THE CLIMAX OF THEOSOPHIC BROTHERHOOD.
“To form the nucleus of a Universal Brotherhood of
Humanity.”—THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY, Object I.
“Pestling a poisoned poison behind his crimson lights!”—“MAUD.”
[Sidenote: =THE “MASTER WILL PROVIDE” MISSIVE.=]
We left the president of the Theosophical Society staring at the
impression of his own “flap-doodle” seal on that which purported to be a
missive from the Mahatma.
The purport of the missive was precisely what the prescient Judge had
foretold. Colonel Olcott was not to sell the Blavatsky jewels, as the
money would be provided.
Having shown it to a brother member, the Colonel replaced it in the
envelope, and went off to have a few words with Mr. William Q. Judge.
He remarked to Judge that he had missed a certain brass seal from among
Madame Blavatsky’s relics, and described the Panjab seal and the story
of its making; not mentioning, however, the name of the exact city where
it was made. Had Judge seen the seal?
Judge answered in the negative. Upon which the Colonel remarked
meaningly (I quote his own account) that he “hoped no scoundrel would
get possession of it, and use it to give colour to bogus Mahatma
messages,” adding that he would at once recognise an impression from the
seal.
He did not mention that he had looked for and found the missive in the
envelope.
After two days he looked into the envelope for that missive again. _It
was gone!_
Some judicious hand had removed it. “Judicious,” says the Dictionary,
“literally: of or pertaining to a Judge.” Colonel Olcott concluded with
some assurance that the hand which had removed that missive, the hand
which had put it there, and the hand which had written it, were one and
the same hand, and that hand William Q. Judge’s. That is a conclusion
which we must leave the two gentlemen to settle between them.
* * * * *
But note the sequel. The writer of the missive, whoever he was, was as
good as his word.
When the Convention in due course was held, it was announced that a
donation had been contributed towards the expenses in a peculiar way.
There had appeared to one of the brethren one afternoon a dark and
mysterious Oriental figure, who gave no name, but deposited two Bank of
England £10 notes (from Tibet?), which were backed with the familiar red
cryptograph, after which he, like Mr. Lewis Carroll’s Snark, “softly and
silently vanished away.”
It will not surprise the astute reader to learn that the brother
favoured with this substantial spectre was William Q. Judge.
Well, there was the £20, and the vice-president’s reputation as an
occultist stood higher than ever. There was a time, years before, when
the society had made much of a similar vision of its president’s, one
which, the Colonel used to explain, had first assured him of the truth
of Madame Blavatsky’s doctrines. On his asking for a sign, the Colonel’s
figure, which was, of course, like Mr. Judge’s, the “astral body” of a
Mahatma, had materialised its turban, and disappeared into several yards
of substantial textile fabric. “And here,” the Colonel was wont to
conclude the story, “here, you see, is the turban!”—whipping it from his
coat-tail pocket. Ah! that was in the palmy eighties. But now where was
he? What was a _chela_ who conjured up a turban beside one who could
conjure up £20 hard cash—“on the table,” as Hilda Wangel would say?
In a word, Colonel Olcott was altogether thrown into the shade by this
bold stroke, and had not even the face to suggest that perhaps Mr.
Judge’s story was only a donor’s graceful way of conveying assistance
from his own pocket. The Colonel pulled rather a sour face, however,
over the heavy sum with which the society’s chest was debited when Mr.
Judge’s expenses at the Convention came to be paid. For, Judge having
attended in his official capacity, it was the Colonel’s treasury at
Adyar which had to foot the bill. Personally, I consider the miracles
cheap at the price.
This reminds me of the matter of Madame Blavatsky’s Rosicrucian jewel,
in which also the Mahatma stole an amusing march on the Colonel. This
was a pendant set with gems, which had the property of changing colour
with every change in Madame’s health—so she and the faithful Olcott used
to swear. The Colonel had his own ideas about the future of this mystic
gewgaw; but what was his disgust on getting to Avenue-road to learn that
the Master had sent a message for it to be given to Judge, and that Mrs.
Besant had accordingly handed it over! Nor was the Colonel’s chagrin
lightened by the fact that the forgetful Mahatma attempted (through
Judge, of course) to put him off the track of the jewel by a message to
quite another effect—an exceedingly misleading message.
