by Marion Meade
By the age of forty, he had everything he might have reasonably expected out of life: respect and success in his chosen profession, enough money to enjoy luxuries, sufficient free time to dabble now and again in freelance newspaper work and, in addition, a family. In 1860 he had married the daughter of an Episcopalian minister, Mary Epplee Morgan, and the following year they had a son, Morgan, and the year after that a second boy, William Topping. Their third son lived only four months, however, and their daughter, Bessie, less than two years. The death of Bessie must have struck Henry Olcott deeply, because when he revised the Olcott genealogy in 1874, he made a curious error. In the listing for his own family, on page 106, he stated that his daughter had been born in June 21, 1868, but he omitted the exact date of her death, writing simply February, 1870.
Perhaps the family’s tragedies drove Henry and Mary apart, because not long after Bessie’s death their marriage began to sour, and by 1874 they had separated. Henry had gone to live at his club in Irving Place and begun kicking up his heels like a frustrated husband just liberated after many years of confinement. Years later, looking back, he described himself as having been “a worldly man” adding that he had been “a man of clubs, drinking parties, mistresses, a man absorbed in all sorts of worldly public and private undertakings and speculations.”10 This profligate image would be confirmed by Helena who called him “a gay dog”11 who kept mistresses and spent his time drinking in clubs.
Considering the crucial role that he was to play in H.P.B.’s life, it is important to take a close look at the man. Physically, he was slightly above medium height with a pleasant open face, brown hair, short beard and steel-rimmed spectacles. People considered him the stereotype of a prosperous, middle-aged Yankee who was unsophisticated, honest, energetic, and practical. But that was before he grew a flowing Santa Claus beard and gave up wearing shoes. Even to those who wished to prove him a liar and charlatan, he shone as a man of integrity and sincerity. As Sir Arthur Conan Doyle observed, no one can read Olcott’s autobiographical Old Diary Leaves without sensing that this was a man “loyal to a fault, unselfish and with that rare moral courage which will follow truth and accept results even when they oppose one’s expectations and desires.”12
That he neither looked nor acted like a mystic dreamer, nor thought of himself as one, proves nothing except that appearances can deceive wildly. For all his outward normality, Henry Steel Olcott was an incomplete person seeking the missing piece that would transform him into —he could not say what. In today’s pop psychology terms, what he was seeking would doubtless be called fulfillment, or perhaps psychic contentment. He had not found it with Mary, although he adored his sons, then aged thirteen and twelve, and for their sakes, as well as the stigma attached to divorce, might conceivably have returned to his family; neither had he found peace in religion, his work, or his relationships with women other than his wife. The trouble with Henry was that he could not pursue his heart’s desire, simply because he had no notion of what it might be.
Seven miles north of Rutland, in a grassy valley enclosed by the slopes of the Green Mountains, lay the hamlet of Chittenden. Farmers sitting around the stove in the village store shrugged when asked about the Eddys; Olcott found that they knew little of the séances and cared less, but he also received the distinct impression that they disliked the brothers. “Their religion,” he observed tersely, “is intolerant, their sect methodist.”13 Although the Vermont countryside was charming, the Eddy farmhouse itself impressed him as gloomy and uninviting. It was a large wooden rectangle two stories high, to which the brothers had recently added a two-story, L-shaped wing. The lower floor of the extension was used as a dining room and kitchen, the upper as a séance hall.
Neither was there anything about William or Horatio to inspire confidence. They were rough, uneducated men who did all the farm work, house chores and cooking. They were curt and surly to the guests—sometimes as many as forty at a time—who paid them a fairly stiff rate of eight dollars a week for room and board. When they learned Henry was a special investigator sent all the way to Vermont by a leading New York daily, they responded only with hostile disinterest.
