EAST END DAYS AND NIGHTS
If we had found the golden thread of meaning which gives coherence to
the whole; if we had been taught as our religion that every man and
woman was receiving the strictest justice at the Divine hands, and that
our conditions to-day were exactly those our former lives entitled us
to, how different would be our outlook on life. As it is, men have
fallen away in their bitter discontent from a God in whose justice they
have ceased to believe, and of whose impartiality they see no sign.
I doubt if any religion extant has claimed such a wide diversity in its
adherents as Christianity. Calvin, Knox, Torquemada, the Archbishop of
Canterbury, and Kaiser Wilhelm. Mr. Gladstone, and Czar Nicolas. The
Pope of Rome, and Spurgeon. Even those nine names, which might be
multiplied indefinitely, show us diametrically opposed readings of the
same faith.
It would be of enormous benefit to us if we studied all the great
religions, and separated from each the obviously false from the true,
and appropriated the latter. The Bible would gain enormously in value if
studied in conjunction with other sacred books written before the advent
of Christ.
A careful study of the ancient faiths will reveal a wonderful
similarity. We are beginning to break down the limitations which have
been presumptuously cast around the conceptions of the Divine teachings.
We begin to see that not only in Palestine, but in all the world, and
amongst all peoples, God has been revealing Himself to the hearts of
men.
It is always folly for the orthodox to hold up hands in holy horror at
the views of the unorthodox. It is a selfish standpoint, and makes
matters no better. Doubt does not spring from the wish to doubt. It
arises solely from the play of the mind on the facts of daily life
surrounding us. The truth remains, that, unless the Church recovers
those vital doctrines that she has lost, and which alone make life
rational to the intelligent, she will be finally abandoned when the
present generation dies out.
We can never rest content with a faith which flatly contradicts the
facts of life which surround us, and press in on us from every side in
our daily existence. We hold that what we undoubtedly find in life ought
to have its complement in religion. The searching temper of our vast
sacrifices in war are thrusting faith down to primitive bed-rock.
Orthodoxies and heterodoxies will not matter much now. What will matter
will be honesty, effectiveness, and a rational explanation of life. For
nineteen hundred years we have professed the religion of what others
said about Christ. Now the hour is approaching when we must try the
religion of what Christ said about us and the world.
I was always of a very inquiring turn of mind, and I had abandoned
orthodoxy before I was twenty. I had read everything I could lay my
hands on, and I emerged after a year or two, an out-and-out agnostic, in
the popular sense of the term.
I had, however, no intention of remaining in that condition. I was
convinced there must be some link between Science and Religion, and that
a just God, worthy of all worship, was to be found, if only I knew where
to seek. I can look back on this crude stage of my life, and see what a
nuisance I must have been, with my defiant disbelief and constant
questioning. I became an ardent truth-seeker, but my demands, I can now
realize, grew out of my palpitating desire to reduce the world of
disorder to the likeness of a supreme and beneficent Creator. If God be
just and good, then what is the explanation of this hideous discrepancy
in human lives?
Following on this came the question: "Is it possible that a just God is
going to judge us, one and all, on our miserable record of three score
years and ten?"
"Whatsoever ye soweth that shall ye reap." So the criminal and the
savage were to be judged by their deeds, though, through no fault of
their own, they were born under circumstances which precluded any
glimmer of light to shine in on their darkness. "Ah!" but I was told,
"God will make it up to them hereafter. Of course, He won't judge them
as He will judge you."
This seemed to me pure nonsense. I could not understand a God who
arranged His creation so badly. Whilst in London I started out on a
search for truth.
Amongst those who accorded me interviews were Cardinal Newman and the
late Archdeacon Liddon. The former was exquisitely sympathetic and
patient, but he gave me no mental satisfaction. I helped him for some
weeks in the great dock strike, and then we drifted apart for ever.
