Madame Blavatsky

by Marion Meade

  From the owner of the d’Orient, M. Fortune, she learned a great deal of interesting gossip about the Coulombs, nearly all of it hearsay from a man who had been at odds with them for some time before their departure for India. Apparently Coulomb, Senior, had left the hotel and a respectable fortune to his children, who had promptly run the business into bankruptcy; Fortune also told H.P.B. that Emma Cutting, whom he recalled as “more mischievous than mischief itself,”141 had wormed her way into the affections both of Alexis’s mother and of Alexis himself. No doubt Fortune’s recollections of Emma were colored by the fact that as an employee of the hotel in the 1870s, he had been dismissed at her instigation. Leaping on these few scraps, H.P.B. immediately enhanced them: Now the Coulombs were “fraudulent bankrupts who had decamped on the sly by night and had several times been in prison for slander.”142 As she wrote Vsevolod Solovyov, Emma “is a well-known charlatan and ‘sorceress’ who revealed buried treasure for money, and was caught red-handed... The French consul gave me official authority to hang them (!) and entrusted me with power of attorney to get 22,000 francs from them.”143

  The French consul had done no such thing, but Helena must have reasoned that it would reassure Olcott, to whom she cabled: “Success complete. Outlaws. Legal proofs. Sail Colombo. Navarino.”144 Her legal proofs consisted of nothing more than written statements from Fortune and several other disgruntled ex-employees of the Coulombs, which, as Olcott subsequently pointed out, would scarcely stand up in court. Still optimistic, H.P.B. believed herself fortified for whatever ordeals awaited her at home. When Henry cabled back that Helena was to return to India at once, she wound up her visit with a sightseeing trip to the Boulak Museum. She introduced herself to the curator, and spent two pounds on a tiny bottle of attar of roses, minimizing her extravagance by saying that she planned to use it to perfume the shrine at Adyar. She was not aware that Judge and Hartmann had destroyed the shrine, nor that Henry had subsequently gutted the Occult Room.

  At Suez she waited two days for the SS Navarino. Once aboard, she found to her annoyance that her sailing companions included “a party of eight disgusting missionaries,”145 who happened to have with them copies of the Christian College Magazine, and who would spend the next two weeks baiting her. Isabel recalled that “every insulting remark that could be made about H.P.B. was heard,” adding that she had found the voyage “very unpleasant.”146 More accustomed to abuse, H.P.B. dismissed the missionaries’ jibes as mere cackling. “I looked at them as an elephant looks at a pug-dog,” she said, “and got my own restlessness calmed down.”147

  If Isabel found the voyage unpleasant, Leadbeater thought it excruciating: Madame was making a point of testing his loyalty. A bashful person, he had the average Englishman’s horror of appearing conspicuous or ridiculous. One of the first tasks Helena set him was to carry her full chamber pot along the main passenger deck in broad daylight. By the time they dropped anchor in Colombo, Ceylon, he could say that “I had reached a stage in which I was absolutely hardened to ridicule and did not care in the slightest degree what anybody thought of me.”148

  Olcott and a party of Theosophists were on hand to greet the arrivals. During the two-day wait before the Navarino continued on to Madras, Helena provided Charles Leadbeater with a challenge considerably more serious than making him parade her excrement on the ship’s deck. Reminding him that on their first trip to Ceylon, she and Olcott had formally professed themselves Buddhists, she asked him if he would be willing to follow their example. She warned that the decision was his, but felt that his openly accepting Buddhism might make him far more useful in his work for the Mahatmas. When Leadbeater agreed on the condition that he need not abjure the Christian faith, she assured him that there was no incompatibility between Buddhism and true Christianity, only the counterfeit being preached by the missionaries, whereupon Leadbeater was presented to High Priest Sumangala and given pansil.

