I ascertained that Elsie was described by her late schoolmaster as being "dreamy," and her mother said that anything imaginative appealed to her. As to whether she could have drawn the fairies when she was sixteen I am doubtful. Lately she has taken up water-colour drawing, and her work, which I carefully examined, does not reveal that ability in a marked degree, though she possesses a remarkable knowledge of colour for an untrained artist.
Sir A. Conan Doyle says that at first he was not convinced that the fairies were not thought-forms conjured up by the imagination or expectation of the seers. Mr. E. L. Gardner, a member of the Executive Committee of the Theosophical Society, who made an investigation on the spot and also interviewed all the members of the family, records his opinion that the photographs are genuine.
Later in the day I went to Bradford, and at Sharpe's Christmas Card Manufactory saw Miss Wright. She was working in an upper room, and at first refused to see me, sending a message to the effect that she did not desire to be interviewed. A second request was successful, and she appeared at a small counter at the entrance to the works.
She is a tall, slim girl, with a wealth of auburn hair, through which a narrow gold band, circling her head, was entwined.
Like her parents, she just said she had nothing to say about the photographs, and, singularly enough, used the same expression as her father and mother—"I am 'fed up' with the thing."
She gradually became communicative, and told me how she came to take the first photograph.
Asked where the fairies came from, she replied that she did not know.
"Did you see them come?" I asked; and on receiving an affirmative reply, suggested that she must have noticed where they came from.
Miss Wright hesitated, and laughingly answered, "I can't say." She was equally at a loss to explain where they went after dancing near her, and was embarrassed when I pressed for a fuller explanation. Two or three questions went unanswered, and my suggestion that they must have "simply vanished into the air" drew the monosyllabic reply, "Yes." They did not speak to her, she said, nor did she speak to them.
When she had been with her cousin she had often seen them before. They were only kiddies when they first saw them, she remarked, and did not tell anybody.