Liddon listened patiently, then told me flatly he could not solve the
mysteries I sought to probe. I also was accorded an unsatisfactory
interview with Basil Wilberforce. After a lapse of thirty years we met
again, though I never recalled to him the visit I had paid him in my
youth, being sure he must have forgotten all about it. I found him
enormously changed mentally. He had outgrown all resemblance to his
former mental self.
At that early period some one happened to mention to me that a certain
Madame Blavatsky had just arrived in London, bringing with her a new
religion. My curiosity was at once fired, and I set off to call upon
her.
I shall never forget that first interview with a much maligned woman,
whom I rapidly came to know intimately and love dearly. She was seated
in a great armchair, with a table by her side on which lay tobacco and
cigarette paper. Whilst she spoke her exquisite taper fingers
automatically rolled cigarettes. She was dressed in a loose black robe,
and on her crinkly gray hair she wore a black shawl. Her face was pure
Kalmuk, and a network of fine wrinkles covered it. Her eyes, large and
pale green, dominated the countenance--wonderful eyes in their
arresting, dreamy mysticism.
I asked her to explain her new religion, and she answered that hers was
the very oldest extant, and formed the belief of five hundred million
souls. I inquired how it was that this stupendous fact had not yet
touched Christendom, and her reply was that there had never been any
interference with Christian thought. Though judge of all, Christianity
had been judged by none. The rise of Japan was a factor of immense
potency, and in time would open out a new era in the comprehension of
East by West. Then the meaning would flash upon the churches of the
words, "Neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem."
I explained to her my difficulties, which she proceeded to solve by
expounding the doctrines of reincarnation and Karma. They jumped
instantly to my reason. I there and then found the Just God, of whom I
had been in search. From that day to this I have never had reason to
swerve from those beliefs. The older I grow, the more experience I
gather, the more I read, the more confirmed do I become in the belief
that such provide the only rational explanation of this life, the only
natural hope in the world to come.
I have offered those beliefs to very many people whom I discovered to be
on the same quest as I had been. I have never once had them rejected by
any serious truth-seeker, and I have seen them passed on and on by these
people to others, forming enormous ramifications which became lost to
view in the passage of time and their own magnitude.
In these early days there was little literature available for the
student, but the circle of clever brains which rapidly surrounded
Blavatsky set to work with a will under her guidance, and now, after the
lapse of thirty years, there is an enormous literature always commanding
a wide sale, and the little circle that gathered round "the old lady"
has swollen into very many thousands.
What was the secret of Helena Petrovski Blavatsky's instant success? I
have no doubt that it lay in her power to give to the West the Eastern
answers to those problems which the Church has lost.
In her way Blavatsky was a true missioner. "Go forth on your journey for
the weal and the welfare of all people, out of compassion for the world
and the welfare of angels and mortals," was the command given by the
Lord Buddha to his disciples, and Christ, following the universal ideal,
five hundred years later, commanded, "Go ye into all the world and
preach the Gospel of the whole Creation."
I began to study those, to me, new doctrines at once, and I also took up
their occult side, no light task, but one of absorbing interest. Not
till then did I fully realize that in no one human life could that long,
long path be trodden, in no new-born soul could be developed those
divine possibilities of which I could catch but a fleeting illusive
vision.
"Thou canst not travel in the Path before thou hast become the Path
itself." Did not the Christ warn his followers that the Path must be
trodden more or less alone? "Forsake all and follow Me." So, also in the
Bhagavad Gita it is written: "Abandoning all duties come unto me alone
for shelter. Sorrow not, I will liberate thee from thy sins."
"The secret doctrine" written by Blavatsky proved a mine of wealth, and
I read the volumes through seven times in seven different keys. The
works of A. P. Sinnett, text books then, and now brought up to date by
expanding knowledge, were extremely helpful. For advanced students "The
Growth of the Soul" is unsurpassed. A very short time elapsed before
mental food was supplied for practically every branch of mysticism and
occult development, and students flocked into headquarters from all
parts of the world.
