by Marion Meade
During the early 1880s, Annie threw herself into work with a ferocity that astonished her contemporaries. Recalled Bernard Shaw:
Her displays of personal courage and resolution, as when she would march into a police-court, make her way to the witness stand, and compel the magistrate to listen to her by sheer force of style and character, were trifles compared to the way in which she worked day and night to pull through the strike of the over-exploited matchgirls who had walked into her office one day and asked her to help them somehow, anyhow. An attempt to keep pace with her on the part of a mere man generally wrecked the man.123
By 1889, however, despite her enviable reputation and excellent income from writing and speaking, Annie was forced to admit that she still had not found happiness. She had seen neither of her children for more than ten years, although she hoped that someday they would return to her of their own free will. In spite of her intimate association with Bradlaugh, a stormy romance with Shaw, and close friendships with a number of men, some of whom she had been in love with, she seems to have successfully repressed her need for physical love. Hypatia Bradlaugh once commented that had her father and Annie Besant both been single, they would have wed; still she believed their love unconsummated because Annie “was the one person who was capable of the deepest affection without any thought of sex.”124 In the opinion of one of her biographers, Arthur Nethercot, “it is very unlikely that she ever took a lover,”125 a supposition that is probably correct because if she had, it would have come to the attention of the detectives Frank Besant hired to shadow her movements for evidence of immorality.
Generally disillusioned with life, Annie slowly came to feel that “my philosophy was not sufficient; that life and mind were other than, more than, I had dreamed.” A professional atheist, she suddenly began to interest herself in psychology, hypnotism and Spiritualism. “Fact after fact came hurtling in upon me, demanding explanation I was incompetent to give.”126 In February, 1889, she undertook a private course in psychic training, probably in telepathy, from a Rev. J. Williams Ashman, an Anglican clergyman who was interested in the occult and, coincidentally, acquainted with H.P.B. though not a member of the Theosophical Society. On February 14, she wrote Ashman, “I have studied nothing in ‘occult’ science, only read anything that came in my way—two books of Sinnett’s, some stray pamphlets. I have not been able to get anything. But I am quite ready to study carefully any works throwing light on the matter. Thank you very much for giving me the possible chance of knowing more.”127
She was ripe for change of some sort, but no one, including Annie herself, would have predicted that the answers she sought could be found in Theosophy.
In early March, a copy of The Secret Doctrine reached the editorial offices of the Pall Mall Gazette. As W. T. Stead had met Madame Blavatsky, he felt an obligation to take review notice of her, although the two thick volumes made him “shrink in dismay” from mastering their contents himself. Aware that Annie Besant had been quietly pursuing a study of other-worldly subjects and had even attended a few seances, he took the books to her.
“Can you review these?” he asked. “My young men all fight shy of them, but you are quite mad enough on these subjects to make something of them.”128
There is, however, an alternate version of how The Secret Doctrine found its way to Mrs. Besant. According to Shaw, it was he who had been given the assignment, no doubt because he had previously reviewed the S.P.R. Report and also Sinnett’s biography of H.P.B.; he had passed on the job to Annie who had recently asked him to get her reviewing work from the Gazette. Why she would have needed Shaw as an intermediary is puzzling, since she and Stead were close friends, but in any case, she took home “my burden” and sat down to read. From the outset she was totally absorbed, in fact, she later admitted, “I was dazzled, blinded by the light in which disjointed facts were seen as parts of a mighty whole, and all my puzzles, riddles, problems, seemed to disappear.”129
Acknowledging that the book did not offer easy reading, she penned a facetious little note to Stead: “I am immersed in Madame B! If I perish in the attempt to review her, you must write on my tomb, ‘She has gone to investigate the Secret Doctrine at first hand.’”130 If reading H.P.B. seemed an arduous proposition, reviewing her was worse, and Annie started out by declaring that to ninety-nine out of every hundred readers, “the study of the book will begin in bewilderment and end in despair.” The average person might just as well skip it; all who did decide to attempt it “must have an intense desire to know.”131
After handing in the review, she asked Stead for a letter of introduction to Madame Blavatsky, which she proceeded to forward along with a note asking permission to call. On March 15, Helena wrote back,
Dear Mrs. Besant,
I too have been long wishing to make your acquaintance, and there is nothing in the world I admire more than pluck and the rare courage to come out and state one’s opinion of the face of all the world—including Mrs. Grundy.
