“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Jane and I last saw Wendell Crowley perhaps seven years ago, but we keep up a correspondence on about a twice-a-year basis. We have not seen Wendell since moving here to Elmira, NY, six years ago. When Jane first read the Crowley-Taylor logo on tonight’s object it meant nothing to her, until I mentioned the name Wendell. Neither of us have met Wendell’s business partner, Mr. Taylor, or know anything about him—not even if he is still living.

(“One thirty-five.” My hunch was that this referred either to the end of the reunion discussed in Wendell’s letter—at 1:35 AM, or the time Wendell himself left the party. Inspection of his letter showed that Wendell states “I left at about 12:30 AM,” but that other member of the party remained after he left. Seth is more specific after break.

(See the tracing of tonight’s envelope object on page 71 and the notes on the next page. The empty envelope used as object was mailed to me last May 26,1966, by an old friend, Wendell Crowley, and contained a letter detailing a reunion of a group of friends, all artists, that Wendell and I worked with in 1941-43. The letter was not in the envelope but was kept separate by me for reference after the session. As I suspected, some of Seth’s data referred to the contents of the letter rather than the envelope object itself.

(Wendell’s letter of May 26 is two typewritten pages long, and at the moment we do not plan to include a copy of it with these notes. If necessary we will do so; in the meantime the letter remains on file with other envelope-related material. Other background material may be necessary to fill in the relationship between Wendell, myself and our friends discussed in the letter, and this will be included in our interpretations of the envelope experiment data. Some geography is involved also.

(I was greatly surprised Friday to have Bill Ward tell me that Wendell Crowley’s 10-year-old daughter died of a heart attack while playing softball. Wendell himself underwent open-heart surgery last year, and now feels well.)

[...] In the letter Bill dwells upon a dinner attended by himself, Wendell Crowley, and several other old friends of mine; the dinner being held just a few days ago; at this dinner Wendell mentioned my availability to Bill Ward for free-lance artwork, and this in turn led Bill to ask me to help him out.

[...] Wendell Crowley is a boyhood friend of Ward’s, and also an old friend of mine; he was my editor in New York City for some years after World War II. [...]

(Bill Ward’s letter accompanying the artwork mentioned his recent attendance at a dinner gathering of many of the group of friends we worked with in the early 1940’s. Oddly enough, the last letter I received from Wendell Crowley, in May 1966, also described a similar event.)