314 



MY LIFE 



[Chap. 



of science as well as among the general public, many of 

 whom, I knew, it had induced to investigate and, as a 

 consequence of their investigation, to become complete 

 converts. I will here mention a little incident that shows 

 how people were accustomed to speak on the subject in the 

 popular tone of contemptuous incredulity, even when they 

 had reason to accept some of the facts. One evening, while 

 having tea after a Royal Institution lecture, I heard the late 

 Professor Ansted and a friend (not knowing I was just 

 behind them) mention spiritualism, and the professor 

 remarked, " What a strange thing it is such men as Crookes 

 and Wallace should both believe in it ! " To which the other 

 replied, with a laugh, " Oh, they are mad on that one subject." 

 As soon as the friend had turned away I addressed Ansted, 

 telling him I had heard what he and his friend had been 

 saying, and asked him if he had any knowledge whatever of 

 the subject. To which he replied, Well, not much ; but a 

 neighbour and friend of mine at Great Bealings has had the 

 most wonderful things happen in his house, which no one has 

 ever been able to find a cause for. He has often told me 

 about the bells ringing when no one was in the house. He 

 was a very clever man, and I am sure what he says is true, 

 and many people in the neighbourhood were witnesses of it." 

 This case I had referred to in my book, and it brought it 

 home to me more vividly to speak with a scientific man who 

 was a friend of the owner of the house where it occurred, and 

 had heard it from his own lips. This was shortly before 

 Professor Ansted's death from an accident, or he might 

 have become one of the band of " persecuted lunatics " — the 

 term by which my friend Mr. Guppy used to describe the 

 despised spiritualists. 



To return now to Romanes. He called upon me at 

 Croydon, and I think I paid him a visit in town, and he then 

 told me how he had come to take so deep an interest in 

 spiritualism. Some time previously a member of his own 

 family — I think either a sister or a cousin — had been found to 

 have considerable mediumistic power. Through her he had 

 witnessed a good many of the usual phenomena — movements 



