Madame Blavatsky

by Marion Meade

  Referred to by Theosophists as the French letter, the document is written in French by Koot Hoomi, although it does not bear his signature. On the lower lefthand corner of the envelope, Nadyezhda wrote in Russian, “Received at Odessa November 7, about Lelinka—probably from Tibet— November 11, 1870,” and the letter itself reads:

  To the Honourable, Most Honourable Lady—

  Nadyejda Andreewna Fadeew

  Odessa

  The noble relations of Mad. H. Blavatsky have no cause whatsoever for grief. Their daughter and niece has not left this world at all. She is living, and desires to make known to those whom she loves that she is well and quite happy in the distant and unknown retreat which she has selected for herself. She has been very ill, but is so no longer; for under the protection of the Lord Sangyas (Buddha) she has found devoted friends who guard her physically and spiritually. The ladies of her house should therefore remain tranquil. Before 18 new moons shall have risen, she will return to her family.54

  In 1870, it will be remembered, Helena was living in Odessa with Agardi Metrovitch.

  It is difficult to follow Nadyezhda’s rationale for participating in the con. She was, to begin with, a confirmed Christian, who looked askance at religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism; on more than one occasion, she had called Helena’s Mahatmas devils, probably because she thought them to be hallucinations. And yet, in the end, she lied for them. During the six weeks in Paris, Helena must have convinced her aunt of the necessity for an authentic Koot Hoomi document predating her arrival in India. Such a piece of evidence would prove she spoke the truth and Emma Coulomb lied; and, indeed, for many Theosophists, even today, the French letter is considered proof positive of Helena’s sincerity. Ironically, it failed to convince either Henry Olcott, who did not even mention the letter in his memoirs, or Alfred Sinnett, who wrote Madame Blavatsky’s biography without a single reference to it.

  II

  London

  When the time for parting came, H.P.B. could not bear to be left behind and decided to start for London two hours before her sister and aunt were due to depart for Russia. As a result, everyone came to the Gare du Nord to see her off. That day her feet were especially swollen, and by the time they reached the station, she could only manage wobbling down the platform on Vera’s arm. Tension was making Vera crabby, and when she began an angry tirade against the all-powerful Mahatmas for not alleviating her sister’s suffering, H.P.B. snapped that the Masters did not interfere with karma. When she could stand no more of Vera’s needling, she drew herself up and glanced over her shoulder. “Who touched me on the shoulder?” she demanded of Vera. “Did you see a hand?”

  No one, of course, had noticed a hand, but their attention was immediately captured by Helena who, brushing aside Vera’s arm, zigzagged briskly ahead on her own. “So now this is an answer to you, Vera,” she cried vehemently. “You have been abusing them for their lack of desire to help me, and this moment I saw the hand of the Master. Look how I walk now.”55 Striding all the way to the railway carriage and yanking herself unaided into the carriage, she loudly assured everyone that the pain had gone.

  Only after the train left the station did she begin to sob in agony, but, luckily, some kind French people in the compartment saw to it that she was taken care of.

  After spending that night in Boulogne, she continued to feel shaky. Annoyed that Olcott had not met her, desperately needing attention, she spent the rest of the trip fantasizing that a delegation of Theosophists would suddenly materialize and carry her off the steamer; she would be “triumphantly brought to London” where the crowds at Charing Cross would frighten her to death “by falling down before me as if I had been an idol.”56

  Helena had not really expected Henry to appear at Boulogne. When he had written that she should not bother coming to London but should directly go on to Germany for a rest, she had been obliged to make her own travel arrangements. Feeling unloved, she had wondered if she would be in the way at Francesca Arundale’s and had offered to take a hotel room, but Francesca would not hear of it.

