Call upon Lady Stanley; and upon Archdeacon Wilberforce, where Holy Grail is exhibited and story of its discovery related to Mr. Clemens by the Archdeacon.
Ashcroft’s note———:
Mr. Clemens calledⒶtextual note on Lady Stanley, widow of the explorer, in the afternoon.
In fact, that was one of my earliest calls. Lady Stanley was as eager and impulsive as ever, and as free from any concealment of her feelings as she was when I first knew her, a proud and happy young brideⒺexplanatory note, so many years ago. Stanley has been dead three years and a half, but I think all her days and nights are spent in worship of him, and I believe he is almost as present to her as he was in life. She is an intense spiritualist, and has long lived in the atmosphere of that cult. Mrs. MyersⒶtextual note, her widowed sister, was the wife of the late president of the British Psychical SocietyⒺexplanatory note, who was a chief among spiritualists. To me, who take no interest in other-worldlyⒶtextual note things, and am convinced that we know nothing whatever about them, and have been wrongly and uncourteously and contemptuously left in total ignorance of them, it is a pleasure and a refreshment to have converse with a person like Lady Stanley, who uncompromisingly believes in them; and not only believes in them but considers them important. She was as exactly and as comprehensively happy and content in her beliefs as I am in my destitution of them, and I perceived that we could exchange places and both of us be precisely as well off as we were before; for when all is said and done, the one sole condition [begin page 131] that makes spiritual happiness, and preserves it, is the absence of doubt. Lady Stanley and I, and the black savage who worships a tar baby in the African jungle and is troubled by no religious doubts or misgivings, are just equals, and equally fortunately situated; either of us could change places with either of the others and be fully as well off as before; the trade would cost neither party the value of a farthing. Lady Stanley wanted to convert me to her beliefs and her faith; and there has been a time when I would have been eager to convert her to my position, but that time has gone by; I would not now try to unsettle any person’s religious faith, where it was untroubled by doubt—not even the savage African’s. I have found it pretty hard to give up missionarying—that least excusable ofⒶtextual note all human trades—but I was obliged to do it, because I could not continue to exercise it without private shame while publicly and privately deriding and blaspheming the other missionaries.
I found that Stanley had left behind him an uncompleted autobiographyⒶtextual note. It sets forth freely and frankly the details of his childhood and youth and early manhood, and stops with his adventures in our Civil War, if I remember rightly. Lady Stanley is preparing it for publicationⒺexplanatory note, and I was surprised, and also greatly gratified, to find that she was not purposing to suppress certain facts that used to sift around in whispers in Stanley’s lifetime—to wit, that he was of humble origin and was born in a workhouse. No doubt there was a time when sheⒶtextual note would have been glad to see these things suppressed and forgotten, but she has risen above that; she lives upon a higher and worthier plane now; she perhaps realizes that those humble beginnings are matter for pride now, when one remembers how high the peerless explorer climbed in spite of them.
I will mix my dates againⒺexplanatory note—this in order to bring into immediate juxtaposition a couple of curiosities in the way of human intellectual gymnastics. Lady Stanley believes that Stanley’s spirit is with her all the time and talks with her about her ordinary daily concerns—a thing which is to me unthinkable. I wonder if it would be unthinkable to Archdeacon Wilberforce, also? I do not know, but I imagine that that would be the case. I imagine that the Immaculate ConceptionⒶtextual note Ⓔexplanatory note, and the rest of the impossibilities recorded in the Bible, would have no difficulties for him, because in those cases he has been trained from the cradle to believe the unbelievable, and is so used to it that it comes natural and handy to him—but that kind of teaching is no preparation for acceptance of other unbelievable things, to whose examination one comes with an untwisted and unprejudiced mind. Wilberforce is educated, cultured, and has a fine and acute mind, and he comes of an ancestry similarly equipped; therefore he is competent to examine new marvels with an open mind, and I think the chances are that he rejects the claims of spiritualism with fully as much confidence as he accepts Immaculate ConceptionⒶtextual note. Is it possible that Mr. Wilberforce has been trained from the cradle up to believe in the Holy Grail? It does not seem likely; yet he does believe in it, and not only believes in it but believes he has it in his possession.
If I had had this astonishing fact at second-hand I could not have believed it, and would not have believed it, even if I had gotten it from the twelve apostles in writing, with every signature vouched for by a notary public. I should have said that to an educated, [begin page 132] cultured, highly intellectual man who believes he has held the Holy Grail in his hand, complete and unquestioning belief in Münchausen’sⒶtextual note, and in all other conceivable extravagances, must come easy.
The text for what I am talking about now I find in this note of Ashcroft’s:
Sunday, June 23 Ⓐtextual note. In the afternoon Mr. ClemensⒶtextual note visited Archdeacon Wilberforce, 20 Dean’s Yard, Westminster. Sir William Crookes, Sir James Knowles, Mrs. MyersⒶtextual note (widow of author of “Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death”) and perhaps seventy-five or a hundred others were thereⒺexplanatory note.
