Winifred Coombe Tennant
Jul 17th, 2009 by houghtonmodern
Winifred Coombe Tennant (1874-1956) was a Welsh writer, politician, suffragette, and patron of the arts. While her work to promote Welsh art, history, and culture are well known–and is extensively documented in her papers at the National Library of Wales–a group of papers bequeathed by Mrs. Coombe Tennant to the Houghton Library sheds new light on her other, less well known career as a gifted medium and automatic writer.
Under the pseudonym “Mrs. Willett,” Coombe Tennant was welcomed into the Society for Psychic Research, and there are many accounts of her spirit communications, and of her writings, in the Society’s Journal. Her work as a medium remained unknown outside a small circle of close friends, many also members of the Society. This group included Gerald Balfour, brother of the Prime Minister and a member of the Society, with whom Coombe Tennant had a lengthy affair.
*2008M-11. Images appear with permission of the Estate of Winifred Coombe Tennant. Images may not be reproduced without permission.
In 1950, perhaps because of Harvard philosopher and psychologist William James’s well-known interest in psychic phenomena, Coombe Tennant placed with her lawyer four locked boxes of her papers, directing that the boxes remain sealed for fifty years after her death and then offered to Harvard University. Houghton accepted this gift, and recently received this collection, which includes over thirty years of Coombe Tennant’s correspondence with Balfour, along with numerous scripts, or automatic writings, from their work with the Society for Psychical Research. In death as well as in life, Winifred Coombe Tennant maintained a distinction between her public work as a Welsh nationalist, and her private life as a medium.
At the request of the family, several of Winifred Coombe Tennants diaries, included in the bequest, were given to them to complete the series of diaries they hold. A transcription of the diaries is in preparation, and after its publication it is the family’s intention to present the diaries to the National Library of Wales to join the Coombe Tennant archive there.
*2008M-11. Images appear with permission of the Estate of Winifred Coombe Tennant. Images may not be reproduced without permission.
*2008M-11. Images © The estate of Winifred Coombe-Tennant. Images may not be reproduced without permission.