Yearning for the New Age: Laura Holloway-Langford and Late Victorian Spirituality

8. Disseminating New Ideas

154 Laura Holloway-Langford, William Quan Judge, and Mohini Mohun Chatterji each left their homelands expecting new lives as Theosophists. In their efforts to negotiate the volatile terrain of a movement marked by internal dissent and outside opposition, they faced disappointments—in themselves, in Helena Blavatsky, and in the Theosophical Society. Nevertheless , each of them contributed to the spread of theosophical ideas: Holloway-Langfordthroughherwriting,JudgeastheleaderoftheAmerican Section of the Society, and Chatterji through a lecture tour in the United States. By the late 1880s, Holloway-Langford and Chatterji had resigned from the Theosophical Society; yet they both remained theosophists in the larger sense of the term, persisting in the search for divine wisdom. Only Judge maintained his commitment to Theosophy as an organized movement, although near the end of his life he too broke away from the parent organization to form an independent group. LauraHolloway-Langford’sforayintotheTheosophicalmovementwas a brief but formative experience. In 1884, she had toyed with the idea of joining William Q. Judge in India, where they would become partners, at least spiritually if not also physically, and where they would devote their lives to the pursuit of esoteric knowledge. Blavatsky, however, had concludedthattheAmericanpsychiccausedmoretroublethanshewasworth and had dispatched her back to Brooklyn. Arriving home in late October 1884, Holloway-Langford was demoralized and uncertain about how to 8 Disseminating New Ideas S front/backmatter 155 Disseminating New Ideas 155 continue her spiritual quest without the imprimatur of the Theosophical Society. Judge’s plans had also been thwarted. Within weeks of his arrival in Adyar, India, Emma Coulomb published excerpts from letters that accused Blavatsky of deceit. A few days later Judge removed and burned the “Shrine” from the occult room at the Theosophical Headquarters.1 Shortlyaftertheseevents,hedecidedtodepartforhome,notwaitinguntil BlavatskyandOlcottreturnedtoIndia.2 HeleftAdyarinlateOctoberand, after spending some time in England, arrived in New York on November 26, 1884. Judge’s reasons for leaving India after only three months remain obscure . There were rumors that a German Theosophist, Franz Hartmann, had dropped upon Judge’s nose a bogus Mahatma letter ordering him back to America.3 Judge, however, denied this, writing Blavatsky: “I did not leave India because I got a message from a Mahatma. I never got any messages from any Mahatma either pretended or real while I was in India. . . . I tell you neither you, nor Olcott, nor Holloway, nor deceit, nor trick, nor message, nor devil, nor Hartmann, had anything to do with my departure from India.”4 What seems clear, however, is that Judge had abandoned his family and career following a dream that had then been shattered by what he had learned—either about the Theosophical Society or about himself. He had risked his own reputation in a bungled attempt at defending Blavatsky , and he wanted nothing to do with the impending investigation by the Society for Psychical Research.5 LauraHolloway-Langfordhadbeenchastenedbybeingbrandedafailed chela; only a few intimates in the United States knew about this debacle, however. In contrast, Judge’s flight to India and his humiliating homecoming were known both within the Theosophical Society and to family and friends in Brooklyn. After returning to New York, Judge suspected that either the leaders of the Society had told “great lies” or the Mahatmas were “absolutelyuselessasguides.”6 Whatever his doubts, Judge soon turned his energy to building the American Section of the Society, established in October 1886, “on the proper lines, eschewing phenomena and preaching Universal Brotherhood and trying to spread Theosophy.”7 In contrast, Holloway-Langford kept her European adventure shrouded in 156 front/backmatter 156 Yearning for the New Age mystery while she concentrated on reestablishing her career as a writer. She made no secret of having met Madame Blavatsky and other famous Theosophists; nevertheless, she shielded her private life from scrutiny by presentingherselfasanobjectivereporterwhohadlittlepersonalinvolvement in the events she portrayed. A NARROW, PRESBYTERIAN CHARACTER On October 18, the same day that Laura Holloway-Langford set sail for America, Helena Blavatsky began a campaign to undermine her reputation and to shape how the summer of 1884 would be remembered. To A. P. Sinnett, she quoted Holloway-Langford’s “parting words”: “‘Do me the justice . . . to tell Mr. Sinnett, that to the last I was living here on two planes—the physical and the spiritual. Judging me from the physical he could not, of course, understand me, for I was living on the spiritual. To the last I have been acting under the direct orders of Master, and could not...