Leadbeater Once More

[Further details of "The Leadbeater Affair" culled from "The Last Four Lives of Annie Besant" by Arthur H. Nethercot, pub. Rupert Hart-Davis, London, 1963. (P93ff.) This account may usefully be compared with the letters of Mrs. Dennis.]

"Re-reading ... from the vantage point of May 1940, Mrs Dennis commented on her own earlier remarks: "There never was at any time through all the conferences between the Eastern members of the Executive Officers and myself even a hint of any suggestion of silent covering up of this scandal as Mrs Besant herself had carried on in Europe and Asia for a score of years, paying no attention to persistent rumours in both countries. Mr Mead and others who had felt suspicious, had for years plead [sic] with her to investigate, but she always turned a deaf ear and proceeded to place him on a pedistal [sic]. Instead of covering it up by the Americans in 1906 in N.Y., all their plans hinged on how to expose and expel him with the least detriment to the Theosophical Society. When Mrs Besant's plan to cover up the man's perfidy, was received, we could but defy Mrs Besant and appeal to Col. Olcott - which we should have done in the first place." Helen Dennis then concluded her comment with a denunciation of her former friend for bolstering up "whited sepulchres" in the T.S., and betrayed her innate Victorian bias by adding: " I for one feel that there must be a deep-seated moral flaw in her character which years ago lead [sic] to her publication of the Malthusian Pamphlet and ended in the tragedy of this prostitution of her mental and spiritual vision - defective as they were - to the defense of a sex pervert and ruination of the T.S.

"Was C. W. Leadbeater a "sex pervert," as his many enemies both within and without the Theosophical Society regarded him, or a misunderstood, maligned, pure-hearted martyr, as his many friends - chiefly within the Society - called him? There is a mass of contradictory testimony on both sides, but it is fairly safe to say that if the situation had arisen three or four decades later than it did, after the liberation of conceptions of sexual practices and sexual morality had occurred, there would have been far fewer cries of shocked outrage and probably little more than a few raised eyebrows. At least it must be admitted even by Leadbeater's enemies that he stuck doggedly and apparently sincerely to his theories and principles, and that he never admitted any shame or even embarrassment over his conduct. On the other hand, there is some evidence that he derived a kind of vicarious pleasure from his associations with and his instruction of his boys.

"In January 1906, the harassed Annie Besant, who had so far remained scrupulously in the background, received a formal letter from Mrs Dennis to prefer what her committee labelled as "The Charge." Fullerton also wrote to Leadbeater in very similar terms. Annie's letter, which carefully avoided the use of nearly all specific names, told how Mrs Dennis had suddenly learned the cause of Douglas Pettit's hatred and contempt for Leadbeater, of which she had informed Mrs Besant during her visit to the London convention. It was much more than the "childish and personal grievance" that she had supposed. It was actually the result of "morally criminal acts." It all traced back to the Western tour Leadbeater had made in 1903-4, in which he had been accompanied by his favourite old protege, Basil, and his new one, Douglas. Basil, however, never appears in the present story; his training had long since been completed, and he never had anything but honour and praise for his tutor.

"The Pettits, it seems, being worried about the condition and development of their somewhat physically handicapped fourteen-year-old son, had decided to entrust him for a time to the care of Leadbeater, whose reputation as a counsellor for children was widely known. But they did not understand that when he talked about "an absolutely pure and virgin life" he only meant abstention from relations with another person, either female or male, and not an individual's dealing with his own sexual needs.

"The first night, Leadbeater not only took his new chela into the same room with him; he took him into bed with him, and there, under the guise of occult instruction from the Master, taught him the practice of self-abuse. This practice continued reciprocally, the boy later swore, for the greater part of the seven months of their tour of the West, with the consequent total breakdown of his health. Leadbeater, on the other hand, swore that "one experiment and only one" had been tried, upon the boy's consulting him about his new adolescent sexual problems. But he admitted he had told the boy this was hardly a matter to be talked about with others - or, as Douglas put it, "He made me promise not to tell."

"Whatever the rights of the matter, as soon as Douglas returned home his parents saw his new antipathy toward his tutor. But the boy maintained his secret with peculiar integrity for many months, till new rumours of Leadbeater's "immoral sexual practices" in India and England reached his mother's ears and she again pressed her son for an explanation of his depression. This time he broke down and told her everything. She then brought her story to Mrs Dennis, who had been encountering a similar problem with her son Robin. Neither boy knew of the other's experience, since they lived some distance apart and hardly ever saw one another.

