Madame Blavatsky: The Woman Behind the Myth (59 page)

Several persons present that night wrote accounts of the event, but no two agreed. According to a new member named Charles W. Leadbeater, a stout woman in black slipped into the rear of the room and seated herself next to him. After listening to the wrangling for a few minutes, she slowly rose, bellowing what Leadbeater likened to a military command, “Mohini!”, at which signal Mohini hurtled headlong down the aisle and threw himself at her feet. Members began craning their necks, and some even climbed onto the benches to get a better view. A moment later Sinnett careened after Mohini and announced in a portentous voice: “Let me introduce to the London Lodge as a whole—Madame Blavatsky!”
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and led her to the platform.

Leadbeater’s eyes were popping. “The scene was indescribable,” he reported. “The members, wildly delighted and yet half-awed at the same time, clustered around our great Founder, some kissing her hand, several kneeling before her, and two or three weeping hysterically.”
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Evidently everyone, even those who had not been rehearsed, played their parts with gusto, awarding Helena the supreme pleasure of upstaging the divine Anna. Afterward, when Anna and Edward Maitland came over to be introduced, Helena “preemptorily bade us to shake hands with Mr. Sinnett, and let bygones be bygones for the sake of universal brotherhood.” Maitland wrote that he also remembered how “she fixed her great eyes on us, as if to compel us by their magnetism to obey her behest.”
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Anna, unimpressed, stared back at Helena in defiant amusement.

Archibald Keightley, who claimed to have been sitting next to Madame, remembered meeting her the next day at the Sinnetts; he had been told that she had arrived at Charing Cross Station without knowing the address of the meeting place, that she had set out by foot and “followed my occult nose.”
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What Keightley did not realize, however, was that Helena never walked anywhere, except, as Olcott remarked, to the dining table or the bathroom. And now, though her robe concealed her edemic legs, even that small amount of exercise had become too much for her.

A week later Helena was back in Paris, blind panic alternating with rage at the thought of Emma Coulomb and what she might do. Appraising the situation, H.P.B. convinced herself that she could handle Emma, if she only kept calm. In any case, it was Damodar on whose shoulders her fate mainly rested; there was nothing she herself could do from Paris except to send him frantic letters of instruction. She had already ordered him to take Emma up to Ootacamund, where she would be isolated from Hartmann and the others; perhaps at Ooty the deranged woman would come to her senses and realize she had nothing to gain by betraying Madame. And it would not hurt to give Emma a taste of the luxuries she might enjoy if she remained Madame’s friend. Emma, in the last analysis, was a solid sort.

What weighed most heavily upon H.P.B. were the letters she had written to Emma, letters whose contents she feverishly tried to recall. She could not have been careless enough to have incriminated herself, could she? After her long, arduous struggle to success, after all the sweat and suffering and lies of the last ten years, it was simply not possible that a disturbed woman with a bundle of letters could ruin her life. If she had believed in God, she might have prayed; as it was, she stole off one day to a Russian Orthodox church and “stood there, with my mouth wide open” for in her mind’s eye she saw, not an unseen deity, not even her invisible Mahatmas, but something far more unexpected. She had the sensation of “standing before my own dear mother,” and she reflected on the number of years since Helena Andreyevna von Hahn had died, and how she would never have recognized her fat daughter now. Afterward, leaving the church, she laughed and told herself that “my brains lack their seventh stopper,”
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that she was silly and inconsistent for allowing herself to be overcome by the sight of a Russian church.

But the church gave her no solace, nor did her Masters. In the end, she almost succeeded in convincing herself that the crisis would pass; Emma would somehow be pacified, and if not, well, it did not matter much. The letters had to be harmless, she felt certain. Consequently, when she heard from Subba Row advising her to tell him if she had ever written compromising letters and, if so, to buy them, she answered that she had never written anything she feared to see published. Emma lied, she stated firmly, and could do whatever she pleased with the letters. At this moment, Helena had only two choices: to instruct Subba Row to buy up the letters, thereby admitting her guilt, or to outface Emma. In the sobering days ahead, she sensed that whatever decision she made, she would regret enormously.

