In the autumn of 1883 Thomas Davidson paid a short visit to London and held several little meetings of young people, to whom he expounded his ideas of a Vita Nuova, a Fellowship of the New Life.  I attended the last of these meetings held in a bare room somewhere in Chelsea, on the invitation of Frank Podmore,[7] whose acquaintance I had made a short time previously.  We had become friends through a common interest first in Spiritualism and subsequently in Psychical Research, and it was whilst vainly watching for a ghost in a haunted house at Notting Hill—­the house was unoccupied:  we had obtained the key from the agent, left the door unlatched, and returned late at night in the foolish hope that we might perceive something abnormal—­that he first discussed with me the teachings of Henry George in “Progress and Poverty,” and we found a common interest in social as well as psychical progress.

[Illustration:  From a copyright photograph by Fredk.  Hollyer, W.

FRANK PODMORE, ABOUT 1895]

The English organiser or secretary of the still unformed Davidsonian Fellowship was Percival Chubb, then a young clerk in the Local Government Board, and subsequently a lecturer and head of an Ethical Church in New York and St. Louis.  Thomas Davidson was about to leave London; and the company he had gathered round him, desirous of further discussing his suggestions, decided to hold another meeting at my rooms.  I was at that time a member of the Stock Exchange and lived in lodgings furnished by myself.

Here then on October 24th, 1883, was held the first of the fortnightly meetings, which have been continued with scarcely a break, through nine months of every year, up to the present time.  The company that assembled consisted in part of the Davidsonian circle and in part of friends of my own.

The proceedings at this meeting, recorded in the first minute book of the Society in the handwriting of Percival Chubb, were as follows:—­

   “THE NEW LIFE”

“The first general meeting of persons interested in this movement was held at Mr. Pease’s rooms, 17 Osnaburgh Street, Regent’s Park, on Wednesday the 24th October, 1883.  There were present:  Miss Ford, Miss Isabella Ford [of Leeds], Mrs. Hinton [widow of James Hinton], Miss Haddon [her sister], Mr., Mrs., and Miss Robins, Maurice Adams, H.H.  Champion, Percival A. Chubb, H. Havelock Ellis, J.L.  Joynes, Edward R. Pease, Frank Podmore, R.B.P.  Frost, and Hamilton Pullen.

“The proceedings were begun by the reading of Mr. Thomas Davidson’s paper ‘The New Life,’ read by him at a former assemblage, and after it of the Draft of a proposed constitution (Sketch No. 2). [This has not been preserved.]

“A general discussion followed on the question as to what was possible of achievement in the way of founding a communistic society whose members should lead the new higher life foreshadowed