by Marion Meade
. . .
If you compromise me before Lane-Fox, Hartmann and the others— ah well. I shall never return to Adyar, but will remain here on in London where I will prove by phenomena more marvelous still that they are true and that our Mahatmas exist, for there is one here at Paris and there will be also in London. And when I have proved this, where will the trap-doors be then?
. . .
Ah my dear friend how miserable and foolish is all this! Come! I have no ill-will against you. I am so much accustomed to terror and suffering that nothing astonishes me. But what truly astonishes me is to see you who are such an intelligent woman doing evil for its own sake, and running the risk of being swallowed up in the pit which you have digged— yourself the first [victim]! Pshaw! Believe both of you that it is a friend who speaks... Undo then the evil which you have unwittingly done. I am sure of this—[you are] carried away by your nerves, your sickness, your sufferings and the anger which you have roused in the board of Trustees who annoy me more than they annoy you. But if you choose to go on disgracing me for no good to yourself— do it—and may your Christ and God repay you
After all, I sign myself, with anguish of heart which you can never comprehend
Forever your friend, H. P. Blavatsky.16
Emma might scream her head off in Bombay but she would never take Koot Hoomi and Morya from Madame. The Mahatmas’ existence did not depend on Alexis’s sliding doors and Emma’s sewing abilities. Emma, who always babbled about Christianity, would see that God, if he existed, would not reward her for repaying kindness with evil. In the long run, Emma would suffer.
Meanwhile, H.P.B. braced herself to contend with Henry. The news from Adyar caused the first of many stormy scenes between them and inflicted wounds that would never heal. Henry knew he could not be certain that Emma was lying, since he had always suspected collusion between Helena and her; now, more severe than sympathetic, he demanded that Madame obtain a satisfactory retraction from the Coulombs. Helena held firm to her claim that Emma was mad and exhibited battered feelings over Henry’s lack of trust. By the next day Henry was reassessing the situation calmly and wrote to Emma, giving his view of the matter. Distressed to hear of the unpleasantness, he believed that he must speak his mind plainly: “The Theosophical movement does not rest at all for its permanency upon phenomena, and that even if you could prove that every supposed phenomena ever witnessed by me or any one else were false it would not alter my opinion one iota as to the benefit to be derived by the world from our society’s work.” As for Emma’s stories about trickery and trapdoors, he refused to believe that she could utter such falsehoods until she repeated them to his face. No one on earth could harm the Society, “which rests upon the everlasting rock of truth,” and he went on to tell her emphatically that while he lived and fought for the Cause, “it will be impossible to overthrow it.”17
Through mutual but probably unspoken consent, Henry and Helena tried to put Adyar from their thoughts and go about their business, although H.P.B. must surely have been far more distressed than she let on. Three days later, anxious to proceed on his commission for the Cingalese Buddhists, Henry left for London with Mohini. Given Helena’s overriding need to convince him that Emma lied, what happened next was not only probable but predictable. Somewhere between Paris and the Channel, as the two men sat alone in the railway carriage, an envelope suddenly dropped from the ceiling. After some advice on Henry’s deportment in London, Koot Hoomi warned, “Do not be surprised at anything you may hear frorn Adyar. You have harbored a traitor and an enemy under your roof for years.”18 In this instance there can be no doubt that Mohini acted as special-delivery carrier, and one wonders what exquisite bait persuaded him to go along with the scheme.
That same evening, Helena and Judge sat together in the parlor of the Paris apartment and spoke nostalgically of the Lamasery and the friends they had once shared in New York. The room was cold because Judge could not get the fireplace to work properly and two-thirds of the heat was going up the chimney. Helena shivered uncomfortably. “Judge,” she suddenly said, “the Master asks me to try and guess what would be the most extraordinary thing he could order now.”
“That Mrs. Kingsford should be re-elected president of the London branch,” Judge offered.
“Try again.”
