Part 2 of 2
The strong looping of the main downstroke of the d is
characteristic of Mr. Damodar's writing, as may be seen from the
instances in Plate I., Group (D). The specimens in this Group are
taken from a letter written by Mr. Damodar in August, 1884. The
last instance is especially peculiar, where the upstroke touches the
initial point of the letter and the main downstroke cuts the initial
stroke, which thus divides the extraordinary loop of the d into two
parts. There is a conspicuous example of exactly tliis form in the
K. H. (Z). It is also particularly to be observed that not only is there
no instance of the clipped loose d, but there is never the slightest
tendency to such a formation. There is not a single instance where the
preceding letter runs into the initial stroke of the if so as
to form a loop with it^ and the structure of the letter
throughout exactly conforms to the structure of the English
d found in Mr. Damodar's ordinary writing. Mr. Damodar
indeed frequently leaves a gap in his ordinary writing between the
beginning of the d and the main downstroke; this seems to be partly
due to rapid writing, but there is apparently one instance of it in the
K. H. (Z), and two other instances may be considered doubtful, though
I think myself, after careful examination with a lens, that the appear-
ance of a gap in these two cases is due simply to the attrition of the
first part of the pencilled stroke. The other most important trace of
Mr. Damodar's handiwork in the K. H. (Z) is the presence of what I
shall call the beaked a formation, of which several instances are given in
the Plate (Group D). The initial point of the letter is considerably farther
to the right than the top of the straight downstroke of the letter, which,
moreover, does not reach so liigh as the upper curvature. It is tins
beaked a formation to which I refer above in (7); it is very commoa
in Mr. Damodar's ordinary writing.
My own view is that Mr. Damodar unquestionably wrote the K. H. (Z)
as well as the K. H. (Y). Mr. Netherclift has had no opportunity of
seeing the K. H. (Y), which was only lent to me for a short time in India,
but the K. H. (Z) was submitted to him with the other K. H.
documents upon which he was asked to give a second opinion, with the
additional light afforded by those lent to us by Mr. Sinnett. Mr.
Netherclift, in his second report, stated as his opinion that it was *' quite
impossible that Damodar could have accommodated his usual style to
suit that of K. H./' and although he admitted that he was unable
to find in it an instance of what I have called the left-gap stroke^ and
that it was less like Madame Blavatsky^s than other of the K. H.
documents, he appeared to think that this may have been due to the
increased wariness of Madame Blavatsky, and 'placed it with the others as
being unmistakably her handiwork. I then submitted to him my
analysis of the document, and he kindly undertook to make a further
examination, expressing his confidence that he would prove to me that
the conclusion which I had reached was erroneous. The result, how-
ever, of a prolonged comparison which he then made was that he frankly
confessed that my view was the correct one, saying that in the whole course
of his many years' experience as an expert, he had " never met a more
puzzling case,'' but that he was at last " thoroughly convinced that " the
K. H. (Z) ''was written by Damodar in cloee imitation of the style adopted
by Madame Blavatsky in the K. H. papers."
Specimens of the K. H. (Z) and the other K. H. letter with
which I have compared it are given in Plate II., and it may be
noticed that the K. H. characteristics in the former are almost
all rigidly of one variety, as we might expect to find in the work of a
copyist adhering to his lesson.
I may here make brief reference to a long account of the professed
experiences of a native witness, which was sent to the headquarters of
the Theosophical Society while I was in India. Mr. Bhavani Shahkar
alleged that he was copying this account for me, and that he had
already copied a portion of it. At the time I thought it rather odd
that I never saw him actually engaged in the copying, and when after
the lapse of some days I found that the document was not ready, I
doubted whether I should receive it at all. Eventually, however, I did
receive it, and with the explicit declaration of Mr. Bhavani Shankar
that it was his copy. The pointedness of his assurance that he had
made the copy caused me to wonder slightly why he was so anxious to
let me have what I should know was a specimen of his handwriting; and
the probable explanation did not occur to me till some time afterwards,
when I was struck by observing, in the document in question, some
peculiarities which I had noticed in the ordinary writing of Mr.
Damodar. I then made a careful examination of the document,
and found that it had every appearance of having been written by Mr.
Damodar, beginning with an elaborate though clumsy attempt at
disguise, and ending with what can hardly be called any disguise at all.
Tliis incident has confirmed me in my opinion of the untrustworthiness
of both Mr. Damodar and Mr. Bhavani Shankar. But as to why Mr.
Bhavani Shankar should hav^e made this attempt to deceive me con-
cerning the characteristics of his handwriting, I have only a conjectural
view.
My examination of another document which I saw in India con-
firmed me in my opinion of the untrustworthiness of Mr. Babajee D.
Nath. This document was written in green ink, and purported to be
the work of a Chela B. D. S. (Bhola Deva Sarma). The disguise seemed
to me to be very puerile, most of the letters being of the copy-book
type; one or two of Mr. Babajee's habits being traceable throughout^
while the name Nath^ which occurred in it, was almost a facsimile of a
"Nath" which I found in Mr. Babajee's ordinary signature.
