Everard Feilding

Born: 6 March 1867.

Died: 8 February 1936.

Francis Henry Everard Joseph Feilding best known as Everard Feilding was an English barrister, naval intelligence officer and psychical researcher.

Career:

As a teenager, Feilding worked as a midshipman for the Royal Navy during the Egyptian campaign in 1882. He was educated at Oscott College and attended Trinity College, Cambridge in 1887, he obtained his bachelors of law degree in 1890. Feilding was a Catholic, he began his interest in psychical research from his visit to Lourdes in 1892. He was secretary of the Society for Psychical Research from 1903 to 1920. His father was Rudolph Feilding, 8th Earl of Denbigh and his brother Rudolph Feilding, 9th Earl of Denbigh. A pioneer of rubber planting in Malaya, he was chairman of Kuala Lumpur Rubber Company in 1906.

Feilding served as a lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR) and worked for the British Intelligence Staff in Egypt and Palestine (1915–1919). Feilding married the psychic medium Stanisława Tomczyk in 1919.

Psychical researcher Eric Dingwall wrote that Feilding was a "member of one of the most distinguished Catholic families in England" and was "one of the most acute investigators of alleged supernormal phenomena that this country has ever produced."

Everard Feilding and Aleister Crowley:

Crowley observed, in Moonchild, that, "Investigation of spiritualism makes a capital training-ground for secret service work; one soon gets up to all the tricks." He was writing about his friend, the Hon. Everard Feilding, who was both a central figure in the Society for psychic Investigation and also a player in the shadow world of intelligence. Crowley, in his novel, describes "Lord Anthony Bowling" (Feilding) as, "...a stout and strong man of nearly fifty years of age, with a gaze both intrepid and acute: His nose was of the extreme aristocratic type, his mouth sensual and strong.

Cyril Grey had nicknamed him "The Merman of Mayfair" and claimed that Rodin got the idea for his "Centaur" the day that he met him.

He was the younger brother of the Duke of Flint, his race probably Norman in the main: but he gave the impression of a Roman Emperor. Haughtiness was here, and great good-nature; the intellect was evidently developed to the highest possible pitch of which man as man is capable; and one could read the judicial habit on his deep wide brows. Against this one could see the huge force of the man's soul, the passionate desire for knowledge which burnt in that great brain. One could conceive him capable of monstrous deeds, for he would let no man, no prejudice of men, stand in his way. He would certainly have fiddled while Rome was burning if it had been his hobby to play the violin."

Feilding was an aristocrat with family ties to the Portuguese Order of Christ, successors to the Knights Templar. He was the younger brother of the Earl of Denbigh. Fluent in French, he was posted to Paris by the Foreign Office in the decade before the First World War, which is where (in the pages of Moonchild) "Lord Bowling" encounters "Cyril Grey" (Crowley). Like Walter Duranty, another member of this milieu, Feilding seems to have indulged appetites for opium and sex with the notorious Jane Chéron. The association did nothing to damage the reputation or social standing of either. As a barrister he gave Crowley legal advice about the Looking Glass case, advising Crowley not to sue for libel. As a psychic investigator, he appears to have been very thorough, and a scourge for false mediums, yet not entirely dismissive. In one encounter with young Austin Osman Spare: "Feilding wanted proof of Spare's magical powers and, when the latter offered to oblige, proposed the following test:

Spare was to materialize an object which Feilding mentally visualized without giving any clue as to its nature. Spare drew one of his magical sigils, which, instead of being symbolic of the unknown desired object, was the ideograph of a familiar spirit whose services he frequently employed when any mind-reading was required.

 

After some time, Spare received a vivid impression of the object in Feilding's mind. He then drew a second sigil, told Feilding he need no longer concentrate, and proceeded to do so himself. These proceedings were interrupted by a knock on the door. Feilding tiptoed to the door, opened it, and was amazed to find his valet proffering a pair of slippers. Feilding turned to Spare and asked him how he had done it!"

Positions with the Foreign Office frequently served as "cover" for secret service work, which seems true of Feilding. In this capacity he appears to have recruited Aleister Crowley for a secret mission to America in October 1914, though it is not absolutely clear which branch of the many headed British Secret Service he was then associated with. Later in the war he is known to have served on the Intelligence Staff in Egypt and Palestine.