It is interesting to remember the two adjoining villas in Avenue Road,
St. John's Wood, where we used to congregate to study, and hear lectures
thirty years ago, and to look now on the stately buildings in Tavistock
Square. They are designed by the great architect Lutyens, whose wife,
Lady Emily, is an ardent theosophist. I am glad that I have lived to see
these doctrines take firm root in the West, and grow so amazingly that
in all cities they are now held by vast numbers, and even in cases where
they have not been finally adopted they are acknowledged to be the only
logical conclusion for those who desire to possess a rational belief. I
am glad that I can look back with love and profound gratitude to Helena
P. Blavatsky, the woman who grafted on the West the wisdom of the ages.
I have no doubt that she is enabled to see the mighty structure raised
on her small beginnings, and doubtless she has met on "the other side"
men and women whose debt to her is equally as great as mine.
Blavatsky began by exploding the theory that men are born equal. If this
one life were all, then this great error ought, in common justice, to be
absolute truth, and every man should possess common rights in the
community, and one man ought to be as good as another. If every soul
born to-day is a fresh creation, who will in the course of time pass
away from this life for ever, then why is it that one is only fitted to
obey, whilst another is eminently fitted to rule? One is born with a
tendency to vice and crime, another to virtue and honesty. One is born a
genius, another is born to idiocy. How, she asked, could a firm social
foundation ever be built up on this utter disregard of nature? How
treat, as having right to equal power, the wise and the ignorant, the
criminal and the saint? Yet, if man be born but once it would be very
unjust to build on any other foundation.
Re-incarnation implies the evolution of the soul, and it makes the
equality of man a delusion. In evolution time plays the greatest part,
and through evolution humanity is climbing. "Souls while eternal in
their essence are of different ages in their individuality."
Many of us must know people who though quite old in years are children
in mind. Men and women who having arrived at three score years and ten
are still utterly childish and inconsequent. They are young souls who
have had the experiences of very few earth lives. Again, we all know
children who seem born abnormally old. Infant prodigies, musicians,
calculators, painters who have brought over their genius from a former
life.
I remember once meeting with a curious experience, which is not very
easy to describe. It was an experience more of feeling than of seeing.
I was standing in Milan Cathedral. In front of me and behind was
gathered a crowd of peasants. High Mass was being celebrated, and all
the seats were occupied.
After a few moments I began to feel a curious sensation of being
intently watched. Some penetrating influence was probing me through and
through, with a quiet but intensely powerful directness. I had the
sensation that my soul was being stripped bare. I looked round, but
could see nothing to account for my sensation. Every one seemed intent
on their devotions. I began to wonder if some malicious old peasant was
throwing over me the spell of the evil eye, but again my feelings were
not conscious of an evil intent; it was more an absorbed speculation
directed towards me. Some one was probing my soul, speculating on my
spiritual worth or worthlessness, with an intensely earnest yet cold
calculation.
Just in front of me stood a peasant woman of the poorest class. Her back
was towards me, and over her shoulder hung a baby of not more than a
year old. Suddenly I met the eyes of the child full. Then I knew. As a
psychological experience it was most interesting, but it sent a little
thrill of creepiness through me.
The baby did not withdraw its gaze, but continued leisurely to look me
through and through. The eyes were large and gray, the expression that
of a contemplative savant, with a faint dash of irony in their glance. I
do not pretend to be anything but what is now called "psychic," but I am
certain that those windows of the soul, with that age-long experience
flooding out of them, would have arrested the most material person. My
husband, who is accustomed to my "flights of imagination," was very much
struck by that look of maturity, that suggestion of aeonic knowledge.
Blavatsky taught me to look on man as an evolving entity, in whose life
career births and deaths are recurring incidents. Birth and death begin
and end only a single chapter in the book of life. She taught me that we
cannot evade inexorable destiny. I made my present in my past. To-day I
am making my future. In proportion as I outwear my past, and change my
present abysmal ignorance into knowledge, so shall I become free.