The forged Hartmann document (see p. 280), which I believe to have
been forged by Madame Blavatsky, for the purpose of attributing it to
the Coulombs, was alleged by some Theosophists to have been the work of
the Coulombs, on the ground that the sentence, " Excuse short letter. I
am writing in the dark," suggested a peculiarity of Madame Coulomb's,
that " writing in the dark " meant " writing in a hurry," and in proof
of this an old letter of Madame Coulomb's, in which she used a similar
expression, was produced ^rom the possession o/ Madame Blavatsky, I
saw this letter, and the expression there appeared to me to be meant
literally. The forged document may possibly have been intended to
bear traces of its forgery on the face of it, though of this I cannot be
sure. The imitation of Dr. Hartmann's characteristics is for the most
part exceedingly close, and on this point I must differ entirely from
Mr. Gribble, [38] who was evidently unfamiliar with Dr. Hartmann's
writing; moreover, bad spelling is noticeable in the document^ and bad
spelling of a similar character is noticeable also in Dr. Hartmann's
writings; but Dr. Hartmann himself asserts that the letter is a forgery,
and the fact that it contains fourteen remakings of letters is enough to
confirm his statement. Although there were 14 remakings of letters,
there was only one erasure; this was in the k of the word dark. Dr.
Hartmann's k is peculiar; so is Madame Blavatsky's; but the
erasure had been so thoroughly made that I was unable to trace the
shape of the letter first formed. I compared the document with
writing of M. and Madame Coulomb, and could not find in it any
traces of their handiwork; but comparing it with Madame Blavatsky's
writings, I found several, and these instances formed the only diver-
gencies which I observed from Dr. Hartmann's formations. I attach
importance to the following: —
1. The figure " 8 " in the dating of the letter was not Dr. Hartmann's^
but Madame Blavatsky's.
2. A capital S was not Dr. Hartmann's, but Madame Blavatsky's.
3. A small z was very different from Dr. Hartmann's, and was
almost a facsimile of the careful z in the K. H. writings, which also
shows exactly the same type as the careful z (very rare) in Madame
Blavatsky's ordinary writing, except that the former terminates in the
leftward curl, while the latter terminates in the usual copy-book up-
ward stroke, trending to the right, cutting the lower part of the down-
stroke, and thus forming a closed loop with it.
4. Dr. Hartmann's small x is nearly of the common copy-book
type, the first half of the letter being formed like a reversed c; but it
seems that he habitually keeps his pen upon the paper until he has com-
pleted the letter, so that from the end of the first part of the letter a
diagonal stroke runs up to the beginning of the second part, between the
left side of which and the right side of the first part there remains a gap,
bridged by the cross stroke; at a first glance, the bridging stroke may
escape notice, and the x appear to be of the copy-book form. Now x
occurs three times in the forged Hartmann document. The first of these
is formed without the bridge, and the two strokes of the letters touch
each other. The second of them is formed like Dr. Hartmann's variety.
The third of them, however, which occurs in the last sentence of the
letter, waafiratformed as Madame Blavatsky's jyeculiar x, Dr. Hartmann's
type being formed over it toithout any erasure's having been made. On
close inspection this was clear even to the naked eye, and examination
with a lens rendered it absolutely unmistakable.
Let us now consider the MaluUmn M, endorsement on the forged
Hartmann document.
1. In five of the seven r's the upper loop has unmistakably been
added by an after stroke, and apparently in the other two also. Very
heavily crowned r's are characteristic of the M. writing; but Madame
Blavatsky in her ordinary writing is frequently obliged to twirl the top
of the r with an afterstroke. (Mr. Gribble also regarded the r's of this
document as suggestive of Madame Blavatsky.)
2. The letter g in the words good and forgery exhibits the peculiar
left-gap stroke. The gap in the g of good has been partly filled by another
stroke, and this also occasionally but rarely happens both in Madame
Blavatsky's ordinary writing and in the K. H. writing. (See the final
a and o in the Plate, Group B'*.)
3. The letter following the t in the word "enterprising" was
manifestly first made as Madame Blavatsky's left^ap stroke a. The-
word has apparently been first spelt " entaprising," and the second
part of the a altered into an r by the addition of a very grotesque-
loop, awkwardly placed in consequence of the little room left for it.
I suppose that Madame Blavatsky, having forged the document in
Dr. Hartmann's writing, and enclosed it in a "cover postmarked Madras,"
in which Colonel Olcott might receive it, afterwards obtained it again
surreptitiously (on finding, as I conjecture, that Colonel Olcott was not
bringing forward the document and stating that he believed it to be a.
forgery, as she had intended him to do), wrote the endorsement in her
disguised M. handwriting and replaced it in Colonel Olcott'y.
despatch-box. If she had little time at her disposal in which to write
the endorsement) this would account for the exceptionally glaring
indications of her handiwork which it contains.
