General Drayson's Eggs
General Drayson's Eggs is an article written by Joe Cooper published in the A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (Vol. 3, 1992).
This article revisits the controversial story of Major General Drayson's "apported" eggs, defending the account through later testimony that identifies the medium involved and corroborates the séance narrative. It situates the episode within Conan Doyle's early exposure to psychical research and the wider debate between believers and sceptics.
General Drayson's Eggs
Owen Dudley Edwards gives an impromptu reading from Julian Symons' The Immaterial Murder Case before proposing the Society's special award.
A Synopsis of the short address given by Joe Cooper
Major General Drayson R.E. (ret'd.) was the sixty-year-old President of the Portsmouth Literary and Scientific Society when Conan Doyle was at Southsea in the 1880s. Drayson had been a professor at the Military Academy at Woolwich, an intrepid explorer, and the author of juvenile fiction and travel books. He had also been a psychical researcher for thirty years, having sat with all the leading mediums of the day, including Daniel Home and Mrs Guppy. Beyond all doubt, he was influential in turning ACD's thoughts towards the possible veracity and worth of Spiritualism. Drayson, however, was firmly against proselytising or converting others to his belief: he believed psychic studies to be a minority interest and that few were interested enough to undertake any serious study. The existing scientific community, he maintained, had their own interests to pursue.
The late Trevor Hall, Sherlockian scholar and a vigorous opponent of Spiritualism, ridiculed Drayson's beliefs and seance room activities. He was especially incensed by what he referred to as 'the ridiculous story of the eggs', as outlined in the chapter 'Conan Doyle and Spiritualism' in his book Sherlock Holmes and his Creator (Duckworth, 1978). The eggs, wrote Hall, came in abundance from one to two dozen every week, so that none had to be bought for the household. The controls said that they had been apported from Brooklyn, New York, to Drayson's darkened seance room in Southsea.
I visited the library of the College of Psychic Studies in London and read up the details in Light for 1896, six years after ACD left Southsea. The author interviewed Drayson, who gave much the same story as Hall above. To the regret of Light, Drayson would not disclose the name of the medium or the circle.
During the previous week, I had been travelling in the Midlands and decided to visit a secondhand bookshop on Mansfield Road, Nottingham, where I had come across interesting books on psychic topics on previous occasions. These books occupied only about two shelves, and I purchased perhaps half-a-dozen. A slender volume by William Gates, entitled The Secret of Death (Psychic Book Club, 1944), seemed to be well and thoughtfully written, the author having been a journalist of forty years standing and well steeped in seance room data.
Incredibly, Yates had sat with Drayson's medium in her later years. He identified her as Stella Maggs, and the following extracts from his book add credibility to Drayson's story:
I was informed by Maggs that the sittings were private, being confined to a circle of three: Major General Drayson, himself, and the medium, who was his wife Stella Maggs. (p. 7)
One evening I was discussing with Stella the record of apports kept by Drayson and I certainly showed reluctance to accept as true his story of the receipt of supplies of fresh eggs from the Trinity Circle at Brooklyn. She assured me on her word of honour that it was true. (p. 75)
The medium at Brooklyn, named St John Henry, was a man of means, one of his hobbies being the breeding of fowls. The knowledge of this led Drayson to ask if the Southsea Circle might have a few fresh eggs. The American laughed and advised the General to place his hat in the corner of the room. They found at the close of the sitting that there were twenty-one fresh eggs in the hat seven for each of them.
- Article courtesy Christopher Roden, founder of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (1989-2003).
