Brief notes on barely-mentioned Forteans.
Which isn’t meant to denigrate these people at all; they had minor connections with the Fortean community—but their own full lives.
I can find very little early information on Jeanne Bagby, and none on Jack. The names are surprisingly common. She may have been born in New York in1927 as Jeanne Smart, and he may have really been named James, and associated with the US Navy. They may have married in the mid-1950s; she may have subsequently remarried twice, first taking the name Lippincott, later Jelliffe.
According to historian Amy Swerdlow, Jeanne, at least, was living in New Orleans in the mid-1950s, where she was reconstructing herself as a Beat. She was alternately lonely and ecstatic until, through intense self-therapy, she made a breakthrough. Towards the end of the decade, at least, she was involved with Beat poetry, contributing to the Memphis small magazine “River” and being interviewed by Charles Ossman for “The Sullen Art.” (There is a reel-to-reel tape of her at the University of Toledo, which may shed some light on her background.)
Which isn’t meant to denigrate these people at all; they had minor connections with the Fortean community—but their own full lives.
I can find very little early information on Jeanne Bagby, and none on Jack. The names are surprisingly common. She may have been born in New York in1927 as Jeanne Smart, and he may have really been named James, and associated with the US Navy. They may have married in the mid-1950s; she may have subsequently remarried twice, first taking the name Lippincott, later Jelliffe.
According to historian Amy Swerdlow, Jeanne, at least, was living in New Orleans in the mid-1950s, where she was reconstructing herself as a Beat. She was alternately lonely and ecstatic until, through intense self-therapy, she made a breakthrough. Towards the end of the decade, at least, she was involved with Beat poetry, contributing to the Memphis small magazine “River” and being interviewed by Charles Ossman for “The Sullen Art.” (There is a reel-to-reel tape of her at the University of Toledo, which may shed some light on her background.)
By the early 1960s, Bagby, a mother of three young children was in the Washington, D.C., area. She was a member of the anti-nuclear bomb group SANE and contributed to the radical-pacifist publication “Liberation.” In May 1959, she analyzed the Beat movement for “Liberation” and in 1961 a poem that eulogized the earth. She picketed the White House, though for what, exactly, I am not sure. In time, Bagby became frustrated with the leadership of SANE, which went on an anti-communist purge of its leadership and, she thought—along with others—ignored women’s perspectives, such as concern over fall-out working its way into the milk supply. (She was happy, though, later, when SANE promoted Dr. Spock’s anti-nuclear views.) In 1961, she joined with several other women from the group to form the “Women’s Strike for Peace.” Apparently, she was still occasionally frustrated by the new group, which tended to be hierarchical and staffed by more traditional women. It is this association with the WSP for which she is best remembered.
Just as I do not know what happened to the Bagbys before this period, I also do no know what happened to them after the founding of WSP. It may be that she died in Arizona in 1998. In fact, I am not even sure she was a member of the Fortean Society; her husband was, and she seemed to have Fortean inclinations.
Apparently, though, in the late 1950s, Jeanne started producing her own ‘zine “Span,” which ran for at least six issues. There are some examples of the ‘zine—perhaps the whole run, perhaps something less—in the Judson Crews papers at the University of Texas. (Crews was in Big Sur with George Leite and Henry Miller when Fort was fashionable.) I have not seen these.
Tiffany Thayer did, though, at least one, and it was this ‘zine that brought the Bagbys to the attention of the Fortean membership at large. In Doubt 58 (October 1958), Thayer mentioned “Span” in a list of recommended readings, writing that it was ”a personal self-expression of the wife of a Fortean who is also a bookman. They are Jack and Jean Bagby, NYC [sic]. . . Very Fortean. Ask for a copy.” Clearly, Jack was a Member of the Fortean Society, though I do not know for how long.
Brief as this connection was, it is still informative, showing how the various forms of dissent cultivated and curated by Thayer from the 1940s into the 1950s were evolving into the more memorialized protests of the 1960s. There seems to be scraps of information that can be studied to flesh out this transformation, but as these changes go beyond the period in which I am most interested, I have yet to really investigate them.
