Collected Writings VOLUME I

1874

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H.P.B.’S SCRAPBOOKS

 

 

[Beginning in 1874, and for about ten years, H.P.B. pasted a wide variety of cuttings from newspapers and magazines into Scrapbooks. There are twenty-four of them in the Archives of The Theosophical Society at Adyar, India. Every newspaper reference to the T.S. and its work, and any account thought to be of consequence for historical purposes, was pasted in these Scrapbooks. This included also cuttings of H.P.B.’s own articles and letters to Editors which had been published, and some of Col. Olcott’s contributions to various Journals of the day.

H.P.B. appended pen-and-ink and pencil remarks and comments to various statements in the text of these articles; many of these comments are humorous and are enhanced by cartoons, either drawn by herself or pasted in from some other magazine or paper, frequently with her own additions. Here and there appears some important statement of her own, not to be found anywhere else in her writings.

In the pages that follow, the reader will find all pertinent comments by H.P.B. introduced in their approximate chronological sequence, which at times is not easy to determine; some of H.P.B.’s annotations may have been added later than the time when any given article was published.—Compiler.]

 

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[The first article definitely known to be from the pen of H.P.B. is the one in the New York Daily Graphic, entitled “Marvellous Spirit Manifestations,” with which the present Volume opens:]

 

 

 

 

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MARVELLOUS SPIRIT MANIFESTATIONS

 

A SECOND IDA PFEIFFER WITH THE EDDYS — APPARITIONS OF GEORGIANS, PERSIANS, KURDS, CIRCASSIANS, AFRICANS, AND RUSSIANS — WHAT A RUSSIAN LADY THINKS OF DR. BEARD.

 

[The Daily Graphic, New York, Vol. V, October 30, 1874, p. 873]

 

The following letter was addressed to a contemporary journal by Mme. Blavatsky, and was handed to us for publication in The Daily Graphic, as we have been taking the lead in the discussion of the curious subject of Spiritualism.

EDITOR, The Daily Graphic.

 

Aware in the past of your love of justice and fair play, I most earnestly solicit the use of your columns to reply to an article of Dr. G. M. Beard in relation to the Eddy family in Vermont. He, in denouncing them and their spiritual manifestations in a most sweeping declaration, would aim a blow at the entire spiritual world of today. His letter appeared this morning (October 27th). Dr. George M. Beard has for the last few weeks assumed the part of the “roaring lion” seeking for a medium “to devour.” It appears that today the learned gentleman is more hungry than ever. No wonder, after the failure he has experienced with Mr. Brown, the “mind-reader,” at New Haven.

I do not know Dr. Beard personally, nor do I care to know how far he is entitled to wear the laurels of his profession as an M.D.; but what I do know is that he may never hope to equal, much less to surpass, such men and savants as Crookes, Wallace, or even Flammarion, the French astronomer, all of whom have devoted years to the investigation of Spiritualism. All of them came to the conclusion that, supposing even the well-known phenomenon of materialization of spirits did not prove the identity of the persons whom they purported to represent, it was not, at all events, the work of mortal hands; still less was it a fraud.

Now to the Eddys. Dozens of visitors have remained there for weeks and even for months; not a single séance has taken place but some of them realized the personal presence of a

 

 

 

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friend, a relative, a mother, father, or dear departed child. But lo! here comes Dr. Beard, stops less than two days, applies his powerful electrical battery, under which the spirit does not even wink or flinch, closely examines the cabinet (in which he finds nothing), and then turns his back and declares most emphatically “that he wishes it to be perfectly understood that if his scientific name ever appears in connection with the Eddy family, it must be only to expose them as the greatest frauds who cannot do even good trickery.” Consummatum est! Spiritualism is defunct. Requiescat in pace! Dr. Beard has killed it with one word. Scatter ashes over your venerable but silly heads, oh Crookes, Wallace and Varley! Henceforth you must be considered as demented, psychologized, and lunatics, and so must it be with the many thousands of Spiritualists who have seen and talked with their friends and relatives departed, recognizing them at Moravia, at the Eddys’, and elsewhere throughout the length and breadth of this continent. But is there no escape from the horns of this dilemma? Yea, verily, Dr. Beard writes thus: “When your correspondent returns to New York I will teach him on any convenient evening to do all that the Eddys do.” Pray why should a Daily Graphic reporter be the only one selected by G. M. Beard, M.D., for initiation into the knowledge of so clever a “trick”? In such a case why not publicly denounce this universal trickery, and so benefit the whole world? But Dr. Beard seems to be as partial in his selections as he is clever in detecting said tricks. Didn’t the learned doctor say to Colonel Olcott while at the Eddys’ that three dollars’ worth of second-hand drapery would be enough for him to show how to materialize all the spirits that visit the Eddy homestead?