Everyone will admit, I think, that the forged Hartmann document
must have originated either with the Coulombs or with Madame
Blavatsky. If the Coulombs were the authors, it is difficult to see
the point of the last sentence about " writing in the dark," and if the
phrase really illustrates a peculiarity of Madame Coulomb's, an old
letter of hers in the possession of Madame Blavatsky being adduced
as proof, the Coulombs would seem to have committed the very
curious mistake of inserting a statement for what looks like the specific
purpose of indicating themselves as the authors. That they should
not only have done tliis, but have also perpetrated the marvellously
subtle fraud of making several slips in the forged document wliich
should be characteristic of Madame Blavatsky's handiwork, is a sup-
position which, I think, appears in itself somewhat absurd, besides
being incompatible with the hypothesis which has been ' put forward
that they forged the letter in order to make mischief between the
founders of the Society and Dr. Hartmann and Mr. Lane-Fox; and
it is difficult to see what other motive they could possibly have had.
In short, the hypothesis that the Coulombs forged the document is
fraught with so many great difficulties that I do not imagine any
impartial reader will entertain it for a moment, or have any doubt
whatever that Madame Blavatsky wrote both the forged document
and the Mahatma M. endorsement. Her action in this respect is in
liarmony with her action throughout, and her object [39] is not far to
seek. The remarks in the Madrcts Christian College Magazine for
October, 1884, p. 302, are entirely justified: —
"What the whole Press and the Indian public has been quick enough to
see was not likely to be concealed from Madame Blavatsky, viz., that the
only chance of her rehabilitation lies in Madame Coulomb's letters being
proved forgeries. How would a person of Madame Blavatsky's genius be
likely to parry such a thrust? Not by a mere assertion, but by a proof that
forgeiy is in the air — that attacks upon Theosophy are being made through
the forger's pen."
She therefore forged a letter which would indubitably be shown to
be a forgery, and which, at the same time, should contain evidence
apparently pointing to the Coulombs as the authors. This evidence
(the aforesaid phrase about '^ writing in the dark ") appears to me to
point on the contrary to Madame Blavatsky herself as the author.
I have not had specimens of the M. writing which would
Jiave enabled me to make such a full examination as I have made of
the £. H. writing, but I have no doubt that all of the few short
specimens which I have had the opportunity of carefully examining
may have been, and that some of them unquestionably were, written by
Madame Blavatsky. It occurred to me that the first M. writing
may have been written by Madame Blavatsky with her left hand, and
that she afterwards imitated with her right hand the characteristics
thus displayed; and on trying the experiment, making some of Madame
Blavatsky's characteristic strokes, I found that several of her peculiarities
took the roughened form which I have observed in some of the M.
writing. But whether all the M. writing was the liandiwork of
Madame Blavatsky, or whether some of the earliest specimens were
written by Babula under the guidance of Madame Blavatsky — as
Madame Coulomb asserts — or whether some other person had some share
in their production, my limited acquaintance with the MSS. has not
provided me with any means of determining. I observed in some
specimens which Mr. Kamaswamier allowed me to see, an instance of
Madame Blavatsky's characteristic A;, with another k formed over it, an
instance of her terminal r, and an instance of her peculiar x. In
perusing the Mahatma M. document which Mr. Damodar alleged had
fallen into his room at Ootacamund, on April 26th, 1884 (see p. 279),
I observed the following peculiarities: —
1. There were a capital H and a capital P which were varieties of
certain H and P types found both in the £. H. and in Madame
Blavatsky's ordinary writings.
2. Many of the ^'s exhibited a double stroke which, though not a
facsimile of Madame Blavatsky's, was very strongly suggestive of her
handiwork.
3. The a exhibits new peculiarities in the M. writing, but some
of the a's here showed the left-gap formation notwithstanding.
4. Several ^'s exhibited Madame Blavatsky's ordinary left-gap
stroke, and in one case the gap had been partially filled up, so that it
presented an eminently peculiar appearance, . Uke that shown in the
final a and o of the Group B^. (See Plate I.)
5. In two words the initial e had been first made in the common
type, and had afterwards been altered into the Greek form.
6. In at least four cases the top of the r had been added by an
after stroke.
A complete examination of this document might have revealed more
resemblances to Madame Blavatsky's ordinaiy handwriting, but I think
those above enumerated are, considering the circumstances of its ap-
pearance, enough to justify me in concluding that Madame Blavatsky
was the writer. [40] The substance of the document is certainly much more
suggestive of the cunning combined with the inevitable ignorance of
Madame Blavatsky in Paris, than of any divine wisdom or knowledge
of the supposed " Mahatma M." in India. The K.H. (Y) of March 22nd,
and the Ootacamund M. letter of April 26th are not easily explained,
except on the view that Mr. Damodar wrote the former and Madame
Blavatsky the latter; for the documents absolutely contradict each
other. But they admit of a satisfactory explanation when we find
that on March 22nd Mr. Damodar was doing his best to avoid a
rupture with the Coulombs, and that Madame Blavatsky, a week or so
later, ignorant of the change of position at headquarters, and ignorant
that Messrs. Lane-Fox and Damodar were at Ootacamund, while Dr.
