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The Theosophical Movement 1875-1950

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The Coues-Collins Charges

BY 1889, despite the numerous obstacles in its path, the Theosophical Movement had gained such headway that the word “Theosophy” was part of the vocabulary of every intelligent person. The Theosophical Society was established in every civilized country and in every large city. The work was expanding in both England and America, and three Theosophical magazines provided ample material for reading and study. It was during this and the following year that Madame Blavatsky sustained another vicious attack upon her character.

On May 11, 1889, the Religio-Philosophical Journal, a leading Spiritualist publication of Chicago, printed a letter from Prof. Elliott Coues embodying a letter to him from Miss Mabel Collins, the young woman in whose house H.P.B. lived upon first arriving in England in 1887. The Coues-Collins letters, and other communications from the same source in later issues of the Religio-Philosophical Journal, made grave charges against H.P.B. The gist of Miss Collins’ claim was that she had been persuaded by H.P.B. to write Prof. Coues that one of the Theosophical adepts had dictated the text of Light on the Path to her. She now denied this to be the fact and told Coues that her original statement had been made “merely to please” Madame Blavatsky. In brief, Mabel Collins sought to damage H.P.B.’s reputation by exactly the same means as those adopted by Madame Coulomb—by “confessing” that she had collaborated with H.P.B. in a Theosophical “hoax.”

Elliot Coues, who used Miss Collins in his attempted exposé, was a man of some standing in scientific and literary circles. His education and cultivation were sufficient to secure him an invitation to edit that portion of the Century Dictionary dealing with his specialties. His multifarious interests led him, early in the 80’s, to conduct psychic experiments, and he soon became a member of the London Society for Psychical Research. While in London during the summer of 1884, he met Col. Olcott and joined the Theosophical Society. Olcott, impressed by Coues’ background and obvious capabilities as a writer and speaker, appointed him a member of the American Board of Control, of which, in the course of time, he was elected chairman. Prof. Coues organized the “Gnostic” branch of the Society in Washington, D.C., a body which seems to have served principally as a sounding board for its founder and presiding officer.

By 1886, it was evident that the Board of Control, originally established by Col. Olcott at Mr. Judge’s request in order to avoid delays in official routine, was in the hands of Prof. Coues a mere exchange of the paternal autocracy of Col. Olcott for the arbitrary autocracy of Prof. Coues. Judge’s request for an American Section resulted in a plan, sent by Olcott from India, for the absorption of the Board of Control by the General Council of the American Section. Apparently disliking this development, Coues returned to Washington and issued an announcement headed, “American Board of Control—Office of the President,” declaring that the Occult Word, a magazine published in Rochester by Mrs. J. W. Cables and William T. Brown—both known to be disaffected with the Society—would henceforth be “the official organ of the American Board of Control of the Theosophical Society.” A few months later both Mrs. Cables and Mr. Brown broke openly with the Society, to return to the fold of “the Master, Jesus.” Later in the year, Olcott issued his official order for the formation of the American Section of the Theosophical Society, and the first convention of the new Section was held in New York in April, 1887.

Meantime, a “lively interchange of letters,” as Olcott phrased it in Old Diary Leaves, was going on, not only between H.P.B. and Col. Olcott over the threatening breach between them on matters of policy and the forthcoming Esoteric Section, but as well among Prof. Coues, Mr. Judge, Col. Olcott, and H.P.B. concerning affairs in America. Olcott, doubtless, found himself sympathetic to elements of the position assumed by Coues. In a letter to the latter, Olcott spoke condescendingly about H.P.B.’s telegraphic request that he “abolish the Board of Control,” saying that he (Olcott) would “neither ratify what she has done, nor anything of the sort she may in future do.” With encouragement of this sort from the President-Founder, and well informed of the critical feelings of Mr. Sinnett toward H.P.B., Coues probably thought he could successfully effect a change in the leadership of the Society in America and win all the disaffected to his support. Audacious as well as clever, he was writing in one strain to Col. Olcott, in another to H.P.B., and in a third to Judge. But like so many others, he was entirely unaware that H.P.B. and Judge, working together as one, made no important moves without mutual consultation, nor ever wrote letters on moot Theosophical matters without supplying each other with copies. It appears evident, also, that Coues supposed the occultism of both H.P.B. and Judge to be either some form of mediumship or simply spurious.