“That H.P.B. should be ordered to go to London.”19
Correct, and furthermore she was ordered to go over on the next evening’s 7:45 express, to remain in London only twenty-four hours, and then to return immediately to Paris. Judge recalled that she seemed to dislike the order “awfully” and fumed that she would look a fool: after all her refusals to come to London, Sinnett and the others would think it was done for effect and when Olcott saw her, he would certainly begin swearing. Still, the London situation was serious, and the Masters knew what they were about. The following evening Judge escorted her to the station and settled her in a coach with her overnight bag.
On the evening of April 7, the London Lodge of the Theosophical Society prepared to conduct its annual election of officers, an event that promised to be enlivened by acrimony; for that reason the benches at the Lincoln’s Inn meeting hall were unusually crowded. Seated on the platform, Olcott and Mohini made such a remarkable contrast that the audience could not help murmuring over them—the older man with his balding head and long white beard, the younger with his long black hair and small Indian cap.
By midevening, Henry was still having little success adjudicating the differences between Alfred Sinnett (pro-Mahatma) and Anna Kingsford (anti-Mahatma). Finally, when he proposed giving Anna a charter for her own separate branch called the Hermetic Theosophical Society, she accepted; elections for the London Lodge proceeded. A barrister, Gerard B. Finch, was elected to succeed Anna as president, and Alfred Sinnett was chosen vice-president. Anna, however, continued to show her disgust for the proceedings by interrupting every few minutes. When Olcott showed himself unable to handle her, the members got bored with the bickering and began whispering among themselves. Suddenly Mohini Chatterji sprang from the platform and leapfrogged toward the back of the room.
Several persons present that night wrote accounts of the event, but no two agreed. According to a new member named Charles W. Leadbeater, a stout woman in black slipped into the rear of the room and seated herself next to him. After listening to the wrangling for a few minutes, she slowly rose, bellowing what Leadbeater likened to a military command, “Mohini!”, at which signal Mohini hurtled headlong down the aisle and threw himself at her feet. Members began craning their necks, and some even climbed onto the benches to get a better view. A moment later Sinnett careened after Mohini and announced in a portentous voice: “Let me introduce to the London Lodge as a whole—Madame Blavatsky!”20 and led her to the platform.
Leadbeater’s eyes were popping. “The scene was indescribable,” he reported. “The members, wildly delighted and yet half-awed at the same time, clustered around our great Founder, some kissing her hand, several kneeling before her, and two or three weeping hysterically.”21 Evidently everyone, even those who had not been rehearsed, played their parts with gusto, awarding Helena the supreme pleasure of upstaging the divine Anna. Afterward, when Anna and Edward Maitland came over to be introduced, Helena “preemptorily bade us to shake hands with Mr. Sinnett, and let bygones be bygones for the sake of universal brotherhood.” Maitland wrote that he also remembered how “she fixed her great eyes on us, as if to compel us by their magnetism to obey her behest.”22 Anna, unimpressed, stared back at Helena in defiant amusement.
Archibald Keightley, who claimed to have been sitting next to Madame, remembered meeting her the next day at the Sinnetts; he had been told that she had arrived at Charing Cross Station without knowing the address of the meeting place, that she had set out by foot and “followed my occult nose.”23 What Keightley did not realize, however, was that Helena never walked anywhere, except, as Olcott remarked, to the dining table or the bathroom. And now, though her robe c
oncealed her edemic legs, even that small amount of exercise had become too much for her.
A week later Helena was back in Paris, blind panic alternating with rage at the thought of Emma Coulomb and what she might do. Appraising the situation, H.P.B. convinced herself that she could handle Emma, if she only kept calm. In any case, it was Damodar on whose shoulders her fate mainly rested; there was nothing she herself could do from Paris except to send him frantic letters of instruction. She had already ordered him to take Emma up to Ootacamund, where she would be isolated from Hartmann and the others; perhaps at Ooty the deranged woman would come to her senses and realize she had nothing to gain by betraying Madame. And it would not hurt to give Emma a taste of the luxuries she might enjoy if she remained Madame’s friend. Emma, in the last analysis, was a solid sort.