Hartmann remained at Adyar, was preparing a Mahatma document
to serve as a guard against the disclosure of the trick apparatus, just
as she afterwards forged the Hartmann document to ward off the blow
which fell in the publication of her own incriminating letters in the
Jfadrcis Christian College Magazine.
Even greater ignorance, or a curious standard of morality, is
displayed in another Mahatma document, written to Mr. Hume. It
contains a reference to a "young man" to whose rapid spiritual
development "K. H." enthusiastically draws Mr. Hume's attention.
After referring to the growth of this young man's " inner soul-power
and moral sense," <kc., K. H. continues: —
"I have often watched that silent yet steady progress, and on that day
when ho was called to take note of the contents of your letter to Mr. Sinnett,
concerning our humble selves, and the cotuiUimis you imposed upon us — ^I
have myself learned a lesson. A soul is being breathed into him, a new
Spirit let in, and, with every day he is advancing towards a state of higher
development. One fine morning the * Soul ' vnll find him; but, unlike your
English mystics across the great Sea, it will be under the guidance of the true
liviiig adept f not under the spasmodic inspirations of his own untutored
* Buddhi,' known to you as the 6th principle in man." [41]
Mr. Hume appends a note that, at the very time the above passage
was written, the young man in question " was systematically cheating
and swindling me by false contracts, besides directly embezzling my
money."
How far the K'. H. letters received by Mr. Sinnett, upon which
"Esoteric Buddhism" is confessedly founded, emanated from the brain
of Madame Blavatsky, how far she was assisted in their production by
confederates, how much of' their substance was plagiarised from other
writers, are questions which lie somewhat outside my present province.
In the light of the incident mentioned by Mr. Hume, where matter
furnished by an able native had been used in the preparation of
Mahatma documents — we may regard it as not improbable that Madame
Blavatsky has obtained some direct or indirect assistance from native
learning and native familiarity with Hindu Philosophy; and the
"Kiddle incident," where the charge of plagiarism has eventually
been admitted, and the fraud attributed to a Chela — is enough to
show that "K. H." has not been above pilfering the very
language of a lecturer on Spiritualism. But apart altogether from
such incidents as these, we must remember that Madame Blavatsky
appeared in the last decade as the author of " Isis Unveiled." It is not
denied that a similarity of style exists between a number of the K. H.
documents and portions of " Isis Unveiled "; the inference made by
those who accept the statements of Madame Blavatsky is that
she wrote neither; I think it much more probable that she wrote
both.
Madame Blavatsky at times writes very strange English, or rather
a language which can hardly be called English. This, I believe, she
frequently does intentionally, and sometimes with good effect. Thus,
towards the close of a long passage in her ordinary handwriting, and in
her good English style, she says that it was dictated to her by a "greasy
Tibetan," and in what follows immediately afterwards, which of course
we are to notice is her own, she lapses into a markedly poorer form
of utterance. I have no doubt that she was fully aware [42] of tiie
importance of convincing adherents like Mr. Sinnett that i^he was
unable to produce the K. H. writings, and that one of her devices
to this end was the speaking and writing of purposely deteriorated
English. Her best English style appears to me to be essentially like
that of the K. H. writings, especially in the cumbrous and wordy form
of sentence which so often appears, in the abundance of parenthetical
phrases and in the occasional use of almost otUre metaphors.
There are, indeed, certain oddities in Madame Blavatsky's English
which are not feigned — in spelling, in the division of words at the end
of a line, and in grammatical structure; but I find that these occur in
the K. H. writings also; where the frequency of dashes, underlinings,
and expressions like " please," " permit me,'' <!bc., is further suggestive
of Madame Blavatsky's work. I admit that some of the quotations
which have been published by Mr. Sinnett, from the K. H. mss.,
attain a standard of style and reflective thought which I should not
expect Madame Blavatsky to maintain continuously through a long
series of documents, and I am accordingly not surprised to learn from
Mr. Hume, who received a large quantity of the K. H. mss., and who
began the writing of " Esoteric Buddhism,'' that much of the K. H.
writing is considerably below the level of those fragments which have
been published, and that the task of eliminating the vast mass of
rubbish was exceedingly difficult. I conceive myself that it would be
impossible for the writer of the K. H. mss. now in my possession to
substantiate any claim to a familiarity with the principles of either
Science or Philosophy, and I see no reason why they should not have
been written by Madame Blavatsky herself, without any assistance
whatever. To speak about '' a bacteria," as K. H. does in one of these
documents, is to show a knowledge neither of Biology nor of Philology;
and to say, as K. H. does in another of these documents, '^that man has
a better prospect for him after death than that of turning into carbolic
(sic) acid, water and ammonia " [43] shows a lamentable ignorance of the
constitution of the Bupa, the ordinary human organism, the first of
the "seven principles."
