by Marion Meade
Doubtless she did feel bad about the calumnies against Wittgenstein, who probably had not been her lover, but it was not his reputation that she felt obliged to protect and defend; rather, the words that roused her to a towering fury were those mentioning the one person she had loved above all others, Yuri. She had denied him for twenty years, and would never do otherwise, but she would not permit his memory to be hauled out for the titillation of the Sun’s readers.
Once Vera had returned to Russia and the autumn days grew shorter and crisper, Helena began to isolate herself more and more, commencing a sort of psychic withdrawal not only from those she termed the “mad dogs,” determined to root up her past, but also from those who loved her. Once she had looked forward to the sociable evening hours of smoking and talking, shuffling and dealing, but now, as George Mead recalled, “she would not receive even the members of the household in the evening unless she especially sent for them.”194 Her appearances at the meetings of the Blavatsky Lodge grew more infrequent, and when she did come, “her presence was both an inspiration and a ‘terror,’ “ as Alice Cleather remarked. Once, when Annie Besant was presiding and a lengthy, somewhat foolish paper was being read by a woman member, the entire hall could hear Helena’s volcanic stage whisper, “Oh stop her, Annie—stop her.”195
Sometimes for days on end, nobody caught a glimpse of Madame outside of her rooms, except perhaps on a particularly mild day when she would have herself wheeled into the garden in her bath chair, to sit for a while in the sun. Occasionally she would receive visitors, more for Annie’s sake than from any genuine desire for company; among the new members who were admirers of Mrs. Besant were the wealthy Ursula Bright, wife of a well-known M.P., and her daughter, Esther, both of whom H.P.B. invited for tea several times after Lodge meetings. Eighteen-year-old Esther, very much intimidated by Madame, “decided it was wisest to keep my eyes open and my tongue silent!” She would remember that H.P.B., clad in a shabby brown dressing gown, had trouble expressing her thoughts clearly and would turn to Annie to finish an explanation she had begun.
But she was always kind and courteous, and always patient, though she gave me the impression of inward impatience and struggle. I am glad to remember that my parents once asked her to dine at our home in St. James Place. She wrote a charming note in reply; she seemed so happy to have been asked, like a child, so simple and pleased, but she could not come to us that evening.196
H.P.B. would never have accepted, no matter what the evening.
In October, Helena received the disconcerting news that Henry Olcott was threatening to resign, giving her sole leadership of the Society. Why this threat should have upset her is puzzling, since for most of that year she had been, as Olcott remarked, “driving me almost to desperation.”197 A few months earlier she had demanded the formation of a European Section with herself as absolute head; the colonel was perfectly welcome to run the branches in the rest of the world; this division she represented as being for his benefit, since it would relieve him of responsibilities that, in any case, he was too far away to supervise. To her sister she had presented this power play in a different light, saying that she had become “a regular theosophical pope: I have now been unanimously elected president of all the European theosophical branches.”198 Had Henry read that blithe announcement, he would have choked. Instead, he wrote her of his intention to retire and to dump into her lap the entire management of the Society. To show he meant business, he began plans to build his cottage at Ootacamund.
Even though Henry had threatened resignation on several occasions, Helena now took him seriously. Smitten with remorse for having pushed him too far, she had to admit that the last thing she wanted was exclusive responsibility for the T.S., and by the next mail she wrote that the Master disapproved of Henry’s resignation; furthermore, if he made good his threat, she would retire and dismember the Society. As if that were not enough to agitate him, she appealed to his patriotism by insisting that India would be doomed if he quit. She declared portentously,
Let the karma of it fall on you alone, and do not say you were true to the Masters, whose chief concern is India; for you will have proved a traitor to them and to every unfortunate Indian. Olcott, I tell this to you seriously and solemnly. It is no speculative theory, no superstition, no invented threat—but sober fact. Do this, resign, and the karma for the ruin of a whole nation will fall on you.199
Henry withdrew his resignation.
