Pearl Lenore Curran's Reflections about 'Patience Worth'

 

Pearl Lenore Curran (1883-1937) wrote an article about her psychic experiences with "the association which I describe as the presence of Patience Worth."  In 1920 the magazine The Unpartizan Review issue 26 noted about the St. Louis resident: "Mrs. Curran has attained a unique place in the annals of literary America as the psychic sensitive through whom the novels, essays and poems of Patience Worth have been transmitted."

Here are some noteworthy excerpts from the article, which was entitled in an ironic fashion "A Nut for Psychologists".

Let any man announce himself a psychic if he would feel the firm ground of his respectability slip from beneath his feet.  He may have attained through rigorous living an enviable reputation, but if he once admits himself an instrument differing in any manner from the masses, he will find himself a suspected character.  Science with side glances will talk secretly of dire and devious matters, connecting with his name such doubtful associates as dis-associations, obsessions, secret deviltries of all manner and kind.  They humor the subject and listen tolerantly to his effort to prove himself sane, while they cast wise eyes and smile.

He will find that the mere act of honestly trying to give the world the truth, has opened the door of his soul to ridicule and abuse.  It is my honest belief that the humiliation the world has offered to the psychic has kept many splendid examples of God's mysteries hidden and that there are many true and wonderful phenomena that are not disclosed or announced, for this reason only.

During the six years I have written for Patience Worth, I have had as witnesses, with me at the board, thousands of people.  I have never attempted any preparation either for the meetings or, when writing, for any of the results; all have been impromptu.  My own opinions even after all this long experience, are worth nothing to the most ordinary scientist.  I am giving these facts that he may classify or not as he pleases.
 
Whatever may be the association which I describe as the presence of Patience Worth, it is one of the most beautiful that it can be the privilege of a human being to experience.  Through this contact I have been educated to a deeper spiritual understanding and appreciation that I might have acquired in any study I can conceive of.  Six years ago I could not have understood the literature of Patience Worth, had it been shown to me.  And I doubt if it would have attracted me sufficiently to give me the desire to study it.

The pictorial visions which accompany the coming of the words have acted as a sort of primer, and gradually developed within me a height of appreciation by persistently tempting my curiosity with representations of incidents and symbols.  I am like a child with a magic picture book.  Once I look upon it, all I have to do is to watch its pages open before me, and revel in their beauty and variety and novelty.

Probably this is the most persistent phase of the phenomena, this series of panoramic and symbolic pictures which never fail to show with each expression of Patience where there is any possibility of hiving an ocular illustration of an expression.

When the poems come, there also appear before my eyes images of each successive symbol, as the words are given me.  If the stars are mentioned, I see them in the sky.  If heights or deeps or wide spaces are mentioned, I get positively frightening sweeps of space.  So it is with the smaller things of Nature, the fields, the flowers and trees, with the field animals, whether they are mentioned in the poem or not.

When the stories come, the scenes become panoramic, with the characters moving and acting their parts, even speaking in converse.  The picture is not confined to the point narrated, but takes in everything else within the circle of vision at the time.  For instance, if two people are seen talking on the street, I see not only them, but the neighboring part of the street, with the buildings, stones, dogs, people and all, just as they would be in a real scene.  (Or are these scenes actual reproductions?)  If the people talk a foreign language, as in The Sorry Tale, I hear the talk, but over and above is the voice of Patience, either interpreting or giving me the part she wishes to use as story.
 
I have received several premonitory flashes of pictures, which I have come to recognize as the beginning of a new story.  As usual, I told the members of the family when I received in June, 1918, a flash picture of what I sensed was a squalid charity place of a very mean sort; a large and very grimy room, a rude basket containing a newborn babe, and standing over it, making ribald remarks, two low class women.  About a week after this I had a feeling while I was writing that the story was about to start, but it passed off without result.  Then within a few days it happened.  I have before me the record prepared at the time by Mr. Curran from the matter which I told to him when he came home, and I will copy the important parts of it.

"Comes now, June 22, 1917.  11 A. M. with Mrs. Curran and her mother on the way to market three blocks away.

