After RR's mother passed away

                           

Could the young man, standing beside the coffin of Elizabeth Mary Eagle Skinner, 

be her son, RR Skinner? If you read newspaper reports of Mrs. Skinner's funeral (see previous

post), one describes the frenzied crowds outside the church, banging on the doors to gain entrance,

and just as RR described, when the funeral was over people entered and stripped the church for souvenirs. During the funeral two elderly, grey-haired, women guarded the doors (possibly the women above), and during the funeral the crowd forced the doors open, The Prophetess's husband, Mr. Arthur Skinner, and her sons left the side of the coffin to keep the crowd outside, mass hysteria was rampant! 

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Here are my edited notes of what RR Skinner recalled of his mother, Elizabeth Mary Eagle Skinner (30 Aug. 1875 - 24 Nov. 1929):

His mother was a tall and imposing woman; possibly six feet tall. She would take a push cart and collect toys in the wealthy west end of London and then distribute them in the poor east end; no wonder there was such a large turnout for her funeral, people loved her as did her family. She started a church and took on the name of The Paracleta. Reg would be present at the church meetings and from this he began to learn about people's psychology; he learned how to "read" people and how to do psychic readings. RR's mother intended him to be her successor and to be a world teacher, she held this belief about him before his birth. Part of her church service was delivering the sacraments. The spirit she communicated with, or was a medium for, or who she channelled, was a North American Indian who was called Idvill. The Paracleta prophesied the coming of World War One and prepared for food shortages by filling large metal trunks with dried fruit. During her last ten years she lived in her church where she had a bedroom. When she died her followers stripped the church of its decorations and ornaments. 

. . . . .

The night RR’s mother died: RR went to his mother when he heard her laboured breathing, this was caused by asthma; Reg said, “No one dies of asthma”, but his mother died of asthma. She had asked for ice cream and RR, noticing it was by the fire, told her it had melted, it had been spoiled by the heat. He felt she was dying; later that night his sister, who was caring for their mother, called their father and RR. While the father put on his spats, moving slowly about his library, RR rushed to his mother's room. They were very close -- she had written to his future godmother, before RR was born, that he was to be the future avatar or world teacher and she trained RR on how to give psychic readings. Reaching her bedroom RR found her body in her bed, her head hanging to one side and mouth open. RR took a towel and tied it around her head closing her mouth; he remarked to me how detached he was when doing this. 

RR wonders why he developed throat cancer two years after his mother's passing. It was years later that he realized, and believed, that it may have been caused by his emotional repression of his mother's death; he believed because he did not speak of her passing, or of how close he had been to her, that this repression caused his throat cancer. A well-known Scottish doctor, whose specialty was cancer, removed the cancerous growth in his neck. He had a long convalescence and was not expected to survive the surgery. Fifty years later, sitting with Reg as he discussed this time in his life, he opened the collar of his shirt and showed me the scar where the doctor had operated. 

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Welby Arthur Skinner (13 Nov. 1896 - 06 Dec. 1984) became the family head after their mother died. In the early years of the 20th Century he was invited to visit Czarist Russia to lecture on the new radio technology. The radio licence that the BBC holds was issued after Welby received his license. Welby was also a visual artist and a member of the Royal Academy of Artists; RR would deliver Welby's paintings to the Royal Academy's exhibitions. Finally, Welby was a dental surgeon with his office at 44 Harley Street West in London (this is still a dental office; as an aside, years ago when I was writing this narrative about RR Skinner I contacted the dentist who bought Welby's dental practise; what he said was that Welby arrived sitting in the back seat of his Rolls Royce, the Rolls will be mentioned again). When Welby went to fight in World War One, sending home watercolour post cards that he had painted, their mother temporarily took over his medical practise, performing extractions, fillings, and other dental operations. RR is missing several teeth because he allowed Welby to extract them for practise. (I have omitted RR's memories of his sister Joan and his brother Ronald). He remembered with fondness his two elderly sisters, Girlie and Doris. 