There is no doubt that William and Horatio Eddy had some genuine psi ability. Over several generations their family had a history of psychic powers, a grandmother four times removed even having been executed at the Salem witch trials of 1692. A fanatical father tried to cure the children of their fits and spells by administering beatings, dousing them with boiling water, and placing live coals in their hands; their mother, a strong psychic herself, was apparently unable to prevent the brutality. Later, when the Fox sisters took to the stage and demonstrated that the psychic could pull in plenty of money, Zephaniah Eddy decided to exhibit his children as freaks. In their touring act, the boys were bound and gagged, pricked with needles and wires, and nailed into suffocating boxes that resembled coffins. It is not astonishing that they grew up to distrust people, but what is difficult to understand is that they courted attention by constructing a special séance hall and inviting the public. Profit does not seem to have been a motive because they did not charge for attendance; the only costs to visitors were room and board, and even then some people were poor or sponged off them.
Olcott stayed three days. Even though he had been fascinated for years by the paranormal and had read books on hypnotism and psychic phenomena, this was his first contact with Spiritualists and he found them a motley crowd: housewives, editors, divines, peddlers of magnetic salves and mysterious nostrums, mediums, clairvoyant healers, phrenologists, sickly dreamers. Some of them, he decided, were “nice, clever people whom one is glad to meet and sorry to part from” but others struck him as “people who shed a magnetism as disagreeable as dirty dish water.”14 Pursuing the marvelous, they sat all day long and hashed over what had happened at the previous night’s séance, until Olcott felt surfeited.
Back in New York, he wrote up his observations in a fraud lawyer’s circumspect style by presenting grave eyewitness accounts of ectoplasmic forms—the giant Indian named Santum, an Indian squaw called Honto, and dozens of other phantom men, women and children. Although to Sun readers Olcott must have seemed prejudiced against the psychic movement, this was not the case. In spite of his claims to being an objective investigator, he secretly believed that the Eddy materializations “must be what they seemed, viz., the ‘spirits of the dead.’”15
Soon after the Sun piece appeared, the editor of the Daily Graphic proposed that Henry return to Chittenden with an artist to make a thorough investigation. Unhesitatingly, Olcott interrupted his law practice, and was back in Vermont by the seventeenth of September.
Upstate New York, the birthplace of Spiritualism, had been ripe for religious unorthodoxy since evangelical Christian revivals first sprung up in the early years of the century. In the spring of 1847, when two preadolescent Hydesville girls heard rapping which gave intelligent answers to questions, the match was set to the powder keg. Margaret and Kate Fox had picked up some thread of communication between this world and the next, and to many people the implications of personal immortality were staggering; the new religion spread rapidly to all parts of the country and eventually to Europe.
While some claimed that the Fox sisters produced the raps by snapping the joints of their toes,16 others clutched at Spiritualism because it seemed to provide answers the world desperately needed. The questions, basically, were these: Have my loved ones survived physical death as individuals with whom I can communicate? Will I survive? That the replies appeared to be affirmative filled a great psychic need for many spiritually restless people who could not accept the modern scientific explanation that God was no longer necessary. In nearly every town of any size in America, groups formed to invoke the denizens of unseen worlds and to devise methods whereby disembodied entities could communicate with the living. In addition to the unsophisticated raps experienced by the Fox sisters, there were tinklings of bells, flashes of light, tipping tables, levitating f
urniture and that was only the beginning. Soon people were receiving messages through planchettes, trumpets, automatic writing, alphabet rapping, slate writing, trance inspiration, and glossolalia— and to act as human channels for these varied communications there sprang up a remarkably large supply of mediums, clairvoyants and inspirational speakers.
Predictably the movement suffered wild fluctuations in support, ranging from spectacular accolades to vehement ridicule. It was inevitable, too, that the enthusiasm of the 1850s would give way to the excesses of a lunatic fringe, to exposures of fraud, and to the opposition of churches and some segments of the intellectual community. By the late 1870s only a hard-core remnant of believers remained, but in 1874, when Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, ex-farmer took a room at 123 East 16th Street, just off Irving Place, Spiritualism was front-page news. H.P.B. was still restlessly scanning her horizons in the hope of spying something interesting to do. Bored both with New York and with herself, she proceeded to chop off her hair to just below the ears. The result seems to have resembled a blond Afro, and in contrast to the elaborate coiffures of her day, she must have looked bizarre.
