Cornelius O'Connor Two interlinked Forteans intent on reforming science.
Thomas Graydon and Cornelius O’Connor were briefly affiliated with the Fortean Society during the mid-1940s, Graydon more than O’Connor. Thayer linked them, as both wanted to reform science, though they had very different ideas about what the new physical laws would look like—and were never really interested in what Fort had to say, or even what Thayer had to say about Fort. They were focused on their own goals: two more in “the greatest aggregation of Academic Cranks the world has known,” as The Canadian Theosophist described Thayer’s Fortean Society.
Cornelius O’Connor was the older of the two, born 17 February 1874 in Troy, New York to Daniel and Mary O’Connor, both Irish immigrants. In 1880, for some reason, the family was in Sacramento, California. Daniel was a laborer, and Cornelius had a younger sister, named Margaret, although later she would be known as Mary. By 1900, the family was back in New York, and Daniel had died. Cornelius, then 26, worked as a telegraph operator. Ten years later, Cornelius was no longer living with the Two Marys. He was in Manhattan, married to Stella Jane—daughter of Scot and Irish immigrants—and working as a stock broker. Stella Jane had been born in Canada, and only moved to the United States in 1902. Cornelius went off to war in 1917.
Sometime thereafter he and Stella moved to San Jose, California—I cannot find them in the 1920 census, but they show up in a 1926 city directory. Stella died in 1929. By the time of the next census, Cornelius was in San Diego, living with his mother and sister. His mother passed, and some time after 1935, Cornelius and his sister Mary moved north, to Burlingame, California, a suburb of San Francisco. Neither worked, living on Cornelius’s retirement savings. He died in 1955 and was buried next to Stella Jane in Glendale, California.
Thomas Graydon and Cornelius O’Connor were briefly affiliated with the Fortean Society during the mid-1940s, Graydon more than O’Connor. Thayer linked them, as both wanted to reform science, though they had very different ideas about what the new physical laws would look like—and were never really interested in what Fort had to say, or even what Thayer had to say about Fort. They were focused on their own goals: two more in “the greatest aggregation of Academic Cranks the world has known,” as The Canadian Theosophist described Thayer’s Fortean Society.
Cornelius O’Connor was the older of the two, born 17 February 1874 in Troy, New York to Daniel and Mary O’Connor, both Irish immigrants. In 1880, for some reason, the family was in Sacramento, California. Daniel was a laborer, and Cornelius had a younger sister, named Margaret, although later she would be known as Mary. By 1900, the family was back in New York, and Daniel had died. Cornelius, then 26, worked as a telegraph operator. Ten years later, Cornelius was no longer living with the Two Marys. He was in Manhattan, married to Stella Jane—daughter of Scot and Irish immigrants—and working as a stock broker. Stella Jane had been born in Canada, and only moved to the United States in 1902. Cornelius went off to war in 1917.
Sometime thereafter he and Stella moved to San Jose, California—I cannot find them in the 1920 census, but they show up in a 1926 city directory. Stella died in 1929. By the time of the next census, Cornelius was in San Diego, living with his mother and sister. His mother passed, and some time after 1935, Cornelius and his sister Mary moved north, to Burlingame, California, a suburb of San Francisco. Neither worked, living on Cornelius’s retirement savings. He died in 1955 and was buried next to Stella Jane in Glendale, California.
Thomas H. Graydon Graydon lived his life much more out loud than Cornelius. He was born 30 March 1881 in Cincinnati to Ann and Thomas Graydon. His father, too, had immigrated from Ireland and worked as a doctor; he also made patent medicines. Graydon attended Harvard University, where he was an award-winning fullback—this at a time when football was extraordinarily dangerous: people died playing the sport. Wikipedia has Graydon performing in a charity event with other Harvard athletes at the Barnum & Bailey Circus, wearing pink tights in 1902. The next year Graydon’s love-life made the newspapers, as he eloped with the daughter of a San Francisco millionaire. Helen Whitney was 19 at the time of the marriage, and perhaps quite a bit younger when first engaged. They settled in Cincinnati, then divorced a few years later, Helen returning to California.
