Madame Blavatsky

by Marion Meade

  Nineteenth-century Russia was a land of aristocratic indolence, where no patrician did anything for himself that a serf could do for him. A husband asked nothing from his wife but that she be pretty, dress with taste, and appear elegantly attired the first thing in the morning. For the remainder of the day, her sole function was to sit in a stately pose upon the sofa while sewing, reading a novel, or receiving guests. If she needed the cushions rearranged or her cigarette lit, she was expected to call for a servant. No Russian “lady” would dream of violating polite rules of conduct by entering the kitchen or attending to her children’s daily needs. Intellectual stimulation of the type sought by Helena Andreyevna did exist, but certainly not in an army town. Still, such lofty deprivations might have been tolerable had there not been other problems in her marriage.

  What Helena Andreyevna may have suspected in the first weeks after the wedding, she knew for certain after her reunion with Peter in 1832: Peter was less spiritual than she; in fact, he professed to be something of an agnostic. But even more distressing to the strong-willed young woman was the realization that her husband had no respect for her. The low status of women in Russian society could not have completely escaped her notice, but she had persisted in envisioning her spouse as a friend and companion who would echo her own aspirations. Now she had to deal with the consequences of her error, for Peter had no patience with her. “The fine, sharp and fast mind of my husband,” she recalled, “as a rule accompanied by a cutting irony, smashed every day one of my brightest, my most innocent and pure aspirations and feelings.” Worse, he ridiculed her:

  All that I admired, all that I aspired to from my childhood, all that was sacred to my heart was either laughed at, or was shown to me in the pitiless and cynical light of his cold and cruel reasoning.

  Whenever she expressed feelings or opinions, he either belittled them or, yawning, turned the subject to dinner menus and other domestic trivia. In time she was able to pretend indifference to his disdain but her apparent submission really derived from lack of an alternative: she was still totally unaware of how to extricate herself from the situation. As his insensitivity wounded her ever more deeply, she grew increasingly disenchanted by both her husband and marriage.

  It should be remembered that Peter von Hahn’s treatment of his wife was neither deliberately cruel nor unusual. He behaved like a typical Russian husband of his class. It was Helena Andreyevna who was different. She insisted upon making demands that a man could not possibly fulfill, even if he had wanted to, and it was these demands that made her a misfit. Interestingly, she did not use that insight against herself. Instead of feeling guilty, she tried to cope with the outrage of a woman of sensitive temperament for whom there was no place in the world. Like countless other women, she directed her rage toward her husband; unlike them, she did not stop at the obvious source of her discontent but went on to aim her anger at society. What is to be marveled at is that the nineteen-year-old woman was able to rise above commonplace marital anguish by looking beyond the personal to the universal. It seemed clear to her that a woman’s intelligence and talents “are in vain before the crowd; she will be like a criminal rejected by Society,” and she posed a question:

  Why, then, does Nature endow her so lavishly with her penetrating mind, her abilities and talents, her perceptions of higher purposes of life, her deep feeling for beauty?

  And she answered it:

  It is not Nature who hinders her... but man—man-made laws and social conditions.12

  In the 1830s few women asked such questions, let alone answered them, and those who wrote about them were fewer still: George Sand in France and the Countess Ida Hahn-Hahn13 in Germany.

  The first three or four years of Helena Andreyevna’s marriage may be summed up as the radicalization of a Russian wife. It was a self-administered process that offered no solutions or remedies and would leave her more miserable than before. Not surprisingly, the chronic tension in the von Hahn household was escalating rapidly. Toward the middle of 1834, Helena Andreyevna and Peter returned to Romankovo where she became pregnant for the third time. Shortly after their arrival, their son Sasha fell ill and died, contributing a fresh sorrow to her already acute sense of despair.

