"For twenty years and more I was without a hearing, yet my
interest and my faith in what I had to say never flagged, the
eagerness of my love for my subject never diminished."
This needs no comment. The quiet and sustained resistance to
indifference and lack of appreciation, is truly the steady
ballast which has prevented our Theosophical ship from aimless
and fatal wanderings, though of inclement weather and adverse
winds we had plenty.
For many long years Mr. Willson was the librarian of the New York
"World." In the afternoons he was too busy to see outsiders,
but, beginning with five o'clock in the afternoon until he went
home somewhere in the neighbourhood of midnight, he always was
glad to see his friends. He had a tiny little room of his own,
very near the top of the tremendous building, his one window
looking far above the roofs of the tallest houses in the
district. There he sat at his desk, generally in his shirt
sleeves, if the weather was at all warm, always busy with some
matter already printed, or going to be, a quiet, yet impressive
and dignified figure.
The elevated isolation, both figuratively and literally speaking,
in which T.E. Willson lived and worked, in the midst of the most
crowded thoroughfares of New York, always made me think of
Professor Teufelsdrockh on the attic floor of "the highest
house in the Wahngasse." The two had more than one point of
resemblance. They shared the loftiness of their point of view,
their sympathetic understanding of other folks, their loneliness,
and, above all, their patient, even humorous resignation to the
fact of this loneliness.
Yet in his appearance Mr. Willson was not like the great
Weissnichtwo philosopher. In fact, in the cast of his features
and in his ways, Mr. Willson never looked to me like a white man.
In British India I have known Brahmans of the better type exactly
with the same sallow complexion, same quick and observant brown
eye, same portly figure and same wide-awakeness and agility of
manner.
Last summer I heard, on good authority, that Mr. Willson had
thought himself into a most suggestive way of dealing with the
problems of matter and spirit, a way which, besides being
suggestive, bore a great resemblance to some theories of the same
nature, current in ancient India. Consequently Mr. Willson was
offered, for the first time in his life, a chance of expressing
his views on matter and spirit in as many articles and in as
extensive a shape as he chose. The way he received this tardy
recognition of the fact that he had something to say was highly
instructive. He did not put on airs of unrecognized greatness,
though, I own, the occasion was propitious; he did not say, "I
told you so;" he simply and frankly was glad, in, the most
childlike way.
And now that I have used the word, it occurs to me that
"childlike" is an adjective the best applied to this man, in
spite of his portliness, and his three score and more winters.
Many a pleasant hour I have spent in the small bookroom of the
great "World" building. With Mr. Willson talk never flagged. We
discussed the past and the future of our planetary chain, we
built plans for the true and wholesome relation of sexes, we
tried to find out--and needless to say never did--the exact
limit where matter stopped being matter and became spirit; we
also read the latest comic poems and also, from time to time, we
took a header into the stormy sea of American literature in order
to find out what various wise heads had to say, consciously or
unconsciously, in favour of our beloved Theosophical views. And
all this, being interrupted every three minutes or so by some
weary apparition from some workroom in the "World" with some such
question: "Mr. Willson, how am I to find out the present
whereabouts of this or that Russian man-of-war? Mr. Willson,
what is the melting point of iron? Mr. Willson, when was `H.M.S.
Pinafore' produced for the first time?" etc., etc. And every
time, Mr. Willson got up in the leisurely manner peculiar to him,
reached for some book from the shelves that lined the room, gave
the desired information, and as leisurely returned to the "pranic
atom," or to "come and talk man talk, Willy," or to whatever our
subject chanced to be at the time.
Mr. Willson's gratitude to the Theosophical Forum for its
recognition was disproportionately great. As he wrote to the
Editor: "give me any kind of work, writing for you, reviewing,
manuscript or proof reading, I shall do anything, I shall
undertake any job, even to taking editorial scoldings in all good
nature, only give me work." His devotion to Theosophical thought
and work in all their ramifications was just as great, as was his
freedom from vanity, his perfectly natural and unaffected
modesty.
At the news of his death many a heart was sincerely sad, but none
so sad as the heart of the editor of the Theosophical Forum. For
a friend and co-worker like T.E. Willson, ever ready to give
material help and moral encouragement, is not easily replaced.
For a soul so pure of any kind of selfishness the transition from
the turmoil of life to the bright dreams of death must have been
both easy and enviable.
--------------