Graydon, too, served during World War I. Upon his return he married twice, the second time in 1929, the year that Stella Jane died. He eventually settled in New York, and went into real estate. The 1940 census captures him and his wife Marion retired in Hempstead, on Long Island. The two died in a car crash 14 October 1949. They had moved to Santa Monica, California—incidentally, home of the Fortean Frederick G. Hehr—and were on their way to Cincinnati, then New York. They hit the back of a bus. Word of the deaths was carried over the Associated Press newswires. A few reports noted that Graydon was the author of several books on scientific subjects.
O’Connor and Graydon both had heterodox scientific ideas that they mulled over for years, although their concepts were very different. O’Connor had been at work on his ideas since at least 1927, when he published two articles in Open Court, a magazine devoted to the relationship between science and religion—and which had hosted papers by other Forteans: Roy Petran Lingle, Maximillian Rudwin, and Frederick S. Hammett. “A New Cosmic Hypothesis” was published in issue 6; “Universalism” was published in issue ten. The latter is the more general take on O’Connor’s project.
Like many other Forteans, O’Connor was inspired by Theosophy and its off-shoots. In “Universalism,” he looked for the element essential to all religions, providing a king’s tour of comparative religion, and then suggesting that history has a progressive motor: the world is getting better. But it does so unevenly, following a spiral—wars and strife are temporary lapses, the forgetting that the universe is good—and they are soon overcome. O’Connor wanted the world united by the idea that the infinite at the heart of the cosmos was positive, and that are thought could understand its operations. “A New Cosmic Hypothesis” was proof of this more general point. O’Connor showed that the planetary distances from the sun could be expressed in musical terms, as could their orbital velocities. He further noted that these proportions were similar to those discovered about atomic measures. There was ancient wisdom here: he invoked Pythagoras and Kepler, who, he said, had similar thoughts. There was modern wisdom, too: the pattern suggested to O’Connor that the solar system was organized by electro-magnetic forces, not gravity. And there was wisdom yet to come: his discoveries gave impetus to further investigation of planets that existed between the sun and Mercury—a bit of Theosophical speculation that would later be taken up by the Fortean A . L. Joquel.
The idea stayed with O’Connor, and in 1939 he published a very similar paper in The Theosophical Forum, to some acclaim. Apparently, he sent something similar to Tiffany Thayer and the Fortean Society—whether by request or on speculation is unknown. Thayer did refer to him as an MFS—Member of the Fortean Society—but he just as easily could have asked O’Connor to join after O’Connor sent him the manuscript as O’Connor could have already been a member when sending in the manuscript. At any rate, O’Connor’s first mention in Doubt comes with notice that Thayer has received the paper—although he does not describe it. That is also the first mention in Doubt of Thomas H. Graydon. Thayer shipped O’Connor’s manuscript to Graydon for comment—a habit of his, having one Fortean specialist review the work of another.
Graydon had been working on his unorthodox science since at least the mid-1930s. His first book, New Laws for Natural Phenomena was published in 1938. His second, Relativity's Failure to Explain the Gravitational Fallacy, appeared in 1947, developing his ideas. While O’Connor wanted to use existing science to prove the wisdom of ancients and the religious harmony of nature, Graydon wanted to re-derive all of science using basic mathematical techniques. In true Fortean spirit, he thought the complex mathematics of modern physics was just obfuscation for the new priests to keep their power and position. So he based his astronomy on the notion that gravity is not a pulling toward something, but a pushing away. (Objects fall because there is insufficient pushing-away force.) He created his own periodic table of the elements. At least some other Forteans relished his attack: N. Meade Layne, in his Round Robin (no. 7, August 1945) wrote:
MYSTERIES OF THE ALTITUDES
Unofficial American altitude record, new 44,940 feet. Set by a P-38 Lightning Plane, July 1945. World record is 56,046 feet, set by an Italian Caproni in 1938. There are sound and sane reasons for taking an interest in such feats, and others that are maybe only half sane; one of the latter is a suspicion that somebody, some day, may find something, maybe land on something overhead ---
And unless the newspapers are lying with unusual consistency, the Germans had a pleasant little scheme well worked out on paper, for fortresses hanging in the ether, 400-500 miles up. That seems to mean, a gravity shield, or counteraction or else something wrong with gravitational formulae. Well, a brick weighs nothing at the earth's center, then develops a maximum weight, then gets lighter the higher it goes. "Far out in space," says Professor N.H.B., "its weight becomes negligible again." We want to know how far.
