A Dead Man's Diary

Written after his Decease.

WITH A PREFACE BY

G.T. BETTANY, M.A.

"I sent my Soul through the Invisible, Some letter of that After Life to spell: And by-and-by my Soul return'd to me, And answered, 'I myself am Heav'n and Hell.'"

Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. (Fitzgerald's Translation.)

WARD, LOCK AND CO.,

LONDON, NEW YORK AND MELBOURNE.

1890.

(All rights reserved.)

PREFACE.

[Pg 5]

The literature purporting to describe the state of mankind after death, whether as Hades, Intermediate State, Purgatory, Hell, or Heaven, has mostly erred in the direction of too great detail. On the one hand, we have had those who with Swedenborg declare "that after death a man is so little changed that he even does not know but he is living in the present world; that the resemblances between the two worlds are so great, that in the spiritual world there are cities, with palaces and houses, and also writings and books, employments and merchandises." On the other hand, we have the picture drawn by the writer of "Letters from Hell," of imaginary houses and scenes, of seeming actions, of semblances of men compelled to appear to be doing after death the very things they did in life, despair all the while gnawing at their hearts. Archdeacon Farrar, in Chapter IV. of his "Mercy and Judgment," has given a varied and horrifying series of extracts from ancient and modern divines describing their detailed conceptions about the future of the wicked. As to the future of the beatified, no one

needs reminding of the multitude of word-pictures, often mutually contradictory, in which their existence has been depicted.

Thus we see that the human mind cannot choose but speculate in some fashion on the future state, while no man has the right to claim that he had said the last word on the subject. It may therefore be confidently anticipated that the remarkable narrative here presented, of which considerable portions have already appeared, serially, in the English edition of "Lippincott's Monthly Magazine," will find a very large number of interested readers, who will be glad to peruse it in the connected and completed form, in which it is best calculated to express the author's full meaning and experiences. It will not by its length or excess of detail overburden the reader, nor does it claim to be more than a narrative of experience which may be left to convey its own lessons. The writer, who prefers to remain anonymous, is one whose essays and stories have been received with high appreciation on both sides of the Atlantic. His narrative is put forth as his actual experience during a lengthened absence from the body, during which he was believed to be dead. Of course no other living person can

confirm or deny his experiences, though many may deem them incredible, fictitious, or the imaginings or visions of a trancelike state. I do not pretend to decide to what category they belong, nor do I feel called upon to condemn or approve any of the assertions or opinions thus put forward. If any one holds theological convictions which appear to conflict with them, I would remark that the publishers, in letting the "Dead Man" speak for himself, do not hold themselves responsible for his opinions, merely having assured themselves of the serious spirit in which they are narrated.

The record of these experiences being given in the form of a diary, the writer has not felt bound to tell his story with the simple directness which is expected in a work of fiction, but has noted down in his narrative, as is the manner of diarists, the thoughts which the record of his experiences have aroused. Though these occasional digressions have no immediate bearing upon the facts recorded, they will, I think, be found to contain some interesting reading, nor do they, in my opinion, interfere seriously with the completeness of the narrative as an artistic whole.

In conclusion, I would add that the writer only desires that his experiences may be read in a candid spirit, and that as no man can prove him to be wrong who has not actually entered the world of spirits, those who reject his narrative will endeavour to maintain an attitude of suspended judgment, until they are in a position to judge for themselves. For myself, I can but say that the moral of the author's teaching is worthy of the most serious attention, and if put into practice there can be no question that it would conduce greatly to the happiness of mankind.

G.T. Bettany.

CONTENTS.

[Pg 13]

CHAPTER I.

EXPLAINS MY TITLE.

It has always been a favourite fancy of mine that I should like to die upon some sunny, songful morning, in spring or early summer. The thought of dying in the night, and of finding this thin and aërial something, which I have learned to call "my soul," being driven remorselessly nightward, as Adam and Eve were driven from Paradise; the seeing it in imagination, a spectral, unsubstantial shadow of myself, flitting a-shivering out into the black-wombed darkness, and fumbling with filmy hands that it might clasp[Pg 14] the closer around it the warm familiar robe of flesh, only to find that robe fallen away for ever—this thought, I must confess, fills me at all times with an abhorrent loathing and dread.