I am at home every evening from tea time at seven till eleven o’clock; and I shall be delighted to see you whenever you come. On Thursdays I have a meeting here, so on that night you would not find me alone; but all the rest of the week you would find me quite free.
Hoping that I shall soon have the pleasure of seeing you, believe me.
Yours very sincerely, H. P. Blavatsky
P.S. This invitation includes of course Mr. Burrows or anyone whom you may choose to bring with you.132
Seemingly Helena and Mrs. Besant had nothing in common, except a mild awareness of each other’s careers over the past six years; on June 18, 1882, for example, Annie had devoted part of her “Daybreak” column in Bradlaugh’s National Reformer to the attention being given the Theosophical Society in India, mentioning Henry Olcott, whom Bradlaugh had once met during a visit to the U.S. Unacquainted with the Society, Annie limited herself to criticizing its vague doctrines and belief in apparitions. Two months later, H.P.B. replied gently in the Theosophist that Mrs. Besant was laboring under a complete misconception about the Society’s objectives; for one so highly intellectual as she to utter dogmatic statements, especially after she herself had suffered so cruelly from bigotry in her struggle for freedom of thought, seemed absurdly inconsistent. Mrs. Besant chose not to respond.
Over the next few years, as H.P.B. continued to send the Reformer copies of her magazine, relations between the two publications grew strained. Bradlaugh had a habit of making snide remarks about Theosophical “miracle working, even to the extent of restoring a broken china plate to its perfect state without cement or patching,” and he suggested it would be nice to have a Theosophical maid in households where there were frequent breakages. He also said that some of H.P.B.’s and Olcott’s statements were so loony that he could not regard the Theosophist as a serious publication, nor could he treat Theosophists as serious persons. “Many of them are very respectable, very good, and very mad. Some of them are less mad and less good.” In respect to Emma Coulomb’s revelations, he acquitted H.P.B. as an enthusiastic semi-Spiritualist “who has managed to get fairly crazed in dabbling with the wonderful in company with many simpletons.”133 In these scornful opinions he was supported by Annie.
It is curious to note that Annie’s name appears twice in the Mahatma letters to Alfred Sinnett. In January, 1884, Koot Hoomi mentioned his respect for Bradlaugh and Besant and his belief that they were not immoral, but he firmly regarded Fruits of Philosophy as “infamous and highly pernicious.” He had not read the book, nor did he intend to, but its “unclean spirit, its brutal aura” offended him and he thought the advice it contained was “abominable.”134 Both K.H. and H.P.B. strongly opposed birth control, even though in 1883 she had carried ads for Fruits of Philosophy in the Theosophist. Apparently she had no idea of the book’s contents, because when Anna Kingsford complained, she hastily removed them.
There is another Koot Hoomi letter, undated but probably received in the summer of 1883 after Sinnett had retur
ned to England, in which K.H. advised him to “use every effort to develop such relations with A. Besant that your work may run on parallel lines and in full sympathy... You may, if you see fit—show this note to her only.”135 According to Sinnett’s notation, he did show her the letter, but it is inconceivable that she would have felt her work running along Theosophical paths. Even as late as the autumn of 1887 she had no sympathy whatever with Theosophy and in her monthly literary magazine, Our Corner, she expressed a bemused opinion of the new publication Lucifer. “What is to be said of such a magazine as Lucifer, ‘a theosophical monthly’? It has a very effective cover, but the contents are mere ravings; it may suffice to say that during the perusal of one story the reader is requested to accept ‘the theory of the reincarnation of souls’ as a living fact.”136 Little did she realize that in less than two years she would become the editor of Lucifer and accept reincarnation as “a living fact.”