Her motto, that summer, was TRY, a subtle reminder that nothing was going to happen without effort. To be sure, she had been trying all along, but efforts had been confined to the realm of the impractical. Perhaps it was time to attempt something different.
Laying aside her gimmicks, she found a way of meeting the much-admired Andrew Jackson Davis, the first important figure in American Spiritualism and a man whose writings were respected throughout the world. Even though the “Poughkeepsie Seer” knew nothing about Helena, he accurately gauged her true worth and extended a gracious welcome. Born in 1826, Davis had received a total of five months’ schooling before being apprenticed to a Poughkeepsie, New York, shoemaker at the age of fifteen. Shortly afterward, when a tailor who had heard a series of lectures on “animal magnetism” succeeded in mesmerizing the boy, Davis’s psychic powers began to emerge. While in trance, the human body became transparent to him and he could observe each organ standing out clearly unless dimmed by disease; like Edgar Cayce a century later, he could diagnose illnesses of those standing next to him, as well as cases thousands of miles away. Aside from his medical work, he held trance conversations with Galen and Swedenborg, gave lectures tracing the evolution of the universe, described our solar system (including a fairly accurate description of the as-yet unidentified planet Neptune), and correctly portrayed the as-yet uninvented automobile, airplane and typewriter.
Davis’s trance revelations—”Harmonial Philosophy” he called his system—had been transcribed and published and would eventually fill twenty-six volumes. Doubtless H.P.B. had already read some of his works; there is no question that she read all of them before writing The Secret Doctrine because some of her concepts, especially those relating to the origin and evolution of worlds, are reminiscent of his ideas. Davis would influence her in other ways as well, but these would not be apparent for quite some time; she could see that he disdained séance rooms and the more gaudy trappings of Spiritualism, that he was a plain man with high moral objects: the advancement of the race by purification and self-control, a return to simple life, and the establishment of a brotherhood of humankind. These would be her objectives—someday. For the moment, however, the weird still lured.
Since her friendship with Davis satisfied her craving for intelligent companionship, she fell into the habit of visiting him nearly every day. She explained her dilemma of wanting to write but not quite knowing how to go about it, and she must also have been candid about her lack of money and prospects. Eager to be helpful, Davis told her about a Russian friend of his, the translator and publisher of his works in German. Alexander Nikolayevich Aksakov was a dedicated Spiritualist who recently had begun a monthly magazine devoted to the serious investigation of psychic phenomena, but since he had encountered trouble publishing such a periodical in Russia, he had established his editorial office in Leipzig. Possibly, Davis suggested, H.P.B. might be able to write for Psychische Studien either by contributing original articles or translating American authors who wrote on occult subjects, and he offered to write Aksakov on her behalf.
Around the same time that she made friends with Davis, H.P.B. also met a Russian businessman of Armenian extraction, Michael C. Betanelly. A native Georgian some ten or more years her junior,17 Betanelly had come to the United States in 1871 to improve his life and, hopefully, make a fortune. With headquarters in Philadelphia, he acted as American agent for a Tiflis import-export firm that exchanged goat skins, wool, Persian carpets and insecticides for U.S. machinery, hardware and patented goods. Although certain Theosophists have tried to paint Betanelly as “a peasant” who was “little better than a workman,”18 he was no such thing. A graduate of the Imperial University of St. Petersburg, he could not exactly be termed illiterate. Some of his letters written in English are slightly awkward in construction, but no more so than any person struggling in a foreign language, while his Russian correspondence is as fluent as could be wished. From everything known of him, admittedly not much, he seems to have been an intelligent, ambitious young man, not without his shrewd side, however.