To this I reply, backed as I am by the testimony of hundreds of reliable witnesses that all the wardrobe of Niblo’s Theatre would not suffice to attire the number of spirits that emerge night after night from an empty little closet.

Let Dr. Beard rise and explain the following fact if he can: I remained fourteen days at the Eddys’. In that short period of time I saw and recognized fully out of 119 apparitions seven spirits. I admit that I was the only one to

 

 

 

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recognize them, the rest of the audience not having been with me in my numerous travels throughout the East, but their various dresses and costumes were plainly seen and closely examined by all.

 

The first was a Georgian boy, dressed in the historical Caucasian attire, the picture of whom will shortly appear in The Daily Graphic.* I recognized and questioned him in Georgian upon circumstances known only to myself. I was understood and answered. Requested by me in his mother tongue (upon the whispered suggestion of Colonel Olcott) to play the “Lezguinka,” a Circassian dance, he did so immediately upon the guitar.

 

Second. A little old man appears. He is dressed as Persian merchants generally are. His dress is perfect as a national costume. Everything is in its right place, down to the “babouches” that are off his feet, he stepping out in his stockings. He speaks his name in a loud whisper. It is “Hassan Aga,” an old man whom I and my family have known for twenty years at Tiflis. He says, half in Georgian and half in Persian, that he has got a “big secret to tell me,” and comes at three different times, vainly seeking to finish his sentence.

 

Third. A man of gigantic stature emerges forth, dressed in the picturesque attire of the warriors of Kurdistan. He does not speak, but bows in the Oriental fashion, and lifts up his spear ornamented with bright-coloured feathers, shaking it in token of welcome. I recognize him immediately as Saffar Ali Bek, a young chief of a tribe of Kurds, who used to accompany me in my trips around Ararat in Armenia on horseback, and who on one occasion saved my life.† More, he bends to the ground as though picking up a handful of

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* [This boy was Michalko Guegidze, of Kutais, Georgia, who was a servant in the household of Katherine de Witte. See in connection with this subject Col. H. S. Olcott’s work, People from the Other World, Hartford, Conn., 1875, pp. 298 et seq.—Compiler.]

† [Safar Ali Bek Ibrahim Bek Ogli, mentioned by Col. Olcott in his People from the Other World, p. 320.—Compiler.]

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 PORTION OF A PAGE OF H.P.B.’S SCRAPBOOK I

 

(See page 34 of the present volume for transcription of her pen-and-ink remarks.)

 

 

 

 

 ALEXANDER NIKOLAYEVICH AKSAKOV

1823-1903

(Consult the Bio-Bibliographical Index for biographical sketch.)

 

 

 

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mould and scattering it around, presses his hand to his bosom—a gesture familiar only to the tribes of the Kurdistan.

 

Fourth. A Circassian comes out. I can imagine myself at Tiflis, so perfect is his costume of “nouker” (a man who either runs before or behind one on horseback). This one speaks. More, he corrects his name, which I pronounced wrongly on recognizing him, and when I repeat it he bows, smiling, and says in the purest guttural Tartar, which sounds so familiar to my ear, “Tchoch yachtchi” (all right), and goes away.

 

Fifth. An old woman appears with a Russian headgear. She comes out and addresses me in Russian, calling me by an endearing term that she used in my childhood. I recognize an old servant of my family, a nurse of my sister.

 

Sixth. A large powerful negro next appears on the platform. His head is ornamented with a wonderful coiffure, something like horns wound about with white and gold. His looks are familiar to me, but I do not at first recollect where I have seen him. Very soon he begins to make some vivacious gestures, and his mimicry helps me to recognize him at a glance. It is a conjurer from Central Africa. He grins and disappears.

 

Seventh and last. A large grey-haired gentleman comes out attired in the conventional suit of black. The Russian decoration of Saint Ann hangs suspended by a large red moiré ribbon with two black stripes—a ribbon, as every Russian will know, belonging to said decoration. This ribbon is worn around his neck. I feel faint, for I think of recognizing my father. But the latter was a great deal taller. In my excitement I address him in English, and ask him: “Are you my father?” He shakes his head in the negative, and answers as plainly as any mortal man can speak, and in Russian, “No; I am your uncle.” The word “diadia” has been heard and remembered by all the audience. It means “uncle.”

But what of that? Dr. Beard knows it to be but a pitiful

 

 

 

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trick, and we must submit in silence. People that know me know that I am far from being credulous. Though a Spiritualist of many years’ standing,* I am more sceptical in receiving evidence from paid mediums than many unbelievers. But when I receive such evidence as I received at the Eddys’, I feel bound on my honour, and under the penalty of confessing myself a moral coward, to defend the mediums as well as the thousands of my brother and sister Spiritualists, against the conceit and slander of one man who has nothing and no one to back him in his assertions. I now hereby finally and publicly challenge Dr. Beard to the amount of $500 to produce before a public audience and under the same conditions the manifestations herein attested, or, failing this, to bear the ignominious consequences of his proposed exposé.

