when he woke up , he was stuart he had absolutely no recollection of ever having been anyone else indeed , he believed he was ten years old , and when he heard a manly voice issuing from his own throat , he was horrified when he discovered he had a grown man 's body , he was speechless with shock dumbfounded he sat in his hospital bed listening to stories of what had been happening to him for the last ten years of course he did not understand french he 'd had a terrible time with it in school and of course he could n't play the piano why , everybody knew he had no musical ability he could not even carry a tune in the next few weeks , he sat staring at the dinner table at his 'enormous ' brothers and sisters , at his now gray-haired father , and at his mother , who could not look at him without bursting into tears telephones and automobiles which hardly existed in 1905 when he had ceased to be stuart startled him endlessly electric lights filled him with insecurity but the keenest source of agony was his own adult body and the ever deepening realization that his childhood and adolescence were now gone without a trace then he began to confront the inevitable problems he was twenty with the emotions and education of a ten-year-old boy he began to gain weight , his color improved , he went riding on the nearby ranches with his old friends tutors were hired to educate him , he read the newspapers and the national magazines by the hour he took long walks during which he practiced moving and thinking like an adult but he lived in a perpetual state of anxiety he was passionately attracted to women , but did not know how to deal with this attraction his feelings were easily hurt as a man he felt hopelessly inadequate at last he began to quarrel with everyone , and discovering that he could drink with impunity , he began to 'hit the bottle ' in the local saloons soon the whole town knew the story some people remembered the first 'go round ' when antoinette had been born others only heard the whole tale in retrospect whatever the case , there was ceaseless talk and though the local paper never , out of deference to the doctor , made mention of this bizarre story , a reporter from dallas , texas , got wind of it from several sources , and without the family 's cooperation , wrote a long article on it which appeared in the sunday edition of a dallas paper in 1915 other papers picked up this story it was eventually forwarded to us in london about two months after it appeared meantime curiosity seekers descended upon stuart a local author wanted to write a novel about him representatives from national magazines rang the front door bell the family was up in arms stuart was once again driven indoors , and sat brooding in the attic room , staring at the treasured possessions of this strange person antoinette , and feeling that ten years of his life had been stolen from him , and he was now a hopeless misfit , driven to antagonizing everyone he knew no doubt the family received a great deal of unwelcome mail on the other hand , communication in that day and age was not what it is now whatever the case , a package from the talamasca reached stuart in late 1916 , containing two well-known books about such cases of 'possession , ' along with a letter from us informing him that we had a good deal of knowledge about such things and would be very glad to talk to him about it , and about others who had experienced the same thing stuart at once fired off a reply he met with our representative louis daly in dallas in the summer of 1917 , and gratefully agreed to go with us to london dr townsend , at first deeply concerned , was finally won over by louis , who assured him that our approach to such things was entirely scholarly , and at last stuart came to us on september 1 , he was received into the order as a novice the following year , and he remained with us from then on his first project of course was a thorough study of his own case , and a study of every other known case of possession on record his conclusion finally , and that of the other talamasca scholars assigned to this area of research , was that he indeed had been possessed by the spirit of a dead woman he believed then and ever after that the spirit of antoinette fielding could have been driven out of him , if anyone knowledgeable had been consulted , even a catholic priest for though the catholic church holds that such cases are purely demonic which we do not there is no doubt that their techniques for exorcising such alien presences do work for the next five years stuart did nothing but investigate past cases of possession the world over he interviewed victims by the dozens , taking voluminous notes he came to the conclusion long held by the talamasca that there are a great variety of entities who engage in possession some may be ghosts , some may be entities who were never human , some may be 'other personalities ' within the host but he remained convinced that antoinette fielding had been a real human being , and that like many such ghosts , she had not known or understood that she was dead in 1920 he went to paris to find evidence of antoinette fielding he was unable to discover anything at all but the few bits of information about the dead louisa fielding did fit with what antoinette had written about her mother time , however , had long ago erased any real trace of these persons and stuart remained forever dissatisfied on this account in late 1920 he resigned himself to the fact that he might never know who antoinette was , and then he turned to active fieldwork on behalf of the talamasca he went out with louis daly to intervene in cases of possession , carrying out with daly a form of exorcism which daly used very effectively to drive such alien presences out of the victim-host daly was very impressed with stuart townsend he became stuart 's mentor , and stuart was throughout these years noted for his compassion , patience , and effectiveness in this field not even daly could comfort the victims afterwards the way stuart could do it after all , stuart had been there stuart knew stuart worked in this field tirelessly until 1929 , reading the file on the mayfair witches only when a busy schedule allowed then he made his plea to the council and won at that point in time , stuart was thirty-five he stood six feet tall , had ash-blond hair and dark gray eyes he was lean of build and had a light complexion he tended to dress elegantly , and was one of those americans who deeply admires english manners and ways of doing things , and aspires to imitate them he was an attractive young man but his greatest appeal to friends and acquaintances was a sort of boyish spontaneity and innocence stuart was really missing ten years of his life , and he never got them back he was capable at times of impetuousness , and of flying off the handle , of getting furious when he encountered even small obstacles to his plans but he controlled this very well when he was in the field , and when he threw a tantrum in the motherhouse he could always be brought round .