Madame Blavatsky: The Woman Behind the Myth (43 page)

Standing on the veranda of “Brightlands,” the Sinnetts’ home just over the Mall, H.P.B. gazed out at the twinkling lights scattered on every level of the hill to make a double firmament; despite her outward contempt for Anglo-Indian society, she was deeply moved and eager to be accepted. Here were, after all, the best people in India, the kind of people with whom she had grown up, and whom she still wanted to impress. Early the next morning Alfred Sinnett took her aside for a serious talk, urging her to consider the visit a total holiday for the next three weeks, not even to speak about the Theosophical Society or the ridiculous Russian espionage charges. He advised her to concentrate on making friends among her own kind, and H.P.B. smiled and politely agreed.

Alfred and Patience had had misgivings about inviting into their summer home a woman who, in Alfred’s opinion, had been guilty of blundering both in the management of the Society and in her own conduct. Finally, he had concluded that her faux pas were caused by two factors: unfamiliarity with Indian life and her recent residence in the United States, where she had clearly picked up democratic ideas as well as a prejudiced view of upper-class Anglo-Indians. That the Society had managed to acquire new members failed to impress him because to his way of thinking, all she had done was natter the natives. Now, despite her past mistakes, Sinnett consented to take her under his protection and help put the Theosophical Society “on the dignified footing it ought to occupy.”
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If Sinnett had ambivalent feelings, Helena had more. She was shrewd enough to realize that he had not invited her to Simla for a sociable holiday, and one fact was clear: Sinnett lusted after miracles with a passion that made Henry Olcott seem an indifferent schoolboy. But Henry redeemed himself by sincerely believing in the brotherhood of mankind and by his genuine desire to help others. Sinnett’s motives, on the other hand, seemed totally selfish. Aware of his disappointment over the lack of phenomena during their previous visit in Allahabad, Helena knew what was expected at Simla, and she came prepared: if Alfred wanted miracles, he should have them.

Unfortunately, that very day she had news from Bombay about the latest Wimbridge-Bates attack: “The next morning, as usual,” Henry reported, “she made me the scapegoat, stamping up and down the room”
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and blaming him for her troubles. Sinnett, heart sinking, took Henry aside to groan about the Old Lady’s lack of control; if she continued this way, she would destroy her chances to make friends with the people she needed. The English, he warned Henry, always associated merit with self-control, and, although Henry sympathized, there was little he could offer in the way of reassurance.

Helena was clearly suffering from a bad case of opening-night nerves, and would have controlled herself if she could. To “Brightlands,” Alfred invited a succession of important government officials, among them Rudyard Kipling’s father, for whom Helena was expected to perform. This time she obliged, and, according to Henry, “began doing phenomena at once.”
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Aside from her raps, now old stuff to Sinnett, she brought out a handkerchief bearing her name and “transformed” it before his eyes into one with his name. According to Emma Coulomb, this was nothing more than a standard magic trick facilitated by the voluminous sleeves on Madame’s gowns. Henry described the handkerchief phenomenon as a simple substitution; Emma later revealed that it was originally conceived as a complicated maneuver with Madame cutting the cloth into two pieces and sending half back to Bombay by occult means, but apparently something went wrong. “I believe the handkerchief is a failure,” H.P.B. wrote Emma. “Let it go. But let all the instructions remain
in statu quo
for the Maharajahs of Lahore or Benares. Everyone here is madly anxious to see something.”
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Many of them were not terribly particular about what they saw either. Sinnett waxed enthusiastic over the botched hanky phenomenon and positively went into raptures when she produced the sound of a silvery bell, sometimes a chime or trill or three or four bells on different notes.
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“From this time on,” Henry recalled, “no dinner to which we were invited was considered complete without an exhibition of H.P.B.’s table-rapping and fairy-bell ringing.”
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Of course some people whispered that she made the raps by her thumb and the ringings with apparatus concealed in her clothing, but Sinnett dismissed both theories as idiotic. While he did not question the raps and bells, he did sense that she was holding back, and “it was mortifying to approach no nearer to absolute certitude concerning the question in which we were really interested—namely, whether there did indeed exist men with the wonderful powers ascribed to the adepts.”
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Helena, volunteering nothing, answered questions only when asked and Sinnett thought that “it was tantalizing to feel that she could, and yet could not, give us the final proofs we so much desired to have.”
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No doubt her tantalizing him was deliberate; the more she gave Alfred, the greedier he became. He actually had the nerve to grumble that she tossed out phenomena suddenly when people were off-guard and had no chance to focus their complete attention. This was, of course, the crucial gambit known to every magician but not, evidently, to Sinnett. For H.P.B.’s own good, he urged her yet again to do a phenomenon under test conditions to prove her validity. “It was an uphill struggle,”
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he groaned. According to Madame herself, she was too excitable to do proper experiments and since the Brothers frequently assisted her, how could she be expected to ask them to participate in some silly experiment? If the Brothers were going to involve themselves, Sinnett countered, they might just as well do something that would leave no room for the imputation of trickery. Since his point was well taken, Helena began groping for a phenomenon that would satisfy him without, at the same time, involving her in any formal test.