—H. P. BLAVATSKY.

124 East Sixteenth Street, October 27.

 

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[In H.P.B.’s Scrapbook, Vol. I, the above article is pasted on page 5, in three separate columns, together with the Press Cutting mentioning her arrival at the Eddy Homestead on Oct. 14, 1874, as may be seen on the accompanying illustration. H.P.B.’s comment at the top of the page reads:]

 

The curtain is raised. — H.S.O.’s acquaintance on October 14, 1874, with H.P.B. at Chittenden. H. S. Olcott is a — Rabid Spiritualist, and H. P. Blavatsky is an occultist — one who laughs at the supposed agency of Spirits! (but all the same pretends to be one herself).

[To the date of the article H.P.B. added in pen and ink: 1874; and she also wrote the following footnote under column 3:]

 

#They may be the portraits of the dead people then repro . . . . . (they certainly are not Spirits or Souls) yet a real . . . . . nomenon produced by the Elementaries. H.P.B.

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* [When H.P.B. pasted the cutting of this article in her Scrapbook. Vol. I, p. 5, she rubbed out the words “a Spiritualist,” substituted for them the words “an Occultist,” and underlined in blue the entire sentence.—Compiler.]

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[The sign introducing the footnote is missing in the actual article; there are, however, blue underlinings and quotation marks in connection with the word “spirits,” in the 4th and 5th paragraphs of the text, made by H.P.B., and to which her footnote may refer.]

[In A. P. Sinnett’s well-known work, Incidents in the Life of H. P. Blavatsky (New York: J. W. Bouton, 1886), pp. 131-33, there occurs a rather important statement, as well as a direct quote of H.P.B.’s own words, bearing upon the séances at the Eddy Brothers. Mr. Sinnett says that H.P.B.

“. . . . has tried with the most famous mediums to evoke and communicate with those dearest to her, and whose loss she had deplored, but could never succeed. ‘Communications and messages’ she certainly did receive, and got their signatures, and on two occasions their materialized forms, but the communications were couched in a vague and gushing language quite unlike the style she knew so well. Their signatures, as she has ascertained, were obtained from her own brain; and on no occasion, when the presence of a relation was announced and the form described by the medium, who was ignorant of the fact that Mme. Blavatsky could see as well as any of them, has she recognized the ‘spirit’ of the alleged relative in the host of spooks and elementaries that surrounded them (when the medium was a genuine one of course). Quite the reverse. For she often saw, to her disgust, how her own recollections and brain-images were drawn from her memory and disfigured in the confused amalgamation that took place between their reflection in the medium’s brain which instantly sent them out, and the shells which sucked them in like a sponge and objectivized them—‘a hideous shape with a mask on in my sight,’ she tells us.”

H.P.B. herself goes on to say:]

 

Even the materialized form of my uncle at the Eddy’s was the picture; it was I who sent it out from my own mind, as I had come out to make experiments without telling it to any one. It was like an empty outer envelope of my uncle that I seemed to throw on the medium’s astral body. I saw and followed the process. I knew Will Eddy was a genuine medium, and the phenomenon as real as it could be, and, therefore, when days of trouble came for him, I defended him in the papers. In short, for all the years of experience in America I never succeeded in identifying, in one single instance, those I wanted to see.

 

 

 

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It is only in my dreams and personal visions that I was brought in direct contact with my own blood relatives and friends, those between whom and myself there had been a strong mutual spiritual love. . . . . For certain psycho-magnetic reasons, too long to be explained here, the shells of those spirits who loved us best will not, with a very few exceptions, approach us. They have no need of it since, unless they were irretrievably wicked, they have us with them in Devachan, that state of bliss in which the monads are surrounded with all those, and that, which they have loved—objects of spiritual aspirations as well as human entities. “Shells” once separated from their higher principles have nought in common with the latter. They are not drawn to their relatives and friends, but rather to those with whom their terrestrial, sensuous affinities are the strongest. Thus the shell of a drunkard will be drawn to one who is either a drunkard already or has a germ of this passion in him, in which case it will develop it by using his organs to satisfy the craving; one who died full of sexual passion for a still living partner will have its shell drawn to him or her, etc. We Theosophists, and especially occultists, must never lose sight of the profound axiom of the Esoteric Doctrine which teaches us that it is we, the living, who are drawn toward the spirits—but that the latter can never, even though they would, descend to us, or rather into our sphere.