Things that have fallen from the sky - "pollen" that wasn't pollen, black rain, black snow, "pumice," "slag", red rain, mud-rain, blood-like rain, hailstones that are red, blue or gray; thick, viscous, red, putrid matter; stuff like soft soap and like fungi, dry fish, stuff like beef, dried frog spawn (maybe), jelly-fish, frogs, worms, black leaf-like masses, white fibrous stuff, combustible yellow stuff, "stinking matter" like butter or grease, hail with turpentine, hail with nitric acid, ashes, grain of unknown variety, burning sulphur, limestone, sandstone, salt water, salt crystals; stuff like cinders, coke or charcoal; bituminous matter (sometimes burning), fossils in meteorites, toads, live fish, dead fish, alabaster, turtles, snails, mussels, snakes, ants the size of wasps, beetles, larvae, "manufactured" stone axes (wedges), stones in ice, frogs in ice, huge masses of ice 20 feet in circumference, metallic objects or fragments, masses of leaves, germinating seeds - -
We collected most of that from Charles Fort, of course (The Book of the Damned is a must book for grown-ups). But his super-Sargasso sea and floating fields of ice fit in with what we have been talking about. Our suspicion is, that anything that gets a few hundred miles up (maybe closer) may stay there. Double the distance between two objects (say the text books) and the attraction is reduced to a quarter, and three times the distance reduces it to a ninth - or, how high does the brick go before it begins to float?
For good measure and while we think of it, and if you're under the hypnosis of astronomical mathematics, turn through Thomas Graydon's New Laws for Natural Phenomena (Christopher Publishing House, Boston). Incidentally, we're science-worshippers ourselves, but that means we're deeply suspicious of scientists - that is, of orthodox acceptances, dogmatism and credulities plastered with plausibilities. But there are a few who, like Huxley, are "too sceptical to disbelieve anything", and we genuflect when we think about them.
Graydon’s report back to Thayer was long-winded, but made one point, over and over again, that he respected O’Connor, and suspected that they shared a similar aim, but that their methods were so divergent he felt he could not adequately comment. Thayer ran the letter in Doubt 11 (Winter 1944), and one gets the sense he was simply trying to fill space. If O’Connor responded, Thayer never mentioned it. But he did mention O’Connor twice more.
None of the subsequent mentions, however, add much to an understanding of O’Connor or his Forteanism. The first noted that the New York Herald Tribune science writer John J O’Neill turned his 3 September 1944 column over to O’Connor. (Note: I have not seen the column, and it may shed light on what O’Connor presented to Thayer: whether his ideas had developed, or he was still flogging the same points.) Thayer was non-plussed: “Either John J. failed to serve that O’Connor is unconnected with any institution of learning or this colleague of Dorothy Thompson et al is stealing Fortean thunder. We’re inclined to think it was a slip which the Hertriber won’t repeat. We’ll bet he got tart notes from Shapley and Olivier—and a real bawling out from Science Service.”
O’Neil, he thought, was a more polished, more upper class version of the science writer (“The Republican Kaempffert,’ as he put it, referring to the science writer Walter Kaempffert), and the Herald Tribune, though it once had employed Fortean founder Burton Rascoe, was stodgy and mired in orthodoxy: on matters of science it bent to the whims of Harvard’s Harlow Shapley and Penn’s Charles P. Olivier, both astronomers; on matters of politics, it followed Dorothy Thompson, who was a keen critic of Nazi Germany and supported the war.
