by Marion Meade
On December 15, the Sinnetts joined H.P.B. and Henry on a trip to Benares where they stayed at a house provided by the Maharajah of Vizianagram and visited a learned yogi, Majji, who made her home in a cave along the banks of the Ganges. Majji whispered in Henry’s ear that Madame’s body was being occupied by an important yogi—she was really a man. Henry could readily accept the idea, for he himself had often commented on Helena’s maleness, but he could not understand why the wise Majji kept saying that the man had been inside Madame for sixty-two years (Helena was forty-eight). They also met briefly with Swami Dayananda before returning to Allahabad for Christmas.
Alfred had been observing Helena, trying to decide “whether Madame Blavatsky really did, as I heard, possess the power of producing abnormal phenomena.” Nothing, he admitted, should have been simpler to ascertain, but after six weeks “the harvest of satisfaction I was enabled to obtain during this time was exceedingly small.”52 Of course she talked incessantly about the Brotherhood and favored the Sinnetts with a few demonstrations of raps, all of which were decidedly unspectacular. When Sinnett urged her to perform phenomena for scientists under test conditions, H.P.B. disdainfully refused, suggesting that the Brothers would regard such a feat as mere showing off.
Still, when Sinnett made it clear that he felt shortchanged, H.P.B. decided to toss one small scrap his way. In Benares, at the maharajah’s, they were sitting in the drawing room with Swami Dayananda and others after dinner and, Sinnett remembered, “suddenly three or four flowers— cut roses—fell in the midst of us.”53 Patience and Alfred were sufficiently impressed to become members of the Theosophical Society; the Swami, however, had only watched critically and next day, when Damodar asked him who had thrown the roses, Dayananda answered that it had not been Madame Blavatsky. Who? Damodar demanded. The Swami would say nothing more.
On December 30, learning of a train for Bombay whose second-class carriages were fitted with cushions, the Theosophists made their exit. At the station Helena realized she had left behind a shawl and angrily blamed it on Henry; her irrational anger, accompanied by a torrent of biting language, mortified the Sinnetts who were unaccustomed to public scenes and made their farewells with almost visible relief.
The first months of 1880 passed peacefully. Helena was busy editing the Theosophist, writing her series for Michael Katkov, for which she was being paid the elegant sum of fifty rubles, (five pounds in those days), per page, and translating Nikolay Grodekoff’s Through Afghanistan, which ran as a series in the Pioneer. Henry had more than enough to do lecturing and supervising the affairs of the burgeoning Society. It was again the hot season; sometimes after working all day and receiving visitors, they would stay up until 4 a.m to finish their tasks, having taken a midnight drive to get a breath of cool air. By this time Damodar was living with them. His family had made no objections, and, in fact, his father joined the Society and thought so highly of Madame that he would present her with a carriage and horse as a gift. Still, he did not take seriously his son’s ambition to become an adept, believing that once Damodar got this religion out of his system he would return to his normal life.
The view was shared by Damodar’s young wife, who had been married to him as a child but had seen little of him since he had encountered the Theosophists.
In March, H.P.B.’s peace was abruptly shattered by a severe, scornful letter from Swami Dayananda who enclosed his Theosophical Society diploma and ordered his name stricken from their membership rolls. Although the contents of his letter were never made public, the nature of his feelings were abundantly clear in subsequent public statements that referred to H.P.B. and Olcott as “atheists believing in spirits and witches.”54
H.P.B.’s chagrin at being unceremoniously dismissed by a man she had called an adept of her very own Brotherhood was overshadowed ten days later by the arrival of Emma and Alexis Coulomb. In the long run, the visit was to prove far more calamitous than the Swami’s animosity. The French consul at Galle, as well as other charitable persons, had taken up a collection for the Coulombs’ passages, and they arrived in Bombay on March 28 virtually penniless. As Emma recalled, they took a room at a seamy downtown hotel and had dinner, then in the evening caught a tram car to Girgaum Back Road. “As soon as Madame Blavatsky saw me she gave a loud cry of joy, and instantly asked us to take up our abode at the headquarters,”55 and she went on to report that they moved in the next day at noon. According to Henry, he agreed to let the couple stay at the house, but only until Alexis, a mechanic, could find work. In fact, Olcott went out of his way to secure for Alexis a machinist’s job in a cotton mill. But Alexis soon squabbled with the owner and was precipitously dismissed. “I found him a man very quick-tempered and hard to please in the matter of employers,” Henry said, “and as no other opening occurred, he and his wife just drifted along with us, without any definite plans as to the future.”56 Since Emma and Alexis were clearly trying to earn their keep, he did not fuss about two extra mouths to feed.