 

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ABOUT SPIRITUALISM*

 

[The Daily Graphic, New York, Vol. VI, November 13, 1874, pp. 90-91]

 

To the Editor of The Daily Graphic:

As Dr. Beard has scorned (in his scientific grandeur) to answer the challenge sent to him by your humble

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* [In her Scrapbook, Vol. I, p. 6, where this article is pasted in, H.P.B. wrote across the top of the page:

My 2nd letter to N. Y. Graphic, November 14, 1874. —Compiler.]

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servant in the number of The Daily Graphic for the 30th of October last, and preferred instructing the public in general rather than one “credulous fool” in particular, let her come from Circassia or Africa, I fully trust you will permit me to use your paper once more, in order that by pointing out some very spicy peculiarities of this amazingly scientific exposure, the public might better judge to whose door the aforesaid elegant epithet could be more appropriately laid.

For a week or so an immense excitement, a thrill of sacrilegious fear, if I am allowed this expression, ran through the psychologized frames of the Spiritualists of New York. It was rumored in ominous whispers that G. Beard, M.D., the Tyndall of America, was coming out with his peremptory exposure of the Eddys’ ghosts, and—the Spiritualists trembled for their gods!

The dreaded day has come; the number of The Daily Graphic for November the 9th is before us. We have read it carefully, with respectful awe—for true science has always been an authority for us (weak-minded fool though we may be), and so we handled the dangerous exposure with a feeling somewhat akin to the one of a fanatic Christian opening a volume of “Büchner.” We perused it to the last; we turned the page over and over again, vainly straining our eyes and brain to detect therein one word of scientific proof or a solitary atom of overwhelming evidence that would thrust into our spiritualistic bosom the venomous fangs of doubt. But no; not a particle of reasonable explanation or a scientific evidence that what we have all seen, heard, and felt at the Eddys’ was but delusion. In our feminine modesty, still allowing the said article the benefit of the doubt, we disbelieved our own senses, and so devoted a whole day to the picking up of sundry bits of criticism from judges that we believed more competent than ourselves, and at last came collectively to the following conclusion:

The Daily Graphic has allowed Dr. Beard in its magnanimity nine columns of its precious pages to prove—what? Why, the following: First, that he, Dr. Beard, according

 

 

 

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to his own modest assertions (see columns second and third), is more entitled to occupy the position of an actor entrusted with characters of simpletons (Molière’s Tartuffe might fit him perhaps as naturally) than to undertake the difficult part of a Prof. Faraday vis-à-vis the Chittenden D. D. Home.

Secondly, that notwithstanding the learned doctor was “overwhelmed already with professional labours” (a nice and cheap réclame, by the way) and scientific researches, he gave the latter another direction, and so went to the Eddys’. That arrived there he played with Horatio Eddy, for the glory of science and the benefit of humanity, the difficult character of a “dishevelled simpleton,” and was rewarded in his scientific research by finding on the said suspicious premises a professor of bumps, “a poor harmless fool”! Galileo, of famous memory, when he detected the sun in its involuntary imposture, chuckled certainly less over his triumph than does Dr. Beard over the discovery of this “poor fool” No. 1. Here we modestly suggest that perhaps the learned doctor had no business to go so far as Chittenden for that.

Further, the doctor, forgetting entirely the wise motto “non bis in idem,” discovers and asserts throughout the length of his article that all the past, present, and future generations of pilgrims to the “Eddy homestead” are collectively fools, and that every solitary member of this numerous body of Spiritualistic pilgrims is likewise “a weak-minded, credulous fool”! Query—The proof of it, if you please, Dr. Beard? Answer—Dr. Beard has said so, and Echo responds, Fool!

Truly miraculous are thy doings indeed, O Mother Nature! The cow is black and its milk is white! But then, you see, those ill-bred, ignorant Eddy brothers have allowed their credulous guests to eat up all the “trout” caught by Dr. Beard and paid by him seventy-five cents per pound as a penalty; and that fact alone might have turned him a little—how shall we say, sour, prejudiced? No; erroneous in his statement will answer better.

For erroneous he is, not to say more. When, assuming

 

 

 

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an air of scientific authority, he affirms that the séance-room is generally so dark that one cannot recognize at three feet distance his own mother, he says what is not true. When he tells us further that he saw through a hole in one of the shawls and the space between them all the manoeuvres of Horatio’s arm, he risks to find himself belied by thousands who, weak-minded though they may be, are not blind for all that, neither are they confederates of the Eddys, but far more reliable witnesses in their simple-minded honesty than Dr. Beard is in his would-be scientific and unscrupulous testimony. The same when he says that no one is allowed to approach the spirits nearer than twelve feet distance, still less to touch them, except the “two simple-minded, ignorant idiots” who generally sit on both ends of the platform. To my knowledge many other persons have sat there besides those two.

