The Ghost Hunters - Deborah Blum [103]
James worried that no other medium offered comparable results. Even if there were another Mrs. Piper somewhere, the psychical research group had not found her, or him. They’d hardly looked. The very few dedicated investigators were preoccupied with other, more substantially rewarding work. He worried about Mrs. Piper, too. The SPR had agreed to, pay her $200 a year to guarantee that she accept no fee from any other source. She was earning her money, James acknowledged, but the very act of taking payment sullied her in his estimation. Her character seemed weaker to him, he told Hodgson.
The general character of academic scientists displeased him as well. He’d invited eight colleagues from Harvard to observe Mrs. Piper, telling them of recent extremely positive developments. Five refused, one informing James that even if something happened, he wouldn’t believe it. “So runs the world away!” James wrote. “I should not indulge in the personality and triviality of such anecdotes were it not that they paint the temper of our time.”
The return to the United States had soured James’s outlook—not just toward his American colleagues and peers but toward the rest of the world as well. Sometimes he couldn’t help but wish that all of them—the psychical researchers and their opponents, the prejudicial naysayers—would just go away and leave him alone.
He was still in that funk a month later when a letter arrived from the irrepressible Fred Myers, inviting William James to become president of the British Society of Psychical Research. Invitation was hardly the word. The letter was more in the nature of a summons. “The first reason is, of course, your position as a psychologist,” Myers explained. All of the SPR’s most interesting scientific ideas—telepathy, subconscious communication, the mental state of mediums—were rooted in the new science of psychology.
But his being an American was good, too. Myers felt that James’s nationality would emphasize the society’s trans-Atlantic inclusiveness. The Sidgwicks agreed, he said, and would even waive the requirement that James attend the London meetings; he would simply appoint someone to read any musings from the president. “We trust that you will grant our prayer. We cannot see that it will hurt you; and we see very clearly that it will help us.”
The timing couldn’t have been worse for James. Didn’t he have enough to trouble him, what with accumulating bills and other work, and colleagues who continued to annoy him? He fired off a hasty refusal, blaming his usual assortment of physical ailments.
Such excuses carried no weight with Myers. He replied that he was always sorry when friends were not in top form, but it seemed to him that James’s ill health was never perceptible to anyone but William James. Certainly, he, Fred Myers, saw no evidence of frailty. What he saw instead was a rare man, full of wisdom and delight, the perfect SPR president, held back by only one character flaw
That would be a tendency to give up too quickly. “It seems to me you lack one touch more of doggedness which would render you of even more helpfulness in the world than you are.”
If his friend were really ill, Myers conceded, he would agree to let him defer his acceptance. That would be a shame, he added, since Myers thought the job could actually improve James’s health and outlook: “Mrs. Piper is all right—and the universe is all right—and people will soon pay more money to the SPR—and an eternity of happiness and glory awaits you.”
On December 17, 1893, a two-word telegram whistled its way across the Atlantic. Myers read it with gratification, but not surprise. It said only: “James accepts.”
IT HAD TAKEN cajoling, pleading, and threatening—even for the Master of Turin—but Cesare Lombroso had launched not just one, but