From collection Creating Acadia National Park: The George B. Dorr Research Archive of Ronald H. Epp

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Memoirs of G.B. Dorr 1901-1915
Memoirs of G.B.D.RORR
1901 - 1915 -
File . 1914
Written : ??
Compass Harbor and Frenchmans Bay
Compass Harbor, onto which the Oldfarm property
here offered immediately descends to low water mark,
is the outermost safe harborage for boats of lesser
size on Mount Desert Island's eastern shore, with a
clean, sandy bottom shelving to deep water. Opposite
it, a mile away, rises the bold, cliffed mass of Round
Porcupine, from which the Government's costly break-
water extends to within six hundred feet of the Mount
Desert Island shore, affording good and speedy passage
from Compass Harbor into the larger harbor the break-
water creates, where, sheltered also from the north
by a range of islets, the Porcupines, the largest
Government vessels, men-of-war and others, have lain
in safe harborage, as occasion served, these many years.
The main passage to this harbor lies past the opposite,
eastern side of Round Porcupine and extends, with un-
diminished depth, through Upper Frenchmans Bay to the
former Government coaling station at Lamoine.
Note: Nearly a dozen Dorr Memoirs are
separately filed under" Road Development."
that May have been collaborative-on MDI geology.
The geology file also contains a 17-page essay-
South of Round Porcupine, with its high-cliffed
oceanfront of lava rock, the way lies direct and open
across outer Frenchmans Bay to Winter Harbor, Schoodic
Head and the Government-maintained Moose Island Radio
Station.
The directness of Frenchmans Bay to ports abroad
is shown by our awakening early one summer morning in
1914 to see the great German passenger liner, the
Crown Princess Cecilie, steaming in past Round Porcu-
pine and coming to rest in the harbor, with her full
complement of passengers and crew aboard. She had been
on her way out to her home port on her regular passage
from New York when, nearing the other side, some word
reached her from Germany which sent her steaming back
to America at full speed. The World War had broken out,
and she sought the nearest port of safety, which was
Frenchmans Bay.
In anticipation of such an eventuality, her captain
had complete and accurate charts of all our coastal waters,
an American yachtsman who chanced to be aboard her and with
whom the captain consulted over them told me later.
(Signed) GEORGE B. DORR.
2130
The Summit of Champlain Mountain
The summit of Newport Mountain -- now Champlain
Mountain by the Government's renaming -- I obtained,
together with the great cliff upon the eastern side, in
gift from Mrs. William Bliss, step-mother of Robert
Bliss and mother of Mildred Barnes, his wife.
Mr. and Mrs. William Bliss came to Grindstone Neck
at Winter Harbor to make a summer home there, in the
later eighteenenineties, but after some seasons they
decided they would rather live in the wider social
atmosphere of Bar Harbor and bought the William Page
property, extending from the shore opposite the great
eastern cliff on Newport Mountain, across the meadow
at the cliff foot and up the cliff to the mountain
summit, an exceedingly important tract to preserve in
public ownership.
Mr. and Mrs. Bliss never built upon this property,
but ultimately made an all the year round home in
California and after that Mrs. Bliss, the actual purchaser
of the property, came but seldom to the Island; he, never.
2.
At the time they bought the land, I knew them
pleasantly in a social way; they used to come over from
Winter Harbor in their boat now and again and take
their lunch with us at Oldfarm, for my mother was still
living at that time.
The meadow at the mountain foot was then a dense
mass of alders, native willows, and rank marsh grasses,
which, as the meadow dried in summer, became a serious
fire-hazard to the whole stretch of woods along the shore.
A fire, once starting there, with the strong south winds
of summer, would sweep the shore toward Bar Harbor for
a mile or more, without a chance of stopping it. One
day when they were lunching with us, I spoke of this to
Mr. Bliss and he said he would be glad to clear the
meadow and put it into grass as I suggested and asked
my advice about it. I told him that I would gladly
take charge of the work on account of its importance
to the shore if he would like me to; and he took my
offer.
