Madame Blavatsky

by Marion Meade

  By this time Anna Kingsford had ceased to interest Helena, who encountered another woman far more threatening than Anna, the American psychic, Laura Holloway. Clairvoyant and clairaudient, as well as rich and very pretty, Laura had been instantly scooped up by Alfred Sinnett, who invited her to stay at his home. She had read Occult World and Esoteric Buddhism and conceived the notion of becoming a pupil of Koot Hoomi. Thinking for some reason that Sinnett could arrange an introduction, she had come to London expressly to meet him. For Sinnett’s part, he became enthralled with Laura after a seance she held in his drawing room on July 6; to his astonishment, once she had passed into trance, Koot Hoomi took possession of her body and spoke in the first person to Sinnett. After all these years, Alfred had found what he had long been seeking: the Mahatma without going through the Old Lady.

  Once H.P.B. heard of these unprecedented events, she moved fast. Koot Hoomi quickly dashed off a starchy note to Sinnett in which he informed him that he had never communicated with him or anyone else through Laura Holloway, who, while “an excellent but quite undeveloped clairvoyante,”77 was the unfortunate victim of evil spirits, or dugpas. Next, H.P.B. herself approached Laura: did she wish to become a chelal Laura swore she was ready to go to Tibet, if necessary, in search of the Masters.

  At the Master’s order, Laura was promptly removed from the Sinnett home and installed at Francesca Arundale’s, where, to her delight, she began receiving letters from the great Mahatma. Admittedly some of them chided her for being young, ignorant and childish about occultism, but Koot Hoomi forgave her. “So far, you are not even one year old—and you would be treated like an adult! Try to learn to stand firm on your legs, child, before you venture walking.”78 Best of all, Laura was settled into an upstairs room with Mohini, the chela too pure to associate with women, and told that the two of them were to collaborate on a book. Through her control, “The Student,” Laura the medium was instructed to “bring through” sketches of ancient history, while Mohini, the genuine sage, would make his contribution with the aid of the Masters.

  Laura Holloway, who seems to have been a sincere and pleasant person, tried her best to cooperate, but when she insisted on interjecting her own ideas into Man, Fragments of a Forgotten History, Helena bristled. Privately dismissing Laura’s insights as “flapdoodle,” she suspected the finished book would have as much meaning as “the jabbering of a schoolboy.”79 Later, when the book was duly published, most of Laura Holloway’s contributions would be deleted, although her name would remain as co-author.

  All too soon, Laura Holloway’s refusal to take direction drove Helena to write two Mahatma letters, one of them from a disgusted Master Morya, ordering her to stop wasting K.H.’s time with trivia like the letters to Laura. “All of you women are ‘Zin Zin’ fools,” he grumbled.80

  Although she supervised Laura’s literary efforts, H.P.B. seems to have been doing little writing herself. For more than a year she had been considering a major new work, a revision of Isis Unveiled called The Secret Doctrine, and had even announced it would be run serially in the Theosophist. But, although William Judge had helped her in Paris by making a few notes for the book, she had not yet sat down to write it. The descriptive pieces for Michael Katkov were still not finished, the manuscript needed major revisions, particularly in grammar, and she moaned to herself that she could no longer write good Russian. She now had no money of her own and was reduced to begging a pittance from the miserly Henry. She did not find it pleasant to be living at Miss Arundale’s expense, but her mental turmoil made work impossible and the extent of her productivity was a long fuzzy letter to Light, commenting on a pamphlet making the rounds of occult London. Arthur Lillie, the Buddhist scholar, had written an essay entitled Koot Hoomi Unveiled, in which he gleefully drew a bead on many of Madame’s myths and proceeded to shoot. Only H.P.B. had the ingenuity to explain away, for example, her attachment to Spiritualism and John King in New York and to deny Lillie’s charges that John was nothing but an alias for Koot Hoomi. She felt no obligation, she declared, to unbosom her private life to Arthur Lillie; whether or not he believed her, “I care very little.”81