Aside from occasional messages routed through Helena, the Mahatmas were little in evidence now, as reclusive in their Himalayan aerie as H.P.B. in her two rooms in St. John’s Wood. She continued to go to her desk, but there was no question that her productivity was waning. More and more time was spent alone with her thoughts, and there must have been moments when she looked backward and marveled to see the miracles Helena Petrovna von Hahn had wrought. The Theosophical Society, her Society, had become a solid organization that would survive her passing, would in fact live on as her monument. More important was the thought that she had given the world a new religion. To be sure, she violently objected to calling Theosophy a religion; rather, it was a “universal religious philosophy; one impregnable to scientific assault because itself the finality of absolute science; and a religion, that is indeed worthy of the name, since it includes the relations of man physical to man psychical, and the two to all that is above and below them.”200 “Only Theosophy, well-understood”201 could save the world from despair.
No one could say that the Old Lady had not made personal sacrifices to bring the world this universal religion, and, indeed, in these last months, she had come to regard herself as almost a classic victim: only when she was dead would people know the truth about her and understand “that I have never, never been false to anyone, nor have I deceived anyone, but had many a time to allow them to deceive themselves, for I had no right to interfere with their Karma... Oh ye foolish blind moles, all of you; who is able to offer himself in sacrifice as I did!”202 Reluctant to think of herself as a liar, she often made the nice distinction between lying and “the sad necessity of concealing things,”203 and now she felt not the least remorse because “so long as the result is accomplished the details are of no account.”204 Motive was everything; she had been forced to perform phenomena because no one would have paid attention to her philosophy without them. In recent years, especially since her removal to London, she had grown sincerely impatient with those of her followers who expected miracles, considering them as children of little faith who needed constant stimulation.
For a dozen years she had shared her Mahatmic visions with these infants, and now she clutched them to herself and slowly, quietly, withdrew them from the world. Not since Annie’s experience at Fontainebleau had Koot Hoomi or Morya appeared, nor did they trouble to write letters. Their retreat seems to have made them even more real to H.P.B; at some undeterminable moment, she had crossed the line between doubt and certainty, until now she seemed sincerely convinced the Mahatmas lived. That cast of characters, born in some fertile corner of her psyche, had metamorphosed into real entities. Perhaps this was to be expected.
Alone in her bedroom as she laid out her game of patience without the distraction of chattering company, her mind must have roamed over the days of her childhood in the country she had not seen for twenty years. Sitting down to her solitary vegetarian dinner, did she ever recall longingly the tables heaped with fresh caviar, raw herring, black bread, raw smoked goose and sturgeon? Did she ever wonder what had become of Nikifor Blavatsky whose surname, always so hateful to her, she had made famous all over the world? She had persuaded herself that he was dead, just as she genuinely believed that Damodar Mavalankar was still alive with the Mahatmas in Tibet and would return to India one day. Damodar, she now believed, was the only person in the world who knew the whole truth about her “and therefore knew that whatever people thought being blinded by appearances I had never deceived anyone—though I was bound on my oath and pledge to conceal much from ev
eryone, even Olcott.”205
The winter of 1890-1891 began unseasonably early and promised to be severe. The windows of Helena’s smoky rooms were locked tight against the cold and fog, the drapes drawn, the fireplaces set going full blast. The lack of fresh air, regarded by her English friends to be absurdly unhealthful, she considered essential to her well-being, and she did not mean to venture out-of-doors until spring. She decided to begin the new year on a productive note by going over the pieces of old manuscript that had been slashed from The Secret Doctrine, since all along she had intended for them to be the basis of a third volume206 dealing with the lives of occultists. Reading over the bits and pieces, she was at least able to make a start and estimated to Countess Wachtmeister that a year’s work would be necessary before publication. How much she actually managed to do in the next few months is questionable for, as Mead pointed out, “still the same indomitable will was there, though her body was worn out.” She worked at her desk, he said, “even when she ought to have been in bed, or in her coffin.”207