From the top of the cliff on Champlain mountain,
one looks directly down upon the meadow and I planned
to clear no more than the level meadowland, making it
3.
into a pasture-land such as I had often seen cattle
grazing on among the mountains in the Tyrol.
fillier
Later that summer when work was underway, Dr. S.
skitchelle
Weir Mitchell of Philadelphia, an intimate friend at
our house, came to me and said that Miss Beatrix Jones,
who had been studying to become a landscape architect,
had completed her studies and that it would be an
opportunity for her if I would let her take charge
B.
on a professional basis the Bliss work on the meadow.
To this I willingly agreed, Mr. and Mrs. Bliss
Mextored
consenting, and the carrying out of this project became
the present Beatrix Farrand's first professional job.
It did not work out as we had hoped, however, either
for herself or for the parklands of the future, for, in
the ambition of her new career, she undertook too much,
clearing further than I had intended toward the mountain
foot and involving her employers in an expenditure which
led to the abrupt termination of the work when half done.
Years after, when the Park was formed, this made it
difficult for me to get the land I wanted along the
mountain foot but the cliff that rises up beyond the
meadow, where now the Precipice Path ascends, and the
4.
summit heights above I obtained later, after patient
waiting, from Mrs. Bliss at the time of her visit to
Bar Harbor.
Ultimately the meadow and the property opposite
it upon the shore passed by inheritance to Robert Woods
Bliss and his wife.
He had held important posts in
the diplomatic service and he and she together had done
splendid service for relief at Paris during and after
the World War.
I knew them personally and they would
gladly have given me what I wanted for the public at the
mountain foot had they returned to Bar Harbor but they
never came again.
And presently the land was sold
for investment, at the beginning of the depression,
to Mr. A. Atwater Kent, the purchaser of other proper-
ties along the shore.
[6.B. DORR]
Paper upon need of public reservations
in the East, written with reference to
conservation plans for Mount Desert Island.
George B. Dorr.
The question of Public Reservation is of par-
amount importance in the eastern portion of our
country where we have already got a dense population
swiftly created and swiftly growing denser without
apparent limit. Many reservations have been made in
the thinly settled west, whose population - owing
to the character of the country - must ever remain
slight compared with the well watered, permanently
fertile region from the Rocky Mountain foot-hills
eastward, with its level lands, easy railroading and
accessibility by river, lake and sea.
We are passing into a new phase of human life
where men are congregating in vast multitudes, for
industrial purposes, for trade and intercourse; the
population of the future must inevitably be many times
the population of the present, and the need of con-
serving now, while there is time, pleasant, wholesome
breathing places for these coming multitudes is great,
How great, we can with difficulty realize in our country
yet so newly occupied and in a period so new of growth
and vast industrial change, but what such open spaces
in the form of Commons have meant to England in the
past, the long struggle to prevent their enclosure by
2.
the few shows strikingly, and what is lost by their
absence is densely peopled regions of China where
every rod of ground is given up to the material
struggle for existence the accounts of all returning
travelers tell.
But it is not a question of breathing-spaces
and physical well-being only; it goes far beyond that
and is deeply concerned with the inner life of men.
With Nature in its beauty and freedom shut out from
so many lives in these industrial and city-dwelling
times it is going to become -- has indeed become al-
ready -- a matter of supreme importance to preserve
in their openness, in their unspoiled beauty and the
interest of their wild life, of their native trees
and plants, their birds and animals, the places where
the interest and human significance of these things
is greatest, the places where the influence of Nature
may be felt the most or where the life with which she
has peopled the world, and man or chance has not
destroyed, may be observed and studied in its fullest.
The times are moving fast in the destruction
of beautiful and interesting things The lost oppor-
tunity of one year becomes the bitter regret of
thoughtful people in a few years more. Valuable and in-
teresting species of birds that were still familiar a
3.