Dr. Beard ought to know this better than anyone else, as he has sat there himself. A sad story is in circulation, by the way, at the Eddys’. The records of the spiritual séances at Chittenden have devoted a whole page to the account of a terrible danger that has threatened for a moment to deprive America of one of her brightest scientific stars. Dr. Beard, admitting a portion of the story himself, perverts the rest of it, as he does everything else in his article. The doctor admits that he has been badly struck by the guitar, and, not being able to bear the pain, “jumped up” and broke the circle. Now it clearly appears that the learned gentleman has neglected to add to the immense stock of his knowledge the first rudiments of “logic.” He boasts himself of having completely blinded Horatio and others as to the real object of his visit. What should then Horatio pummel his head for? The spirits were never known before to be as rude as that. But then Dr. B. does not believe in their existence and so puts the whole thing to Horatio’s door. He forgets to state, though, that a whole shower of missiles were thrown at his head, and that, “pale as a ghost”—so says the tale-telling record—the poor scientist surpassed for a moment the “fleet-footed Achilles” himself in the celerity with which he took to

 

 

 

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his heels. How strange if Horatio, not suspecting him still, left him standing at two feet distance from the shawl? How very logical?

It becomes evident that the said neglected logic was keeping company at the time with old mother Truth at the bottom of her well, not being wanted, none of them, by Dr. Beard. I myself have sat upon the upper step of the platform for fourteen nights by the side of Mrs. Cleveland. I got up every time “Honto” approached me to an inch of my face in order to see her the better. I have touched her hands repeatedly as other spirits have been touched, and even embraced her nearly every night. Therefore, when I read Dr. Beard’s preposterous and cool assertion that “a very low order of genius is required to obtain command of a few words in different languages and so to mutter them to credulous Spiritualists,” I feel every right in the world to say in my turn that such a scientific exposure as Dr. Beard has come out with in his article does not require any genius at all; per contra, it requires the most ridiculous faith on the part of the writer in his own infallibility, as well as a positive confidence in finding in all his readers what he elegantly terms “weak-minded fools.” Every word of his statement, when it is not a most evident untruth, is a wicked and malicious insinuation, built on the very equivocal authority of one witness against the evidence of thousands.

Says Dr. Beard, “I have proved that the life of the Eddys is one long lie; the details need no further discussion.” The writer of the above lines forgets, by saying these imprudent words, that some people might think that “like attracts the like.” He went to Chittenden with deceit in his heart and falsehood on his lips, and so, judging his neighbour by the character he assumed himself, he takes everyone for a knave when he does not put him down as a fool. Declaring so positively that he has proved it, the doctor forgets one trifling circumstance, namely, that he has proved nothing whatever.

Where are his boasted proofs? When we contradict him by saying that the séance-room is far from being as dark

 

 

 

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as he pretends it to be, and that the spirits have repeatedly called out themselves through Mrs. Eaton’s voice for more light, we only say what we can prove before any jury. When Dr. Beard says that all the spirits are personated by W. Eddy, he advances what would prove to be a greater conundrum for solution than the apparition of spirits themselves. There he falls right away into the domain of Cagliostro: for if Dr. B. has seen five or six spirits in all, other persons, myself included, have seen one hundred and nineteen in less than a fortnight, nearly all of whom were differently dressed. Besides, the accusation of Dr. Beard implies the idea to the public that the artist of The Daily Graphic who made the sketches of so many of those apparitions, and who is not a “credulous Spiritualist” himself, is likewise a humbug, propagating to the world what he did not see, and so thrusting at large the most preposterous. and outrageous lie.

When the learned doctor will have explained to us how any man in his shirt-sleeves and a pair of tight pants for an attire can possibly conceal on his person (the cabinet having been previously found empty) a whole bundle of clothes, women’s robes, hats, caps, headgears, and entire suits of evening dress, white waistcoats and neckties included, then he will be entitled to more belief than he is at present. That would be a proof indeed, for, with all due respect to his scientific mind, Dr. Beard is not the first Oedipus that had thought of catching the Sphinx by its tail and so unriddle the mystery. We have known more than one “weak-minded fool,” ourselves included, that has laboured under a similar delusion for more than one night, but all of us were finally obliged to repeat the words of the great Galileo, Eppur si muove! and give it up.

