Sprinkled throughout Doubt are references to various members of the Fortean Society. Some of these members appear only once or twice, and then never again. Vanishing is an especially likely risk for those Tiffany Thayer listed in the first issue as "regional correspondents." Here's what I have found on a few of these disappearing Forteans.
Irving Kaden:
It is, of course, easy to dismiss Thayer and Doubt--even Forteans found reasons to do so. But there is at least one crime for which the writer is not guilty--Doubt (and the Fortean Society generally) were not meant to bilk people. Thayer was almost certainly losing money on the enterprise.
One way he sought to defray his expenses was selling books. Thayer would point out books of interest to Forteans in the pages of Doubt, and then offer to sell them. I have not yet made a study of this, but my sense is that even this sales department lost him money--it was more a way for him to share ideas he thought deserved sharing. His business brought him into contact with a number of booksellers. It may even be that Fort particularly appealed to book enthusiasts, who themselves might have stored up many strange facts they read about in the course of their careers.
One bookseller Thayer knew was Irving Kaden. Kaden is only mentioned once in Doubt. The very first issue lists him as a ‘regional correspondent’ for the Boston area. Since his name never appears again, it is hard to gauge just how committed he was to Forteanism. Still, a bit on Kaden.
Irving Kaden was the son of Russian immigrants, born in New York in 1905. By 1920, the family lived in the Boston area. Irving started the business that would become the Book Clearing House in 1932, on 186 Tremont Street. The shop grew, and merged with another, so that by 1943 Kaden needed a new place, relocating The Book Clearing House to 423 Boylston Street. In 1947, Kaden and his partner focused more on art books, binding, and rare editions.
The business continued on at least until Kaden’s death in 1970.
Roy Petran Lingle:
Roy Petran Lingle was another of the regional correspondents Thayer listed in the first issue of Doubt whose name never again appeared in the pages of the magazine. Still, something must have drawn him to Forteanism, even if he may not have liked the turn around which Thayer steered it. And there is room to speculate on what that might be.
Lingle was born in Philadelphia in 1885 to James Monroe Lingle of Harrisburg and Mary Petran Lingle of Minneapolis. He attended Central High School, and then matriculated at Princeton. Illness interrupted his studies, and he did not graduate until 1913. In the meantime, he was a salesman for the Stromberg Electric Company and a high school teacher. After graduating with a degree in English from Princeton he taught again in Philadelphia, took a jobs at Rice University in Houston--where he was married--and Baylor, earned his MA at the University of Pennsylvania, and taught at the University of Chicago, before ending up near home, a professor of English at Swarthmore.
Lingle traveled extensively through the U.S., read his Nietzsche, Arnold, and Chesterton, and enjoyed sports. He especially liked poetry, both frivolous (he wrote a football song for Rice) and serious.
His hobby, he said in 1913, “To help Princeton discover a scientific, philanthropical interpretation of religion that will eliminate superstition, destroy unbelief and tend to unite existing creeds and sects.”
Thirteen years later, he published “The Speed People: A Transcendental Stenographic Fantasy” in The Open Court, “a monthly magazine devoted to the science of religion, the religion of science, and the extension of the religious parliament of ideas.” The story told of a lucid dream Lingle experienced, in which he watched the the characters in some shorthand notes he had taken debate the existence--and necessity--of man. Eventually, they concluded that man was a necessary concept for keeping order and understanding the majesty of existence. An interpretation of religion, then, that had no need for superstition that, while not destroying unbelief, showed its dangers and minimized creedal differences.
There are certainly Fortean elements here: most notably, the distrust of superstition. Also the fantastic premise--it’s like so many of Fort’s own analogies and examples from his books. But the main argument, and Lingle’s enterprise, would have been foreign to both Fort and Thayer, and so it is little surprise that there was a parting of the ways--or, at least, that Lingle never appeared again in Doubt.
Charles W. Ward:
Another disappearing regional correspondent. This one from Brandenton, Florida. His name was Charles W. Ward, and he was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1885. Ward made his way south, with stops in Ohio and Missouri; he seems to have married twice. In Bradenton, he became the city’s electrical engineer.