generation since and that might have added to the
delight or wealth of the world forever have now
become
extinct Individuality honeless of resurrection
as if we had only known of them in fossil forms
Many a landscape and forest- land that should have
remained forever unspoilt and public in the crowd-
ed eastern regions of the future in this country
have been ruined needlessly or locked up in private
ownership
In nothing is conservation needed more
than in saving all that is economically possible
of the pleasantness and freedom of nature in
regions accessible, even by travel, to the vast,
town-dwelling populations of the future; in preser-
ing the features of scientific interest or landscape
beauty that widen men's horizon or quicken their
imagination. City parks and playgrounds; valuable
and necessary as they are, cannot do this, nor can
cultivated fields and motor-traversed roads. The
bold hill-tops and mountain heights which the ancient
Hebrews felt were God-inhabited; the clear springs
in Syria over which the Greeks built temples
through whose ruined stones the crystal water still
comes gushing; the sacred groves of Italy and Druid
oaks of northern Europe, tell a story of the deep
influence of such things upon the hearts and lives
of men, an influence we cannot afford to lose today
4.
in our mechanism-shrunken, modern world of immeasurably
growing population.
By taking thought in season, little need
be sacrificed to secure incalcuable benefits in
nature's wilder near-by regions, in her grander land-
scapes that lie within the reach of busy men; in re-
freshing forests, not too limited; on picturesque and
open downs beside the sea; or along the pleasant,
wooded side of streams with unpolluted water. When
coal becomes exhausted, water power or other form of
energy will take its place, but nothing will ever
compensate for natural beauty permanently ruined with-
in the narrowing bounds of modern life.
Life will always be a compromise of many
interests, where each and every side must get and
give. But life is also an organic whole, where, as
in the old Roman fable of the stomach and the brain
that won the people back from their revolt, each part
must starve if the other be not fed; and if there be
anything in the world, next to the opportunity to gain
the necessities of life, to meet disease or find the
means of education, that should be kept upen to the
right use of all it is the wholesome freedom of nature
and opportunity for contact with its many-sided in-
terest and beauty in appropriate tracts. The day will
ultimately come when to provide such will be felt to
be one of the most essential duties of the state or
5.
greatest privileges of wealthy citizens. For wiser
and better gifts than these, to be public heritages
forever, it were hard to find. Permanent as few
others can be, they will only gain with time, in
beauty often and in richness of association always.
Changes in science or social organization, altered
standards of artistic interest or change in chari-
table method will not destroy their value.
There are landscapes and tracts of land
which for their beauty and exceptional interest -
or their close relation to important centers --
should be inalienably public, forever free to all.
Our metropolitan parks and reservations are a
first step in this direction, as are the national
parks out west, but with increasing private ownership
and rapidly increasing population the movement is
one that will need to go far eventually.
The earth is our common heritage. It is
both right and needful it should be kept widely free
in the portions that the homes of men, industry and
agriculture do not claim. Personal possession reaches
out at widest but a little way, and passes quickly
in the present day, gathering about itself little of
that greater charm which time alone can give. If
men of wealth would spend but a fraction of what
they do for themselves alone, with brief résult, in
6.
making the landscape about them beautiful for the
benefit of all in permanent and simple ways, the
result would be to give extraordinary interest -
of of steadily accumulative kind - to every residential
section of the land and it would tend, besides, to
give all men living in or passing through it a sense
of personal possession in the landscape instead of
the now common one of injury at exclusion from it;
and to give them, too, a freedom of wandering and a
beauty by the way which even the wealthiest cannot
get today.
And with such gifts would also go the
pleasant sense of sharing and the sense of permanence
in things accomplished No monument could be a better
one to leave behind, no memorial pleasanter --
whether for one's self or others - than gifts like
these that make the earth a pleasanter, a more in-
teresting or delightful place for other men to live
in than it would else have been.
In offering the Nation, through the
Federal Government, the reservation it has formed upon
Mount Besert Island our Association seeks not only to
ensure to all the future freedom, the striking beauty
and the various interest of the tract conveyed but to
make the gift serve also as a statement of the follow-
ing principles: (1) That great landscape, unique or
7.
typical, belong of right to the people, who should
gradually ROquire then in adequate and sufficient
portions, and guard them as if precious heritage.
(2) That the nation, states and individual citizens
should cooperate together to conserve in every possi-
ble way the beauty and various interest of the
natural world; and that this is a duty not to be lost
sight or or postponed in the presence of other
passing needs but to be provided for with these.