  Arriving in Madras on the twenty-first of December with her confidence high and her psyche in fighting strength, H.P.B. found waiting on the pier a student delegation from Pachiappa’s College and the Indian approximation of a brass band, “weird Indian musical instruments,”149 as Leadbeater called them. Along the pier ran a tramway-line with a single primitive car to which a dozen of the more enthusiastic students had harnessed themselves, insisting that they be allowed to tow H.P.B. and her party to shore. Isabel retained the “quaint” impression of “masses of smiling dark faces”150 and paper roses festooning the tramcar. Leadbeater recalled that

  quite a number of Europeans had also come down to see the fun, and were seated in their carriages at the end of the pier. I think that the Oakleys felt distinctly conspicuous and uncomfortable, and I must admit that I was a little embarrassed myself, as the whole proceeding was, to say the least of it, unconventional, but Madame Blavatsky accepted all this homage with great dignity as a matter of course, and indeed seemed rather to enjoy it.151

  H.P.B. had found the demonstration mildly disappointing, for the crowd was comprised mainly of gawking Anglo-Indians and college students out on a romp; she looked in vain for members of the Theosophical Society. Describing the homecoming to Solovyov, with her usual pathological exaggeration, she said that the anchor had hardly been dropped before a crowd of Theosophists swarmed over the sides of the ship. “They threw themselves down and kissed my feet,” before escorting her ashore where she was “almost deafened by the furious cries of triumph and delight. We were drawn, not by horses, but by Theosophists, in a chariot preceded by a band walking backwards.” And she added, “Lord, if you had only been there; how proud you would have been of your countrywoman!”152

  One does not have to read between the lines to catch glimpses of her fantasies: three hundred students from Madras Christian College, the very school whose missionary administrators published her letters, rushed her off to Town Hall where a cheering crowd of five thousand was waiting to reassure her of their belief in her innocence. Actually the students were from Pachiappa, a rival of Madras Christian, and they took her to their campus auditorium where, undeniably, they did applaud her with enthusiasm and ask her to make a few remarks. While a brilliant conversationalist, H.P.B. had an aversion to public speaking: now, for the first and last time in her life, she consented to give an address. She began well enough, saying that she was touched by their affection, that it demonstrated what she had always known, that the people of India would not accept these “vile, cowardly, loathsome and utterly abominable slanders, circulated by these unspeakable missionaries… ,”153 Olcott, suddenly realizing the hysterical turn her remarks were taking, hurriedly broke in and, as Leadbeater said, “somehow persuaded her to resume her seat.”154

  Back at Adyar, standing on her terrace and looking out over the mango trees at the Bay of Bengal, she found herself just as restless and anxiety-ridden as ever. From the moment of her arrival, she had exhorted Olcott to take her to a judge or a solicitor so she might begin legal action against the Coulombs and Madras Christian College. After reading the written statements she had collected in Cairo, he told her that “she had made a mess of the affair,” that while the declarations might suggest “a line of inquiry that should be followed in case the matter should come to trial,”155 they could not, in their present form, be introduced in court. He positively forbade her to go off half-cocked to file a libel suit. When the Society’s annual convention opened, he would lay her case before the delegates and appoint a special committee of their ablest lawyers to decide what, if any, steps should be taken. Olcott wrote in his memoirs,

  She fretted and stormed and insisted, but I would not stir from my position, and, when she threatened to go off by herself and “wipe this stain off her character,” I said that I should, in that case, resign my office and let the Convention decide between us: I knew too much about legal practice to do any such foolish thing. She then yielded.156

  Helena never forgave him, still reviling him several years later as a fainthearted coward who had preven
ted her from clearing her name. The truth was too unpleasant to admit: not only Henry but Subba Row and the other attorneys in the Society realized the unfavorable impression she would create in a witness box. They shuddered to imagine what she might say in the hands of a cross-examiner, or what she might not say, for her refusal to answer questions about the Mahatmas could cause her to be cited for contempt of court. Furthermore, word had it that some of the English judges were hoping to get Madame Blavatsky into court so that “this damned fraud may be shown up,”157 and its perpetrator shipped to a penal colony in the Andaman Islands.

