July 1892 - The Emma Hardinge Britten Archive

The Mystery of NO.9, Stanhope Stred. 185
R. s.: "Spare your jokes on the poor old man, dear
boy. He, as I have heard, is a fierce Catholic; you, as
I know, are a no less fierce infidel. Why censure so
harshly what you do not understand? "
R. B.: "Stop a bit, my dear fellow, and just hear me
a moment. If I am an infidel to the religion of Priestcraft
and baseless humbug, the devotees of such Munchausen
fables are infidels to me. I profess the religion
of Reason. I don't know who or what created me,
except my mother and father, and being endowed with
reason, I presume that endowment means use, and as long
as I use my reason and it is convicted of any truth, that
is my religion. Outside of my said reason all that claim
to teach what they cannot prove are' infidels' to me, just
as much as I am to them."
R. S.: "Still. Reginald, your reason should tell you
that there are mysteries of mind, thought, special genius
and inspiration that mere reason cannot touch, cannot
explain or account for. There are other worlds than
this, my friend-a life beyond this life, the realities of
which we sometimes see or feel or hear of in glances and
glimpses, and of which some favoured ones know more
than others, who boast of measuring everything in the
vast, vast, unknown universe by their poor sensuous perceptions,
called by them 'reason.' Reason! Good
Heaven! I have had an inner life-aye, and will have
more-in which the reason that seems to grow out of the
infinitesimally small modicum of life that the senses can
inform us of, can tell me nothing. But forgive me, my
friend. I interrupt your narrative with my waking
dreams."
R B.: "Well, dear boy, let us proceed on ground we
can tread in common. Your uncle, 'Milor Stanhope,' as
the Italians call your rich uncle, having made a visit to
Rome, the tidings went abroad in our artistic circles that