Coues’ own methods received some special publicity in the Chicago Tribune following the Chicago Convention of the American Section in 1888. Without disclosing the source of its “news,” the Tribune published the text and facsimile of an alleged “message from a Mahatma” to Prof. Coues. Judge wrote to Coues about the affair, and in his reply Coues tacitly admitted he had released the story to the press. In another letter, he accused Judge of standing in the way of his advancement in the Society. His correspondence with H.P.B. included one letter urging her to use her influence to have him elected President of the American Section. The height of his egotism was reached in a letter dated April 17, 1889, in which he said to H.P.B.:

. . . do you know you are getting great discredit in this country and for what do you suppose? for being jealous of me! . . You are not moved by abuse, but you want to know how people think and what they say, and a great many are talking loudly and wildly, that your silence respecting my books in the “Secret Doctrine,” and the absence of my name from “Lucifer” (as well as from “The Path”) means that you are afraid of my 2 growing power. . .

Failing entirely to enlist H.P.B.’s support, Coues remained absent from the 1889 convention, held later that month, and soon after he received from her a letter in which she dealt patiently but plainly with his claims and behavior, and added: “You speak of your earnestness ‘to defend and help a woman who has been sadly persecuted, because misunderstood.’ Permit me to say to you for the last time that no bitterest enemy of mine has 3 ever misunderstood me as you do. . . .

In May, after his hopes for the Presidency of the American Section had been dashed, Coues gave his letter containing Mabel Collins’ “confession” to the Religio-Philosophical Journal. The June I issue contained additional correspondence attacking H.P.B. In England, a similar campaign raged, the Spiritualist journal, Light, repeating the 4 charges first published in the United States. Prof. Coues also found an ally in a renegade theosophist, Michael Angelo Lane, who had been exposed as a carrier of slanderous tales about Madame Blavatsky.

Coues based his charges against H.P.B. on an unsigned and undated note from Mabel Collins which he claimed she sent him in 1885, in response to his inquiry to her concerning the authorship of Light on the Path. This note, which Coues published in the ReligioPhilosophical Journal for June I,read as follows:
The writer of “The Gates of Gold” is Mabel Collins, who had it as well as “Light on the Path” and the “Idyll of the White Lotus” dictated to her by one of the adepts of the group which through Madame Blavatsky first communicated with the Western world. The name of this inspirer cannot be given, as the personal names of the Masters have already been sufficiently desecrated.

Prof. Coues asserted that after receiving this answer to his question on Light on the Path, he had no further word from Miss Collins until May 2, 1889, when her letter “recanting” the above explanation arrived. With her cabled permission to publish this second letter, Coues rushed into print in the Religio, thinking he had proved H.P.B. a fraud.

Actually, he only convicted himself of slandering H.P.B., since she had refused to further his ambition to be President of the American Section of the Society. In saying that he had received the above brief note from Mabel Collins in 1885, he inadvertently revealed that he was “building a case” against H.P.B., for The Gates of Gold was not written until 1886, and was published early in 1887. The Idyll of the White Lotus was written before Mabel Collins ever met H.P.B., and Miss Collins had told several persons how it had been “inspired.” The first edition of the Idyll was published with the dedication, “To the True Author, the Inspirer of this work.” A note in the Theosophist for March, 1885, written by Bertram Keightley, reports that the writing of the Idyll commenced in 1877, and that the work was resumed by Miss Collins after she had been treated for a serious illness by Col. Olcott. To his kindness and encouragement she attributed in large part “the successful restoration of her interrupted 5 communication with the adept who had inspired the book.

The claim in 1889 that H.P.B. “dictated” Mabel Collins’ answer to Coues’ alleged inquiry of 1885 was transparently an invention, for Miss Collins had previously let it be widely known that she believed her inspirer to be a member of the occult brotherhood. After the Coues-Collins charges had been printed in Light, H.P.B. contributed a letter to that journal, observing: 

“When I met her [Mabel Collins] she had just completed the Idyll of the White Lotus, which, as she stated to Col. Olcott, had been dictated to her by some ‘mysterious person.’ Guided by her description, we both recognized an old friend of ours, a Greek, and no Mahatma, though an Adept; further developments proving we were right. This fact, acknowledged by . . . her dedication of the Idyll, sets aside the idea that the work was either inspired 6 or dictated by Koot Hoomi or any other Mahatma.” 

