“Aunt H. and I tried to work a Ouija set that she had made, & it did not work well when we tried together but did better separately. It went very well for me, purporting to represent Papa & saying one or two things that were very like them. Later on I tried writing with a pencil which I had never been able to do, & after 10 minutes or so it began to move, & presently wrote – very badly, & rather nonsensically under the name of Wolfe Tone.”
NLI Call Number: MS, 3582/36
NLI Catalogue Link can be found here
Date Range of Diary: 12th September 1919 – 27th January 1920
WEEK 106: 17th – 23rd November 1919
Monday 17th. – I visited the Bell’s in the afternoon & told Janie & Anna about the awful book on Right Thought that Maya sent me, & Janie sided with it & defended what I told
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her of it, and asked for a loan of it, & lent me Stead’s book about Julia. She said I was the most skeptical person I ever met; she can’t have met many.
Tuesday 18th. – I went to the Tech, & visited Mrs Coade in the afternoon. She had a young English Mrs Paxton there all the time, who makes lovely lace, & they & Constance & Peggy were very busy making & planning fancy things for the Y.W.C.A. sale in December. We were all making bags etc after tea & I of course went wrong with mine. Mrs C. is a very patient woman, she never showed the least worry or irritation with the girls crying out for help or information every minute when she was busy about something else. I find she disapproves of dancing unless in the most private &
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domestic form. Uncle E. was in bed practically all this time.
Wednesday 19th. – Aunt H. & I visited Mrs Murray & saw her new baby, Louise Angela. I went on to Eileen then and had tea with her & saw Darkey is great splendour. I forget what E. had to say but she was entertaining as usual. I was at St Declan’s in the evening, looking over old Studios & Art Magazines that they are cutting up, & disagreeing with Tom about a beautiful, thin, intellectual looking woman that he could not admire. Josef Fries seemed to be the only male beauty in the whole lot.
Saturday 22nd. – Miss Courtney brought me her crystal pendant, in a very broken up condition & I spent most of the
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morning mending it. In the evening Aunt H. & I tried to work a Ouija set that she had made, & it did not work well when we tried together but did better separately. It went very well for me, purporting to represent Papa & saying one or two things that were very like them. Later on I tried writing with a pencil which I had never been able to do, & after 10 minutes or so it began to move, & presently wrote – very badly, & rather nonsensically under the name of Wolfe Tone.
Sunday 23rd. – Wet morning but the afternoon was fine & I went for a walk with Tom & Louis. L. had produced two teeth the night before, upper eyeteeth, leaving out a lot that he should have got before. Tom of course did not altogether approve of the automatic
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writing, & was not much interested in it – thought I might get too wrapped up in it etc etc. Dorothea afterwards turned out to be far more interested in it. Aunt H. came to St Declan’s for afternoon tea, & Mrs Ryan called to consult about the W.C.A. social the next Thursday, & Louis found her walking stick very nice to play with. I got a lot more stuff from the being calling itself Wolfe Tone, and a little from Mamma on the Ouija board. Somewhere near here I asked “Isn’t Louis lovely?” & it said “Set him up! he is not half as lovely as you & Freddy were.”
[Unclear Short hand writing symbols at bottom of page]
Featured Image: Image of a Ouija Board Box lid, c.1915-1918. Flickr, Public Domain.