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But the Masters were not enough. Wherever she went, her urge to impress prospective converts with her magical powers led her to stage "phenomena"— the miraculous and well-timed materialization of teacups, pin trays, rings, etc. In the end, this was her undoing: the confederates she needed to perform these ready-made miracles exposed her. In 1885, repudiated by her own followers, she left the land of her Masters forever.
Success at Last. But the best was still ahead. Her rescuers were not Tibetan supermen but a brace of wealthy young Englishmen, who established her in a London suburb and set up a staff of experts to edit her 6,000-page manuscript of Secret Doctrine. When Atheist Annie Wood Besant reviewed it, she was so excited that she went to see Madame, and was quickly converted to Theosophy.*
Fat and tired, Madame Blavatsky ended her days steeped in the adulation she loved. Says Biographer Williams: "London society was curious to see her and the moody lioness became the rage. . . . Even the Church of England, thundering against her on Sunday, peeked at her on Monday. Leaning back against her cushions at one of her soirees, Madame watched the wife of the Archbishop of Canterbury sitting primly on a front row chair. . . . Such eminent scientists as Alfred Russel Wallace, Sir William Crookes and Thomas Edison became members of her Theosophical Society. . . . When Alfred, Lord Tennyson . . . died, a copy of Madame's mystical poem, The Voice of the Silence, lay on the table beside his bed."
Wrote the London Society for Psychical Research, in its painstakingly detailed investigation of Theosophist Blavatsky: "We regard her neither as the mouthpiece of hidden seers nor as a mere vulgar adventuress; we think she has achieved a title to permanent remembrance as one of the most accomplished, ingenious and interesting impostors in history."
*After Madame's death in 1891, Mrs. Besant became head of the Society, immediately set about revamping it according to her own lights. Result: Blavatsky followers seceded by thousands. Mrs. Besant's greatest coup: discovery in 1909 of the twelve-year-old Hindu moppet, Jiddu Krishnamurti, whom she proclaimed a "vehicle" of the World Teacher whose last incarnation was Christ. He quit the role 20 years later, took up California residence and lecturing on "the search for truth," is now on a lecture tour of his native India.