That this movement mist gros, no one who
has thought upon the setter can doubt - the more-
went for tablic parks and open spaces, near or far,
not as playgrounds simply but as opportunities for
nature in its may-sided interest and beauty to r
min an influence in life; for places, too,
where such features or wild life as way co-exist
with man may be preserved sund where plant life,
whether in forest growths or the infinite detail
of flovering plants and lowly forms, may still remain
a part of man's enviroment.
The movement will gros, as all great
movements do, because a great truth - man's need for
nature - lies behind it. The essentially important
thing is to save KHONE that opportunity we can for its
expansion later.
Xxx
Dictaphone - transcribed October 15, 1941.
I acquired the lands west of the Athletic Field and secured
the Park Office site at the beginning of my work for a major group
of Public Reservations with the thought clearly in view of such an
approach to them as I am now offering the National Park which presently
sprang out of my undertaking. The Athletic Field, the fundamental
feature of the whole undertaking, I made safe for all time, ao long
as Bar Harbor will endure, by giving it to the Town with restrictions
against any building being placed upon it; the land west of it, held
personally for a time, I placed in the hands of the Dorr Foundation,
created for the express purpose of holding it, to insure its safety,
independent of myself, as a n essential feature In the approach I
planned to the Great Headow, central to my scheme of the Reservations.
Those chosen to constitute the Foundation were people I felt
would understand and be in sympathy with the spirtt of my work and
the end I had in view, and it is that corporation, hot I, that
controls it now and has the duty to see that my original plan for
a beautiful and undisfigured entrance from the Town to the group
of Public Reservations lands which I was gathering is worthy of the
whole and of what it leads to. The tract of land which the Dorr
Foundation corporation has reserved in its gift of the entrance to
the Park, the Park has no need of or use for at the present time
nor in the future so far as can be seen; all that the Park Service
officials at Washington desire it for, as I understand it, is to
make sure that no use will be made of it in the future alien to what
I now propose for the unique character of the whole as an entrance to
2.
theimportant National Park area. The members of the corporation and
I with them, most gladly agree to blotting whatever can best secure
this purpose without sacrificing the purpose for which the reservation
was made, important also to the Park in my judgment and in theirs.
This land did not enter into the question when bill for the taking
over by the Government of the National Park headquarters site and its
buildings was entered, not necessary to it, but was held in reserve
with the intention of offering it to the Government later in free
gift, when such plans as have now been adopted, plans with which I
am more than content, had been worked out. All that I or the Foundation
want is to make permanent so far as is humanly possible the opportunities
secured. It has great opportunities and should be as enduring
. intthe accomplishment, if rightly done, as the Park itself.
I, can see now danger ahead in the Park-Foundation control, nor what
I control myself which lies immediately beyond it. But beyond that,
between it and the actual entrance on the Park there is a good bit
to be done to make the opportunity that offers there secure and
developed to its best and fullest.
Dictaphone - transcribed October 15, 1941.
I, happily, was not a member of the Bar Harbor Water Company's
directors board, but stood apart as one interested from every angle
in the better development of the Town. I could do what others could
not without being open to the charge of acting for some special
interest in seeking charge of the acquisition of further lands for
the protection of the Bar Harbor Water Company. The water sheds of
the lake was large and its lands were held by local owners whose
prices would go up beyond all limit as soon as purchasing by the
Water Company for protection of the lake began. But the matter was
one of broad public concern, State concern, and I thought that by
dwelling on that aspect of it I night be able to get a law passed
by the State Legislature, which happily met in its biennial session
the first of the coring year, and I set to work upon it with a will.
We happily had at Seal Harbor, as a summer resident, Professor
C
19092
William T. Sedgwick, author of the most authoritative work extant
on public water supplies, and I at once enlisted his aid. Dr. Abbe,
than whom no one in New York stood higher, I already had behind me
and one by one I was able to present, when the January first meeting
of the Legislature opened and #/1111/111 hearing came upon my bill,
a most impressive array of testimony of high authority in favor of
granting our water supplies on the Island condemnation rights for the
protection of their waters purity. I also got a number of leading
summer residents on the Island to attend the meeting and speak in
favor of the Bill. They represented a great new industry of the State,
summer residential life along its ocean-front, and they too carried
weight. I sought the right for all the water supply companies upon
the Island; I obtained it, in spite of local opposition, for Eagle Lake,
Bar Harber's water supply, and Jordan Pond, that of Seal Harbor, the
two most important of them all. Local ownership around the others,
less important from the summer residential point of view, was too
strong to do more, but it was enoughth
It put the idea of the
necessity of purity for our water supplies across and no further
trouble has ensued.