The second mention of O’Connor is a bit more instructive. Thayer had come across another example of fringe astronomy, this one in the Liverpool Echo, and he called out to O’Connor and Graydon to comment. (He may also have sent a personal request.) But, again, if O’Connor bothered to respond, Thayer never printed it. Likely, by this point—Doubt 16, 1946—O’Connor had already left the Fortean Society behind. If he could ever be said to have joined with it in any more than a formalistic way. He shared with Fort a monistic view of the universe, but that was about all their similarities. O’Connor was in pursuit of a more religious vision—no era of the hyphen for him.
Graydon had more interaction with the Society, enough to show that he was engaged with Thayer’s project, even if only incidentally. Thayer published Graydon’s proposed table of contents in Doubt 12 (summer 1945). And, in the late 1940s, when Thayer—in one of his fitful moments of organization, before he repudiated everything himself—was flirting with the idea of a Fortean University, he named one of the subjects after Graydon: “the subject transcends simple chemistry, embracing areas of mathematics, physics, etc., etc., but because the author is the inventor of the graydon periodic table for the positions of the chemical elements (as printed in Doubt #12), Graydon is the FU equivalent of ‘chemistry.’” He wanted Graydon to be chair of the subject and the text to be his book New Laws.
Whether because he was reading Doubt—which is likely!—or that Thayer made the offer in correspondence as well—also likely!—Graydon himself learned of the Fortean Society’s approbation. Ever the contrarian, though, Graydon could not accede to such a position: he was dissolving the very notion of chemistry, how could he be its exemplar, even in Fortean terms? He wrote to Thayer, “When I had chemistry at Harvard University under Prof. [Charles Loring] Jackson, I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. That’s why I thought I would look into it later on in life.” Thayer was gracious in acknowledging he’d been out-Forted, but still wanted Graydon on the team: “After MFS Graydon decides just what his course really covers, we hope we can persuade him to teach it.”
The last mention of Graydon came in Doubt 28, April 1950, the lag already indicating that Graydon had drifted from the Society, like so many other Forteans of the forties. Thayer’s obituary indicated some fundamental differences—including those that divided the Society at large. “With deep regret we report the death of MFS Thomas H. Graydon, author of New Laws for Natural Phenomena. No details beyond the bare announcement had reached us at press time. The quality of Graydon’s Forteanism, as evinced in his books and pamphlets, has been the subject of some discussion. Our hope, now lost, had been that in revised editions, the influence of Charles Fort would be felt in Graydon’s expression of this theories. His challenge to Newton and Einstein still stands, however, a memorial to an independent thinker.”
It’s not clear where his “discussion” over the “quality” of Graydon’s Forteanism took place. There was something like it later in that issue, and perhaps that is what Thayer was thinking of. The Fortean Alexander Grant wanted a plenary ruling on the different subjects—Crehore’s theories, which formed the basis of Fortean atomic physics (the Crehores will be considered at a later date)—seemed inconsistent with Graydon’s theories. So, which was it, Grant wanted to know. Thayer replied:
“Indeed there would be ‘fundamental’ contradictions galore in teaching these subjects as most subjects are taught in more orthodox universities. F U does not teach, it studies. Each Chair stands on its own four (or more or less) figurative legs, merely as a field for investigation and further development. No subject is taught as true by F U. Each is advanced as a question profitable to explore. Thus no contradiction exists.”
But one could already see Thayer turning against Graydon from the very beginning. In the same issue of Doubt that had Graydon’s (extensive) remarks on O’Connor, Thayer gushed over a new enthusiasm: the theories of George F. Gillette and his Rational Non-Mystical Cosmos. “This is the first book we have discovered since the restoration of Charles Fort all in one volume, that the Society has wished to reissue. Because THIS is the theory posterity must attack if human mentality is to progress beyond it. Not Einstein. Not Newton. Not Planck. The greatest challenger of the Fortean principle of temporary acceptance--was Gillette. For his ‘cosmic’ theory, ‘a Unitary conception of all Natural Phenomena,’ embraces, envelops and includes Orthodoxy, plus Babbit, Ouspensky, Crehore, Drayson, Graydon, Blavatsky and Page. We are unaware of any cosmogony, from Pythagorous to Voliva, which Gilette’s theory cannot assimilate. In fine, we see no reason why any of them could object to being gobbled up by anything so capacious. There is room for all--and only a few simple readjustments of focus are necessary to bring all the welter of private opinions into general accord--with Gillette.
