{Bombay}
August 4, 1882.
My dear Young Boss,
And now you will catch it, and aren't I glad you will. You see truth is a dangerous thing to tell especially to seers inspired by John the Baptist and Hermes. In the paper addressed to the Theosophist (you will find it already announced in Light, by Maitland and Mrs. K.) you are called "your reviewer" (my, the Theosophist's reviewer) and my poor reviewer who is no masked stranger to the authors of the Perfect Way, is treated in a polite yet very rough way especially for his having left Christianity before he could understand its hidden esoteric beauty. Fuss, fuss. Then an interminable article from that blind bat W. Oxley — versus Subba Row, whom he calls a bigoted orthodox Brahmin!! He had three visits from K.H. "by astral form" he tells the public!!! and the philosophic doctrine therein propounded (in the article by K.H.) is hardly calculated to enlighten the poor mortals or strengthen their esteem for the powers of the Brothers. I was going to reject the MSS. but K.H. ordered me not to and D.K. just brought in a long foot note to be appended to the article which as it is given to me in a double copy I send to you as ordered. K.H. tells you to make alterations in it if you like it, and send them before the thing is printed. Well, as I say to Mr. Hume, it will be a coup de theatre when received in London. Your church goers nearly all distributed. Will send again what remains to American subscribers and to our fellows for judicious distribution. I have insisted that it should be printed as you wanted it and not as Olcott had prearranged it in his Yankee pumpkin. I find that I am a far better business woman than he is when left alone and not bossed by him. I sent Deb to the Bombay Gazette Press and had no difficulty in having it printed in such a way. I do not know what the bill will be, I think 15 rup. and I will pay it out of your Occult World sums — which sell (the O.W. not the sums) like hot cakes. You who have accused me so often for my innacuracy you are a nice one to talk. D. Khool pointed out to me a mistake of yours and laughed at you jolly. See pp. 200 and 201. Collect your memory, my son, and try to remember that the details of K.H.'s portrait painting were quite different from what you give. We were sitting — Mrs. S. you and I in the drawing-room when I said something about K.H.'s portrait but added I did not think you would get it. Right away you teased me to try. I told you all right but that I doubted. You gave me first a sheet of note or letter paper and it was left in the scrap book. Nothing happened before lunch, but something happened during lunch on the same day and no "that day nor that night" passed between. I was dissatisfied with the portrait and paper and asked you to give me two Bristol boards marked and took it into my room. After it's all right. But you see if you can forget with your young memory the fact that both were asked for by you and produced on the same day — why should not I, with my old and impaired brain forget often things and — like Paul — be "held as a sinner" when I do not lie like him even for the glory of God! All of you are backbiters and calumniators.
Poor Beatson. You will not say, I hope, that he was not treated in the most shabby and mean way. The poor fellow comes to study his Persian for examination, settles quietly down, and then suddenly receives from General MacPherson an offer to accompany him on his staff to Egypt; consents, prepares, spends money, breaks and gives up his study, and now, when all is ready is left out in the cold! It is disgusting such injustice. Why he even let me announce his departure in our theosophical items in the Supplement. And now through a brat, a Vice-regal favourite he is insulted and will be laughed at. I told him he would not go I felt it, but he would not believe. And now he not only does not go to Egypt and loses his chance of promotion but has lost time and will not be able to pass his Persian examination this year. It is terribly mean, and the poor fellow looks very downhearted. You ought to give it them in the Pioneer if you had anything like a heart and any love or feeling for any brother theosophist except your K.H. who refused going to Egypt and thereby displeased his authorities.
He is determined, he says, to leave the Service, buy an occult library, build himself a hut in Cashmere somewhere, and devote his life to theosophy. But this of course is a "moonshine of vexation" as Deb expresses it. Beatson is in love with Deb. He says he never saw a more charming ideal face than that boy's face. A "boy" of 30! Poor Damodar is still at Poona, but is all right now in health. The brothers picked him up and even endowed him with such a mesmeric force that he cured several desperate cases (one blindness in a boy) in a few days. Whether it will last or not I do not know. But the Poona Fellows craved for something phenomenal and he gave it to them. I want to run up to Poona for a few days to dry my bones and get out the dampness from every pore of my body I got during this monsoon. To all kinds of insects we have the rats to boot. They are eating up everything in the house from my dresses to cupboards and iron bedsteads. I slew seven of them since yesterday to the great horror and disgust of Deb. But they have devoured my poor little canary bird and I had to get my revenge and did get it by means of cunningly devised traps. I feel I am becoming wicked and cruel, and that if the "old one" will keep me off for some time yet from going home I will become a Marat if not a Maratta Brahmin.
Oh my Karma! Mr. Hume's letter to Miss Green — something is, as he says, "velvet gloved." Ye gods of the infernal regions, wouldn't I have given [it] her if they would only let me! I begin to think our brothers chicken-hearted for refusing to make the most they can of my present warlike disposition. Why you sent me back the MS of Khandallavalah is more [than] I can tell. K.H. says you do know and have to know, and that it is only your viciousness that prevents you from admitting that you do know but won't tell. To tell truth, it is not K.H. who says so, but I know that he must think so, and that's the same thing. However he carried it off* in disgust with you, I feel sure of it. Goodbye.
Nobody's
H. P. Blavatsky.
* Your letter and MS.
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