11

I shall give a number of the successful drawings, and some of the partial successes, but none of the failures, for these obviously are merely waste. When I draw a cow, and my wife draws a star or a fish or a horseshoe, all you want is the word “Failure” and then you want to know the percentage of failures, so that you can figure the probabilities. Failures prove nothing that you do not already believe; if your ideas are to be changed, it is successes that will change them.

I begin with series three, because of the interesting circumstances under which it was made. Late in the afternoon I phoned my secretary to make a dozen drawings; and then, after dark, Craig and I decided to drive to Pasadena, and on the way I stopped at the office and got the twelve sealed envelopes which had been laid on my desk. I picked them up in a hurry and slipped them into a pocket, and a minute or two later I put them on the seat beside me in the car.

After we had started, I said, “Why don’t you try some of the drawings on the way?” We were passing through the Signal Hill oil-field, amid thunder of machinery and hiss of steam and flashing of headlights of cars and trucks. “It will be interesting to see if I can concentrate in such circumstances,” said Craig, and took one envelope and held it against her body in the darkness, while I went on with my job of driving. After a few minutes Craig said, “I see something long and oblong, like a stand.” She got a pad and pencil from a pocket of the car, and switched on the ceiling light, and made a drawing, and then opened the envelope. Here are the pictures; I call it a partial success (Figs.26,26a):

Fig. 26

Fig. 26a

Here is the next pair, done on the same drive to Pasadena (Figs.27,27a):

Fig. 27

Fig. 27a

Then came a drawing of an automobile. Considering the attendant circumstances, it was surely not surprising that Craig should report it as “a big light in the end of a tube or horn.” There were many such lights in her eyes.

Then a fourth envelope: she said, “I see a little animal or bug with legs, and the legs are sticking out in bug effect.” When she looked into the envelope, she was so excited that she tried to get me to look—at forty miles an hour on a highway at night! Here is the drawing, meant to be a skull and cross-bones, but so done that a “bug with legs” is really a fair description of it (Fig.28):

Fig. 28

After we arrived at our destination, my wife did some more of the drawings, and got partial successes. On this telephone the comment was: “Goblet with another one floating near or above it inverted” (Figs.29,29a):

Fig. 29

Fig. 29a

And then this arrow (Figs.30,30a):

Fig. 30

Fig. 30a

Concerning the above my wife wrote: “See something that suggests a garden tool—a lawn rake, or spade.” And for the next one (Fig.31) she wrote: “A pully-bone”—which is Mississippi “darky” talk for a wish-bone of a chicken. I don’t know whether it means a bone that you pull, or whether it is Creole for “poulet.” Here is what my secretary had drawn (Fig.31):

Fig. 31

I had asked my secretary at the outset to make simple geometrical designs, letters and figures, thinking that these would be easier to recognize and reproduce. But they brought only partialsuccesses; Craig would get elements of the drawing but would not know how to put them together. There were seven in the first series, and there is some element right in every one. An oblong was drawn exactly, and then two fragments of oblongs added to it. A capital M in script had the first stroke done exactly, with the curl. A capital E in script was done with the curls left out.

And the same with the second series. Here is a square—but you see that the two halves of it are wandering about (Figs.32,32a):

Fig. 32

Fig. 32a

And here is a letter Y, but by telepathy it has been turned from script into print (Figs.33,33a):

Fig. 33

Fig. 33a

A quite different story began when my secretary allowed his imagination a little play. He knows that my wife lives in part on milk, and he knows that she is particular about the quality, because he has to handle the bills. So he has a little fun with her, and yousee that immediately she gets, not the form, but the color and feeling of it (Figs.34,34a):

Fig. 34

Fig. 34a

The comment reads: “Round white foamy stuff on top like soap suds or froth.” As she drinks her milk sour and whipped, you see that its foaminess is a prominent feature.

Then comes an oil derrick. We live in the midst of these unsightly objects, and are liable to be turned out of house and home by drilling nearby; moreover, I have written a book called “Oil!” and the exclamation mark at the end has been justified by the effect of it on our lives. My wife made a figure five with long lines going out, and wrote: “I don’t know why the five should have such a thing as an appendage, but the appendage was most vivid, so there it is” (Figs.35,35a):

Fig. 35

Fig. 35a

After she had opened the envelope and seen the original drawing, the problem became, not why a figure five should have an appendage, but why an oil derrick should have a figure five. Craig puzzled over this, and then lay down and told her subconscious mind to bring her the answer. What came was this: the German version of my book, called “Petroleum,” has three oil derricks on the front, and a huge dollar sign on the back of thecover, and this was what Craig had really “seen.” She had looked at this book when it arrived, a year or more back, and it had been filed away in her memory. Of course, this may not be the correct explanation, but it is the one which her mind brought to her.

