8F 1027 
 .H6 US 
 Copy 1 
 
 mo, 
 
 2? 
 
A Memoir of 
 
 Richard Hodgson 
 
 i 855- 1905 
 
 By MA. DeW. H. 
 
 Read at the 
 
 Annual Meeting of the Tavern Club 
 
 6 May 1 906 
 
'fre v. •» " ; 
 
 lit* 
 
 
 <> 
 
 
Richard Hodgson 
 
 On the twentieth of December, 1905, 
 there died in the over-active exercise of 
 his body one whose life was preemi- 
 nently an exercise of the spirit. Indeed, 
 it was as an explorer of the spiritual 
 realm, an adventurer beyond the bourne 
 from which he believed the return of 
 travelers could be proved and guided, 
 that he was chiefly known to the world 
 at large. Before recalling the distinctive 
 qualities of his private life as we knew 
 it, let us look for a moment at the main 
 facts of what may be called his public 
 career. 
 
 Richard Hodgson was born in Mel- 
 bourne, Australia, in i855. In due time 
 he graduated and took a law course at 
 
Melbourne University. This was followed 
 by study and graduation at the English 
 Cambridge, where he devoted himself 
 especially to the mental and moral 
 sciences. After six months more of study 
 at the University of Jena, he found him- 
 self, 1882-83, delivering University Ex- 
 tension lectures in the north of England. 
 In 1 884-85 he served as lecturer at Cam- 
 bridge on the philosophy of Herbert 
 Spencer. From 1882 to 1887 he was 
 active in the investigations of the Eng- 
 lish Society for Psychical Research. One 
 of his most important and conspicuous 
 pieces of work in this period was the 
 exposure of Madame Blavatsky, for the 
 accomplishment of which he spent some 
 months in India. Another was the pene- 
 trating study of S. J. Davey's * ' Imitations 
 
by Conjuring of Phenomena sometimes 
 attributed to Spirit Agency." In 1887 he 
 came to Boston as secretary of the Ameri- 
 can branch of the Society for Psychical 
 Research. 
 
 The results of his whole-hearted de- 
 votion to this task may be seen in the 
 Reports of the Society, and in what he 
 did towards completing the monumental 
 work on "Human Personality and its 
 Survival of Bodily Death" by his friend 
 F. W. H. Myers. Through the last years 
 of his life he was peculiarly identified 
 with the trance sittings of Mrs. Piper and 
 the communications from the spirit- 
 groups of which he recognized "Phi- 
 nuit" and "Imperator" as the central 
 figures. Though finally surrendering his 
 own life to the direction of ' ' Imperator," 
 
he sought to retain in his work of inter- 
 pretation for others the attitude of the 
 investigator insisting upon the best of 
 evidence. It was his unflagging desire to 
 accumulate a mass of evidence sufficient 
 to form a reasonable hypothesis regard- 
 ing the "spirit world." 
 
 There is no lack of pathos, from one 
 point of view, in his having dropped this 
 work uiifinished. From another there 
 is the satisfaction of his having passed 
 quickly, as he wished to pass, from the 
 present to the future life. More than one 
 of his friends recall the eagerness with 
 which he said only last summer, "I can 
 hardly wait to die." A keen intellectual 
 curiosity regarding what awaited him 
 was his own chief concern about death. 
 Then came that which he had desired; 
 
and neither the doubters nor his fellow- 
 believers could wholly grudge him the 
 opportunity to carry forward — as he 
 would have said — "on the other side" 
 the work to which he gave his life on 
 earth. With a swift passage from the 
 known to the unknown sphere, the visi- 
 ble life among us came to an end. 
 
 To those who knew him in private his 
 utter confidence in the work was one of 
 its highest justifications. To hear him 
 talk of that "other side" as if it were lit- 
 erally a room separated from the house 
 of life only by walls and doors of glass, 
 to see him year in and year out devoting 
 to an idea intellectual and moral powers 
 which might well have won him many 
 of the rewards which men prize most, 
 — this was to realize in a measure the 
 
spirit which has animated the idealists 
 of every age, the spirit through which a 
 man saves his life by losing it. 
 