As soon as I entered I was told by the Archdeacon that a most remarkable event had occurred—that the long lost Holy Grail had at last been found, and that there could be no mistake whatever about its identity!Ⓐtextual note I could not have been more startled if a gun had gone off at my ear. For a moment, or at least half a moment, I supposed that he was not in earnest; then that supposition vanished; manifestly he was in earnest—indeed he was eagerly and excitedly in earnest. He leading, we plowed through the crowd to the centreⒶtextual note of the drawing-roomⒶtextual note, where Sir William Crookes, the renowned scientist, was standing. Sir William is a spiritualist. We closed in upon Sir William, Mrs. MyersⒶtextual note accosting me and joining us. Mr. Wilberforce then told me the rest of the story of the Holy Grail, and it was apparent that Sir William already knew all about it and was, moreover, a believer in the marvel. In brief, the story was that a young grain merchant, a Mr. Pole, had recentlyⒶtextual note been visited in a vision by an angel who commanded him to go to a certain place outside the ancient Glastonbury Abbey, and said that upon digging in that place he would find the Holy Grail. Mr. Pole obeyed. He sought out the indicated spot and dug there, and under four feet of packed and solid earth he found the relic. All this had happened a week or ten days before this present conversation of June 23dⒺexplanatory note.Ⓐtextual note
Lady Stanley . . . when I first knew her, a proud and happy young bride] Clemens called on Dorothy, Lady Stanley (1855–1926), the widow of Henry M. Stanley, on the afternoon of 20 June 1907. Born Dorothy Tennant, she was an artist and illustrator. She married Stanley in 1890, having earlier had liaisons with Andrew Carnegie and other prominent men. The newlywed Stanleys visited the Clemenses in Hartford in December 1890, in the course of Stanley’s lecture tour of 1890–91 ( N&J3, 587 n. 49).
Mrs. Myers, her widowed sister, was the wife . . . British Psychical Society] Lady Stanley’s sister, Eveleen Tennant (1856–1937), was the widow of the wealthy essayist and psychical researcher Frederic William Henry Myers (1843–1901), a founder, in 1882, of the Society for Psychical Research, devoted to the scientific examination of psychic phenomena. The society invited Clemens to join them in 1884; his letter of acceptance, published in the society’s Journal, expressed “a very strong interest” and belief in “thought-transference, as you call it, or mental telegraphy as I have been in the habit of calling it” (Barrett 1884, 166). Clemens was a frequent reader of the society’s publications and, in his own writings, gave it public encouragement and credit: “They have penetrated toward the heart of the matter . . . and have found out that mind can act upon mind in a quite detailed and elaborate way over vast stretches of land and water. . . . They have done our age a service” (SLC 1891, 95). The society’s records indicate that Clemens remained a member until 1902. He had no great opinion of Myers as an investigator, writing of him just after his death: “I am afraid he was a very easily-convinced man. We visited two mediums whom he & Andrew Lang considered wonderful, but they were quite transparent frauds” (26 Mar 1901 to McQuiston, CtHMTH; Barrett to SLC, 26 Sept 1884, CU-MARK; N&J3, 260–61 n. 111; Horn 1996, 10–12).
Stanley had left behind him an uncompleted autobiography . . . Lady Stanley is preparing it for publication] For the life of Henry Morton Stanley, and Clemens’s acquaintance with him, see AutoMT2 , 583 n. 280.28–33. Stanley’s manuscript autobiography,written in the 1890s, sets forth—“freely,” though not “frankly”—the events of his life up through August 1862, when he had recently been discharged from the Union army. In 1909, Lady Stanley published the autobiography, “completed” by her using Stanley’s journalism, notebooks, and other material. In February 1910, Howells recommended “the autobiography of Stanley” to Clemens as “about the livest book I ever read” (Stanley 1909, ix, 215, 219; McLynn 1989, 43; McLynn 1991, 384, 389; Howells to SLC, 11 Feb 1910, CU-MARK, in MTHL , 2:852–53).
I will mix my dates again] Clemens “mixes” his dates in order to juxtapose the credulous Lady Stanley, whom he saw on 20 June, with the similarly credulous Archdeacon Basil Wilberforce, whom he saw on 23 June. For Wilberforce, see the Autobiographical Dictation of 25 July 1907, note at 80.7.
Sunday, June 23. In the afternoon Mr. Clemens visited Archdeacon Wilberforce . . . seventy-five or a hundred others were there] This “note of Ashcroft’s” is a creative expansion by Clemens; Ashcroft’s real note is more terse: “Had tea at Wilberforce’s and saw The Holy Grail” (Ashcroft 1907, 2).
the long lost Holy Grail had at last been found . . . All this had happened a week or ten days before this present conversation of June 23d] The saucer-like vessel displayed at Wilberforce’s home had been brought there the day before by Wellesley Tudor Pole (1884–1968), a Bristol grain merchant and clairvoyant. For the last five years, Tudor Pole had been making pilgrimages to Glastonbury, believing that he, in association with “a triad of maidens” (his sister and two friends), had a pivotal role in “preparing the Way for the Coming of the Holy Graal.” In September 1906 he told the maidens to search “a certain Holy Well” near Glastonbury Abbey, where they found the vessel. Pole showed it to an acquaintance, Dr. J. A. Goodchild, who volunteered the surprising information that he himself had secreted the item in the well. Goodchild said he had purchased it in an antiques shop in Italy in 1885; later, spirit voices revealed to him that it was the Grail, and told him to place it in the well, where a pure woman would, at the appointed time, discover it. Early in 1907 Tudor Pole began to submit the vessel to the scrutiny of antiquarians, clerics, and spiritualists, with varying results. Wilberforce was enthusiastic, and so, at first, was Sir William Crookes (1832–1919), a scientist and spiritualist. At Wilberforce’s house on 20 July 1907, before an invited audience of some forty interested persons, Wilberforce exhibited the vessel; Tudor Pole told his story, and Crookes was given a week to investigate the artifact. Meanwhile, the “find” became a short-lived newspaper item (see AD, 12 Sept 1907, note at 134.5–6). Crookes, in his report, declined to state whether the vessel was of ancient or modern manufacture; in January 1908 a panel of experts concluded that it was “fairly modern” (Benham 1993, 59–82; Annals of Psychical Science 1907; Lathem 2006, 156–58).
Source document.
TS1 Typescript, leaves numbered 3138–44 (altered in ink to 2238–44), made from Hobby’s notes and revised.TS1 as revised by Clemens is the sole source for this dictation.