Having got this right, I naturally was asked by the Water
Company to take charge of securing, so far as their reserve funds,
which were consideraBle, would allow, their water sheds which I.
agreed to do upon the sole condition that the lands secured should
pass into the Public Reservations hands, to be held by our Trustees
association, and not go to the Water Company, thus insuring, as I
thought forever the purity of their supply. In this the Water
Company secured a great advantage in its freedom from taxation
which ownership under our Trustess of Public Reservations association
gave, and it readily agreed. The same course was followed by the
Seal Harbor Water Company so far as need was, and the two lakes
lying back to back as it were with the Bubbles mountain ridge
2 Wed night, Feb, 8,
Survey of the lot should be made, as above described,
as the spring opening makes possible. Instructions from
my executors should be drawn up in regard to this lot as
early as winter permits.
NoteL This also should be done in regard to the four
lots, four separate lots I still own,
opposite
One, Pryob's Island where there is a spring
to be
and the wate: r carried across by pipe to Pryor's
Riquests Igland
Two, the land by Lurvey Spring;
Three and four the two pieces which should be treated as a
single one, though separate, at the head of Long Pond. I mean
by head the southern end near the piping pumping station.
of
These I would like to have ultimately used independently, but
with due regard for the Park, should it be possible. But if not
and they are
in one way or another these
lands all are of value.
My feeling is that the two at the head of Long Pond
should dealt with as a unit for an ice fishing club, a rowing
club on the eastorn shore of the eastern lot, east of the Pumping
station and the one tract of land still left me on Echo Lkake
at the head of the Lake between the App club and th boys club
whose future needs to be worked out -- might very well go with these
along with the entrance from the high road down and the continuation
compicion
Wednesday evening CT1 1
Note to get the proposed property lines and the sewage
and cistern line drawn for the properties on the shore.
And to get line against the Phelps property drawn out
on paper from road to shore with the restrictions against
building and for tall trees on the property obtained from
David Ogden shown also throughout, from Main street to the
shore. The pipe line against the Phelps line to its outflow
on the shore needs also to be shown.
The land I own on the Otter Creek road beyond the
Gorge upon the west descending from the Otter Creek Road
crossing the Brook and there extending to the woods nor thward
needs also to be surveyed and shown. This whole property
should be thoroughly studied, its possibilities looked into
and the access to it studied.
The spring on the Parkland
where the old
loggers lived should be looked into also for its possibilities.
This property is interesting and unle SS right arrangements
can be made for it, , it should he held and not given away.
The tax upon at the present date cannot be but very light.
A good ground survey not only of bounds but of woods and
levels would help also. The footpaths and old woodroads as
developed on the Park land north of it should not be opened
hence
through by land as at present owned and thruxxnot used at all,
for riding or driving. This is to be watched out for and
strictly held to.
DICTATHONE.
May 29th.
CONTINUING DICTATION TO MRS. . STOVER.
for
18406
sitter
Another beba at this time with the same medium
whom we will call z, was Prof. Newbold of the University
of Pennsylvania.
He was Prof. there of Greek but
had recently been appointed when I knew him Dean of the
University and feared, if his name appeared in connection
psychical
with
research phenomena that it might discredit
him at the University, so his name was kept out of the
as were
Societtes report, published in England, AXTA those also
of the Perry family, so they had no hésitation on talking
of the matter and coming squarely out in affirmation
22
of their aptitude conviction of the gunuity of the
phenomena on a survival basis.
Prof. Newbold came
on from Philadelphia to make trial of the medium, and
stayed with Dr. Hodgdon in his rooms on Charles Street
Boston.
What he got I do not know.