  More than one of the delegates to her ninth annual convention suspected Madame Blavatsky of perpetrating the Coulomb letters, and the conventioneers as a body voted unanimously that she “should not prosecute her defamers in a Court of Law.”158 Lacerated by their lack of faith in her and in the Mahatmas, she wrote to Solovyov, “You are my one friend, for God’s sake, my angel... Answer me soon; I don’t believe that you have turned my enemy, too.”159 In India, the adopted homeland she had envisioned as her haven of peace, she now found herself forsaken and friendless. Marooned in her rooftop bedroom, there must have been moments when she mourned the loss of her closest friend, Emma Coulomb.

  THE SECRET DOCTRINE

  1884-1887

  I

  The Investigation

  The Society for Psychical Research, in the person of Richard Hodgson, was waiting for Helena in Madras. On December 18, Hodgson had presented himself at Theosophical Headquarters and asked Damodar if he might have a look at the Occult Room and also inspect samples of Madame Blavatsky’s handwriting. Damodar replied that, in the absence of both Madame and the colonel, he had no authority to grant either request, but that he expected them back any day. Hodgson said that he would return.

  Chief among the Theosophists’ complaints about Richard Hodgson was his lack of experience as a psychical researcher. However, it must be kept in mind that in 1884 virtually no researchers existed, experienced or otherwise. Ironically, Hodgson would make his reputation as a result of the Theosophical investigation and go on to become widely recognized as possibly the greatest psychical researcher of the Victorian era. At the time he met H.P.B. he was a twenty-nine-year-old university lecturer of little apparent brilliance.

  An Australian by birth, Hodgson had taken a doctorate in law at Melbourne University before going to England in 1878 and entering Cambridge, where he studied moral sciences. One of his professors was Henry Sidgwick, a professor of moral philosophy and a founder of the S.P.R. It was as a result of his friendship with Sidgwick that Hodgson joined an undergraduate group called the Cambridge Society for Psychical Research. The society conducted a few unsatisfactory experiments with mediums, but since its members were students with presumably more pressing concerns, it remained a dilettante avocation and soon expired. After completing his course, Hodgson became a lecturer with the University’s Extension Service, mainly in the north of England, teaching the philosophy of Herbert Spencer. In 1882, he joined the newly organized Society for Psychical Research.

  In the highly rarefied atmosphere of Cambridge, Hodgson had stood out as a man of quirky, if not eccentric, sensibilities. For example, he had refused to accept his degree because the graduation ceremony required him to kneel before the vice-chancellor; although he did not kneel to any man, his friends persuaded him to make an exception in this case. Hodgson’s stubborn individualism carried over to his dress—he wore a brown evening suit instead of the customary black—and his breezy manners and booming voice put off more than a few people. However, those who knew him well came to cherish his absolute sincerity as compensation for his lack of humor, and to appreciate that, whether it was a game of handball or the investigation of a medium, he was always in deadly earnest and hated losing a game or being defeated in an argument. William James, who later would bring him to the United States as head of the American Society for Psychical Research, called him “a real man,”1 and added that while Hodgson believed in the reality of many Spiritualistic phenomena, “he also had uncommon keenness in detecting error; and it is impossible to say in advance whether it will give him more satisfaction to confirm or to smash a given case offered to his examination.”2

  Later Hodgson would insist that when he took up his assignment in India, he felt favorably disposed toward H.P.B., although he never specified whether it was toward her personality, her phenomena or her philosophy. Certainly he was not at all offended by her earthy language or candid manner, as he himself could not be bothered with social niceties. As for her teachings, he did not propose to analyze them because the S.P.R. considered philosophy beyond the range of its inquiry; its sole concern was with the phenomenal aspect of Theosophy. Personally, Hodgson’s chief area of interest was personal survival: is the human personality obliterated at death—can consciousness continue to function in the absence of nerve tissue? To Hodgson, all other considerations were purely secondary. Hodgson approached H.P.B. with the attitude of a first-rate detective: all he sought were facts, which, once and for all, would prove or disprove her phenomena.