These drawing tests afford a basis for psycho-analysis, and it is interesting to note some of the facts thus brought up from the childhood of my wife. For example, fires! She was raised in the “black belt,” where there are nine Negroes to one white, and the former are still close to Africa. When Craig was a girl, a nurse in the family, having been discharged, set fire to the home while the adults were away, and the children asleep. Another servant, jealous of an unfaithful husband, put her two babies into a barrel full of feathers and burned them alive. Other fires occurred; so now, in her home, Craig keeps an uneasy eye out for greasy rags, or overheated stoves, or whatever else her fears suggest. When in these drawing tests there has been anything indicating fire or smoke, she has “got” it, with only one or two failures out of more than a dozen cases. Sometimes she “got” the fire or smoke without the object; sometimes she supplied fire or smoke to an object which might properly have it—a pipe, for example. The results are so curious that I assemble them together—a series of fire-alarms, as it were.

You recall the fact that in one of the early drawing tests—those in which, instead of giving the drawings to my wife, I sat in my study and concentrated upon them—I drew a lighted cigarette, and thought of the curls of smoke. Craig filled up her drawing with curves, and wrote: “I can’t draw it, but curls of some sort.” At this time the convention that “curls stood for smoke” had not been established. But now, in the series drawn by my secretary, appeared a little house with smoking chimney, and you will see that my wife got the smoke better than the house (Figs.36,36a):

Fig. 36

Fig. 36a

This apparently established in her mind the association of curls with smoke. So when, in series six, I drew a pipe with smoke-curls, my wife first drew an ellipse, and then wrote: “Now it begins to spin, round and round, and is attached to a stick.” She then drew (Figs.37,37a):

Fig. 37

Fig. 37a

In series eight I drew a sky-rocket going up. My first impulse had been to draw a bursting rocket, with a shower of stars, but I realized that would be difficult, so I drew this instead (Fig.38):

Fig. 38

My wife apparently took my first thought, rather than my drawing. Anyhow, she made half a dozen sketches of whirligigs and light (Figs.38a,38b,38c):

Fig. 38a

Fig. 38b

Fig. 38c

And here in series twenty-two is a burning lamp (Figs.39,39a):

Fig. 39

Fig. 39a

And here in series thirty-four another, with comment: “flame and sparks” (Figs.40,40a):

Fig. 40

Fig. 40a

I drew another pipe in series twenty-two, with the usual curls of smoke; and Craig wrote: “Smoke stack.” I drew another in series thirty-three with the result that, five drawings in advance of the correct one, Craig drew a pipe with smoke. Of course, this may have been a coincidence; but wait till you see how often such coincidences happen! (Figs.41,41a):

Fig. 41

Fig. 41a

In series twenty-one I drew a chimney, and Craig drew a chimney, and added smoke. In thirty-four I drew an old-fashioned trench-mortar; and here again she supplied the smoke (Figs. 42, 42a):

Fig. 42

Fig. 42a

Cannons are especially horrible things to her, as you may note again and again in her published war-sonnets:

The sharpened steel whips round, the black guns blaze,Waste are the harvests, mute the songs of birds.

The sharpened steel whips round, the black guns blaze,

Waste are the harvests, mute the songs of birds.

So when, in series eleven, I drew the muzzle half of an old-style cannon, Craig’s imagination got to work one drawing ahead of time. She wrote: “Fire and smoke—smoke—flame,” and then drew as follows (Fig.43a):

Fig. 43a

The next drawing was the cannon, and I give it, along with the drawing Craig made to go with it. The comment she wrote was: “Half circle—double lines—light inside—light is fire busy whirling or flaming” (Figs.44,44a):