And while he never again appeared in Doubt, he retained his Fortean skepticism. The July 1950 issue of Popular Science printed a letter from Ward. He was wondering about the picture of switch which had been carried in a rocket 250 miles above the earth. There was no evidence from the switch that the rocket had drifted westward at all, and Ward found this intriguing. Objects on the ground, he said, moved eastward at 750 miles per hour. And even objects slightly above the ground moved at this peed because they were swept along by the earth’s atmosphere. But a rocket outside of the atmosphere, that should move west, like the spirals in a nebula.
Gotcha!
Isn’t this “proof,” he asked, “that, actually, the earth has little if any movement?”
(It is worth noting here that Ward’s letter was printed alongside an ad for the Rosicrucians.)
No, the magazine explained. The rocket had been moving east when it left the atmosphere, and there nothing had altered that when it went up: it was still moving east. Another force would be required to make it move west.
The answer, though, is less interesting than the question. An engineer, working for a city, was trying to show that the earth did not move. In 1950!
Wallace A. Clemmons:
Clemmons, too, was one of the original regional correspondents listed in Doubt’s first issue. Unlike most of them, though, he did not disappear after that issue. No, his name appeared twice more.
Clemmons was born in Missouri in 1892. He was postmaster for a time. Married in 1914, by Clemmons 1930 lived in New Orleans with his wife, two daughters, a servant, and four lodgers. He owned the Gulf Radio School (and all four of the boarders were teachers there). A few years later, he was one of the early investors in tractors that could mechanically harvest cotton.
Clemmons died in 1956.
Thayer thanked Clemmons (and others) in the third issue of Doubt for sending in clippings, which, he said, he had not been able to discuss. This was 1940, so Clemmons had been a member for three years.
He next appeared in Doubt five years later, credited for sending in a clip on an unexplained explosion in the air. Thayer commented, Clemmons “is one of our earliest members. The first data we have from him arrived early in the year 1.”
It is not immediately clear what this means. Year one, according to Thayer’s calendar, was the year the Fortean Society was founded, 1931. But at the time, as far as I know, the Society was not soliciting clippings. Did Clemmons send him material then anyway? Or was it meant for Fort, who would have still been alive? And then did Thayer recruit him for the Fortean Society once he decided to revive it--in 1936--and start sending out a magazine, in 1937?
Or did he simply mean that the first data arrived after issue one?
And if Clemmons was so enthusiastic, why did he never appear in Doubt again after 1945?
Like so much Forteana--more questions than answers.
Irving Kaden:
It is, of course, easy to dismiss Thayer and Doubt--even Forteans found reasons to do so. But there is at least one crime for which the writer is not guilty--Doubt (and the Fortean Society generally) were not meant to bilk people. Thayer was almost certainly losing money on the enterprise.
One way he sought to defray his expenses was selling books. Thayer would point out books of interest to Forteans in the pages of Doubt, and then offer to sell them. I have not yet made a study of this, but my sense is that even this sales department lost him money--it was more a way for him to share ideas he thought deserved sharing. His business brought him into contact with a number of booksellers. It may even be that Fort particularly appealed to book enthusiasts, who themselves might have stored up many strange facts they read about in the course of their careers.
One bookseller Thayer knew was Irving Kaden. Kaden is only mentioned once in Doubt. The very first issue lists him as a ‘regional correspondent’ for the Boston area. Since his name never appears again, it is hard to gauge just how committed he was to Forteanism. Still, a bit on Kaden.
Irving Kaden was the son of Russian immigrants, born in New York in 1905. By 1920, the family lived in the Boston area. Irving started the business that would become the Book Clearing House in 1932, on 186 Tremont Street. The shop grew, and merged with another, so that by 1943 Kaden needed a new place, relocating The Book Clearing House to 423 Boylston Street. In 1947, Kaden and his partner focused more on art books, binding, and rare editions.
The business continued on at least until Kaden’s death in 1970.
Roy Petran Lingle:
Roy Petran Lingle was another of the regional correspondents Thayer listed in the first issue of Doubt whose name never again appeared in the pages of the magazine. Still, something must have drawn him to Forteanism, even if he may not have liked the turn around which Thayer steered it. And there is room to speculate on what that might be.
Lingle was born in Philadelphia in 1885 to James Monroe Lingle of Harrisburg and Mary Petran Lingle of Minneapolis. He attended Central High School, and then matriculated at Princeton. Illness interrupted his studies, and he did not graduate until 1913. In the meantime, he was a salesman for the Stromberg Electric Company and a high school teacher. After graduating with a degree in English from Princeton he taught again in Philadelphia, took a jobs at Rice University in Houston--where he was married--and Baylor, earned his MA at the University of Pennsylvania, and taught at the University of Chicago, before ending up near home, a professor of English at Swarthmore.
