Masonic, Occult and Esoteric Online Library
H.P. Blavatsky As I Knew Her
By Alice Leighton Cleather
Chapter 1
THE opportunity offered by my friend Mrs. Laura Langford (whom we all knew so well in the eighties as " Laura Holloway " ) to contribute my recollections of H. P. B. to her forthcoming book was a very welcome one. I had always wished to testify publicly to my Teacher's greatness of Soul and her unique and wonderful personality. I say " her," but one felt no suggestion of the feminine in her, or of the masculine either, for that matter. Rather an overwhelming realisation that here was one of those rare Souls whose grandeur of purpose escapes lesser mortals, and who are consequently almost invariably misunderstood, and but too often hated. For of such a poor, mean quality is the stuff compounded which we call our " selves," being ignorant of what our real " selves " are ; and this H. P. B. came to show us.
When Mrs. Langford's request reached me from America in my present Himalayan home, I had just been reading once more Countess Wachtmeister's Reminiscences of H. P. Blavatsky and " The Secret Doctrine." We were fellow-members of H. P. B.'s Inner Group ; I therefore knew her very well, and she was ever a good friend. In the present instance, I cannot do better than follow her example, and just try to write simply and clearly of some of my experiences with H. P. B. These are, many of them, never-to-be-forgotten ; but with the passing of the years some of the outlines have become blurred, and the actual details less clear than they would have been had I written something of what I know soon after she left us.
Like the way that led up to the Countess's first meeting with H. P. B., my own path to her was strewn with obstacles. My husband and I, with our two child- ren, were living at Eastbourne when H. P. B. came over to England from Ostend in 1887, having been practically driven from India in 1885. l I had met Mr. BertramKeightley shortly after I joined the Theosophical Society, and from him received help and encouragement that wasinvaluable as from an older to a younger member.He knew my keen desire to meet H. P. B., and kindly undertook to arrange it, if possible, while they were at Maycot, Norwood (a London suburb). But he warnedme that it might be a difficult matter as " our old Lady " was apt to be well, a little uncertain and capricious at times. I did not care the proverbial two pins what she was in those respects, if only she would see me. I had a profound conviction that I was approaching a crisis in myinner life, and that everything depended upon getting into touch with her. See her, therefore, I must and would.
We were not well off at this time, and a journey from Eastbourne to London, and back, was not easy to compass. 1 had a small sum at " the bottom of a stocking," put by against a rainy day. This I nowdetermined to use for my little pilgrimage. Indeed, I felt like a pilgrim, to an unknown goal ; and I set out for London with no small excitement, and very definite high hopes. A friend had lent me a room for a couple of days, so I was spared that expense. Maycot was a small villa occupied at that time by Mrs. Keningale Cook (a wellknown novelist, daughter of Mortimer Collins and niece of Wilkie Collins) better known to Theosophists by her maiden name, Mabel Collins, as the scribe of Light on the Path.
I well remember Mr. Keightley telling me on our way out to Norwood that, in their frequent " arguments," she and H. P. B. could be " heard halfway down the road " when the windows were open ! We walked from West Norwood station and, sure enough, when we got within about a hundred yards of Maycot, I heard loud and apparently angry voices floating or rather ricochetting towards us down the road. I was rather aghast, and Mr. Keightley's murmured remark that he was afraid " the old Lady " was in " one of her tempers " was not reassuring, particularly as he added that she would probably refuse to see me ! She did : Nothing would induce her to, I could hear her saying so when Mr. Keightley went in (leaving me outside on the doorstep), and rating him soundly for bringing a total stranger to call at such an inopportune moment. In vain he reminded her that she herself had made the appointment, and that I had come up from the country on purpose to keep it. No, she was adamant ; also angry (at least I thought so then). So I had to return sadly to London, and thence to Eastbourne, my " savings " gone, and my " high hopes " dashed to the ground. Truly I was greatly upset, as I imagined I must be " unworthy." All the same, I by no means abandoned my determination to see H. P. B. in the end worthy or unworthy. Of course I was the latter ; we all were ; but we were all too tragically unconscious of it, and of the real nature and greatness of the being we so misunderstood and misjudged.