What weighed most heavily upon H.P.B. were the letters she had written to Emma, letters whose contents she feverishly tried to recall. She could not have been careless enough to have incriminated herself, could she? After her long, arduous struggle to success, after all the sweat and suffering and lies of the last ten years, it was simply not possible that a disturbed woman with a bundle of letters could ruin her life. If she had believed in God, she might have prayed; as it was, she stole off one day to a Russian Orthodox church and “stood there, with my mouth wide open” for in her mind’s eye she saw, not an unseen deity, not even her invisible Mahatmas, but something far more unexpected. She had the sensation of “standing before my own dear mother,” and she reflected on the number of years since Helena Andreyevna von Hahn had died, and how she would never have recognized her fat daughter now. Afterward, leaving the church, she laughed and told herself that “my brains lack their seventh stopper,”24 that she was silly and inconsistent for allowing herself to be overcome by the sight of a Russian church.
But the church gave her no solace, nor did her Masters. In the end, she almost succeeded in convincing herself that the crisis would pass; Emma would somehow be pacified, and if not, well, it did not matter much. The letters had to be harmless, she felt certain. Consequently, when she heard from Subba Row advising her to tell him if she had ever written compromising letters and, if so, to buy them, she answered that she had never written anything she feared to see published. Emma lied, she stated firmly, and could do whatever she pleased with the letters. At this moment, Helena had only two choices: to instruct Subba Row to buy up the letters, thereby admitting her guilt, or to outface Emma. In the sobering days ahead, she sensed that whatever decision she made, she would regret enormously.
Spring had come to Paris, but Helena barely noticed. She rarely left the apartment except to attend meetings of the Paris Theosophical Society at Lady Caithness’s luxurious apartment in the rue de Grammont, or at Emile de Morsier’s home at 71 Claude Bernard. Even these evenings she found to be frivolous as well as tedious and was just as satisfied to remain at home, which was merely boring. Judge’s gloomy presence did nothing to boost her morale: when the man was not mooning about the apartment, his conversation turned obsessively to a rich American medium, Laura Holloway, who was expected in Europe momentarily; Mrs. Holloway, he repeated, was a genuine seer, as well as the purest person he had ever known, and he bet his head to a lemon she would make a superb successor to H.P.B. Very soon, Helena reached the breaking point: “O my God, if I shall only find in her A SUCCESSOR, how glad I will PEG OUT!”25 and she meant every word. In the hope of seeing somebody’s face beside Judge’s, she placed a notice in the Matin announcing that she would be pleased to receive at home anyone interested in the Theosophical movement.
But it was not strangers she wanted to see. Ever since she had arrived in Paris she had been writing almost daily to Odessa, imploring Vera and Nadyezhda to visit her. Perhaps it was the death of Rostislav that suddenly made her aware of mortality; she ached to see her family again; she would never return to Russia, probably would never come to Europe again, and this would be the last chance for a meeting before she died. To be sure, the journey would be expensive and neither Nadyezhda nor the again-widowed Vera were well off, but “my dear, my sweet one, don’t you bother about money. What is money? Let it be switched!” Recently Michael Katkov had asked her to do more articles and, if that didn’t work, she was sure that somehow she could get the money from Olcott. Since she would pay the two women’s rail fares, they could not use money as an excuse for not coming: “If for no other reason, come for the sake of the fun and see how I am worshipped as a kind of idol; how in spite of my fearful protests all sorts of Duchesses, Countesses, and ‘Miladis’ of Albion kiss my hands, calling me their saviour... You will see for yourself how they carry on about me… ”26 The aunt and the sister would see that they now could be proud of the prodigal daughter.