To look up by night at the cold glitter of the stars, and to fancy my disembodied spirit winging its weary way thereto, through fathomless leagues of void and voiceless ether, causes me ever to shiver, and to turn shudderingly to earth again; but the thought of passing peacefully away upon some sunny, summer morning seems less like dying than like stepping out of doors to be among the birds and the butterflies. Then the heaven of my hopes would not seem so very distant after all (and oh! how much more heavenly and homelike would that heaven appear did I but know it to be this side of the stars!), and my first entry into the dim and shadowy[Pg 15] realm of the spirit-world would seem the less strange and unfamiliar for my having to pass out on my way to it through the fields, the flowers, and the sunshine that I love so well.

To me, however, in the utter solitude of midnight waking, and in the scarcely less utter solitude of day-dreaming in the midst of men, the thought which ever most oppresses me in the contemplation of death, is not so much the Unknown which lies beyond, as the thought of its awful loneliness,—the thought that human faces may shine on my face, human hands lie clasped in mine, and human voices bear me company up to the very boundary line of that still and silent land, but that when that boundary line is once reached, all these must fail and forsake me, and I must turn to face the unknown darkness naked, desolate, and alone.

[Pg 16]

But why do I allow my thoughts, you say, to brood thus morbidly upon death and the death moment? I will tell you. Because I who now write to you have—save only in the last and uttermost giving up of the spirit—been for some narrow space of time dead; because on me there once fell that thin and impalpable veil which cuts off, as by a wall of vast and impenetrable night, the dead one from those whom he leaves behind.

The facts of the matter are simply these. Some years ago I became seriously ill, grew worse day by day, and was pronounced dying, and finally dead. Dead I apparently was, and dead I remained to all intents and purposes for the greater part of two days, after which, to the intense and utter astonishment of my friends and of the physicians, I exhibited symptoms of returning vitality, and in the course of a week or two was[Pg 17] convalescent. The medical and scientific aspects of the case are, I am assured by those most competent to judge, of unusual interest, but it is not to them that I now wish to direct attention. It is rather to that dim borderland betwixt life and death, wherein the spirit hovers on uncertain pinion, as if hesitating whether to return to the body it has lately tenanted, or to wing its way to the shadowy heights of the world Unseen.

Where, during those two-score hours, I would ask, was my soul, ghost, or life-principle? Had it passed into some intermediate spirit-realm, there to await till the Father of Spirits should command it either finally to quit the mortal habitation in which it had so long found a home, or to return thereto till such time as He should call it to Himself? Or was it still hovering over the[Pg 18] body, struggling and striving to free itself from the fetters which bound it to that which, without it, were but a senseless and inanimate clod?

To that question I am prepared with an answer, and so strange a one, that I cannot hope my story will be regarded with anything but incredulity, nor can I reasonably expect it to be otherwise, for I am aware that what I am about to relate I myself should reject unhesitatingly were it proffered me on the testimony of another.

[Pg 19]

CHAPTER II.

DEALS WITH DEATH AND THE DREAD OF IT.

If the thoughts which are coursing through my brain at this moment be not less gruesome to read than they are to write, this chapter will, I fear, be but sorry reading; for I feel strangely depressed and nervous, as I settle down to the opening pages of my diary.

The wind is raging and roaring outside until the stout walls of the house seem to rock and sway like tree-tops, and the sudden gusts and squalls make my startled heart[Pg 20] bound and beat faster in my bosom, and turn me sick with a sense of loneliness and of loss.

