CHAPTER VIII.
THE ADVENTURES OF A SEAL.
“O that Heaven had set a seal upon men, that we might know them, honest from dishonest!”—Euripides.
From the previous record of Colonel Olcott — described by Madame Blavatsky herself, in an epigrammatically candid moment, as “a psychologised baby”—he is almost the last person whom one would have expected to lead the way in any sceptical examination of “miracles.”
And no doubt he might have been content, like Mrs. Besant, to open his mouth and shut his eyes and take whatever Mr. Judge should send him, so long as that gentleman’ thaumaturgy was confined to benefiting the common cause. But it was another matter when the vice-president’s Mahatma showed a tendency to favour the vice-president, and that at the expense of the president himself, Had the oracle said “Olcott’s plan is right,” and declared that Olcott was the “friend,” “not Lancelot nor another”; had it made Olcott, and not Judge, Outer Head with Mrs. Besant—the president’s ears might have been an inch longer, and the course of Theosophic history have been changed.
But there was, from the first, about Mr. Judge’s Mahatma a certain crudity, a lack of tact in dissembling favouritism, which was bound, human nature being what it is, to make enemies.
On the decease of “H.P.B.,” President Olcott, like Vice-President Judge, had hurried to the headquarters at Avenue-road. He had to come from India, however, and the American disciple naturally out-ran him. When the former arrived, the latter’s Mahatma was already in full swing. On hearing of his performances with the seal, a look of more than usual intelligence may have crossed the president’s mild and venerable features; but, like Brer Rabbit, he wasn’t “sayin’ nuffin,” “he just lay low.”
That busy July, ’91, the period of Mahatma M’s greatest activity, was also marked by the assembling at Avenue-road of one of the periodical conventions of Theosophic Europe. Some conversation occurred between the president and vice-president about the expenses of this convention, and the former, being “H.P.B.’s” legatee, mentioned a happy thought of his, of selling some of the jewels that lady had left behind her, and giving the proceeds as her posthumous contribution to the expenses.
THE “WITHOLD” MISSIVE.
But here, too, Mr. Judge was prepared to “go one better,” as his countrymen say, than the president-legatee. He responded airily that Colonel Olcott need not trouble himself about it, as “Master” had promised him (Judge) that the cash should be forthcoming, and also that he would convey a “message” on the subject to Olcott himself.
The Colonel waited for his message. None came.
The Colonel jogged Mr. Judge’s memory. Mr. Judge said he had no more to tell.
But that very day, on sitting down at his writing-table, and lifting up a piece of blotting-paper, the Colonel found under it a piece of peculiar paper, reading as in the following facsimile (reds and blacks as per former samples):—
So Brer Rabbit continued to say nuffin’, and to lie low.
Presently Mr. William Q. Judge left on the same writing-table the following note (being scribbled on a torn-off scrap of paper, it also has rather a Mahatmic look. But that is accidental):—
“Dear Olcott” “looked” accordingly; and sure enough, in the ordinary envelope of a letter, previously opened and put by on the table, there was a piece of paper bearing a message with all the proper Mahatma-marks about it. And this time the Mahatma had taken heart and “precipitated” a decently clear impression of the seal.
And then the Colonel “smiled a sorter sickly smile.” For now he did recognise that seal. And this is its story. ***** Back in the palmy days of 1883, or ever the marvels of “H.P.B.” were besmirched by slanderous tongues, the Colonel was in a certain city of the Panjab. Passing an Urdu seal-engraver’s shop in the bazaar, he turned in and ordered the man to make a seal bearing the cryptograph signature which “H.P.B.” identified as that of the “Master of Wisdom,” Mahatma Morya.
What did the Colonel want the seal for? Let him explain himself:—
An idea occurred to me (he writes) of sending through “H.P.B.,” as a playful present to my Master M, a seal bearing a fac-simile of his cryptograph.
An odd idea, this “playful present” of the Colonel’s. Had the seal been intended for use by an ordinary person—by “H.P.B.” herself, for instance—there would have been some sense in it. But the Mahatma, of course, who “precipitated” his letters and his signature psychically, might just as well “precipitate” the latter in the shape of a seal impression as otherwise, if he wanted to; and where, then, should the use of a brass seal come in? However, as the Colonel says, the present was merely “playful.”
