Masonic, Occult and Esoteric Online Library
H.P. Blavatsky As I Knew Her
By Alice Leighton Cleather
Chapter 4
WHENit was settled that H. P. B. and the Lansdowne Road household should move into Mrs. Besant's house in Avenue Road, I experienced an unaccountable and curious sinking of the heart ; a sense of foreboding, of impending disaster ; and when the end came, less than two years later, I understood the reason. Moreover, once settled there, things seemed to change very much, in spite of H. P. B. being in the house. Her presence seemed in some subtle way to be withdrawn. Looking back, I can see more clearly than was then possible, that the real cause for this intangible, " unseizable " change in the psychic atmosphere the determining factor was that it was Mrs. Besant's house, not H. P. B.'s. Mrs. Besant's masterful and somewhat intolerant personality gave, as it were, the tone to the house. In spite of her conversion to the tenets of Theosophy, the ineffaceable stain of Socialism and Atheism remained. Subsequent events have amply proved the danger to the Theosophical Movement of these and other elements in Mrs. Besant, who was destined to become its evil genius. 1
A lecture hall had been added to her house (a large detached one, standing in a garden) for the meetings of the Blavatsky Lodge, both public and private. It was also used for the meetings of the E. S. T. This hall was at the side of the house furthest from EL P. B/s quarters, and she did not appear as frequently, nor was she as accessible as was the case at Lansdowne Road.Failing health had much to say to this, but before shebecame almost entirely confined to her own rooms shewould sometimes be present at the Lodge meetings.On such occasions her presence was both an inspirationand a " terror." Once, when Mrs. Besant was in thechair, and a rather lengthy and stupid paper was beingread, the whole room could hear H. P. B.'s stage whisperof agonized appeal : " Oh stop her, Annie stop her \ "To the E. S. meetings H. P. B. rarely, if ever, came(in person, at least) ; and, on the formation of the InnerGroup of the E. S., she was seen even less often outsideher own rooms, save in her bath chair, in the garden atthe back of the house.
The names of the twelve members of the InnerGroup became subsequently so well known that therecan be no indiscretion involved in giving them here.We were six men and six women ; of these latter CountessWachtmeister and Mrs. Cooper-Oakley are dead. Bothof them, together with Miss Cooper and Miss EmilyKislingbury, followed Mrs. Besant at the time of thedisruption of the Society in 1894-5. Too late the Countess must have realised her mistake, for subsequentlyshe left the Society, and an intimate friend who sawher on her death-bed told an old friend of mine that thepoor Countess had wept long and bitterly over " theruin which Mrs. Besant had wrought to H. P. B/s work."No one more loyal and devoted to H. P. B. than CountessWachtmeister ever lived, but personal loyalty and devotiondo not, alas ! necessarily imply, or confer wisdom.Mrs. Cooper-Oakley, another tireless and devoted worker,died in Buda Pesth some years ago. Her sister, MissLaura Cooper, married Mr. George Mead, who is nowso well known in London through his magazine andSociety, The Quest. Miss Kislingbury went back, I am told, to the Roman Church, whence she came forth to join H. P. B. Whether she is still alive or not I do not know.
Of Mrs. Besant in this connection little need be said -, 1 she belongs to the public, for she has always appealed unto Caesar. I, who write these brief memories, was the only woman out of the six who followed Mr. Judge in 1895, for the simple reason that we considered the conduct of the majority of our number to be a violation of the E. S. Pledge and of the First Object of the T. S. I say "we," because with Dr. Archibald Keightley and Mr. Herbert Coryn we formed a minority of three in England who declined to follow Mrs. Besant's lead. Of these two, the former is, I believe, still practising in London.2 He married Mrs. Campbell Ver Planck, so well known to Theosophists as " Jasper Niemand," who died some years ago. No finer tributes to the real H. P. B. exist than those from her pen. Mr. Herbert Coryn is at Point Loma, California, with Mrs. Tingley, from whose organization (the " Universal Brotherhood ") I resigned in 1899.
Of the four men remaining, Mr. Claude Wright3 had then been for some time in America with Mr. Judge, and naturally followed him. The three who followed Mrs. Besant were Messrs. Mead, Old, and Sturdy. The two latter took an active part in the preliminaries of the attack on Mr. Judge, and both soon dropped out of the Movement altogether. Mr. Sturdy, when I last ran across him, about 1904, had become a complete sceptic and spoke of H. P. B. as " a wicked old woman " ! Hehad married the hospital nurse who had pulled himthrough a bad illness, before the Avenue Road colony was broken up. Mr. Walter Old also married, and still works at his astrology as he has always done underthe pseudonym of Sepharial. H. P. B. used to call him" the astral tramp/' on account of his habit of " roamingabout in his astral body at night,"as she put it.
There were two more members of the I. G. whosenames did not appear, who were not under the samestrict Rules as we were, and who never attended its meetings. One of them could not, for the very goodreason that he was a native of India and lived there. The other was Dr. Wynn Westcott, the eminent Freemason and authority on the Kabala. He too, wouldappear to have lost faith and interest, if one may judge by the fact that his entire library of occult and Theosophical books was sold, shortly before he left for SouthAfrica ; so I am informed, at least.
The Inner Group was formed, and held its weeklymeetings at 19, Avenue Road, in a room which had beenspecially built for it, leading out of H. P. B.'s bedroom ; into it no one but herself and her twelve pupils ever entered. We had each our own place, and our ownchair ; and H. P. B. sat with her six men pupils on her right, and the six women on her left hand side, in semicircular formation, during our instructions.
One rather interesting incident which occurred when the interior of the Lecture Hall . was being photographed is perhaps worth mentioning. When the plate was developed a face appeared at a small upper window,or transom, partly open, about ten or twelve feet fromthe ground, where no human being could by any possibility have been standing, except on a ladder, and there were none on the premises. What, or rather Who could it be ? The faace was a distinguished-looking one, of an oval shape ; that of a man with a moustache and pointed beard. H. P. B. soon solved the mystery. It was the face of a Master known as " Hilarion," and she said that while the photographer was still in the hall the Master had " looked in on " her in her study, and had told her rather ruefully, that he had "just been caught by the camera." I have a copy of the photograph, and the face is perfectly distinct. Little things of this sort were of common occurrence.