H.P.B. did not circulate the story that one of the Theosophical Mahatmas—her own Teachers, and the correspondents of Sinnett and Hume—was the inspirer of Light on the Path. And not until Mabel Collins had met the theosophists, and had told them of her psychic experiences, did she have any idea of the nature of the personage from whom she received these elevating communications. All she was able to say was that they came from some “mysterious person.” That this was her impression regarding the source of the Idyll was well known to all the members of Sinnett’s London Lodge in 1885. But in her “confession” to Coues, she claimed that H.P.B. had “begged and implored” her to say that Light on the Path had come from “one of the Masters who guide Madame Blavatsky.” She then asserted to Coues that she had lied to him in her first letter, that Light on the Path “was not inspired by anyone,” but that she “saw it written on the walls of a place I visit spiritually. . . .
H.P.B., commenting on the dedication of the Idyll, had this to say: 
Was the dedication invented, and a Master and “inspirer” suggested by [Mme. Blavatsky] before the latter had ever seen his amanuensis [Mabel Collins] ? For that only she proclaims herself in her dedication, by speaking of the “true author,” who thus must be regarded as some kind of Master, at all events. Moreover, heaps of letters may be produced all written between 1872 and 1884, and signed ? : the well-known seal of one who became an adept only in 1886. Did Mme. Blavatsky send to “Miss Mabel Collins” this signature, when 7 neither knew of the other’s existence.

As the evidence piled up, showing Mabel Collins to be the “fraud” rather than H.P.B., the former’s sister wrote to Light saying that Miss Collins was too ill to speak for herself, but that she would reply in “a few days.” Months passed, but Miss Collins made no statement. In the meantime, pamphlets by Judge and H.P.B., and statements by the two Keightleys, both of whom had been intimately acquainted with Miss Collins in 1887, proved beyond doubt the baseless character of the Coues-Collins charges. Prof. Coues was thoroughly exposed. The charter of the Gnostic branch of the Society was revoked and Coues was expelled from membership.

Mabel Collins brought suit against H.P.B. for libel in London in 1890. When the case came up for trial, in July, a certain letter written by Miss Collins was shown by H.P.B.’s attorney to the counsel for Miss Collins, who thereupon asked the Court to take the case off the docket, which was done. 

It will be recalled that Mabel Collins began as co-editor of Lucifer with H.P.B. in September, 1887, when that magazine first appeared. With the issue of February 15, 1889, the name of Mabel Collins disappeared from the magazine. No explanation was offered for this change, either in Lucifer, or by Miss Collins, who retired into privacy until her letter to Prof. Coues appeared in the ReligioPhilosophical Journal in May. Some time later it became known that Miss Collins had pleaded with H.P.B. to accept her in the Esoteric Section, but that H.P.B. was reluctant to do so. She was finally placed on probation, and within four days, in the words of H.P.B., she “broke her vows, becoming guilty of the blackest treachery and disloyalty to her HIGHER SELF. And when I could no longer keep in the E.S. either herself or her friend, the two convulsed the whole Society with their calumnies and falsehoods.”

The question naturally provoked by these events is, How could Mabel Collins have been chosen as the channel for high spiritual teachings, when the defects in her character were so great ? First of all, her case gives emphasis to the difference between psychic and spiritual development. To be “psychic” is merely to be sensitive to impressions at a subtle level of perception, making possible the phenomena of clairvoyance, clairaudience, thought-transference, and the like. This capacity Mabel Collins undoubtedly possessed. In addition, her egoic affinities must have been such as to allow her to be the recipient of psychic communications from an Adept—a fact that rests upon the internal evidence of Light on the Path. But psychic sensitivity may or may not be allied with moral stability. In many, many cases, a strong moral nature is precisely what is lacking in the psychic, for the reason that vanity—pride in a “gift” not manifested in the ordinary man—tends to make the psychic individual intensely personal, vain, and prone to acts of impulsive egotism.