“Day after day,” Henry recorded, “we continued receiving visitors, dining out and being lionised generally. H.P.B. kept on with her phenomena, some of them very trifling and undignified, I thought, but still such as to make half Simla believe that she was ‘helped by the Devil.’”
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The time for departure approached and passed, but the Sinnetts said nothing about their leaving. Alfred still hoped for some spectacular proof of the Brotherhood, while Helena herself also felt vaguely dissatisfied with her achievements. Toward the end of September, Patience took Helena and Henry for a drive to the top of Prospect Hill. Sinnett did not accompany them but he described the afternoon’s events in
Occult World:

Madame Blavatsky asked my wife, in a joking way, what was her heart’s desire. She said at random and on the spur of the moment, “to get a note from one of the Brothers.” Madame Blavatsky took from her pocket a piece of blank pink paper that had been torn off a note received that day. Folding this up into a small compass, she took it to the edge of the hill, held it up for a moment or two between her hands and returned saying that it was gone.
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Helena then assumed an expression of intense concentration, after which she told Patience that the Brother wished to know where she would like to receive the letter. She’d like it to flutter down into her lap, Patience answered, but apparently that did not suit the Brother, and it was finally agreed that she would find her note in a tree. The two women began scrambling among the trees, searching for the note, and Patience climbed up into one of them and began beating the branches. At first she saw nothing but then, stuck on a twig, she spotted a pink note. The message could not have been more brief, nor more prosaic: “I have been asked to leave a note here for you. What can I do for you?” There was no signature, only a few Tibetan characters. Patience could not have been more flabbergasted.

Back at “Brightlands,” Helena was just beginning to congratulate herself and possibly Babula, who no doubt planted the note, when Sinnett came home. To her disgust, his excitement over the note was mixed with criticism. If she had managed the afternoon better, he said, if only she had warned him of what was about to take place, it “would have been a beautiful test; but Madame Blavatsky, left to herself in such matters, is always the worst devisor of tests imaginable.” His constant fault-finding and searching for loopholes were beginning to annoy her, and she pronounced his distrust “tiresome and stupid.”
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Several days later she impulsively informed him that one of the Brothers was actually present in Simla and staying at a Tibetan temple. Immediately Sinnett ordered the carriage brought around so that Madame could lead him to the temple. There ensued a wild chase over the hills as Helena followed what she described as occult currents, but of course they found neither temple nor Mahatma. “After a while,” Sinnett wrote, “the expedition had to be abandoned, and we went home much disappointed.” That evening he announced plans for a picnic the following day, “not with the hope of seeing the Brother, but on the general principle of hoping for something to turn up.”
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Later, Sinnett would claim that he had been careful to keep track of Madame’s movements that night; he could swear that neither she nor Babula left the house. In fact, in the middle of the night when he called his valet to fasten a rattly door, Helena had sent Babula to inquire what was wrong.