Fig. 44

Fig. 44a

So much for fires, and things associated with fire. Now consider another detail about life in the Yazoo delta, brought out in the course of our psycho-analysis. In the days of Craig’s childhood, poisonous snakes were an ever-present menace, and fear of them had to be taught to children, and could hardly be taught too early. There is a family story of a little tot crawling under the house and coming back to report, “I see nuffin wiv a tail to it!” In the swamps back of Craig’s summer home on the Mississippi Sound I have counted a dozen copperheads and moccasins in the course ofa half hour’s walk. Also, her father has some childhood complex buried in his mind, which causes him to have a spell of nausea at the sight of a snake. All this, of course, strongly affected the child’s early days, and now it is in her mental depths. So when I drew a hissing snake, just see the uproar I caused! She made no drawing, but wrote a little essay. I give my drawing, and her essay following (Fig.45):

Fig. 45

“See something like kitten with tail and saucer of milk. Now it leaps into action and runs away to outdoors. Turns to fleeing animal outdoors. Great activity among outdoor creatures. Know it’s some outdoor thing, not indoor object—see trees, and a frightened bird on the wing (turned sidewise). It’s outdoor thing, but none of above seems to beit.”

In other words, little Mary Craig Kimbrough is back on the plantation, seeing terror among birds and poultry, and not knowing what causes it! Study the drawing, and you see that I got the action of the snake, but didn’t get the coils very well, so they might be a “saucer of milk”—and a sure-enough kitten’s tail sticking out from it. Another childhood horror here! Craig was a fat little thing, and she slipped and plumped down on her favorite pet kitten, and exploded it.

The person whom we are subjecting to this process of psycho-analysis has a strong color sense, and wanted to be a painter. So we note that she “gets” colors and names them correctly. Here is my drawing of what I meant to be a bouquet of pink roses (Figs. 46, 46a):

Fig. 46

Fig. 46a

Or take this case of a lobster. Craig’s comment was: “Gorgeous colors, red and greenish tinges.” Apparently I had failed to decide whether I was drawing a live lobster or a boiled one! My wife wrote further: “Now it turns into a lizard, camelian,reds and greens.” When she sees this about to be made public, she is embarrassed by her bad spelling; but she says: “Please do not overlook the fact that a chameleon is a reptile—and so is a lobster.” I dutifully quote her, even though her zoology is even worse than her spelling! (Figs.47,47a):

Fig. 47

Fig. 47a

While we are on the “reptiles,” I include this menacing crab, which may have got hold of little Mary Craig’s toe on the beach of the Mississippi Sound (Fig.48):

Fig. 48

For the crab, Craig made two drawings, on opposite sides of the paper (Figs.48a,48b):

Fig. 48a

Fig. 48b

The comments on the above read: “Wings, or fingers—wing effect, but no feathers, things like fingers instead of feathers. Then many little dots which all disappear, and leave two of them, O O, as eyes of something.” And then, “Streamers flying from something.”

Another color instance: I drew the head of a horse, and Craig drew a lot of apparently promiscuous lines, and at various places wrote “yellow,” “white,” “blue,” “(dark),” and then a general description, “Oriental.” Afterwards she said to me: “That looks like a complete failure; yet it was so vivid, I can’t be mistaken. Where did you get that horse?” Said I: “I copied it from a Sunday supplement.” We got the paper from the trash-basket, and the page opposite the horse contained what Craig described. We shall note several other cases of this sort of intrusion of things I did not draw, but which I had before me while drawing.

Also anything with metal or shine seems to stand a good chance of being “got.” For example, these nose-glasses (Figs.49,49a):

Fig. 49

Fig. 49a

The comment reads: “Opalescent shine or gleam. Also peafowl.”

Or again, a belt-buckle; my wife writes the word “shines” (Figs.50,50a):

Fig. 50

Fig. 50a

Or this very busy alarm clock—she writes the same word “shines” (Figs 51, 51a):

Fig. 51

Fig. 51a

She has got at least part of a watch whenever one has been presented. You remember the one Bob drew (Fig.17). There was another in series thirty-three; Craig made a crude drawing and added: “Shines, glass or metal” (Figs.52,52a):

Fig. 52

Fig. 52a

Also, onthe automobile ride to Pasadena, series three, there was a watch-face among the drawings, and Craig drew the angle of the hands, and added the words, “a complication of small configurations.” Having arrived in Pasadena, she took the twelve drawings and tried them over again. This time, of course, she had a one in twelve chance of guessing the watch. She wrote: “A white translucent glimmering, or shimmering which I knew was not light but rather glass. It was like heat waves radiating in little round pools from a center.... Then in the center I saw a vivid black mark.... So it was bound to be the watch, and it was.”