Later in the same year, 1887, I at last attained my heart's desire ; and once more Mr. Keightley was the Deus ex machind. He obtained an invitation for me to 17, Lansdowne Road, and himself took me there late one afternoon. H. P. B. had moved into the West End of London from Maycot, and we had left Eastbourne for Harrow, a North-western suburb, so journeys were no longer a difficulty. When we were ushered into the well-known double drawing-room on the ground floor myattention immediately became riveted on the figure of a stout, middle-aged woman seated with her back to the wall before a card table, apparently engaged in playing Patience. She had the most arresting head and face I had ever seen, and when she lifted her eyes to mine, on Mr. Keightley presenting me, I experienced a distinct shock as her extraordinarily penetrating blue eyes literally " bored a hole " through my brain. She looked steadfastly at me for a few seconds (most uncomfortable ones for me) then, turning to Mr. Keightley, remarked indignantly : " You never told me she was like this ! " absolutely ignoring his assertion that he had repeatedly done so. Exactly what " like this " indicated I never subsequently discovered.
Such was my introduction to the greatest incarnated Soul of our times ; but at that early date I realised nothing more than that she took one's breath away ; and that " life was never the same again." From that moment I became her devoted disciple though here again I did not mentally so phrase my attitude but I felt that if she would consent to teach me, my gratitude would know no bounds. Quite what I proposed to learn was not clear to me then, either. Certainly, it had nothing to do with phenomena spiritualistic or otherwise which had always seemed to me to prove nothing at all, except the survival of consciousness after the death of the body, and the existence of laws in Nature of which man had hitherto been ignorant. But I already firmly believed in all that. I think that I most wanted to learn the truth about the Soul, and the Powers of the Soul.
" Faith," as defined by the small boy in a Sunday School class, is the " power of believin ' what yer know ain't true ; " and although this quaint definition did not exactly apply to the quality of my own faith, I yet felt somehow and had done so from the first moment I heard of her that this extraordinary woman could teach me what I wanted to know ; could, if she would, prove to me that (to quote Huxley) " there are Intelligences in the Universe as far above Man's as Man's is above the black beetle's." I had believed in the existence of such Beings, here, on earth, for as long as I could remember, and had always determined to find Them, even if it took me many lives. For I already believed in " transmigration, " as it was then called, and in the reign of immutable Law.
Without going further into the nature of my mental equipment, I may say that I had a fair knowledge of philosophy and metaphysics, and was therefore more or less mentally prepared to meet H. P. B. Morally I was not ; that is to say, my motives were all askew. I did not at that time desire only to serve my fellowmen ; I did not realise the dangers of acquiring knowledge without that basic leitmotif ; I did not in the least realise the awful mental and moral condition of the world ; the need for morality, ethics call it what you will but the need for the purification of heart and mind. I but vaguely comprehended all this. I, too, was a child of my day and generation ; selfish, and at any rate superficially materialistic ; though so little did I realise my own condition that I should have indignantly repudiated such imputations. All the same, it was true ; and at this distance of time I see it more clearly. H. P. B. alone gave me the key to my own nature, proved to me the scientific " necessity " for the practice of the highest morality. A " necessity " based on the conception of the essential One-ness of all living things. " He who would profit by the Wisdom of the Universal Mind," she once wrote, " has to reach it through the whole of Humanity " (Practical Occultism, p. 45).
My personal recollections of H. P. B. are so inextricably bound up with what she taught, and with what her teachings did for me, that to recall the one is inevitably to draw the other into one's conscious mind. H. P. B. and what she stood for, in short, are to meinseparable.
Many pens far more able and graphic than mine have described this " lion-hearted " woman, so I will not attempt a task beyond my powers. From the day I first met her she always showed me the very greatest kindness. I soon felt she knew " all about " me ; read me like a book. I never remember having the very smallest doubt as to her ability to do this ; or indeed anything else she chose. This because I believed most profoundly in the " psychical powers latent in man," but not " latent " in her ; for her mere presence conveyed an overwhelming impression of power and knowledge, despite the apparently irascible temper, and the general puzzle which her personality presented to the ordinary mind. There was absolutely no merit in my attitude ; simply, I had always " known," and could more easily have been made to doubt my own identity than that she was an " Initiate " ; though I did not then make use of that actual word in my own mind. All I realised was that " she," or something behind " her," was entirely different from all those who surrounded her ; that she belonged in fact to a totally different world, a world of which ordinary mortals have no conception. A much more real world than that cognisable by our senses which, as every schoolboy knows, deceive us " most " if not " all of the time ". To this (inner) world H. P. B. really belonged. She once told us " I work all the twentyfour hours ; in this body all day, in another [more ethereal] one, all night. But / remember all I do [in the latter] you do not." There are plenty of so-called Theosophists nowadays, however, self-styled " Initiates " (H. P. B never claimed to be, but ivas, an Initiate) who pretend they do " remember " ; but the very nature of their utterances, so trivial, often contemptible and even unintelligent, give the lie to their pretensions. Out of their own mouths are they condemned.