There is a slight possibility that Helena may have known him in Tiflis because he would claim to be acquainted with members of the Witte family, but more likely they met for the first time in New York at a sentimental gathering of Russian emigrees, and after discovering they had mutual acquaintances back home, they fell into each other’s arms. Essentially Michael and Helena shared a common desire to make their marks in America, and at the very least, they shared a wish for a decent standard of living. It is obvious that there was some physical attraction, but just how deep an intimacy they formed at this time is not clear. Since the death of Agardi Metrovitch three years earlier, there had apparently been no men in her life, and at forty-three she still must have had a vigorous libido. She responded favorably to the handsome Michael Betanelly, and the fact that he was so much younger than she must have been tremendously flattering. For obvious reasons, she did not reveal her real age.
She still spent much of her time reading voraciously: books, newspapers and periodicals, and also in the leading Spiritualist journals: the Banner of Light, Religio -Philosophical Journal and the Spiritual Scientist. Since June all of these papers had been carrying stories about the Eddy brothers, some by enthusiastic tourists such as J. H. Randall of Clyde, Ohio, who rhapsodized, “Readers, you who can not believe my statements, go and see these things for yourself,”19 others by more discriminating observers who wondered why the Indian spirits did not speak but responded only by raps. Undoubtedly Helena read these articles, and she may also have seen Olcott’s piece in the Sun, but the possibilities had not yet jelled in her mind.
In the September 26 issue of the Religio-Philosophical Journal, however, there appeared an article so eye-catching that she could not possibly have overlooked it. The entire front page, plus part of an inside page, was devoted to a euphoric report headlined astounding wonders that stagger belief and bylined by Colonel Henry Steel Olcott. Sounding like a publicity agent for the Eddys, Olcott described the seances in terms generally reserved for the births of messiahs and other world-shaking events and he, too, encouraged visitors by printing travel directions to Vermont. All one had to do was take the New Haven, Hartford and Springfield Railroad to Springfield, Massachusetts, then the Connecticut River and Vermont Railroad to Rutland where the rest of the trip to Chittenden could be made by wagon. The rail fare from New York to Rutland cost eight dollars, the wagon ride two.
If Helena somehow missed the Religio-Philosophical Journal’s article, which is unlikely, she certainly saw Olcott’s Daily Graphic pieces that began to appear the same week. Suddenly Colonel Olcott, whoever he was, seemed to be the man of the hour.
There was something about the writer that intrigued Helena, a karmic tug some might say, certainly a sixth sense whispering that this was the man for whom she had waited forty-four ye
ars, Michael Betanelly notwithstanding. So potent was this sensation that she would later maintain a higher power had instructed her to make the trip to Chittenden20 for the express purpose of meeting Henry Steel Olcott. Accordingly, she packed her tobacco, a scarlet shirt such as the ones worn by Garibaldi’s soldiers, and, as we shall see, several other items that might prove useful at a country séance. On Tuesday, October 13, in the company of Madame Magnon, she set out for Chittenden to meet her destiny.
At noon the next day, Henry Olcott and the Graphic artist Kappes stood in the doorway of the Eddys’ dining hall and surveyed the luncheon crowd. A lover of good food and wine, Henry had suffered through a month of the Eddys’ bad cooking, not to mention having put up with the constant stream of cranks who descended on the farmhouse. Sweeping his eyes critically along the tables, he was jolted by the sight of an unusual-looking woman. “Her hair was then a thick blond mop, worn shorter than the shoulders, and it stood out from her head, silken-soft and crinkled to the roots, like the fleece of a Cotswold ewe. This and the red shirt were what struck my attention.” Both the Garibaldi shirt and the hairstyle were so outrageously anti-fashion that Olcott immediately pigeonholed her as an eccentric.
“Good gracious!” he remembered whispering to Kappes. “Look at that specimen, will you.” Boldly settling himself opposite H.P.B. and Madame Magnon, who were talking French, he proceeded to stare.
Helena, recognizing him at once, chose to pay no attention. After the meal, she and Magnon rose and went outside, where Helena began to roll a cigarette. Olcott followed them into the yard but Helena continued to ignore him, and it was not until she fumbled for a match that he saw his opening.
“Permettez moi, Madame,” he said, and lit her cigarette.