But Dr. Beard, he does not give it up. Preferring to keep a scornful silence as to any reasonable explanation, he hides the secret of the above mystery in the depths of his profoundly scientific mind. “His life is given to scientific researches,” you see; “his physiological knowledge and neuro-physiological learning are immense,” for he says so, and skilled as he is in combating fraud by still greater

 

 

 

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fraud (see column the eighth), spiritualistic humbug has no more mysteries for him. In five minutes this scientist has done more towards science than all the rest of the scientists put together have done in years of labour, and “would feel ashamed if he had not.” (See same column.) In the overpowering modesty of his learning he takes no credit upon himself for having done so, though he has discovered the astounding, novel fact of the “cold benumbing sensation.” How Wallace, Crookes, and Varley, the naturalist-anthropologist, the chemist and electrician, will blush with envy in their old country! America alone is able to produce on her fertile soil such quick and miraculous intellects. Veni, vidi, vici! was the motto of a great conqueror. Why would not Dr. Beard select for his crest the same? And then, not unlike the Alexanders and the Caesars of the antiquity (in the primitive simplicity of his manners), he abuses people so elegantly, calling them “fools” when he cannot find a better argument.

A far more wise mind than Dr. Beard (shall he dispute the fact?) has suggested, centuries ago, that the tree was to be judged according to its fruits. Spiritualism, notwithstanding the desperate efforts of more scientific men than himself, stands its ground without flinching for more than a quarter of a century. Where are the fruits of the tree of science that blossoms on the soil of Dr. Beard’s mind? If we are to judge of them by his article, then, verily, the said tree needs more than usual care. As for the fruits, it would appear that they are as yet in the realms of “sweet delusive hope.” But then, perhaps, the doctor was afraid to crush his readers under the weight of his learning (true merit has been in all days modest and unassuming), and that accounts for the learned doctor withholding from us any scientific proof of the fraud that he pretends exposing, except the above-mentioned fact of the “cold benumbing sensation.” But how Horatio can keep his hand and arm ice-cold under a warm shawl for half an hour at a time, in summer as well as in any other season, and that without having some ice concealed about his person, or how he can prevent it from thawing—all the above is a

 

 

 

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mystery that Dr. Beard doesn’t reveal for the present. Maybe he will tell us something of it in his book that he advertises in the article. Well, we only hope that the former will be more satisfactory than the latter.

I will add but a few words before ending my debate with Dr. Beard for ever. All that he says about the lamp concealed in a bandbox, the strong confederates, etc., exists but in his imagination, for the mere sake of argument, we suppose. “False in one, false in all,” says Dr. Beard on column the sixth. These words are a just verdict to his own article.

Here I will briefly state what I reluctantly withheld up to the present moment from the knowledge of all such as Dr. Beard. The fact was too sacred in my eyes to allow it to be trifled with in newspaper gossiping. But now, in order to settle the question at once, I deem it my duty as a Spiritualist to surrender it to the opinion of the public.

On the last night that I spent with the Eddys, I was presented by George Dix and Mayflower with a silver decoration, the upper part of a medal with which I was but too familiar. I quote the precise words of the spirit: “We bring you this decoration, for we think you will value it more highly than anything else. You shall recognize it, for it is the badge of honour that was presented to your father by his Government for the campaign of 1828, between Russia and Turkey. We got it through the influence of your uncle, who appeared to you here this evening. We brought it from your father’s grave at Stavropol. You shall identify it by a certain sign known to yourself.” These words were spoken in the presence of forty witnesses. Colonel Olcott will describe the fact and give the design of the decoration.*

I have the said decoration in my possession. I know it as having belonged to my father. More, I have identified it by a portion that, through carelessness, I broke myself

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* [See H.P.B.’s explanation on pp. 203-04 of the present Volume. On page 357 of Col. Olcott’s work People from the Other World may be found the drawing of both the buckle and the decoration itself. —Compiler.]

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many years ago, and, to settle all doubt in relation to it, I possess the photograph of my father (a picture that has never been at the Eddys’, and could never possibly have been seen by any of them) on which this medal is plainly visible.

Query for Dr. Beard: How could the Eddys know that my father was buried at Stavropol; that he was ever presented with such a medal, or that he had been present and in actual service at the time of the war of 1828?

Willing as we are to give every one his due, we feel compelled to say on behalf of Dr. Beard that he has not boasted of more than he can do, advising the Eddys to take a few private lessons of him in the trickery of mediumship. The learned doctor must be expert in all such trickeries. We are likewise ready to admit that in saying as he did that “his article would only confirm the more the Spiritualists in their belief” (and he ought to have added, “convince no one else”), Dr. Beard has proved himself to be a greater “prophetic medium” than any other in this country!

H. P. BLAVATSKY.

23 Irving Place.

 

[In H.P.B.’s Scrapbook, Vol. I, pp. 6-7, where the above article is pasted, H.P.B. added in pen and ink under her signature:]

 

So much in defence of phenomena, as to whether these Spirits are ghosts is another question.

H.P.B.

