CHAPTER III.
MYSTIFICATION UNDER MADAME BLAVATSKY.
“Now, dear, let us change the programme … He is willing to give 10,000 rupees … if only he saw a little ‘phenomenon’!”—Blavatsky-Coulomb Letters.
It is no part of my present object to enter at length into the history and character of the late Madame Blavatsky. But a comparison of the earlier phase of the Theosophical Society with that of to-day is so indispensable to the right appreciation of both, that a brief résumé (borrowed mainly from previous sketches of my own elsewhere) may be welcome at this point, even to readers already familiar with the subject.
The Theosophical Society was born in America of Russo-Yankee parentage. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky founded it at New York in 1874, with the aid first of Colonel Olcott, then a kind of journalist, who became, and still is, the president, and soon afterwards of William Q. Judge, then a lawyer’s clerk in Olcott’s brother's office, who became, and still is, the vice-president.
The previous career of the Foundress had been remarkable enough, if we accept hostile accounts of it—still more remarkable if we accept her own; but with this I am not concerned. From 1874 Madame Blavatsky’s history and that of the Theosophical Society are one.
In 1878 the society moved its headquarters to India, and in the congenial atmosphere of the mysterious East launched into marvels. Eked out by performances not unlike a drawing-room Maskelyne and