It would, however, be a tedious and a useless task to analyse these
K. H. documents at length, and I shall now simply give a few instances
of those points wliich admit of a brief illustration. I take the following
from the Koot Hoomi Lai Sing: " Whatever helps restore " [= "what-
ever helps to restore]. Also, "You and your colleagues may help
furnish the materials." Similarly Madame Blavatsky writes, " to help
him publish." The Koot Hoomi Lai Sinff, as I have already men-
tioned, is quoted almost in its entirety by Mr. Sinnett, on pp. 85-95 of
*' The Occult World." But the reader will find that the word to is
inserted before its verb in Mr. Sinnett's version. I was certainly sur-
prised on finding this, as Mr. Sinnett had written ('^The Occult
World," p. 69):—
"I shall, of course, throughout my quotations from Koot Hoomi's letters
leave out passages which, specially addressed to myself, have no immediate
bearing on the public argument. The reader must be careful to remember,
however, as I now most unequivocally affirm, that I shall in no case alter
one syllable of the passages actually quoted. It is important to make this
declaration very emphatically, because the more my readers may be acquainted
with India, the less they will be willing to believe, except on the most positive
testimony, that the letters from Koot Hoomi, as I now publish them, have
been written by a native of India."
Yet on comparing the original document, Koot Hoomi Lai Sing^
with " The Occult World," I find that there are more than sixty differ-
ences between the two (excluding mistakes of spelling — hen^a and
remarqued — and excluding also omission of underlinings, changes of
punctuation, <Ssc.). Many of these differences consist of words omitted
or inserted, others of words changed, and although some of these
differences may be resolved into misprints or mis-co;ne«, by no
means all of them can be explained in this way. For example, in
the original document I read: '* the difference between the modes of
physical (called exact often out of mere politeness) and metaphysical
sciences "; but in " The Occult World " (p. 88), politeness appears as
complimefit. Again: '^ Education enthrones skepticism, but imprisons
spiritualism "; spiritualism in *' The Occult World " (p. 94) appears
as spirituality, Jietnarqusd and politeness appear to me to be more
suggestive of Madame Blavatsky than of the K. H. described to us,
whose peculiarities ought to be German rather than French; [44] and it is
curious that Madame Blavatsky, in a letter of last year to Mr. Myers,
should have drawn a contrast " between spiritualism and materialism,"
where spiritualism^ is clearly intended to bear the same meaning as in
the passage quoted from the K. H. document. I do not suppose that
Mr. Sinnett himself knew anything of these and other alterations, but
he is certainly chargeable with no ordinary negligence for not having
ascertained, after the emphatic and unequivocal declaration which
I have quoted, that no coppst or printer's devil or reader had
assumed the function of improving Koot Hoomi's English — ^unless,
indeed, we are to suppose that Koot Hoomi At m(?)self corrected the
proof for the press, in which case we ought to have been told that
he did so, and how and when it was done. Such exceeding carelessness
on the part of Mr. Sinnett has destroyed the confidence which I
formerly had that his quotations from Koot Hoomi documents might
be regarded as accurately faithful reproductions of the originals.
The following short groups of peculiarities of spelling and mistakes
of idiom may be compared:—
KOOT HOOMI MADAME BLAVATSKY
SPELLING
your's, her*8
fulfill, dispell
tliiefs
leasure
quarreling, marshaling
alloted
in totto
CLTcunistancial
defense
&c. yours
expell
tliiefs
deceaved, beseached
quarreling, quarreled
cooly (for * coolly ')
lazzy, lazziness
consciensciously, hypocricy
defense
&c.
Division of words at the end of a line.
incessan— tly, direc— tly
una — cquainted
fun — ctions
discer— ning, rea — ding, rea— dily
po — ^werless
atmos — ^phere
des— pite
corres — pondence
£n— gliahman, En — ^glish
misunders — tood
&c. recen — ^tly, hones— tly, perfec— tly
cha — ^nged
correc — ^tness
retur— ning, trea— ting, grea— test
po — wers
Beacon— sfields
&c.
Structure
'I give you an advice'
'who, ever since he is here, has been influencing him'
'we mortals never have and will agree on any subject entirely'
'one who understands tolerably well English'
'you felt impatient and believed having reasons to complain'
'to take care of themselves and of their hereafter the best they know how' — 'the best she knew how'
'that the world will not believe in our philosophy unless it is convinced of it proceeding from reliable'
'there are those, who, rather than to yield to the evidence of fact'
'in a direct course or along hundred of side-furrows'
'their active mentality preventing them to receive clear outside impressions'
'provided you consented to wait and did not abuse of the situation '
'Immutable laws cannot arise since they are eternal and uncreated, propelled in the Eternity and that God himself — if such a thing existed— could never have the power of stopping them '
'So more the pity for him '
&c.