  Two dominant moods emerge from this period of Helena Andreyevna’s life: a deepening resentment toward her marriage and a rapidly developing feminist consciousness. She appears to have been a dutifully conscientious mother but lacking in the fierce affection and self-sacrificing disposition of her own mother. But then, the Princess was happily married while her daughter was not. In any event, Helena Andreyevna got off to a poor start in the profession of parenthood: her firstborn, little Helena Petrovna, or “Lelinka,” proved to be a child who would tax the patience of the most devoted mother.

  II

  Lelinka

  H.P.B.’s failure to mention her mother in later years, with the notable exception of the false remark that Helena Andreyevna had died when H.P.B. was a baby, was evidence of deep hostility. With few exceptions, H.P.B.’s general view of her own sex was unmistakably contemptuous: women lacked concentration and precision, they could not control their tongues, and above all, they could not be trusted. Some of this negativism undoubtedly derived from the general misogyny of the period, but she rejected women as could only one who had passionately loved a female and been rebuffed.

  One of H.P.B.’s earliest memories is that she was perpetually ill: “sick and ever dying till seven or eight,” is the way she phrased it, although family lore gives no evidence that she was ever in mortal danger. Her second memory was of being “spoilt and petted on one side, punished and hardened on the other,”14 and in this, her recollection is amply supported. From the beginning, Lelinka was a nervous, high-strung infant, a colicky baby designed to drive to distraction a woman like Helena Andreyevna.

  Her volatile temperament aside, Helena’s appearance was somewhat less than irresistible. Her frequent illnesses did not prevent her from eating with gusto; she was a lumpish little girl who all her life would be struggling—not terribly hard at times—against obesity. Within the family, opinion about her was divided, as public opinion would be for the next sixty years. The more polite members said that Lelinka must have inherited her curly hair and vivacity from Peter von Hahn’s mother, but, in reality, her kinky mop of pale brown frizz could never be called curly, and her vivacity could often have passed for demonic possession. Her most striking features were her prominent azure eyes, which seemed to observe her surroundings with an intensity that was hypnotic to many and frightening to some. Nobody who ever met H.P.B. forgot her eyes.

  In the midnineteenth century, the typical Russian child was given its own way to a degree that shocked European visitors from the West who thought them undisciplined brats. But even in this permissive context, Helena Petrovna was an unusually willful and independent child. Badly behaved to the point of being unmanageable, Helena never hesitated to throw a temper tantrum when she could not get her way. The slightest contradiction, recalled her Aunt Nadyezhda, “brought on an outburst of passion, often a fit of convulsions.”15 Her habit of automatically defying authority may well have resulted from a nervous constitution and a naturally aggressive temperament, but it was also a by-product of being spoiled by the Fadeyevs and by the superstitious serf nurses into whose care she was placed. While the household was devoutly Christian—icons hung in every room—alongside the priests and the Orthodox sacraments, the Empire’s pagan religion persisted and retained popularity, particularly among the servants. Old Russia, a hothouse of superstition, abounded in tales of wolves, monsters, ghosts, leshies, brownies and goblins, all of which were believed to manipulate human lives. Roussalkas, beautiful water spirits, were believed to be the souls of the unchristened who returned to entice the unwary to watery graves. Every house had its domovoy, a goblin in the form of an old man who lived behind the stove and played pranks when displeased.

  According to legend, these supernatural beings could be placated or
even controlled by individuals who, like H.P.B., had been born between the thirtieth and thirty-first of July. Furthermore, the Fadeyev serfs called Lelinka a sedmitchka, a word difficult to translate but meaning one connected with the number seven—a reference to H.P.B.’s having been born during the seventh month of the year. On the night of her birthday, they would carry her around the house and stables, sprinkling holy water and repeating mystical incantations to appease the domovoy. This ritual was supposedly conducted without the knowledge of her mother or grandparents. More likely, they simply refused to assign the slightest importance to it. There was too much superstition to pay attention to, and it governed every aspect of daily life: a baby must never look in the mirror or see its own shadow; a cradle mustn’t be rocked unless the infant was in it; if a child moaned in its sleep, the nurse must make the sign of the cross to ward off evil spirits.