  Francesca Arundale, a moon-faced woman with tightly coiled thin hair and tiny spectacles perched on the bridge of her nose, was typical of the upper-class Englishwomen whose vacant lives were satisfied by pursuing mystic causes. A former Spiritualist and friend of Charles Massey, Mary Hollis Billing and Emily Kislingbury, Arundale had drifted first to the Allan Kardec reincarnationists, then to Anna Kingsford’s select coterie, and finally had anchored in the exciting harbor of Theosophy. Proselytizing for the Society became a full-time occupation, and her home at 77 Elgin Crescent, Notting Hill, like the Sinnetts’ new home in Ladbroke Gardens, soon became a gathering place for London Theosophists. Francesca lived with her mother Mary and her six-year-old nephew, George, whom she had adopted after her sister died in childbirth. According to Isabelle de Steiger’s gossipy memoirs, George was in frail health due to some inherited family ailment, and Francesca had resolved never to marry in order to devote her life to rearing him; after she was converted to Theosophy, she determined to dedicate his life as well to the service of the Mahatmas.

  While the Arundale home was not overly large or luxurious, it was more than comfortable and provided Helena with a convenient base of operations. Francesca, having rashly promised to place the household at H.P.B.’s disposal, soon found her guest to be more than she had bargained for; swearing, for instance, took getting used to. So far as Helena was concerned, Francesca had no cause for complaint since she had been given ample warning of her guest’s eccentricities. Unphased, Madame proceeded to unpack her silver samovar, dress Babula in fresh white turban and dress, and make herself thoroughly at home.

  During those first days in London, H.P.B. found that the main topic of conversation among her friends was the Society for Psychical Research, a group that had genuinely excited her when its formation was announced two years earlier. At the time she had thought wonderful the idea of an organization devoted to scientific investigation of paranormal phenomena; in fact she had rashly called the S.P.R. “our sister association”57 and offered her help in any future project. Among the founders and early members of the S.P.R. were men who happened to be Fellows of the British Theosophical Society, Stainton Moses, Charles Massey, and Frederic Myers, and to H.P.B. the psychics must have seemed like an offshoot of her own Society. “Let the London savants but tell us what they want done,” she had editorialized in an 1882 issue of Theosophist, “and we will take care of the rest.”58 She had not then divined that Massey and Moses would turn against her, nor did it occur to her that someday the S.P.R. would investigate the Theosophical Society.

  During its first two years, the Society for Psychical Research had drawn into its ranks scientists and scholars, had held staid meetings, and done relatively little in the way of actual experimentation. However, with the arrival of Henry Olcott and Mohini Chatterji in the spring of 1884, the group could not ignore the rumors regarding occult letters and astral appearances by the invisible Brothers who directed the Theosophical Society. Since a few of its members were still Theosophists, it was only natural for the S.P.R. to consider the possibilities. Accordingly, on May 2, 1884, the S.P.R. appointed a committee to take evidence from the visiting Theosophists and to delve into four areas: “astral appearances” of living men, transportation of physical substances by “occult” means, the “precipitation” of letters, and “occult” sounds and voices.

  As for Madame Blavatsky, her nomadic life and Spiritualist background appeared subversive to the S.P.R. committee. One of its members, Frank Podmore, although he had not actually read Isis Unveiled, accepted the judgment of competent persons who had and who described it as “only a chaotic apocalypse of ignorance.” Moreover, he had not been especially impressed with the Mahatmas’ reputed ability to transport objects phenomenally or with Koot Hoomi. The Master, he thought, “if a saint and scholar, was something less than a gentleman.”59

  According to Podmore, the S.P.R. launched its inq
uiry “led away by no craving for mysticism, nor buoyed up by the hope of introducing into Europe the lost secrets of Oriental magic,”60 nor of proving Madame Blavatsky a fraud. Rather, the claims of the Theosophists happened to be analogous to cases of telepathic communication and spontaneous apparitions that the S.P.R. had already been investigating in England. “It did, indeed, seem to some of us probable that the alleged physical marvels would prove to be fraudulent,”61 Podmore admitted, but on the other hand it was not impossible that they might prove legitimate.

  On May 11, a self-confident Henry Olcott had his first sitting with the Committee. There was, he wrote, “entire cordiality and unsuspicious friendliness on our part; an equally apparent sympathy on theirs.”62 When Frederic Myers and Herbert Stack asked him when he had first seen a Mahatma, Henry happily described the incident in New York when Master Morya had appeared for a chat and disappeared as if by magic; and as an attorney who appreciated the value of evidence, he had even brought with him the silk turban. Proudly displaying it to the committee, he was more than a little indignant to notice them smiling.