'to give as impartial an evidence ' — 'offering advices'
'for 14 or 15 years that I am "preaching the Brothers"'
'they have never and never will rush into print '
'Olcott says you speak very well English'
'had he but consented becoming a rascal'
'and left to do the best I knew how'
'there is not a tittle of doubt for it being so'
'the chelas would rather be anyday insulted themselves than to hear insulted'
'the accursed lecture with hundred others'
'the mediums reproached me with preventing by my presence the "spirits" to come'
'I have never written anything against you that I could fear of being shown to you'
'since Eastern and Western ideas of morality differ like red and blue and that you ... may appear to them as, and more immoral perhaps than they do to you'
'So more the pity for those'
&c.
It may seem strange that K. H. should be induced by a " philo-
logical whim," to spell "skepticism" with a k {vide ^. 271), and yet
make such mistakes in spelling and such remarkable diYisions of words
as I have instanced above. And throughout the K. H. documents in
my hands, expressions abound which can hardly be termed feliciUUee,
though they are certainly curiosce, and which appear to me to be
eminently Blavatskian.
What the ethics of a real Mahatma would be we perhaps have no
means of judging, but those of Madame Blavatsky's Mahatma certainly
are, in some points, those which we should expect would commend
themselves to a person engaged in producing fraudulent phenomena.
There is evidence in one of the K. H. documents that K. H. actually
endeavoured to incite the recipient to what I think every honour-
able Englishman would regard as a falsehood. The moral is toler-
ably obvious, and the reader will perhaps rather expect the advanced
Chelas of ^^Mahatmas" to be, by virtue of that very position,
untrustworthy individuals. That there are persons whose actions
are marked by the highest integrity, and who have devoutly
and sincerely believed themselves to be acting under the tutelage
of a " Mahatma," I do not for a moment question; though there
can be little doubt that there are also instances where Madame
Blavatsky has endeavoured to persuade natives to pretend falsely
that they were Chelas, and in some cases, as I think I have shown,
has succeeded, but in other cases has failed. Mr. Hume has stated
to me his conviction, founded on their own confessions, that certain
natives had been instigated by Madame Blavatsky to fraudulent
assertion of their Chelaship, and to the conveyance of " Mahatma ''
messages in the guise of Chelas; this would appear also from some
of the documents forwarded to me by Mr. Hume; and, quite indepen-
dently of this evidence, I was assured by an educated native with whom
I had a personal interview, that Madame Blavatsky had used her
powers — not only of persuasion, but of threatening — to induce him
to further her objects, as explained to him, and to play the rdle of
a dawning Adept. It is, in short, quite certain that there are
natives who have charged Madame Blavatsky with inciting them to
the fraudulent personation of Chelas of "Mahatmas," and she seems
to have worked upon patriotic feeling for the purpose of securing
their assistance.
I have now dealt with the main points of the evidence for the
alleged marvellous phenomena in connection with the Theosophical
Society which were directly associated with my investigations in
India, and I regard the details which I have given as sufficient to
warrant the conclusion which I expressed at the beginning of my
Beport, that these alleged marvellous phenomena have been fraudulent
throughout. The force of the evidence leading to this conclusion will
hardly be appreciated except by those who have followed the accounts
given in the Appendices, and it certainly cannot be conveyed in a
mere summary. Yet I think it well that the reader should be reminded
of the most important considerations which have arisen in the course
of the inquiry, and I shall therefore suggest these once more — ^in as
few words as possible. But, before doing so, there are one or twa
collaterrvl questions which demand some brief reference.
At the time of our First Report, it appeared to us a serious difficulty
in the way of adopting the hypothesis of fraud that we should have to
suppose Mr. Damodar to have exchanged, within a comparatively short
time, the character of a confiding dupe for that of a thorough-going*
conspirator. This difficulty was impressed upon us all the more
strongly by the account of Mr. Damodar which we received fronk
Colonel Olcott, who stated: —
"His father was a wealthy gentleman occupying a high position in the-
Govemment secretariat at Bombay; and the son, besides the paternal
expectations, had, in his own right, about 50,000 or 60,000 rupees. The
father at first gave his consent to the son's breaking caste— a most serious
step in India — so as to take up our work. But subsequently, on his death-
bed, his orthodox family influenced his mind, and he demanded that his son
should revert to his caste, making the usual degrading penance required in
such cases. Mr. Damodar, however, refused, saying that he was fully
committed to the work, which he considered most important for his country
and the world; and he ultimately relinquished his entire property, so that
he might be absolutely free."
The impressiveness of this, however, was considerably reduced by
further investigation, which revealed that Colonel Olcott's statement
conveyed utterly erroneous ideas concerning the actual facts of the
case. From evidence I obtained in Bombay from several witnesses,.
&nd from a series of documents which I was allowed to peruse by
an uncle of Mr. Damodar, and which consisted partly of letters
written by Mr. Damodar, it appeared that his father had been a
member of the Theosophical Society, but that he had resigned all
connection with it in consequence of the conclusion he had reached that
the founders of the Society were untrustworthy. It was also in
consequence of this conclusion that he so earnestly entreated his son
(not to " revert to his caste," but) to give up his connection with
Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott, or at least to live no longer in.
the same house with them. It was, moreover, in consequence of the-
opinion which prevailed among some of Mr. Damodar's acquaintancesr
in Bombay to the effect that Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott
had sought to gain power over Mr. Damodar for the purpose of
obtaining his money — that Mr. Damodar had expressed his desire to
relinquish his property. And, according to the provisions of his.
father's will, he may yet receive the property on certain conditions, of
which the primary one is the severance of his connection with the-
Theosophical Society. I must add that the correspondence to which
I refer, which lasted over some months, afforded ample evidence that.