“The remunerative researches which keep so many gainfully employed need NOT be abandoned. On the contrary, all may be continued, and a raft of new ones added. Here is the book to put a stop to World Fraud III, by using up all the steel they can make and all the mental energy the race can generate. Artists are wanted to embellish the endless charts and graphs--to glorify new loves and animosities: musicians to compose new scores for the ‘spheres.’ Here is an epoch--tailor-made--waiting to be exploited. One could write about the possibilities from now on--but, please do not misunderstand.
“Our enthusiasm for Gillette’s theory is not based upon absolute approval, but upon the challenging circumstance, unique in our experience, that we can find no flaws in it--except some minor ones regarding the terms of the author’s expression, which, doubtless, he could rectify if he were still alive.
“Nobody is going to republish this adversary for us. We must do it ourselves. We are exploring the possibilities, costs, etc., etc., with a view toward doing that as soon as the alleged paper shortage will permit. We shall have to call upon subscribers to underwrite the first complete edition.”
Like O’Connor, Graydon was only affiliated with the Fortean Society because it welcomed the consideration of heterodox ideas. Neither seems to have been influenced by Fort—indeed, they were both great systematizers, not interested in anomalies at all, nor with temporary acceptance. Graydon seems to have had a muted effect on other Forteans, notably N. Meade Layne. But O’Connor’s ideas seem to have stayed within the Theosophical tradition. Neither had a lasting, or large, influence, on Forteanism as it developed from the 1940s into the 1950s. Indeed, as with other Forteans from the era, they seemed to turn away from the Society. Not, apparently, for reasons of lifestyle, as both were retired at the time they became engaged with the Fortean Society, but simply because their ideas fit only poorly with those of Fort and the Forteans.
Graydon, too, served during World War I. Upon his return he married twice, the second time in 1929, the year that Stella Jane died. He eventually settled in New York, and went into real estate. The 1940 census captures him and his wife Marion retired in Hempstead, on Long Island. The two died in a car crash 14 October 1949. They had moved to Santa Monica, California—incidentally, home of the Fortean Frederick G. Hehr—and were on their way to Cincinnati, then New York. They hit the back of a bus. Word of the deaths was carried over the Associated Press newswires. A few reports noted that Graydon was the author of several books on scientific subjects.
O’Connor and Graydon both had heterodox scientific ideas that they mulled over for years, although their concepts were very different. O’Connor had been at work on his ideas since at least 1927, when he published two articles in Open Court, a magazine devoted to the relationship between science and religion—and which had hosted papers by other Forteans: Roy Petran Lingle, Maximillian Rudwin, and Frederick S. Hammett. “A New Cosmic Hypothesis” was published in issue 6; “Universalism” was published in issue ten. The latter is the more general take on O’Connor’s project.
Like many other Forteans, O’Connor was inspired by Theosophy and its off-shoots. In “Universalism,” he looked for the element essential to all religions, providing a king’s tour of comparative religion, and then suggesting that history has a progressive motor: the world is getting better. But it does so unevenly, following a spiral—wars and strife are temporary lapses, the forgetting that the universe is good—and they are soon overcome. O’Connor wanted the world united by the idea that the infinite at the heart of the cosmos was positive, and that are thought could understand its operations. “A New Cosmic Hypothesis” was proof of this more general point. O’Connor showed that the planetary distances from the sun could be expressed in musical terms, as could their orbital velocities. He further noted that these proportions were similar to those discovered about atomic measures. There was ancient wisdom here: he invoked Pythagoras and Kepler, who, he said, had similar thoughts. There was modern wisdom, too: the pattern suggested to O’Connor that the solar system was organized by electro-magnetic forces, not gravity. And there was wisdom yet to come: his discoveries gave impetus to further investigation of planets that existed between the sun and Mercury—a bit of Theosophical speculation that would later be taken up by the Fortean A . L. Joquel.
