Madame Blavatsky: The Woman Behind the Myth (61 page)

For many years, but especially in the past few weeks, Helena had been begging a favor, a trifle she called it, “but for me, if I fell in with her wishes, it would be a crime,” Vera confessed. Yet her sister persisted. “So it seems,” she told Vera, “that you do not love me, if you will not even do this for me. What will it cost you? Don’t you see that this is simply childish simplicity?”

Nadyezhda, eagerly leaping to Helena’s aid, declared that if Vera really loved her sister, she would do as Helena asked. “No one but me loves Helena,”
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the aunt exclaimed.

One afternoon in June, Vera sat on a bench in the Pare Monceau with Solovyov and tried to explain away her anguish without revealing its cause. Nadyezhda, she blurted out, “has no bounds for her pity for Helena, but is that real love? Can it be that one should take to falsehood and crime to prove one’s love?”
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As Rostislav was dying, she said, he had begged her not to yield to Helena’s demands; instead she must show her sister that she was doing herself irreparable harm.

“You are only talking in riddles,” a confused Solovyov finally grumbled.

“I cannot talk in any other way,” Vera answered, adding that she had already said too much. She had dotted most of the fs, and he could do the rest for himself.

Did she mean to insinuate, Solovyov demanded, that the Mahatmas and the phenomena were nothing but deceit? “I say nothing,” replied Vera, and refused to utter another word.

After a few weeks of uneasy community, Olcott went back to London and Judge left for India. Helena announced she was too weak to do more phenomena, although occasionally she did treat Vera and her aunt and Solovyov to the sounds of her silver bell. The group amused themselves, Solovyov recalled, by questioning Babula about life at Adyar. When Vera would ask him if he had ever seen the Mahatmas, he would laugh: “I have often seen them.” “What are they like?” she persisted.

“They are fine!” And with another laugh, he added, “Muslin!”
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Calling him a dreadful rascal, Nadyezhda repeated the question but all she could get out of Babula was the word muslin and roars of laughter. Toward the end of June the Russian women talked about going home, and Helena professed herself eager to shake from her feet the dust of Paris, “which city I hate.”
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Since there was nothing more for her to do there, she would go to London and stay with Francesca Arundale. Three days before the departure, Nadyezhda agreed to grant the favor that Vera had refused her; it was to be an act that would be Helena’s life insurance against Emma Coulomb. On June 26, Nadyezhda wrote to Henry Olcott that, fourteen years earlier, she had felt very anxious about Helena, from whom she had not heard for some time. “We were ready to believe her dead, when—I received a letter from Him Whom I believe you call ‘Kouth Humi,’ which was brought to me in the most incomprehensible and mysterious manner, in my house by a messenger of Asiatic appearance, who then disappeared before my very eyes.”
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Nadyezhda did not have the letter with her, but, true to her word, sent it to Henry when she returned to Odessa.

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.
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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.”
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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.”
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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”
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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.”
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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.”
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According to Podmore, the S.P.R. launched its inquiry “led away by no craving for mysticism, nor buoyed up by the hope of introducing into Europe the lost secrets of Oriental magic,”
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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,”
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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.”
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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!”
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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?