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MEMORIES ON BLAVATSKY WHEN SHE LIVED IN NEW YORK IN 1873

 
  
 
 
A REMINISCENCE OF H. P. BLAVATSKY IN 1873
 
 
By Elizabeth G. K. Holt
 
In 1873, I had the very great privilege of living for some months under the same roof with H.P.B. This was exactly fifty-eight years ago last month [August, 1931].
 
Those of us who can recall the New York of that time have either gone on or are swiftly passing. I think in the stage, upon which H.P.B. was to introduce her great mission, could be placed before present-day people, her methods and the reasons for them would be better understood.
 
In a speech during war-time Lloyd George said something like this: that while the world, sometimes for centuries, rolled on monotonously with little change of condition, at other times it progressed by leaps and bounds, and conditions changed almost overnight. Those who have lived through the period from 1873 to the present must agree that this was such a changeful time.
 
New York in 1873, as compared to the present city, was small; neither elevated railroad nor subway nor automobile had been thought of; you reached the north end of Manhattan Island by horse-drawn vehicles, the public horse-cars taking hours for the trip; there were no bridges over the rivers, East or Hudson; if necessary to cross, you used a ferry-boat.
 
There were, of course, no sky-scrapers the down-town city was dominated by the Trinity Church steeple, the most conspicuous landmark for miles around. The north end of the island was mostly granite cliffs, not yet excavated into streets, even as far down town as East Fortieth St. There was a solid boulder from Third to Second Avenues, on which squatters had built for themselves nondescript shanties, and over which goats and squatter children played. Second and Third Avenues were not built up, in some sections not yet reclaimed from the East River waters.
 
The very population was different: the Mediterranean peoples, the peoples of Eastern Europe and of Asia, had not yet discovered us, or, at least, not in any great numbers; the immigrants who were crowding through Castle Garden, to dig out our boulders, and lay out our streets and railroads were Irish and German, with a sprinkling of Scandinavians, though the latter mostly went north-west to the farms. And the habits and thought of the people resembled today’s as little as that city of small homes resembles the present skyscraper city.
 
I can remember that Darwin and the evolutionary Theory were live subjects of angry dispute, I remember quite vividly the sermon preached by our clergy-man —incidentally a most kindly gentleman— upon a horror which had shocked the city. A theatre in Brooklyn had been burned down the previous week; the fire had occurred during an afternoon matinee, and some three hundred people, mostly women and children had been burned to death. The clergy-man told us that God, in His just anger, had sent the fire to punish the frivolous who were spending their time in so evil a place as a theatre.
 
Even in social affairs we were very respectable Victorians in those days. There were, of course, no women in business; a few, a very few were beginning to be heard, clamoring for their “rights”; but the women who had to go out in the world to earn a living were teachers, telegraphers, sewers of various kinds and workers at small trades which paid very badly.
 
The typewriter had not yet been invented, there were no stenographers, nor had women invaded the businesses of men. A lady travelling alone was not received in the better hotels, being looked upon as under suspicion when unaccompanied by a male relative.
 
The first step toward changing this condition was made at our time, when the newspapers voiced indignation at the treatment vouchsafed to some nationally prominent woman, whose name I have forgotten, who, coming into New York unescorted, was refused admittance at the better hotels.
 
It was probably this difficulty of finding proper accommodation that led H.P.B. to the house in which I met her. I have always wondered how she, a strange coming into New York, had discovered it. The house itself was unique and a product of that particular era. In those days it was hard for respectable women workers of small means to find a fitting place in which to live; so it happened that some forty of them launched a small experiment in co-operative living. They rented a new tenement house, 222 Madison Street, one of the first built in New York, I think; certainly one of a group of three tenements which were the first built in Madison Street.
 
It was a street of small two-storey houses occupied by their owners, who were proud of their shade-trees and kept their front and back gardens in order. I may add here that the co-operative experiment, having neither capital nor business efficiency behind it, failed, lasting in all only some months, the small houses were sold by their owners, who saw the shadow of the coming slum, and were vacated and many of them pulled down to make room for tenements, even before the co-operatives disappeared.
 
My mother and I had spent the summer of 1873 in Saratoga. In order to be ready for school when it opened, I was sent home in August to the Madison Street house, where we had a friend who would take me somewhat under her friendly protection, and there I found Madame Blavatsky.
 
So far as I know, this was her first stopping-place in New York. She had a room on the second floor and my friend had a duplicate room next to her, so that they became very friendly neighbors. Being a co-operative family, we all knew one another familiarly, and kept a room next to the street-door as a common sitting-room or office, a meeting-place for members and a place where mail and messages were cared for.
 
My small apartment was directly opposite, so that I saw a good deal of Madame Blavatsky, w ho sat in the office a large part of her time, but she seldom sat alone; she was like a magnet, powerful enough to draw round her everyone who could possibly come. I saw her, day by day, sitting there, rolling her cigarettes and smoking incessantly; she had a conspicuous tobacco pouch, the head of some fur-bearing animal which she wore around her neck. She was certainly an unusual figure.
 
