CHAPTER 5:
ROSEMARY BROWN AND THE LOUNGEROOM OF DEAD COMPOSERS
NOTES
VICTOR HUGO
The information about Victor Hugo’s seances were largely obtained from the brilliant Graham Robb biography. However, since then, Mark Vent has discovered that perhaps he wasn’t in the room to take down the dictation. His son, Francois-Victor, was:
"Hugo attended none of the seven seances (the first one divided into two parts) during which this material was ostensibly dictated by the spirit of William Shakespeare."
"A note in Adèle Hugo’s diary for April 30, 1854, explains Hugo’s decision: “I don’t want to read or to know about this play of Shakespeare’s. I have a fear of meeting myself in those spirits.”
"Shakespeare had on April 27 [1854], begun to dictate the “drama” that Vacquerie had asked him to... Learning about this from a transcript on April 29, Hugo, who hadn’t attended the séance, noted: “The analogies between the beginning of this scene and the idea behind something I did on November 23, 1853, entitled, ‘Two Voices in the Starry Sky: Zenith, Nadir,’ oblige me to absent myself—and I deeply regret it—from all participation in the séance . . . during [the dictation of] this drama, and only for this drama."
- Victor Hugo's Conversations with the Spirit World - John Cambers
- Oeuvres Completes Vol 9 pg 1172 - Victor Hugo,
- Journal III, pgs 192-193 - Adele Hugo
CLARIFICATIONS
-
Mrs Paton, received the seal of approval from Deakin when she successfully manifested a wet rock, and some seaweed but not several six-pound dumbbells, that was someone else, during a different seance.
SOURCES
Spotify - A Musical Seance - https://open.spotify.com/album/1vVDMGTDZIACfu0A3WpZsO
Philips releases 1970 - https://www.discogs.com/label/7704-Philips?page=274&genre=All&limit=100&sort=year&sort_order=asc
Meeting Liszt aged 7 - https://archive.org/details/unfinishedsympho00brow/page/8/mode/2up
Liszt speaks English - https://archive.org/details/unfinishedsympho00brow/page/36/mode/2up
BBC 1969 Documentary - https://www2.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2b69d9a6f4
Archival Recording of Rosemary Brown in 1967 - https://archive.org/details/twitter-920348701670772736
No Sex In Heaven - https://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/02/nyregion/rosemary-brown-a-friend-of-dead-composers-dies-at-85.html
Liszt Says It’s 385! - https://archive.org/details/unfinishedsympho00brow/page/100/mode/2up
Three fires - https://archive.org/details/unfinishedsympho00brow/page/102/mode/2up
Prose & Plays - https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/rosemary-brown
Caesar’s Revenge - https://archive.org/details/immortalsbymysid00brow/page/128/mode/2up
Caesar’s Revenge @ The Fringe - The Stage - Thursday 27 July 1978 (subscription required) - https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0001180/19780727/105/0012
Rosemary’s Books - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary_Brown_(spiritualist)#Publications
Richard Rodney Bennett - https://www.britannica.com/biography/Richard-Rodney-Bennett
‘More Pedal, More Staccato” - https://archive.org/details/unfinishedsympho00brow/page/188/mode/2up
Sir Donald Tovey - https://www.britannica.com/biography/Donald-Francis-Tovey
Rosemary Isabel Brown - https://www.theguardian.com/news/2001/dec/11/guardianobituaries
Jap Herron
Jap Herron: A Novel Written From The OuiJa Board - https://archive.org/details/japherronnovelwr00hutciala
Harper & Brothers - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harper_(publisher)#Harper_&_Brothers_(1833%E2%80%931962)
Mark Twain - https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mark-Twain
Publishing Twain -
https://200.hc.com/stories/mark-twain/
https://200.hc.com/timeline/1895-mark-twain-signs-an-exclusive-contract-with-harper-brothers/
Harper & Brothers vs Mitchell Kennerley - http://www.twainquotes.com/19180728.html
Pearl Curran/Patience Worth’s The Sorry Tale - https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/excerpts-frompatience-worthsthe-sorry-tale-65242095/
New York Times Review Of Jap Herron - http://www.twainquotes.com/19170909.html
Roland Greene Usher acclaim for The Sorry Tale - https://imusic.co/books/9781908733061/casper-s-yost-2012-patience-worth-a-psychic-mystery-paperback-book
The Shade Of Twain Called To The Stand? - http://www.twainquotes.com/19180728.html
Victor Hugo
VH and Delphine de Girardin - https://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2017/collection-privee-pf1760/lot.18.html
THE PILGRIM’S PROGRESS
Published 1678
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pilgrim%27s_Progress
Second prime minister of Australia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Deakin
Writes the book
BEYOND DELICIOUS
The book, and the extract on Amazon contains the story that I tell in the book
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Beyond-Delicious-Whisperers-Cookbook-Departed/dp/1578604990
Walking into and generating the white light, as well as the quote I use in the book
https://www.reuters.com/article/idINIndia-43317120091021
Jennifer Love Hewitt’s ghost-stalker
T.P JAMES / Dickens
15th novel, the description of the book
https://www.charlesdickenspage.com/charles-dickens-the-mystery-of-edwin-drood.html
All the rest of that stuff, here. Bockley Wickleheap/ the Dickens connection
http://victorianreview.org/?tag=spiritualism
Note, for those wondering who the murderer was in James’s spirit book. There was none. Didn’t want to spoiler alert in the physical book itself.
Mark Says:
Another James (this one being Montague Rhodes aka M R) loved to read detective novels in the rare time he had away from his college work or writing ghost stories. His love for Sherlock Holmes was well known, even if he did let slip "Doyle’s cribbing of the plot for 'The Firm of Girdle Stone'" which Doyle had 'borrowed' from Sheridan Le Fanu’s “Uncle Silas”.
James took on the mantle of detective himself, to try and solve the unfinished plot of Charles Dickens’ “The Mystery of Edwin Drood”. The “Edwin Drood Syndicate” was his contribution, which was presented to “The Cambridge Review” on two evenings, the 30th of November and 7th of December 1905.
These evenings took the form of presentations of well researched detective work looking into the case of Edwin Drood. Their two pronged investigation focused on two areas, 1. Did John Jasper succeed in murdering Edwin Drood? (To which the syndicate found in the negative), and 2. Who was Mr Datchery? James argued that in an ingenious plot turn engineered by Dickens, Datchery is actually none other than Drood himself.
This part of the presentation had interjections from the audience who posed the question as to why Dickens had not been consulted on the matter, to which the vice-chancellor answered, that he was sorry to report that due to the sad news of Dickens’ death the consultation was impossible. However, he added, he was glad that Dickens had not lived to see the report of the syndicate.
The challenge of solving this last mystery of Dickens’s was especially gratifying for James, as his enthusiasm for Dickens’s works never waned.