 ... Within six months of RR's mother's passing, his father (Arthur John Skinner, 11 June 1867 - 25 March 1953) was looking for a new wife. This was something of which Welby disapproved; Welby called a family meeting and had his father put out of the family home. RR had a photograph of his father sitting in a tiny London garden located behind the house of his father's second wife, he was a tiny lonely old man; RR's father had a daughter with his second wife.  When Flossie (Florence Skinner, 4 Oct. 1891 - 18 Feb. 1960), Welby's first wife, suffered a stroke in the late 1950s, RR went to visit them in London. Flossie sat in a chair by a window and Welby spoke of her condition in front of her, he said, "All she can do is shit and piss." RR was upset by Welby's crude comment; he visited Flossie afterwards and attempted to communicate with her. It was Welby's insensitivity that alienated RR from Welby. And then, after Flossie died, Welby remarried but RR never visited them and never met Welby's new wife and her son. 

During the 1930s RR worked for Nestle, possibly as a manager, and he spoke of firing numerous people; the other employees hated him so much that one day a hostile group of them waited for him at the entrance to the Nestle factory, but he seems to have intimidated them and the gang dispersed.

RR said that he had two adopted brothers, Eric and Victor. He had a sister, Ruthie, who failed to return home from school one day, it was believed she was kidnapped for she was never seen again; they adopted Victor to replace Ruthie. While RR and Welby went to public schools, to Aleyn's, Dulwich, where their father taught geography, another brother, Cyril, went to a council school because the family couldn’t afford a better school; Cyril had a working class accent and later worked for Welby as a helper. 

During the war RR said he worked as an air traffic controller. He mentioned that some British fighter planes, returning to the UK, would be shot down, these British planes were confused with enemy airplanes entering British airspace. RR was demobbed in 1945 and returned to civilian life to open a fix-it shop. He had married before the war and returned to married life, but he said the marriage was unhappy, they were constantly arguing. He and his wife had two children, both girls, but he seems to have had little contact with his ex-wife or his daughters. He left the marriage and re-enlisted and served for another five years; I think what he did during this period, 1945 - 1950, is that he visited German towns to root out remaining Nazi sympathizers. In 1950, without money, but with an allowance to retrain for civilian life, he took a short course in chiropody. He described living upstairs over a green grocer for six months, living on oat meal. Around this time he met Joan, his future common-law wife. In 1967 she discovered that she had cancer; five years later, when they were about to celebrate her fifth year of being cancer free, a new tumour was discovered. RR often spoke about Joan and how happy they were together. 

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RR said that he was a healer; he kept file cards on his patients, his notation on each card was some kind of short hand or notation that only he could understand. And people came to see him, to talk, to have him put them in deep relaxation and try to locate the source of their ill health. A few times people came to the front door and just meeting RR seemed to help them and they left. RR felt that people needed to enter the stream of life but how was this to be done? RR is not alone when he says that destroying the old allows something new to be born, in this sense being destructive is allowing for what is new to exist. Once, I asked him to summarize his teaching. He said there were two things he had observed, these would help people enter the stream of life: the first was that the other person came first and, the second is that one's thoughts were always wrong, if you thought you knew something then you were wrong in your thinking. I could understand the first of these but the second somewhat eluded me except that, sometimes, the more I am firmly committed to a point of view, that I am convinced of something, the greater the possibility that I am wrong. I remember repeating these two points to RR and he said he didn't remember saying these things, although they were interesting ideas and they seemed like something he would say. He said that he would add something else to the list, that we must give what we have, freely and without thought for ourselves or for the future. He said that ideas and thoughts will get you nowhere, the stream of life has to come to you, life has to come to you for "you" are just an idea with no reality, but an accumulation of thoughts and memories. Life is constantly moving and changing and we cannot make permanent that which is impermanent. The stream of life is constantly changing and new.

-o-

I remember the following episode very clearly. It was towards the end of my last visit with RR. 