"All at once, without any preliminary warning, as in a single flash, she was overwhelmed with the entire framework of the story which she felt had been on the way.  In the twinkling of an eye, like the bursting of an inner veil or the sudden drawing of a great curtain, she found herself immediately in possession of practically the entire mechanism of a wonderful story, the plot, the characters, that subtle spirit essence of the central idea, the purpose, and with it came a great exaltation.  Even the name of the story came, which was The Madrigal."
 
 
Another persistent phase of the phenomena is that ever since the coming of Patience, she has been giving evidence of knowing the inner life of those who come to meet her.  So many scores and hundreds of these occurrences have transpired that it no longer causes any wonder to the people of her household.  We write twice a week, and every time we write, if there are newcomers, Patience shows that she knows them and what they are doing, what their sorrows are, if any, what are their dispositions; in fact she has shown that in a pinch there is nothing about them which is kept from her if she desires to know it.

It would seem that the memory of Patience Worth is perfect.  We have asked her to recall certain things, such as the lines of a poem she had written months before for a scientist by request, but which he and all of us had forgotten so completely that we knew not even what it was about.  She gave the first four lines just to show she could.

Once a record was lost.  It was the record which came when The Sorry Tale was first begun.  Twenty months afterwards, when Mr. Yost prepared to write his preface to the book, we were still unable to locate the record, and in despair asked Patience if she could recall it, and she proceeded to give it to us verbatim.  Each time the coming was witnessed by the same five people who could not give it themselves, but recognized it when it was repeated by Patience.  It was only about 150 words.

Often there comes to me the realization that Patience not only knows what is going on now, but knows the literature of all times and places.

Patience's literary stunts — things she does which no mortal man may do, according to our wise writers, form a large share of the wonderful evidences of superusual power.  Here are a few:

Wrote the novel Telka, 70,000 words in blank verse, actual writing time 35 hours.  Characters well rounded, plot true and novel, language a high order of poetry, about 80 per cent dialogue.  Written in a manufactured English formed of a combination of all English dialects; 98 per cent words of one and two syllables; 95 per cent pure Anglo-Saxon; no word in it that has come into the language since the sixteenth century; a tapestry closely woven and revealing a beautiful purpose.

Patience is writing on four novels at once, part of each at a time.  She has written a line of one in its dialect, then a line of another in a different dialect, then back to the first for a line, switching from one to the other at top speed and without a break; at times she has assembled two persons in each story, engaged them in conversation, and made the characters of one seem to reply and even argue with the characters in the other.  When the stories are stript apart, it is found that they read right along in the proper continuity of text.

Lately I have been doing some writing on my own account, — without the impulse from Patience Worth [MRB comment: this is a cursory supposition] — and so far have been very successful.  In doing this material, I use a typewriter, and by persistent practice have become quite adept, having reached the point now where I can use the keys unconsciously.  Once the trick of using the keys without the conscious effort to find each and every one was learned, — Presto! there is a perfectly good means of communication, unhampered with conscious effort.  Patience seemed to realize it, and delivered a poem to me through the typewriter instead of the Ouija board.  As I was writing a letter to a friend, I wrote a line of poetry before I realized that I had done it, then it crowded along and infringed itself into the text of my letter! . . . The keyboard offered the letters in the same way that the Ouija did, and the removal of conscious effort left me free for her dictation.  My own writing of short stories without the aid of Patience has been most interesting — to watch the functioning of my own mind and feel the difference between the conscious effort of the ordinary manner of writing, as against the unconscious manner in which the Patience Worth material comes to me.

My own writing fatigues me, while the other (Patience Worth's) exhilarates me.  That's a queer mess of a statement, but quite true.

I am rapidly discarding the Ouija board.  This has been coming in for a long time.  For months I have been almost unconsciously dropping the spelling of the words until I have been able lately to simply recite the poems instead; though if I become conscious of the change, I have to go back to the spelling.  Last night I wrote a poem on my typewriter for Patience.  Every other condition was the same, her presence, the pictures of the symbols, the pressure on my head, and everything except that I was at the typewriter, and since I can now write on the machine without guiding my fingers, the lines came right along.  I expect eventually to discard the board altogether.  I hate to do this, for think of the check there will be upon the sale of Ouija boards!

Pearl Lenore Curran.