 |
vol. title: Vol Four of The Theosophical Society of The Arya Samaj of Arya-wart vol. period: Sept 1878 – Sept 1879 pages in vol.: 350 |
< Lassalle’s Sad Romance (continued from page 8-52) >
to me for undertaking to come between Lassalle and another woman. Of course I was wild with rage, and I wrote to her that I should consult Lassalle himself with regard to his relations with any other woman; and then, of course, she was wild, too.
“Well, the whole of life seemed to me to be over after Lassalle’s death. I could see nothing to live for. All things were the same to me, except that I hated my father and mother. And as I believed that Racowitz was the only person who had any sympathy for me, for he was truly of a noble nature, and as he protested his love for me always, and as, more than all, his illness—consumption—developed very rapidly after that, I finally consented to marry him, if he wished to marry one who would always love her dead rival. It was months after the duel that we were married; four months after the wedding he died.”
“And what of your life after your husband’s death?” asked the writer.
“Why, do you wish to write a three volume novel?” Mme. Hélène replied. “It would fill a good many copies of The Sun.”
“Then give me an outline of it.”
“I had married the Prince partly to rid myself of my family, and it was not likely that after his death I would go back to them. All my family ties were broken. I was alone in the world, and, as I had always had a strong liking for the stage, I became an actress. In this way it was, probably, that so much came to be said in the papers, at one time and another, about my story. I played in Paris and Germany, and later in the western part of this country, and some two years ago I met the gentleman who is now my husband.”
“But you want it all in more detail? Well, after the death of my first husband I stayed some time in Italy. I was in Nice with a friend of mine, a good Catholic lady and an American, when I had my first adventure—if you would call it so. Of course I was in mourning, and went very little into society, and I used to go to church with my friend. There was a beautiful little chapel there, only for the dames du monde, which they had built and given to the Jesuit Society, and it was there that we went. It is true I had not been brought up to be religious at all, but the Catholic cult always impressed me deeply. It seems so—so—so dramatic.”
Mme. Hélène hesitated to find the right word, as she often does when speaking in English, and laughed when she found it, at the thought of a dramatic religion.
“After I had been going there some time,” she continued, “the pater spoke with me seriously on religious subjects, and many times took me into his sacristy. At length he told me he wanted me to enter the employ of his society. You know in all European cities the Jesuits have ladies of the highest social position who learn political and other secrets for them. He tried every means to persuade me. He saw that I was fond of the toilette and of social distinction, and he said, ‘You will need a great deal of money when you leave off your mourning. Our society will let you have all you want. You shall have millions.’
“I had almost made up my mind to accept, and had promised to go in three days to Rome to make the final arrangements. Then, one evening, I determined that I would not give up my freedom. I was afraid of what they might want me to do. So I packed my trunks and left that same night for Paris. I had many friends in the Emperor’s Court, and they warned me that the Jesuits would not easily relinquish their plans, and that if I wished to escape from them I should retire to a convent for a few months. But I had no desire for life in a convent, and I would not. Then they advised me to go to Berlin, and that Bismarck’s power would be protection enough for me. So I went to Berlin.
“After I had been there for a time I decided to go on the stage; so I studied for a time, and was to make my debut in the hof-theatre of the Duke of Coburg-Gotha, at Mecklenburg-Schwerin. But just before I was to appear I was taken ill, and was unable to act for a long time, and that engagement was lost. Then, when I got well, I became acquainted with a Hungarian gentleman, an actor, and a man of great talents. We loved each other very much, and agreed to get married, and went to a lawyer to have the necessary arrangements made. There was some difficulty about it, as he was a Hungarian, and I, by my first marriage, was a Turk—a Wallachian. But the lawyers professed to have got over the difficulties, and we supposed we were married by the civil law. We lived together for four years, very happily, and acted together in several cities. But I made up my mind that I was not suited to domestic life, and I told him at length that it would be better to separate while we were still good friends than to live together until we ceased to be so. He agreed to this after a time, and we went to a lawyer to get papers of separation. The first thing he asked for was our marriage papers, and we told him we hadn’t any. There was a great deal of research then, and finally we were informed that we never had been married. It was very funny, but it was a delicate situation, and I was determined to have papers of separation. The lawyers could do nothing, and told us to go to the Judge; but he could do nothing. We went to a Catholic priest. He asked me if my husband was a Catholic. I said no, he was a Protestant. ‘But,’ he said, ‘you were married in a Catholic church, were you not?’ I told him no, that we weren’t married in church at all, and then he very politely showed me the door. Then I went to a Protestant priest, and he, when he learned I had not been married in his church, wanted to know what he had to do with it. We even tried a rabbi, and he was very kind, and said he would see what he could do, but after he consulted his superiors he said he could do nothing. So we didn’t get our papers. It was very funny, and my friends said that nobody in the world but me would have such luck; for I lived four years with the man I loved, supposing we were married, and then, when we wanted to separate, all we had to do was to go our ways, for we had never been married. So we parted, the best of friends, and are so still.
