Madame Blavatsky: The Woman Behind the Myth (72 page)

The certificate said:

The undersigned testifies as requested, that Mme Blavatsky of Bombay-New York, corresponding secretary of the Theosophical Society, is at the present time under the medical treatment of the undersigned. She suffers from
Anteflexio Uteri,
most probably from the day of her birth, as proved by minute examination; she has never borne a child, nor has she had any gynecological illness.

(Signed) Dr. Leon Oppenheim

WURZBURG, 3 November, 1885.

The signature of Doctor Leon Oppenheim is

hereby officially attested. WURZBURG, 3rd November, 1885.

The Royal Medical Officer of the District

(Signed) Dr. Med. Roeder.
⁶⁹

Unfortunately Dr. Oppenheim’s certificate turned out to be less than satisfactory since it did not state that H.P.B. had never been pregnant, only that she had never borne a child and it did not mention virginity. At Helena’s request, he wrote a second certificate slightly more to the point: “I hereby certify that Mme. Blavatsky has never been pregnant with child and so consequently can never have had a child. Oppenheim.”
⁷⁰
Once again, however, there was missing even an implication of virginity. When H.P.B. forwarded a copy of the document to Sinnett, she was forced to enclose a note explaining that “gynecological illness” really meant intactness: “it is a
delicate
and
scientific
way of putting it, and
very clear.”
⁷¹
Actually it was far from clear; Dr. Oppenheim was not so foolish as to state in writing that Madame Blavatsky had never experienced intercourse, although later, probably under pressure, he did tell Constance Wachtmeister that while no doctor could positively certify virginity, to the best of his knowledge Madame had not had sexual relations.

Several of Madame Blavatsky’s biographers have advanced the theory that she herself forged the certificate. This seems unlikely because she circulated the document in Wurzburg while under Oppenheim’s regular care; surely he would have protested a forgery. Moreover, the fact that the certificate is worthless seems to indicate that it is genuine. As it happens, though, the paper was also worthless as proof that she never bore a child.

In the first place, from everything known about the professional relationships between women and their physicians in the 1880s, it seems unlikely that H.P.B. ever had a gynecological examination, certainly not a proper one. In that prudish period women customarily described their symptoms and then were escorted to the bedroom where a superficial examination took place. Even in cases where a diagnosis was urgently needed, there were widespread objections to being examined by male physicians.

Secondly, and more significant, the term
anteflexio uteri
means only that the uterus is tipped forward, a condition common to about twenty-five percent of all women; and it does not prevent a woman from bearing children. Finally,in a fifty-four-year-old, post-menopausal woman, the uterus that once could accommodate a fetus has already begun shrinking to the size of a womb that has never experienced pregnancy. Therefore, given Helena’s age at the time of Dr. Oppenheim’s examination, it would have been virtually impossible to determine whether or not she had ever been pregnant.
⁷²
Nevertheless, to this day Helena’s supporters continue to cite the Oppenheim certificate as unassailable evidence that she had never consummated the sexual act nor borne an illegitimate child.

Although Helena proclaimed Dr. Oppenheim’s proof as “a great triumph,”
⁷³
and spoke about her supposedly deformed uterus in detail to Sinnett and Olcott and other trusted friends, there were times when she thought the whole thing shameful. In her elder years she had grown particularly prudish, even for a Victorian, and the necessity of mentioning unmentionable organs distressed her. Mailing the certificate to Sinnett, she enclosed a pathetic note saying that “I had always had a dim conception that ‘uterus’ was the same thing as ‘bladder,’“ and signing herself, “Yours dishonoured in my old age.”
⁷⁴

In November a tinge of unexpected tragedy entered her life when she learned that her brother Leonid had died at the age of forty-five. They had never been close, and she could not truly mourn for him, but the news of his passing saddened and depressed her. Writing to Mary Gebhard, she did not mention Leonid, but asked how one could help being lonely with only Babaji and Louise for company. Most probably she was hinting that she would appreciate a visit from Mary, since their residences were less than a day apart, but Madame Gebhard could not spare time from her family. However, she did show the letter to her friend and house guest Countess Constance Wachtmeister and suggest that she might visit H.P.B. for a few weeks. “She needs sympathy,” Mary told the countess, “and you can cheer her up.”
⁷⁵