********************************
Much more can be said about George Sassoon. Born in London, 1936, the only child of poet Siegfried Sassoon and Hester Gatty, George grew up to be something of a polymathic eccentric. His childhood was largely spent on the Scottish island Mull, with his mother. From an early age, he showed a facility for engineering work, and won a science scholarship to King’s College, Cambridge. After graduation, he went to work for a manufacturer of scientific instruments. He also proved adept at languages (he would learn Klingon) and musical instruments.
Married four times, he seems to have spent a large part of his adult life on his father’s former estate, which he inherited in 1967. he had a developed interest in extraterrestrial life, and wrote about his alien theories in the late 1970s. He died 8 March 2006 from a slow moving cancer.
One cane see ways to slot Sassoon into certain Fortean boxes: he had an engineer’s mind, was acute at picking out patterns, and these, together, led him sometimes to impractical solutions. I have not read his books on alien life, though one suspects that they belong to just this species of elegant reasoning in the service of off-center premises, but an obituary of him noted that his solution to the Gibraltar problem was to offer Spain a bit of Britain, which could then become a center of Bullfighting: just in its way, and balanced, it was also remarkably naive.
But all that is speculation. The only true connection I have between him and Forteanism is one brief contribution to “Doubt” and one even briefer mention of him in a letter from Tiffany Thayer to Eric Frank Russell. These both come from 1957, when he was in Cambridge. In the letter, dated 19 January, Thayer wanted to know if George Sassoon had paid his dues. Apparently, Sassoon had sent a question to Thayer, but Thayer planned only to respond if he was square.
There were no further mentions of Sassoon in the correspondence, but it seems most likely the question had to with “irradiation of the brain with microwaves.” That was Thayer’s later phrasing (from Doubt 54). In Doubt 53, the question read, “A British member asks about American attempts to develop mental powers by irradiation of the brain with microwaves. What can you tell us?” Thayer himself suggested as possibly pertinent—though he had not read it—Melvin Powers’s “Mental Powers through Sleep Suggestion.” The next issue, Doubt 54, Thayer excerpted a letter from a Mexican correspondent to Wing Anderson, which he thought bore upon the problem: it had to do with Langston Day’s “New Worlds Beyond the Atom.” which dealt with, according to the correspondent, non-radioactive radiation(?) that could be photographed using special cameras in water and blood samples.
This bit of balderdash came immediately after Sassoon contributed an answer to a very different question that had been moving through Fortean circles for a while. Back in Doubt 51 (January 1956), Thayer had run a letter from a member, received some eighteen months earlier, about a story he could not quite remember. It dealt with two women walking through the gardens at Versailles who found themselves suddenly transported back to 1789. Thayer thought of the story “Time-Travel Happens!,” which ran in “Unknown” December 1939 and dealt with Anne Moberly and Eleanor Jourdain. Later, another member also remembered a book the two women had written called “An Adventure.”
“Doubt 54” had other versions of the story. There was “The Ghosts of Versailles,” which had recently been reviewed in the secularist “The Freethinker.” And then Sassoon sent a book seemingly inspired by “An Adventure”: Edith Olivier’s 1938 “Without Knowing Mr. Walkley.”
It could be that Sassoon brought Forteanism into his extraterrestrial research, but I have not seen those books, and they are so distant in time from the period that interests me, I probably will not.
**************************
The third of this triumvirate is also poorly known by me. His name was Wesley O. Morris. I believe that he was born Wesley Orton Morris, 23 October 1907 and married Mahala Bostick in the mid-1950s. She was a teacher in the Brevard County, Florida, schools from 1954 to 1974. He was a principal there, at least from 1958 to 1960, when he was removed by the Board of Trustees. Wesley died in 1969—decades before Mahala, who passed in 2007, aged 97.
