Theosophical Society,
THE
LIFE OF
H P Blavatsky
Marriage and Travel
1848 - 1858
An extract from
Incidents in the Life of Madame Blavatsky -
compiled from information supplied by her relatives and friends and edited by A.P.Sinnett
First Published 1913
THE
marriage by which Mdlle Hahn acquired the name she
has since been known by took place in 1848. She was
then, it will be seen, about seventeen, and General Blavatsky to whom she was
united — as far as the ceremonies of the Church were concerned — was, at all
events, a man of advanced age. Madame herself believed that he was nearer
seventy than sixty. He was himself reluctant to acknowledge to more than about
fifty. Other matrimonial opportunities of a far more attractive character were,
as I now learn from her relatives, open to her really at the time, but these
would have rendered the marriage state, had she entered it with some of her
younger admirers, a much more serious matter than she designed it to be in her
case. Her demeanor, therefore, with the most desirable of her suitors was
purposely intolerable. The actual adventure on which she launched herself — for
in its precipitation and brevity it may fairly be
described by that phrase — seems to have been brought
about by a combination of circumstances that could only have influenced a girl
of Mademoiselle Hahn's wild temper and irregular training. Her aunt describes
the manner in which the marriage was arranged as follows :
—
“She
cared not whether she should get married or not. She had been simply defied one
day by her governess to find any man who would be her husband, in view of her
temper and disposition. The governess, to emphasize the taunt,
said that even the old man she had found so ugly,
and had laughed at so much,
calling him 'a plume-less raven' — that even he
would decline her for a wife!
That
was enough: three days after she made him propose, and then, frightened at
what she had done, sought to escape from her joking
acceptance of his offer. But it was too late. Hence the fatal step. All she
knew and understood was — when too late — that she had been accepting, and was
now forced to accept — a master she cared nothing for, nay, that she hated;
that she was tied to him by the law of the country, hand and foot. A 'great
horror ' crept upon her, as she
explained
it later ; one desire, ardent, unceasing, irresistible, got hold of her entire
being, led her on, so to say, by the hand, forcing her to act instinctively, as
she would have done if, in the act of saving her life, she had been running
away from a mortal danger.
There
had been a distinct attempt to impress her with the solemnity of marriage, with
her future obligations and her duties to her husband, and married life. A few
hours later, at the altar, she heard the priest saying to her: 'Thou shalt honour and obey thy husband', and at this hated word
'shalt,' her young face — for she was hardly
seventeen — was seen to flush angrily, then to become deadly pale. She was
overheard to mutter in response, through her set teeth —' Surely, I shall not.'
” And surely she has not. Forthwith she determined to take the law and her
future life into her own hands, and — he left her ' husband ' for ever, without
giving him any opportunity to ever even think of her as his wife.
“Thus
Mme. Blavatsky abandoned her country at seventeen, and passed ten long years in
strange and out-of-the-way places — in
At
the time the marriage took place, Mademoiselle Hahn was staying with her
grandmother and some other relatives at Djellallogly, a mountain retreat
frequented in the summer by the residents of
never
intended to do more than establish the fact that General Blavatsky would be
ready to marry her, but with an engagement regularly set on foot, announced in
the family, proclaimed to friends, and so forth, with “congratulations” coming
in, and the bridegroom claiming its fulfilment, a
restoration of the status quo was found by the reckless heroine of the
complication more easily talked about than obtained.
Her
friends protested against the scandal that would be created if the
engagement were broken off for no apparent reason.
Pressed to go on with the wedding, she seems to have consoled herself with the
belief that she would be securing herself increased liberty of action as a
married woman than ever she could compass as a girl. Her father was altogether
off the scene, far away with his regiment in
Of
course the theories concerning the married state entertained by General
Blavatsky
and his abnormally natured young bride differed toto coelo,
and came
into violent conflict from the day of the wedding —
a day of unforeseen
revelations, furious indignation, dismay, and
belated repentance. Nothing was
ever imagined in fiction more extravagant than the
progress of the brief and
stormy though imperfect partnership. The intelligent
reader will understand that
a born occultist like Mademoiselle Hahn could
never have plunged into a
relationship so intolerable, so
impossible for her, as that of husband and wife
if she had understood on the ordinary plane of
human affairs what she was about.