Mr. Damodar's father had been painfully impressed by his want of
truthfulness and honourable dealing.
At the time when Mr. Damodar desired to give up all claims to the
property, he was, I think, not a confederate. Wlien he first began to
suspect fraud, I have no means of ascertaining; but as regards the
transition from being a dupe to becoming himself a conspirator, there
is this to be said. — There can be little doubt that patriotic feeling —
which, I believe, has much more to do with the underworking of the
Theosophical Society than the followers of Madame Blavatsky in
England commonly imagine — ^was one of the strongest influences which
attracted him to the Society, and which aftei'wards kept him an active
worker in the movement. His bitter antipathy to the " conquering
race " was sufficiently obvious in those letters of his which I had the
opportunity of perusing. To this we must add the fact that he had
espoused the Theosophical cause and the claims of Madame Blavatsky
with a burning intensity of antagonism to those who alleged that these
claims rested on a foundation of dishonesty. It was not easy to confess
to the world that the flaming ardour which resisted the tender and wise
advice of his father, and perhaps was fed by the importunate cautions
and scoffings of his friends, was but the folly of an aspiring youth, who
was not quite clever enough for Madame Blavatsky. And, after all,
he might have the honour of posing as a Chela, with rapidly-developing
powers, and receiving reverence and glory, not only from his native
associates, but from Englishmen themselves. In the face of such
considerations as these, the psychological revolution in which Mr.
Damodar was transformed from a dupe, capable of deceiving his father,
to an impostor in the supposed interests of his country, is perhaps not
very difficult to understand. There is no necessity for me to give all the
results of my inquiries concerning the personal characters and ante-
cedents of those persons whom I regard as confederates of Madame
Blavatsky. As Mr. Damodar is the only one of her followers who has
deprived himself of any substantial property by his action in connection
with the Theosophical Society, or who, in my opinion, can be said to
have sacrificed his worldly prospects, I have thought it desirable to
draw special attention to the circumstances under which the sacrifice
was made.
After reviewing the instances I have given of the unreliability of
Colonel Olcott's testimony, some readers may be inclined to think that
Colonel Olcott must himself have taken an active and deliberate part
in the fraud, and have been a partner with Madame Blavatsky in the
conspiracy. Such, I must emphatically state, is not my own opinion,
though I should be unwilling to affirm that Colonel Olcott may not,
by carrying out supposed injunctions of his "Master," have improperly
contributed, either by word or action, to the marvellousness of certain
phenomena. It is clear, for example, from documents in my posses-
sion, that the influence of "K. H.'' has been exerted unsuccessfully
in the case of another gentleman, for the purpose of strengthening the
evidence for an alleged " occult" phenomenon, and 1 can well understand
that Colonel Olcott may have been induced by the solemn asseverations
of his '* Master " that certain events occurred, to remember incidents
which never happened at all; and how much may have been exacted
from his blind obedience it is impossible to determine. Further,
his capacity for estimating evidence, which could never have been very
great, was probably seriously injured before the outset of his Theoso-
phical career by his faith in Madame Blavatsky, who herself regarded
him as the chief of those '' domestic imbeciles " and ** familiar muf& "
to whom she refers in her letters to Madame Coulomb; and writing
about him from America to a Hindu in Bombay, she characterised him
as a " psychologised baby," saying that the Yankees thought themselves
very smart, and that Colonel Olcott thought he was particularly smart,
even for a Yankee, but that he would have to get up much earlier in the
morning to be as smart as she was. His candour was shown by his
readiness in providing me with extracts from his own diary, and the
freedom with which he allowed me to inspect important documents in
his possession; and he rendered me every assistance in his power
in the way of my acquiring the evidence of the native witnesses. Not
only so, but observing, as I thought, that Mr. Damodar was unduly
endeavouring to take part in my examination of a witness shortly after I
arrived in India, he desired me not to hesitate in taking the witnesses
apart for my private examination, and he made special arrangements
for my convenience. Not unmindful of the opportunities afforded me
for investigation by most of the Theosophists themselves, it is with all
the more regret that I now find myself expressing conclusions which
must give pain to so many of them. But Colonel Olcott himself would
be among the first to admit that the interests of truth must not be
stopped or stayed by any merely personal feelings, and although in a
letter to Madame Coulomb, he implied that his mind could not " be
unsettled by any trivial things " — such as, among others, the making
of trap-doors and other apparatus for trick-manifestations by Madame
Blavatsky — ^lie wrote also: —
"I do fk>£ think it right or fair that you should continue to be a member
of a Society which you thought flourishing by the aid of trickery and false
representation. If I thought my Society ihat I would leave it, and wash my
hands of it for ever."
