In the course of preparing a biographical bibliography of Trevor H. Hall, I realized early on that at some point, I would have to deal with the "Hall vs Borley" controversy, no matter how much I would like to focus the work on the two dozen books Hall wrote which were not about Borley. Part of the diffidence this prospect brings arises from the fact that I have great admiration for Trevor Hall, both as a self-made man and (practically) a self-made scholar. But serious accusations on several counts have been leveled at him from extremely credible sources, and those cannot be ignored. That being said, I am trying to be honest in my work, and inevitably, the chips will have to fall where they may.
Without seeming to be counsel for the defense of Trevor Hall, I have the feeling that much of the controversy is tied up in the clash of Trevor's world-view and interests with those of his critics, and indeed at times, his colleagues. Essentially, I believe that most of the parties involved simply took the wrong things too seriously -- or rather, they failed to understand what the "opposing" party took seriously and why, and indeed, how that party could even think as they did.
For instance, in his Search for Harry Price (London: Duckworth, 1978), I think that Trevor took Harry Price too seriously -- more seriously than Price took himself. It must be remembered that for all his "scientific" trappings, Price was a showman, if not an entertainer. He brought attention to the possibility of the paranormal, which is good in many aspects, and I think he felt that such a worthwhile goal should be supported however possible. This was Dr. Eric Dingwall's view of Price, and it was he who introduced Price to psychical research in the first place.
No one writing a biography of, say, P. T. Barnum, would be aghast at catching him telling a tall tale. That's what P. T. Barnum did, and the people loved it! Price was not, of course, as spectacular a mountebank as Barnum, but he had the essential traits of the showman. I don't think Hall was very capable of understanding frivolity and the appeal it holds for many, so the crux of the matter is, ultimately, the clash of the pragmatic and the romantic outlook, coupled with the inability of the one to comprehend the world of the other.
Unlike Barnum and Price -- and for that matter, Dingwall and some other colleagues -- Hall was a bibliographer and textual scholar. That's what he did. For Hall, texts were texts, whether spoken, published, or scribbled on walls, and the process of sorting out their veracity, meaning and implications -- the game -- was what he enjoyed most. That is a feeling which I can understand, having the same mania myself, as probably do many readers. The entire Borley business represented a wealth of unexplored territory for the textual critic and investigator (just as the life and work of THH does for me!), and I have the feeling that THH did not want his well to run dry....hence the enquiry into Marianne's life, the dossiers, and ultimately the Price book. This is a vast oversimplification, but it's the core of my view.
I believe that the strongest evidence for Hall's enthusiasm for the game, the process, of textual scholarship for its own sake is provided by the fact that most of the small mysteries he based his books on had already been explained many years earlier. Without meaning to diminish his accomplishments and his contributions, it was Hall's joy to dress the probable solutions in as much scholarly boiler-plate as he could muster. In the process, he uncovered further interesting mysteries, and -- usually -- their solutions, and he never failed to produce an interesting and congenial book.
For example, Mollie Goldney had known the truth about the "Florence Cook and William Crookes" affair almost 40 years before Hall came along (the noted Victorian microscopist W. B. Carpenter knew perfectly well what was going on at the time and, I think, personally admonished his friend Crookes), and Dingwall had spoken and written about the case in 1959 and 1960 before Hall examined it in The Spiritualists (London: Duckworth, 1962).
Again, Just a few weeks after the event, many of his friends and colleagues came to the conclusion that Edmund Gurney had committed suicide (in the 1880's). Many also knew that Frank Podmore was homosexually inclined, although Hall deals with that under the cover of an appendix in The Strange Case of Edmund Gurney (London: Duckworth, 1964) which is about Gurney's suicide along with many other subjects, including some interesting scoundrels. This, however, is in my opinion one of Hall's best books, and is the certainly the best he ever does at recreating a time and place, a literary process that invariably benefits from a touch of the romantic outlook which Hall generally avoided.
Hall's exposure of Ada Goodrich Freer's misdeeds was very rigorous, and she highly deserved it...a Victorian strumpet plagiarising almost the entire life's work of a selfless rural priest! The mistaken attribution of the work of gathering and transcribing certain folklore which Miss Freer published as her own work and which formed the basis for her modest literary career stood for over 50 years before Dr. Lorne Campbell and Hall exposed and corrected it in Strange Things (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968). Miss Freer's publications were proved by them to be sloppy redactions of legends and tales of strange happenings in South Uist which Fr. Allan MacDonald had collected and transcribed over many years. Here again, it was Campbell who actually discovered the plagiarism, which was the major evil deed in the book. The book would have stood without Hall's contribution.
As to The Enigma of Daniel Home, (Buffalo, NY:Prometheus Books, 1984), a perfectly sound explanation of the famous levitation had been offered by at least 1909, but the context added by Hall's research, and his considerable focus on a bibliographic anomaly as an indicator of a state of mind and nefarious motives, are fascinating and enlightening.
Other examples could be cited, but one might easily get the impression that as far as covering new ground goes, Borley and Price were about the best things Trevor had!
It is clear to me that Trevor Hall intensely enjoyed the game for its own sake, just as did Sherlock Holmes, on whom Hall wrote no fewer than three collections of essays and a major lecture. And of course, Sherlockian "higher criticism" is among the ultimate games a textual critic can engage in, as it is admittedly tongue-in-cheek and widely played by definite rules. THH obiously loved the genre a great deal, and he played the game superlatively. This love of the game, I think, had its consequences.
Such relentless pursuit of process can be easily interpreted as malice or pathological obsession by those who do not share the passion for the game. Obsession of a kind it truly is, and I will not deny that in certain cases there may have been darker, possibly unconscious motives at work in some of Trevor's investigations. We shall see. But one can imagine that the bibliographer seized by the passion may fail to properly appreciate how his work might appear to a more normal observer. Oscar Wilde described the passion and the pathology very well in 1898 in his short and very clever piece, The Portrait of Mr. W. H., which deals with a fictional discovery in Shakespearean bibliography.
In any event, "Hall vs Borley" presents, to my way of thinking, an interesting study in what may be termed a conflict of cultures, and I look forward to further explorations along these lines.
Again, this is not intended as an apology for any of Hall's behavior. But in my modest experience, in life and in scholarship, I know quite well that different observers can put very different constructions on the same events. This phenomenon is one of the reasons why we have a Borley Ghost Society in the first place!
To return to my own current bibliographic obsession, I would appreciate communications from readers who have opinions concerning the (somewhat obvious) hypothesis here presented -- or who have any information concerning Trevor Hall and his work. I am in frequent communication with Trevor's son, who has been of great assistance, and of course the BGS, Vince O'Neil, Andrew Clarke and others have provided great help. I am now in search of the parts which can't be found in libraries, and any tibits at all will be appreciated!