The
day after the wedding she was conducted by the General to a place called
Daretchichag, a
summer retreat for
journey to make her escape towards the Persian
frontier, but the Cossack she sought to win over as her guide in this
enterprise betrayed her instead to the General, and she was carefully guarded.
The cavalcade duly reached the residence of the governor — the scene of his
peculiar honeymoon.
Certainly
the position in which he was placed commands our retrospective
sympathy for some reasons ; but it is impossible
to go into a discussion of
details that might go far to qualify this. For
three months the newly married
couple remained together under the same roof, each
fighting for impossible
concessions, and then at last, in connection with a
quarrel more violent even
than the rest, the young lady took horse on her own
account and rode to
Family
councils followed, and it was settled that the unmanageable bride should
be sent to join her father. He arranged to meet
her at
despatched in the care of an old
servant-man and a maid, to catch at Poti a
steamer that would take her to her destination.
But her desperate passion for
adventure, coupled with apprehensions that her
father might endeavour to
refasten the broken links of her nuptial bond,
led her to design in her own mind
an amendment to this programme. She so contrived
matters on the journey through
The
Commodore was bound first to Kertch, then to
afterwards returning to the
The
little voyage itself seems to have been full of adventures, which, in
dealing with a life less crowded with adventures
all through, than Mme.
Blavatsky's
one would stop to chronicle. The harbour police of
Later
on, when the vessel arrived at
Unfortunately,
it is impossible for me to do more than sketch the period of her
life that we now approach in the meagrest
outline. For the full details of her
childhood given in the foregoing pages, we are
indebted to her relatives. She
herself, though frequently able to tell
disjointed anecdotes of her childhood,
could never have put together so connected a
narrative as that obtained from
Mme.
Jelihowsky, and there was no sister at hand to keep a
record of her
subsequent adventures during her wanderings all
over the world. She
never kept diaries during this period, and memory at
a distance of time is a
very uncertain guide, but if the present record is
uneven in its treatment of
various periods, I can only point in excuse for
this to the obvious
embarrassments of my task.
In
began to pick up some occult teaching, though of a
very different and inferior
order from that she acquired later. At that time
there was an old Copt at
a man very well and widely known ; of
considerable property and influence, and
of a great reputation as a magician. The tales of
wonder told about him by
popular report were very thrilling. Mme.
Blavatsky seems to have been a pupil
who readily attracted his interest, and was
enthusiastic in imbibing his
instruction. She fell in with him again in later
years, and spent some time with
him at Boulak, but her
acquaintance with him in the beginning did not last long,
as she was only at that time in
lady of rank whom she met during this period she
also travelled for a time.
Her
relatives at
servants at Kertch
reported her disappearance, but she herself communicated
privately with her father, and secured his consent
to her vague programme of
foreign travel. He realised
the impossibility of inducing her to resume the
broken thread of her married life; and, indeed,
considering all that had passed,
it is not unreasonable to suppose that General
Blavatsky himself was ready to
acquiesce in the separation. He endeavoured, indeed, to obtain a formal divorce
on the ground that his marriage had never been
more than a form, and that his
wife had run away; but Russian law at the time was
not favourable to divorce,
and the attempt failed. Colonel Hahn, however,
supplied his fugitive daughter with money, and kept her counsel in regard to
her subsequent movements.
Ten
years elapsed before she again saw her relatives, and her restless eagerness
for travel carried her during this period to all
parts of the world. She kept no
diary, and at this distance of time can give no very
connected story of these
complicated wanderings. Within about a year of their
commencement she seems to have been in
time, and where a famous mesmerist, still living as
I write, though an old man
now, discovered her wonderful psychic gifts, and
was very eager to retain her
under his control as a sensitive. But the chains had
not yet been forged that
could make her prisoner, and she quitted
influence. She went over to London, and passed
some time in company with an old Russian lady of her acquaintance, the Countess
B------, at Mivart's Hotel, whom, however, she
out-stayed in London, remaining there in company with the
Countess's
demoiselle de compagnie in a big hotel, she says,
somewhere between the City and the Strand, “but as to names or numbers, you
might as well ask me to tell you what was the number of the house you lived in in your last incarnation.”