The Coulombs were a strange couple whose appearance and manner did not readily endear them to most people. After years of penury and ill health, Emma had become haggard and wrinkled, and she seems to have been habitually grim, undoubtedly as the result of worrying about their next meal. Alexis, with his glass eye, pasty complexion and black beard, was no more prepossessing and his propensity for surliness did little to lighten his nature. He assured H.P.B. that he was accomplished in carpentry, a rare skill in India, and could repair almost anything. Since Anglo-Indian residents were forever complaining about the shortage of European-trained handymen, it should have been easy for him to find work, but for some reason, he felt disinclined to look.
From the outset of their visit, Helena must have seen that Alexis was content to let his wife play the decision-making role. While treating Alexis with deference and kindness, she directed her amicable overtures toward Emma. After warning her not to talk about their lives in Cairo, she went out of her way to be hospitable and, in fact, seems actually to have enjoyed Emma’s company. Now that she was rarely even speaking to Rosa Bates, it was a comforting change to have a woman with whom she could gossip. Moreover, it occurred to her that the Coulombs might turn out to be extremely useful. One evening, Emma remembered, H.P.B. took her arm and said, “Look here, run and tell the colonel that you have seen a figure in the garden.”
“Where is the figure?” Emma asked.
“Never mind, run and tell him so. We shall have some fun.”
Emma did as she was told, but to her amazement the colonel took her seriously and declared that she had probably seen one of the Brothers. Emma professed to be as mystified by Madame’s contriving such a lie as by the colonel’s taking it for the truth. Nevertheless, she continued to perform similar services, including the embroidering of names on handkerchiefs, simply from an “earnest desire to please her in everything.”57
Temporarily reassured in the matter of Emma, Helena turned her attention to a trip that she and Henry had been considering for some time. Olcott had been corresponding with several Buddhist priests in Ceylon, who urged them to visit the island. There was much to do before their departure, including the readying of several advance issues of the Theosophist, and neither he nor H.P.B. had time to worry about the Coulombs. To save expenses, it was decided that H.P.B., Henry and Wimbridge would make the journey while Rosa and Emma remained behind to look after the house. “As Miss Bates was a spinster and Mme. Coulomb an experienced housewife,”58 Henry decided to make Emma officially responsible, although it seems reasonable to assume that it was H.P.B. who urged Rosa’s demotion in favor of Emma. Rosa, smoldering, said nothing. On May 7, when the travelers embarked on the SS Ellora, the party included not only Wimbridge but Babula, Damodar, and five other Hindu members of the Society.
The next months were among the most relaxed and gratifying that Madame would spend in the East. Everywhere they went, the Theosophists were greeted by enormous crowds and showered with gifts.
For three m
onths we went from triumph to triumph—processions headed by Buddhist high priests and elephants—I rode a coffee-coloured one!— garlands and triumphal arches every ten steps along the road from one side of Ceylon to the other; women from the central provinces decked or rather clothed with a diamond necklace for only garment; processions of great Cingalese ladies dressed in the fashion of Dutch ladies of the Middle Ages coming to prostrate themselves before me.59
To H.P.B., who was only truly satisfied when being adored on a grand scale, “it was like a dream!”60 At a temple in Galle, on May 25, Helena and Olcott formally became Buddhists, a rather odd step for two people who had heretofore presented themselves as staunch Hindus. This formal and flamboyant rejection of Christianity by two Europeans received wide publicity, which may account for the enthusiastic reception they received from the flattered Cingalese. During their stay, seven branches of the Theosophical Society were organized, and Henry encouraged the Buddhists to establish their own denominational schools.