The countess was stopping at Elberfeld on her way to Rome, where she planned to join friends for the winter. However, thinking over Mary’s suggestion, she decided her friends could wait a few weeks while she paid a sympathy call on a needy, sick woman, and wrote to Wiirzburg indicating her wish to visit H.P.B., if it met with her approval. To the countess’s consternation, it did not. Madame was sorry, but she had no room for the countess and, besides, was so preoccupied with her
Secret Doctrine
that she had no time to entertain; still, she hoped they might meet on the countess’s return from Italy.

This was not Constance’s first contact with Helena. In the spring of 1884, they had been introduced at one of Alfred Sinnett’s receptions, and she had been arrested by Madame’s eyes “which seemed to penetrate and unveil the secrets of the heart.” She had been repulsed by the coterie of sycophants sitting at H.P.B.’s feet and hanging on every word she said, so she had not joined the group, who were gazing up at Madame “with an expression of homage and adoration.”
⁷⁶
A few weeks later, she had been astonished to receive a letter from H.P.B., inviting her to Paris for a private talk. Even though she was on her way back to Sweden at the time, Constance was sufficiently curious to make the detour to Paris.

Catching up with H.P.B. at Enghien, where she was visiting the Count and Countess d’Adhemar, she sent in her card only to be told that Madame was busy and could not see her. “I replied that I was perfectly willing to wait,” Wachtmeister recalled, “because having come from England at Madame Blavatsky’s behest, I declined to go away until my errand was accomplished.”
⁷⁷
Apparently that was the correct answer, because she was immediately ushered into a crowded salon and led up to the main celebrity, Madame Blavatsky, who paid her scarcely any attention.

For several days Constance trailed after H.P.B., both at Enghien and then in Paris, waiting to learn the reason for Madame’s summons, but the information was not forthcoming. When at last she informed Madame that she was leaving, Helena condescended to take her aside. Within two years, she said, Constance would be devoting her life wholly to Theosophy. That was impossible, the countess replied, for she had a son and family ties in Sweden.

H.P.B. smiled and said, “Master says so, and therefore I know it to be true.”
⁷⁸

Now, at Elberfeld, Constance read her letter of rejection to Mary Gebhard, who found it incomprehensible. Putting Helena from her mind, she prepared to set out for Italy. It was at the last moment, when her luggage was piled at the door and a cab waiting, that a telegram from H.P.B. arrived: “Come to Wurzburg at once, wanted immediately—Blavatsky.” Continuing to the station, Constance exchanged her Rome ticket “and was soon travelling onwards to work out my karma.”
⁷⁹

Constance Georgina Louise Wachtmeister, nee de Bourbel de Montjuncon, was the daughter of the Marquis de Bourbel, a French diplomat, and Constance Buckley, an Englishwoman. Born in Florence in 1838 and orphaned while a child, she was raised by an aunt in England and when she was twenty-five made an excellent marriage with her cousin, Count Karl Wachtmeister, then Swedish and Norwegian Minister to the Court of St. James. After three years in England, the count was assigned to the Danish court at Copenhagen and then brought home to be Sweden’s Minister of Foreign Affairs. When Constance was thirty-three, her husband died and left her a sizable estate and a six-year-old son to raise. As befitted a woman of independent means, she kept a stately home in Sweden, spent her winters in Italy, and traveled in England, France and Germany as the mood struck her. Apparently disinclined to remarry, she devoted herself to her son and to the fashionable hobby of mysticism, becoming first a Spiritualist and finally a Theosophist. One observer described her as “a lovely woman of
blonde-cendrte
hair and ‘Lost Lenore’ expression,” who always reminded him of “Bulwer’s violet-velvet heroines.”
⁸⁰
No doubt her ruffled gowns and beribboned hats helped contribute to this misimpression, for, in reality, Constance was far from helpless.

