Brusilova NV - On slanderous claims by Vs. S. Solovyov

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Appendix. N. V. Brusilova on slanderous claims by Vs. S. Solovyov

by V. P. Zhelikhovsky

Excerpts from “My memories and notes from childhood” by N. V. Brusilova (Брусилова Н.В., “Мои воспоминания и записки с детства”, ГАРФ, ф. 5972, оп. 1, д. 19а.)
Vera Petrovna Zhelikhovsky about her sister Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

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Appendix

N. V. Brusilova on slanderous claims by Vs. S. Solovyov

Mama had been absent for several weeks and, on returning, she told us a lot about extraordinary phenomena and her extraordinary meetings with extraordinary people. I remembered the names of people like Flammarion, de Vogüé and our Russian writer Vsevolod Sergeevich Solovyov. Mom had positively fallen in love with the latter and there was no end to her admiration for this “wonderful person”. We picked up her enthusiasm, and a heated correspondence with Paris began. There are a lot of his letters in my possession. But what came of it, after all? Many most serious troubles and even much grief. I often think he was the cause of death of both our aunt and mother, since their old hearts were completely torn and they could not bear simple cold flus or mild inflammation in the lungs, like the one my mother had. This “wonderful” man, as my mother described him at first, had brought too much torment and suffering to both of them. Let me tell you briefly what I know for sure. Should, in the future, any of Theosophists wish to look into this confused story in detail, he may avail himself of many documents and letters that I left in Paris with M. I. Othman de Villiers. Neither my mother nor myself have ever been Theosophists. Mom was interested in this society because her sister had founded it, and because, in general, she was interested in all sorts of abstract questions and phenomena that science could not explain. As for my sister Lena and myself, we were young and stupid and understood absolutely nothing. Our mother was a typical representative of the 1850s and 1860s, an educated and intelligent person, with a huge heart, spiritual responsiveness, trust in people, but she was also full of romantic fantasies that left a big mark on everything that she wrote. I repeat: she took a fancy to the sweet, talented, elegant Russian writer, whose historical novels she had always read with pleasure. She sympathized deeply with his second illegal wife, a pretty young lady, the sister of his first wife. Each had a child from him. His first wife lived with his older son in Petersburg while his second wife with a tiny son was hiding in Paris. I can't understand what he wanted with our poor mother, but he began to tell her about his grief, his sin which neither the church nor the imperial court (he was a Kammerjunker) would forgive him, he assured her that my mother and her family, i.e. we, would replace his own family that had rejected him; he told a lot, a lot of things that my mother believed, she felt sorry for him and was ready to help him in every possible way. One year later, when we were in Petersburg, he came from Paris to seek divorce from his first wife. His second wife could not show herself in Petersburg with him until his lawyer Bolotov got a residence permit for her, and when she arrived later, she stayed with us, since neither her nor his relatives agreed to accept her for a single day, and it was also impossible to stop at a hotel without a passport. Really, our mother loaded her and her child with benefits, showing but little regard to her illegal position, nor to the fact that she herself had three young daughters. I repeat, those were the eighties, and one has but to remember the views, traditions and rules that prevailed in society at that time in order to appreciate my mother's services to both of them. He thanked her, and wept, and kissed her hands. But some time later, he stated in print that he had looked for friendship with my mother and us in order to find out all the ins and outs about Blavatsky, to gain confidence of our family in order to follow her more closely. He had deceived us, told tall stories about his own family, he had turned our family and our mother's relatives against each other, he had moved us, children, against our own mother and her sister. In a word, he had spun such a tragedy and comedy that we were literally stunned. Letters from Paris, Petersburg and Odessa were full of monstrous slander, gossip and quarrels. He published, after all, his famous, libellous, deceitful book, A Modern Priestess of Isis, in which he heaped abuse on Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and her Theosophical Society, as well as on our mother and her aunt, Nadezhda Andreevna Fadeeva. In response, my mother came up with the pamphlet A Modern Priest of Truth. A scandal flared over this case in Russia and abroad, and, very soon, our mother died, while earlier, even before the publication of his book, when some of his articles had just appeared in newspapers and magazines, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky died. Yet, when I think of what he said personally to me, “Your dear Aunt Lelya will give me money to publish a Theosophical magazine in Paris. She has, for this purpose, her Hindu wizards and mahatmas,” when I think that my aunt didn't have the money, and her Indian friends wrote to her that he was a mean person, everything becomes clear to me. Indeed, we had lived through so much in those days! Heaven help him! I have laid down here bare facts alone. He had warned us, “If she, Blavatsky, doesn't do what I want, I'll take revenge on her.” And so he did.

