Madame Blavatsky: The Woman Behind the Myth (89 page)

While Yeats was trying to raise the ghosts of flowers, another young man found himself attracted to the Theosophical Society through his admiration for Annie Besant. Mohandas K. Gandhi was a twenty-one-year-old Indian law student, nondescript, and frail, with a tiny mustache and bow tie. During his year’s stay in London, he had made a number of acquaintances at vegetarian restaurants, among them Bert and Arch Keightley who were reading the
Bhagavad-Gita
in Sir Edwin Arnold’s popular translation called
The Song Celestial,
and they invited him to join them. Ashamed that he had never read the
Gita
either in Sanskrit or Gujarati, Gandhi went through it and Arnold’s
Light of Asia
with their help. The Keightleys invited him to a meeting of the Blavatsky Lodge and introduced him to Madame Blavatsky and Annie Besant, whose recent conversion he had followed in the papers with great interest. The shy Gandhi felt out of place, and when the Keightleys asked him if he would care to join the Society, he declined politely by saying,

“With my meagre knowledge of my own religion I do not want to belong to any religious body.”
¹⁷⁰
He did, however, follow their suggestion that he read Madame’s recently published
Key to Theosophy,
which “stimulated in me the desire to read books on Hinduism and disabused me of the notion fostered by the missionaries that Hinduism was rife with superstition.”
¹⁷¹

Though Gandhi would later deride both Theosophy and its unseen Mahatmas as humbugs, he would nevertheless credit the Society as the means by which he began to discover his own heritage. With Annie Besant, who some twenty-five years later would become a brilliant advocate of Indian freedom and President of the Indian National Congress, Gandhi may have had political differences, but his veneration would never diminish.

On Gandhi’s sole visit to Lansdowne Road, Helena took no more notice of him than she did of hundreds of others who entered her rooms and were led up to her chair for a brief introduction, nor did she intuit nor infer from her Mahatmas the fact that she had encountered, for a few minutes, a genuine mahatma, or at least one who would be regarded so not only by his own countrymen but the world. Such were the ironies of Madame Blavatsky’s life.

As the year 1890 opened, H.P.B. began to suffer attacks of extreme fatigue. Seated in her armchair behind her desk, rolling the ubiquitous cigarettes and occasionally handing one to Mead, she would be busy writing when her head would start to nod. Sometimes there would be palpitations of the heart and a ringing in her ears that made her feel almost deaf, and spasms of weakness so intense that she had difficulty lifting her head. When Dr. Mennell diagnosed exhaustion and nervous prostration due to overwork, and ordered a complete rest, Helena responded with annoyance and said she had too much work to do. Mennell did not bother to argue but merely alerted the rest of the household, who promptly determined that Madame must be parted from her papers and books, if necessary by force. One way to limit her activities, perhaps the only way, was to remove her from London. Word traveled quickly around the city and even to the United States that Madame was extremely ill; in no time contributions came pouring in so that she could take a vacation. “America especially,” she remarked in some amazement, “is so generous that, upon my word, I feel ashamed.”
¹⁷²

In early February she was taken to Brighton so that she might, in her phrase, “inhale the oceanic evaporations of the Gulf Stream.” Shifts of two or three of her students would come to stay with her, but keeping her quiet was no easy matter. “I am forbidden to write or read or even to think,” she wrote Vera, “but must spend whole days in the open air...”
¹⁷³
In her opinion, Brighton was a frightfully expensive place and, initially, she worried about the money she was spending; after a while, however, she decided to enjoy herself for the weather was splendid. “The sun is simply Italian, the air is rich; the sea is like a looking-glass, and during whole days I am pushed to and fro on the esplanade in an invalid chair. It is lovely.”
¹⁷⁴

After several weeks, she began to rally and felt well enough to write Vera. This slight exertion immediately brought a concerned protest from one of her caretakers who poked his nose in the door and asked her to please stop. She had to let her family know she was still alive, she retorted, and went on writing.