Spring had come to Paris, but Helena barely noticed. She rarely left the apartment except to attend meetings of the Paris Theosophical Society at Lady Caithness’s luxurious apartment in the rue de Grammont, or at Emile de Morsier’s home at 71 Claude Bernard. Even these evenings she found to be frivolous as well as tedious and was just as satisfied to remain at home, which was merely boring. Judge’s gloomy presence did nothing to boost her morale: when the man was not mooning about the apartment, his conversation turned obsessively to a rich American medium, Laura Holloway, who was expected in Europe momentarily; Mrs. Holloway, he repeated, was a genuine seer, as well as the purest person he had ever known, and he bet his head to a lemon she would make a superb successor to H.P.B. Very soon, Helena reached the breaking point: “O my God, if I shall only find in her A SUCCESSOR, how glad I will PEG OUT!”
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and she meant every word. In the hope of seeing somebody’s face beside Judge’s, she placed a notice in the
Matin
announcing that she would be pleased to receive at home anyone interested in the Theosophical movement.

But it was not strangers she wanted to see. Ever since she had arrived in Paris she had been writing almost daily to Odessa, imploring Vera and Nadyezhda to visit her. Perhaps it was the death of Rostislav that suddenly made her aware of mortality; she ached to see her family again; she would never return to Russia, probably would never come to Europe again, and this would be the last chance for a meeting before she died. To be sure, the journey would be expensive and neither Nadyezhda nor the again-widowed Vera were well off, but “my dear, my sweet one, don’t you bother about money. What is money? Let it be switched!” Recently Michael Katkov had asked her to do more articles and, if that didn’t work, she was sure that somehow she could get the money from Olcott. Since she would pay the two women’s rail fares, they could not use money as an excuse for not coming: “If for no other reason, come for the sake of the fun and see how I am worshipped as a kind of idol; how in spite of my fearful protests all sorts of Duchesses, Countesses, and ‘Miladis’ of Albion kiss my hands, calling me their saviour... You will see for yourself how they carry on about me… ”
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The aunt and the sister would see that they now could be proud of the prodigal daughter.

In the very last days of April Helena finally had a letter from Vera saying that she and Nadyezhda would arrive on May 12. H.P.B. was too excited to think of work; when Sinnett wondered why he had ceased to hear from Koot Hoomi, she told Patience to inform her husband there would be no more Mahatma letters for a while: “I am strictly forbidden by both Masters to serve henceforth as a postman.”
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Instead of writing, she decided to take up the overly zealous invitation of Count Gaston and Countess Marguerite d’Ad-hemar to be their guest at Enghien. Now that plans for the family visit were firm, Helena left hurriedly for Villa Croisac, which turned out to be an easy fifteen-minute trip by train from Paris. The Countess, born in Cincinnati, Ohio, was different from many of H.P.B.’s new friends, in that she liked Helena for herself, rather than her phenomena; Madame spoke warmly of her as “so nice and unpretentious.”
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Relaxing at Enghien, she continued to plead with Vera, “For God’s sake, do not always change your mind; do not kill me. Give me this greatest and only happiness in the end of my life. I am waiting and waiting and waiting for you, my own ones, with an impatience of which you can have no idea.”
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It was at Enghien that another chicken was seen to be coming home to roost: Charles Massey sent Helena a copy of the Mahatma letter he had received from “Ski” in 1879 and risked her embarrassment by asking why she had asked Mary Hollis Billing to place it in the Society’s minute book. H.P.B. was hard put to contrive a reasonable answer, and in fact failed to do so, probably because her mind was on her relatives. She told Massey that the harmless lines of the letter were genuine and that the remainder was an anonymous forgery. Incredibly enough, she credited Henry Olcott with the idea of having Mary deliver it via the minute book. Madame Blavatsky’s method of dealing with the man was laughable, and Massey greeted it in kind. By this point, Helena had probably ceased to care what Massey did or said; compared to Emma he was as insignificant as a buzzing mosquito.

Shifting back to the rue Notre Dame des Champs in early May, H.P.B. continued to count the days until her family arrived, but now there was no restraining her impatience. It was this anticipation of Russia, of her past, that prompted her to strike up a friendship with a Russian man who appeared unexpectedly at her door one afternoon.