In the perspective of the Theosophical teaching, it appears that Mabel Collins had in past incarnations allowed herself to drift into mediumistic habits, at the same time maintaining some connection with the adepts of the occult school. During the nineteenth-century cycle of the Theosophical Movement, she had, perhaps, an opportunity to recover her balance and to return to the disciplined life of an aspirant on the path of adeptship. The philosophic treatise for which she was the instrument of transmission could have been itself the best corrective for her personal weaknesses, for Light on the Path is peculiarly addressed to those in whom psychic tendencies are strong. She was, therefore, in a position to help, not only others of similar nature, by affording a channel for publication of this book, but also to gain help from it herself. Her failure and its train of ugly consequences illustrate the dangers in any attempt to “mix” psychic and mediumistic practices with occult aspirations. 

Expelled from the Society and discredited among theosophists, Prof. Coues plotted revenge upon H.P.B. He used his scientific reputation to gain access to the pages of the New York Sun,where, in the form of an interview with him as a staff member of the Smithsonian Institution of Washington, he spread the most complete set of libelous statements and innuendoes ever directed at Madame Blavatsky. The attack began with a preliminary editorial in the Sun for June 1, 1890. The editorial writer calls Theosophy a “humbug religion” and claims that Prof. Coues “showed up the lying and trickery of the Blavatsky woman after having been one of her dupes for several years.” The rest of the editorial is in this vein. In the Sunday edition of July 20, the Sun printed a full-page feature interview with Prof. Coues, entitled, “The history of a Humbug,” in which he accused H.P.B. of immorality, fraud, plagiarism, and systematic deception of her followers. 

The Coues interview fills seven closely printed columns of small type. The charges made and the alleged evidence procured by Prof. Coues ostensibly exposed the facts of H.P.B.’s career from 1857 onward. They include virtually every one of the multitude of attacks, before and since, upon H.P.B. and Theosophy. On the statements of D. D. Home, the medium, and of W. Emmette Coleman (a writer of malicious slanders against H.P.B. in the Religio-Philosophical Journal), Prof. Coues charged H.P.B. with having been one of the demi-monde of Paris in 1857-58, and mistress of a Russian nobleman by whom, he asserted, she bore a deformed son who later died. Besides these and similar lies concerning her private life, Coues turned the events of Theosophical history to his purpose, quoting Hodgson’s S.P.R. Report and other assaults upon H.P.B.’s character. Judge, also, was the object of attack, he being represented as Madame Blavatsky’s tool.

Following the Sun articles, Mr. Judge in The Path for August, 1890, advised all whom it might concern that he had brought suit for libel. Manifestly he had done this only for the protection of the Society and the good name of H.P.B., and to head off similar attacks in other publications, for he himself had been mentioned only incidentally and as rather dupe and tool than arch deceiver, and the same as to Col. Olcott. In his notice Mr. Judge made the significant statement: 
The animus of the writer is so plainly disclosed that it might well serve as an ample answer to the attack. Inasmuch, however as certain moral charges cannot be permitted utterance with impunity, I have brought suit for libel . . . and am awaiting instructions from Madame Blavatsky as to her own course.