In the very last days of April Helena finally had a letter from Vera saying that she and Nadyezhda would arrive on May 12. H.P.B. was too excited to think of work; when Sinnett wondered why he had ceased to hear from Koot Hoomi, she told Patience to inform her husband there would be no more Mahatma letters for a while: “I am strictly forbidden by both Masters to serve henceforth as a postman.”27 Instead of writing, she decided to take up the overly zealous invitation of Count Gaston and Countess Marguerite d’Ad-hemar to be their guest at Enghien. Now that plans for the family visit were firm, Helena left hurriedly for Villa Croisac, which turned out to be an easy fifteen-minute trip by train from Paris. The Countess, born in Cincinnati, Ohio, was different from many of H.P.B.’s new friends, in that she liked Helena for herself, rather than her phenomena; Madame spoke warmly of her as “so nice and unpretentious.”28 Relaxing at Enghien, she continued to plead with Vera, “For God’s sake, do not always change your mind; do not kill me. Give me this greatest and only happiness in the end of my life. I am waiting and waiting and waiting for you, my own ones, with an impatience of which you can have no idea.”29
It was at Enghien that another chicken was seen to be coming home to roost: Charles Massey sent Helena a copy of the Mahatma letter he had received from “Ski” in 1879 and risked her embarrassment by asking why she had asked Mary Hollis Billing to place it in the Society’s minute book. H.P.B. was hard put to contrive a reasonable answer, and in fact failed to do so, probably because her mind was on her relatives. She told Massey that the harmless lines of the letter were genuine and that the remainder was an anonymous forgery. Incredibly enough, she credited Henry Olcott with the idea of having Mary deliver it via the minute book. Madame Blavatsky’s method of dealing with the man was laughable, and Massey greeted it in kind. By this point, Helena had probably ceased to care what Massey did or said; compared to Emma he was as insignificant as a buzzing mosquito.
Shifting back to the rue Notre Dame des Champs in early May, H.P.B. continued to count the days until her family arrived, but now there was no restraining her impatience. It was this anticipation of Russia, of her past, that prompted her to strike up a friendship with a Russian man who appeared unexpectedly at her door one afternoon.
Vsevolod Solovyov was spending the spring of 1884 in Paris as a tonic for what he called “sick nerves.” The eldest son of the eminent historian Serguey Solovyov, the brother of the celebrated philosopher Vladimir Solovyov, he had taken his law degree from the University of Moscow and then abruptly turned to journalism and historical novels. His books were respectable commercial successes but could scarcely be called great literature, and, in comparison with his brother and father, Solovyov must have felt crass. At the age of thirty-five, his life and career appeared to be at a standstill, and it was in this depressed state that he came to Paris. Now he spent lonely days in the Bibliotheque Nationale reading works on the occult and lackadaisically planning his next novel, which he vaguely envisioned as dealing with the supernatural. He had read, for example, From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan in the newspaper Russky Vyestnik and greatly admired the stories of “Radda Bai,” whom he knew to be H. P. Blavatsky.
Later Solovyov would claim that he called on H.P.B. one afternoon a
fter reading her announcement in the Matin, but the truth was more complex, and not the sort of story he wished publicized. Since arriving in the city, he had been hearing about Madame and her famous Theosophical Society from Justine Glinka, a member of the Paris branch, who happened to be his sister-in-law and former mistress. “Quite electrified” at the prospect of meeting a Russian seeress, he arrived at 46 rue Notre Dame des Champs expecting to see a line of carriages outside the door and solemn visitors crowding the drawing room. Not only was there not a single carriage in sight, but he was admitted to an empty apartment by Babula, “a slovenly figure in an Oriental turban,” and rudely told to wait.
Solovyov remembered his first impression of Helena as a woman whose “plain, old, earthy-coloured face struck me as repulsive; but she fixed on me the gaze of her great, rolling, pale blue eyes, and in these wonderful eyes, with their hidden power, all the rest was forgotten.” She greeted him so affectionately that after fifteen minutes he was talking to her as if she were an old friend and “all her homely coarse appearance actually began to please me.” It was not idle curiosity that had brought him, he confided; he had been studying occult literature and had come for serious answers to serious questions. At once H.P.B. snowed him with a breathless sales plug for the Theosophical Society and the Mahatmas and then called in Mohini. “Madame Blavatsky raised her hand, and Mohini bowed himself to the earth and almost crawled as though to receive her blessing.” When Solovyov tried to shake Mohini’s hand, he shrank back and said that he could not; H.P.B. explained that the ascetic Mohini was not permitted to shake hands with a man or look at a woman.