Chapter 17 - Page 2

affirmed the real existence of the Jew, or of his
like; and, apart from whatever might have been imagined by Huxley,
Tyndall, Carolus Duran and Bastien-Lepage, I saw nothing against
his reality. Presently having heard that Madame Blavatsky had
arrived from France, or from India, I thought it time to look the
matter up. Certainly if wisdom existed anywhere in the world it
must be in some such lonely mind admitting no duty to us,
communing with God only, conceding nothing from fear or favour.
Have not all peoples, while bound together in a single mind and
taste, believed that such men existed and paid them that honour,
or paid it to their mere shadow, which they have refused to
philanthropists and to men of learning?

I found Madame Blavatsky in a little house at Norwood, with but,
as she said, three followers left--the Society of Psychical
Research had just reported on her Indian phenomena--and as one of
the three followers sat in an outer room to keep out undesirable
visitors, I was kept a long time kicking my heels. Presently I was
admitted and found an old woman in a plain loose dark dress: a
sort of old Irish peasant woman with an air of humour and
audacious power. I was still kept waiting, for she was deep in
conversation with a woman visitor. I strayed through folding doors
into the next room and stood, in sheer idleness of mind, looking
at a cuckoo clock. It was certainly stopped, for the weights were
off and lying upon the ground, and yet as I stood there the cuckoo
came out and cuckooed at me. I interrupted Madame Blavatsky to
say. 'Your clock has hooted me.' 'It often hoots at a stranger,'
she replied. 'Is there a spirit in it?' I said. 'I do not know,'
she said, 'I should have to be alone to know what is in it.' I
went back to the clock and began examining it and heard her say
'Do not break my clock.' I wondered if there was some hidden
mechanism, and I should have been put out, I suppose, had I found
any, though Henley had said to me, 'Of course she gets up
fraudulent miracles, but a person of genius has to do something;
Sarah Bernhardt sleeps in her coffin.' Presently the visitor went
away and Madame Blavatsky explained that she was a propagandist
for women's rights who had called to find out 'why men were so
bad.' 'What explanation did you give her?' I said. 'That men were
born bad but women made themselves so,' and then she explained
that I had been kept waiting because she had mistaken me for some
man whose name resembled mine and who wanted to persuade her of
the flatness of the earth.

When I next saw her she had moved into a house at Holland Park,
and some time must have passed--probably I had been in Sligo where
I returned constantly for long visits--for she was