He did not
tell me and I did not ask, but it was to him absolutely
(1901-02)
convincing.
This was later by some ten years than
what Dr. Hodgdon waited in Boston to tell of us on our
(1891-92)
return from a winter on the Nile.
And but for my
mother's interest which kept me still in touch with
Dr. Hodgkin's work of which he came in frequently to
tell her, I had dropped out completely from pursuing
as
2.
the investigation.
Then Dr. Hodgdon, active
and athletic and a fellow member at the Tavern Club,
fell dead suddenly while playing handball and Prof.
James, then become president of the English
psychical
Research Society because of the importance they gave
to the work being done in America and his own distinction,
asked me as knowing something of the work and Dr.
Hodgdon personally, to take charge of straightening
things out till someone would be got over from England
to do it.
This I did, and it proved an exceedingly
trying job/
Dr. Hodgdon, convinced by the evidence
he had got, had taken the communications that
came to him from the controls on the basis of reality
and had given that impression to a widely scattered
group of sitters for sittings believing, like himself,
in the r eality of the communication and they had talked
freely, as had Dr. Hodgdon also, of personal and private
matters, $1111 trusting to Dr. Hodgdon's assurance that
all would be kept strictly private.
Dr. Hodgdon
had also taken over for the Society the entire time
of Mrs. z, the medium, limiting her sittings strictly
in number that she might come fresh to her work and,
which
advaning the charge for sittings to the point
sufficed for her and her family's support. This
3.
gave sitters, paying on this basis for their sittings,
a better right to have what they got, taken down by
Dr. Hodgdon, who, when no one else, was present at the
sitting, a further claim to an invidiability. But,
looking at the matter from another angle, Dr. Hyslop
of New York, carrying on independent investigations
into the subjects, wished to be appointed in Dr.
Hodgdon's place for the purpose of giving all the
record whose privacy Dr. Hodgdon had assured, to the
public as purely scientific material, which no one
had a right to hold back.
And because
Prof. James would not support him in his claim, he
threatened a public attack in the newspaper which
would certainly have arcused interest in the subjectx
And, to further complicate the situation,
Dr. Hodgdon's secretary, employed by the English Society,
who had helped him to transcribe the sittings had come
in contact with the sitters personally, felt that she
and no one else whould be placed in charge of the
records. which, as the work had now been going on for
years, had reached a formidable bulk.
DR. Hodgdon's family in Australia was catered to
by William James and I, of whom they knew through
4.
larec.
his long stays with us at Oldfarm, happily reported
to them, was asked to become his executor and take
charge of what was private in the records.
In
the meantime, the English P Research Soc. made me,
at / James's suggestion, the Vice-president
of the Society and put me in charge of their interest
in Dr. Hodgdon's records.
This, in view of the
private nature of the material and the complication
over what the rights of the society were and what
those of the sitters and Dr. Hodgdon personally, I
undertook only on condition that William James's oldest
son,now grown to manhood, were made co-executive and
took over personally as such Dr. Hodgdon's papers.
This was done.
The sittings, on which Mrs. Z depended
for her support in accordance with her arrangement
with Dr. Hodgdon, continued under my general direction,
bringing me into personal contact with the sitters.
In this way I came to know personally whose who had
been given sittings by Dr. Hodgdon and made some
interesting friends, some of the sitters coming for
their occasional sittings, which they valued highly
from as far away as Philadelphia and Chicago, all
5.
concerned for XXXXXXXX/ intimate and personal reasons,
far more than important to them than the gathering of
scientific evidence, in their meetings with the controls.
One of these was // Prof. Newbold of whom I have
spoken, who told me of his earlier coming on AXXX/111
to stay with Dr. Hodgdon and make experiment of the
medium -- an experiment, as I have said, that resulted
in his complete conviction of reality in the communication.
Prof. Newbold, though he did not tell me what he had
got in his sittings when he stayed with Dr. Hodgdon
that led him to conviction of reality in the communication,
told me of one curious thing that happened on that visit.
Mrs. Z, the medium, lived with her family in a house
not in Boston but a neighboring town,
which Dr . Hodgdon had rented for her and where the
sittings were held.
One went out by train.
