THE MAHATMA OF NEW YORK.

An Appreciation of Mr. Judge’s “Reply,” by the Author of “Isis Very Much Unveiled.”

A convicted person has one last refuge. He may contrive to suggest imbecility, and so appeal from the sense of justice to that of pity. To the average reader it might seem that this, and this alone, could be the real object of the astounding piece of self-revelation which I have been privileged to extract from Mr. William Q. Judge, vice-president of the Theosophical Society. But we must remember that with the Theosophical reader it may be otherwise. To the Theosophical Society this “Reply” from the man they have delighted to honour may seem, for all I know, a model of candour, of coherence, and of cogency. That is not, I confess, what I hear privately; but, so far as any public word goes, the good, docile folk have evidently determined to wait till Mrs. Besant comes home and tells them what to think, and (still more important) what to say. For their benefit, then, and still more for the benefit of those potential converts to Theosophy in whom the atrophy of the mental processes is not yet complete, I will, as gravely as I can, examine the vice-president’s utterance.

How Much is Admitted.

Now, first, let us see how many of the “Mahatma missives” Mr. Judge directly or indirectly admits. Those which I have referred to as produced by Mr. Judge included the following:—

(Besides these I have referred to other Mahatma letters or endorsements on letters, on bank-notes, &c.; but those enumerated will do for the present.)

Out of all these Mr. Judge disputes only two. As regards the “Note the Seal” missive, all that he denies is the statement that it was he who drew the special attention of the Inner Group to the seal upon it—a denial which I shall deal with presently. He denies the whole story of the Cabinet missive, and in regard to the “Judge is not the Forger” missive, he denies that it was fabricated by him, but suggests that it was fabricated by some other Theosophist.

The facts about the whole of the remaining thirteen (and more) missives he thus implicitly admits, using such general phrases as these:—“Several of the contested messages are genuine ones”; “they were all good and true”; “they were from the Master”; “I have not admitted her [Mrs. Besant’s] contention” [that they were only psychically from the Master, and were written in Mahatmascript by Judge]; and, finally, “I will not tell how or by what means they were produced.” The “Grave Danger Olcott” missive, by the way, he admits explicitly.

It is for the Theosophists, therefore, now to consider whether the substance of these admitted missives (to say nothing of this “Reply,” in which also Mr. Judge asserts the Master’s collaboration) squares with their conception of “the Master of Wisdom,” that “god-like” exemplar of “the perfectibility of man,” as his own “Messenger” describes him.

The Two Contested Missives.

The reason why Mr. Judge selected just these two for denial is, no doubt, the damaging suggestiveness of the contents of the one and of the circumstances under which the other was produced. I for my part applaud his choice, because it will bring him into sharp conflict, as regards the one missive, with Mrs. Besant, and as regards the other, with Colonel Olcott.

(1) The Cabinet Missive: Judge v. Besant.

In regard to all those missives which were palmed off on Mrs. Besant herself, my account is based, as regards generalities, on Mrs. Besant’s own statements and Mr. Judge’s own admissions. As regards details, however, I have had to rely on intimates and colleagues at Avenue-road, to whom Mrs. Besant told the wondrous tale at the time.

The story of the Cabinet missive is briefly this (see “Isis Very Much Unveiled,” p. [28]). Mr. Judge suggests to Mrs. Besant that they should put a question to the Masters by writing it on paper, and placing this in a certain cabinet in “H.P.B.’s” room. The result was the endorsement of the paper with the words, “Yes,” “And hope,” in the red script used in all these communications, and also the impression of what Madame Blavatsky called the “flap-doodle” seal, under circumstances which demonstrated either psychic precipitation on the part of the Master, or else vulgar trickery on the part of Mr. Judge.

Mr. Judge declares “no such thing took place.”

Now, on the facts stated, it is obvious that only one person can authoritatively contradict Mr. Judge here: to wit, Mrs. Besant. This I am bound to suppose that she will do; for my version of the story is that given by her on the day after the occurrence to a colleague, who quoted it from his diary. Mrs. Besant also showed what purported to be the missive, sealed and endorsed as described, and this to several people. At Adyar, at the beginning of this year, when the Judge missives were being blown upon all round, she repeated the story, with only one correction—a notable one—that she had not, as she at first implied, stayed in the room all the time during Mr. Judge’s working of the Cabinet oracle.