I think she must have been taller than she looked, she was so broad, she had a broad face, and broad shoulders, her hair was a lightest brown and crinkled like that or some Negroes. Her whole appearance conveyed the idea of power.
 
I read somewhere lately an account of an interview with Stalin; the writer said that when you entered the room you felt as if there was a powerful dynamo working. You felt something like that when you were near H.P.B., I am sure I did not analyze these things then, but looking back, I can see that there was a sort of suppressed excitement in the house because of her presence, an excitement wholly pleasant and yet somewhat tinged a little with awe.
 
Mr. Leadbeater has spoken of Madame Blavatsky's telling of weird tales of the supernatural to fellow-travelers on her sea voyages, and that her listeners invariably went below and through the ship's passengers in groups, never alone. I can testify to something similar.
 
My friend, Miss Parker, was a Scotch-Irish lady, in her early thirties, logical, level-headed and not, as I remember, given to imagine things; but after she became well acquainted with Madame, and probably heard some of these experiences, (I never heard any of them) when she came home from business late in the evening, rather than go up the two flights of dark stairs to her own room, she would stay all night with me; she owned quite frankly that she was afraid. I would like to say here that the H.P.B. whom Colonel Olcott described in his Old Diary Leaves, Vol. I, seems a perfectly accurate picture of the H.P.B. I knew.
 
Madame referred often to her life in Paris; for one thing, she told us that she had decorated the Empress Eugenie’s private apartments; I thought of her as dressed in blouse and trousers, mounted on a ladder and doing the actual work, and I think this is what she told us; but I cannot be sure whether she said that she did the actual painting, frescoing, etc., or whether she merely designed it. Later she gave practical demonstration that she had ability in the arts. I had a piano, and Madame sometimes played on it, usually because someone passed her to do so.
 
She described their past life to the people, who asked her to do so, and these accounts must have been accurate, they made such a profound impression. I never heard that she told them their future, but she may have done so without my knowing about it.
 
My friend, Miss Parker, was greatly startled when Madame told her incidents in her life which, my friend said, were known only to herself and to the dead. She was considered to be a Spiritualist, although I never heard her say she was one, but the things she said which touched on those subjects, were Theosophical rather than Spiritualistic.
 
Miss Parker had lost her mother, many years before, and when she asked Madame to put her into communication with her mother, Madame Blavatsky said it was impossible for her to do so, as her mother was absorbed in higher things, and had progressed beyond reach. The spirits she spoke continually about were the diaki, tricksy little beings, evidently counterparts of the fairies of Irish folklore, and certainly non-human from her description of them and of their activities.
 
Madame Blavatsky continually described herself as being under the authority of unseen powers; there was quite a vogue of Spiritualism at that time and the people around her thought that these unseen powers were her “Spirit Guides”. This was the most natural conclusion for people to reach, who had never heard of unseen directing powers outside of the Church or among the Spiritualists.
 
I never looked upon Madame Blavatsky as an ethical teacher. For one thing she was too excitable; when things seemed wrong to her, she could express her opinion about them with a vigor which was very disturbing. I would say here that I never saw her angry with any person or thing at close range. Her objections had an impersonality about them; even if directed at someone, the someone was usually distant and the cause for blame quite apparent. In mental or physical dilemma, you would instinctively appeal to her, for you felt her fearlessness, her unconventionality, her great wisdom and wide experience, and hearty goodwill -- her sympathy with the underdog.
 
An instance of this kind comes to mind: the two tenements near us were filling up; undesirable people were beginning to move into the street and the neighborhood was changing rapidly. One evening one of our young girls coming home late from work, was followed and greatly frightened; she flung herself breathlessly into a chair in the office. Madame Blavatsky interested herself and finally drew from some fold of her dress a knife (I think she used it to cut her tobacco, but it was sufficiently large to be a formidable weapon of defense) and she said she had that for any man who molested her.
 
At this time Madame Blavatsky was greatly troubled about money; the income she had received regularly from her father in Russia had stopped, and she was almost penniless. She had some idea that this condition was caused by the machinations of some person or persons in touch with her father, and she expressed herself about these persons with customary vigor.
 
Some of the more conservative people in our house suggested that she was, after all, an adventuress, and they want of money was only what might be expected; but my friend Miss Parker, whom she took with her to the Russian Consul, assured me that she was really a Russian Countess, that the Consul knew of her family, and had promised to do all he could to get into touch with them and find out what was the difficulty. I may say here, that the holding up of her income was caused by the death of her father and the consequent time required to settle up his affairs, and that this delay continued until Madame Blavatsky had left 222 Madison Street.
 
The owner of our house was a Mr. Rinaldo, who personally collected his rents, and so became acquainted with our people. Like everyone else he became interested in H.P.B., and introduced two young friends of his to her. They came very often to see her and were of practical aid to her, in suggesting and giving her work. They got her to design picture advertising-cards for themselves and for others; I think these gentlemen had a collar and shirt factory, for the card I remember best was of little figures (diaki perhaps), dressed in the collars and shirts of their manufacture. I think these were the first picture advertising-cards used in New York.
 