Even when I lie warm in my bed the sound of the wind at midnight strikes a chill through me, so that I shiver in spite of the blankets. As it comes shrieking and sobbing through key-hole and lattice, the very doors and windows seem to partake of my superstition, and to be touched with some uncanny dread; for long after it has died away I hear them creaking complainingly among themselves, as if they too were nervous and in fear. In the wind's shriek at such times there is always to me some suggestion of the sights it has seen, and of the ruin it has wrought. I seem to see, as I listen to its wailing, a weary moon that looks out white and wan upon a bleak heath, where a dead woman lies straining a living[Pg 21] babe to her milkless breast; or upon a waste of hurrying waters that heave and roar and hurl themselves in huge billows upon one desolate figure, clinging despairingly to a broken mast. And then there is a sudden lull in the storm; the moon is hidden by clouds once more, and the infant's wail, the strong man's cry, and the shriek

of the wind, gloating in savage exultation over its ghastly secrets, die away into a distant rumble, and all is still save the beating of my heart, and the stealthy creaking of door and casement.

Even as I write I can hear its wailing so die away in the distance, and I seem to see it crouching, still and quiet and panther-like, yet ever gathering itself together, and creeping nearer and nearer, so that it may take me unaware, and in one sudden bound sweep down upon me, as an eagle swoops upon his prey, and bear me away to destruction.

[Pg 22]

Listen to it now!—whistling, wailing, shrieking, like a live thing! Is it any wonder, on such a night, and with a sound in the air like that of innumerable lamentations, that I feel strangely conscious of the near approach of death, and cannot dissociate my thoughts from

"The knell, the shroud, the mattock, and the grave, The deep damp vault, the darkness, and the worm?"

For I do fear death, as I believe we all do in some moods. Notwithstanding our reiterated beliefs in Christ and in Immortality; notwithstanding our prayers, hymn-singing, and heartfelt declarations of our trust in God, and in His care for us, are there not moments in the life of each of us when the human nature within recoils in dumb and desolate protest from the thought of an existence in which the body will be left to decay? We think at such times of[Pg 23] our own death and burial. We picture the mourning coaches setting out, with solemn pomp and pageantry of woe, to bear us away to our last earthly resting-place. We see them drive back—briskly now, and as though the grief were left behind with the coffin—to the darkened house, and we see the mourners alight and re-enter to draw up the blinds with a sigh of thinly-disguised satisfaction, and to turn with a natural if humiliating relief to life and the things of life again. And as we think of the darkness coming on, and of that deserted body of ours, which had once so craved for light and warmth and human companionship,

lying, in the first awful night of desolation, away out under the sods in that dreary cemetery, we can almost fancy that we see the uneasy soul, restless even in heaven, stealing sadly to earth again, and hovering, for very[Pg 24] companionship, over the forsaken mound that covers its ancient comrade.

So, too, there are moments of midnight waking, when we lie on our bed as in a grave, and feel the awful thought of death borne in upon us with unutterable, intolerable horror. Then the darkness which shuts out those objects that in the day-time distract the attention of our outward eye, and of our mind, serves only to make our mental vision doubly keen, and to concentrate all our faculties, as to one inward focal point of light, on that hateful thought. Then do we seem to feel the earth rushing swiftly on its way, as if eager to hurry us to our own dissolution; and then do we stretch forth impotent hands and vain, striving hopelessly to stay it on its course. Yet ever is our striving of none avail: Death, hideous and inexorable, stares us in the face—a wall of[Pg 25] vast and impenetrable night, which closes in upon us on every side. We gasp and choke as though some bony and cruel fingers lay clutching at our throat. "Is there no way," we cry, with heart strained unto bursting, "is there no way by which we may escape the Inescapable?—no loop-hole through which we may creep, and

elude this black and grisly thing?" But from the hollow womb of night comes back the sullen answer, "Escape there is none," and then, like doomed criminals who snatch greedily at a day's reprieve, we thrust the ghastly thing away from us, and strive to distract our thoughts in folly.

[Pg 26]

CHAPTER III.