  Myers asked mildly, “I wish to see on what grounds you think it impossible that this was a living Hindu who left the apartment by ordinary means.”

  “In the first place,” Henry exclaimed, “I never saw a living Hindu before I arrived in London on my way to India.” Rattled, he apparently forgot about Moolji Thackersey, whom he had met several years prior to the astral appearance of Morya, as well as his correspondence with Hurrychund Chintamon and Swami Dayananda; consequently, he proceeded to insist that “I had no correspondence with anyone until then, and no knowledge of any living Hindu who could have visited me in America!”63

  Myers and Stack seemed to accept his word and stopped smiling, and the examination continued without further incident. When Mohini was questioned on June 10, Stack zeroed in on the alleged astral appearance of Koot Hoomi at Adyar, inquiring how Mohini managed to recognize the Mahatma. Could the figure not have been anyone?

  “I had seen his portrait several times before,” Mohini replied.

  “Had you ever seen him in the flesh?”64 Stack persisted.

  Unwilling to admit that he had not, Mohini hemmed and hawed and announced he was not permitted to answer that question. When questioned about the purported Tibetan letters, he also had to confess that he had no idea what a real Tibetan letter looked like, never having received one for the simple reason that no postal service existed between India and Tibet.

  Poor Mohini had been subjected to nothing but suffering since he had come to Europe: in Paris he had lost his way every time he left the apartment, then had to bear with gaping Parisians; in London, Sinnett had given him an unheated room where it was too cold to sleep. At one of the Sinnetts’ receptions, a man in black velvet knee breeches and white stockings, whose name he later learned was Oscar Wilde, had come up to be introduced and then whispered audibly to Patience, “I never realized before what a mistake we make in being white.”65 Now Mohini had to face cross-examination by this panel of smirking Englishmen. Somehow, he managed to retain his dignity.

  Olcott felt quite pleased with the way Mohini had conducted himself and was confident that he, too, had made a good impression on the Committee. Therefore, it was disillusioning, to say the least, when H.P.B. suddenly popped up in London and started to criticize him. According to her sources, Olcott had given some extremely silly information to the Committee and she strongly advised him to stop feeding the S.P.R. “cock and bull stories.”66 Henry promised to be more discreet and even offered to escort her to an S.P.R. meeting: to H.P.B.’s consternation and disgust, he brought the meeting to a standstill by launching into a trite, rambling narrative about his experiences with the Mahatmas and then, to demonstrate a point, pulled from his pocket a little tin Buddha on wheels. At the sight of the toy the S.P.R. broke into riotous laughter.

  Helena blanched, struck dumb with rage. Francesca Arundale, ringside, retained a vivid memory of “our journey home in the cab, the tense stern quietude of H.P.B. holding herself in till she got into the house, and then the fury with which she lashed Colonel Olcott with her words, her reproaches for having brought the names of the Masters into ridicule.”67 Henry reluctantly admitted that he had made a mistake by showing the toy Buddha, but H.P.B. was not to be mollified.

  “What do you want me to do?” he flared. “Do you want me to commit suicide?”68

  At this, Helena grew even wilder. He should resign from the Society, she screamed; she refused to be associated with a fool like him.

  Gathering up the remaining shreds of his dignity, Henry replied gravely, “I do not care what you say. I am in the Society and I shall remain and work for it until the Master turns me out.”69 The verbal bloodbath continued until 3 a.m., when Helena abruptly stomped off to bed.

  One did not have to be a psychic to intuit that the S.P.R. investigation would end unpleasantly. Nevertheless, H.P.B. was obliged to assume an attitude of cooperation. When Frederic Myers paid her a social call one afternoon and asked to see proof of her occult powers, she gave him a benign grin: “What would be the good? Even if you saw and heard, you would not be convinced.”

  “Try me,” Myers countered.

  Finally H.P.B. asked Francesca to bring a finger bowl full of water and place it before Myers. After a few moments of silence, the astral bell tinkled four or five times. Myers, who had been told of the bell, complimented her and wondered how the sound was produced.

  Again Helena smiled. “Nothing very wonderful, only a little knowledge of how to direct some of the forces of nature.”70 Myers left on a wave of praise, but when Helena predicted it would last no more than a day or two, she was quite correct.