What Mr. Judge will do if Mrs. Besant sticks to her version of the story I do not know. But he has already, in the secret circular lately divulged, disposed of the rest of her action in this matter as due to possession by a devil; so no doubt he will say that here, too, it was “the Black Magicians” (per Brother Chakravarti) who both imposed the delusion and manufactured the missive to fit it. Note that he does not appeal to Mrs. Besant to bear him out, but says: “It cannot be proved by anybody’s testimony, unless you will accept perjury.” This is not the only passage in his Reply where Mr. Judge foreshadowed his readiness to extend his accusations of lying, pledge-breaking, &c. (as, indeed, he is logically bound to), from Mr. Old to Mr. Old’s fellow-sinners, Mrs. Besant and Colonel Olcott.

(2) The “Judge Is not the Forger” Missive: Judge v. Olcott.

The other missive with which Mr. Judge disclaims connexion is the only one in the whole series which was apparently not produced in immediate juxtaposition with him, and under his personal superintendence. That, indeed, was just the point of it; it was enclosed in a letter from another person, with all the distance between New York and California to prove that Mr. Judge could have had no hand in it. It was, in fact, a last desperate attempt to lull the suspicions of the recipient, Colonel Olcott, who, however, discovered that Mr. Judge had been in California, and in the company of Mr. Clark, from whom the letter came, at the very date of the letter. (“Isis,” pp. [50]-52.)

I told this story—quoting Colonel Olcott’s evidence—and forthwith was assured, publicly, in general terms (“Isis,” p. [76]), then specifically through a private source, that Mr. Judge could annihilate it by producing an affidavit from the Mr. Clark in question. (“Abbot Clark”—the name comically recalls that of “Abner Dean” in Bret Harte’s “Society upon the Stanislaus.”) I was not much perturbed by this announcement, as the reserve evidence in my hands happened to include the substance of a letter from Mr. Abbot Clark himself, offering abundant material for cross-examination upon the boasted “affidavit,” if and when this was produced.

And lo! now we have this precious “affidavit” (which, by the way, turns out not to be an affidavit at all), testifying—what? Why, that Mr. Judge had abundant opportunities for inserting or getting inserted any enclosure he wished in Mr. Clark’s letter, and that the letter which provided the opportunity was actually written at Mr. Judge’s suggestion, and passed once through Mr. Judge’s fingers, besides spending several days in Mr. Clark’s coat pocket!

The guilelessness with which Mr. Abner De—I mean Mr. Abbot Clark—adds, among the rest of the plaintive verbiage of his statement, that “on my word of honour Brother Judge said nothing to me about any missive,” completes the charm of this document. Ah! it would be a poor world for the William Q. Judges if it did not contain a good percentage of Abbot Clarks.

Whom does Mr. Judge Accuse?

But now arises another point. Mr. Judge does not number this missive among the “several genuine” ones. It was not the Mahatma’s; it was not fabricated by Mr. Judge; therefore it must have been fabricated by somebody else. “You can make what inference you like,” Mr. Judge liberally remarks; but the only inferences possible from what he says are that the guilty person is Colonel Olcott or Colonel Olcott’s manager at the Theosophist office. (The latter, by name T. Vijiaraghava Charlu, was the person who received and forwarded the letter and enclosure to Colonel Olcott. Mr. Judge and his satellite appear to wish to confuse this person with another Charlu, Theosophical treasurer, who committed suicide after peculation.)

Now, as I have made sufficiently clear, I hold no sort of brief for any Theosophist, and especially none for any Theosophical official. In the past, Mr. Judge has had no monopoly of the missive-manufacturing industry; and if he can prove that there are colleagues in the business even now, I shall be glad to consider the evidence. But, in this particular case, just look at the probabilities.

First, there is the handwriting, which is apparently exactly the same in this missive as in others of the series with which, admittedly, these other gentlemen had nothing, and Mr. Judge had everything, to do.

Then there are the contents. These also fit admirably into the chain. The Master is made to declare that “Judge is not the forger”—a point of which Mr. Judge was trying hard to convince the Colonel; also, to provide explanations of various suspicious circumstances in other missives which tended to show that Judge was “the forger”; also to exculpate Judge for various misstatements by suggesting that he was an unconscious vehicle.