Addendum

On pages 72, 73 and 74 I tell the unfortunate story that happened in our family in connection with Vsevolod Sergeevich Solovyov, but I do not elaborate enough on what actually occurred. To tell the truth, it's hard for me to touch upon it. Now that I hand over all family letters and papers to the Russian Foreign Archives in Prague, I have also given all the materials on this case that I had in my hands. Having re-read many letters of this infamous novelist, I believe I should tell the essence of the matter in more detail in my notes. Vsevolod Solovyov was a Kammerjunker of the court of His Majesty, the son of the honoured Russian professor of history Sergei Mikhailovich Solovyov and the brother of professor of philosophy Vladimir Solovyov. But he himself made his name as the gifted author of interesting novels. During the period of our acquaintance with him, he was just writing his The Gorbatovs series that he had first published in the Niva magazine, and then released as separate books. The publisher of Niva, Adolf Fedorovich Marx, paid first-rate fees for his writings which sparkled with great imagination and beautiful style. He had been married for a long time, had a son named, in memory of his grandfather, Sergey; in his literary works he was helped by a very young sister of his wife. He had sore eyes and could not write much — so, he dictated his novels to her. It was during his dictations that he fell in love with the very pretty relative, achieved reciprocity from her and took her to Paris, where he cohabited with her for several years, and she bore him a son, Borik. In 1884, our mother and her aunt, N.A. Fadeyeva, went from Odessa to Paris to see our mother's sister, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, whom they both hadn't seen for a long time. It was at her place that they made the acquaintance of V. S. Solovyov. It was not only his novels, but also his personal [situation] that intrigued everyone, while he gave such a bad colour to his family and his first wife, and presented himself as such a persecuted martyr that our good mother’s romantic heart melted, and she immediately believed everything, no matter what he said. Acting very cunningly and talentedly, he worked his way into our family, at first turning my sister Vera's and my own heads, especially mine. Our subsequent meetings with him set me against all my people, as I was eagerly protecting my friend and his wife Adele. After we moved from Odessa to Petersburg, he continued to visit us, and we met almost daily. At that time, he was fussing about a divorce from his first wife, Olga Iosifovna. Lawyer Bolotov, famous for his divorce cases, had arranged this for him. Adele came from Paris, leaving little Borik with Madame de Morsier to marry Vsevolod Sergeevich. This was a very difficult thing to do, since, according to the law, he had no right to marry the sister of his first wife. But the dodgy lawyer found a “venal priest,” in the words of Vsevolod Sergeevich, who agreed to bless their marriage. In the days of the “Holy Synod,” the addresses of such “clergymen,” or rather priests-crooks, were known fairly well.

In addition, Adele could not stay anywhere, as neither his nor her relatives would let her in, while to stay at a hotel she needed a residence permit, which she did not have. At that time, it was possible to buy everything for money, but strict and honest janitors did not let anybody into the capital without a residence permit. And so V[sevolod] S[ergeevich] groaned and wrung his hands racking his head in despair over how he could best arrange for Adele for a few days, before Bolotov handed them the necessary papers. Our mother has always been a great defender of women's rights; actually, her broad views on life were widely known, and she would never severely blame anyone for anything. Moreover, she always sought to help anyone in trouble. This time, too, she didn’t think for a minute about what Olga Alexandrovna Dieterichs, her youth friend, said; I heard accidentally the words of the latter: “Vera, what are you doing, you have adult daughters, why are you letting this mistress of Solovyov come to you? After all, her family does not want to see her...” But, I repeat, in order to help her out of trouble, to help her neighbour, my mother would stop at nothing and, thus, she invited Adele to us, to her daughters' room. In the enthusiasm of my youth, I approved of her very much. But, of course, this happened in the eighties of the 19^th century, and one has only to remember the hypocritical views of those times to fully appreciate the service rendered by my mother both to Vsevolod Sergeyevich and Adele Iosifovna. It was from our place that they went to get married, and to our place they returned to dine with us on the wedding day. We had fun, and everyone laughed endlessly at the many funny details of this whole incident. Our brother, a young student of the Institute of Ways of Communication, went to the Varshavsky railway station to fetch the things of our guest, carefully hiding from our janitor, so that he would not come to us prematurely with a house-register. This episode was an endless topic for Vsevolod Sergeevich's witticisms at the dinner we gave in their honour. But there were far more toasts to the “only” and true friends as well as their vows of endless friendship and devotion to us.

Then they left. We had no doubt that these were our real friends. Every evening of the winter that we spent together, Vsevolod Sergeevich asked us about everything related to our family and our mother’s relatives, her sister Blavatsky, her cousins and aunts Witte and Fadeeva. We, regarding him as our friend, were quite frank with him, and, thus, a lot of our family squabbles and troubles, a lot of curiosities in the life of our original aunt Nadezhda Andreevna Fadeeva, a lot of gossip about the extravagant youth of our mother's sister became known to him. Remembering many details, I realized much later how cleverly Vsevolod Sergeevich had asked us about everything and how unworthy of a man it was of him to heap up gossip and turn us against each other later.

