, when he was invited by Malcolm Guthrie to join his investigation in thought transference in Liverpool. Next he undertook similar experiments himself in 1892 in Carinthia at Portscach am See where he spent the summer. His findings were reported in the Society's Proceedings, Vol. VII.

ACD had also been experimenting in a similar field for a number of years (see my book Conan Doyle And The Spirits, Thorsons, 1989), and since 1887 had carried on a correspondence with F.W.H. Myers, the great psychic investigator and author of Human Personality And Its Survival of Bodily Death. As he began to read Proceedings, ACD was impressed by the nature of Lodge's work. He subsequently wrote to him. Thus began a partnership that was to last nearly forty years.

In psychical phenomena, Lodge's most notable observations were made with Eusapia Palladino. In Professor Richet's house on the Ile Roubaud he attended four seances and in his report for the Journal of the S.P.R., November 1894, he accepted the reality of her phenomena. When Palladino was exposed at Cambridge in the following year, Lodge, who had attended two of the sittings there, did not hesitate in sustaining his former opinion. Like ACD, he exhibited a single-mindedness and moral courage which the genial giant found attractive.

In the field of mental phenomena, Mrs Piper was his chief source of enlightenment. His first investigation was conducted in England in 1889 when the medium was tested by the S.P.R. He received many evidential messages from the medium which convinced him that the dead still lived. His first report was published in 1890.

In 1908 he made his first public statement that he had genuine converse with deceased friends and that at last the boundary between the living and the dead was wearing thin. Five years later, speaking from the Presidential Chair to the British Association in September 1913, he declared that 'personality exists beyond bodily death.'

Over the next few years a series of books flowed from his pen: Man And The Universe, 1908; Survival of Man, 1909; Reason And Belief, 1910; Life and Matter, 1912; Modern Problems, 1912; Science and Religion, 1914.

The widest publicity to his belief in survival was given in his famous book, Raymond. The story of the return of his son, who was killed in action in The Great War, is one of the most famous documents dealing with the survival of bodily death, and in its day was a bestseller. It begins with the famous Faunus message, delivered through Mrs Piper on 8 August 1915. The message reached Lodge in early September 1915 and on 17 September the War Office notified him that his son Raymond had been killed in action on 14 September. So began quest which involved close work with several leading mediums and which resulted in clear evidence of the survival of his son in spirit form.

ACD's first letter to Lodge reveals how far along the path of spiritualist research he had already travelled. He had, of course, read most of the studies of the occult, which had also formed the background to the research undertaken by Myers and Edmund Gurney. He had also read Kardec and the visionary Swedenborg. He had become deeply influenced by the followers of Charcot, whose work convinced him that cryptaesthesia and clairvoyance were in some way linked with an existence in the hereafter.

When Lodge sent ACD the Transactions at the Kurhaus Hotel, Davos Platz, Switzerland, Conan Doyle was to reply:

: You must think me a miserable fellow for not acknowledging your kindness sooner in sending me the Transactions. I have as you know been going up and down on the earth (Like the famous father of all fiction) and then, after I reached this haven of rest, I wanted to read it all first. It is a charming piece of narrative ... My only possible criticism was that you seemed to speak too guardedly and not to give weight enough to the idea that since this entity was so correct about other matters it might also be correct in its account of its own genesis and individuality. I only marvel that such evidence could have been three years before the public without exciting more widespread comment. After all it is, if established (and what more can be demanded to establish it), infinitely the most important thing in the history of the world.
: I should like to ask a control, if I had the chance, for some information about our antecedent states. There are two veils & we pull at the front one, but take no thought of that behind. We may occupy the position to some other stratum of life, which Dr Phinuit occupies to us.
: Pray excuse my doubtless crude remarks. My interest exceeds my knowledge. Wishing Mrs Lodge & yourself every happiness for '94.

A note of explanation is required here. Phinuit was the earliest permanent control of Mrs Piper. His statements about himself were hazy and contradictory and he was therefore never much trusted. He claimed that he was French, a physician living in Metz, but never furnished convincing proof of his identity. To Myers, who investigated the case fully, it seemed clear that the name Phinuit was the result of suggestion at earlier seances and that he was nothing more than a secondary personality of Mrs Piper. However Gurney, who wrote to Lodge in 1889, claimed that 'Dr Phinuit is a peculiar type of man... he is eccentric and quaint, but good hearted... a shrewd doctor, he knows his own business thoroughly.' Phinuit's regime was from 1884-1892. In 1897 the Imperator group took Mrs Piper in charge and Phinuit was entirely suppressed. It seems evident from ACD's remark about Phinuit that he regarded him as a genuine personality.