I have often heard Blavatsky called a charlatan, and I am bound to say
that her impish behavior often gave grounds for this description. She
was foolishly intolerant of the many smart West End ladies who arrived
in flocks, demanding to see spooks, masters, elementals, anything, in
fact, in the way of phenomena.
Madame Blavatsky was a born conjuror. Her wonderful fingers were made
for jugglers' tricks, and I have seen her often use them for that
purpose. I well remember my amazement upon the first occasion on which
she exhibited her occult powers, spurious and genuine.
I was sitting alone with her one afternoon, when the cards of Jessica,
Lady Sykes, the late Duchess of Montrose and the Honorable Mrs. S.----
(still living) were brought in to her. She said she would receive the
ladies at once, and they were ushered in. They explained that they had
heard of her new religion, and her marvelous occult powers. They hoped
she would afford them a little exhibition of what she could do.
Madame Blavatsky had not moved out of her chair. She was suavity itself,
and whilst conversing she rolled cigarettes for her visitors and invited
them to smoke. She concluded that they were not particularly interested
in the old faith which the young West called new; what they really were
keen about was phenomena.
That was so, responded the ladies, and the burly Duchess inquired if
Madame ever gave racing tips, or lucky numbers for Monte Carlo?
Madame disclaimed having any such knowledge, but she was willing to
afford them a few moments' amusement. Would one of the ladies suggest
something she would like done?
Lady Sykes produced a pack of cards from her pocket, and held them out
to Madame Blavatsky, who shook her head.
"First remove the marked cards," she said.
Lady Sykes laughed and replied, "Which are they?"
Madame Blavatsky told her, without a second's hesitation. This charmed
the ladies. It seemed a good beginning.
"Make that basket of tobacco jump about," suggested one of them.
The next moment the basket had vanished. I don't know where it went, I
only know it disappeared by trickery, that the ladies looked for it
everywhere, even under Madame Blavatsky's ample skirts, and that
suddenly it reappeared upon its usual table. A little more jugglery
followed and some psychometry, which was excellent, then the ladies
departed, apparently well satisfied with the entertainment.
When I was once more alone with Madame Blavatsky, she turned to me with
a wry smile and said, "Would you have me throw pearls before swine?"
I asked her if all she had done was pure trickery.
"Not all, but most of it," she unblushingly replied, "but now I will
give you something lovely and real."
For a moment or two she was silent, covering her eyes with her hand,
then a sound caught my ear. I can only describe what I heard as fairy
music, exquisitely dainty and original. It seemed to proceed from
somewhere just between the floor and the ceiling, and it moved about to
different corners of the room. There was a crystal innocence in the
music, which suggested the dance of joyous children at play.
"Now I will give you the music of life," said Madame Blavatsky.
For a moment or two there fell a trance-like silence. The twilight was
creeping into the room, and seemed to bring with it a tingling
expectancy. Then it seemed to me that something entered from without,
and brought with it utterly new conditions, something incredible,
unimagined and beyond the bounds of reason.
Some one was singing, a distant melody was creeping nearer, yet I was
aware it had never been distant, it was only becoming louder.
I suddenly felt afraid of myself. The air about me was ringing with
vibrations of weird, unearthly music, seemingly as much around me as it
was above and behind me. It had no whereabouts, it was unlocatable. As I
listened my whole body quivered with wild elation, and the sensation of
the unforeseen.
There was rhythm in the music, yet it was unlike anything I had ever
heard before. It sounded like a Pastorale, and it held a call to which
my whole being wildly responded.
Who was the player, and what was his instrument? He might have been a
flautist, and he played with a catching lilt, a luxurious abandon that
was an incarnation of Nature. It caught me suddenly away to green
Sicilian hills, where the pipes of unseen players echo down the mountain
sides, as the pipes of Pan once echoed through the rugged gorges and
purple vales of Hellas and Thrace.