III

Twilight

The sea air seemed to have done Helena good, and she returned to London thinking that she might resume her old schedule. This proved far too optimistic an expectation, for tiring easily, she had to voluntarily curtail her twelve-hour workday, insisting she intended to resume it once she had regained her health. By April Dr. Mennell had to call another halt to work and put Helena to bed with orders to do absolutely nothing; this caused her real torture because, in spite of her failing physical strength, her mind remained as active as ever, if not more so. In her idleness she fretted about matters that under ordinary circumstances would not have held her attention for more than a few minutes: Ida Candler was already planning another summer junket and writing to ask where Madame felt inclined to spend the season this year; there was also an invitation from Theosophists in Sweden suggesting that she visit their country, and one of them offered to put at her disposal a villa and yacht. These invitations merely distressed her as she did not feel up to traveling and was obliged to compose polite refusals. What she really wanted was a visit from Vera, and wrote to tell her so.

But mostly she occupied herself with second-hand reports on the progress taking place at 19 Avenue Road. Of course the most exciting feature of the new headquarters would be the lecture hall that was now half completed, but H.P.B.’s main concern seems to have been her personal quarters. Annie had decided Madame must have two connecting rooms on the ground floor just off the main hall. One of these, formerly Annie’s study, would make a perfect office and there was also a small adjoining room that could be Madame’s bedroom. These rooms required little alteration but, to accommodate Madame, a short passageway was to be built from the bedroom to a spacious addition designed specifically for the Esoteric Section; even more secret was a windowless octagonal room about eight feet in diameter, which she called her Occult Room. Few people saw this room, and those who did were reluctant to say much about it; apparently, it had a dark blue glass roof and concave mirrors that were supposed to concentrate light and occult influences on those seated in the room. It also had a special ventilating system that never worked properly. Finally, there was to be a small observation window in Helena’s bedroom through which she could look into the Occult Room.

Although she knew exactly what she wanted and had given detailed instructions for the builders, Helena suspected the job was being botched: the ventilators to be installed near the ceiling had been entirely omitted, which would cause her to suffocate after ten minutes; she feared that fifty additional mistakes had also been made. In a black mood she urged Annie to remove the workmen from the Occult Room and give them something else to do. “Put the keys in your pocket and give it to no one, please. When I am on the spot I can direct myself... Please darling, do so.” Feeling “most
profoundly miserable”
she told Annie that she could not begin to explain the reasons for her depression. Growing somber, she cautioned her to remember that “I believe but in
one
person in England and this is YOU.”
¹⁷⁵
Nevertheless, she constantly changed her mind about the placement of her desk and clothespress, fussing over doors opening into or out from her room, fretting that her bed might be in the direct line of some stray draft. All of this vexation could have been avoided if only she might visit Avenue Road and show people what she wanted. As it was, she was reduced to making apologetic suggestions and drawing floor plans to be passed along to Annie.

By the beginning of July, when the new headquarters was finally ready for occupancy, it had been transformed into the office complex of the British and European Sections of the Society, as well as a communal residence of Madame’s most trusted workers and students. Two blocks from Regent’s Park, 19 Avenue Road was a large square house covered with stucco and painted the same coffee color as many London homes; the grounds contained flower beds, lawns and several tall trees, all enclosed within a high brick wall. The ground floor was set aside for Helena’s apartments, offices and for the dining room that had been refurbished as a reception room; upstairs were bedrooms, one of which Annie reserved as her own bedroom-study.

In what had once been a large garden stood the new meeting hall. It had not turned out exactly as H.P.B. had envisioned; she had wanted an Oriental-style building made of brick “to keep out the cold,”
¹⁷⁶
with wood-lined interior, and what she got was a rather ugly, hundred-foot-long shell made of corrugated iron and sheathed inside with unpainted wood. The sloping ceiling, designed by Theosophist R. A. Machel had been painted with intricate blue designs symbolizing the six great religions of the world and the twelve signs of the zodiac. At the south end of the hall was a low platform for speakers, behind which flashed a large mirror bearing the six-pointed Theosophical star and other occult emblems. On the second floor were sixteen bedrooms for the staff, eight large and eight small. If it was not so beautiful as H.P.B. had hoped, at least the new hall was functional.