...Now RR referred to himself as being old and what a comfort this was for him. One morning, before Peggy arrived, we walked through a housing estate and gotr lost. A very old woman, bent and thin with age, was walking her equally old dog. RR went up to the dog and affectionately, "I think you're naughty, I think you're a naughty girl." The old woman laughed and said, "Yes, aren't all of us women naughty." RR and she smiled and chattered, old age was a blessing. 

-o-

A few years later (around 1987 - 1988) when I was back in Canada, I had a phone call from Reg; I had some difficulty understanding what he was saying because, as he informed me, he had had a stroke. He said that the stroke was a blessing. A few years later he moved into a nursing home. I had the address at the time, but RR was no longer able to correspond, he said that writing letters had ended for him. I looked up the residence on Google Street View to see what it looked like, it seemed to be someone's home. Sue, RR's companion for a number of years, said that Reg stayed in his upstairs bedroom, he wasn’t interested in socializing with the other residents.  

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I’ve just found these photographs in a box of old photos; they might be of interest.

Sue Fairless (?) and RR

Reg and Czar

Beach huts; walking to Bognor Regis

In Felpham, William Blake’s home from 1800 to 1803; my finger on lense

Walking from Felpham to Bognor Regis

Reg’s dog, Czar

Here is Ley Road; unrelated to this road`s name,
ley lines cross and crisscross the UK

 

Visiting 

St. Mary's, Felpham

View from St. Mary’s, Felpham, Felpham Road

St. Mary's, Felpham

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Peggy Lake and Reg Skinner with pendulum for dowsing

Miniature painting (3 1/2" X 3 1/2"), a present to me from Peggy Lake
who lived near RR after he moved to Felpham, Peggy was RR's sister-in-law; 
inscription on verso: "To Steven, A small memento of your visit Aug/Sept 84
with good wishes to you and your family. Peggy"

One day, RR and I visited Joan's sister, Peggy Lake, who lives near Felpham, in Yapton. Peggy has a small row house in a fairly new development. Peggy said, "When Joan was dying I held her hand. Joan said that she saw birds at her feet and she was talking to them, then she said ‘have I harmed anyone?’” and died. Sitting in Peggy`s living or reception room, one is surrounded by knick knacks, her paintings, books, and family photos. There is one photograph of RR and Joan together; they are sitting beneath a tree, Joan with no expression, looking very tired, while RR is smiling. Peggy said, "Ìt's not a good photograph of Joan; it was taken the summer before she died." RR, when speaking with Peggy, was nervous, he spoke quickly and he was not at ease; while he spoke of the same things he discussed with me -- "things appertaining", auras, evolution, and dowsing, Krishnamurti, for instance -- he was not at ease. He assumed a formality that Peggy accepted as RR's way. They have known each other for almost thirty-five years but RR said they have never been especially close. Peggy thinks of RR as an eccentric; she does not approve of everything he says or does, but she keeps her judgements to herself. 

-o-

… And in the End: I met Reg Skinner in August 1974. At the end of that month I returned to Montreal and spent two years at McGill University earning my Master of Arts degree; upon graduating I was hired to teach English at Champlain Regional College, I taught there for thirty-five years. I corresponded with RR for about fifteen years. I married in August 1976, the marriage ended in 1989; I have one son. In April 1978 I spent a month with Pat McCarty and we drove from Oakland, California, to Baja California; we attended Krishnamurti's Talks in Ojai, California, that April 1978. I first met Pat in Switzerland for Krishnamurti's Talks in 1974; Pat also met RR Skinner at the same time as I did. Pat McCarty died, in Florida in 2008, he was only 60 years old; Pat McCarty was born on 21 January 1947, the same birthdate as Carolyn Zonailo, my second wife; Carolyn and I have been together since the end of May 1991. I heard Krishnamurti speak at the Felt Forum, MSG, in New York City around 1984. After about twelve years since we met at Saanen for Krishnamurti’s talks, I met Sally (Lake) McKenzie at RR's home in Felpham in 1986. I published books of poetry and criticism. I retired from teaching in 2012; now, I consider myself retired from most things. All those years ago...

Meetings with RR Skinner

 

Photo of RR Skinner provided by Patricia Proenza in 1988

                                    

Hark, hark! the dogs do bark,
Beggars are coming to town.
Some in rags, some in jags,
And some in velvet gowns.