Back went the Colonel to Madras, where Madame was, and presented the seal to her, with a “jocular remark” (I am again quoting his own account). Madame’s keen eye dwelt on it a moment, and then she pointed out that the Colonel, in his jocularly playful mood, had made a slight mistake. “The Master’s cryptograph was not correctly drawn,” according to the pattern already familiar to recipients of his precious missives. There was a twiddle too much, or a twiddle too little, in it. The Colonel himself saw the blunder when it was pointed out, and he now declares that he would know it anywhere.
For this sufficient reason the “playful present” was not sent on to the Himalayas (Heaven knows, by the way, by what astral form of parcels-post service the Colonel had expected it to be sent); neither did it appear in any of the communications vouched for by Madame.
It went into Madame’s despatch-box, along with a lot of other mystical odds and ends, properties of the occult stage; and among these it was remarked, as late as 1888, by the Mr. Keightley already mentioned, who was then living with her in Lansdowne-road.
This gentleman asked the prophetess what the little brass seal might be? Madame Blavatsky’s answer—a characteristically racy “fragment of her prophet voice”—was:—
“Oh, it’s only a flap-doodle of Olcott’s.”
In the same year, at a time when William Q. Judge was staying with Madame, Mr. Judge’s Mahatma evidently determined to overlook the inaccuracy in the seal, and to make use of it for the first time to save himself the trouble of a psychic signature.
He did this, of course, in a letter of Mr. William Q. Judge’s own, and in a sense endorsing Mr. William Q. Judge’s wishes—in fact, the letter was the one recorded in the last chapter, in which the Master’s seal came so plump upon the disciple’s prayer for a sign.
I have not mentioned before, however, that the recipient of this ’88 letter was Colonel Olcott. He presumably recognised, then as now, his own “playful present,” his own “flap-doodle”; but he appears to have let it pass in silence.
From this date the seal seems to have disappeared from among Madame Blavatsky’s belongings. It was, of course, intrinsically valueless.
THE TELEGRAM MISSIVE.
But in 1890 it turned up again—in New York, and in close contiguity with Mr. Judge. Madame sent a message through Mr. Judge to a disciple, then in America, who happened to be the Mr. Keightley who had remarked the “flap-doodle of Olcott’s” at Lansdowne-road. The context, which is before me as I write, shows that Madame was persuading this disciple to take some course distasteful to him. Judge added his persuasions to hers. But what was bound to determine the disciple was the discovery on receiving the missive from Mr. Judge’s hands, that the Mahatma had added his vote in transitu by endorsing the word “RIGHT,” in red pencil, with cryptograph and impression of the Panjab seal.
Mr. Keightley, too, must have recognised the “flap-doodle”; but he, too, like Olcott, said never a word. He did, indeed, go so far as to ask Judge if he had affixed the seal? But on receiving a blandly surprised assurance that Mr. Judge did not so much as know there was a seal affixed, he let the matter drop.
These are, so far as I know, the only two instances in evidence of the use of this peculiar seal in Mahatma missives during the life-time of Madame Blavatsky, and, as was to be expected from her objection to the seal, neither missive was among those vouched for by her, for the message from herself to New York was telegraphed, and it was the telegraph-form at the New York end that the Mahatma endorsed. Nevertheless, it is clear that no intimate of Madame’s would get hold of the seal and make use of it for bogus Mahatma missives under her very nose, unless he were under the impression either that she had it for that purpose herself, or that she might be relied on at least not to “peach” on a chela who used it.
But why did neither Colonel Olcott nor Mr. Keightley speak? The only answer I can suggest is that while Madame Blavatsky was in the flesh the faithful thought twice before they expressed a doubt about anything or anybody. They were accustomed to take their marvels as they found them, and be thankful.
Otherwise, they might at least have pointed out to Mr. Judge, in order that he might in turn apprise his Mahatma, whose supernal knowledge seems here to have been somewhat at fault, what a fatal blunder he was making in palming off upon the faithful a bogus edition of his own cryptograph, known as such by three of the faithful themselves.
However, there are the facts; and but for the Mahatma’s trop de zéle in pushing his favourite chela’s occult claims immediately on Madame Blavatsky’s decease, I fear we should never have been vouchsafed this instructive side-light on an earlier period of the Theosophical Society.
These Adventures of a Seal supply the clue to the great game of bluff between the two highest Theosophical officials which must be depicted in the next chapter.