Their return to India was marked by a rough passage during which almost all of the party were miserably seasick. In his diary Olcott noted that during the trip Helena had gained eight pounds, bringing her to 237 pounds, while he shed 15 pounds and Damodar was down to 90. “It rained cats and dogs on the last day of our return voyage,”61 Henry also recorded, but the downpour was mild compared to the storm waiting for them at home: “Arriving house found a hell of a row on the carpet between Dame Coulomb and Spin. Bates.”62 Dagger drawn, Rosa said that Emma had tried to poison her and truculently demanded that both Emma and Alexis be expelled from the house at once; Emma, of course, denied everything. Charges and counter-charges flew thickly back and forth as Olcott tried to arbitrate the quarrel and H.P.B., furiously chain-smoking, threw in an occasional incendiary remark that caused tempers to sputter and blaze. Wimbridge managed to help Henry negotiate a temporary cease-fire, and everyone went to bed exhausted.
The squabble could not have come as a surprise to Helena because she had been hearing snatches of it all summer. Rosa, furious that a newcomer should have been given charge of the household, as well as being made editor of the Theosophist, had called Emma a meddler. Emma had been the first to agree, but H.P.B. assured her that she was nothing of the kind. “You are one of my ‘Assistant Secretaries,’ “ she had written on June 16. “You are my friend— and that is more.”63
For two weeks the battle raged, with H.P.B. taking her friend’s side, Wimbridge supporting Rosa, and Olcott teetering helplessly in the middle but growing angrier every day. He had begged Helena not to bring Rosa to India, but she had bullied him into it and in the end he had yielded to “her presumably superior occult foresight.” Now, through no fault of his own, he “had to assume the disagreeable task of forcing Miss Bates out of the Society. This was always my lot: H.P.B. made the rows and I had to take the kicks and clear out the intruders.”64 He suggested that the Society purchase Rosa a steamship ticket to New York; at first she agreed and the booking was made, but she changed her mind. Within a few days H.P.B. and Henry had abandoned the dining room to Wimbridge and Bates and began eating their meals in H.P.B.’s room. “Hell of an explosion between Rosa and us,” Henry told his diary on August 6. “This settles her hash; she must go.”65 The situation grew steadily worse until none of the household was on speaking terms; Wimbridge and Bates moved their belongings into a separate section of the bungalow and actually bricked up the connecting doorway. The tension grew so deadly that it began to affect Helena’s health and Olcott recalled that she “fretted herself into a fever.”66
It was not only the feud that agitated her. During Helena’s and Henry’s absence, many of their new members had either lost interest in the Society or resigned, and she had also been greatly shocked to learn of Moolji Thackersey’s unexpected death. After their remarkable success in Ceylon, it did not seem possible that the Society could lose ground, but that was precisely what appeared to be happening. She had crossed off the Society in the United States; Judge had enough trouble supporting himself and Ella on his legal earnings and had sent Madame letters to this effect, but she had no encouragement to give him. A few months earlier, she had written to a French correspondent that “at Lhasa, in Tibet, another branch is being formed under the direction of initiated Lamas. Within a few years you will see how our Society will be honored and sought after.”67 Of course she had yet to meet a Tibetan lama. She had felt certain that the Society would continue to expand; now, she was suddenly plunged into a fit of doubt. She drew closer to Henry, for he had the knack of pretending cheerfulness he did not feel, and together they commiserated over this kitchen row. It was pitifully childish and not worth brooding over; it would pass like a summer cloud.
On August 12, Wimbridge and Rosa left the house at last. Sometime before the separation, Olcott had used his personal influence with a Parsi friend to obtain capital so that Wimbridge might establish a furniture and interior decoration business. It was not as if he and Rosa were going off to starve, but still, H.P.B. was shaken by this transformation of old friends into enemies. She also felt that her charity in “boarding, lodging, washing, and in many instances CLOTHING Mr. Wimbridge and Miss Bates for over 18 months”68 was being ill repaid.
As it happened, on the very morning that the enemy decamped, she and Henry received an invitation to visit the Sinnetts at Simla. The letter, Olcott remembered, “was like a draught of sweet water,”69 and Helena, too impatient to wait on the mails, rushed to telegraph their acceptance. Nervous depression suddenly gone, she rattled joyfully about the house, then dragged Olcott with her to purchase a new outfit for her “debut” in the British summer capital.