Letters flew from Petersburg to London, from there to Odessa, to Paris and back, and he ended up making such a mess that it was very difficult for a fresh person to figure it out. Also, it was he who set us at odds with Alexei Alekseevich Brusilov and many others.

Many years later, I realized what the essence of his intrigues was. I'll try to put it in brief.

In the life of H. P. Blavatsky, whose centenary birth anniversary has been formally marked by the Theosophists of the world recently, there were many strange, even incomprehensible things, especially in that distant time.

This is not the place to talk about it. All I know is that mankind, since then, has discovered things that would positively look like miracles when viewed from the point of view of our old concepts and knowledge, and it is quite unreasonable to throw unfounded accusations of charlatanism to everything that you do not understand or cannot be explained by our modern science. Had we been told at that time that we would be able to hear conversations and music from America or from Moscow, while sitting in Paris, we would have only laughed at such “nonsense”. But nowadays, even in the most remote village, everyone who wants to listen to “Radio” catches waves in the atmosphere every day. This makes it clear to me that the learned Hindus, the “Mahatmas,” the teachers whom our Russian aunt Helena Petrovna had found in mysterious ways in her travels in India and who recognized her as capable of perceiving their knowledge in the field of “Radio,” unknown at that time, might have known a lot of things which humanity in general has yet to grow up to learn. This will not happen soon, though… It's quite clear to me that although much of what my aunt did was called “tricks” and “quackery” in her times, will eventually be recognized by science. And so, if we now listen to “Radio” and are not surprised at the voices and music coming from America, why not admit the possibility that the “Mahatmas” Morya and Kut Hoomi might teach Helena Petrovna, among other things, a more simplified way of hearing their voices or producing the chords of music, thanks to her psychic receptivity. All this can be explained in the future by people of science, and I put an end to this issue for now. I will only say that Vsevolod Solovyov demanded that H.P.B. should teach him many of her “tricks”, so that on returning to Petersburg he could surprise everybody by his occult powers, just like Gorbatov, the hero of his novel, did. Besides, he wanted her to get a very sizeable subsidy in India from some Rajas or Mahatmas so that he could publish an occult and theosophical journal in Paris. She could do neither the former nor the latter for him, since her Hindu “Teachers” turned out to be really far-sighted beings not of this world, for they had unravelled his machinations at a distance and warned her about this. He got so angry that he told us: “I will take my revenge, I'll give her and her false Mahatmas what for!” And so he did. This whole story had greatly affected the health of our aunt. He started to act when she was still alive, but she died soon, and he began to write and print such outrageous dirty stories about her, such slander and shameful fabrications, that my mother, offended for her sister, considered it her duty to come out in print in defence of her. Her health had also been greatly shaken by this story; having got her retaliatory pamphlet published, she did not live long, her heart being greatly torn. The tabloid, vulgar press picked up the Solovyov scandal and fanned it. But the honest and serious press was wholly on the side of our mother. I hand over all the surviving materials on this sad case to the Russian historical archive in Prague, and there is also my explanatory note to these materials and letters of that time. The brother of Vsevolod Sergeevich, Vladimir Solovyov, a professor, said he was ashamed of his brother, and, having delved into this story, he blushed for him. I regret very much that the talented, sharp and fair article by V. P. Burenin in Novoye Vremya, where he had ruthlessly slammed Vsevolod Solovyov for playing such a mean role, remained in my papers in Moscow. I didn't take all of them with me. It was then that we realised — unfortunately, too late — what naive, simple-hearted people we were while this cunning and dishonest person, who only needed our family to achieve his own gains, twisted us round his little finger. As soon as he became convinced that the case had failed, he threw us aside and began to “revenge,” i.e. write unimaginable, vile slanders about our late aunt. What makes me remember those days with particular shame and pain is severe insults I would hurl then at my mother and her sister, for I believed Solovyov's fables about them. Vsevolod Sergeevich had turned my head so that I was ready to follow him blindly. But some time later, when he sought a meeting with my mother at the Brusilovs to negotiate the return of his letters, I said I wanted to be present at this conversation. He, however, did not want my presence, probably for fear that I might remind him of a lot of things… I have kept A. A. Brusilov's letter to me on this case. Poor man, this born schemer, V. S. Solovyov, his death was agonizing. He shouted and swore as if he really was in the hands of some whirling black power. Neither his wife nor his children were beside him at his mortal hour. There only happened to be one of our common good friends, a practicing Christian and theosophist N. V. Pshenetskaya (she died in Paris in 1933), who helped him at the hour of death with her care. It is from her that I learned some details about the last years of his unseemly life and agonising death. It also happened by chance that the graves of my dear husband and brother in the Novodevichy Convent were very close to those of the Solovyov family, but there was no place for Vsevolod Sergeevich behind the same fence. His large, black marble cross stands right there, but aside, surrounded by other people's graves.

I feel anguish and pain every time I visit his grave.

N.V. Brusilova,
(née Zhelihovsky)

Footnotes

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