The
following article was published in the New York Daily Graphic newspaper, on
December 10, 1878, on page 266:
H.P.
BLAVATSKY'S ADIEUX
The Ci-Devant
Countess Ready to Depart for the East
Having Disposed of
Strange Gods, She Ventilates Her Ideas -- The Land of Freedom
Helen
P. Blavatsky, who has dropped her title of Countess, and even her conventional
one of Madame, and who constantly alludes to herself in the third person, as
"H.P.B.," is about leaving America, as she says, forever.
A
very damp reporter found his way into the pleasant French flat at Eighth avenue
and Forty-seventh street this morning, and his ring was answered by a colored
servant, who expressed serious doubts as to whether her mistress would see any
one at so early an hour.
The
interviewer was, however, ushered into a breakfast room, which was in a very
disordered condition, and invited to a seat on a vacant stool. The disorder was
a necessary result of yesterday’s auction sale, and the only semblance of
occupancy left were an uncleared breakfast table and three human occupants.
Colonel Olcott, the new hierophant of the Arya-Samaj, sat at the table busily
making memoranda in a note-book and burning his handsome moustache with a
half-finished cigar that struggled ineffectually to reach beyond the outskirts
of his beard.
A
male companion sat Eastern fashion on a bench under the window and read a
morning paper, which he held in one hand, while he twisted one end of his
moustache with the other.
On
the wall were leaves formed in emblematic designs, Rosecrusian or otherwise,
and an Oriental landscape of the same material, filled with elephants,
serpents, monkeys and other denizens of the typical jungle.
When
the reporter was finally ushered into Mme. Blavatsky’s own room, he found that
lady seated at the end of a letter and tobacco laden table, twisting a fragrant
cigarette from a quantity of loose tobacco of a famous Turkish brand.
The
room was the inner temple of the Lamasery, which has become so widely known in
recent years. A highly-polished and highly ugly idol, doubtless many years
unworshipped, sat with the stolidity of long habit, on the mantleshelf, and in
the centre of the room, on a platform delicately constructed from an old
barrel, surmounted by a zinc stove plate, was mounted the marvellously designed
and artistic treasure house of Arya-Samaj.
The
reporter said:
-
"And
so you are going to leave America?"
-
"Yes,
and the Lamasery, where I have spent so many happy, happy hours. I am sorry to leave
these rooms, although there is little to regret about them now," glancing
about at the bared floors and walls, "but I am glad to get away from your
country. You have liberty, but that is all, and of that you have too much, too
much!
Do you wonder I am anxious to leave it when
you know how I was received and the treatment I have met? They said I was a
spiritualist, a heathen, a believer in all manner of impossible things; that I
was an adventuress and had neither title nor family; that I was a felon and a
forger; that I had been married seven times and had murdered six of my
husbands; that I was a free lover and had never been married; that I was the
mistress of Pio Nono, and that I came here a fugitive from justice.
Think of it all! They never stopped to think
that I was an old woman and not likely to adopt a vile life which had not been
mine when I was young, that I have been a bitter hater of Pio Nono and the
Catholic religion all my life. Then the reporters came and asked me how I was,
how much I was worth, and wanted to see inside my mouth to count my teeth and
see whether they were genuine or not. Will you have a cigarette?"
As
soon as the reporter could recover from the surprise at this sudden turn in the
conversation he signified his willingness to smoke with his hostess, who
thereupon discovered that she had no fresh tobacco and called to a servant to
go for a supply.
Colonel
Olcott, however, appeared with ulster, hat and umbrella and volunteered to
secure the desired "long cut."
The
reporter paid a friendly compliment to the hierophant’s generous good nature,
and asked Mme. Blatavsky:
-
"How
with your dislike for America, did you come to abandon your Russian citizenship
and become a resident of New York?"
-
"Ah,
you have liberty. I had none. I could not be protected by Russian consuls and
so I will be protected by American consuls. It has cost me much. When I took
out my papers here, it cost me $40,000. I had forgotten to secure it first and
they stopped it en route. It is not a small sum to lose, but I have still other
property in Russia which I shall also lose. Still I shall live.
I correspond for three papers in Russia, at
Moscow and Novnj-Novgorod, and I shall soon have one in St. Petersburg. They
pay me liberally. One of them gives me 120 roubles a month, but, of course, I
have to be careful what I say. They make me a great deal of trouble.
There was M. de Bodisco, who always got
himself written Count de Bodisco, but who never was a count, and I don’t
believe he was ever in Russia. He spoke Russian like a Spanish pig, and his
French was extremely bad -- for a Russian. He told me I had no right to come to
America, and that he would not allow me to have money sent through him.
Then he advised me to buy a place on Long
Island, and when I had paid $3,000 for it the woman to whom I had paid the
money sold it again and went away, and I found I was helpless, because I was
not an American citizen and could not hold real estate. Now I shall have the
protection of my citizenship both here and abroad."
-
"When
shall you leave?"
-
"I
do not know. I never knew."
-
"There!"
broke in the lady; "you see what a dear, philanthropic man he is. He will
not even allow the servant to go out in the storm, if he can help it."
-
"I
do not know what I shall do an hour beforehand, I am all ready to start and am
only waiting for a telegram. Then I shall go in three hours." Here the
tobacco arrived, and she continued, as she twisted a sample of fresh
cigarettes: "I know neither the time nor the vessel, but it will be very
soon and very secretly. No one shall know when I go. I am going first to
Liverpool and London, where we have branch theosophical societies, to whom I
must take their charters and with whom I must arrange other matters. Then to
Paris and one or two other places, and from Marseilles or Brindisi I shall go
direct to Bombay. Then I am going to Northeastern India, where the head of the
order is, and where I shall obey whatever orders they may give and go where I
am told. Oh! how glad I shall be to see my dear Indian home again."
And
as she arose and wrapped a morning gown of strange design about her, she looked
very much the Oriental priestess which she claims she is – not.
(Cid note: The latter said by the journalist, that Blavatsky was
held before him wrapping herself in an exotic dress, I consider that the journalist
invented him because this attitude does not correspond to the character that
Blavatsky had.)