  Believing that Helena Petrovna possessed special magical powers, the house serfs revered her, and she must have relished the attention, which she was not getting from her mother or father. But while she reveled in the backstairs admiration, she also saw that the servants feared her. A strange incident had taken place on a visit to Ekaterinoslav during the years when the von Hahns were living at various army bases, and it was legend among the servants. One day on an outing along the Dnieper, Helena, accompanied by a nurse and a fourteen-year-old serf named Pavlik who was pulling her in a cart, apparently set out to frighten the boy. “I will have you tickled to death by a roussalka!” she threatened. Then, pointing to a willow, she yelled, “There’s one coming down from that tree. Here she comes... see, see!”16

  Whether Pavlik actually thought he saw the dreaded nymph or whether he was merely fed up with the abuse of a miniature tyrant, he promptly ran off and the nurse had to return home without him. Several weeks later, his body was found by fishermen who caught it in their nets. Although the police verdict was “accidental drowning,” the serfs had no doubt that Pavlik had died because Lelinka had withdrawn her magical protection and delivered him to some watchful roussalka. The family, however, disapproved of this superstitious interpretation and grew even more displeased when they heard Helena Petrovna corroborating the story, indignantly insisting that she had indeed handed over the boy to her faithful servants, the water nymphs.17

  This particular incident was not so much brought on by an overactive imagination as by Helena’s firm belief in an invisible world of supernatural beings whose lives were inextricably blended with those of mortals. Hard put to distinguish between fact and fiction, she was convinced that roussalkas sat in every tree. Didn’t she see them with her own eyes? Hadn’t Pavlik drowned? She felt herself powerful and invulnerable, and became increasingly convinced that mighty forces would carry out her wishes.

  That her family recognized her abnormalities is clear; that they were at a loss to deal with them is equally obvious. H.P.B. would later recall that during her childhood she had been exorcised by countless priests and drenched in enough holy water to float a ship. At that time, when exorcism failed to eradicate outrageously unacceptable behavior, it was believed that beating might succeed. But although she received a good many scoldings and punishments, they failed to have the desired effect.

  In these critical early years, H.P.B.’s mind was being formed not entirely by the superstitions of the peasants, which influenced all Russian children. There was also a general instability, presumably in part inherited, but enhanced by unconscious psychological conflicts about her parents. To Helena Andreyevna von Hahn, the troublesome child represented merely one problem out of many, undoubtedly not the most serious. Slowly, perhaps without realizing it, she was devising the only reasonable method of dealing with her foundering marriage: removing herself whenever the opportunity arose. At first this meant frequent trips home to Ekaterinoslav, but in 1834, soon after she found herself pregnant for the third time, she was able to arrange a more extended absence. In that year, Andrey Fadeyev became a member of the Board of Trustees for the Colonizers and moved his family to Odessa, on the Black Sea. Shortly afterward, Helena Andreyevna followed with Lelinka. She remained in Odessa until the spring of 1835 when her second daughter, Vera, was born.

  After this separation, she rejoined her husband and resumed the wandering existence of an army wife, first in the Ukraine and later in the provinces of Tula and Kursk. The southern steppes, in winter, only deepened Helena Andreyevna’s basic sense of loneliness. When the hurricanes known as metels swept down in furious, whirling gusts, the snow fell so thickly that houses disappeared, whole flocks of sheep froze, and people had to dig paths through six-foot drifts to reach their neighbors. At those times when the thermometer hanging between the double glass windows read sixteen degrees below zero, there would be nothing to do but huddle near the stove and listen to the bubbling samovar. Helena Andreyevna’s discontent continued to fester until the spring of 1836, when her life suddenly took an unexpected turn. After four years of boring provincial towns, her husband’s battery was temporarily assigned to the most exciting place in the Empire—the capital city of St. Petersburg.

  The first railroad had been built only the previous year, and it still did not reach southern Russia. The von Hahns must have made the journey in a caravan of horse-drawn carts that transported coachmen, maids, nurses, household belongings and food provisions. The family itself would have ridden in a dormez, a cumbersome, high-wheeled wagon covered with leather and lined with straw and featherbeds. Since lying down was more comfortable than sitting, one usually made a journey stretched out on a featherbed, surrounded by roast chickens and other edibles, which were hung from the roof.