Alluring though the music was, and replete with the hot fever of life,
it carried with it a thrill of dread. Its sweetness was cloying, its
tenderness was sensuous. A balmy scent crept through the room, of wild
thyme, of herbs, of asphodel and the muscadine of the wine press. It
enwrapt me like an odorous vapor.
The sounds began to take shape, and gradually mold themselves into
words. I knew I was being courted with subtlety, and urged to fly out of
my house of life and join the Saturnalia Regna. The player was speaking
a language which I understood, as I had understood no tongue before. It
was my true native tongue that spoke in the wild ringing lilt, and I
could not but give ear to its enchantments and the ecstasy of its joy.
My soul seemed to strain at the leash. Should I let go? Like a powerful
opiate the allurement enfolded me, yet from out its thrall a small
insistent voice whispered "Caution! Where will you be led: supposing you
yield your will, would it ever be yours again?"
Now my brain was seized with a sense of panic and weakness. The music
suddenly seemed replete with gay sinfulness and insolent conquest. It
spoke the secrets which the nature myth so often murmurs to those who
live amid great silences, of those dread mysteries of the spirit which
yet invest it with such glory and wonderment.
With a violent reaction of fear I rose suddenly, and as I did so the
whole scene was swept from out the range of my senses. I was back once
more in Blavatsky's room with the creeping twilight and the far off
hoarse roar of London stealing in at the open window. I glanced at
Madame Blavatsky. She had sunk down in her chair, and she lay huddled up
in deep trance. She had floated out with the music into a sea of earthly
oblivion. Between her fingers she held a small Russian cross.
I knew that she had thrust me back to the world which still claimed me,
and I went quietly out of the house into the streets of London.
On another occasion when I was alone with Madame Blavatsky she suddenly
broke off our conversation by lapsing into another language, which I
supposed to be Hindustanee. She appeared to be addressing some one else,
and on looking over my shoulder I saw we were no longer alone. A man
stood in the middle of the room. I was sure he had not entered by the
door, window or chimney, and as I looked at him in some astonishment, he
salaamed to Madame Blavatsky, and replied to her in the same language in
which she had addressed him.
I rose at once to leave her, and as I bade her good-by she whispered to
me, "Do not mention this." The man did not seem aware of my presence; he
took no notice of me as I left the room. He was dark in color and very
sad looking, and his dress was a long, black cloak and a soft black hat
which he did not remove, pulled well over his eyes.
I found out that evening that none of the general staff were aware of
his arrival, and I saw him no more.
I remember clearly the first night that Annie Besant came to
headquarters as an interested inquirer. She arrived with the socialist,
Herbert Burrows. Madame Blavatsky told me she was destined to take a
very great part in the future Theosophical movement. At that time such a
thing seemed incredible, yet it has come to pass.
About this period I went to live in the East End of London, Haggerston
and Whitechapel, where I had a night shelter of my own. There I saw into
what surroundings children were born, how they grow up, and how their
parents live and die. I have seen so much of the lives of the outcast
poor that I can feel nothing but the most passionate pity for them,
even though I can now look upon them as souls just beginning to climb
the ladder of evolution.
My night shelter was for women only, and was purposely of the roughest
description. The floor was bare concrete, and round the walls were heaps
of millers' sacks I had bought cheap, owing to mice having eaten holes
in them.
According to our laws the legal age at which a girl can marry is
thirteen, and I used to get many of these girl wives in for the night,
as their lawful husbands used to turn them out of doors. I discovered
that it was no uncommon practice for a man to buy one of those children
from the parents for a few pence, the parents' consent being necessary.
The marriage was solemnized, and the child wife was used only as a
drudge to slave for the husband and his mistress, who was of a more
suitable age to become his mate.