It was a soft spring evening in late March when Annie Besant and Herbert Burrows, a Socialist friend who was interested in Theosophy, walked from Notting Hill Station to the door of 17 Lansdowne Road. When they were ushered in, Helena saw a petite, slightly stooped woman with a gently rounded face and close-cropped hair that showed streaks of silver. A few years earlier Annie had been slimmer, prettier; she had worn tightly buttoned gowns that showed off her slender figure and cameo brooches at her throat, and she had curled her hair into short bangs over the forehead with the rest wound in plaits at the back of her head. Now, no longer so slim, she had taken to wearing a sort of working-class uniform—short skirt that skimmed the top of her thick, laced boots (usually muddy) and a red neckerchief or Tarn O’Shanter. But the sweet face remained.
Helena reached out for her hand and gave it a firm shake. “My dear Mrs. Besant,” she said, “I have so long wished to see you.”
Annie was conscious of a sudden leaping of her heart—”was it recognition?” she asked herself later—followed immediately by “a fierce rebellion, a fierce withdrawal, as of some wild animal when it feels a mastering hand.”
The rest of the visit proved anticlimactic. When Annie explained that she was interested in Madame’s work and would like to know more about it, Helena, “her eyes veiled, her exquisitely moulded fingers rolling cigarettes incessantly,” talked about Egypt and India and then turned the conversation to more general topics. Nothing was said about occultism, no mysteries were subtly conveyed. Slightly disappointed, Annie and Burrows rose to leave but at that last moment, Annie would recall, “the veil lifted, and two brilliant, piercing eyes met mine, and with a yearning throb in the voice: ‘Oh, my dear Mrs. Besant, if you would only come among us!’ “ The younger woman, struggling against an almost uncontrollable desire to bend down and kiss Helena, steeled herself and turned away “with some inanely courteous and evasive remark.”
During the next weeks Annie Besant struggled against the temptation to go back and drown herself in “that yearning voice, those compelling eyes,”137 but she could see what throwing herself at Madame’s feet entailed. She had finally overcome many years of public ostracism and now saw a smooth road stretching before her. Was she to begin a fresh fight for an unpopular cause and make herself an object of ridicule again? Must she turn against materialism and face the humiliation of publicly confessing that she had been wrong? “What would be the look in Charles Bradlaugh’s eyes when 1 told him that I had become a Theosophist?”138 she wondered. Aside from these agonizing questions, she also felt perplexed as well as repulsed by H.P.B. Madame Blavatsky was obviously wasting away and Annie repeatedly asked herself how this was consistent with her occult training: if the Mahatmas existed, why did they permit their representative to suffer? “And does it not seem rather cruel,” she wrote Reverend Ashman, “if they have used her, worn her out, & thrown her away? They remain vigorous and strong. If they trained her, why does she not share their higher vitality, instead of being exhausted. I am puzzled altogether.”139
When Annie’s review appeared on April 25, she sent Helena a copy and was invited to call again. By this time it must have been obvious to H.P.B. that while Annie wanted to join the Society, pride was holding her back. She was, H.P.B. decided and later told her, “as proud as Lucifer himself.” When Annie returned yet a third time and continued to ask questions about Theosophy and made it clear she was close to a decision, Helena took an immense gamble. Looking at her piercingly, she asked, “Have you read the report about me of the Society for Psychical Research?”
No, Annie replied, she had not even heard of it although the statement is hard to believe.
“Go and read it,” Helena suggested. “And if, after reading it, you come back—well.” And she changed the subject.
For two days Mrs. Besant read and re-read Richard Hodgson’s findings. Everything, she thought, turned on the veracity of the Coulombs who admitted themselves partners in the alleged frauds. Could she believe their word as against “the proud fiery truthfulness” that shone from Madame’s blue eyes? Was the author of The Secret Doctrine “this miserable impostor, this accomplice of tricksters, this foul and loathsome deceiver, this conjuror with trapdoors and sliding panels?” She could not believe it.
On the tenth of May she visited the office of the Theosophical Publishing Company in Duke Street and asked Countess Wachtmeister for an application. Filling it in then and there, she left and hurried straight to Lansdowne Road where she found H.P.B. alone. Without a word, she went up to her chair and bent to kiss her.