If Helena had indeed grown more feeble and remote, the dynamic Annie Besant’s shoulders were broad enough to bear both of their duties: in addition to editing Lucifer and presiding over the Blavatsky Lodge, she was continually hopping around London to lecture, even traveling to Manchester and Leicester with the Theosophical word; she decided to put Richard Hodgson in his place with a lengthy expose, “The Great Mare’s Nest of the Psychical Research Society,” written for Time; and, most important of all, she continued to expand the Lodge’s physical facilities by buying and renovating the house next door; she also built for H.P.B.’s use a one-story yellow-brick addition that extended out into the back garden. Finally, on April 1, Annie sailed to the United States as H.P.B.’s personal representative to the American Section’s annual convention in Boston. Madame, evidently feeling dubious about sending Annie into Coues-territory, expressed her concern to Ursula Bright: “I share your anxiety for Annie and feel quite nervous about it, but what can we do? She has to be at the Annual American Convention of the T.S., her failing to be there being likely to produce a regular disaster.”208
To William Judge, who would be meeting Annie for the first time and who was responsible for arranging her lecture tour, H.P.B. felt it necessary to send a warning about her lack of humor on serious subjects; he was never to indulge in irreverent talk about occultism or the Masters. Annie was, she added, “the soul of honor and uncompromisingly truthful,” her heart a single transparent diamond “filled to the brim with pure, unadulterated Theosophy and enthusiasm.”209
As it turned out, Madame had no cause for worry about Annie’s reception in America, because even those who thought her message wacky were charmed by her oratory. As usual, Annie Besant triumphed.
Winter drifted into spring. The April sun dusted London with glorious mornings, the trees outside H.P.B.’s windows arched over with newborn leaves, and whiffs of lilac perfumed the air. An epidemic of influenza had been going around the city but had mercifully bypassed the Theosophical compound. Helena kept busy writing an article, “My Books,” in which she stated emphatically that neither Isis Unveiled nor The Secret Doctrine had been plagiarized. This was meant as an answer to the latest critical attack by William Emmette Coleman, as well as an assurance to Annie and the others that Helena’s works had been written with the aid of the Mahatmas. Many of her memories about writing Isis are extremely garbled; she stated, for example, that Alexander Wilder had called J. W. Bouton’s attention to the manuscript and also that she had begun the work before she met Olcott. Neither story was true. As to Coleman, she refused to mention his name, as “there are names which carry a moral stench about them, unfit for any decent journal or publication. His words and deeds emanate from the cloaca maxima of the Universe of matter and have to return to it, without touching me.”210
Once again she insisted that none of the teachings in her books had been invented, but simply had been given out as she had received them, and she repeated the quotation from Montaigne used in The Secret Doctrine: “I have here made only a nosegay of culled [Eastern] flowers, and have brought nothing of my own but the string that ties them.” Could anyone, she wondered, dare to say “that I have not paid the full price for the string?”211
On Thursday evening, April 23, she decided to attend a Lodge meeting and showed before her followers a flash of her old gregariousness, remaining after the conclusion to chat with friends; she invited several members of the staff in for coffee. The next day and all day Saturday as well she was unusually bright, visiting with Dr. Mennell when he called to check on her and then staying up with Isabel Cooper-Oakley and her sister Laura until 11 p.m., when she retired with a cheerful “Good night all.”212 Early Sunday morning, however, H.P.B.’s maid knocked on Laura’s door and said that Madame had passed a restless night owing to fits of shivering. Late in the afternoon Dr. Mennell arrived to find her with a one-hundred-and-five-degree temperature and a serious case of influenza. Fearing complications from the Bright’s disease, he stressed the importance of her taking both medicine and food punctually, and asked that some member of the household remain with her during the nights. Since the countess and Isabel both had duties that had to be conducted during the day, night-nursing fell on Laura Cooper.
