“I will add that when my wife left Calcutta I accompanied her in a steam launch, and she embarked on board the Vega at Diamond Harbor. I was the bearer of a letter to Mr. Eglinton. It was given to me for him by Mrs. Gordon, I think, but I won’t be positive. I had known Mr. Eglinton; he was in the habit, when in Calcutta, of giving exhibitions of his powers in private houses, for a fee. He came to our house in this way, but nothing occurred; I think he considered it a failure.”
Mrs. Broughton writes that she was with her friend Mrs. Eddis when Eglinton brought the letter. Both ladies observed that the letter which Koothoomi was to convey across the sea contained no allusion to anything that had occurred since they left—nothing that might not have been written before they started. Instead of marking the envelope, for identification, in the way Eglinton suggested, she made his cross into an asterisk. But the envelope published in India to prove the power of Koothoomi was marked, as Eglinton had requested, with three separate crosses. All efforts to obtain explanation of the difference between the marks on the letter sent and the letter received were vain. In reply to my question Mr. Sinnett said, “All I can tell you now is that Mrs. Broughton acted very badly.” I was present when the Hon. Mrs. Pitt Rivers pressed Colonel Olcott for an explanation. He replied, “The tone of your question suggests collusion between the Theosophists of India and Mr. Eglinton. To such a charge I am, of course, dumb.” It was the only prudent answer he could make.
This incident lowered my idea of Madame Blavatsky’s powers. It was not clever to rest so much on the pliability of a “society lady” with whom she was unacquainted. I presently found that at Bombay she had failed in several performances, but was shielded by a theosophistical argument that mere jugglers never fail.[4] There was a pretty general feeling in Calcutta and Bombay that no glamour or magnetic mystery was needed for Madame Blavatsky’s thaumaturgy, which would soon collapse in Madras as elsewhere. Nearly the first thing I heard after reaching London (1884) was of that collapse. Mr. and Mrs. Coulomb, the former a skilled mechanic, had confessed at Madras that they had all along been assisting Madame Blavatsky in frauds; elaborate contrivances were discovered behind the shrine, and compromising letters written by the high priestess were produced. Madame Blavatsky declared that the contrivances were put in the shrine to ruin her; but Coulomb could have done that by a small mechanism, whereas the arrangements were extensive and expensive, requiring such time as must have assured detection, and money which he had not. The letters, mainly efforts to prevent the Coulombs from revealing the frauds, were pronounced forgeries; but no expert reading them can fail to perceive that to forge them would require a genius far beyond even that of Madame Blavatsky. The letters are brilliant, and Mrs. Coulomb is sometimes worsted in them. Mrs. Coulomb, after her confession, wrote me a long letter, which shows no trace of the style or ability disclosed in the Blavatsky letters. However, it was a sufficient confession that the Theosophists receded from a proposal to test all these things, including the handwriting of the letters, before a law court, for which the Coulombs were eager. The result was that Madame Blavatsky left India and established herself in London.
At the very time that I was at Adyar, and despite a certain repugnance to “occultism,” sympathetically appreciating the serene harmony of the Theosophists in their beautiful retreat amid the palms, the place was turbid with discord, Madame Blavatsky at one end of the table and the Coulombs at the other were even then in mortal combat. I have often marvelled at the self-possession of the woman under the suspended sword that presently fell.
The most curious thing about this turbaned Spiritualism is its development of the Koothoomi myth. I asked Sir W. W. Hunter, Gazetteer-General of India, and other orientalists, about the name of this alleged Mahatma, or Rabat, and they declared Koothoomi to be without analogies in any Hindu tongue, ancient or modern. I was assured on good authority that the name was originally “Cotthume,” and a mere mixture of Ol-cott and Hume, Madame Blavatsky’s principal adherents. Out of Madame’s jest was evolved this incredible being, who performed the part allotted to the aboriginal “John King” in America. Sumangala, chief priest of the Buddhist world, though not unfriendly to Theosophy, told me that it was a belief among them that there had been Rahats in the early world. I gathered from him and others that they are thought of as Enoch, Seth, Elias, etc., are in Christendom. The Coulomb story is that a pasteboard doll, with half-shrouded head, superimposed on the shoulders of Mr. Coulomb, himself orientally draped, moved about in the dusk at Adyar when an “astral” apparition was wanted. In an accession of conscience, Mrs. Coulomb, who is a Catholic, smashed the effigy. She says she had not cared much so long as Hindus only were cheated, because they believed such things anyway, but she could not stand it when European gentlemen and ladies were subjects of the imposture. Perhaps it was because of this moral “strike” that Koothoomi was not tried on me.