For all I know, the gift was as valueless intrinsically as the brass
seal; but Theosophically it was a distinct score for Mr. Judge and his
Mahatma thus to amalgamate the two mystic apparatuses in one firm’s
hands, so to speak.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: =THE “INNER GROUP” MISSIVE.=]
After the passages described above, Mr. Judge’s Mahatma was chary of
subjecting any more epistolary efforts to the eye of Colonel Olcott. And
he seems to have become more cautious altogether. In the following
September, however, he succumbed to the temptation of intervening again
in the administration of the society. A letter with the usual trimmings
was enclosed to the Inner Group, bearing upon its constitution and
future changes, in one of Mr. Judge’s on the same subject and in the
same sense (September 14).
Just at this time Colonel Olcott was visiting America, _en route_ for
Japan, where he was to teach the Buddhists their own religion in a
flying visit. He took the opportunity of making some more pointed
representations to Mr. Judge on the vagaries of his Master.
The result was prompt and significant.
During the very next month Mrs. Besant, then preparing for her trip to
India, received a cablegram from the vice-president in America to this
effect:—
You are desired not to go to India remain where you are grave danger
Olcott await further particulars by an early mail.
[Sidenote: =THE “GRAVE DANGER OLCOTT” MISSIVE.=]
At Avenue-road this mysterious telegram was at first read in the sense,
“Grave danger _to_ Olcott.” The president was just then due at Tokyo,
and there was a report of an earthquake thereabouts. For a while there
was a great flutter over this convincing case of Mahatmic prescience.
When, however, the “early mail” arrived with Mr. Judge’s explanatory
letter, quite a different complexion was put on the telegram. After
reading this letter, and one from the inevitable Mahatma which Mr. Judge
enclosed, the conclusion of the Inner Group was that the “grave danger”
against which the Master warned Mrs. Besant was “_from_ Olcott.” The
Tibetan founder of the society, in short, warned Mrs. Besant against
imperilling her safety in the neighbourhood of its president!
The Mahatma had declared war on Colonel Olcott.
This was the first shot in the campaign.
But what could this danger from Colonel Olcott be? Mr. Judge and his
Mahatma left that darkly vague. Some of their friends in England dotted
the i’s and crossed the t’s for them. It is hardly credible, but the
suggestion was nothing less preposterous than that Colonel Olcott
intended to _poison_ Mrs. Besant!
I have no great veneration for Colonel Olcott’s character, and none at
all for his intelligence; but I frankly apologise to him for having to
mention this astounding nonsense in connexion with his name. I mention
it simply in order to explain one of the documents which follow, and to
throw a light on the minds of the colleagues who made or believed the
charge; and I suppose I need scarcely add that I attach to it no other
value whatever. Colonel Olcott is about as remote as it is possible to
conceive from the sort of stuff of which murderers are made. I am sure
he never had and never will have any more intention to poison Mrs.
Besant, or anybody else, than the Man in the Moon. Having said so much
to make any misunderstanding impossible, I return to the suspicions or
pretended suspicions of the Colonel’s professed “Brothers.”
Positively, the only material which these ladies and gentlemen had to
work on was an innocent conversation of the Colonel’s with a friend on
the subject of poisons, Indian and other, which took place at a date
when Mrs. Besant was not yet even a member of the society! The
“evidence”—save the mark!—was such as ordinary non-Theosophical folk
would not give even a dog a bad name on. But Mahatmas and their friends
are different, and Mr. Judge’s Mahatma was well served. For this trivial
episode, buzzed about from mouth to mouth in connexion with the sinister
hints of “Mahatma M,” sufficed to make this monstrous charge against
their president currently believed at Avenue-road, for some weeks at
least, by the very inmost and governing circle of his colleagues, with
Mrs. Besant at their head!
A belief once discarded, it is easy to deny that it ever existed. But
this particular belief, or half-belief, showed itself in action. Mrs.
Besant deferred her visit to India, and to impatient Indian disciples
wrote that “Master had forbidden her to come,” and “till that order was
countermanded” she would not budge.
Now just pause a moment, and enjoy the exquisite irony of this unique
situation. The Theosophic Society was to be “the nucleus of a Universal
Brotherhood of Mankind.” At this moment, taking the three chief
exponents of this new Brotherliness, the president believed the
vice-president to be fabricating bogus documents; the vice-president
apparently believed the president to have designs to poison the
high-priestess; and the high-priestess, having these two beliefs to
choose from, coquetted at least, as we have seen, with the more heinous
of the two.
Other Theosophists appear from their course of action to have
accomplished the intellectual feat of believing both.