Lingle traveled extensively through the U.S., read his Nietzsche, Arnold, and Chesterton, and enjoyed sports. He especially liked poetry, both frivolous (he wrote a football song for Rice) and serious.
His hobby, he said in 1913, “To help Princeton discover a scientific, philanthropical interpretation of religion that will eliminate superstition, destroy unbelief and tend to unite existing creeds and sects.”
Thirteen years later, he published “The Speed People: A Transcendental Stenographic Fantasy” in The Open Court, “a monthly magazine devoted to the science of religion, the religion of science, and the extension of the religious parliament of ideas.” The story told of a lucid dream Lingle experienced, in which he watched the the characters in some shorthand notes he had taken debate the existence--and necessity--of man. Eventually, they concluded that man was a necessary concept for keeping order and understanding the majesty of existence. An interpretation of religion, then, that had no need for superstition that, while not destroying unbelief, showed its dangers and minimized creedal differences.
There are certainly Fortean elements here: most notably, the distrust of superstition. Also the fantastic premise--it’s like so many of Fort’s own analogies and examples from his books. But the main argument, and Lingle’s enterprise, would have been foreign to both Fort and Thayer, and so it is little surprise that there was a parting of the ways--or, at least, that Lingle never appeared again in Doubt.
Charles W. Ward:
Another disappearing regional correspondent. This one from Brandenton, Florida. His name was Charles W. Ward, and he was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1885. Ward made his way south, with stops in Ohio and Missouri; he seems to have married twice. In Bradenton, he became the city’s electrical engineer.
And while he never again appeared in Doubt, he retained his Fortean skepticism. The July 1950 issue of Popular Science printed a letter from Ward. He was wondering about the picture of switch which had been carried in a rocket 250 miles above the earth. There was no evidence from the switch that the rocket had drifted westward at all, and Ward found this intriguing. Objects on the ground, he said, moved eastward at 750 miles per hour. And even objects slightly above the ground moved at this peed because they were swept along by the earth’s atmosphere. But a rocket outside of the atmosphere, that should move west, like the spirals in a nebula.
Gotcha!
Isn’t this “proof,” he asked, “that, actually, the earth has little if any movement?”
(It is worth noting here that Ward’s letter was printed alongside an ad for the Rosicrucians.)
No, the magazine explained. The rocket had been moving east when it left the atmosphere, and there nothing had altered that when it went up: it was still moving east. Another force would be required to make it move west.
The answer, though, is less interesting than the question. An engineer, working for a city, was trying to show that the earth did not move. In 1950!
Wallace A. Clemmons:
Clemmons, too, was one of the original regional correspondents listed in Doubt’s first issue. Unlike most of them, though, he did not disappear after that issue. No, his name appeared twice more.
Clemmons was born in Missouri in 1892. He was postmaster for a time. Married in 1914, by Clemmons 1930 lived in New Orleans with his wife, two daughters, a servant, and four lodgers. He owned the Gulf Radio School (and all four of the boarders were teachers there). A few years later, he was one of the early investors in tractors that could mechanically harvest cotton.
Clemmons died in 1956.
Thayer thanked Clemmons (and others) in the third issue of Doubt for sending in clippings, which, he said, he had not been able to discuss. This was 1940, so Clemmons had been a member for three years.
He next appeared in Doubt five years later, credited for sending in a clip on an unexplained explosion in the air. Thayer commented, Clemmons “is one of our earliest members. The first data we have from him arrived early in the year 1.”
It is not immediately clear what this means. Year one, according to Thayer’s calendar, was the year the Fortean Society was founded, 1931. But at the time, as far as I know, the Society was not soliciting clippings. Did Clemmons send him material then anyway? Or was it meant for Fort, who would have still been alive? And then did Thayer recruit him for the Fortean Society once he decided to revive it--in 1936--and start sending out a magazine, in 1937?
Or did he simply mean that the first data arrived after issue one?
And if Clemmons was so enthusiastic, why did he never appear in Doubt again after 1945?
Like so much Forteana--more questions than answers.