Connected
as she was in
countrymen abroad with whom she was either already
acquainted, or who were glad to befriend her. Sometimes, when circumstances
were favourable, she would travel with companions
thus thrown in her way, at other times altogether alone. Her craving for
adventure and for all strange and outlandish places and people was quite unsatiable. Her first long flight abroad was prompted by a
passionate enthusiasm for the North American Indians, contracted from the
perusal of Fennimore Cooper's novels. After a little minor touring about
Fortunately
her illusion on the subject of these heroes was destined to an early
dissipation. At
especially a pair of boots that she greatly prized,
and which the resources of
ruined the ideal she had constructed in her fancy. She
gave up her search for
their wigwams, and developed a new programme. In the
first instance, she thought she would try to come to close quarters with the
Mormons, then beginning to excite public attention; but their original city,
Nauvoo, in Missouri, had just been destroyed by the unruly mob of their less
industrious and less prosperous neighbours, and the
survivors of the massacre in which so many of their people fell were then
streaming across the desert in search of a new home. Mme. Blavatsky thought
that under these circumstances
This
apparently hasty sketch will give the reader no idea of the difficulty with
which she has, at this long subsequent period,
recalled even so much as is here
set down. It has only been by help of public events
that she can remember to have heard about at such and such places that I have
been enabled to construct a skeleton diary of her wanderings, on which here and
there her recollections enable me to put a little flesh and blood At New
Orleans the principal interest of her visit centred
in the Voodoos, a sect of negroes, natives of the West Indies, and half-castes,
addicted to a form of magic practices that no highly-trained occult student
would have anything to do with, but which nevertheless presented attractions to
Mme. Blavatsky, not yet far advanced enough in the knowledge held in reserve
for her, to distinguish “black” from “white” varieties of mystic exercise.
The
Voodoos' pretensions were of course discredited by the educated white
population of
She
went through
insecure country, protected in these hazardous
travels by her own reckless
daring, and by various people who from time to time
interested themselves in her
welfare. She speaks with special gratitude of an
old Canadian, a man known as
Père
Jacques, whom she met in
then
exposed, and thus by hook or by crook Madame always managed to scramble along
unscathed; though it seems miraculous in the retrospect that she should have
been able — young woman at that time as she was — to lead the wild life on
which she was embarked without actually incurring disasters. There was no
reliance in her case, as in that of
as civilised, and seems
to have been guarded from harm, as assuredly she was
guarded, by the sheer force of her own
fearlessness, and her fierce scorn for
all considerations however remotely associated with
the “magnetism of sex”.
During
her American travels, which for this period lasted about a year, she was
lucky enough to receive a considerable legacy
bequeathed her by one of her
godmothers.
This
put her splendidly in funds for a time, though it is much to be regretted on
her account that the money was not served out to her in moderate instalments, for the temperament, which the facts of her
life so far even will have revealed, may easily be recognised
as one not likely to go with habits of prudent expenditure. Madame, in the
course of her adventures, has often shown
that she can meet poverty with indifference, and
battle with it in any way that
may be necessary, but with her pockets full of
money, her impulse has always
been to throw it away with both hands.
She
is wholly unable to explain how she ran through her 80,000 roubles,
except that amongst other random purchases she bought land in
She
resolved during her Mexican wanderings that she would go to
fully alive already to the necessity of seeking
beyond the northern frontiers of
that country for the further acquaintanceship of
those great teachers of the
highest mystic science, with whom the guardian
of her visions was associated in
her mind. She wrote, therefore, to a certain
Englishman, whom she had met in
together. He duly came, but the party was further
augmented by the addition of a
Hindu whom Mme. Blavatsky met at Copau, in
A
dispersion of the little party soon followed, each being bent on somewhat
different ends. Madame would not accept the
guidance of the Chela, and was bent on an attempt of
her own to get into
attempt failed, chiefly, she believes, as far as
external and visible
difficulties were concerned, through
the opposition of the British resident then
in
1853,
however, was an unfortunate year for a Russian to visit this country. The
preparations for the Crimean War
were distressing to Mme. Blavatsky's
patriotism, and she passed over at the end of the
year again to
this time to
city compared to the
In
reference to her prolonged wanderings her aunt writes: —
“For
the first eight years she gave her mother's family no sign of life for fear
of being traced by her legitimate 'lord and
master', Her father alone knew of
her whereabouts. Knowing, however, that he would
never prevail upon her to
return home, he acquiesced in her absence, and
supplied her with money whenever she came to places where it could safely reach
her.”