In
the course of their first sitting on this occasion some
non-sensical things were said by an includeng person-
ality breaking Mon on the sitting, which vexed them at the
time but amused them when they came to read the record
of the sitting over the next morning before returning,
again by train, for a second sitting. Having read
the record over they had only just time to catch their
6.
train, driving to the station.
Prof. Newbold was
staying with Dr. Hodgdon in his rooms on Charles St.
and it was there the record was read over as they
breakfasted.
When they got to the medium's house,
taking a train out, the same personality that had
appeared before immediately turned up again and
reproached Dr. Hodgdon for his
laughter over
what be - this personality w had said during the
medium's trance the day before.
There was no
explanation for it along normal lines of compmnication.
In some way the ### including
control had become aware of what had taken
place in Dr. Hodgdon's room immediately they left
to catch their train, and there had been no one in
# the room beside them.
It seemed a clear case
of swareness at a distance, of which indeed there
are many well authenicated instances.
The English secretary came and I turned Dr.
Hodgdon's papers over to him to be carried over,
sealed, to England and examined at England if
anyone had time to study them
,liew
they
and
&
without which all is valueless
Evidently, unless
to the sitter.
And I was struck by the freedom given
7.
by the sitters to & control so doubtful and so little
known. Now and again what seemed a real figure from
the beyond was thrown upon the screen of the medium
sub-normal consciousness, trance- conscious, and played
a seemingly genuine part.
In general, the controls
were
psychilogies
shams, phases evidently of the medium's
sub-conscious mind -- whatever mind can be that is
sub-conscious.
It was with a feeling of great
relief that I committed the papers and the medium,
both, to the care of the English secretary, Mr.
Hiddmatton, who disappeared from my horizon.
Frederick Myers died at this time and they
if
thought in England that/anyone could return to
communicate it would be he who had taken so great
a part in their investigation, and it was for this
especially that they desired to have the medium out
to England for studies thete.
They made them during
the following winter to no result.
Then the medium
was returned home and committed to my c are, a care
I accepted for the possibility of discovery and I
raised funds for further sittings under my direction,
taking part in them myself and making opportunity for others.
8
The object of my
investigation was to see if I could get something
evidential from Frederick Myers who had stayed with
us at Bar Harbor and I knew personally.
But if
they KAA failed in England, with all his old home
association and personal frendships to draw upon,
V
I thought it idee to go out in quest of material
along that line.
And I took one of my own, original
so far as I know.
Myers had been a notable scholar
in the classics and a poet.
I sought
something from him along that line and got some
strangely interesting results, which I promptly
dispatched to England as I got them, to be studied
over there.
I got references to classical
mythology dwelling, as Myers would have done, on
its poetic side, which were etraordinarily interest-
ing and utterly beyond anything the medium, not a
of
person/Y/ more than the most ordinary education,
could have possibly known about or imagined.
Most
of them contained material I at one timeor another
had been conversant with myself, but happily as it
chanced I had never read 01/ Ovid's Metamophases
9.
and Dr. Verril of a noted Greek scholar,
wife and daughter, the latter equally a scholar
found as they thought references to these in what
I got and which could not therefore
have
come out of my mind.
On this and the imagination
displayed, studying my records carefully there laid
much stress.
On one / Occasion I got
curious results.
The theory of Mrs. Z's trances
was that those on the other side removed the spirit
from what they called the machine, the body, and used
it themselves for making communications. Then, the
trance over, they returned the spirit to its body,
it being for a brief time conscious apparently of
what was said or done by those upon the other side,
then suddenly, losing that, came in consciousness
again.
During this period the medium would talk,
telling in a disconnected, whispered sought of way,
what she saw and heard.
When in full trance all
animation seemed to have left the body save the right
arm only, the hand being lifted up inquiringly as
to question or to hear, then brought down onto the paper
which lay before her and seizing a pencil would write.
On one occasion, when Mrs. Z was in full trance I
10.
said that I had a line of poetry
-
Greek poetry -
which had been much to Dr. Eyer's, when
he
was
upon
this
side,
and
wide
m
La
posted
in
original
Greekd without translating it in an address he gave
which had been afterward published and I repeated
the line taken from the commencement of Homer's
Odyssey.