Morris was a member of the Fortean Society at least in 1956, the summer of which is when he was mentioned in “Doubt,” with the honorific MFS. He wrote to Thayer calling attention to a supplementary reader that was used in the schools’s science classes—which mentioned Fort, without completely dismissing him. Thayer printed what was probably an excerpt from a letter in Doubt 53 (February 1957):
“‘I thought you would be interested in this direct quotation from a supplementary science reader for 5th and 6th grade to use in the schools of Florida. The book is The Real Book about Space Travel, by Hal Goodwin, published by Garden City Books, 1952. The following quotation is from pages 172, 173, 174.
“‘A Remarkable Man, Charles Fort, spent his life digging up such stories—even if we throw out 99% of Fort’s facts—the remaining 1% can’t be put aside.
“‘Fort wrote four books which have been put into one volume called The Books of Charles Fort. No one who wants to think for himself and to make up his own mind--can study the subject fully without reading Fort.’”
Thayer supposedly wrote Morris back, congratulating him on the fine job he was doing educating the students of Florida. (Hal Goodwin, by the way, was a science fiction author.) I have not seen any correspondence, only what Thayer reported in “Doubt.” Morris then replied, “We try to teach them the scientific method as distinguished from the method of scientists.” Tickled, Thayer repeated the witticism in “Doubt,” with the caption, “That’s a Fortean epigram of ever we read one.”
As far a I know, that was the last connection between Morris and the Fortean Society. I do not know anything else about any other possible Fortean activities on his part.
Just as I do not know what happened to the Bagbys before this period, I also do no know what happened to them after the founding of WSP. It may be that she died in Arizona in 1998. In fact, I am not even sure she was a member of the Fortean Society; her husband was, and she seemed to have Fortean inclinations.
Apparently, though, in the late 1950s, Jeanne started producing her own ‘zine “Span,” which ran for at least six issues. There are some examples of the ‘zine—perhaps the whole run, perhaps something less—in the Judson Crews papers at the University of Texas. (Crews was in Big Sur with George Leite and Henry Miller when Fort was fashionable.) I have not seen these.
Tiffany Thayer did, though, at least one, and it was this ‘zine that brought the Bagbys to the attention of the Fortean membership at large. In Doubt 58 (October 1958), Thayer mentioned “Span” in a list of recommended readings, writing that it was ”a personal self-expression of the wife of a Fortean who is also a bookman. They are Jack and Jean Bagby, NYC [sic]. . . Very Fortean. Ask for a copy.” Clearly, Jack was a Member of the Fortean Society, though I do not know for how long.
Brief as this connection was, it is still informative, showing how the various forms of dissent cultivated and curated by Thayer from the 1940s into the 1950s were evolving into the more memorialized protests of the 1960s. There seems to be scraps of information that can be studied to flesh out this transformation, but as these changes go beyond the period in which I am most interested, I have yet to really investigate them.
********************************
Much more can be said about George Sassoon. Born in London, 1936, the only child of poet Siegfried Sassoon and Hester Gatty, George grew up to be something of a polymathic eccentric. His childhood was largely spent on the Scottish island Mull, with his mother. From an early age, he showed a facility for engineering work, and won a science scholarship to King’s College, Cambridge. After graduation, he went to work for a manufacturer of scientific instruments. He also proved adept at languages (he would learn Klingon) and musical instruments.
Married four times, he seems to have spent a large part of his adult life on his father’s former estate, which he inherited in 1967. he had a developed interest in extraterrestrial life, and wrote about his alien theories in the late 1970s. He died 8 March 2006 from a slow moving cancer.
One cane see ways to slot Sassoon into certain Fortean boxes: he had an engineer’s mind, was acute at picking out patterns, and these, together, led him sometimes to impractical solutions. I have not read his books on alien life, though one suspects that they belong to just this species of elegant reasoning in the service of off-center premises, but an obituary of him noted that his solution to the Gibraltar problem was to offer Spain a bit of Britain, which could then become a center of Bullfighting: just in its way, and balanced, it was also remarkably naive.
