January ji, i(jii> 
LAND & WATER 
ittfc anti Jtelter0 
By J. C. Squire 
17 
"The Universal Memory" 
MR. \V. B. YEATS, in Per Arnica SUeniia 
Ltiiiae (Macmillan, 4s. 6d. net) has published 
iwo intimate, and beautifully written, fragments 
.if self-communing : admitting us, with an 
iinift'octed frankness not disguised by the polish of his seii- 
te ices and the studious care of his images, to a brief glimpse 
of the inner chamber where he keeps his most important 
secrets, his jjoetic methods, his imperfections of character, 
liis beliefs, his doubts and his ignorances about Hfe, death, 
and " the nature of things." Hii essays can scarcely be called 
ethical ; he is continuouslv preoccupied with religion, but it 
Mould scarcely come iinder that definition of " morality 
tinged with emotion," which is an agnostic's and not a mystic's 
dclinition ; and his principal observation about conduct is 
that the kind of character that he most admires, " over- 
mastering, creati\e," and of which he gives " St. Francis of 
Assisi and (jesar Borgia," as examples (!), is produced when 
iiieii aim at imitating models or " masks," and that our modern 
cultivation of self and sincerity makes us gentle and passive. 
Where he is most interesting is not here — where every con- 
tention in his argument provokes an answer — but when he is\ 
tcntati\ei\- e.Kploring the frontiers of psychology, especially 
in its relation to art and cosmolog}'. 
***** 
Art, to him, is an escape ; the " hollow image of fulfilled 
desire." " We make out of the quairel with others, rhetoric, 
but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry " ; the poet is a 
saint or a Jiero when he is writing, but not (Mr Yeats is careful 
to point out) at other times. By impUcation, Mr. Yeats 
narrows down to the definition of poetiy to exclude the fruits 
of the mere conscious intellect ; he quotes Goethe's theory of 
the evocation of images. " One must allow the images to 
fomi with all their associations before one criticises." This, 
of course, is inspiration under another name ; the poet's 
\isions. like his dreams, come into his mind. As in dreams, 
if the mind be held passive, an image will drag up from tlic 
subconscious " anything you already possess a fragment of." 
l^xperiences w hich he could not explain by the l-reudian theory 
of the mere rearrangement of personal memories and fnis- 
t rated desires (with a strong emphasis on the sexual) led him 
to believe in " a great memory passing on from generation to 
generation "; but this did not suffice, and he now sketches, 
with an occasional confidence that leaves one startled and 
an occasional obscurity that leaves one puzzled, a universe 
of material and spiritual bodies, emanations, ghosts, 
witches, Daimons, Conditions of Air, Conditions of Fire and 
Paths of the Serpent which is possibly more familiar to tlie 
disciples of Madame Blavatsky than it is to me. 
• « * * * 
I should not lia\e given this inadequate summary of doc- 
trines which deserve more thorough treatment by someone, 
wliether sympathetic or not, more versed in their history and 
affmities, had I not desired to notice an extraordinary narra- 
tive b\- a gentleman whose experiences have forced him to 
conclusions resembling those of Mr. Yeats. 1 refer to The 
Gale of Remembrance, by Frederick Bligh Bond, R.F.I.B.A. 
(Blackwell, 6s net). Mr. Bond, who some ten years ago was 
appointed Director of Excavations at Glastonbury, gives in 
this book " the story of the psychological experiment which 
resulted in the discovery.of the Edgar Chapel at Glastonbuiy." 
He and a friend, in short obtained, at a large number of sit- 
tings, automatic writings which (he says) divulged to hmi 
tilings which at that time nobody knew and which afte^^vards 
proved to be true. Chfef amongst them was the site, shape 
and size of the Edgar Chapel, long a matter of speculation. 
***** 
Mr. Bond tends to Mr. Yeats's old theory of the " general 
memorv." But he is rather confused on the subject (no 
wonder !) and what happened to him is much more interesting 
than any theories he may hold about what happened. He 
and his friends received messages from a company of 
ecclesiastics, including Beerc and Whiting (the last two 
Abbots of Crlastonbury), Guliclmus, Reginaldus, and one 
Johannes Bryant, who.se reminiscences and instructions 
appeared most frequently. Johannes was a man of marked 
character. He was fond of building, beer, fishing, and nature 
study, and there is a strange story about Joha!\nes (who did 
in i5.ij), Henry VIII., and the Abbey's great vat of ale. 