Then, there is the description of the “flap-doodle” seal as “the Lahore brass”—a bad shot at the place of origin known to Olcott, but only half known to Judge. Attribute this to Mr. Judge trying to startle his colleague, and it exhibits just that mixture of fatuity and cunning which appears throughout the vice-president’s transactions. Attribute it to Colonel Olcott manufacturing a pretended Judge forgery, and it becomes a refinement of malignant ingenuity such as his worst enemy, I fancy, will not suspect Colonel Olcott of compassing, either himself or through an agent.

It needs no Sherlock Holmes to point the bearing of these probabilities.

The Evidence of the Seal.

We have it now on Mr. Judge’s authority that “the whole matter of this so-called seal ... has made me laugh whenever I have thought of it.” If so, it shows how much harmless mirth a trivial and apparently useless nick-nack may be the cause of. Throughout its history this Mahatma-signet seems to have had a magical effect on the risible muscles. We saw how Madame Blavatsky smiled at it as “a flap-doodle of Olcott’s”; Colonel Olcott himself has told us that he had it manufactured in the first instance as “a playful present,” and accompanied the gift with “a jocular remark”; and there is no doubt that he has enjoyed many a quiet chuckle since over the unwary use of it by his rival, who may yet prove to have sealed his own official death-warrant in sealing the Mahatma’s “missives.”

Well, since it is so provocative of pleasant emotions, let us look again into this matter of the Master’s seal. For, indeed, it is only since certain other things have been found out that Mr. Judge has discovered how little the question of the seal’s genuineness matters either way. It is all very well now for him to declare that internal evidence is the only test of Mahatmic origin: that in a message, for instance, like “Follow Judge and stick” (“Isis,” p. [48]), it is the words themselves

whose very sweetness giveth proof

That they were born for immortality.

But that was not always Mr. Judge’s line. After all, somebody must have been at pains to see to the seal impression in those missives which Mr. Judge vouched for—to say nothing of such other external and material things as the texture of the paper, quite unlike any found elsewhere, and the handwriting and signature, all of which used to be triumphantly cited as evidence by Mr. Judge’s satellites (the present quotation is from a pamphlet on “Mahatmas,” embellished with learned references to “Lord Bacon,” which is by Mr. Judge’s private secretary, and bears the imprimatur of Mr. Judge). Mr. Judge denies that it was he who called special attention to the seal impression as authenticating his first pioneer missive in 1891 (the “Note the Seal” missive, as I have called it). As he does not deny my statement that he excused himself to the others present for not showing the contents of the letter, perhaps he will explain what it was that he did call attention to, if not the seal and signature. But why labour the point, when there is the direct evidence afforded by one of his own seal-bearing letters—one which he has not denied—in which he wrote, “I believe the Master agrees with me, in which case I will ask him to put his seal here”—and “plump on the written word came the seal” (“Isis,” p. [34]). In those days at any rate Mr. Judge was of those who “think these little decorations of importance,” as he now puts it.

“You trace it [the seal] to her [H.P.B.], and there you leave it,” Mr. Judge says; “and then you think I am obliged to prove I did not get it—to prove negatives.” But I traced it rather farther than to H.P.B. I traced the seal to Lansdowne-road in 1888 (Mr. B. Keightley’s evidence). I traced an impression of it on a letter from Mr. Judge at Lansdowne-road in 1888 (Colonel Olcott’s evidence). I showed that when Mr. Judge went back to America, the seal went too (telegram impression, New York, 1890; evidence of Mr. B. Keightley). I showed that thenceforward it appeared on missives produced by Mr. Judge, and on no others, again and again. I showed how, in the missives planted on Colonel Olcott, as if dubious how far the Colonel would carry on the complaisance of Madame Blavatsky, Mr. Judge’s complete letter-writer tried the seal on gradually; first, an illegible impression, and then a bold one; how, when the Colonel threatened to “peach,” the latter pièce à conviction was suddenly and stealthily removed from the spot where Mr. Judge had taught the Colonel to find it; how, after that, legible impressions were reserved for others, and the Colonel only got illegible ones; how, finally (this was after the Colonel had threatened to reproduce any he saw anywhere, together with the whole story of the seal, in the Theosophist), seal-impressions ceased altogether; and how Mr. Judge erased such as he could get hold of, and began quibbling and equivocating about the seal as he is doing up to the present moment.

These facts, again, I leave to tell their own story; in face of which it matters little how many “stories” Mr. Judge may tell.

Quibbling about the Mahatma.