In The Path for September, 1890, is printed a letter from Madame Blavatsky whose tone and spirit is in shining contrast with the course and animus of her calumniators. The letter reads: 
While I fully agree to the proposition that we should forgive our enemies, yet I do not thereby lose “my appeal unto Caesar,” and in that appeal, which is now made to the Law and not to the Emperor, I may keep the command to forgive, while for the protection of the name of a dead friend and the security in the future of Theosophists, I hale into the Courts of the land those who, having no sense of what is right or just, see fit to publish broadcast wicked and unfounded slanders.
For some fifteen years I have calmly stood by and seen my good name assailed by newspaper gossips who delight to dwell upon the personal peculiarities of those who are well known, and have worked on for the spread of our Theosophical ideas, feeling confident that, though I might be assailed by small minds who try their best to bring me into reproach, the Society which I helped to found would withstand the attacks, and, indeed, grow under them. This latter has been the case. It may be asked by some members why I have never replied to those attacks which were directed against Occultism and phenomena. For two reasons: Occultism will remain forever, no matter how assailed, and Occult phenomena can never he proved in a Court of Law during this century. Besides, I have never given public currency to any of the latter, but have always objected to the giving out of things the profane cannot understand. 
But now a great metropolitan daily in New York, with no knowledge of the facts in the case, throws broadcast before the public many charges against me, the most of which meet their refutation in my life for over a decade. But as one of them reflects strongly upon my moral character and brings into disrepute the honorable name of a dead man, an old family friend, it is impossible for me to remain silent, and so I have directed my lawyers in New York to bring an action against the New York Sun for libel. 
This paper accuses me of being a member of the demi-monde in ’58 and ’68 and of having improper relations with Prince Emile Wittgenstein, by whom the paper says I had an illegitimate son. 
The first part of the charge is so ridiculous as to arouse laughter, but the second and third hold others up to reprobation. Prince Wittgenstein, now dead, was an old friend of my family, whom I saw for the last time when I was eighteen years old, and he and his wife remained until his death in close correspondence with me. He was a cousin of the late Empress of Russia, and little thought that upon his grave would be thrown the filth of a modern New York newspaper. This insult to him and to me I am bound by all the dictates of my duty to repel, and am also obliged to protect the honor of all Theosophists who guide their lives by the teachings of Theosophy; hence my appeal to the Law and to a jury of my fellow Americans. I gave up my allegiance to the Czar of Russia in the hope that America would protect her citizens; may that hope not prove vain !—H.P.B.

At the time, the Sun was perhaps the most widely circulated and influential of American newspapers. It had at its command every resource of ability, influence, and money, and it is not to be supposed that it was unfamiliar with the technicalities of the New York State laws relating to libel or the difficulties in the way of any one who might try to obtain a verdict against it in such a suit. It had but to establish in court its own good faith and prove or show reasonable cause for belief in and circulation of a single one of its major charges, and the whole history of American jurisprudence in similar cases showed that it would be acquitted. But one thing favored the suit of H.P.B.: the fact that this time, quite the contrary of the Coulomb charges, the S.P.R. report, and the numerous prior attacks upon her and her mission—this time the charges were direct, made as statements of fact, not of opinion, hearsay, conclusion, inference, or innuendo. If H.P.B. was actually guilty of a single one of the offenses charged against her, she was ruined, ineradicably branded with the stigma of a convicted rogue—her enemies triumphant, her Society exploded, her followers buried in ignominy, her mission and her “Theosophy” a thing of contempt and of derision.

The issue was squarely joined, with no possibility of evasion by either party to the suit. This time it was not a friendless and slandered woman forced into the position where she must suffer in silence or essay the hopeless task of proving herself innocent of the fabrications of irresponsible evil and malicious minded assassins of her good name. It was a great and powerful newspaper faced with the simple task of proving her guilty of a single one of its numerous charges by the simple process of bringing into Court in its behalf all the living “witnesses” who had fathered or circulated the “evidence” which for so many years had been industriously spread before the public to “prove” H.P.B. a fraud, her phenomena bogus, her teachings a theft or a plagiarism. Certainly, on the assumption that at some time in her life H.P.B. had been indiscreet in her relations with men, at some time participant in questionable transactions, at some time engaged in anything disreputable, at some time party to fraudulent phenomena, at some time profiting by her “hoax”—the task before the Sun was an easy one.

The case was pressed with the utmost vigor by H.P.B.’s attorneys, but the usual “law’s delays” were invoked and taken advantage of in the defense. In The Path for March, 1891, a statement of what was then the status of the suit was published under the caption, “The Libel Suits Against New York Sun and Elliott Coues.” The article reads:
Several letters inquiring about these suits having been received, and various rumors about them having arisen, facts are given.
It is not possible to bring any suit to trial in New York very quickly, as all the calendars are crowded and suitors have to await their turn.
It is not possible in New York to have newspapers notice the progress of suits for libel against other newspapers, as an agreement exists between the various editors that no such publication will be made. Hence the silence about the above-mentioned actions.
The actions were begun in earnest and are awaiting trial. They will be continued until a verdict is reached or a retraction given. One victory has been gained in this way. The New York Sun put in a long answer to Mme. Blavatsky’s complaint and her lawyers demurred to its sufficiency as a defence. That question of law was argued before Judge Beach in the Supreme Court, and on the argument the lawyers for the Sun confessed in open court their inability to prove the charge of immorality on which the suit lies, and asked to be allowed to retain the mass of irrelevant matter in the answer. These matters could only have been meant to be used to prejudice a jury. But Judge Beach sustained Mme. Blavatsky’s objection and ordered that the objectionable matter be stricken out. The case now looks merely like one in which the only question will be the amount of damag es, and everything must now stand until the case is reached in the Trial Term. This decision on the demurrer was a substantial victory. The suit against Dr. Elliott Coues is in exactly the same condition.