One of his (if tliis is liis) messages may serve as iutroduction : 
I think 1 all! wrung in sonic things. Other influences cross 
Hiy own. . " . Tlube monks are trying to make tliem- 
sches felt bv vou bjtii. Wliv du tliev want to talk Latin i 
. ■: . Why can't they talk English ? . . . Bene- 
dicite. Johannes. ... It is difficult to tall: in Latm 
tongue. Seems just as difficult to talk in Latin language. 
Ye names of builded things arc very hard in Latin 
tongue — transome, faune, tracery, and the like. ^le son 
thou canst not understand. Weo wolde speak in the Kng- 
Ij^she tongue 
Fhe hesitation of the spirits, or the memory, about language 
is noticeable throughout. They write sporadically in collo- 
quial^ English, in the F2nglish of American Higher Lifers, in 
the Englyshe tongue of their own diverse times, in Latin 
which is like the plodding Latiri of Domesday Book (which 
tells us " hoc manerium fuit totum wastum," etc.), and in a 
mixture which recalles the law French of the clerk to the 
court wlio recorded that a prisoner had " ject un brickbat " 
at the judge. This tlie reader must accept ; it is only a minor 
puzzle where everything is piizzhng. The important thing is 
not that these media;val auxiharies had linguistic difiiculties 
which did not prevent them from "occasionally breaking into 
a beautiful sermon ending witli such words as " Work in the 
sun. Listen in the starlight," but that they issued specific 
directions which Mr. Bond obeyed with success. Sometimes 
they spiced their reiiiarks with humour, like that Reginaldus 
(qui obiit 1214) who replied to a question about St. Patrick 
and St. Brigit with : " They were, and didde, much among 
the heathen. We know not more, save that their workes 
were old and very dry to rede." Sometimes they made 
extremely questionable remarks about things in general, as 
when Robert the Monk alleged, of contemporary architecture : 
" They who budded in our day and were masters, lead ye ijow '' 
- which, if one accepts it, piiovokes the reflection that the old 
builders must experience even more difficulty in getting their 
instructions tjarough to the modern ones than the old inhabi- 
tants of Glastonbury did the modern visitors. But most of 
their messages are, if fragmentary, to the point. Mr^ Bond 
gives them in detail. He was told things scarcely credible 
about the huge measurements of the Edgar Chapel and oiE the 
whole structure ; he dug and found them true. He was 
told to go on when he seemed to have come to a solid wall of 
clay ; he noticed a slight discoloration, dug on, and found a 
polygonal east end, \\itli a probable door, which confirmed 
se\"eral emphatic messages, including : 
When you dig. excavate the pillars of the cr\pt, si.^ feet 
below the grass — they will give you a clue. The diregtion 
of the walls . . eastwards . was at an angle. 
. . Nothing er.ds twenty-seven long nineteen wide. 
He was told that there was fine blue glat's in the East window* 
and he found a trench where blue glass was thick ; he wa* 
told by a venerable Saxon to dig for the remains of his wattle- 
\\ork hut and he found blackened wattlework ; he was told 
that the Chapel had four bays (as to which nothing was 
known and no inference was possible) and he found it to be 
so : he was told that the builder " did make the Est end full 
square, that I know he didd, and in hym three arches and a 
grete serene," and he pro\-ed that there were three arches 
behind the altar, and found indications of a screen wall. 
He published, on the strength of his ultramundane informa- 
tion, a conjectural plan of the Edgar Chapel, long before the 
angular east end shown in it had been proved to have existed, 
and he has a testimonial from the Secretary of the S.P R 
saying that " there is no question but that the writing about 
the Edgar Chapel preceded the discovery of it by months" 
***** 
There are sometimes difficulties about Mr. Bond's measure- 
ments ; but a few minor flaws do not much impair the im- 
pressiveness of his extraordinaiy story. The curious person 
will hasten neither to swallow it whole, nor to call the author 
u fabricator, nor to invent ingenious plans of explaining away 
the difficult by the equally difficult. Mr. Bond has put 
his cards on the table with convincing candour. He has 
given us the text of a later series of communications about the 
lost Loretto Chapel. The building is stated to have been 
(thus early) hi the Italian style ; numerous rough plans arc 
supplied ; and it remains for further exploration to test the 
information given. " If," Mr. Bond remarks, " it should 
appear that by the same obscure mental process which has 
alreadv, in the case of the FZdgar Chapel, predicated the 
existence, with practical truth in form and detail, of a building 
wliese ^•ely memory was lost (and tlve evidence for which had 
been ignored, nav even scouted, by the most competent 
antiquaries), another architectdral treasure, long buried and 
lorgotteii, niigiit once again be brougiit to ligiit, and its 
wealth of Itahan detail verified ; then indeed, would come hito 
sight new vistas, new possibilities of exploration and research 
into the ?e';rets of old time. 