  On the surface, however, the Theosophical Society’s relationship with the S.P.R. continued to be chummy, and a few weeks later, when Helena was invited to Cambridge to meet informally with Eleanor and Henry Sidgwick, Richard Hodgson, and other members, she readily accepted, hoping to eradicate from their minds Henry’s toy Buddha. Accompanied by Mohini and Francesca, she stopped for several days at a small hotel near the Union Society. At her meetings with the S.P.R. she went out of her way to be helpful; declining to perform phenomena, she disarmed her interrogators by stating that the Society’s purpose was to promulgate religious doctrines, not to prove she possessed supernormal powers. Eleanor Sidgwick found her “reassuring and pleasant, in spite of having cigarette ashes in the flounces of her skirt,”71 a generous assessment considering that Mrs. Sidgwick had once written to her husband that she believed “the Mahatmas are ordinary magicians and know no more of the universe than we do.”72

  H.P.B. was surprised to find that Laura Holloway, the American medium praised by William Judge, was also a guest of the hotel. Out of courtesy and curiosity, Madame invited her to her room for a chat. Laura recalled that Madame Blavatsky looked depressed and when asked the reason, H.P.B. told her: “Ah! my child, you little know what is to follow this Cambridge trip.”73 This made no sense to Laura, who thought that the Madame’s visit had been an overwhelming success. It seems clear that Helena was preparing her followers for the S.P.R. denunciation she saw coming. Ironically, she was wrong, at least in the short run: six months later, the Committee would issue a preliminary report on its findings, and would not pronounce her a fake. To her astonishment, the overall tone of the report was favorable and seemed to accept the Mahatmas and their letters as genuine. This endorsement was deceptive, however, for the S.P.R. verdict had been decided on the basis of Olcott’s honesty and Mohini’s social standing; since the Committee was stumped by what either of them had to gain by cooperating in fraud, it found them honest by default.

  July progressed in an exhausting round of visitors, dinners, meetings, and conversaziones, the drawing-room discussions that were the latest rage among London’s smart set. To the mercurial H.P.B., it seemed like “mad turmoil from morning till night.” Sinnett had arranged a reception for Madame at Prince’s Hall, to which nearly a thousand p
eople showed up. The reception had occasioned her buying a “black velvet dress with tail three yards long (which I hate)” but she rather liked Sinnett’s windy tribute to her. Basking in the glory that had always made her happy, she still wished to go home without subjecting herself to the rigors of the reception line. “Just fancy,” she moaned happily to Vera, “smiling and shaking hands with three hundred ladies and gentlemen during two hours. Oof !!”74

  Not a late sleeper, Helena spent her mornings in her room, generally at her desk. When Francesca came up to say good morning, H.P.B. ignored her clucking about the burnt matches littering the floor. Helena, possessed by a mystifying aversion to ash trays, habitually tossed matches away without bothering to extinguish them. Francesca, careful housekeeper that she was, worried less about cleanliness than about the house burning down. As a result, she kept a surreptitious watch on H.P.B. so she could snatch up the flaming matches before they hit her carpets. And there were more problems. Even though Madame had established 4 to 6 p.m. as visiting hours, she did not stick to it. Sometimes, for no reason palpable to Francesca, she would refuse to come down from her room, and the guests, often from considerable distances, had to be sent away with whatever lame excuses Francesca could invent; at other times, the open house lasted all day long. H.P.B.’s samovar would glisten on the table and Babula would bear cups of tea and sweet cakes to the guests while Helena sat smoking in a big arm chair. Without regard for Fran-cesca’s grocery bill, she would grandly invite a whole room of people to stay for dinner so that, Francesca recalled, “I never knew whether I should have one person or twenty.”75

  Among the visitors not invited to dinner were Anna Kingsford and Edward Maitland. They arrived one afternoon just as Helena was setting out for a drive with Mohini and were invited to join her. Although Maitland recalled her as “very cordial and cheerful even to jocularity,”76 H.P.B. immediately laced into Anna for a critical article she had written about Sinnett’s latest work, Esoteric Buddhism, even quoting one particularly offensive sentence. Anna denied having written any such thing, but Helena insisted she had, and the exchange ended with both of them repairing to a confectioner’s shop for chocolate.