Interest in Frederic William Henry Myers (1843–1901), one of the founders of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR), has grown in recent years, and now Trevor Hamilton has demonstrated his significance still further with this first full-length biography. Hamilton has combed Myers’s prolific writings and those of his contemporaries, as well as the large secondary literature, and his clear presentation allows the reader to trace Myers’s life and the development of his thought. He also sheds light on late-Victorian élite culture – political, literary and scientific – by looking at Myers’s extensive social networks. The result is a book which will be essential for future historians of both Myers and the SPR, and of value to students of the period more generally.
This, though, is no hagiography. Hamilton discusses such controversial issues as Myers’s relationship with Annie Marshall, his cousin’s wife who killed herself; the nature of his sexuality; and whether his colleague and close friend Edmund Gurney’s death was accident or suicide. But where Myers’s critics, notably Trevor H Hall, have taken his less likeable aspects and supplemented them with innuendo and unsubstantiated speculation, Hamilton draws a more nuanced picture which counters these partial and distorted interpretations.
Myers is shown at times to be narcissistic, a snob with a keen sense of his status and worth. Yet at the same time, his loyalty and his warmth towards his family and intimate friends shows through. Where it is not possible to come to a definite conclusion, Hamilton weighs the probabilities and shows where the evidence runs out and informed speculation begins. The result is a depiction of Myers’s strengths and weaknesses, but more importantly, an exploration of what is of value in his legacy.
Clearly the most frequent contributor to the SPR’s publications in its first two decades, his major strength was as a synthesiser and systematiser. Given that his background was in the Classics, Myers absorbed an enormous amount of psychology. But his language was frequently obscure and it is to Hamilton’s credit that he has managed to present the ideas in a clear and readable manner, at least as far as he is allowed to by the frequent opacity of his subject’s style.
Immortal Longings appears when there is increasing interest in Myers’s ideas. His insights are not just of antiquarian interest, they are once more being taken seriously as having relevance to modern psychology. The result is a worthy addition to the small number of works which deal in a critical but fair way with the efforts of Myers and the other SPR pioneers as they sought to probe, not always successfully, but certainly sincerely and despite their personal frailties, the mysteries of the human soul.
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