 

—————

 

 

 

 

 

[In H.P.B.’s Scrapbook, Vol. I, pp. 7-8, there is a cutting from The Daily Graphic of November 1874, which deals with the visit of a Mr. Brown, the “mind reader,” to the Eddys’ Homestead. Mr. Brown relates how one of the “spirits” brought to H.P.B. one of the decorations which had belonged to her father, and says that “Madame was overwhelmed with gratitude.”

H.P.B. underlined the word overwhelmed and added at the end of the article in pen and ink:]

 

Overwhelmed—be switched! . . . . not my father’s pet, if you please. H. P. Blavatsky is never “overwhelmed.”

 

 

 

 

 

ELBRIDGE GERRY BROWN                                           45

 

 

[In Scrapbook, Vol. I, p. 8, the account of Mr. Brown is followed immediately by an article entitled “Unpractical Spirits,” presumably also from The Daily Graphic. It is signed with the initials “I.F.F.” which obviously stand for Irvin Francis Fern. H.P.B. added the following remarks in pen and ink:]

 

Bravo! Irvin Francis Fern—a great Occultist. He IS RIGHT but we have to defend phenomena & prove it too before we teach them philosophy.

 

 

—————

 

 

[ELBRIDGE GERRY BROWN]

 

 

[It is interesting and significant to bear in mind that at the earliest stage of the modern Theosophical effort, in addition to H. P. Blavatsky and Col. Henry S. Olcott, a third individual had been selected by the Teachers to play an important part in the initial work. This individual was Elbridge Gerry Brown, a young American who was Editor of the Spiritual Scientist of Boston, Mass.

A careful perusal of letters received by Col. Olcott from the Adept-Brother who signed himself Serapis throws a good deal of light on this early plan. The Egyptian Section of the Brotherhood, under whose special care the earliest stage of the Movement had been placed, appears to have intended a broadening and deepening of contemporary Spiritualism, to be achieved by the introduction into its midst of a larger philosophy. Fraudulent phenomena had to be sifted from genuine ones, and the true occult explanation of the latter was to be attempted. In the beginning, E. Gerry Brown evidently responded to these ideals and plans.

The day after H.P.B. had published her letter to the Editor of The Daily Graphic, in its issue of November 13, 1874, E. Gerry Brown wrote her a letter, the original of which is pasted in H.P.B.’s Scrapbook, Vol. III, p. 259. It runs as follows:

 

“Mme. H. P. Blavatsky.

“I have read your article in the Daily Graphic and am so much pleased with the statements therein, and the powerful refutations of Dr. Beard’s so-called ‘arguments,’ that I hasten to acknowledge to you, as editor of the Scientist, my gratitude for the service you have done Spiritualism in re-opening the eyes of the skeptical world.

“Should you ever be in Boston, I beg that you will grant

 

 

 

46                                      BLAVATSKY: COLLECTED WRITINGS

 

 

me permission, to call on you that I may learn more of the Eddy Family from one who has had so wonderful an experience and presents it in so interesting and attractive style.

“I have taken the liberty, to send you a copy of the Scientist.

“Hoping you will pardon my enthusiasm, which thus seeks expression, I have the honor to subscribe myself,

with respect,

          truly yours

Gerry Brown.”

9 Bromfield Street,

           Boston.

 

No further developments seem to have taken place for some time. According to Col. Olcott’s account, in his Old Diary Leaves, Vol. I, pp. 72-73, it was not until the first quarter of 1875 that he and H.P.B. became seriously interested in E. Gerry Brown’s journal. H.P.B. herself, in an undated letter written to Prof. Hiram Corson in the Spring of 1875 calls the efforts of Brown to his attention, speaks of the persecution he had been subjected to, and voices her intention to help Brown with his Journal and to secure his collaboration. She also suggests to Prof. Corson to write for the Spiritual Scientist.*]

 

—————

 

[The following excerpt from a letter is the first item from H.P.B.’s pen in the pages of the Spiritual Scientist:]

––––––––––

* Cf. E. R. Corson, Some Unpublished Letters of H. P. Blavatsky, letter No. 8.

––––––––––

 

 

 

 

    

 

 

MADAME BLAVATSKY

 

HER EXPERIENCE—HER OPINION OF AMERICAN SPIRITUALISM AND AMERICAN SOCIETY.

