How we cite our quotes: Possession: A Romance. London: Vintage Books, 1991.
Quote #1
At 11.00 he found what he thought was the relevant passage in Vico. Vico had looked for historical fact in the poetic metaphors of myth and legend; this piecing together was his 'new science'. His Proserpine was the corn, the origin of commerce and community. Randolph Henry Ash's Proserpine had been seen as a Victorian reflection of religious doubt, a meditation on the myths of Resurrection. (1.6)
On the whole, Possession doesn't spend a lot of time on Randolph Henry Ash's own religious doubt. We know that he does doubt, but his uncertainty doesn't seem to bother him as much as Christabel LaMotte's bothers her.
Quote #2
On the whole, Possession doesn't spend a lot of time on Randolph Henry Ash's own religious doubt. We know that he does doubt, but his uncertainty doesn't seem to bother him as much as Christabel LaMotte's bothers her.
These comments from James Blackadder give us our first impression of Christabel LaMotte as a religious writer. Although Blackadder isn't entirely justified in characterizing her work in this way, his comments do introduce us to an important aspect of Christabel's personality.
Quote #3
If you can order your Thoughts and shape them into Art, good: if you can live in the obligations and affections of Daily Life, good. But do not get into the habit of morbid Self-examination. Nothing so unfits a woman for producing good work, or for living usefully. The Lord will take care of the second of these—opportunities will be found. The first is a matter of Will. (4.31)
This passage, quoted from a letter that Christabel LaMotte wrote to one of her nieces, continues to build our impression of Christabel as a religious woman. It's important to note that this letter was written in 1886, more than twenty-five years after her affair with Randolph Henry Ash. Despite the ups and downs she has experienced in life, Christabel seems to have retained her Christian faith in God.
Quote #4
That there may be wandering spirits I grant you, earth-bubbles, exhalations, creatures of the air, who occasionally cross our usual currents of apprehension, proceeding on their own unseen errands. That agonised reminiscence of some kind in some mental form does inhere in some terrible places there is some evidence. There are indeed more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy. (6.36)
There's nothing like a shout-out to Hamlet to help a guy prove his point. In this letter to Priscilla Penn Cropper, Mortimer Cropper's late great-grandmother, we catch our first glimpse of Randolph Henry Ash's distaste for the nineteenth century's growing fascination with spiritualism. Though he doesn't dismiss the possibility of communications from beyond the grave, he thinks of most spiritualist practices as showmanship and trickery.
Quote #5
You are to know too—or maybe you are not—how should I say this, to you with whom my acquaintance is so recent—and yet if not to you, to whom—and I have just written, one must keep truth, and this is so central a truth—you are to know then, after all, for I must take my courage in my hands—that your great poem Ragnarök was the occasion of quite the worst crisis in the life of my simple religious faith, that I have ever experienced, or hope to experience. (10.7)
Early on in their correspondence, Christabel LaMotte confesses to Randolph Henry Ash that his epic poem Ragnarök produced a religious crisis in her life. This admission marks the beginning of their intimate exchange of ideas about God, Christianity, and life after death.
Quote #6
Ragnarök was written in all honesty in the days when I did not myself question Biblical certainties—or the faith handed down by my fathers and theirs before them. It was read differently by some—the lady who was to become my wife was included in these readers—and I was at the time startled and surprised that my Poem should have been construed as any kind of infidelity—for I meant it rather as a reassertion of the Universal Truth of the living presence of Allfather (under whatever Name) and of the hope of Resurrection from whatever whelming disaster in whatever form. (10.22)
As Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel LaMotte continue to correspond, we readers begin to get a deeper sense of Randolph's own religious doubt. As he says here, he started out by trusting the faith of his fathers. That began to change as he grew older and continued to read, reflect, and write.
Quote #7
Now—I must make confession. I have written and destroyed an earlier answer to your letter in which—not disingenuously—I urged you to hold fast by your faith—not to involve yourself in the 'ambages and sinuosities' of the Critical Philosophy—and wrote, what may not be nonsense, that women's minds, more intuitive and purer and less beset with torsions and stresses than those of mere males—may hold on to truths securely that we men may lose by much questioning […]. (10.23)
In one of his letters to Christabel LaMotte, Randolph Henry Ash decides to reject a very old-fashioned view of women's "intuitive and purer" spirituality and instead chooses to treat Christabel as an intellectual equal.
Quote #8
We went to hear another lecture on the recent Spiritual Manifestations, given by a most respectable Quaker—who began with a predisposition to believe in the life of the Spirit—but with no vulgar desire to be shocked or startled. Himself an Englishman, he characterised the English—in a manner not wholly alien to the style of the poet Ash. We have undergone—this good man said—a double process of Induration. Trade—and Protestant abjuration of spiritual relations—have been mutually doing the work of internal petrification and ossification upon us. (10.67)
In this passage, we start to get a sense of Christabel LaMotte's perspective on spiritualist theories and ideas. Both Christabel and Blanche Glover believe that spiritualist ideas are compatible with their Christian faith, and both are fascinated by the new line of thought.
Quote #9
I shall lock away this volume—anyway during its earliest life—and write in it only what is meant for my eyes alone, and those of the Supreme Being (my father's deity, when he does not seem to believe in much older ones, Lug, Dagda, Taranis. Christabel has a strong but peculiarly English devotion to Jesus, which I do not wholly understand, nor is it clear to me what her allegiances are, Catholic or Protestant). (19.35)
As Sabine de Kercoz's journal reminds us, we don't know a whole lot about the specifics of Christabel LaMotte's Christian beliefs. Is she Anglican? Catholic? Presbyterian? Quaker? It's really hard to say.
Quote #10
'Ah, Lazarus. Etiam si mortuus fuerit… Do you think—in your heart of hearts—we continue—after?'
She bowed her head and looked for the truth.
'We are promised—men are so wonderful, so singular—we cannot be lost—for nothing. I don't know, Randolph, I don't know'
'If there is nothing—I shall not—feel the cold.' (25. 69-72)
Even on his deathbed, Randolph Henry Ash wasn't sure about his deepest beliefs and doubts. But, once again, he doesn't seem to be overly stressed about it. Here, he seems to be saying: If there's life after death, so be it; if there isn't life after death, that's all right, too.