This, however, is a course which probably Colonel Olcott's mind
will never be " unsettled " enough to take, and he still apparently
continues to believe in the genuineness of the alleged occult phenomena.
_______________
Notes:
29. Several of these letters were lent to me for my own examination by the
editor of the Christian College Magazine, The remaining letters I examined
at the honse of a gentleman in whose cnBtody they were at the time. Some of
them which I selected myself were entrusted to me to he sent to England for
the judgment of the best experts obtainable, with the special request that they
should be returned as soon as possible, and I found upon my arrival in England
that they had already been returned.
30. I refer to the B, Marginal Notes and the B, Replies, (See pp. 282
and 290.)
31. See Madame Coulomb's pamphlet "Some Account," &c., pp. 94-104.
32. In addition to the manuscripts which I have already mentioned as pro-
viding me with a knowledge of Madame Blavatsky's ordinary handwriting, I
have in my possession various undisputed writings of hers produced between
1877 and 1885, among which are three letters written to a Hindu in 1878, three
writings to Mr. Hume about the years 1881-1832, and other more recent letters
to Messrs. Massey and Myers.
33. The Occult World '' (first edition) was published Jane 2nd, 1881.
34. "Esoteric Buddhism " (first edition) was published June 8th, 1883.
35. Mr. Gribble, in his pamphlet, '^ A Report of an Examination into the
Blavatsky Correspondence," &c., has drawn special attention to this left gap-
stroke Id Madame Blavatsky's ordinaiy writing, and to the significance of it»
occiirpence in some K. H. Meriting.
36. I think it not improbable that this document was written by Madame Blavatsky in 1879 or 1880 when the idea of corresponding with one of the "Brothers" appears to have been first mooted. In weighing the statement of Madame Fadeeff that she received the document about the year 1870, we should remember that she is a Russian lady, and the aunt of Madame Blavatsky, and that Madame Blavatsky may have been influenced by political motives in the founding of the Theosophical Society (vid. p. 314). It may be mentioned here that Madame Blavatsky, when she heard that Mr. Hormusji had given evidence that he had received a brooch from her for repair, which resembled the one afterwards produced at Simla for Mrs. Hume, first alleged (to Mr. Hume) that the brooch Mr. Hormusji had seen was square, and a few days later (to myself) that it was round, and had, indeed, some resemblance to Mrs. Hume's, that she (Madame Blavatsky) had purchased it for her niece, and that I could obtain confirmation from Madame Fadeeff. Considering Madame Blavatsky's contradictory statements about the brooch, this ready reference to Madame Fadeeff, in connection with it, suggests that she was a convenient person to appeal to when no other corroboration of Madame Blavatsky's assertions could be obtained.
37. The initial curve beginning the m or n strictly fomis part of the letter in
ordinary writing, but in the K. H. writing these letters are made on the
pattern of the letters t and u, so that the absence of a first upstroke is ]es9
curious than it would otherwise be.
38. "A Report of an Examination into the Blavatsky Correspondence," &e.,
p. 7. Mr. Gribble says: — " The only instance in which any resemblance to
Dr. Hartmann's writing is to be found is in the formation of the capital H," and
he mentions the capital letters A and T, and no others, as exhibiting
pecnliarities which reminded him of "similar letters to be found in Madame B.'s
acknowledged writings." The A and T are, in my opinion, not more suggestive
of Madame Blavatsky than the A and T of Br. Hartmann's undoubted ordinary
writings. I should say that Mr. Gribble had the opportunity of examining the
document only very hastily during a short visit of an hour at the headquarters
of the Theosophical Society, when he examined other documents also; and this
DO doubt accounts for the mistakes which he made in his'examination of it.
39. I have already referred to Madame Coulomb's allegation that at the end of
April she wrote to Madame Blavatsky threatening to prodace incriminating
letters written by the latter.
40. The following passage occurs in the document: "She hopes for more than
2,000 Rupees from them, if she helps them ruining or at least injuring the
Society," &c. Madame Blavatsky writes, in one of her imdoubtecl letters: " I
ask yon to do this to help me tracing by the emanations the persons," &c.
41. It is noteworthy that in the same K. H. document the following passage
occurs: ** Nor can I allow you to be under the misapprehension that any adept
is unable to read the hidden thoughts of others without first mesmeriAing
them."
42. This appears, e.g., in the following sentence of hers in a letter to Mr.
Home, of 1882: " You have either to show me as a champion liar, but cunning,
logicaU and with a most phenomenal memory (instead of my poor failing brains),
or admit the theory of the Brothers."
43. This reminded me of a passage in the Contemporary/ Eevieio for September,
1876, p. 545: ** The man resolves into carbonic acid, water and ammonia, and
has no more personal future existence than a consumed candle."
44. Other mistakes suggesting that the writer was accustomed to French
may be found in different K. H. documents; for instance, motUain for mountain,
pro/and for profound, vanted for vaunted, defense for defence, " you have to beat
your iron while it is yet hot."