"Robin had been made a chum of by Leadbeater, who had lived in the household whenever he was in Chicago. The two were such good friends that when the boy was about fourteen Leadbeater invited him to come and visit him briefly in Toronto, where he was giving some lectures. Here the pattern of the Pettit case was repeated, with the same reluctant admission by the boy. To his mother's question about Leadbeater's excuse for such conduct, the boy replied pathetically, "Mother, I think that was the worst part of the whole thing. Somehow he made me believe it was Theosophical." That was the end of the matter. Leadbeater made no further allusion to it, but, said Robin, " he acted as if he did not like me any more."

"But according to Leadbeater's version, he invited Robin to stay with him only because the boy's mother was troubled about the immoral influence obtained over him by a third boy, a George Nevers, referred to as "Z" and not even alluded to in Mrs Dennis's letter of accusation sent to Mrs Besant. On the fateful night, Robin confessed " the relations with regard to the sexual matters into which he has entered with , Z'," and he and Leadbeater talked the problem over openly and fully, the man giving the boy innocuous advice about diet and exercise as a means of handling his difficulty. Only when Robin wrote him for further advice after Leadbeater had left America did he advise him to start the practice of " regular discharges," widely spaced, to relieve his problem.

"The distraught Annie Besant, trapped between two loyalties, decided in favour of the older and stronger. On 26 February 1906 she answered Mrs Dennis from Shanti Kunja, accepting Leadbeater's explanation, and pointing out how unfair it was to condemn a man unheard, on the accusations of two confused boys.

"Leadbeater's and Mrs Besant's defence might have been convincing, in spite of the very circumstantial stories of the two main boys, if it had not been for a mysterious and sensational "cipher letter" which some time later entered the investigation. This letter, unsigned, undated, and typewritten on a piece of unidentifiable paper, had been picked up by a suspicious housekeeper in the Toronto home where the pair had stayed. A copy of this came later into the possession of Dr Chidester, who promptly saw that it was widely circulated, against the wishes of the parents. This ambiguous note, which Leadbeater, when confronted with its text in the form of a legally attested photograph, admitted that he recognised, but "not in its present form," clinched the case against him for his enemies.

"Annie, now committed to the defence of her friend, maintained that the whole thing was a malicious misinterpretation-that in the midst of a passage relating to an astral experience a few words in cipher had been introduced concerning the objectionable advice. "Then follows a sentence," she wrote, "unconnected with the context, on which a foul construction has been placed. That the boy did not so read it is proved by a letter of his to Mr Leadbeater-in which he expresses his puzzlement as to what it meant, as well he might." All of which explains little, since she failed to tell how else the passage could be interpreted, or why it was placed there. Still later she decided that the whole thing must have been a forgery.

"As to the use of a cipher at all Leadbeater later tried to deny that he had ever employed such a thing in writing, and maintained that he had only talked about it. Unfortunately for his defence, Mrs Besant had almost simultaneously explained in a circular letter to members of the Society that it was simply the aftermath of an earlier episode in which, to amuse some of his boys, he had described some elementary cipher codes to them, and they, being boys, had promptly taken up with them and used them for their amusement.

[Details of the cipher method omitted here, as the full text is in the CWL.ZIP file - AB]

"The key passage was so offensive, so slimy, that in the early years of the century most editors refused to print it, and in England were actually prevented by law from doing so. Two or three Americans, however, less squeamish than the rest or more fully actuated by their animosity against Leadbeater, boldly published not only the text but some of the translation ......The most offensive and incriminatory sentences were the last two, following certain instructions and comments in their predecessors. They ran: "Glad sensation is so pleasant. Thousand kisses darling." In the meantime proceedings had been marching steadily toward Leadbeater's expulsion. Following the American charges, there had been a flurry of letter-writing and cablegrams (some in code) from Leadbeater to Fullerton, Fullerton to Mrs Dennis, Mrs Besant to Mrs Dennis, Mrs Besant to Olcott, Mead to Mrs Dennis, and so on. Perhaps the most significant of these biographically was Annie's long and eminently sensible letter of 26 February to Mrs Dennis, in which she discussed with much frankness, understanding, and sympathy the sexual problems of maturing boys, and tried to explain Leadbeater's views and treatment without accepting them herself. She knew through her and his mutual meetings with Master K.H. that her colleague could do nothing "evil-minded." Olcott, however, decided that the only way to handle the trouble was to submit it to a committee, which he scheduled for 16 May in London. Annie, peculiarly enough, in view of her usual fondness for committees and meetings, decided that she would remain in India."