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The Letters of H. P. Blavatsky to A. P. Sinnett - 1925

By A. T. Barker

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Letter No. 122

{Wurzburg}

16th December.

Dear Mr. Sinnett,

Madame is so miserable at the thought of the enclosed slander that it will most probably shut India on her, that I have been thinking that as a slander it should be refuted for you see, indirectly it concerns us all. I give you the following my own idea and leave it to your own superior judgment to act on it or not as you think best. I think the Editor of Vanity Fair would at once insert the article if threatened with Law, for Editors are rather chary of inserting libels; Modern Society had to pay £1,000 — for that little game not long ago. Now this is my idea, do with it what you please. Madame Blavatsky has read with astonishment in Vanity Fair the following, "that carefully worded proclamations calling upon the people in India to rise and claim their political rights were being distributed (under her auspices) together with other documents of a less compromising nature." Madame calls this a gross libel, and calls upon the Editor to prove it by sending to her one of these proclamations, and also she desires him to give to her the name of the person from whom he received such a slander. Madame says that the Editor must at once insert the following refutation, or she will have him taken up for libel.

"Madame Blavatsky denies absolutely having in any way used her influence among the People of India to induce them to rise and proclaim their political rights; she denies absolutely having distributed any worded documents to that effect and she also denies having meddled with Politics in any way whatsoever during her sojourn in India. On her return to India in autumn, 1884, she was accompanied by one English lady and two English gentlemen, and as she was sick and ill the whole time they never left her side so that they are witnesses to the truth of what she says."

I feel that this step ought really to be taken. We are getting into such a tangle of troubles on all sides — that where we can protest with truth we should do so. And Madame swears the truth of what is written here. I am so sorry to trouble you again, it seems to me that I am always troubling you, but you are a man whereas I am only a helpless woman.

My love to Mrs. Sinnett.

Much from Madame to you both.

Yours sincerely,
C. Wachtmeister.

I enclose the slip, but please return it and let me know in your next letter whether you will take this matter into your hands. Madame says that however much they may slander her she has only contempt for the same, but that this is too serious an affair to let pass, as it closes India upon her.

Cutting and Extract front the "Times of India."

Vanity Fair publishes the following cock and bull story, which will doubtless amuse Mr. Hume, General Morgan, and other "amiable enthusiasts" who dabble in Theosophy: — Strange rumours of Russian intrigue and political propaganda under the guise of religious research reach me from India. The High Priestess of Esoteric Buddhism, who left England last autumn on a pilgrimage to the shrine of the new faith, was followed, so I hear, by a person charged to watch that lady's movements. The result has been a discovery that carefully worded proclamations, calling upon the people of India to rise and claim their political rights, were being distributed, together with other documents of a less compromising nature. There is, I believe, no direct evidence of any communication between Moscow and Tibet, but it was a matter of common notoriety that intimate relations subsisted between Madame Novikoff and Madame Blavatsky during their stay in London last year.