Arriving at Wurzburg in December, 1885, remembering the Paris summons, when she had cooled her heels waiting for Madame to notice her, she half expected to be back on the train for Rome within hours. At forty-seven she was, as H.P.B. called her, “no woman of gush or impulse.”
⁸¹
Worse yet, she did not in the least resemble a prospective invalid’s attendant, a fact of which H.P.B. was well aware. Her curt note to Constance at Elberfeld had simply been the reflection of her understandable fear that the Countess would not want to put up with a sick person in a cramped apartment. Confessing her embarrassment, she apologized to Constance for having “only one bedroom here and I thought you might be a fine lady and not care to share it with me.”
⁸²
But when the Master had assured her that Countess Wachtmeister would not mind, she had sent the telegram and spent the day fixing up the bedroom. She had bought a large screen to divide the room and hoped it would not be too uncomfortable.

Constance replied graciously that whatever the surroundings to which she had been accustomed, she would willingly relinquish them for the pleasure of Madame’s company. Then they sat down in the dining room to take tea.

The next day Constance “began to realize what the course of H.P.B.’s life was, and what mine was likely to be while I stayed with her.”
⁸³
If the rhythm of Helena’s daily routine was undeniably dull, Constance must have felt that it would be endurable for a few weeks until she could politely make her departure for sunny Italy. It would be many weeks, perhaps months, before she realized she had been entrapped.

The two women’s day soon fell into an unvarying pattern. Louise wakened them at six o’clock with coffee, after which Madame rose and dressed, and by seven was seated at her desk in the study. After a pause for breakfast at eight, H.P.B. returned to her desk and began the day’s work in earnest. At one o’clock Constance would stand outside Madame’s door and ring a small bell to announce dinner. Sometimes H.P.B. came at once, but at other times her door would remain closed all afternoon until finally Louise would come crying to the countess, desperate over Madame’s dinner, which was getting cold, burnt, or dried up. When Helena eventually emerged, a fresh dinner would have to be cooked, or Louise would be sent to Rugmer’s Hotel for a hot meal. At seven, the writing was put aside for the day and tea would be served. H.P.B. would lay out her cards for a game of patience to relax her mind, while the countess read aloud from newspapers, books and magazines. Once a week Dr. Oppenheim came by to inquire after H.P.B.’s health and usually stayed to gossip for an hour; occasionally the landlord would stop in. At 9 p.m. Helena got into bed with her Russian newspapers and read until midnight.

If Constance found the days monotonous she could say the same of the nights. Beginning at ten each evening, the raps would begin, continuing at intervals of ten minutes until six the following morning. When Constance asked for an explanation, Madame said that it was only the psychic telegraph that linked her to the Masters in Tibet, who watched over her body while she slept. Even though a screen divided the bedroom, there was no way to shut out the sound, or the lamp that Helena kept burning. Understandably, Constance had difficulty sleeping and one night, when the clock had struck one and the light still burned, she tiptoed around the screen, found Madame asleep, and extinguished the lamp. Back in bed, she was annoyed to see the room brightly illuminated as before. Three times she got up to turn off the light; three times if flamed up again, until finally she could take no more and woke H.P.B. by yelling her name. Then came an agonized gasp, “Oh, my heart! my heart! Countess, you have nearly killed me.” Constance flew across the floor.

“I was with Master,” H.P.B. whispered. “Why did you call me back?”
⁸⁴
It was dangerous to shout at her when her astral form was absent from her physical body, she explained.

Thoroughly frightened, Constance gave her a dose of digitalis and promised she would never do it again.

Obviously possessed of a genuinely gentle nature, the countess quickly accustomed herself to the nightly sound-and-light shows, growing used even to a defective cuckoo clock that emitted strange sighs and groans. What she could not bear was being boxed in twenty-four hours a day. Eventually, she made it a daily practice to escape for a half-hour’s walk, look in shop windows, and breathe the fresh air unavailable in the apartment where the windows were never opened and the stove roared full blast day and night. Only three times during her months at Wiirzburg, did Constance recall Helena leaving the apartment to go for a drive, and that was at Constance’s insistence. Helena admitted that she enjoyed the outings but also thought them an outrageous waste of time.