The idea stayed with O’Connor, and in 1939 he published a very similar paper in The Theosophical Forum, to some acclaim. Apparently, he sent something similar to Tiffany Thayer and the Fortean Society—whether by request or on speculation is unknown. Thayer did refer to him as an MFS—Member of the Fortean Society—but he just as easily could have asked O’Connor to join after O’Connor sent him the manuscript as O’Connor could have already been a member when sending in the manuscript. At any rate, O’Connor’s first mention in Doubt comes with notice that Thayer has received the paper—although he does not describe it. That is also the first mention in Doubt of Thomas H. Graydon. Thayer shipped O’Connor’s manuscript to Graydon for comment—a habit of his, having one Fortean specialist review the work of another.
Graydon had been working on his unorthodox science since at least the mid-1930s. His first book, New Laws for Natural Phenomena was published in 1938. His second, Relativity's Failure to Explain the Gravitational Fallacy, appeared in 1947, developing his ideas. While O’Connor wanted to use existing science to prove the wisdom of ancients and the religious harmony of nature, Graydon wanted to re-derive all of science using basic mathematical techniques. In true Fortean spirit, he thought the complex mathematics of modern physics was just obfuscation for the new priests to keep their power and position. So he based his astronomy on the notion that gravity is not a pulling toward something, but a pushing away. (Objects fall because there is insufficient pushing-away force.) He created his own periodic table of the elements. At least some other Forteans relished his attack: N. Meade Layne, in his Round Robin (no. 7, August 1945) wrote:
MYSTERIES OF THE ALTITUDES
Unofficial American altitude record, new 44,940 feet. Set by a P-38 Lightning Plane, July 1945. World record is 56,046 feet, set by an Italian Caproni in 1938. There are sound and sane reasons for taking an interest in such feats, and others that are maybe only half sane; one of the latter is a suspicion that somebody, some day, may find something, maybe land on something overhead ---
And unless the newspapers are lying with unusual consistency, the Germans had a pleasant little scheme well worked out on paper, for fortresses hanging in the ether, 400-500 miles up. That seems to mean, a gravity shield, or counteraction or else something wrong with gravitational formulae. Well, a brick weighs nothing at the earth's center, then develops a maximum weight, then gets lighter the higher it goes. "Far out in space," says Professor N.H.B., "its weight becomes negligible again." We want to know how far.
Things that have fallen from the sky - "pollen" that wasn't pollen, black rain, black snow, "pumice," "slag", red rain, mud-rain, blood-like rain, hailstones that are red, blue or gray; thick, viscous, red, putrid matter; stuff like soft soap and like fungi, dry fish, stuff like beef, dried frog spawn (maybe), jelly-fish, frogs, worms, black leaf-like masses, white fibrous stuff, combustible yellow stuff, "stinking matter" like butter or grease, hail with turpentine, hail with nitric acid, ashes, grain of unknown variety, burning sulphur, limestone, sandstone, salt water, salt crystals; stuff like cinders, coke or charcoal; bituminous matter (sometimes burning), fossils in meteorites, toads, live fish, dead fish, alabaster, turtles, snails, mussels, snakes, ants the size of wasps, beetles, larvae, "manufactured" stone axes (wedges), stones in ice, frogs in ice, huge masses of ice 20 feet in circumference, metallic objects or fragments, masses of leaves, germinating seeds - -
We collected most of that from Charles Fort, of course (The Book of the Damned is a must book for grown-ups). But his super-Sargasso sea and floating fields of ice fit in with what we have been talking about. Our suspicion is, that anything that gets a few hundred miles up (maybe closer) may stay there. Double the distance between two objects (say the text books) and the attraction is reduced to a quarter, and three times the distance reduces it to a ninth - or, how high does the brick go before it begins to float?