DEALS WITH LIFE AND THE LUST OF IT, BUT HAS NO DIRECT BEARING ON MY STORY.[1]

Shall we not weary in the windless days Hereafter, for the murmur of the sea, The cool salt air across some grassy lea? Shall we not go bewildered through a maze Of stately streets with glittering gems ablaze, Forlorn amid the pearl and ivory, Straining our eyes beyond the bourne to see Phantoms from out life's dear forsaken ways? [Pg 27] Give us again the crazy clay-built nest, Summer, and soft unseasonable spring, Our flowers to pluck, our broken songs to sing, Our fairy gold of evening in the West; Still to the land we love our longings cling, The sweet vain world of turmoil and unrest. —Graham R. Tomson.

Let me frankly confess that I love this world and the things of it, and so, I believe, do all in whom the "great, glad, aboriginal" and God-given love of life is whole and healthy, and not stunted by sickness of mind or body. For the bereaved and the sorrow-stricken I make every allowance and would have all tenderness, but I suspect either the honesty or the health (and by "health" I mean, of course, mental as well as physical soundness) of those who express themselves as being "desirous of departing," or who assert that love of this[Pg 28] world is irreconcilable with the love of God.

It is not God's world, with its love and friendship and little children, its fields and flowers, sea and sky, sunlight and starshine, and sweet consolations of Art and Song, against which we are bidden to beware. No it is man's world—the world which devotes itself to gain, or to the wish to be somebody in society; to the frittering away of our days in fashionable frivolity, or in struggling to outdo our neighbour, not in the purity of our lives, or the dignity of our actions, but in our clothes, our carriages, and the company we keep—this world it is which cannot be rightly loved by one in whom dwelleth the love of the Father.

But God's world we can never love half enough, can never sufficiently appreciate and enjoy. Suppose that you and I, my reader,[Pg 29] had to make a world—call it a heaven if you will—of our own designing, and were entrusted with infinite potentialities for the purpose. Could we, could all of us combined, ever conceive of anything half so beautiful as this world at which so many of us gaze with apathetic eyes?

"An idle poet, here and there, Looks round him, but for all the rest, The world, unfathomably fair, Is duller than a witling's jest."

At best we could but copy, but if it so happened that we, to whom it was given to create, had never been permitted to set eyes even upon this earth beforehand, what sort of a world then, think you, should we contrive to construct?

I believe that if God were to make a man, a full-grown man in a moment, and were to set him down in the midst of the world, to[Pg 30] look upon it with new eyes, and for the first time, instead of letting him grow up from a child, to become accustomed to it—for it is true, as Mr. Lowell says, that "we glance carelessly at the sunrise, and get used to Orion and the Pleiades,"—I believe that that man would be in danger of delirium from his overwhelming joy and wonder at the beauty and the boundlessness of that which he saw around.

Even this grim old London is full of beauty and of boundlessness; of beauty which strikes me breathless, and of boundlessness of life, and sky; for in what slum of it, be it never so stifling, are we quite shut out from view of the stars or the sunshine, or of the human faces that come and go in the streets? But a moment ago, while looking out from my window upon a crowded, choking city thoroughfare, I[Pg 31] caught one glimpse of a woman's profile, as she passed with her head poised, and half-turned towards me; and though the vision was gone in an instant, the sweep of the queenly neck, ivory-white and stately as a lily-stem, set my senses vibrating with a thrill of exquisite pleasure. And yonder, looking into a window, I see another face, the sweet pure face of a maiden. I run my eye like a finger along the profile, I follow the flowing line of the hair; but even as I look, she turns, is gone and is forgotten, for her place is taken by a girl with a basket of flowers, the flowers that I love as I love nothing else but poetry.

It is Emerson, I think, who tells us that God's loveliest gifts are the commonest; and that sun and sky and flowers are scarce denied to a beggar's call; and it is pitiful, as he says in another passage, the things by which we call ourselves[Pg 32] rich or poor. Why, I have gone home from my morning's walk, feeling richer in the possession of a handful of honey-suckle than if I had found a purse of sovereigns by the wayside; nor could all the art-treasures of Bond Street (not that I fail to appreciate them, either) give me a more exquisite thrill of sweetly-saddened pleasure than does the tender perfume of a bunch of violets.