Theos-Talk Archives (October 2008 Message tt00369)

--- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, Drpsionic@... wrote:

> Better to admire her for what she was, a person of extraordinary 
energy and  
> knowledge whose presence still looms over the world, who is a 
source of  
> inspiration for us and of horror to our enemies.  Let us honor her 
for that  and at 
> the same time have a good laugh at the extreme gravity of her 
person  which 
> could break chairs and capsize boats if she looked over the side. 
(I used  to 
> joke that she was the reason my family ended up in America because 
she caused  
> the Great Pasta Famine.)
>  
> And let us never, ever forget her humanity.


After reading your moving tribute to HPB, Chuck, I could not resist 
posting some excerpts of Leadbeater's description of some incidents 
in his travel with her from Cairo to India in 1884:


"Among the passengers were several missionaries, and they, with one 
exception, seemed distinctly disposed to regard us as emissaries of 
the Prince of Darkness. The exception was a young Wesleyan minister 
named Restorick, with whom I used to play deck-tennis; I found him 
quite friendly and reasonable, and willing to discuss without 
acrimony all kinds of religious matters. A very different type was an 
earnest but quite uneducated missionary from America, named Daniel 
Smith, who made no secret of the fact that he had been a bricklayer, 
but found the hard work and the exposure too severe for his health, 
and so, as he put it, the Lord had called him to preach the gospel to 
the heathen.

Perhaps because of his ignorance, he was apt to be aggressive, and 
used frequently to engage in arguments with Madame Blavatsky which 
were a source of great amusement to the passengers. I am afraid that 
our Leader took a kind of impish pleasure in entangling him in his 
talk and inducing him to commit himself to the most impossible 
theological statements. She knew the Bible far better than he did, 
and would constantly quote unexpected and little-known texts which 
drew from him the indignant protest: "That's not in the Bible! I'm 
sure that's not in the Bible!"

Then Madame Blavatsky would turn to me with deadly composure:

"Leadbeater, fetch my Bible from my cabin!" and would proceed to 
confound him with chapter and verse. Once he was so ill-advised as to 
rejoin: "Well, anyhow, I'm sure it's not in my copy!" But the ripple 
of amusement which ran round among the audience warned him to avoid 
such a rash assertion in the future.

As we were crossing the Indian Ocean I remember walking the deck with 
Madame Blavatsky early one morning in all the glory of a tropical 
sunrise, when this worthy missionary appeared at the top of the 
staircase, and she at once hailed him with the words:

"Now, Mr. Smith! Look round you! See the calm shining sea, and the 
lovely colours! See how good your God is! Surely on such a glorious 
morning as this you can't tell me that I am going to be burnt in hell 
for ever and ever!"

I must do the Rev. Daniel the justice to admit that he blushed deeply 
and looked very uncomfortable, but he stuck manfully to his guns, and 
replied with an evident effort:

"Well, I'm very sorry, ma'am, but I guess you will!"

Naturally Madame Blavatsky's brilliant and powerful personality 
impressed itself upon the whole company, officers and passengers 
alike (always excepting the Captain) and whenever she chose to show 
herself upon deck in good weather she speedily gathered round her a 
kind of court of interested auditors, who asked her questions upon 
all sorts of subjects, and listened fascinated to her stories of 
experience and adventure in out-of-the-way corners of the world. At 
night especially they asked always for tales of the weird and 
supernatural, which she told so well and with such gruesome realism 
that her audience shuddered with delightful thrills of horror ? but I 
noticed that they had a distinct tendency to herd together 
afterwards, and that none would adventure into a dark passage alone!

Landing at Madras
 
After a day or two in Colombo we resumed our voyage on the Navarino, 
and duly arrived at Madras, to find an uncomfortably heavy swell, 
which made our landing a distinctly unpleasant and even somewhat 
hazardous business. A breakwater had been erected some years 
previously, but had not proved strong enough to resist the seas 
raised by the monsoon, so that all that was left of it were a few 
scattered heaps of stone. Consequently we had to be taken off the 
ship in enormous boats of a very unusual type. The planks of which 
they were constructed seemed to be not nailed together in the 
ordinary way, but as it were stitched together with rope, so that 
there was a curious collapsibility about the sides; and we were told 
that this method of construction enabled them to resist the impact of 
the tremendous surf better than if they had been more rigid.

The boats were of great depth, and the rowers with their long paddles 
perched themselves somehow on the sides, the very gunwale of the 
boat, while the unfortunate passengers were dumped into the central 
hollow far below the feet of the rowers, in what would have been the 
hold of the craft if it had been decked. It will perhaps be 
understood that to descend into such a craft from a steamer which was 
rolling heavily in the open roads (for of course there was then 
nothing like a harbour) required great agility, and was indeed a 
decidedly dangerous feat, as the boat was sometimes level for a 
moment with the ship's bulwarks and directly afterwards twenty or 
thirty feet below, for the seas were positively mountainous.

One had to jump at exactly the right moment, and one by one most of 
the passengers achieved it, though with a good deal of trepidation, 
mostly bundling ungracefully and ignominiously into the bottom of the 
boat. Obviously gymnastics of this sort were impossible for Madame 
Blavatsky, and the only alternative was to tie her carefully into a 
chair, and lower her by means of the ordinary cargo winch. I need 
hardly say that she did not appreciate this operation, and I think 
that her language on the occasion rather surprised even the hardened 
officers. She was, however, lowered and received with perfect safety, 
and though the process may have appeared undignified, I think some of 
the rest of us rather envied her.

Presently we were all safely in the boat, very wet but otherwise 
uninjured. We have to remember that Madame Blavatsky was returning to 
India to meet a mass of most wicked and slanderous charges which had 
been brought against her by the Madras Christian College 
missionaries, that these so-called missionaries had confidently 
predicted that she could never return to face these charges, and that 
consequently the Indian population regarded her as a hero and a 
martyr, and came down in their thousands to give her such an ovation 
as might have been accorded to a victorious general."

(http://www.singaporelodge.org/htctm.htm#7A)


Pedro