Over the next two days, flu began to rip through Headquarters; a hospital regime was established with those who had escaped the infection doing double duty as nurses and staff workers. Though still extremely ill, H.P.B. continually inquired about the other invalids; by Tuesday morning her fever broke and no further complications appeared. Luckily, she was able to take plenty of nourishment, but when she tried to smoke a cigarette, her first since taking ill the previous weekend, she found that she lacked all taste for tobacco and gave up after several attempts.
Two days later, just as she seemed firmly on the road to recovery, she began to complain that her throat hurt and that she was having trouble swallowing; it was clear, too, that her cough had worsened and her breathing had become somewhat labored. Dr. Mennell found an inflammation on the right side of her throat and ordered the application of hot poultices. This remedy was successful, but the next day an abscess formed on the bronchial tube. This too was promptly medicated and disappeared. Now, however, because swallowing remained painful, she managed to eat very little and began to lose strength. Her bronchial congestion continued.
Still, on Wednesday, May 6, Helena insisted on crawling out of bed and walking into her office where she ate lunch and afterward lay on the sofa to rest. When Dr. Mennell stopped by that evening, she told him several times that she was dying and did not see how she could keep up the struggle much longer. In reply, Mennell reminded her of the illnesses she had conquered in the past and said that he had every hope of her pulling through this one as well. After a bad night, during which she had no perceptible pulse, she rallied during the day and about 3 p.m. dressed completely and lurched into the office. Propping herself against her desk, she asked that the armchair be swiveled around and a card table set up so that she could “make a patience.” It was, Mead thought, “a last and supreme effort of will, for she was so weak that she could hardly speak or hold up her head.”213 When Mennell arrived at five, he was surprised to find her sitting up and praised her courage.
H.P.B. whispered, “I do my best, Doctor,”214 but to utter even those few words was a strain. She handed him a cigarette that she had managed, with difficulty, to roll for him.
That evening, Mennell brought in his partner, a Dr. Miller, for consultation, and afterward the two physicians told Laura and Isabel that Madame’s condition was very serious; they advised a tablespoonful of brandy every two hours, the quantity to be increased if necessary. In spite of Helena’s aversion to alcohol, she began sipping the brandy at once and found that it seemed to alleviate her congestion, at least for a while. That night Laura and a professional nurse watched over Helena, who was unable to sleep. There was no position in which she could find comfort and finally, seated i
n a chair and propped with pillows, she managed to doze off about 4 a.m. By then the cough had almost stopped, due to her exhaustion.
On the morning of Friday, May 8, Dr. Mennell came by about nine and appeared pleased with Madame’s progress; the brandy seemed to be having a good effect and her pulse was stronger. Believing there was no cause for immediate alarm, he advised Laura to get a few hours’ rest and told Isabel that she could leave to attend to her businesses. Two hours later, though, Claude Wright woke Laura to tell her there had been a turn for the worse and that H.P.B. could not live much longer. “She was sitting in her chair,” Laura said, “and I knelt in front of her and asked her to try and take the stimulant; though too weak to hold the glass herself she allowed me to hold it to her lips, and she managed to swallow the contents, but after that we could only give a little nourishment in a spoon.”
Very soon after, when Laura tried to moisten Helena’s lips, she realized that Madame’s eyes were growing dim. H.P.B. used to tap one foot when she was thinking intently “and she continued that movement almost to the moment she ceased to breathe,” Laura recalled.
Claude Wright and Walter Old knelt before Helena’s chair, each holding one of her hands, while Laura supported her head. Shortly after noon, her heart stopped beating. “We remained motionless for many minutes,” Laura said, “and so quietly did H.P.B. pass away that we hardly knew the second she ceased to breathe; a great sense of peace filled the room, and we knelt quietly there until, first my sister, then the countess arrived.”215