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interests were not primarily in spiritistic phenomena for themselves, but for
what they revealed of the inner spiritual capacities and potentialities of our
evolving Psyche.
It required but a few weeks to disgust Madame Blavatsky with her fruitless
undertaking. Some French female spiritists, whom she had drafted for service as
mediums, in lack of better, proved to be adventuresses following in the wake of
M. de Lesseps' army of engineers and workmen, and they concluded by stealing the
Society's funds. She wrote home:
"To wind up the comedy with a drama, I got nearly shot by a madman-a Greek, who
had been present at the only two public séances we held, and got possessed I
suppose, by some vile spook."8
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She terminated the affairs of her Société and went to Bulak, where she renewed
her previous acquaintance with the old Copt. His unconcealed interest in his
visitor aroused some slanderous talk about her. Disgusted with the growing
gossip, she went home by way of Palestine, making a side voyage to Palmyra and
other ruins, and meeting there some Russian friends. At the end of 1872 she
returned without warning to her family, then at Odessa.
In 1873 she again abandoned her home, and Paris was her first objective. She
stayed there with a cousin, Nicholas Hahn, for two months. While in Paris she
was directed by her "spiritual overseers" to visit the United States, "where she
would meet a man by the name of Olcott," with whom she was to undertake an
important enterprise. Obedient to her orders she arrived at New York on July
7th, 1873.9 She was for a time practically without funds; actually, as Col.
Olcott avers, "in the most dismal want, having . . . to boil her coffee-dregs
over and over again for lack of pence for buying a fresh supply; and to keep off
starvation, at last had to work with her needle for a maker of cravats."10
During this interval she was lodged in a wretched tenement house in the East
Side, and made cravats for a kindly old Jew, whose help at this time she never
forgot.11 In her squalid quarters she was sought out by a veteran journalist,
Miss Anna Ballard, in search of copy for a Russian story. She received, in late
October, a legacy from the estate of her father, who had died early in that
month. A draft of one thousand rubles was first sent her, and later the entire
sum bequeathed to her. Then in affluence she moved to better quarters, first to
Union Square, then to East 16th Street, then to Irving Place. But her money did
not abide in her keeping long. In regard to the sources of her income after her
patrimony had been flung generously to the winds, we are told, upon Col.
Olcott's pledged honor, that both his and her wants, after the organization of
the Theosophical Society, were frequently provided for by the occult
ministrations of the Masters. He claims that during the many years of their
joint campaigns for Theosophy, especially in India, the treasure-chest at
headquarters, after having been depleted, would be found supplied with funds
from unknown sources. Shopping one day in New York with Colonel, she made
purchases to the amount of about fifty dollars. He paid the bills. On returning
home she thrust some banknotes into his hand, saying: "There are your fifty
dollars." He is certain she had no money of her own, and no visitor had come in
from whom she could have borrowed. Once during this period she created the
duplicate of a thousand dollar note while it was held in the hand of the Hon.
John L. O'Sullivan, formerly Ambassador to Portugal; but it faded away during
the two following days. Its serial number was identical with that of its
prototype. The knowledge that financial help would come at need, however, did
not dispose Madame Blavatsky to relax her effort toward her own sustenance.12
During this time, and for nearly all the remainder of her life, the Russian
noblewoman spent large stretches of her time in writing occult, mystic, and
scientific articles for Russian periodicals. This constituted her main source of
income. Col. Olcott states that her Russian articles were so highly prized that
"the conductor of the most important of their reviews actually besought her to
write constantly for it, on terms as high as they gave Turgenev."13
A chronicle of her life during this epoch may not omit her second marriage,
which proved ill-fated at the first. It came about as follows: A Mr. B., a
Russian subject, learning of her psychic gifts through Col. Olcott, asked the
Colonel to arrange for him a meeting with his countrywoman. He proceeded to fall
into a profound state of admiration for Madame Blavatsky, which deepened though
he was persistently rebuffed, and he finally threatened to take his life unless
she would relent. He proclaimed his motives to be only protective, and expressly
waived a husband's claims to the privileges of married life. In what appears to
have been madness or some sort of desperation, she agreed finally, on these
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terms, to be his wife. Even then it was specified that she retain her own name
and be free from all restraint, for the sake of her work. A Unitarian clergyman
married them in Philadelphia, and they lived for some few months in a house on
Sansom Street. When taken to task by her friend Olcott, she explained that it
was a misfortune to which she was doomed by an inexorable Karma; that it was a
punishment to her for a streak of pride which was hindering her spiritual
development; but that it would result in no harm to the young man. The husband
forgot his earlier protestations of Platonic detachment, and became an
importunate lover. Madame Blavatsky developed a dangerous illness at this time
as a result of a fall upon an icy sidewalk in New York the previous winter, and
her knee became so violently inflamed that a partial mortification of the leg
set in. The physician declared that nothing but instant amputation could save
her life; but she discarded his advice, called upon that source of help which
had come to her in a number of exigencies, recovered immediately and left her
husband's "bed and board." He, after some months of waiting, saw her obduracy
and procured a divorce on the ground of desertion.14
During the latter part of her stay in New York she and Col. Olcott took an
apartment of seven rooms at the corner of 47th Street and 8th Avenue, which came
to be called "The Lamasery," in jocular reference to her Tibetan connections.
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