Details

Title

The Twentieth Plane

Sub Title

A Psychic Revelation

Author

Watson, Albert Durant

Publisher

George W. Jacobs & Co

Place of Publication

Philadelphia

Collection

L.M. Montgomery Institute.

Note

Montgomery held a lingering fascination with pop psychology, the occult, spiritualism, and other related “sciences.” She read many books on these topics with a skeptical, yet curious eye. In March of 1919, she reviewed one such book at length, Watson’s “The Twentieth Plane.” “Tonight I enjoyed the treat of a ‘good read.’ I read ‘The Twentieth Plane’, the book which has made such a sensation in Toronto. I was much disappointed in it. It was absolute poppycock—utterly unconvincing. And I was so ready to be convinced for since Frede died I would give anything if I could only be convinced that she still exists and that there might be a faint hope of getting some communication from her, even by the medium of the ouija-board.” The “sensation in Toronto” Montgomery mentions came from the scathing reviews of the book published in multiple Toronto papers along with the subsequent expulsion of its author from Canadian medical and religious societies. Montgomery was not alone, however, in her wish to have Watson’s “Revelation” be true. But, she wrote, “my intellect absolutely refused any cadence to the so-called ‘revelations’ of ‘The Twentieth Plane’. As a stunt of the ‘subjective mind’ or whatever strange occult power is responsible, it is rather remarkable. But as a proof that communication is possible with the spirits of the dead it is nil. There was a certain enjoyment in the book, though, because it is really exquisitely funny—all the funnier because it is so deadly serious. The ‘pink twilight’ and the ‘orange sun’ of the Twentieth Plane don’t appeal to me, and the ‘bill of fare’ which the departed eat is farcical—’synthetic beef tea’ and ‘juice of a rice product’!! Ye gods, if one must eat in the world of spirits I would prefer something more appetizing. How Frede would have howled over that! What fun we could have had if we had read this book together! … But I will say that Dr. Watson is choice on the spook company he keeps. There isn’t a single non-famous spirit on his calling list, except his mother. Shakespeare and Plato and Wordsworth and Lincoln, etc. etc. jostle each other for a chance to expound through the Ouija board—and all use precisely the same literary style and a very awful one at that. There don’t seem to be any grocers or butchers or carpenters on the Twentieth Plane—though one would think that a few butchers at least would be needed to convert the synthetic cows into the synthetic beef out of which the synthetic beef tea is made!” (“The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Vol II, p. 312). All her skepticism aside, the following month she told her journal that she and some friends “had a very interesting seance with the Ouija board. A wave of Oujiaism has flooded Toronto" since the book came out. “Honest dealers in Ouija boards have made small fortunes," she wrote. And while she remained mostly skeptical through the seance and her attempts to communicate with Frede, “I did not–could not–believe [mesages] came from her. Yet it gave me a queer comfort” (The Complete Journals of L.M. Montgomery, The Ontario Years, 1918–1921, p. 137).

Genre

nonfiction book

Type of Item

contemporaneous