He wrote a treatise upon 'amulets'
and their inscriptions. All this was after the death of his first
wife. He had a large collection of amulets, Gnostic gems, and
abraxas stones. That he really believed in the virtue of amulets will
be pretty clearly seen as my narrative proceeds. Indeed, the subject
of amulets and love-tokens became a mania with him. After his death
it was said that his collection of amulets, Egyptian, Gnostic, and
other, was rarer, and his collection of St. Helena coins larger,
than any other collection in England.
Though my mother did not know of the spiritualistic orgies in
Switzerland, she knew that my father was a spiritualist. And this
vexed her, not only because she conceived it to be visionary folly,
but because it was 'low.' She knew that it led him to join a
newly-formed band of Latter-Day mystics which had been organised at
Raxton, but luckily she did not know that through them he believed
himself to be holding communication with his first wife. The members
of this body were tradespeople of the town, and I quite think that in
my mother's eyes all tradespeople were low.
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