For good measure and while we think of it, and if you're under the hypnosis of astronomical mathematics, turn through Thomas Graydon's New Laws for Natural Phenomena (Christopher Publishing House, Boston). Incidentally, we're science-worshippers ourselves, but that means we're deeply suspicious of scientists - that is, of orthodox acceptances, dogmatism and credulities plastered with plausibilities. But there are a few who, like Huxley, are "too sceptical to disbelieve anything", and we genuflect when we think about them.
Graydon’s report back to Thayer was long-winded, but made one point, over and over again, that he respected O’Connor, and suspected that they shared a similar aim, but that their methods were so divergent he felt he could not adequately comment. Thayer ran the letter in Doubt 11 (Winter 1944), and one gets the sense he was simply trying to fill space. If O’Connor responded, Thayer never mentioned it. But he did mention O’Connor twice more.
None of the subsequent mentions, however, add much to an understanding of O’Connor or his Forteanism. The first noted that the New York Herald Tribune science writer John J O’Neill turned his 3 September 1944 column over to O’Connor. (Note: I have not seen the column, and it may shed light on what O’Connor presented to Thayer: whether his ideas had developed, or he was still flogging the same points.) Thayer was non-plussed: “Either John J. failed to serve that O’Connor is unconnected with any institution of learning or this colleague of Dorothy Thompson et al is stealing Fortean thunder. We’re inclined to think it was a slip which the Hertriber won’t repeat. We’ll bet he got tart notes from Shapley and Olivier—and a real bawling out from Science Service.”
O’Neil, he thought, was a more polished, more upper class version of the science writer (“The Republican Kaempffert,’ as he put it, referring to the science writer Walter Kaempffert), and the Herald Tribune, though it once had employed Fortean founder Burton Rascoe, was stodgy and mired in orthodoxy: on matters of science it bent to the whims of Harvard’s Harlow Shapley and Penn’s Charles P. Olivier, both astronomers; on matters of politics, it followed Dorothy Thompson, who was a keen critic of Nazi Germany and supported the war.
The second mention of O’Connor is a bit more instructive. Thayer had come across another example of fringe astronomy, this one in the Liverpool Echo, and he called out to O’Connor and Graydon to comment. (He may also have sent a personal request.) But, again, if O’Connor bothered to respond, Thayer never printed it. Likely, by this point—Doubt 16, 1946—O’Connor had already left the Fortean Society behind. If he could ever be said to have joined with it in any more than a formalistic way. He shared with Fort a monistic view of the universe, but that was about all their similarities. O’Connor was in pursuit of a more religious vision—no era of the hyphen for him.
Graydon had more interaction with the Society, enough to show that he was engaged with Thayer’s project, even if only incidentally. Thayer published Graydon’s proposed table of contents in Doubt 12 (summer 1945). And, in the late 1940s, when Thayer—in one of his fitful moments of organization, before he repudiated everything himself—was flirting with the idea of a Fortean University, he named one of the subjects after Graydon: “the subject transcends simple chemistry, embracing areas of mathematics, physics, etc., etc., but because the author is the inventor of the graydon periodic table for the positions of the chemical elements (as printed in Doubt #12), Graydon is the FU equivalent of ‘chemistry.’” He wanted Graydon to be chair of the subject and the text to be his book New Laws.
Whether because he was reading Doubt—which is likely!—or that Thayer made the offer in correspondence as well—also likely!—Graydon himself learned of the Fortean Society’s approbation. Ever the contrarian, though, Graydon could not accede to such a position: he was dissolving the very notion of chemistry, how could he be its exemplar, even in Fortean terms? He wrote to Thayer, “When I had chemistry at Harvard University under Prof. [Charles Loring] Jackson, I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. That’s why I thought I would look into it later on in life.” Thayer was gracious in acknowledging he’d been out-Forted, but still wanted Graydon on the team: “After MFS Graydon decides just what his course really covers, we hope we can persuade him to teach it.”