And here is a fountain. You see that it appears to be in a tub, and is so drawn by Craig. But you note that the “shine” has been got. “These shine!” (Figs.53,53a):

Fig. 53

Fig. 53a

Another instance, even more vivid. I made a poor attempt to draw a bass tuba, as one sees them on the stage—a lot of jazz musiciansdressed up in white duck, and a row of big brass and nickel horns, polished to blind your eyes. See what Craig drew, and also what she wrote (Figs.54,54a):

Fig. 54

Fig. 54a

The comments, continued on the other side of the sheet, are: “Dull gold ring shimmers and stands out with shadow behind it and in center of it. Gleams and moves. Metal. There is a glow of gold light, and the ring or circle is out in the air, suspended, and moves in blur of gold.”

You see, she gets the feeling, the emotional content. I draw a child’s express-wagon, and she writes: “Children again playing but can’t get exactly how they look. Just feel there are children.” Or take this one, which she describes as “Egyptian.” I don’t know if my pillar is real Egyptian, but it seems so to me, and evidently to my wife, for you note all the artistry it inspired (Figs.55,55a):

Fig. 55

Fig. 55a

Sometimes Craig will embody the feeling in some new form of her own invention; as for example, when I draw an old-fashioned cannon on wheels, and she writes: “Black Napoleon hat and red military coat.” I draw a running fox—well drawn, because I copy it from a picture; she rises to the occasion with two crossed guns,and a hunting horn with a lot of musical notes coming out of it (Figs.56,56a):

Fig. 56

Fig. 56a

I draw an auto, and she replies with the hub and spokes of a wheel. Not satisfied with this, she sets it aside, and tries again a little later—without looking at the original drawing—and this time she produces a horn, with indication of a noise. I give both her drawings, which are on two sides of the same slip of paper (Figs. 57a, 57b):

Fig. 57a

Fig. 57b

An extraordinary incident occurred in connection with the fourth series of drawings. While my secretary, E. M. Hart, was making the drawings, there came into the office his brother-in-law, R. H. Craig, Jr., a teller of the Security First National Bank of Long Beach, a person entirely unknown to my wife. He heard what was going on, and said, “I’ll give her some that’ll stump her.” He took a pen and drew two pictures, which were duly wrapped in sheets of green paper and sealed in envelopes, and put with the rest of the series. I was not at the office, and nothing was said to me about Mr. Craig having taken part in the matter.

My wife did this series under my eyes; and when she came to the first of Mr. Craig’s two drawings, she wrote, “Some sort of grinning monster,” and added an elaborate description. Then she opened the envelope, and found a roller skate with a foot and leg attached. This, naturally, was called a failure; but seven drawings later in the same series came Mr. Craig’s other drawing, which was as follows (Fig.58):

Fig. 58

Now read the amazing description which my wife had written, seven drawings back, when the first of Mr. Craig’s drawings had come under her hand:

“Some sort of grinning monster—see only the face and a vagueidea of deformed neck and shoulders. It is a man, but it looks like a cat’s face, cat eyes and whiskers. Don’t know just how I know it is a man—it is a deformity. Not a cat. See color of skin which is deep, flat pink, as of a colored picture. The face of the creature is broad and weird. The flesh of neck, or somewhere, gives effect of rolls or creases.”

I asked my secretary what this drawing was meant to be, and he said “a Happy Hooligan.” My cultural backwardness is such that I wasn’t sure just what a “Happy Hooligan” might be, but my secretary told me it is a comic supplement figure, and I then looked it up in the paper, and found that the face of the figure as printed is a very pale pink, and the little cap on top is a bright red. I called Mr. Craig on the phone and asked him this question: “If you were to think of a color in connection with a ‘Happy Hooligan,’ what color would it be?” He answered, “Red.”

Now I ask you, what chance do you think there is of a person’s writing a description such as the above by guess work? To be sure, my wife had eight guesses; but do you think that eight million guesses would suffice? And if we call it telepathy, do we say that my wife’s mind has the power to dip into the mind of a young man whom she has never seen, nor even heard of? Or shall we say that his mind affected his brother-in-law’s, the brother-in-law’s affected mine, and mine affected my wife’s? Or, if we decide to call it clairvoyance, or psychometry, then are we going to say there is some kind of vibration or emanation from Mr. Craig’s drawing, so powerful that when one of his drawings is handed to my wife, she gets what is in another drawing which has been done at the same time?