The hand, as usual, went up inquiringly,
then wrote asking me to repeat it, which I did a
couple of times perhaps, always in the Greek and
giving no indication of its source.
The hand then
wrote that they would take it to Er. Eyer's and ask
him to answer it.
When we next net, which would
be on the second after, Hrs. Z only giving three
sittings a week, that she might be fresh, Nothing
was said referring At during her trance on the second
day.
But when the trance was over and the medium's
spirit as controls explained her return to consciousness
was back in her machine or bodybut conscious still of
what KA went on upon the other side, she began to whisper,
at first so low that I could not
end 2
catch it,
cytender
to bring over but I did catch it and what she whispered
smoke
was "I save my soul and win my homeward way." Then
connecting
if
as XXX corrected by some one on the other side, she
11.
whispered, 'Saving' 'Mr . Myer's said, f
a very
curious correction showing exact scholarship, the
being
first word if/the pastpand not the present indicative.
So the line was read with that low whispered trans-
lation and the correction made.
Nothing more
was said in reference to it as the medium's conscious-
ness seemed passed over into normal, nor was anything
said concerning it at the next sitting two day's later
yet, except that as the hand began to write, as she
entered the trance, 'comrades homeward way' thus,
without explanation, completing a correct rendering
of Homer's line.
The only explanation possible
along normal lines being that the medium had memorized
the lines when I repeated it, asking for translation
and had gone to some Greek scholar and asked that it
be translated, but then its translation would have
been correct in the first instance and I could hardly
imagine that two successive corrections could have
been made in way they were in order to deceive me.
Yet the possibility was there and it could not be
taken as conslusive evidence, though strangely
suggestive.
12.
All together it was a most interesting experience,
and so they found it in England on my report.
When spring came, after various correspondence
with Sir Oliver Lodge, Mrs. Sedgwick and others I
returned Mrs. Z to England for a final study together
with a substantial contribution I raised from a few
friends who had been interested with me in the investi-
gation to add to shotket fund raised over there
to provide Ror her future and there my connection with
the Society ended, William James passing over to the
majority himself, soon after.
Sir Oliver Lodge
name out of it with full conviction of the Bible and
genuine communication of which he got further evidence,
he felt, when a son was killed in the World's War.
But I left my investigation with suspended judgment;
were it but possible to arrive at definite evidence
of survival, no subject in the world can touch it in
importancealtering our whole outlook upon life.
N
may 30, Dictaffore
I had a curious experience in connection with
that last
winter's work on gather-
ing material to send out to England on Frederick
Myers.
To tell it I must go back some years.
The Bellemy Storers were friends of Theodore Roosevelt
with men he knew socially
in Washington and Roosevelt, liking to fill/diplomatic
such
posts that came under his disposal when he became
President, made Mr. Storer the United States Minister
to Austria. Mr. and Mrs. Storer were Catholics and
established at Vienna pulled wires to get some appointment
made of a Catholic to another post which, for some
reason -- I forget the details -- it pleased Roosevelt
so greatly that he made an open breach with the Storers,
who had been his intimate friends before.
Storer
resigned and the whole matter got into newspapers with
publication of letters from Roosevelt to Mrs. Storer,
letter of an earlier date, in which he addressed her
as 'Dear Maria', which attached itself as a name to
the whole bunch of letters, giving the whole matter
a rather rediculous turn. 71611 When the Storers
got back to Washington, there was too much
Roosevelt in the air to make it pleasant and they
2.
came on to Boston and took an Apartment there till
Roosevelt's time should be up.
It was then that
I met them. Mrs. Storer, though a strong Catholic,
was interested also in the practical research work
I was engaged upon, of which she knew, and one day
I got a note from her asking me if I would not come
and take a cup of tea and to meet a man named Raupert,
sent out by the Catholic Church from England to have
talks with the Catholic priests in America and common
laymen, and make it clear to them that they must have
nothing to do with psychical reserarch patters.
I
naturally went and had a t alk with
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Memoirs of G.B. Dorr 1901-1915
Details
1901 - 1915