  When Hodgson reappeared at Adyar on December 22, Helena’s mood could not have been more downcast. She and Olcott were constantly at each other’s throats, but she was careful to conceal the bickering from Hodgson. There was no reason why she should have liked the man, yet her own statements give the impression that she did. That she judged him a friendly, pleasant young man, unlike those haughty, detestable English types, only demonstrates what a poor judge of persons she could be. She seems not to have totally glossed over his potential danger, but rather to have minimized it, perhaps because his attitude was cordial and he was a friend of the Cooper-Oakleys. In a flurry of hospitality, she invited him to come out to Adyar as her house guest, assuring him of her utmost cooperation in whatever inquiries he wished to make.

  Encouraged by this amicable beginning, Helena must still have realized she was treading a treacherous path. Hodgson’s first request could not have been unexpected: he wanted permission to examine the shrine and Occult Room. Helena replied innocently that the shrine seemed to have disappeared during her absence, and so far she had been unable to discover its whereabouts. When Damodar and Hartmann were asked for information, both of them denied any knowledge of the cupboard. The matter should have ended there, but to Helena’s dismay, Hodgson refused to give up. As he later wrote,

  It was only after repeated and urgent requests to be told what had happened that I learnt from the halting account given by Mr. Damodar and Dr. Hartmann that the Shrine had been removed from the Occult Room into Mr. Damodar’s room at about mid-day of September 20th, that on the following morning, at 9 o’clock, they found the Shrine had been taken away, and they had not seen it since.3

  Since all of them knew perfectly well the shrine’s ultimate fate, Helena must have been particularly relieved to see Hartmann and Damodar lying for her. As for the famous Occult Room, all Hodgson could perceive was an ordinary room with freshly plastered walls.

  By the time he requested a sample of her handwriting to compare with the Coulomb documents, Helena began growing uneasy. When she offered to write him a letter as a test specimen, he replied that he needed script dating from before the appearance of the Christian College Magazine articles, inferring that she might have altered her script in the aftermath. Coming to her aid, Olcott fended off Hodgson, stressing the fact that the request could only be granted with the approval of the Theosophical Society as a whole. Undaunted, Hodgson asked to see a Mahatma letter, which he intended to submit to a calligraphic expert, but again Olcott put him off. By this juncture Helena must have been utterly frantic.

  Over the next ten days, Hodgson stayed at Adyar, cross-examining every Theosophist on the premises and a few who did not live there. He would ask them to describe the occasions when they had seen the Mahatmas, either in their physical or astral bodies; when had they received Mahatmic letters and in what manner; how the shrine worked and what the Occult Room looked like. N
o one, including Babula, was excused from his interrogation, which could be both tough and tenacious. Objectively, it appeared that H.P.B. had little cause for concern, since no one had said anything incriminating; indeed, when Hodgson bore in too dangerously close on some point, she had watched people, unconsciously or deliberately, falsifying their stories.

  While Hodgson seemed to be making little progress with his interviews, he did however manage to obtain some Mahatma letters from Damodar and from Hartmann, who also gave him one of H.P.B.’s letters written to him from Elberfeld. In the meantime, he had been in touch with George Patterson, who offered to loan him several of the Coulomb letters with the proviso that Hodgson keep them away from Adyar lest Madame tamper with them.

  H.P.B. appeared to be following this line of investigation with little interest: while Hodgson recalled that she occasionally asked him if he had seen the letters, she expressed no desire to inspect them herself. He found it odd that she should display such indifference to what she called forgeries, since, had she wanted to see them, Patterson would certainly have permitted a viewing before witnesses. Afterwards Helena often referred to the unfairness of the investigation, claiming she had asked repeatedly to see the letters, but had been refused. According to Patterson, however, “no Theosophist has ever asked to see any other letter, or his request would have been, under proper precautions, at once complied with.”4 Hodgson, interestingly enough, was not convinced that the letters were H.P.B.’s work, or at least did not accept the sole opinion of the Madras bank manager, James Gribble, who had attributed them to her; instead he sent three or four of the disputed letters, along with one of Helena’s own notes, to Frederick George Netherclift, one of the leading handwriting experts in the world and a consultant for the British Museum.5