During
her travels in
gentleman known to her father, who, — in
association with two friends, having
laid out a journey in the East on his own account,
with a mystic purpose in
view, in reference to which fate did not grant him
the success that attended
Mme.
Blavatsky's efforts — had been asked by Colonel Hahn to try if he could
find his errant daughter. The four compatriots travelled together for a time,
and went through
Recollections of Travel in Tartary,
In
the later editions of that book the testimony the author gives to the wonders
he witnessed in
accuracy of the quotation given in
In
reference to the journey in the course of which the Russian travellers
witnessed the transaction at the Buddhist
monastery, Mme. Blavatsky writes: —
“Two
of them, the brothers N------, were very politely brought back to the
frontier before they had walked sixteen miles
into the weird
Bod, and Mr K------, an
ex-Lutheran minister, could not even attempt to leave
his miserable village near Leli,
as from the first days he found himself
prostrated with fever, and had to return to
The
Tartar Shaman, referred to above, rendered Mme. Blavatsky more substantial
assistance in her efforts to penetrate into
been made to certain talismans which each shaman
carries under his left arm,
attached to a string. Mme. Blavatsky goes on : —
“ ' Of what use is it to you, and what are its
virtues ? ' was the question we
often offered to our guide. To this he never answered
directly, but evaded all
explanation, promising that as soon as an
opportunity was offered and we were
alone, he would ask the stone to answer for himself.
With this very indefinite
hope we were left to the resources of our own
imagination.
“But
the day on which the stone 'spoke' came very soon. It was during the most
critical hours of our life; at a time when the
vagabond nature of a traveller
had carried the writer to far-off lands where
neither civilisation is known nor
security can be guaranteed for one hour. One
afternoon, as every man and woman had left the yourta
(Tartar tent) that had been our house for over two months, to witness the
ceremony of the Lamaic exorcism of Tshoutgour, [An elemental demon, in which every native of
Asia believes.’] accused of breaking and spiriting away every bit of the poor
furniture and earthenware of a family
living about two miles distant, the Shaman, who had
become our only protector in those dreary deserts, was reminded of his promise.
He sighed and hesitated, but after a short silence, left his place on the
sheepskin, and going outside,
placed a dried-up goat's head with its prominent horns
over a wooden peg, and
then dropping down the felt curtain of the tent,
remarked that now no living
person would venture in, for the goat's head was a
sign that he was ' at work.'
“After
that, placing his hand in his bosom, he drew out the little stone, about
the size of a walnut, and, carefully unwrapping it,
proceeded, as it appeared,
to swallow it. In a few moments his limbs
stiffened, his body became rigid, and
he fell, cold and motionless as a corpse. But for
a slight twitching of his lips
at every question asked, the scene would have been
embarrassing, nay dreadful.
The
sun was setting, and were it not that the dying embers
flickered
at the centre of the tent, complete darkness would
have been added to the
oppressive silence which reigned. We have lived in
the prairies of the West, and
in the boundless steppes of
the silence at sunset on the sandy deserts of
solitudes of the deserts of
and the latter utterly void of life. Yet, there was
the writer, alone with what
looked no better than a corpse lying on the ground.
Fortunately this state did
not last long.
“ ' Mahaudû !' uttered a
voice which seemed to come from the bowels of the
earth, on which the Shaman was prostrated, ' Peace be
with you. What would you have me do for you ? '
“Startling
as the fact seemed, we were quite prepared for it, for we had seen
other Shamans pass through similar performances.
'Whoever you are', we
pronounced mentally, 'go to K-----, and try to
bring that person's thought here.
See
what that other party does, and tell ----- what we are doing and how
situated.'
“ ' I am there,' announced the same voice. ' The
old lady (kokona) is sitting in
the garden. . . . she is
putting on her spectacles and reading a letter.'
“ 'The contents of it, and hasten', was the hurried
order, while preparing
note-book and pencil. The contents were given
slowly, as if, while dictating,
the invisible presence desired to put down the
words phonetically, for we
recognised the Vallachian
language, of which we knew nothing beyond the ability
to recognise it. In such
a way a whole page was filled.
“ ' Look west . . . toward the third pole of the yourta,' pronounced the Tartar
in his natural voice, though it sounded hollow,
and as if coming from afar. 'Her
thought is here.'