 

[Spiritual Scientist, Boston, Vol. I, December 3, 1874, pp. 148-9]

 

 

From a letter received from Mme. Blavatsky last week we make the following extracts, want of space alone preventing us from publishing it entire. It is written in her usual lively and entertaining style, and her opinions expressed are worthy of careful study, many of them being fully consistent with the true state of affairs. She says:

As it is, I have only done my duty: first, towards Spiritualism, that I have defended as well as I could from the

 

 

 

MADAME BLAVATSKY                                             47

 

 

attacks of imposture under its too transparent mask of science; then, towards two helpless, slandered “mediums”—the last word becoming fast in our days the synonym of  “martyr”; secondly, I have contributed my mite in opening the eyes of an indifferent public to the real, intrinsic value of such a man as Dr. Beard. But I am obliged to confess that I really do not believe in having done any good—at least, any practical good—to Spiritualism itself; and I never hope to perform such a feat as that were I to keep on bombarding for an eternity all the newspapers of America with my challenges and refutations of the lies told by the so-called “scientific exposers.”

It is with a profound sadness in my heart that I acknowledge this fact, for I begin to think there is no help for it. For over fifteen years have I fought my battle for the blessed truth; I have travelled and preached it—though I never was born for a lecturer—from the snow-covered tops of the Caucasian Mountains, as well as from the sandy valleys of the Nile. I have proved the truth of it practically and by persuasion. For the sake of Spiritualism I have left my home, an easy life amongst a civilized society, and have become a wanderer upon the face of this earth. I had already seen my hopes realized, beyond the most sanguinary [sic] expectations, when, in my restless desire for more knowledge, my unlucky star brought me to America.

Knowing this country to be the cradle of modern Spiritualism, I came over here from France with feelings not unlike those of a Mohammedan approaching the birthplace of his prophet. I had forgotten that “no prophet is without honor save in his own country.” In the less than fourteen months that I am here, sad experience has but too well sustained the never-dying evidence of this immortal truth!

What little I have done towards defending my belief, I am ever ready to do it over and over again, as long as I have a breath of life left in me. But what good will it ever do? We have a popular and wise Russian saying that “one Cossack on the battlefield is no warrior.” Such is my case, together with many other poor, struggling wretches, every

 

 

 

48                                      BLAVATSKY: COLLECTED WRITINGS

 

 

one of whom, like a solitary watch, sent far ahead in advance of the army, has to fight his own battle, and defend the entrusted post, unaided by no one but himself. There is no union between Spiritualists, no “entente cordiale,” as the French say. Judge Edmonds said, some years ago, that they numbered in their ranks over eleven million in this country alone; and I believe it to be true, in which case it is but to be the more deplored. When one man—as Dr. Beard did and will do it yet—dares to defy such a formidable body as that, there must be some cause for it. His insults, gross and vulgar as they are, are too fearless to leave one particle of doubt that if he does it, it is but because he knows too well that he can do so with impunity and perfect ease. Year after year the American Spiritualists have allowed themselves to be ridiculed and slighted by everyone who had a mind to do so, protesting so feebly as to give their opponents the most erroneous idea of their weakness. Am I wrong, then, in saying that our Spiritualists are more to be blamed than Dr. Beard himself in all this ridiculous polemic? Moral cowardice breeds more contempt than the “familiarity” of the old motto. How can we expect such a scientific sleight-of-hand as he is to respect a body that does not respect itself? We ourselves brought upon our heads that shower of abuse lavished by his hand with the dexterity and ability of a drunken London cockney.

My humble opinion is, that the majority of our Spiritualists are too much afraid for their “respectability” when called upon to confess and acknowledge their “belief.” Will you agree with me, if I say that the dread of the social Areopagus is so deeply rooted in the hearts of your American people, that to endeavour to tear it out of them would be undertaking to shake the whole system of society from top to bottom? “Respectability” and “fashion” have brought more than one utter materialist to select (for mere show) the Episcopalian and other wealthy churches. But Spiritualism is not “fashionable,” as yet, and that’s where the trouble is. Notwithstanding its immense and daily increasing numbers, it has not won, till now, the right of citizenship. Its chief leaders are not clothed in gold and purple

 

 

 

 

 

ROBERT DALE OWEN

1801-1877

(From W.G. Langworthy Taylor’s Katie Fox, New York, 1933.

Consult the Bio-Bibliographical Index for biographical sketch.)

 

 

 

 

 

ANDREW JACKSON DAVIS

1826-1910

(From Sir A. Conan Doyle’s History of Spiritualism, London, 1926.

Consult the Bio-Bibliographical Index for biographical sketch.)

 

 

 

MADAME BLAVATSKY                                               49

 

 

and fine raiments; for not unlike Christianity in the beginning of its era, Spiritualism numbers in its ranks more of the humble and afflicted ones, than of the powerful and  wealthy of this earth. Spiritualists belonging to the latter class will seldom dare to step out on the arena of publicity boldly proclaim their belief in the face of the whole world; that hybridous monster, called “public opinion,” is too much for them; and what does a Dr. Beard care for the opinion of the poor and the humble ones? He knows but too well, that his insulting terms of “fools” and “weak