Early the next morning, Sunday, October 3, the Sinnetts, Henry, and H.P.B., a woman friend of Patience’s, and Chief of Police Philip Henderson set out for a nearby valley on horseback. Just as they were leaving the house, a judge rode up and joined the outing to make a party of seven. The servants went on ahead with the hampers while the picnickers followed leisurely in single file down a rocky path. Finally they settled themselves on the grassy edge of a ridge, and the servants opened the tiffin baskets and built a fire to boil water for tea; only then did they discover that they had brought six cups and saucers. Turning to her guests, Patience said with a smile, “Two of you good people must drink out of the same cup, it seems.” Henry suggested giving the cup to one person and the saucer to another, and somebody jokingly remarked to H.P.B., “Now, Madame, here is a chance for you to do a bit of useful magic.” Picking up her cue, Helena offered to produce a cup and saucer phenomenally, but claimed that she must have the help of Major Henderson. Boldly snatching a table knife, she requested the police chief to follow her and led him to the side of the hill where she pointed and commanded, “Please dig here.” After some difficulty cutting through roots, the Major unearthed a cup and saucer of the identical pattern as Patience’s china set.

The materialization was greeted with exclamations of surprise and immense excitement. Enormously pleased, Helena delayed her first encore until after luncheon when she carefully steered the conversation to the greatly impressed judge. Someone, perhaps H.P.B. herself, proposed that he might like to join the Theosophical Society then and there, and the judge agreed on the condition that he would be presented with a diploma. Could Madame produce one by magic? Undaunted, she gave a dramatic sweep of her hand and pointed to a bush. The judge bounded over and pulled from the shrubbery a diploma of membership, filled in with his name and the day’s date, together with an official letter of welcome from Olcott, which Henry insisted, “I am quite sure I never wrote, but which was still in my handwriting!”

By this time the whole group, Helena included, was in hilarious spirits and everyone sat down on the grass for coffee. No more wonders were expected, nor even necessary, yet, when they ran out of filtered water, “Madame suddenly got up, went to the baskets, a dozen or twenty yards off, picked out a bottle... and came back to us holding it under the fold of her dress.” The bottle was full, of course, and Sinnett, mind reeling, proclaimed that it was entirely different from the usual Simla water.

At the time and even later Alfred could find no loopholes in what came to be known as “the cup and saucer incident.” He based his conviction mainly on the fact that Madame Blavatsky could not have known in advance that there would be seven guests in the party, as the judge had arrived only at the last minute. Obviously she did know, and so did Patience Sinnett because Olcott overheard her telling the butler: “It was very stupid of you not to put in another cup and saucer when you knew that the other gentleman would have to have tea.” It seems reasonable to assume that H.P.B. had instructed Babula to bury the cup and saucer, then led the picnickers to the spot herself. In fact, this notion had already occurred to the judge and police chief who later in the afternoon examined the site. Their final conclusion was that it was theoretically possible for someone to have tunneled in from below and thrust the cup and saucer up into the place where they were discovered. Apparently Babula later confided to Emma Coulomb that this was exactly what he had done. In the experts’ opinion, the phenomenon could not be accepted as scientifically perfect and, somewhat indelicately, they challenged her to repeat it under test conditions.

Helena, who had worked hard to stage the tableau, could not keep herself from exploding. Henry vividly remembered that “she seemed to take leave of her senses and poured out upon the two unfortunate skeptics the thunder of her wrath. And so our pleasant party ended in an angry tempest.”
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However, the day’s miracles had not yet ended, for Helena, ham that she was, had saved the most sensational phenomenon for last. That evening they were to dine with the Allan Humes at Rothney Castle and it was for Hume that Helena had planned a marvel to set Simla on its well-bred ear.