She would have set out for Simla the very next day, but there was still work to be done: upcoming issues of the magazine, which Damodar would supervise, had to be finalized, and Emma, who would be left in charge of the house, had to be given her instructions. As a result of the recent imbroglio, the balance of power between Helena and the Coulombs had shifted dramatically. Thanks to H.P.B.’s sacrifice of Wimbridge and Rosa, Emma had been saved from becoming a charity case; Emma and Alexis were more than aware of what they now owed Madame.
Around this time, Helena moved the couple into a bedroom directly above Henry’s office. On the twenty-third of August, when she was expecting a visit from the distinguished Dewan Sankariah of Cochin, she came to Emma’s room to ask her to saw a hole in the floor, pointing out exactly where it should be made. The task completed, it was now possible for Emma to slide the entire length of her arm through the hole until it touched the ceiling cloth (used in India to prevent spiders and insects from dropping down one’s neck) in the colonel’s office. On Madame’s instructions, Emma cut a slit in the cloth that was wide enough to slip an envelope through. During the meeting with the Dewan, Henry was startled to see an envelope fall through the air and whack a tin box on his desk. Opening it, he found a portrait of a yogi; he had last owned it in New York and believed it lost. A few moments later, a portrait of Swami Dayananda sailed down. As Helena had hoped, the Dewan was wide-eyed with astonishment.
Later, Emma felt sheepish about her deception of Colonel Olcott; she justified her actions by saying that Madame
told me that she did these things to divert the Colonel’s mind from certain painful occurrences that he had experienced while in America, and that if she had not got over him by these means he certainly would have destroyed himself, and also she added that she had prevented him from doing so by climbing through a window into his room when she found him with a revolver in his hands, ready to commit suicide.70
If the thought of Madame Blavatsky hauling her 237 pounds through a window made Emma smile, she managed to suppress her amusement; for all she knew the seemingly amicable colonel might very well be secretly contemplating suicide. At that point, Emma’s livelihood depended on the Madame, and pushing letters through ceiling clothes seemed a trivial price to pay. A few days later, when Helena brought her three handkerchiefs and some blue silk,
Emma embroidered “A. P. Sinnett” on each of them and did not even bother to ask for explanations.
II
The Mahatmas
On August 27, H.P.B. left Bombay on the evening mail train with Henry and Babula. They stopped briefly in Allahabad and then took another train to Meerut, where they planned to try to patch up their differences with Swami Dayananda. The heat was almost unbearable, and Helena sweated as Henry debated with Dayananda, mainly about the powers of yogis, prodding the Swami about H.P.B., without mentioning her by name. Was it possible, he asked, for a person to possess occult powers and perform supernatural phenomena without having submitted to the disciplines of yoga? Only, the Swami answered carefully, if they had practiced Hatha Yoga in a previous lifetime. Satisfied, Henry changed the subject.
Once again, Helena felt shut out. On one occasion, she seems to have got close enough to the Swami for a brief conversation about Buddhist and Brahmanist literature. The knowledge that Western scholars had of Eastern religion, said the Swami, amounted to rejected snippets from the sacred books; the mlecchas (foreigners) knew nothing about it and, furthermore, would have a long wait for enlightenment. The true ancient literature was not lost to the world but hidden in secret crypts in the Himalayas. Storing away this interesting idea, Helena occupied herself writing letters to the Times of India and the Indian Mirror in an effort to counteract the vicious gossip that the dismissed Wimbridge had been blabbing to the press. If Helena had counted on her former friend dropping quietly out of sight, she was very much mistaken, for he seemed to take pleasure in denigrating both the Society and Madame. “Brotherhood and justice,” Wimbridge charged, “are mere ideas in the Theosophical Society.”71 In his opinion, it was this hypocrisy which accounted for the flood of recent resignations. Indeed, he went on, more members would have resigned if not for H.P.B.’s “hasty flight to Simla.” Although the article was not without some validity, Helena, when she pasted the clipping in her scrapbook, sprinkled the margins with comments such as “three lies in six lines,” “the biggest fib,” and so forth. The Theosophical quarrel, she pointed out to the Indian Mirror, was “a purely personal and domestic variance having no bearing whatever upon the question of Theosophy and of no importance to the public.”72