THE PSYCHICAL RESEARCH EXPOSURE.
“Either she is a messenger from the Mahatmas or else she is a fraud.
In either case the Theosophical Society would have had no existence
without her.”—MRS. BESANT in _Lucifer_, December 15, 1890.
At the time of the Blavatsky season in London and Cambridge, the
lately-founded Psychical Research Society, which had close connexion
with the University town, was spoiling for something to investigate, and
it decided to investigate Madame Blavatsky. Madame and her friends were
delighted with this testimony to the stir which they had made, and
entered into the thing with every hope of converting the Researchers.
Were they not all ready to asseverate that such-and-such things had
indeed happened——in India?
Whatever Theosophists may now say, the ‘S.P.R.’ was certainly not a
hostile tribunal. Its very existence and objects were a challenge to the
average educated prejudice which assumes that nothing can ever happen in
nature which is not accounted for in current scientific textbooks. The
society had itself vouched for “telepathy,” and coquetted with
“phantasms of the living”; it has since bestowed a statistical
respectability on the common ghost. To the miracles of Adyar some of its
members had lent a more than friendly ear. One of the most prominent had
actually been dubbed a _chela_. Dr. Hodgson (now secretary of the S.P.R.
American Branch), who conducted the Indian part of the inquiry, declared
that whatever prepossessions he may have had “were distinctly in favour
of occultism and Madame Blavatsky.”
When Mr. Hodgson got to India he found people very much excited over
some highly suspicious and suggestive letters which had just appeared in
a Madras paper, communicated by the Madame Coulomb already spoken of,
and alleged by her to have been written by Madame Blavatsky. Mr. Hodgson
had to inquire on the spot: first, into the genuineness of these
letters; secondly, into that of the missives alleged to have been
precipitated by Mahatmas; thirdly, into the credibility of the evidence
about other marvels given before the Psychical Committee by Madame
herself, Colonel Olcott, Mr. Sinnett, and Mohini. He inquired and
investigated for three months; and his report, with copious facsimiles
and plans, is on record in Part IX. of the S.P.R. _Proceedings_
(December, 1885).
The allegation of the Coulombs was that the whole series of miracles had
been a matter of vulgar trickery, some of which they had been employed
to carry out for Madame. During Madame’s absence in Europe, the people
at Adyar had quarrelled with them and dismissed the pair, partly for
having at various times hinted to outsiders the secrets which they now
proceeded to make a clean breast of. The origin of their close
relationship with Madame Blavatsky is obscure. She and Madame Coulomb
had been associated at Cairo in the seventies in some “page” which the
foundress of Theosophy had expressed a wish to have “torn out of the
book of my life.” By the foundress’s own account, this torn-out page was
such as made it odd that she should pitch on the Coulombs when in want
of fit guardians for the sacred Shrine. Mrs. Besant once expounded to me
a theory that Madame did this, with the full foreknowledge that frauds
would follow and would discredit her and her Masters, partly from a
sublime benevolence towards the wicked Coulombs, partly because it was
necessary that she should herself “have her Calvary.” It was the same
combined motives, no doubt, which led Madame Blavatsky to act more than
once exactly as if Madame Coulomb had some secret hold over her. An
agitated telegram from Paris, however, failed to heal the present
rupture; and the result was the giving to the press of a long series of
letters in Madame’s hand, teeming with veiled instructions to the
Coulombs which fitted in at every point with their accounts of jugglery
at Adyar.
The Coulomb story tallied also with equal accuracy with such outside
circumstantial evidence as happened to touch it. Did Madame Coulomb
allege that a “miracle” was worked by the substitution of one vase for
another exactly similar, the shop she named proved to have record of the
purchase of just such an exact pair just before the date of the miracle.
Did she make a similar statement about a “miraculous” shower of roses,
the like corroboration would be forthcoming. Did her husband describe
the famous “Shrine” cupboard as a trick-cabinet with three sliding
panels in the back, the panels had to be admitted, and explained by
Madame as “for convenience of packing in case of removal.” It had hung
against a hidden recess in the wall—there was the recess, the
coincidence had to be deplored as unfortunate. On the other side of that
recess, in Madame’s bedroom, the sideboard had a false back—that, too,
was to be seen, and the Theosophists must content themselves with
alleging that M. Coulomb had made it so after the miracles, and in the
nick of time for the inquiry. As for the scribbled instructions and
letters in which some of these arrangements were clearly hinted at,
Madame was driven to the peculiar course of admitting some letters and
even parts of letters and denying the rest. This, by the way, was
exactly what she had done about a similar incriminating letter on the
subject of a trick “missive,” which was planted on Mr. C. C. Massey, in
1882; the discovery of which led to the resignation of that gentleman
and others from the Society.