When Lodge gave his address to the British Association in September 1913, ACD was quick to write to him from his home in Crowborough:

: Dear Sir Oliver,
: May I without impertinence say how fine I thought your address. I only hope it won't be used to bolster up the theological dogmatism of the past but will be recognised as a trumpet call for all stragglers, to bring them back to those spiritual truths which really do not depend upon that two-edged business Faith, but upon direct reason.
: I thought the simile of the Observer who could see the deeds of man but not man himself one of the finest and clearest things I ever read. I have been fighting a small skirmish on my own. It may interest you some time to glance at a controversy which was at least earnest however imperfect in other respects.

The document ACD refers to is still in the Archives of the S.P.R.. Entitled In Quest of Truth, it appears to be an obscure twenty-two page correspondence between ACD and Hubert Stansbury R.N., who had himself published a monograph entitled In Quest of Truth (Watts & Co., n.d., 3s 6d.) The correspondence deals at length with certain aspects of telepathy and thought transference. Much of it is extremely tedious but ACD's main tenet can be summed up in a sentence in the penultimate letter to Stansbury:

: Our whole discussion comes down to the Design, or want of it, in the universe. To show that I don't avoid your argument, I state it. It is this: That it is easier to imagine that there is some force in Nature itself which has been eternal, and will eternally evolve a sequence of events of which the universe, as we know it, is part: that it is easier, I say, to imagine this inherent force than it is to imagine an intellect guide which created and controlled the whole.
: When I try to grasp this I find that I can imagine an endless stagnation on these lines, or perhaps an endless chaos, but that I cannot imagine an endless orderly unfolding without purpose. The inorganic grows to the organic, and that to the human, which still evolves and may reach the superhuman.

ACD's quest for the truth about order in the universe would have found great support with Lodge, who was himself a traditional physicist influenced by the theories of Darwin.

The correspondence file shows a gap here of some three years. There follows a short letter from ACD regarding Lodge's book Raymond, which he had been asked to review for The Observer. ACD concluded:

: I am going to a clairvoyant of repute in London at 3 pm on Tuesday next. If you should be in touch with Raymond it would be interesting if you tried to put him on to me.
: Nov 18 1916

The medium in question was almost certainly Aldred Vout Peters. Peters was a trance medium and clairvoyant. Born in 1867, he had been involved in the spiritualist movement for many years before he met ACD. He travelled widely and figures largely in Lodge's Raymond, which was mostly written round the seances which Lodge had held with Peters and Mrs Leonard. Peters also had the strange experience of being controlled by a living person.

Lodge writes to ACD:

: I shall be interested to hear in due time how you got on with Peters. If Mrs Kennedy is good enough to go, she will help by giving Peters confidence and friendly support. She is a rather nervous but very sympathetic person. I expect you will like her, though I admit it is a curious mode of introduction.
: (1 December 1916)

ACD wrote back on 2 December 1916:

: My Dear Lodge,
: The meeting was good. It was a Frenchified Control whose identity I did not know. There was a lot that was interesting but not final, but there was one very good test and no absolute failure.
: He ended up by sending a test to someone and it may have been to you but was not clear. Perhaps Mrs K understood better. Here it is for what it is worth. To try & continue to sit at home - rather a tag rag & bobtail lot of mediums present one woman of gipsy blood & none too clean physically. That was how I heard it.
: Yours sincerely.

The next letter is dated 11 March and is an interesting reflection of ACD's awareness regarding false mediums. Often ACD was accused of gullibility, but the letter demonstrates that in the matter of authenticity he was as sharp as the next man:

: My Dear Oliver Lodge,
: I have such confidence in your own judgement that I have the greatest difficulty in (unreadable) my own, where there is any tendency to diverge.
: I should like one (unreadable) in this excellent letter to say that no one suffers so much from these knaves as Spiritualists do, that no one can be more eager for their suppression, but that our objection to the law is that it is framed in such broad terms that it is just as likely to banish the true mediums, whom we look upon with reverence as the false ones whom we regard with abhorrence. These people are weeds who will choke the grain and I can't help thinking that those who pull them out, if they don't take too much pain as well, are doing good work. But if they pull indiscriminately, then certainly they are stopping all progress.
: If and when a good man or woman, whom we can really trust, a Vout Peters or a Mrs Leonard are in trouble, then we should all rally round & spend money & work to see them thro'.
: With all remembrance,