-- Quoted by RR Skinner

What follows (in the following posts) are the events and narrative of meeting RR Skinner; our first meeting was in 1974, the last meeting was in 1986. This is taken from notes I made after these meetings; they were marathon sessions of talking with (mostly listening to) Reg, including what he told me about himself, his life, his family, and his observations on life. When I told Reg in 1985 that I would like to write about him he gave me a thick manila envelope containing copies of his various essays written over a thirty year period, I returned these papers to him later. The manuscript that I wrote became "Meetings with RR", it’s 125 pages of double-spaced text; it is unpublished and probably will never be published.

RR Skinner was born on  03 July 1909; he died at Bognor Regis on 31 December 1999 (these dates may not be accurate). From age eight to eleven he did not attend school because of frail health, he had a tubercular bowel and spent these three years in hospital or convalescing at home; this was a time of relative isolation and solitude. After returning to school he found that he couldn't pronounce certain words because of a stammer, but he overcame this through an effort of will. He was the seventh of fifteen children, plus two adopted children. Reg's mother, who ran and ministered her own spiritualist church in Bethnal Green, London, believed that her son would be the next world-teacher and she raised him for that position (this sounds terribly inflated today but it was also the aim of the Theosophical Society to find the next messiah or world teacher, a Buddha, and the person they eventually found was Jiddu Krishnamurti who eventually renounced this idea). In a letter to a friend RR's mother said that the child she was carrying, the future RR Skinner, would be the next messiah. RR told me that his ability to vet people was part of his training at his mother's church, it was his training to be a psychic and spiritual teacher. Many years ago I attended a few spiritualist meetings, these aren't seances but church services, sometimes these services were held at rented spaces in office buildings, and once at the Unitarian Church of the Messiah or, at other times, the Spiritual Science Fellowship, both located in Montreal; there is usually a non-denominational religious service, including hymns, followed by the medium addressing the congregation and communicating messages allegedly from the departed to their family members. I believe RR's mother, Elizabeth Mary Eagle Skinner, was the main influence of his life.

Oral history is an important source of information on the past; some of us, but not many, listen to the old folks and write down what they say. My mother spoke to me often about our family history, in fact it’s what we talked about the most and, now, years later, I am still impressed at the accuracy of what she remembered; I still have notes -- written on the backs of envelopes and scraps of paper -- recording what she said about our family's history. Part of my interest in family history is that my mother would mention relatives that I had never heard of and I wanted to know who they were, how they were related to me, what was my place in the genealogy of the family, I needed to make sense of what she said; I was the youngest member of our family and I wanted a record of what people said, what people did, and who these people were; I knew even then that no one lives forever and this might be my only chance to record what happened in the past. This wasn't for entertainment, it was to make sense of life by writing things down, writing as a way to understand something; and writing is a way of finding order in things, of putting things into their proper order. I am neither obsessive nor compulsive but I am serious and I know that I have a calling to write poems and a great need to make sense and order of this life, to remember the ancestors, and to record the events of my own life; towards this end I have kept a diary everyday since January 1965 and I have written books of poetry and literary criticism. This has been my life’s journey. From my interest and research in family history I have compiled our Morrissey family history; and I have written about my paternal grandmother, and her central place in our family, in Remembering Girouard Avenue. 

Address of RR's sister, Rosemary Skinner on RR's appointment card;
I was leaving for Ireland and RR suggested meeting his sister,
but this meeting never happened. Summer 1978.