Vsevolod Solovyov was spending the spring of 1884 in Paris as a tonic for what he called “sick nerves.” The eldest son of the eminent historian Serguey Solovyov, the brother of the celebrated philosopher Vladimir Solovyov, he had taken his law degree from the University of Moscow and then abruptly turned to journalism and historical novels. His books were respectable commercial successes but could scarcely be called great literature, and, in comparison with his brother and father, Solovyov must have felt crass. At the age of thirty-five, his life and career appeared to be at a standstill, and it was in this depressed state that he came to Paris. Now he spent lonely days in the Bibliotheque Nationale reading works on the occult and lackadaisically planning his next novel, which he vaguely envisioned as dealing with the supernatural. He had read, for example,
From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan
in the newspaper
Russky Vyestnik
and greatly admired the stories of “Radda Bai,” whom he knew to be H. P. Blavatsky.

Later Solovyov would claim that he called on H.P.B. one afternoon after reading her announcement in the
Matin,
but the truth was more complex, and not the sort of story he wished publicized. Since arriving in the city, he had been hearing about Madame and her famous Theosophical Society from Justine Glinka, a member of the Paris branch, who happened to be his sister-in-law and former mistress. “Quite electrified” at the prospect of meeting a Russian seeress, he arrived at 46 rue Notre Dame des Champs expecting to see a line of carriages outside the door and solemn visitors crowding the drawing room. Not only was there not a single carriage in sight, but he was admitted to an empty apartment by Babula, “a slovenly figure in an Oriental turban,” and rudely told to wait.

Solovyov remembered his first impression of Helena as a woman whose “plain, old, earthy-coloured face struck me as repulsive; but she fixed on me the gaze of her great, rolling, pale blue eyes, and in these wonderful eyes, with their hidden power, all the rest was forgotten.” She greeted him so affectionately that after fifteen minutes he was talking to her as if she were an old friend and “all her homely coarse appearance actually began to please me.” It was not idle curiosity that had brought him, he confided; he had been studying occult literature and had come for serious answers to serious questions. At once H.P.B. snowed him with a breathless sales plug for the Theosophical Society and the Mahatmas and then called in Mohini. “Madame Blavatsky raised her hand, and Mohini bowed himself to the earth and almost crawled as though to receive her blessing.” When Solovyov tried to shake Mohini’s hand, he shrank back and said that he could not; H.P.B. explained that the ascetic Mohini was not permitted to shake hands with a man or look at a woman.

By this time, Solovyov was spellbound. “Suddenly I heard distinctly, quite distinctly, somewhere above our heads, near the ceiling, a very melodious sound like a little silver bell or an Aeolian harp,” and when he asked the meaning of it, H.P.B. said that it signified the presence of her Master, who had just informed her she could trust Solovyov “and am to do for you whatever I can.” The bell, she told him, was only a bare beginning. “You shall hear and see still more, if you only wish.”

“Of course I wish, Helena Petrovna,”
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Solovyov responded gravely. He would later insist he left Madame that first day feeling confused and suspicious, and continued so throughout their relationship, but he was being less than candid. On the contrary, he felt strongly drawn toward her and paid her visits nearly every day for the next six weeks. Without being urged, he joined the Theosophical Society and made a nuisance of himself by nagging her for occult secrets; he gobbled up every word she said and repeatedly pleaded for phenomena. To everyone he met, he lauded Madame, swearing his belief in her psychic power and the miracles she produced. He even wrote her a poem:

To the wonderful world, to the abode of far-off dreams,

I seek to soar in spirit, if only for a moment, 

And knock again at the forgotten door 

With trembling hand.
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If the poem was puerile, the emotion behind it was not. To the young Russian, H.P.B. seemed “the one fresh and living interest in this lonely life,” and if she had been young and beautiful, he might have fallen in love with her; since she was not, he had to content himself with the pleasures of companionship. He grew to love her apartment, which reminded him of a Russian country house, and he thought of Helena as “an incarnation of the type of old-time Russian country lady of moderate means, grown stout in her farm-house.” Sitting across the table from her in the drawing room, he observed the flowing, one-piece black robe she always wore and the nicotine-stained fingers sparkling with diamonds, emeralds and rubies. She smoked constantly, spraying her clothing and the carpets with ashes, and she talked. To Solovyov, she was exhilarating and utterly absorbing.