Deeply moved, Helena nevertheless set her face in a stern expression and asked. “You have joined the Society?”
“Yes.”
“You have read the report?”
“Yes.”
“Well?”
Kneeling beside her, Annie clasped both of her hands and looked deep into her eyes. “My answer is, will you accept me as your pupil, and give me the honour of proclaiming you my teacher in the face of the world?”
With tears gleaming in her eyes, Helena rested her hand on Annie’s head. When she could trust herself to speak, she murmured, “You are a noble woman. May Master bless you.”140
No one knew better than H.P.B. what this decision would cost Annie Besant and what it would mean to the Theosophical Society. For her, it was literally a dream come true and it provoked joyous tears; it was one of the rare instances in her life when anybody saw her cry.
Due to the fact that Annie’s Pall Mall Gazette review had been unsigned, news of her conversion took several weeks to become public. There was a personal item in the Sun on June 16 announcing briefly that she had turned Theosophist and had been admitted to “the Esoteric Section of the famous Blavatsky Lodge,” and a few days later Annie wrote a piece for the Star, “Sic Itur ad Astra”: or, Why I Became a Theosophist. Bernard Shaw, while paying a call on the editor, happened to glance at a set of proofs littering the table and saw Annie’s by-line. Staggered, he galloped over to her office in Fleet Street and “asked her whether she was quite mad.” Did she know that Madame Blavatsky had been exposed as a fraud by the Society for Psychical Research? If Annie sincerely felt in need of a mahatma, he teased, he would be her mahatma. After playing all his usual tricks to stir her indignation or her wit, he could see that “it was no use.” She listened patiently with a half smile and then remarked only that she had become a vegetarian, as he was; perhaps the new diet had enfeebled her mind. “In short,” Shaw concluded, “she was for the first time able to play with me; she was no longer in the grip of her pride; she had after many explorations found her path and come to see the universe and herself in their real perspective.”141
Charles Bradlaugh was aghast. Viewing Annie’s conversion with “the very gravest misgiving,” he deeply regretted that his colleague and co-worker had accepted as fact “matters which seem to me as unreal as it is possible for any fiction to be.” The Theosophists’ Tibetan Masters “are to me as the ‘inhabitants’ of the planet Mars, and equally fall into the category of Romance, whether vouched for by Mme.
Blavatsky or by M. Jules Verne.”142
If Annie’s transformation stupefied her friends, it convulsed the public and touched off a flurry of debate in the press: had Mrs. Besant’s mind suddenly become unhinged, or had Madame Blavatsky unfairly snared her by some supernatural means? The Daily News assured its readers that hypnotism had been a factor in the conversion, and some of Annie’s later biographers, while not going quite that far, would suggest that she was an extremely suggestible person who could be influenced by strong personalities. In the past, she had been influenced by men, but Madame, they wrote, was sufficiently masculine as to be included in that category. Annie’s about-face may have seemed sudden to most people but, as we have seen, it followed a long period of incubation extending back to the religious ecstasy of her girlhood when she had yearned to be a martyr; it continued through her adult career, in which she devoted herself to good works that might be expected to bring grievous but pleasurable suffering. Shaw believed her shift to H.P.B.’s ranks reflected the fact that “she was a born actress. She was successively a Pusyite Evangelical, an Atheist Bible-smasher, a Darwinian secularist, a Fabian Socialist, a Strike Leader, and finally a Theosophist, exactly as Mrs. Siddons was a Lady Macbeth, Lady Randolph, Beatrice, Rosalind, and Volumnia. She ‘saw herself’ as a priestess above all. That was how Theosophy held her to the end.”143
Helena, who had been observing the furor with interest, quickly moved to set people straight by emphatically insisting that she had nothing to do with Annie’s joining the Society. She also denied that “I ever put any pressure upon her—whether hypnotical or magical.” Had she bestowed such a valuable acquisition on the Society, she remarked self-deprecatingly, “it would have been a matter of pride, but it was not so.” Pointing out that “Mrs. Besant yields to no pressure, except that of her own reasoning power,”144 she asked mildly whether it might not be possible for there to be value in a philosophy that attracted such individuals.