  Travelers entering St. Petersburg from the south had to ride through the triumphal arch called Moscow Sastawa, an excellent vantage point from which to view the canals and gilt of the cupola churches of the “Venice of the North.” It was obligatory to drive across Isaac Square, past the magnificent statue of Peter the Great, the Admiralty and Isaac Church, and then to turn down the city’s main thoroughfare, Newsky Perspective. Along this artery flowed a constant stream of life: throngs of men on foot and horseback, bundled women sporting the latest French gowns under their furs, four-horse carriages and the smaller, faster droschkis. The street’s immense width contained a double line of carriageways floored with wood and sidewalks a dozen feet broad. Flanking either side of the boulevard were palaces, elegant town-houses and luxurious shops whose windows were frosted with the clearest glass and illuminated at night with floods of gaslight.

  St. Petersburg, the center of all that was “smart,” was an intellectual and cultural aphrodisiac to Helena Andreyevna. Her position as the daughter of Princess Dolgorukov guaranteed her entry to a high level of society, and although the “season” was almost over, she plunged into a strenuous round of suppers, receptions, operas and concerts. The city’s real socializing, however, took place at private gatherings where guests would arrive at 8 p.m. and immediately sit down at tables of whist, Boston, ombre and preference—the latter, played for money, was highly popular with the women. Conversation, in French, was plentiful and varied—the women gossiping and exchanging news of the latest plays, novels, and fashions; the men discussing business and politics. By midnight, the rooms would be thick with tobacco smoke, both men and women having adopted the fashionable cigarette habit, and the card games would continue until two in the morning, after which dinner was served. Nobody thought of leaving before 4 a.m., and sometimes they stayed until dawn.

  In the drawing rooms of St. Petersburg, Helena Andreyevna would inevitably meet artists and writers, Alexander Pushkin among them, and she could not avoid comparing them to her husband. She discovered the obvious: that there were people to whom she could relate; people who shared her interests and respected her opinions. Predictably, as the gulf between herself and Peter widened, she began to dread the thought of returning to her old life with him, whenever his temporary assignment to St. Petersburg was terminated.

  Early in her stay in the capit
al, she met a man who provided her with an opportunity for making changes in her life. O. I. Zenkowsky was editor of The Readers’ Library, a conservative publication that sounds a good deal like a Russian version of the Reader’s Digest. Only two years old, it was already enjoying success among provincial readers for its original fiction and condensations of contemporary novels. Zenkowsky asked her if she would like to attempt a condensation of Godolphin, a new work by the best-selling English novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Pleased with the results, he then suggested that she write an original story for his magazine. His admiration of her creative talent no doubt fed Helena Andreyevna’s determination to free herself from Peter von Hahn and, more important, showed her the avenue by which she might achieve that end. Encouraged by the prospect of earning a living by her pen, she immediately set to work on a novel which she planned to call The Ideal.

  When springtime arrived in St. Petersburg, the ice on the Neva began to break up, furs disappeared from the streets, and the nobility began its annual exodus to country estates with their servants, horses and dogs. No one lingered, by choice, much past the end of May, when the heat, dust and stench of the canals made life unpleasant. About this time, Helena Andreyevna’s father appeared in the city with her eight-year-old sister, Nadyezhda. Andrey Fadeyev, rising in the bureaucracy, had just been appointed Trustee for the nomadic Kalmuck tribes in the Province of Astrakhan. Before taking up his new position, he came to the capital on business and when he departed for Astrakhan in June, Helena Andreyevna and her daughters were with him. Peter von Hahn returned to the Ukraine alone. How definite a break she made with her husband is unclear; possibly she tried to disguise her departure as merely another of her jaunts to visit her family. More likely, since divorce was virtually impossible to obtain, she took matters into her own hands and divorced herself.