Whatever may be the explanation, here is the fact: Again and again we find Craig getting, not the drawing she is holding under her hand, but the next one, which she has not yet touched. When she picks up the first drawing, she will say, or write: “There is a little man in this series”; or: “There is a snow scene with sled”; or: “An elephant, also a rooster.” I am going to show you these particular cases; but first a word as to how I have counted such “anticipations.”

Manifestly, if I grant the right to more than one guess, I am increasing the chances of guesswork, and correspondingly reducingthe significance of the totals. What I have done is this: where such cases have occurred, I have called them total failures, except in a few cases, where the description was so detailed and exact as to be overwhelming—as in the case of this “Happy Hooligan.” Even so, I have not called it a complete success, only a partial success. In order to be classified as a complete success, my wife’s drawing must have been made for the particular drawing of mine which she had in her hand at that time; and throughout this account, the reader is to understand that every drawing presented was made in connection with the particular drawing printed alongside it—except in cases where I expressly state otherwise.

Now for a few of the “anticipations.” In the course of series six, drawn by me on Feb. 8, 1929, drawing number two was a daisy, and Craig got the elements of it, as you see (Figs.59,59a):

Fig. 59

Fig. 59a

Her mind then went ahead, and she wrote, “May be snow scene on hill and sled.” The next drawing was an axe, which I give later (Fig.145); she got the elements of this very well, and then added on the back: “I get a feeling again of a snow scene to come in this series—a sled in the snow.” That was number three; and when number five came Craig made this annotation: “Opened it by mistake, without concentrating. It’s my expected sled and snow scene.” Here is the drawing (Fig.60):

Fig. 60

Series number eight, on Feb. 10, brought even stranger results. This is the series in which the laced-up football was turned into acalf wearing a belly-band (Figs.15,15a). But even while I was engaged in making the drawings, sitting in my study apart, and with the door closed, Craig’s busy magic, whatever it is, was bringing her messages. She called out: “I see a rooster!” I had actually drawn a rooster; but of course I made no reply to her words. She at once drew a rooster and several other things, and after I had brought my drawings into the room, but before she had started to work with them, she wrote as follows:

“While Upton was making these drawings I sat before the fire thinking how to dry felt slippers which I had washed. I had my mind on them. Hung them on grating to see if they would hang there without burning. Suddenly saw rooster crowing. Then thought, ‘Can U be drawing rooster?’ Decided to make note of this. Did so. Then saw”—and she draws a circle with eight radiating lines, like spokes of a wheel.

In due course came drawing number eight, and before looking at it, Craig wrote: “Rooster.” Then she added, “But no—it looks like a picture of coffee-pot—see spout and handle.” This is hard on me as an artist, but I give the drawing and let you judge for yourself (Fig.61):

Fig. 61

What about the circle and the radiating spokes? That was, apparently, a fore-glimpse of drawing number five. I give you that, together with what Craig drew for that particular test when it came. Her effort suggests the kind of humor with which the newspaper artists used to delight my childhood; a series of drawings in which one thing turns into some other and quite unexpected thing bygradual changes. You will see here how the hub of a wagon-wheel may turn into the muzzle of a deer! (Figs.62,62a):

Fig. 62

Fig. 62a

What are the principles upon which I have classified the drawings, as between success, partial successes, and failures? I will use this series, number eight, to illustrate. There are eight drawings, and I have set them down as one success, six partial successes, one failure. The success is the rooster (Fig.61), called “a rooster,” even though it “looks like a coffee pot.” The partial successes are, first, an electric light bulb, very crudely imitated as to shape in three drawings. Perhaps this was hardly good enough to be counted; it was a border-line case, and probably the poorest that I admitted to the classification of “partial successes” (Fig.63a).

Fig. 63a

Second, the ascending sky-rocket, already printed as fig. 38, giving rise to six different drawings of whirligigs and light. Third, the following drawing, for which Craig wrote: “See spider, or some sort of legged pest. If this is not a spider, there is a spider in the lot somewhere! This I know!” (Fig.64):

Fig. 64

The fourth partial success was a drawn bow, with arrow fitted, ready to be launched. Craig wrote as follows: “Picked this up and saw inside as it dropped on floor—so did not try it. Suddenly recall I have already ‘seen’ it earlier.” Before starting the tests, along with her written mention of “a rooster,” she had drawn a bow and crude arrow, and the resemblance is so exact that it seems to me entitled to be called a partial success (Figs.65,65a):

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