“Then
with a convulsive jerk the upper portion of the Shaman's body seemed
raised, and his head fell heavily on the writer's
feet, which he clutched with
both his hands. The position was becoming less and
less attractive, but
curiosity proved a good ally to courage. In the
west corner was standing, life-like, but flickering unsteady, and mist-like,
the form of a dear old friend, a Roumanian lady of Vallachia, a mystic by disposition, but a thorough
disbeliever in this kind of occult phenomena.
“ 'Her thought is here, but her body is lying
unconscious. We could not bring
her here otherwise', said the voice.
“We
addressed and supplicated the apparition to answer, but all in vain. The
features moved and the form gesticulated as if in
fear and agony, but no sound
broke forth from the shadowy lips; only we imagined —
perchance it was a fancy — hearing, as if from a long distance, the Roumanian words, 'Non se pote'
('It cannot be done' ).
“For
over two hours the most substantial, unequivocal proofs that the Shaman's
astral soul was travelling
at the bidding of our unspoken wish were given us.
Ten
months later, we received a letter from a Vallachian
friend in response to
ours, in which we had enclosed the page from the
note-book, inquiring of her
what she had been doing on that day, and describing
the scene in full. She was
sitting, she wrote, in the garden on that
morning,[The hour in Bucharest
corresponded perfectly with that of
the country in which the scene had taken
place.] prosaically occupied
in boiling some conserves; the letter sent to her
was word for word the copy of the one received by
her from her brother; all at
once, in consequence of the heat she thought, she
fainted, and remembered
distinctly dreaming she saw the writer in a desert
place, which she accurately
described, and sitting under a gipsy's
tent,' as she expressed it. '
Henceforth,'
she added, 'I can doubt no longer'.
“But
our experiment was proved better still. We had directed the Shaman's Inner
Eye
to the same friend heretofore mentioned in this chapter, the Kutchi of
Lhassa, who travels constantly to British India and back. We know that he was
apprised of our critical situation in the desert;
for a few hours later came
help, and we were rescued by a party of twenty-five
horsemen, who had been
directed by their chief to find us at the place
where we were, which no living
man endowed with common powers could have known.
The chief of this escort was a Shaberon, an 'adept'
whom we had never seen before, nor did we after that, for he never left his soumay (lamasary), and we could
have no access
to it. ... But he was a personal friend of the Kutchi.”
This
incident put an end for the time to Mme. Blavatsky's wanderings in
She
was conducted back to the frontier by roads and passes of which she had no
previous knowledge, and after further travels in
occult guardian to leave the country, shortly before
the troubles which began in
1857.She went in a Dutch vessel from
Meanwhile
the fate to which she has been so freely exposed all through her later
life was already asserting itself to her
disadvantage, and without, up to this
time, having challenged the world's antagonism, by associating
her name with
tales of wonder, she, nevertheless, already found
herself — or rather, in her
absence, her friends found her — the mark for
slanders, no less extravagant, in
a different way, than some that have been aimed
at her quite recently by people
claiming to take an interest in psychic
phenomena, but unable to tolerate those
reported to have been brought about by her
agency.
Her
aunt writes: “ Faint rumours
reached her friends of her having been met in
Nathalie,
etc which were those really of other persons of the same surname; and
attributed to her various extravagant adventures.
Thus the Neue Freie Presse
spoke of Madame Heloise (?) Blavatsky,
a non-existing personage, who had joined the Black Hussars — les Huzzards de la Mart — during the Hungarian revolution, her
sex being found out only in 1849.” Similar stories, equally groundless,
were circulated at a later date. Anticipating this, her aunt goes on :
“Another
journal of
an active part in the Polish Revolution of 1863
(during the whole of which time
Mme.
H. P. Blavatsky was quietly living with her relatives at
compelled, from lack of means, to serve as a
female waiter in a ' restaurant du
Faubourg St
Antoine'.
”
These,
and many other infamous stories circulated by idle gossips, were laid at
the door of Mme. Blavatsky, the heroine of our
narrative.
On
her return from
but,
after spending some months in France and Germany, rejoined her own people at
last in the midst of a family wedding-party at Pskoff,
in the north-west of Russia, about 180 miles from St Petersburg.
Theosophical Society,