 The general and the personal signifi- 
 cance of his work were so inextricably 
 twined together that it is hard to discuss 
 it at all without seeming to invade the 
 inmost sanctities. Yet in this company 
 it is no sacrilege to quote from a private 
 letter of 190 1 a passage which reveals at 
 once the intense conviction of Richard 
 Hodgson's belief and the pure spiritual 
 faith of which it was the embodiment : 
 "I went through toils and turmoils and 
 perplexities in '97 and '98 about the sig- 
 nificance of this whole Imperator re- 
 gime, but I have seemed to get on a rock 
 after that, — I seem to understand clearly 
 the reasons for incoherence and obscur- 
 
ity, etc., and I think that if for the rest 
 of my life from now I should never see 
 another trance or have another word 
 from Imperator or his group, it would 
 make no difference to my knowledge that 
 all is well, that Imperator, etc., are all 
 they claim to be and are indeed messen- 
 gers that we may call divine. Be of good 
 courage whatever happens, and pray 
 continually, and let peace come into your 
 soul. Why should you be distraught and 
 worried? Everything, absolutely every- 
 thing, — from a spot of ink to all the 
 stars, — every faintest thought we think 
 of to the contemplation of the highest 
 intelligence in the cosmos, are all in and 
 part of the infinite Goodness . Rest in that 
 Divine Love. All your trials are known 
 better than you know them yourself. Do 
 
you think it is an idle word that the hairs 
 of our heads are numbered? Have no dis- 
 may. Fear nothing and trust in God." 
 
 His friends and brothers here — for 
 surely friendship and brotherhood were 
 almost indistinguishable in his relations 
 with us — care especially to remember 
 one thing — that this idealist did not de- 
 tach himself from the most earth-bound 
 of us all. Though so much of his com- 
 merce was with the unseen, his feet kept 
 step with ours on solid earth. In the field 
 of mental activities, there was no one 
 better qualified to discuss the freshest 
 topics of physical science, the events and 
 tendencies in the world of affairs, and 
 their deeper significances. There was no 
 one here to whom the pleased discov- 
 erer of a new minor poet — since the 
 
major phenomenon is so rare — could 
 come with such conviction that his dis- 
 covery had been anticipated. Indeed it 
 was no unusual thing to have Dick quote 
 you off-hand the new singer's best 
 verses, with all the fervor and under- 
 standing which made him the favorite 
 interpreter of certain of our own poets. 
 One cannot forget how he entered into 
 the reading of other men's verses. No 
 matter if there were twenty valentines or 
 prize songs to be read in a single even- 
 ing, every one of them rang out in his 
 loyal voice as heartily as if Dick himself 
 were the author, bent upon bringing 
 forth every particle of meaning or wit 
 the lines might contain. His intimate 
 association with the more serious muse 
 will be a recurring remembrance to 
 
most of us, when Christmas and New 
 Year come round without the card 
 which brought us his poetic greeting, 
 in which an old or a new poet seemed 
 merely the mouthpiece of the sender's 
 own thought. 
 
 Nor was this community of interest 
 restricted by any means to the things of 
 the mind. The healthy Anglo-Saxon de- 
 votion to every exhibition of physical 
 prowess was conspicuously character- 
 istic of this child of the spirit. The pro- 
 fessional ball game, the college boat race 
 and foot-ball battle excited his keenest 
 interest ; and it was like him to double 
 his enjoyment in these sports by the 
 companionship of one or more of us. 
 The cheery call for volunteers for the 
 2 . 20 boat must remain one of the bright- 
 
 10 
 
est memories of our summer lunch- 
 table, not only for those who used to 
 join the almost daily expeditions to Nan- 
 tasket, and huddled into their clothes 
 while Dick's head was still a mere speck 
 amongst the ocean steamers and harbor 
 islands, but for all whose paths led in- 
 land or to other shores. In the pool- 
 room, its dominating figure was for the 
 tyro the most patient and encouraging 
 of teachers, for the expert the most for- 
 midable of rivals, for the box the most 
 active inciter of tickets. Is it — by the 
 way — a mere coincidence that the par- 
 rot, since losing his most devoted friend 
 and champion, has stood in less need of 
 a defender than ever before? In the 
 squash-court Dick was the best and gen- 
 tlest of antagonists in victory or defeat. 
 