Mr. Judge’s particular version of the old Theosophistry about the small part played by Mahatmas and their missives in the society is conveniently adjacent in this Reply to statements of his own in the exactly opposite sense. While in one breath he denies “influencing the course of affairs by any such thing,” a few lines lower down he tells us how he got a message directing him to prevent the president’s resignation, “and at once cabled to him and went to work to have the American section vote”; and, again, how he stopped Mrs. Besant going to India, “under direction”; and, again, how authoritative messages are going round “even as I write,” “and in relation to this very affair.” Compare these, too:—

Mr. Judge in His “Reply.”Mr. Judge Elsewhere.
It is absolutely untrue that the society grows by talking of the Mahatmas or Masters, or by having messages sent round from them. The movement here and elsewhere is pushed along the line of philosophy.... Messages from the Masters do not go flying around, and the society does not flourish by any belief in those being promulgated.I am not acting impulsively in my many public statements as to Masters.... Experience has shown that a springing up of interest in Theosophy has followed declarations, and men’s minds are more powerfully drawn.... The Masters have said, “It is easier to help in America, because our existence has been persistently declared.”—(Mr. Judge, letter in Lucifer, April, 1893.)
Nor am I, as you hint, in the habit of sending such messages about the society, nor of influencing the course of affairs by using any such things. Could I be such a fool as to tell all others to go by what I get for my own guidance?I now send you this, all of it being either direct quotations from the messages to me or else in substance what I am directed to say to you.... We are all, therefore, face to face with the question whether we will abide by Masters and their messenger.—(Mr. Judge, circular to “the core of the T.S.,” deposing Mrs. Besant, November, 1894.)
What Mr. Judge Lives On.

Mr. Judge pretends that I have said that his motive is mere pecuniary gain. I have throughout treated the vice-president as a spiritual Jabez, not a financial one; and I wish him joy of the distinction. But since he has raised the question at such length, I will examine it a moment. Mr. Judge says: “No salaries are paid to our officers. We support ourselves, or privately support each other.” As he has elsewhere explained that he, for one, gives his whole time to the society, it will be seen that the Theosophical officials supply a parallel to those famous Scilly Islanders who “eked out a precarious existence by taking in each others’ washing.” The statement about the salaries is directly contradicted, on turning to the 1894 Convention Report, by an extra vote of £150 for the officials at Avenue-road. But I am well aware that the ready money of the T.S. is drawn far more from a few individuals with means and from special funds than from the small annual subscription, and I have said already that the “free board and lodging” amid the temple groves at Adyar, Avenue-road, and New York is more than their small salary to those of “the smaller fry” to whom such things are a consideration. As for Mr. Judge, he does not deny that it is he to whom the Path, and the press and publishing business connected with it, now belong; but he makes the curious statement that the proceeds, whatever they may be, come out of the pockets, not of “members, but largely of others.” In other words, it is not Theosophists, but the outside public, who support the official organ of Theosophy! Can it be that the Path is widely taken in as a comic paper?

A Few Other Curiosities.

Note the information conveyed, in this Reply and in Mr. Judge’s recent Circular, that both Mrs. Besant and Colonel Olcott also profess to get “messages from the Master.” “If you may get messages (he asks in effect) why not I missives?” Why, indeed?

Note the reproach about “abusing a woman who has long enough fought,” &c. This from the man who has just issued a circular ordering the deposition of the said woman for being possessed of a devil!

Note the threat, addressed to me and the Editor of The Westminster, that Mr. Judge’s Master will get us “execrated for offences not yet exposed,” and that he has already let Mr. Judge into “altogether too much of the secret hearts” of his Theosophical colleagues. This is an old line which Madame Blavatsky used to find very effective with weak-minded disciples.

Note the claim to prophetic “foreknowledge,” based on the fact that Mr. Judge said, long before the July “Enquiry,” that it would come to nothing. It must be granted that this does imply a complete prescience on the part of Mr. Judge—of the tactics which Mr. Judge in due course adopted.

Note, lastly, Mr. Judge’s plain avowal that he declines to face any inquiry of any sort or kind. He declines the Law Courts, which, I frankly agree, are no possible tribunal for him. He declines the Judicial Committee of the T.S., because he, the vice-president, is a private member. He declined a Theosophical Jury of Honour in July, which would have tried him as a private member, because they, too, were not occult enough for him. And he avows that he will decline everything and anything else, because the “proof” of the New York Mahatma “begins and ends with myself.” Need I add a word more?

F. Edmund Garrett.