“After that I acted in Berlin and Vienna and Paris, and went through Germany as a star, I think you call it, for one year. Then I went to St. Petersburg, and there I met my husband. We loved, and he wanted to marry me, but there were obstacles. He was a marked man on account of his political opinions, and his family were very much opposed to the match, and, more than all, I did not want to be married. So after a time I left him and went to Paris, telling him we would try for a year to get along without each other. He did not like it, and after a time I received in Paris a despatch from him saying that he could not stand it, and that he was coming to meet me. He wanted me to meet him at Aix-la-Chapelle, and answer him one question. I thought that was reasonable, so I met him, but it was three days after I saw him before I thought to ask him what it was he wanted me to tell him. When I did, he said he wanted me to come to America with him, and I consented. We were married by the civil law, and we went to London first, and then came to New York.
“We didn’t know what to do when we got here, any more than two children. I remember the night after I arrived I told my maid whom I had brought with me to bring me the German papers, and I would see what we should do. The first thing I saw that I thought would suit was an advertisement for a finely-educated lady, who was wanted in a saloon. I did not know the word. I thought it meant salon, and I said to my husband that that would do for me. Then I found that a gentleman of good musical ability was wanted in another saloon, and I said that would do for him. Then I found an advertisement saying that a young German gentleman wanted to learn French from a German lady. That, I said, would do for the maid, and the next morning I made her write an answer to the advertisement. She was the only one of the three who succeeded, for she gave the young man lessons, and two months afterward she married him, and they are living happily together now.
“Of course we had brought money enough with us to live on for a while, and we were not anxious, but I knew we must do something sometime. At one time we talked of becoming farmers. ‘But do you think we can do it?’ said my husband. ‘I think so,’ I said; ‘having come to America, I can now do anything.’ We did not try farming, but after a time I had a great many offers from the managers of German theatres in the West, and I went to St. Louis, Chicago, Milwaukee, San Francisco, and a number of other cities. I was a year in San Francisco.”
“Do you intend going on the stage again?”
“Yes, and I think, you know, to play in English. My specialty is French high comedy, and my friends tell me I would succeed in New York.
“My story is romantic, is it not? A friend of mine once said that it was a tragedy that could never be played, because the hero was killed too soon.”
Fine Arts
Mr. William R. O’Donovan has modelled on tiles portraits of Mr. F. Hopkinson Smith, Mr. Edwin A. Abbey, “Pharaoh, the Last King of the Mohawks,” “John Howard Payne’s Sweetheart,” and Madame Blavatsky. The last-named is an excellent piece of character-generalization, rich in suggestiveness and expression. The bass-relief of the supposed fiancée of the author of “Home, Sweet Home,” is a sweet and simple delineation, an idyl in clay.
The “Death-Warrant of Jesus Christ” a Forgery
That “most imposing judicial document ever recorded in human annals,” published in the Journal, Oct. 5th, is a clumsy, Christian fraud. If such a document was ever found engraved on a copper plate in Hebrew among the ruins of an ancient Italian city, it is as contemptible a forgery as the pretended plates of the book of Mormon.
The death-warrant of Jesus Christ in this document is dated the 27th of March in the 17th year of Tiberius, which would be A. D. 31. Now the date of the crucifixion heretofore most generally adopted is A. D. 33; but the latest authorities are compelled to abandon that and all other dates later than A. D. 29, which agrees not only with the ancient authorities, but with recently discovered Syriac documents of a very early period.
But March 27th is entirely too early in the year. The crucifixion took place according to the first three Evangelists, on the great Passover day, which was the 14th of the month Nisan, and, though the Jewish month varied according to the moon, yet it is quite impossible for the 14th Nisan to have been as early as March 27th. Smith’s Bible Dictionary puts the crucifixion on the 8th of April, and I doubt if any respectable authority ever fixed it as early as March 27th.
The document makes Annas and Caiaphas high priests at the same time. This is a gross historical error. Annas was high priest from A. D. 12 to 21, and Caiaphas from A. D. 23 to 36.
It also makes Pontius Pilate governor of “Lower Galilee,” i.e. the region about Lake Tiberius. Herod Antipas was tetrarch of that division of Palestine, and Pilate was procurator of Judea only.