After Attending Krishnamurti's Talks in July 1974

In the fall of 1973

I had no real plans for my future after I graduated from university in 1973; with no plans and no ambition it was a fairly aimless time that followed. But I did have two interests, one was writing poetry, the other were the writings of the Indian teacher J. Krishnamurti who had once been a famous speaker, a famous guru, but by 1973 his fame had somewhat faded. It was only by chance that I came across Krishnamurti’s writings, there is a chapter on Krishnamurti in Henry Miller’s The Books in My Life, and this is possibly where I first heard of Krishnamurti. I also remember hearing and visiting Swami Shyam who was popular in Montreal in the early 1970s, I was one of many who received a mantra from him. I was one of the young seekers, just a face in a crowd, who visited Geof Stirling’s house where Swami Shyam was staying. But I was never a follower, never a believer, never a joiner of groups or organizations, I never have been and I’m still not. I think what Krishnamurti was to me was therapy, not really learning about spiritual ideals but learning about myself. After I received a mantra from Swami Shyam I sat every night for about three months repeating it but by early 1973 I was wary of mantras, swamis, and meditation; but it wasn't just Krishnamurti who dissuaded me from following a guru, it was my own innate disbelief in gurus and the people who followed them. Krishnamurti didn't want you be a follower or believe in anything, he wanted people to think for themselves. The months of late 1973 and early 1974, after graduating from university, dragged on and in the spring of 1974 I decided to go to Saanen, Switzerland, to attend Krishnamurti’s public talks given there every year; at the time I still didn't know anybody who was interested in Krishnamurti's teachings or in Krishnamurti. One of my professors had become a Tibetan Buddhist and published a book length poem on Milarepa, I think his complaint was that Krishnamurti was too intellectual for him, too lacking ritual, but this is what I always liked about Krishnamurti, that he was not a part of the guru industry being exported to the West by India and Tibet. So, in early July 1974, I flew from Montreal to Zurich and from there I took a train to Sannen which is about two miles from Gstaad, a holiday resort for wealthy people. I think it was my first day there that I met Patrick McCarty, who was from California, and Sally Lake, from England. The three of us, Pat, Sally, and myself, became friends and between attending Krishnamurti’s Talks we travelled a bit, for instance to Lake Maggiore; at the end of the Talks we decided that we would meet again in the UK; perhaps it was only a week or ten days later when we met at Sally’s mother’s home in Crowborough and we planned to meet Sally's uncle, Reg Skinner, of whom Sally often spoke; Reg was also interested in Krishnamurti, and he seemed to be someone worth meeting.  

      

This is Reg Skinner's home, Boisville, located at 7 Sandhurst lane, Blackwater,
Camberley. Photo from Google Street View

Meeting RR                                      

It was in mid-August 1974 that I met Reg (Reginald Rice) Skinner, or RR, at his home in Blackwater, near Camberley. Reg had retired the previous year, he had worked as a chiropodist (not, as he told me, affiliated with the NHS) with his surgery at his home and he was about 66 years old. Joan, Reg’s common law wife, had died of cancer in 1972 and he recounted to me his married life with her. Reg's home, Boisville, was named by the contractors who built it about forty years before and it had been given to Reg and Joan by their friend and the previous owner of the house, Mrs. Scott, with whom Reg and Joan lived, and who was affectionately named Mu; Mu had worked for the post office and now, in her mid-eighties, she lived in a residence, near Tekels Park, in Camberley. It occurs to me only now that Joan must have been the sister of Sally’s father who had died when Sally was young, she referred to RR as Uncle Reg. Boisville is pronounced “boy’s ville” and not “bois ville” with a French pronunciation; the “boys” having been the contractors who built that particular house. It was a white stucco building with a small garage beside it that was used as a workshop. There were a few topics that preoccupied RR, among them was his brother, Welby Skinner, his mother who had also been a spiritual teacher, Krishnamurti, Joan, beekeeping, and his own life experiences; but what interested him the most were “things appertaining”, his term for understanding life in its complexity and depth. Everything eventually devolved to “things appertaining”. I was to hear a lot about these topics from Reg.

Stephen Morrissey (right) with Reg Skinner in the garden at Boisville,
Camberley,  26 August 1974

      

Reg Skinner 

Meeting Reg (RR) Skinner, mid-August 1974

Here I am with my old friend Reg (RR) Skinner (left) in the backyard of his home, "Boisville", at 7 Sandhurst Lane, Blackwater, Camberley, Surrey, England. It was mid-August 1974. I believe his German shepherd was named Czar.