{"id":222,"date":"2009-07-17T10:17:38","date_gmt":"2009-07-17T14:17:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/?p=222"},"modified":"2015-01-08T13:54:36","modified_gmt":"2015-01-08T18:54:36","slug":"winifred-coombe-tennant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/2009\/07\/17\/winifred-coombe-tennant\/","title":{"rendered":"Winifred Coombe Tennant"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"wct-photo\"<\/a>Winifred Coombe Tennant (1874-1956) was a Welsh writer, politician, suffragette, and patron of the arts.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

Under the pseudonym “Mrs. Willett,” Coombe Tennant was welcomed into the Society for Psychic Research<\/a>, and there are many accounts of her spirit communications, and of her writings, in the Society’s Journal<\/em>.\u00a0 Her work as a medium remained unknown outside a small circle of close friends, many also members of the Society.\u00a0\u00a0 This group included Gerald Balfour,\u00a0 brother of the Prime Minister and a member of the Society, with whom Coombe Tennant had a lengthy affair.<\/p>\n

*2008M-11<\/a>.\u00a0 Images appear with permission of the Estate of Winifred Coombe Tennant.\u00a0 Images may not be reproduced without permission.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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<\/a>.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

*2008M-11<\/a>.\u00a0 Images appear with permission of the Estate of Winifred Coombe Tennant.\u00a0 Images may not be reproduced without permission.<\/p>\n

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\"wct-tag\"<\/a><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\"wct-auto-writing1911\"<\/a>
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\"wct-writing-2\"<\/a><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

*2008M-11<\/a>.\u00a0 Images <\/span>\u00a9 The estate of Winifred Coombe-Tennant.\u00a0 Images may not be reproduced without permission.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Winifred Coombe Tennant (1874-1956) was a Welsh writer, politician, suffragette, and patron of the arts.\u00a0 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1761,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[64929],"tags":[6219,2452,1620],"class_list":["post-222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-houghton-library","tag-great-britain","tag-manuscripts","tag-women"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5TUly-3A","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1761"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222"}],"version-history":[{"count":32,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5452,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222\/revisions\/5452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}