Lodge replied almost immediately to the letter, pointing out the difficulty in establishing the genuineness of mediums:

: My dear Conan Doyle,
: Best thanks for your letter this morning. I agree, but in the present state of the Law, there is no real discrimination between the genuine and the fraudulent, hence the weeding out of the fraudulent is better not done by the Law, but by investigators. They need some machinery for the purpose, and I think that it is one of the jobs we shall have to tackle in some way or other. But the police machinery is unsuitable. Moreover I am very doubtful whether those we call fraudulent have not got some genuine power, though the temptation to eke it out by normal means for stupid or credulous or ignorant sitters has become too much for them, and whether any genuine power still survives, as it did in Sludge the Medium, may be an open question ...
: 13th March 1917

The question of authenticity clearly vexed ACD throughout his involvement in the Spiritualist movement. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the case of William Hope, whom ACD championed, only to discover later that the man was an impostor. Although ACD never publicly admitted to Hope's trickery, and in fact mounted a spirited defence of his methods in one of his lesser-known publications (The Case for Spirit Photography, Hutchinson, 1922), he no doubt had his misgivings. It is interesting, therefore, to find him writing to Lodge on 3 April 1917 as follows:

: My dear Lodge,
: I am interested about a spirit photo sent to you, taken by some Crewe Iman (Hope). Miss Stead & my sister in law Mrs Forbes were the sitters. The young head is my nephew by marriage, a fine lad, killed in France. It is very like him in profile. The lower part of the face is not good, but we think some other figure was standing there and obscured it. Stead is very good. I wonder what you will think of it. Mrs Forbes brought the plate and developed it herself, seeing the heads on the negative after development. Only the printing was done at Crewe.
: This man Hope is, I understand, in very poor circumstances. It seems to me a case where some Society which could afford to take him up & establish him in some central point, London for choice, so that his testimony would be available, would do great work.
: I have just finished Hill's book, very good & clear. But there is a book waiting to be written which has not been done yet. No psychical research about it, but a wholehearted acceptance of the position and a determination to make it understood by the people, and to influence the humblest of them. More heart as Raymond said. At present it is as if the Early Christians did nothing but sit around & discuss whether
: Christ's wounds were really (unreadable) or subjective.
: This thing gets more and more hold of me. I mean to put all I have into it when the time comes. But it must ripen naturally.
: Yours sincerely,

The letter is an interesting one for it reveals to what extent ACD was impressed by Hope's work, even at this early stage. His kindness of heart is also readily apparent in the phrase regarding Hope's lowly status. More importantly, perhaps, is the reference to his reading of J. Arthur Hill's Spiritualism, Its History, Phenomena and Doctrine (Cassell, 1918). (Presumably ACD had a review copy of the book or perhaps had been sent the book in typescript by Hill). Even back in 1917 he was thinking of the magnum opus, his History of Spiritualism, which was to remain the most thorough treatment of the subject for many years after its publication.

ACD's letter drew a belated response from Lodge and it contains a warning which ACD must have ignored:

: My dear Conan Doyle
: Referring to your letter about the photograph which I know by your subsequent letter was not sent to me but to Crookes, I had some little experience with the man Hope, and was inclined to consider him fraudulent. If not, his behaviour was exceedingly stupid for it clearly conveyed that impression. Crookes however got a photograph in his presence which impressed him favourably, so I now regard Hope's honesty as an open question.
: I am glad to hear that you are contemplating a book on the general psychic subject some day. I have one in contemplation too. The one I am proposing is at present in my mind roughly in the form of a dialogue, or rather a conversation between people who want to know, people inclined to scoff, and a student or two. Somewhat after the fashion of Galileo's dialogues on the Copernican theory. But it is an ambitious scheme which probably demands more literary skill than I possess...
: J. Arthur Hill has just told me that a Mr Jeffrey, a manufacturer in Glasgow, is more or less looking after Hope financially, so perhaps this means no special need for the present.
: Thanks for your letter, I have only recently returned home.
: Yours very Truly,

=== Part Two: 1917-1922: The Busy Years ===

...

{{footer_acd_society_article}}
{{footer_periodicals}}
{{footer_research_articles}}

A Pair of Spiritists - Revision history

TCDE-Team at 16:59, 25 February 2026

TCDE-Team at 10:30, 21 February 2026