What will be the future of Theosophy? Its age of miracles has passed, and is more likely to be repudiated than renewed. It may easily be held that even if Madame Blavatsky was sometimes tempted, in the absence of her potent Guru, to satisfy the demand for signs and wonders with devices, she performed wonders not so explicable. In one of Madame Blavatsky’s letters to Mrs. Coulomb, she says, defiantly, “I have a thousand strings to my bow, and God Himself could not open the eyes of those who believe in me.” Elsewhere she quotes a letter she (Blavatsky) has from Colonel Olcott, saying: “If Madame Coulomb, who has undeniably helped you in some phenomena, for she told this to me herself, were to proclaim it on the top of the roof, it would change nothing in my knowledge, and that of Dr. Hartmann, Brown, Sinnett, Hume, and so many others, in the appreciation of Theosophy and their veneration for the brothers. You alone would suffer. For even if you yourself were to tell me that the Mahatmas do not exist, and that you have tricked in every phenomenon produced by you, I would answer you that you lie, for we know the Mahatmas, and know that you cannot—no more than a fly on the moon—have produced certain of the best of your phenomena.” It should be stated here that, in the whole correspondence revealed by Mrs. Coulomb, Colonel Olcott appears as the dupe of Madame Blavatsky, and in no case accessory to imposture unless by an amazing credulity.
We may assume that Colonel Olcott will continue his propaganda, and it remains only to consider what vitality there is in Theosophy, apart from its “occultism,” and what competency its leader has for such work. I gathered up in India a number of Colonel Olcott’s addresses, circulated in cheap form, and find them much like “The Veiled Isis” ascribed to Madame Blavatsky. They contain a medley of Buddhist, Brahmanic, and Zoroastrian traditions, interpreted in a mystical and moral way, the only thing systematic being a Buddhist catechism. This catechism was printed by the favor of a Singhalese lady, and approved, for use in schools, by the Buddhist high priest Sumangala. Colonel Olcott’s theosophy on the negative side aims to combine all oriental religions against Christianity. He has not “any belief in, or connection with, Christianity in any form whatsoever.” (Theosophy and Buddhism, p. 2.) But he maintains the oriental philosophies, and to some extent the mythologies, of eras corresponding to the discredited biblical doctrines and legends. It is not, indeed, a literal restoration; but no esoteric interpretation can make it very different from an attempt to rationalize for Europeans ancient Druidism, or for Americans Aztec fables and symbolism. This kind of revival appeals in a certain way to the Rajahs whom English rule has reduced to antiquarian curiosities; they too are survivals from primitive religious and social systems. Colonel Olcott had patrons among the Rajahs who used to send elephants to meet him, and entertain him in their palaces. But young India is not going that way. English freedom and English colleges have emancipated Hindu youth, and they look upon the cruel idolatry under which their fathers groaned as Colonel Olcott does on the Puritanism he fiercely denounces.
But if Colonel Olcott should give up his Rajahs and elephants, and fix his headquarters in Ceylon, there would be, I believe, fair prospect of a fruitful alliance of Theosophy with Buddhism. In this island, now the centre of the Buddhist world, I found Madame Blavatsky comparatively unimportant, the great personage being Colonel Olcott. The Buddhists are a mild, speculative, unambitious people, easily overborne by the aggressive missionaries, and were without any leader to defend their rights before Olcott came. He came to their rescue in a case where their procession was attacked by Catholics, while enshrining relics of Buddha,—the Catholics thinking it a mockery of their own processions. Colonel Olcott appealed to the government and obtained redress. The Catholics (Portuguese) presently found some holy well, pointed out, I believe, by a vision, where ailing pilgrims were said to be healed,—among these a number of Buddhists who were deserting their temples. Colonel Olcott announced that he would try and heal sufferers in the name of Buddha, and it is said his success quite eclipsed the holy well. Several eminent Buddhists told me that he had healed members of their families. He is a robust man, of powerful will, and in these days of hypnotism his influence over the most passive of people may appear less wonderful to us than to them. No Christian was found willing to meet him in debate. By lectures, in which Ingersollism blends with Arnold’s “Light of Asia,” the Colonel brought about a sort of Buddhist revival. The Singhalese saw the Theosophists as wise men from the West, bringing frankincense and myrrh to the cradle of their prophet. Although their high priest, Sumangala, expressed disbelief in the Mahatmas, he valued the services of Colonel Olcott. He was especially moved by a request from this American for his permission to administer the pansala to another American. The ceremony took place at Madras. The two Americans, amid a crowd of witnesses, went through formulas unheard there since the ancient banishment of the Buddhists. “I take refuge in Buddha! I take refuge in religion! I take refuge in Truth!” The Colorado doctor (Hartmann) pledged observance of the Five Precepts (pansala): abstinence from theft, lying, taking life, intoxicating drink, adultery. All of this has profoundly impressed the Buddhist world, but that is a world of humble people. It remains to be seen whether Theosophy, which has hitherto shown an affection for titles in India and London, is willing to take its place beside Buddha under his Bo tree, and share the lowliness of his followers. This may be rather hard after the rapid success of Theosophy in India, where in four years from its foundation (1879) it counted seventy-seven flourishing branches; but these are withering away under the Blavatsky scandals, and if Theosophy is to live it must “take refuge in Buddha!”