Some four or five years ago, I was shown a similar fraudulent document printed in a German newspaper. Translated into English it is as follows:
“Within a few weeks France has experienced sad loss by fire. As already stated, by the burning of the very ancient Loraine Museum at Nancy, antiquities which cannot be replaced, have been destroyed. A few days later, the Archbishop Palace at Bourges was burnt down; and here highly precious manuscript and antiquities perished in the flames, together with a particularly important historical document, the order of the execution against Jesus Christ. This satisfactory and authentically proved document was for hundreds of years in possession of the family of Latour D’Auvergne, and was preserved as a precious relic in the Archbishop’s Museum.” We give below a verbatim translation from the Latin text:
“Jesus of Nazareth, of the tribe of Judah, found guilty of disturbance and rebellion against the godly power of Tiberius Augustus, Emperor of Rome, for high treason, condemned to die on the cross by the decision of Judge Pontius Pilate and approved by our master Herod, representative of the Emperor in Judea, shall, early to-morrow, the 23rd day of the Ides of March, at the common place of execution under accompaniment of a company of Pretorian guards, suffer death. The so-called King of the Jews shall be taken out of the Strumium gate. Accompanying public officers and subordinates of the Emperor’s are hereby ordered to give a hand to the carrying out of this judgment.
“Jerusalem, the 22nd day of the Ides of March in the year [A.U.C.] 783.”
The forgery of this document is betrayed by the expression “23rd day of the Ides of March.” There were but seventeen Ides of March, and what is more, they were reckoned backward from the 1st of April, so that the 17th before the calends of April would be March 15th. That was as far back as the Ides could go. The 23d, if such a reckoning were possible, would be March 9th.
It is needless to give further proofs of the spuriousness of these documents. The fact is, there is not a scrap of historical evidence that there was a Jesus Christ crucified under the procuratorship of Pontius Pilate. Every pretended reference in the 1st and 2d centuries to such an event has been proved a forgery. The gospels themselves have been impeached. They contradict one another even as to the day on which the crucifixion took place. While the first three fix it on the great Passover day the fourth fixes it the day before. As if the former could be mistaken about its occurring on that great yearly festival! But the writer of the 4th Gospel probably knew that no culprit ever was or could be tried or executed on that day by the Jews, and that the Passover never fell on Friday according to the regulations of the Jewish calendar. Every intelligent Jew knows that. Was it then a mere mistake of the Synoptics? No, it was a fiction. They could not be mistaken on such a point if they were writing history.
What then? Was the crucifixion by Pontius Pilate a fiction? Yes, undoubtedly. But was there no sort of foundation for the story? Yes, probably there was. The Jewish Talmud speaks of a Jesus the son of Mary who transgressed the laws of chastity and separated from her husband. The boy being illegitimate, was in disgrace. He went to Egypt where he learned magic, and on returning to Judea, he became a conjurer. At last he was condemned for sorcery and deception and was stoned and hanged. This Jesus, the Talmud says, lived in the reign of Alexander Janucus (106 to 79 B. C.) Celsus, who wrote against Christianity about A. D. 200, refers to this same story. It is also alluded to by later Christian writers, and in the 13th century a part of the story was translated into Latin, and afterwards into German, in the 16th century, by Luther. Again in 1681, Professor Wagenseil found a complete Hebrew version which he translated into Latin. And now a correspondent of the Truth Seeker has for the first time rendered the Latin into English, and it is published in tract form, price 10 cents, with the following title:
“First English translation of the ancient Jewish story of Jesus, who was born at Bethlehem about 106 B. C., being the son of a betrothed maiden named Miriam (Mary) by Joseph Pandera. By the power of a charm stolen from the Holy of Holies he cured lepers, raised the dead, and wrought other miracles. Wherefore he was arrested by the elders of Jerusalem, scourged, crowned with thorns, and by order of the Sanhedrin stoned to death and hanged on the day before the Passover and the Sabbath, in the reign of Queen Alexandra, about the year 75 B. C.
“Death of Simon Kepha on a tower in the city of the Nazarines about 39 B. C. How and why the Romans changed ‘Kepha’ to ‘Petros.’
“Startling evidence that Paul flourished before the middle of the first century B. C., contemporary with the aforesaid Kepha.”
The antiquity of this document is as certain and probably as great as that of our four Gospels. The Rev. John Pye Smith, in a controversy with Robert Taylor, about 1830, claimed it as a crowning proof of the existence of Jesus Christ. J. M. Peebles also refers to it for the same purpose in his, “Jesus, Myth Man or God.” But probably neither of them knew its contents; if they had, they would have seen that the work, if true, proved too much by fixing the time one hundred years too early, thus negativing the whole story of a crucifixion under Pontius Pilate.
Editor's notes