  Much of her energy that summer was channeled into her new avocation— art patronage. Among recent recruits to the Society was a fashionable German-born painter, Hermann Schmiechen, much in vogue for his head-and-shoulders portraits of London society beauties in decollete” evening dress. Hardly had the ink dried on Schmiechen’s Theosophical diploma than H.P.B. hastened to proclaim him a great artist. Ignoring the fluff, lace, and bare shoulders that normally characterized his work, she decided that he should be the one to paint her beloved Koot Hoomi. At the same time, she apparently commissioned Isabelle de Steiger to paint Morya and, as Isabelle put it, the work was to be done “of course, gratis.” One day H.P.B. visited Isabelle at her studio in Holland Park Road, and Isabelle recalled “how with great difficulty she got out of a hansom cab unhelped and laboured up my one flight of steep stairs.” Stopping before a life-size male head, Madame asked, “What do you call that picture?”

  “John the Baptist,” Isabelle told her.

  “Well, then, you should not have forgotten that he was Nazar, and you have made him with his hair short.”82

  She was right, of course, and Isabelle subsequently corrected the hair length, but she never felt so warm toward Helena afterward. Still, when Colonel Olcott brought her a photograph of Morya, taken from a black-and-white drawing “precipated” by Madame, Isabelle settled at her easel and “finished a fairly good piece of work which I would not have hesitated to place before any hanging committee. I had it packed and sent to Adyar… ,”83 That, she reported, was the last she knew of the painting because she never received an acknowledgment. In due course she heard, however, that Schmiechen had finished his assignment with the aid of Koot Hoomi, who had actually given him a sitting, and that Madame, evidently forgetting Isabelle’s commission, declared it a perfect likeness and directed him to do one of Morya.

  At an afternoon conversazione in his studio, Schmiechen unveiled the Koot Hoomi painting for the Theosophists. Isabelle, admittedly biased, shuddered at the sight of “the plum-box Oriental style with extra large, lambent eyes, and encircled with glowing ‘auras,’ like those of the early Christ pictures,”84 but everyone else expressed admiration for Herr Schmiechen’s spirituality and his special artistic genius. Helena, of course, was well aware of the evenings that she had spent in the studio calling out directions (“Be careful, Schmiechen, do not make the face too round—lengthen the outline—take note of the distance between the nose and ears!”),85 but she remained silent and let Schmiechen take full credit.

  III

  Elberfeld

  Alfred Sinnett had still not forgiven Madame Blavatsky for bleeping out his ultrahigh frequency channel to Tibet, and even though Helena had insisted that she was unconnected to Laura Holloway’s moving into Miss Arundale’s, he continued to view the Old Lady with suspicion. For that matter, it occurred to him that the quality of Koot Hoomi’s recent communications had sounded more Blavatskian than Mahatmic, and when he mustered enough nerve to bring this to K.H.’s attention, his letter was not answered. Unknown to Sinnett, his days as chief recipient of the Mahatma’s messages were numbered. Helena had decided to phase him out.

  The first inkling of his fall from grace came in early August as he was about to leave on a continental holiday. Since returning from India, he had made a practice of spending August with his family touring Switzerland and Germany, then stopping at the home of Gustav and Mary Gebhard in Elberfeld. Gustav Gebhard was an extremely wealthy banker and silk manufacturer, who had once held the post of consul to the United States; his Canadian-born wife, Mary, had been one of the few pupils accepted by the renowned Cabbalist Eliphas Levi, and she had furnished an “Occult Room” in her mansion that outclassed anything H.P.B. had at Adyar. Each summer the Gebhards enjoyed keeping open house for their friends and the Sinnetts looked forward to a week or two of pure luxury, esp
ecially this year since the Gebhards had invited a large group of London Theosophists including the Arundales, Madame Blavatsky, Mohini, Laura Holloway, Bertram Keightley and Henry Olcott, who had successfully completed his mission for the Cingalese Buddhists and was enjoying a tour of Germany. However, to Sinnett’s chagrin, he was informed “that Madame Blavatsky had given orders that we were not to be invited that year.”86 More than a little annoyed, the Sinnetts made other plans.

  Aside from being a piece of pure spite on Helena’s part, this dodge had its practical side, for Madame had no intention of allowing Sinnett to lure back Laura Holloway. In any case, she intended to enjoy herself in Germany and even talked of settling there if the climate agreed with her health; it was probably for this reason that she had sent Babula back to India. On the journey to Elberfeld, H.P.B. had felt like a queen; Gebhard was paying not only for Helena’s expenses, but also for those of the dozen or so people in her party, and he made sure that along the way they were served baskets of fruit, tea sandwiches and lemonade.

