Page:Isis very much unveiled - being the story of the great Mahatma hoax (IA b24884273).pdf/20

16 Colonel Olcott and Mohini L. Chatterji. Mohini, a Brahmin graduate of the University of Calcutta, shone like Damodar with a lustre not all reflected. He, it was whispered, was a chela of some attainments. He was not to be touched. He held his hands politely behind him when being introduced. There was a splendour as of some astral oil about his dusky countenance and thick black locks; while his big, dark eyes were as piercing as those of Madame herself. Men gazed on Mohini with awe, and ladies with enthusiasm. In the background hovered the recording Sinnett.

In spite of the disappointing fact that the London air proved unfavourable to miracles, the tale of the Indian ones was greedily drunk in, and Theosophy became the fashionable fad. Society people took to calling themselves Esoteric Buddhists: some were enrolled as chelas at short notice. The Theosophists went the round of the London drawing-rooms, penetrated to provincial towns, were not unheard of at the Universities. Madame rolled cigarettes and swore and talked black magic in the rooms of well-known Cambridge dons, till the hair of undergraduate listeners stood on end. Those were the days when a set of enthusiastic pass-men lived “the higher life” on a course of Turkish baths and a date diet; while three unlucky youths at Trinity nearly poisoned themselves with hasheesh in an attempt to project their astral bodies, and were only recovered at midnight by a relentless tutor armed with the college authority and a stomach-pump.