But all that is speculation. The only true connection I have between him and Forteanism is one brief contribution to “Doubt” and one even briefer mention of him in a letter from Tiffany Thayer to Eric Frank Russell. These both come from 1957, when he was in Cambridge. In the letter, dated 19 January, Thayer wanted to know if George Sassoon had paid his dues. Apparently, Sassoon had sent a question to Thayer, but Thayer planned only to respond if he was square.
There were no further mentions of Sassoon in the correspondence, but it seems most likely the question had to with “irradiation of the brain with microwaves.” That was Thayer’s later phrasing (from Doubt 54). In Doubt 53, the question read, “A British member asks about American attempts to develop mental powers by irradiation of the brain with microwaves. What can you tell us?” Thayer himself suggested as possibly pertinent—though he had not read it—Melvin Powers’s “Mental Powers through Sleep Suggestion.” The next issue, Doubt 54, Thayer excerpted a letter from a Mexican correspondent to Wing Anderson, which he thought bore upon the problem: it had to do with Langston Day’s “New Worlds Beyond the Atom.” which dealt with, according to the correspondent, non-radioactive radiation(?) that could be photographed using special cameras in water and blood samples.
This bit of balderdash came immediately after Sassoon contributed an answer to a very different question that had been moving through Fortean circles for a while. Back in Doubt 51 (January 1956), Thayer had run a letter from a member, received some eighteen months earlier, about a story he could not quite remember. It dealt with two women walking through the gardens at Versailles who found themselves suddenly transported back to 1789. Thayer thought of the story “Time-Travel Happens!,” which ran in “Unknown” December 1939 and dealt with Anne Moberly and Eleanor Jourdain. Later, another member also remembered a book the two women had written called “An Adventure.”
“Doubt 54” had other versions of the story. There was “The Ghosts of Versailles,” which had recently been reviewed in the secularist “The Freethinker.” And then Sassoon sent a book seemingly inspired by “An Adventure”: Edith Olivier’s 1938 “Without Knowing Mr. Walkley.”
It could be that Sassoon brought Forteanism into his extraterrestrial research, but I have not seen those books, and they are so distant in time from the period that interests me, I probably will not.
**************************
The third of this triumvirate is also poorly known by me. His name was Wesley O. Morris. I believe that he was born Wesley Orton Morris, 23 October 1907 and married Mahala Bostick in the mid-1950s. She was a teacher in the Brevard County, Florida, schools from 1954 to 1974. He was a principal there, at least from 1958 to 1960, when he was removed by the Board of Trustees. Wesley died in 1969—decades before Mahala, who passed in 2007, aged 97.
Morris was a member of the Fortean Society at least in 1956, the summer of which is when he was mentioned in “Doubt,” with the honorific MFS. He wrote to Thayer calling attention to a supplementary reader that was used in the schools’s science classes—which mentioned Fort, without completely dismissing him. Thayer printed what was probably an excerpt from a letter in Doubt 53 (February 1957):
“‘I thought you would be interested in this direct quotation from a supplementary science reader for 5th and 6th grade to use in the schools of Florida. The book is The Real Book about Space Travel, by Hal Goodwin, published by Garden City Books, 1952. The following quotation is from pages 172, 173, 174.
“‘A Remarkable Man, Charles Fort, spent his life digging up such stories—even if we throw out 99% of Fort’s facts—the remaining 1% can’t be put aside.
“‘Fort wrote four books which have been put into one volume called The Books of Charles Fort. No one who wants to think for himself and to make up his own mind--can study the subject fully without reading Fort.’”
Thayer supposedly wrote Morris back, congratulating him on the fine job he was doing educating the students of Florida. (Hal Goodwin, by the way, was a science fiction author.) I have not seen any correspondence, only what Thayer reported in “Doubt.” Morris then replied, “We try to teach them the scientific method as distinguished from the method of scientists.” Tickled, Thayer repeated the witticism in “Doubt,” with the caption, “That’s a Fortean epigram of ever we read one.”
As far a I know, that was the last connection between Morris and the Fortean Society. I do not know anything else about any other possible Fortean activities on his part.