As for the evidence of Madame and her friends about special “phenomena”
it had already so melted away under the application of ordinary
evidential canons as to leave the field clear for the Coulomb theory.
The “tests” with which in some cases the Mahatmas had insisted on
supplementing the credibility of their witnesses were as worthless and
disingenuous as all the rest.
Last, what of the Mahatma missives?—precipitated from the Himalayas,
speaking in the persons and signed with the superscriptions of Mahatma
Morya and Koot Hoomi Lal Sing. These precious documents, which had been
rained among the faithful with a copiousness almost amounting to
garrulity, had been a little discredited already. The prosy and
sometimes illiterate verbiage of the Tibetan sages was a severe trial to
the enthusiasm of the more critical Theosophists even where it was
apparently original. But it was too much of a good thing when a long
doctrinal treatise, which Koot Hoomi had addressed to Mr. Sinnett, was
found to be a gross plagiarism from a lecture by an American gentleman
which had been reported in a Spiritualist paper a few months before. Nor
did it mend matters when, after considerable delay, the illustrious Koot
condescended to the newspaper arena, and wrote—we mean precipitated—an
explanation which for its evasiveness and general “thinness” is probably
unique even in the records of convicted plagiarists.
But now came worse. For the same scrutiny which had identified Madame
Blavatsky as the writer of the unblushing letters to Madame Coulomb now
found exactly the same characteristics of expression, turns of phrase,
and solecisms in spelling in the compositions of Koot Hoomi Lal Sing. As
to handwriting, it was shown that the styles of the two august
correspondents had been evolved gradually by differentiation from
Madame’s ordinary hand. The facsimiles in the report deal only with
“K.H.” documents; but the case against those of “M.” is just as strong.
I showed a mass of “M.” script, which lies before me as I write,
belonging to the earliest period, to a Theosophist well acquainted with
Madame’s writing, and in perfect innocence he at once took it for hers.
At that time almost the only difference between the two Mahatma scripts
was that one affected red pencil or ink, and the other blue.
[Illustration:
FACSIMILE OF MAHATMA M.’S SIGNATURE. FROM AN EARLY BLAVATSKY MISSIVE.
]
In a word, it was declared that Koot Hoomi Lal Sing and Mahatma Morya
were the same person, and that person Madame Blavatsky. When a missive
from the Himalayas floated down into the neophyte’s lap, it was Madame’s
own hand which had prepared it, though it was the no less useful if
humbler function of M. Coulomb to jerk it from the ceiling at the
critical moment with a string, or deftly pass it through the sliding
panel into the closed Shrine.
Passing by the committee’s report on Madame Blavatsky herself, what of
her leading disciples? Of Colonel Olcott it was declared proven that in
a Theosophical connexion he was either unable to describe anything as he
really saw it, or else to see anything as it really was. Mohini and Mr.
Sinnett were disposed of in much the same way. Damodar—the astral
Damodar—was charged explicitly as a confederate of Madame in
missive-manufacturing. Mohini, the fascinating saint, hurried back to
India with a damaged halo. Mr. Sinnett has since sprung to fame as a
director—not of the regeneration of mankind, but of the Hansard Union.
Damodar announced that he was off to find his _guru_ in the Himalayas,
disappeared, and has not been seen since by his friends.
William Q. Judge, having been left out in the cold when the hegira to
India took place, lived to fight another day, as we shall see. Mrs.
Besant had not yet loomed on the Theosophical horizon. Madame Blavatsky
herself left England and travelled till the storm had blown over. To the
S.P.R. Report no serious answer has ever appeared from that day to this;
and it fairly killed the miraculous phenomena. One class of them has
reappeared under the ægis of Mrs. Besant; but poor indeed, as we shall
see, is the Late Besantine period of mythological architecture beside
its gorgeous predecessor.