I used to be very much troubled by women in the throes of delirium
tremens. They would come in quite quietly when the shelter opened,
strip, pick up a sack and get into it, and then lie down and at once go
to sleep. After a few hours' dead slumber they would get up, raving mad,
and disturb all the other sleepers. The reason of this peculiar form of
D. T. was explained to me by a doctor in the neighborhood. The publicans
kept a pail behind the bar, into which was thrown the dregs of every
species of liquor sold during the day. This concoction was distributed
cheap at closing time, and its effects were cumulative.
One night I had a curious experience. The room was unusually quiet, and
I had closed my eyes, but I was not asleep. I opened them, and, in the
bright light of one unshaded gas jet, I saw a dark figure moving. Its
back was towards me, and I instantly thought a plain clothes policeman
had entered, no unusual occurrence, without my hearing him. In these
days detectives used often to escort the West End ladies on slumming
expeditions, and they usually called on me. Then I saw this figure was
clad in dark robes, and was very tall. Again I thought, this is some old
Jew who has crept in, and I was just about to rise and eject him, when
something suddenly stopped me.
_I saw through him and beyond him._ I then and there realized that
feeling of hair of one's head rising on one's scalp is no mere figment
of speech.
The figure moved softly round the room, it made no sound whatever, and
as it came to each sleeper it bent down, as if closely scrutinizing each
face. It occurred to me that it was looking for some one. I began to
dread the moment when the search was over, and the figure would turn its
face towards me. I felt that my hair had turned into the quills of a
porcupine. I wanted to shut my eyes, but dared not. Then before that
quest was over, the figure straightened itself and turned full towards
me. My fears instantly fell away from me like a fallen mantle, for
though I knew the visitor had come from the other side, there was
something so profoundly sad in the pale weary face, that compassion
quite eclipsed fear. Another second and it had vanished.
I lived in Whitechapel during the dread visitation of "Jack the Ripper,"
and all women at once adopted the habit of walking in the middle of the
road amongst the horses and carts. Fortunately there were no motors in
those days to add to the confusion. When we came to the house or alley
we wished to enter, we made a sudden dash for it.
One night I had occasion to pass the entire night by the bedside of a
dying prostitute. She lived in one of four rooms, all occupied by the
same class, and all opening into a court not larger than ten feet by
ten. I suppose I must have been very tired, for I fell asleep, and about
five a. m. I woke and found I was alone, the woman was dead. I went out
into the court, hearing a sudden noise of excited voices, and discovered
that "Jack" had been at work in the adjoining room, only separated from
mine by a match-board partition. Portions of the unfortunate woman were
neatly arranged on a deal table. I had heard absolutely nothing. Later
on that same day I revisited the scene, and found a curious contrast.
Seeing his way to a cheap furnished lodging, a coster had married his
donah in a hurry, and the wedding breakfast was being eaten off the
blood-stained table!
It was in those days that I developed into a convinced Suffragist. I saw
that until men and women came together to improve and mold our
civilization, very little improvement could be expected. The son of the
bondwoman is not on a level with the son of the free woman, and we saw
that the struggle must go on until we were accorded the right to govern
our own lives.
I could always see the anti's point of view, for, had I thought only of
my own position as an isolated unit, a vote would have seemed to me a
needless responsibility. No social worker who has penetrated to the
depths can maintain this attitude, and so, in company with all other
women workers, I entered on the crusade which has just terminated in
victory. Much as I dislike militancy, I am convinced that it hastened
our victory by very many years, by bringing the subject before the
world. Also the enormous number of idle and, formerly, indifferent
women, who have rushed into work in answer to their country's call, has
helped our cause enormously. I have invariably found that directly a
woman enters the ranks of active labor, her views, however strongly they
have been opposed to us, at once swing round. Once a woman _proves for
herself_ the disabilities under which we labor, she is at once
converted. To the very many women who suffered acute physical torture
during the militant campaign, our easy victory must seem passing
strange.