Madame Blavatsky also tried ornamental work in leather, and produced some very fine and intricate examples, but they did not sell, and she abandoned the leather work.
 
 
About this time she completed the unfinished novel Edwin Drood, which Charles Dickens had not completed when he died in 1870. I am under the impression that these Jewish friends of Madame Blavatsky were Spiritualists and that they urged her to complete the book with spirit-aid. She had a long table in her private room and I saw her for days, perhaps weeks, steadily writing page after page of manuscript. I was told she was finishing Edwin Drood and that "the spirits" were helping her.
 
Later, Miss Parker lent me a copy of the book, a paper-covered 9 x 5.5 inch book. Harper and Appleton both published similar series of popular books, and I cannot say which publisher issued Madame Blavatsky's book.
 
Miss Parker wanted me to pick out the line at which Madame Blavatsky took up the story, and pointed it out to me when I was unable to do so. In recent years, I read in The New York Times Book Review an account of a sequel to Edwin Drood, written in 1873 by a Mr. James of Brattleboro, Vermont, under mediumistic influence. I think this must be the volume I saw Madame writing, although the writer of the article claimed to have known Mr. James.*
 
Shortly after this and while Madame was still without income, she met and became intimate with a French lady, a widow, whose name I have forgotten, if I ever knew it, for though she became a familiar visitor to the house, she was usually called “ the French Madame,” while H.P.B. remained ever "the Madame” . It was this lady who afterwards went with H.P.B. to the Eddy farm. At this time she lived a short distance away in Henry Street, a street parallel to Addison; she offered to share her home with H.P.B. until the latter’s money difficulties had passed. This offer was accepted, and Madame left our house.
 
Many of our people, however, and notably my friend, Miss Parker, kept in close touch with her, and attended the Sunday evening meetings inaugurated by the two ladies, from which, to my great disappointment, I was shut out, perhaps because was not wanted, and also, I know, because Miss Parker knew that my mother would not have approved.
 
One of the stories about the diaki dates from this time: one morning Madame did not appear for breakfast and her friend finally went to her bedroom to see what was the matter; there she found H.P.B. unable to rise because her night-gown was securely sewed to the mattress, and sewed in such a manner that it would have been impossible for Madame to have done it herself, and so thoroughly had the sewing been done that the stitches had to be cut before Madame could rise. This was the work of the diaki.
 
Shortly after this, Madame received money from Russia, and she moved to the north-east corner of 14th Street and Fourth Avenue. The house was very unpretentious, with a liquor saloon on the street floor, and the two upper floors let as furnished rooms. To this house Miss Parser took me in order to visit Madame, and small Victorian that I was, I remember wondering whether it was quite respectable to adventure into a house over a saloon, but I must add, to my credit, I was wholly glad to go.
 
There I found Madame in a poorly furnished top-floor room; her bed was an iron cot, and beside her bed on a table was a small cabinet with three drawers. Madame was in a state of great excitement; earlier in the day her room had been on fire; she said it had been purposely set on fire in order to rob her. After the fire was out, and the firemen and curious strangers had gone, she found that her valuable watch and chain had been stolen.
 
When she complained to the proprietor of the saloon, who was her landlord, he intimated that she had never had a watch to lose. She told us that she asked “Them” to give her some proof which she could show her landlord and convince him that she had really lost her property, as she claimed; immediately there appeared before her a sheet of paper of the size usually used in typewriters, all gray with smoke except for white spots, the size and shape of a watch and chain and indicating that after the fire had darkened the paper, the watch and chain had been lifted from it, revealing the white spots which they had covered.
 
She went on to tell us that when she needed money, she had only to ask “Them” for it, and she would find what she needed in one of the drawers of the little cabinet on her table. I could not understand this. I had always heard the “They” and “Them” explained by the people who were around her as referring to her "Spirits Guides"; naturally I thought she spoke of them; I had known how sorely she had been in need of money, and I could not understand how this statement could be true. I knew nothing of Occultism, its pledges, nor of the selflessness it demands from its followers.
 
Sometime after this, I heard that she went to Ithaca, to give to Professor Corson, of Cornell University, a ring entrusted to her by one of her mysterious directors, which would identity her as an authentic messenger from them. But my visit to H.P.B. was the last time I saw her; from that time on her life has been well known and described by others
 
 
 
 
Note
 
* A copy of this work bearing H.P.B.'s autograph, and dated Philadelphia, March, 1875, exists at Adyar in the collection of her autographed library. There is on the inside cover a note by Colonel referring to a book called Rifts in the Veil, no author given, published in London 1878, for details of the completion of Edwin Drood through the medium J.P. James. It would seem that Colonel had never heard H.P.B. allude to any share which she may have had the matter, as he would surely have noted down such a noteworthy incident in her life. — C. Jinarajadasa
 
 
(Theosophist, December 1931, p.257-266)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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