Feilding seems to have remained on friendly terms with Crowley throughout the war, and Crowley credits him with instigating the police raid on the O.T.O. headquarters 93 Regent Street during the spring of 1917, to enhance his credibility to George Sylvester Viereck and his associates at The Fatherland. Following the war they seem to have drifted apart, but, in 1929, Gerald Yorke received a letter about Crowley from Feilding, which states:

          "During the time I was a naval censor in the London Press Bureau & afterwards employed on Intelligence work in Egypt, Crowley wrote me from time to time that he was anxious to do work for the British Intelligence & that meanwhile he was doing his best, by various preposterous performances, to represent himself as disaffected & to get in with German connections. [...] I sent his letters to the Intelligence authorities with whom I was personally acquainted, but as this branch of work was by no means my job, I did nothing more beyond forwarding to Crowley a test question, which they suggested, regarding the identity of a certain personage [involved with the pro-German movement in America]. Whether it was to test his knowledge against their own, or because they really wished to know who the personage was, I did not inquire. Anyway, his answer did not, I understand, prove helpful, and whether for that or other reasons I know not, they declined any direct communication with him. I can only add that my own personal very strong belief was & is that, whatever other vagaries Crowley may have indulged in, which have caused him to be expelled from two countries as widely different as Italy & France [in 1923 and 1929 respectively], treachery to his country was not one of them."

Feilding report:

Feilding is most well known for his investigation of the Italian medium Eusapia Palladino. In 1908, the SPR appointed a committee of three to examine her in Naples. The committee consisted of W. W. Baggally, Hereward Carrington and Everard Feilding. Although the investigators caught Palladino cheating during the séances, they were convinced Palladino had produced genuine paranormal phenomena such as levitations of the table, movement of the curtains, movement of objects from behind the curtain and touches from hands. In 1909, all three investigators wrote a report on the medium in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research. The report became known as the "Feilding report" and has been a source of debate between psychical researchers and sceptics.

Frank Podmore in his book The Newer Spiritualism (1910) wrote a comprehensive critique of their report. Podmore said that the report provided insufficient information for crucial moments and the investigators representation of the witness accounts contained contradictions and inconsistencies as to who was holding Palladino's feet and hands. Podmore found that the accounts among the investigators conflicted as to who they claimed to have observed the incident. Podmore wrote that the report "at almost every point leaves obvious loopholes for trickery." The psychologist C. E. M. Hansel criticised the report based on the conditions of the séances being susceptible to trickery. Hansel noted that they were performed in semi-dark conditions, held in the late night or early morning introducing the possibility of fatigue and the "investigators had a strong belief in the supernatural, hence they would be emotionally involved."

Although originally convinced of her alleged powers, Feilding attended séances with Palladino in 1910 with the magician William S. Marriott and concluded her mediumship was fraudulent.

Paul Kurtz has noted that "Skeptic's question the first Feilding report because in a subsequent test by Feilding and other tests by scientists, Palladino had been caught cheating."

Abbé Vachère case:

In 1914, Feilding with Maud Gonne and William Butler Yeats visited Mirebeau to investigate an alleged miracle of a bleeding oleograph that was in the possession of priest Abbé Vachère. Feilding took a blood sample to the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine. They concluded that it was not human blood.

In 1915, Feilding returned to Mirebeau. He made several visits to Vachère's home. The oleograph had been placed in his chapel. Feilding found that it was wet but he did not directly observe the picture to have bled. As a test, he locked the chapel door and placed a slip of paper in the hinge. He discovered hours later that although the picture was wet, the paper had been dislodged. The evidence was negative but Feilding did not believe Vachère was guilty of deception.

In 1920, Feilding and his wife visited Vachère. This time he alleged that a small statue of Jesus in the chapel had also bled. Feilding and his wife investigated this claim. His wife suspected that Vachère sprinkled water on the picture from a small pot she found behind some flowers in the room. Feilding took a blood sample and this time the results showed it was human blood. He did not come to any definite conclusion but because of the evidence suggestive of fraud, sceptics have dismissed the case as a hoax.

Other investigations:

Feilding was a friend of the neurologist Henry Head who he attempted to get involved with psychical research. He invited Head to a "ghost hunt" at an alleged haunted house known as "Pickpocket Hall" on his brother's estate in Pantasaph. He wrote in a letter to Wilfrid Meynell that they spent a few nights in the derelict house but the result was a failure. He also persuaded Head to investigate the shrines at Lourdes in the summer of 1895.

Feilding with W.W. Baggally exposed the materialization medium Christopher Chambers as a fraud in 1905. A false moustache was discovered in the séance room which he used to fabricate the spirit materialisations. In 1911, Feilding attended two séance sittings with the medium Etta Wriedt. He suspected that the phenomena may have been fraudulent. He was "specifically excluded" from attending further séances with Wriedt.

Everard Feilding with

Bishop Cary-Elwes