As the time approached to vacate the old house, Madame began to feel increasingly morose, and this mood rubbed off on those around her. Speaking for herself, Countess Wachtmeister remembered the move as “a sore upset,” and the amount of papers and books Madame had accumulated over the past three years as “quite appalling.”
¹⁷⁷
Beyond that, both she and H.P.B. sadly realized that the new place was Annie’s house rather than Madame’s, and they were profoundly conscious that a happy phase of their lives was drawing to a close. On the day before the transfer, a lovely warm afternoon, Constance insisted on taking Helena for an outing in Hyde Park. Throughout the carriage ride, H.P.B. grew more and more upset and when she returned to the house seemed to be in a highly excitable state. Alice Cleather, who was sitting in the drawing room with Isabel Cooper-Oakley, sensed that what first appeared to be anger was actually “a passion of grief.”
¹⁷⁸
Helena paced the room with tears sliding down her cheeks, muttering in a sing-song voice, “Not a Soul among them—not
onel”
which Alice interpreted as compassion and pity for the thousands of park-goers who had been born too soon in human form.

The next day when Helena arrived at her new home, her mood continued to be gloomy, because as she entered the house she was heard to remark, “I shall not live long in this house—it does not bear my lucky number seven.” And she added very quietly, “I shall leave here only to be cremated.”
¹⁷⁹

On July 3 when the new headquarters was officially opened to the public, H.P.B. attended the dedication ceremony. She was still clinging to her depression. An armchair had been set up for her near the platform “and I sat as if enthroned.” Still, she was “hardly able to keep myself together, so ill was I,” and Dr. Mennell hovered nearby in case she should feel faint. An estimated 250 people jammed the hall, fifty over capacity, while many more watched the proceedings through the windows; others had to be turned away. The press had various comments to make on the event; the
Vanity Fair
reporter described the audience as mainly “human curiosities” and the
Star
provided more specific details on stern-faced young women with short hair and the suspicion of a mustache, and haggard young men with abundant locks and colorful neckties. While none of the reporters noticed Mrs. Edward Benson, wife of the Archbishop of Canterbury sitting in the front row, Helena spotted her at once. “Imagine my astonishment,”
¹⁸⁰
she later reported to Vera. “What are we coming to!”

Perhaps the startling sight of Mrs. Benson aroused her, for during the rest of the dedication, H.P.B. pepped up and listened to the speeches with great pleasure. As president of the Blavatsky Lodge, Annie delivered one of her eloquent speeches, after which she turned over the podium to Alfred Sinnett, president of the London Lodge, who gave an enthusiastic address on the future of Theosophy. Next came short speeches by Bertram Keightley and a Mrs. Woolf, who represented the American Section, then Mrs. Besant officially threw open the hall and the ceremony ended. H.P.B., as always, did not speak, but no doubt every eye in the hall was on her at one time or another.

This was the first time Helena had seen Sinnett in nearly two years for there had been, in his words, “a complete extinction of our former intimate relations.”
¹⁸¹
Occasionally when a member of the rival group would stray into H.P.B.’s camp, she did not give the person a welcome that would encourage a second visit. The previous year, after five years in Ceylon, Charles W. Leadbeater had returned to London and came to pay his respects to the Madame— once. Helena had almost forgotten the existence of the bearded curate whom she had carried off to India and left there in 1884. Not only had he done anything he was told, from sweeping floors to clerical work, but he had offered no protest when Olcott had shuffled him off to Ceylon for Theosophical field work and supervision of the Society-sponsored schools for Buddhist children. Indeed not a meow had been heard from him until 1889 when, understandably, he grew restless and began to write Sinnett that he had developed psychic powers by which he communicated regularly with the Mahatmas.