 ii 
 
From the gallery above it his initial 
 inquiry, " Score ?" his rallying shouts — 
 "two-yard-line," "anybody's game" — 
 put spirit into the flagging player, and 
 made him happily conscious of a gallery 
 to which it was no shame to play. Down- 
 stairs by the fire-place and at the table 
 above, it was generally Dick who first 
 taught the new member to know him- 
 self here by his Christian name, and to 
 feel that gray hairs and youth might after 
 all be contemporaries. 
 
 Just because he was the contempo- 
 rary of all, the man between whom and 
 the rest of us the barriers were the few- 
 est and the lowest, he typified, perhaps 
 more than any individual member of 
 the club, the spirit of the Tavern. The 
 last words that certain of us heard him 
 
speak are a memorable illustration of his 
 unique and beautiful place among us. 
 Eight or ten men were gathered in the 
 lower room — one defending an unpop- 
 ular cause, which the others were hotly 
 denouncing. The debate was growing ac- 
 rimonious. Down from luncheon came 
 Dick. "Go for the scoundrel," he thun- 
 dered from the stairs. "Don't give him 
 a chance to speak; down with him! 
 Don't let him be heard!" The genial 
 shout, with its animating love of fair 
 play as well as of peace, drew a laugh 
 and a response. "How can anybody be 
 heard when you 're in the room, Dick?" 
 There was another laugh — and the un- 
 pleasantness was past. A few moments 
 later Dick left the club. That evening his 
 lifeless body was carried upstairs. 
 
 i3 
 
A purity of nature which leaves his 
 friends unable, even should they try, to 
 recall a single taint of coarseness in his 
 word or thought; a sincerity like that of 
 a true-hearted boy; an unselfishness and 
 absence of egotism which made our con- 
 cerns far more often than his the topics 
 of our personal intercourse; a self-re- 
 spect which included in its operations a 
 body as wholesome as the air and sea he 
 loved; — these must surely be remem- 
 bered in any enumeration of the quali- 
 ties which made his personality so rare 
 a blending of the spirit and the flesh. 
 Who better than our well-loved friend 
 can remain for us the interpretation and 
 type of this blending? What man of us 
 has lived in the flesh a life so illuminated 
 and controlled by the spirit that the 
 
 i4 
 
transition from the seen to the unseen 
 could have seemed so short a journey 
 as for him? One whose spirit, like our 
 friend's, was clothed with the whole 
 armor of faith and courage has told what 
 it is for such a man to die: "In the hot- 
 fit of life, a-tiptoe on the highest point 
 of being, he passes at a bound on to the 
 other side. The noise of the mallet and 
 chisel is scarcely quenched, the trum- 
 pets are hardly done blowing, when, 
 trailing with him clouds of glory, this 
 happy-starred, full-blooded spirit shoots 
 into the spiritual land."* 
 
 It is much to have left behind one 
 what Richard Hodgson has left to us, — 
 a memory the sweetest, the purest, the 
 best^beloved. When his spirit had gone 
 
 *R. L. Stevenson, conclusion of Aes Triplex. 
 
 i5 
 
on its final quest that memory in all its 
 freshness remained to hallow the room 
 in which he shared so many of our de- 
 lights. There it brought together an un- 
 exampled assemblage of the friends of 
 him who had come to us a stranger. For 
 his sake the place which was so truly 
 his home must be, to us who like to call 
 ourselves his family, more than ever 
 unlike all other places. For his sake we 
 shall sing without sorrow, 
 
 Meum est propositum in Taberna mori, — 
 
 for we shall sing it, remembering what 
 it is both to live and to die here, and 
 rejoicing always in the sense of his con- 
 tinuing fellowship. 
 
 
 16