Arthur & George

A telegram from Sir Oliver Lodge is read out. 'Our greathearted champion will still be continuing his campaign on the Other Side, with added wisdom and knowledge. Sursum corda.' Then Mrs St Clair Stobart reads from Corinthians, and declares that St Paul's words are fitting to the occasion, since Sir Arthur was often in his life described as the St Paul of Spiritualism. Miss Gladys Ripley sings Liddle's solo 'Abide With Me'. The Revd G. Vale Owen speaks of Sir Arthur's literary work and agrees with the author's own view that The White Company and its sequel Sir Nigel were his best writings; indeed, he judges that the description in the latter work of a Christian knight and man of high devotion may serve as the very picture of Sir Arthur himself. The Revd C. Drayton Thomas, who took half the funeral service at Crowborough, praises Sir Arthur's tireless activity as Spiritualism's mouthpiece.

Next they all stand for the movement's favourite hymn, 'Lead, Kindly Light'. George notices something different about the singing, which he ca

As the hymn ends and they take their seats again, George gives his neighbour a small, indeterminate greeting – modest enough, yet even so, something he would never do in church. She responds with a smile that fills every surface of her face. There is nothing forward in it, nor anything of the missionary either. Nor is there any evident complacency. Her smile merely says: yes, this is certain, this is right, this is joyful.

George is impressed, but also slightly shocked: he is suspicious of joy. He has come across little of it in his life. In his childhood there was something called pleasure, usually accompanied by the adjectives guilty, furtive or illicit. The only pleasures allowed were those modified by the word simple. As for joy, it was something associated with angels blowing trumpets, and its true place was in Heaven not on Earth. Let joy be unconfined – that was what people said, wasn't it? But in George's experience, joy has always been closely confined. As for pleasure, he has known the pleasure of doing one's duty – to family, to clients, and occasionally to God. But he has never done most of the things that afford his compatriots pleasure: drinking beer, dancing, playing football and cricket; not to mention things that might have come if marriage had come. He will never know a woman who jumps up like a girl, pats her hair, and runs to meet him.

Mr E.W. Oaten, who once proudly chaired the first large meeting Sir Arthur addressed on Spiritualism, says that no man better combined within himself all the virtues we associate with the British character: courage, optimism, loyalty, sympathy, magnanimity, love of truth and devotion to God. Next Mr Ha

George instinctively looks down at the mention of his name, then proudly up, then surreptitiously sideways. A pity he has been coupled yet again with that low and ungrateful criminal; but he may, he thinks, take honourable pleasure in having his name spoken at this great occasion. Maud will be pleased too. He glances more openly at his neighbours, but his moment has passed. They have eyes only for Mr Swaffer, who has moved on to celebrate another Doyle, and an even greater one than Doyle the bringer of justice. This greatest of all Doyles was and is the man who in the hours of the War's despair carried to the women of the country the comforting proof that their loved ones were not dead.

They are now asked to stand in silence for two minutes to honour the memory of their great champion. Lady Conan Doyle, as she rises, looks briefly down at the empty chair next to her, and then stands, with one tall son on either side of her, gazing out at the hall. Six – eight? ten? – thousand gaze back, from gallery, from balcony, from tiered boxes, from the great curve of stalls, and from the arena. In church, people would lower their heads and close their eyes to remember the departed. Here there is no such discretion or inwardness: frank sympathy is conveyed with a direct look. It also seems to George that the silence is of a different nature to any he has felt before. Official silences are respectful, grave, often deliberately saddening; this silence is active, filled with anticipation and even passion. If a silence can be like suppressed noise, then this is such a silence. When it ends, George realizes that it has held such a strange power over him that he has almost forgotten about Sir Arthur.

Mr Craze is back at the microphone. 'This evening,' he a

George has never been to a séance. He has never, for that matter, crossed a gypsy's palm with silver, or paid twopence to sit before a crystal ball at a funfair. He believes it is all hocus-pocus. Only a fool or a backward tribesman would believe that the lines on a hand or the tea leaves in a cup reveal anything. He is willing to respect Sir Arthur's certainty that the spirit survives death; perhaps, too, that under certain circumstances such a spirit might be able to communicate with the living. He is also prepared to admit that there might be something in the telepathic experiments Sir Arthur described in his autobiography. But there comes a point where George draws the line. He draws it, for instance, when people make the furniture jump around, when bells are mysteriously rung and fluorescent faces of the dead appear out of the darkness, when spirit hands leave their supposed imprint on soft wax. George finds this all too obviously a conjuring trick. How can it not be suspicious that the best conditions for spirit communication – drawn curtains, extinguished lights, people joining hands so that they ca