  Installed in a luxurious two-room suite, Helena pronounced both Elberfeld and the Gebhard family “charming” but also admitted to feeling “dead beat.”87 Her legs were so swollen with dropsy that it was painful to get around, she had attacks of rheumatism, and sometimes her heart pounded so alarmingly that she had difficulty breathing. In letters to her family, however, she minimized her physical discomforts and talked about the “lords, counts, and princes, all of them very decent people,”88 who came and went during the next three weeks: the Count and Countess von Spreti, Frederic Myers and his physician brother (who examined H.P.B. and found nothing physically wrong), the diplomat Dr. William Hubbe-Schleiden, and Dr. Elliott Coues of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., among them.

  Despite her physical discomfort, Helena felt that she must take center stage, and soon the astral post office was back in business. Mahatma letters began materializing in people’s pockets, falling from behind gilt picture frames and even thumping onto Dr. Hubbe-Schleiden’s head while the doctor was traveling in a railway carriage. The delivery of these missiles required careful planning and execution, but even though Helena could barely walk down the stairs, she intended to find the strength to use this new challenge. Clearly, she wished to impress the distinguished audience; equally obviously, she knew she owed the Gebhards, who had been sincerely generous, a miracle or two. But more than that she wanted to reinforce the idea that her marvels could be done anywhere, anytime, without Emma Coulomb.

  Since leaving Adyar, Emma had been ominously silent, too silent, according to H.P.B., about her threats to publish the letters. Damodar wrote that the Coulombs were living quietly in the section of Madras called Saint-Thome with a missionary’s family and William Judge had also assured her that he arrived in India to find “the Coulomb affair” forgotten. But conscious of the fact that it was Emma who controlled the situation, Helena was not reassured. The strain of waiting for a blow that might strike tomorrow, or might never come at all, was unbearable, and must account for Henry Olcott’s comment on Madame’s violent mood swings. “H.P.B. savage,”89 he succinctly wrote in his diary on August 24.

  Profoundly conscious of her isolation from the Gebhards and their guests, Helena convinced herself that she would feel better if only she could see a Russian face; from Paris she summoned Vsevolod Solovyov and Justine Glinka who had proven themselves truly loving friends. While in London she had received two pitiful letters from Solovyov pleading with her not to forget him and insisting “he has never loved anyone outside of his family as he loves poor old me.”90 And dear Justine had printed and distributed five hundred copies of Prince Dondoukoff-Korsakoff’s document clearing Madame of Olga Smirnoff’s charges. How could Helena fail to be deeply affected by their loyalty?

  Immediately upon arriving, the Russians went directly from their hotel to the Gebhard mansion, where they found Helena sitting in an enormous arm chair, almost immobilized by dropsy. Brightening when she saw them, she gaily announced that they had arrived just in time for a surprise. “The curtains were suddenly drawn back,” Solovyov remembered, “and two wonderful figures, illuminated with a brilliant, bluish light, concentrated and straightened by mirrors, rose before us. At the first moment I thought I was looking on two living men, so skillfully was the whole thing conceived. But it turned out they were two great draped portraits of Mahatmas Morya and Koot Hoomi, painted in oils by Schmiechen.”91 For more than an hour Madame kept them staring at the portraits until Solovyov’s head began to ache. Bidding Madame goodnight, he returned to the hotel, only to be awakened after midnight by a tall figure in white. The vision, who looked exactly like Master Morya, confided to him that he possessed latent occult powers, which could be developed if he prepared carefully.

  Meeting Justine in the hotel dining room the next morning, he described the encounter as an hallucination induced by staring too long at the portraits. Immediately Justine took issue with his conclusions and confided that Morya had visited her and said, in Russian, “We have need of a ‘little beetle’ like you.”92 After breakfast the two of them set off for the Gebhards where Helena greeted them by remarking nonchalantly that the Master had been to see them. When Solovyov insisted the appearances had been delusive, Helena replied that his skepticism would drive her mad. Justine, of course, believed everything.