The last mention of Graydon came in Doubt 28, April 1950, the lag already indicating that Graydon had drifted from the Society, like so many other Forteans of the forties. Thayer’s obituary indicated some fundamental differences—including those that divided the Society at large. “With deep regret we report the death of MFS Thomas H. Graydon, author of New Laws for Natural Phenomena. No details beyond the bare announcement had reached us at press time. The quality of Graydon’s Forteanism, as evinced in his books and pamphlets, has been the subject of some discussion. Our hope, now lost, had been that in revised editions, the influence of Charles Fort would be felt in Graydon’s expression of this theories. His challenge to Newton and Einstein still stands, however, a memorial to an independent thinker.”
It’s not clear where his “discussion” over the “quality” of Graydon’s Forteanism took place. There was something like it later in that issue, and perhaps that is what Thayer was thinking of. The Fortean Alexander Grant wanted a plenary ruling on the different subjects—Crehore’s theories, which formed the basis of Fortean atomic physics (the Crehores will be considered at a later date)—seemed inconsistent with Graydon’s theories. So, which was it, Grant wanted to know. Thayer replied:
“Indeed there would be ‘fundamental’ contradictions galore in teaching these subjects as most subjects are taught in more orthodox universities. F U does not teach, it studies. Each Chair stands on its own four (or more or less) figurative legs, merely as a field for investigation and further development. No subject is taught as true by F U. Each is advanced as a question profitable to explore. Thus no contradiction exists.”
But one could already see Thayer turning against Graydon from the very beginning. In the same issue of Doubt that had Graydon’s (extensive) remarks on O’Connor, Thayer gushed over a new enthusiasm: the theories of George F. Gillette and his Rational Non-Mystical Cosmos. “This is the first book we have discovered since the restoration of Charles Fort all in one volume, that the Society has wished to reissue. Because THIS is the theory posterity must attack if human mentality is to progress beyond it. Not Einstein. Not Newton. Not Planck. The greatest challenger of the Fortean principle of temporary acceptance--was Gillette. For his ‘cosmic’ theory, ‘a Unitary conception of all Natural Phenomena,’ embraces, envelops and includes Orthodoxy, plus Babbit, Ouspensky, Crehore, Drayson, Graydon, Blavatsky and Page. We are unaware of any cosmogony, from Pythagorous to Voliva, which Gilette’s theory cannot assimilate. In fine, we see no reason why any of them could object to being gobbled up by anything so capacious. There is room for all--and only a few simple readjustments of focus are necessary to bring all the welter of private opinions into general accord--with Gillette.
“The remunerative researches which keep so many gainfully employed need NOT be abandoned. On the contrary, all may be continued, and a raft of new ones added. Here is the book to put a stop to World Fraud III, by using up all the steel they can make and all the mental energy the race can generate. Artists are wanted to embellish the endless charts and graphs--to glorify new loves and animosities: musicians to compose new scores for the ‘spheres.’ Here is an epoch--tailor-made--waiting to be exploited. One could write about the possibilities from now on--but, please do not misunderstand.
“Our enthusiasm for Gillette’s theory is not based upon absolute approval, but upon the challenging circumstance, unique in our experience, that we can find no flaws in it--except some minor ones regarding the terms of the author’s expression, which, doubtless, he could rectify if he were still alive.
“Nobody is going to republish this adversary for us. We must do it ourselves. We are exploring the possibilities, costs, etc., etc., with a view toward doing that as soon as the alleged paper shortage will permit. We shall have to call upon subscribers to underwrite the first complete edition.”
Like O’Connor, Graydon was only affiliated with the Fortean Society because it welcomed the consideration of heterodox ideas. Neither seems to have been influenced by Fort—indeed, they were both great systematizers, not interested in anomalies at all, nor with temporary acceptance. Graydon seems to have had a muted effect on other Forteans, notably N. Meade Layne. But O’Connor’s ideas seem to have stayed within the Theosophical tradition. Neither had a lasting, or large, influence, on Forteanism as it developed from the 1940s into the 1950s. Indeed, as with other Forteans from the era, they seemed to turn away from the Society. Not, apparently, for reasons of lifestyle, as both were retired at the time they became engaged with the Fortean Society, but simply because their ideas fit only poorly with those of Fort and the Forteans.