Madame Blavatsky died in May of the same year—1891—and, under the Laws of New York, her death automatically terminated the suit brought by her against the Sun. Mr. Judge, however, continued to press his suit, although the allegations originally made against himself were rather ridicule than slander. Finally, on September 26, 1892, the Sun, which by this time had become convinced of the great wrong perpetrated in its pages, voluntarily published, in partial amends, an editorial article repudiating the Coues interview, and a long article by Mr. Judge devoted to a tribute to the life-work and character of H. P. 8 Blavatsky. The retraction reads:

We print on another page an article in which WILLIAM Q. JUDGE deals with the romantic and extraordinary career of the late Madame HELENA P. BLAVATSKY. We take occasion to observe that on July 20, 1890, we were misled into admitting into the Sun’s columns an article by Dr. E. F. COUES of Washington, in which allegations were made against Madame BLAVATSKY’S character, and also against her followers, which appear to have been without solid foundation. Mr. JUDGE’S article disposes of all questions relating to Madame BLAVATSKY as presented by Dr. Coues, and we desire to say that his allegations respecting the Theosophical Society and Mr. JUDGE personally are not sustained by evidence, and should not have been printed.

“The Esoteric She,” the article written by Mr. Judge on H.P.B. at the invitation of the Sun, received editorial sanction from the words, “Mr. Judge’s article disposes of all questions relating to Madame Blavatsky as presented by Dr. Coues.” Thus this article and its editorial endorsement amounted to a complete reversal of the position of the Sun. This can be accounted for on only two grounds: (1) that the Sun after vigorous and prolonged efforts to find evidence to support even one of the charges found that they were mere calumnies, and (2) that its publishers were men honorable enough voluntarily to make amends for the wrong done by publishing a retraction, even after the death of H.P.B. had freed them from all risk of damages.

All those who have in any way benefitted by the message of Theosophy would do well to inform themselves fully on the Coues-Collins attack and the Sun case, for they cover every accusation ever directed at H.P.Blavatsky; and they constitute the only case where the charges were made directly, and by a responsible channel. The outcome of the case constitutes an absolute vindication of H.P.B. and an equally emphatic exposure of the bad faith or the ignorance of those who have since repeated those slanders. Yet years later one and another of the Coues-Collins-Sun charges have been repeated and have gained very wide publicity because of the supposed high character of the parties making them, for example, by “Margot Tennant” (wife of Herbert Asquith, ex-Prime Minister of Great Britain, in her “Intimate Diary”), and by the late Count Witte, for many years one of the leading Ministers of the Russian Empire under the régime of the last Czar. Count Witte was a cousin of H.P.B., but as he was very much her junior, he saw her but a few times when a mere boy. In his published “Memoirs” the old charges of immorality first directly made by Coues and the Sun are circumstantially repeated. He does not profess to speak from knowledge, but for the same inscrutable reasons that have prompted so many others, does not hesitate to repeat these abominable calumnies at second-hand. The outcome of the Sun case gives the lie to the Witte slanders upon the dead. Students may be interested to know that Count Witte’s own mother, a devoted member of the orthodox Greek Catholic Church, remained to her dying day the warm friend and champion of H.P.B. Vile as must be considered the characters of those who originate or circulate unverified base charges against the living, they are respectable in comparison with those who continue to revile the defenseless dead.

After the battle in the Sun and its sequence, Dr. Coues fled ingloriously from the field; his Gnostic society melted away like a shadow, his prestige waned, and he died in obscurity in 1899.