  Helena had hoped to extract pleasure, if not comfort, from Solovyov’s visit, and now, suddenly, he appeared to be turning on her. He sulked and spoke of leaving, even though Mahatma Morya honored Justine with a note which read: “Certainly I was there; but who can open the eyes of him who will not see?”93

  When he came to say goodbye a few days later, Solovyov was shocked at the sight of Madame’s “perfectly grey face, which betrayed extreme suffering.” He could barely recognize the woman who just yesterday had been, if not spry, at least energetic and cheerful. “My God!” he exclaimed. “What is the matter with you?”

  She explained that she had almost died from a heart attack during the night. “With an effort,” Solovyov wrote, “she got her hand from under the bed-clothes. It was no more a hand; it was but an inflexible thick log.”94

  When he suggested sending for a doctor, she brushed aside the idea stating that if she died, she died. Not until Solovyov announced his departure did she start to cry, begging him to take pity on her. She felt desperately lonely: “All these people are strangers, strangers; they nurse me and attend to me, but I am sick of seeing them. I should like to beat them, to spit at them.” Solovyov must stay with her so that if she died among these “loathsome” strangers, there would be a Russian to close her eyes.95

  And another thing: the Blue Mountains manuscript had to be sent immediately to Katkov. Would Solovyov please stay to correct it? For God’s sake, she gasped, he must do her this one last kindness.

  Greatly moved, Solovyov agreed to remain another week and edit the Blue Mountains.

  The summer had been painfully frustrating for Emma Coulomb. She had tried threatening the Theosophists with legal action and when that failed, had voiced her intention of commencing a lecture tour to expose the Society. So far these tactics had brought no results. When attempting to find employment, she found doors slammed in her face; she naturally attributed her rejection to the powerful influence of the Society in Madras. For a while she had even considered moving to Bombay and was now regretting not having accepted Lane-Fox’s offer of passage to the United States. Somehow she and Alexis had to live.

  On August 9 Emma bundled up H.P.B.’s letters and paid a call on the Rev. George Patterson, editor of the Madras Christian College Magazine. The Reverend did not appear overly eager at the prospect of reading Madame Blavatsky’s mail and cautioned her that publishing the letters was a serious matter. How could he be sure they were genuine?

  Patterson must have been more intrigued than he let on. In fact, one suspects that having begun to read the correspondence, he deliberately held back his excitement, knowing he must proceed
with caution. He did not publish a muckraking journal; his paper, on the contrary, was a rather stodgy organ of the Scots Kirk missionaries. He could foresee personal condemnation if he printed the letters in Madame Blavatsky’s absence, especially since they contained embarrassing references to leading Anglo-Indians such as Alfred Sinnett, Allan Hume, and Maj.-Gen. Henry Rhodes Morgan, not to mention various prominent Indians. Membership in the Theosophical Society was not, after all, a crime, but he still believed that to perform fraudulent phenomena as Madame had apparently done was “distinctly criminal.”96

  Since there were no handwriting experts in Madras, Patterson submitted the letters to the bank manager, James D. B. Gribble, who pronounced them genuine on some mysterious basis. After careful study and much weighing of the moral pros and cons, Patterson decided to go ahead. To Emma’s disappointment, he did not offer to purchase them, only to rent them for the paltry sum of a hundred fifty rupees, or about fifty-four dollars in 1884. That was his usual rate, she could take it or leave it. She took it.

  Selecting extracts from nineteen of the letters, Patterson himself wrote a two-part article titled, “The Collapse of Koot Hoomi,” and planned to publish it in the magazine’s September and October issues.

  At Elberfeld the first signal of the approaching tempest arrived quietly on the tenth of September with a letter from Damodar that impressed Olcott as strangely lugubrious; Damodar had nothing concrete to relate, only that he had caught rumors of Emma hatching a plot with the missionaries. Increasingly uneasy, H.P.B. passed the time quietly with her friends, trying to forget the future. The leaves were beginning to turn and the weather remained glorious. That week Hermann Schmiechen arrived from London to add a few final touches to the portraits and insisted on painting Helena as well. Henry thought the result “gorgeous” and quipped that she looked “as if she were just digesting a missionary’s head!”97 The reference to the missionary is a good indication of what was on both their minds.