Sections: General Index Present Section: Index
• BLAVATSKY, Helena Petrovna. The Late Mrs. Anna Kingsford, M.D. In H.P. Blavatsky Collected Writings, Vol. IX, pp. 89-91. TPH, Madras, 1962, 487 pp. First published in Lucifer, Vol. II, nº 7, March 1888, pp. 78-79.
Information: It is an obituary written by Madame Helena Blavatsky, with great praise to Anna Kingsford, where we can read:
“She was (…) a leader of spiritual and philosophical thought, gifted with the most exceptional psychic attributes. In connection with Mr. Edward Maitland, her truest friend (…) she wrote several books dealing with metaphysical and mystical subjects. The first and most important was The Perfect Way, or the Finding of Christ, which gives the esoteric meaning of Christianity. (…) She was one, the aspirations of whose whole life were ever turned toward the eternal and the true. A mystic by nature – the most ardent one to those who knew her well – she was still a very remarkable woman even in the opinion of the materialists and the unbelievers. (…) The whole of her adult life was passed in working unselfishly for others, for the elevation of the spiritual side of humanity. (…) And Anna Kingsford’s work will be still bearing fruit even when her memory has been obliterated with the generations of those who knew her well, and new generations will have approached the psychic mysteries still nearer.”
Read below the complete Html text:
(p.
89)
THE LATE MRS. ANNA KINGSFORD, M.D.
OBTUARY (1)
We have this month to record with the deepest regret the passing away from this physical world of one who, more than any other, has been instrumental in demonstrating to her fellow-creatures the great fact of the conscious existence – hence of the immortality – of the inner Ego.
We speak of the death of Mrs. Anna Kingsford, M.D.,
which occurred on Tuesday, the 28th of February, after a somewhat painful and
prolonged illness. Few women have worked harder than she has, or in more noble
causes; none with more success in the cause of humanitarianism. Hers was a short
but a most useful life. Her intellectual fight with the vivisectionists of
Europe, at a time when the educated and scientific world was more strongly fixed
in the grasp of materialism than any other period in the history of
civilization, alone proclaims her as one of those who, regardless of
conventional thought, have placed themselves at the very focus of controversy,
prepared to dare and brave all the consequences of their temerity. Pity and
Justice to animals were among Mrs. Kingsford’s favourite texts when dealing with
this part of her life’s work; and by reason of her general culture, her special
training in the science of medicine, and her magnificent intellectual power, she
was enabled to influence and work in the way she desired upon a very large
proportion of those people who listened to her words or who read her writings.
Few women wrote more graphically, more takingly, or possessed a more fascinating
style.
Mrs. Kingsford’s field of activity, however, was not
limited to the purely physical, mundane plane of life. She was a Theosophist and
a true one at heart; a leader of spiritual and philosophical thought, gifted
with the most exceptional psychic attributes. In connection with Mr. Edward
Maitland, her truest friend – one whose incessant,
(p.
90)
watchful care has undeniably prolonged her delicate ever-threatened life
for several years, and who received her last breath – she wrote several books
dealing with metaphysical and mystical subjects. The first and most important
was The
She was for some time President of the “London Lodge”
of the Theosophical Society, and, after resigning that office, she founded “The
Hermetic Society” for the special study of Christian mysticism. She herself,
though her religious ideas differed widely on some points from Eastern
philosophy, remained a faithful member of the Theosophical Society and a loyal
friend to its leaders. (1)
She was one, the aspirations of whose whole life were
ever turned toward the eternal and the true. A mystic by nature – the most
ardent one to those who knew her well – she was still a very remarkable woman
even in the opinion of the materialists and the unbelievers. For, besides her
remarkably fine and intellectual face, there was that in her which arrested the
attention of the most unobserving and foreign to any metaphysical speculation.
For, as Mrs. F. Fenwick Miller writes, though Mrs. Kingsford’s mysticism was
“simply unintelligible” to her, yet we find that this does not prevent the
writer from perceiving the truth. As she describes her late friend, “I have
never known a woman so exquisitely beautiful as she who cultivated her brain so
assiduously. (…) I have never known a woman in whom the dual nature that is more
or less perceptible in every human creature was so strongly marked – so
sensuous, so feminine on the one hand,
(p.
91)
so spirituelle, so imaginative on the other hand.” (1)
The spiritual and psychic nature had always the upper
hand over the sensuous and feminine; and the circle of her mystically-inclined
friends will miss her greatly, for such woman as she are not numerous in the
same century. The world in general has lost in Mrs. Kingsford one who can be
very ill-spared in this era of materialism. The whole of her adult life was
passed in working unselfishly for others, for the elevation of the spiritual
side of humanity. We can, however, in regretting her death take comfort in the
thought that good work cannot be lost nor die, though the worker is no longer
among us to watch for the fruit. And Anna Kingsford’s work will be still bearing
fruit even when her memory has been obliterated with the generations of those
who knew her well, and new generations will have approached the psychic
mysteries still nearer. (2)
NOTES
(89:1) Note from the editor of the Anna Kingsford Site: This text, The Late Mrs. Anna Kingsford, M.D., was published in H.P. Blavatsky Collected
Writings, Vol. IX, pp. 89-91. TPH,
(90:1) Note from the original
text: Both Mr. Maitland and Mrs. Kingsford had resigned from the “London Lodge
of the Theosophical Society,” but not from the Parent Society.]
(91:1) Note from the compiler of
the work H.P. Blavatsky Collected Writings: “Woman: Her
Position and Her Prospects, Her Duties and Her Doings,” Lady’s Pictorial,
(91:2) Note from the original
text: The statement made by some papers that Mrs. Kingsford did not find her
resting place in psychic force, for “she died a Roman Catholic,” is utterly
false. The boasts made by the R.C.
Weekly Register (March 3 and March 10, 1888) to the effect that she
died in the bosom of the Church, having abjured her views,
psychism, theosophy, and even her The Perfect Way, and writings in general, have been vigorously refuted
in the same paper by her husband, Rev. Algernon Kingsford, and Mr. Maitland. We
are sorry to hear that her last days were embittered by the mental agony
inflicted upon her by an unscrupulous nun, who, as Mr. Maitland declared to us,
was smuggled in as a nurse
– and who did nothing but bother her patient, “importune her, and pray.” That
Mrs. Kingsford was entirely against the theology of the Church of Rome,
though believing in Catholic doctrines, may be proved by one of her last letters
to us, on “poor slandered St. Satan,” in connection with certain attacks on the
name of our Journal,
Lucifer. We have preserved this and several other letters, as
they were all written between September, 1887 and January, 1888. They thus
remain eloquent witnesses against the pretensions of the Weekly Register. For they prove that
Mrs. Kingsford had not abjured her views, not that she died “in fidelity to the
Catholic Church.”