Quotes:Johnston, Charles

Zirkoff, Boris

Johnston, Charles. Irish Orientalist, Theosophist, writer and traveller, b. at Ballykilbeg, County Down, Ireland, Feb. 17, 1867. His father was William J. Johnston, member of Parliament for Belfast, a famous Orangeman and leader of the Temperance Movement. His mother was Georgina Barbara Hay, daughter of Sir John Hay, a Scottish Baronet, of Park, Scotland. He was educated at Derby, England, and later at Dublin University. In August, 1888, he took and passed brilliantly his final examination, notoriously “stiff,” for the Bengal Civil Service. Soon after, he married in London Vera Vladimirovna de Zhelihovsky, daughter of H. P. B.’s sister, Mme. Vera Petrovna de Zhelihovsky, by her second marriage, whom he had met while mother and daughter were staying in London visiting H. P. B. In October of the same year, Charles Johnston and wife sailed for India on the same steamer with Col. Henry S. Olcott, arriving at their destination in November. Stationed in an unhealthy district, Johnston contracted jungle fever, and, after visiting Bombay, Madras, Calcutta and Allahabad, became so ill that he was officially invalided home some two years after his arrival. At one time he told a friend of his about a yogi who used to emerge from the depths of the jungle whenever a particularly bad attack of fever had him in its grip. He said that the yogi would squat on the veranda, near him, and smile sympathetically, occasionally discussing philosophy, but more often saying nothing; and that the effect of this man’s presence was most soothing and helpful, seeming always to quiet the fever and make it more endurable.

On his return to Europe, his Civil Service career at an end, Johnston’s first effort had to be to recover his health while somehow making a living, which must have been quite difficult without either mercantile or professional training. He tried to become a professional writer, and succeeded in connecting himself with some English journals, to which he sent letters on foreign news. He also contributed to more serious reviews, articles on ethnological, political and economic subjects. Employed in this capacity, he 423 and his wife travelled extensively throughout Europe for the next six years, staying in various places in England, Holland, Belgium, Germany, Austria and France; they also visited H. P. B.’s nearest kin in Russia, and lived for some time in Salzburg, where Dr. Franz Hartmann helped Johnston finally to get rid of his fever.

It was in 1885 that Johnston joined the Theosophical Society, and in the Spring of 1887 met H. P. B. in London, where she had just moved from Ostende. Regarding this, he writes:

“I had been first introduced to her by reading A. P. Sinnett’s Occult World in November, 1884, and Esoteric Buddhism in the following spring; and had been completely convinced of the truth of her message, of the reality of the Masters, and of her position as Messenger of the Great Lodge. This conviction was tested by the attack made on her by the Society for Psychical Research in London, in June, 1885, when I made a vigorous protest in H. P. B.’s defence. ... I was in London for Indian Civil Service examinations, and was able to make arrangements through these friends to visit her. When I entered the room, she was sitting writing, with her back to the door. She turned to greet me, the powerful face lit up by a smile in the great blue eyes, her hair light golden brown, naturally waved or rippled, and parted and drawn back.

“She was at work on the first volume of The Secret Doctrine, which came out at the end of 1888; we talked about some of the ideas it contained, and such was the immense generosity of her nature that she never made her visitor feel young, ignorant, inexperienced. There was an unconscious, whole-hearted humility about her, as rare as it was beautiful. One was always aware of the largeness and dignity of H. P. B.’s nature, yet there was nothing stilted or artificial about it. When at Lansdowne Road in the summer of 1888, whither she had moved from Maycot with her loyal friends, she stood behind my chair at lunch, stroking my hair and accusing me of using a tallow candle-end to keep it smooth,—there was not the least lapse from dignity: it was the humour of a good-natured Titan.

“An immense feeling of power surrounded her; it was like being in a room with a tremendously active volcano, though eruptions—and there were eruptions—had less to do with that impression of power than had the steadily maintained force that was present in everything she did,—was present equally when she seemed to be doing nothing....

“In talking to her, one had always the sense of power, wisdom, integrity, humour. But at rare intervals there was a notable change. It was as though a door had opened within her, a door into the infinite worlds. One had a sense of a greater than H. P. B. speaking, a tremendous authority and force.

424 “I once asked her what her own experience was during such visitations. She said that it was as if she stepped out and stood at one side, listening, keenly interested, fully remembering afterwards all that was said. ‘Nothing of the medium about it!’ she added.”

In October, 1896, Johnston and his wife moved permanently to the U.S.A., where he became a citizen in 1903. Here, as in Europe, he made his living by contributing to various magazines and journals; he wrote book reviews on Oriental and philosophical subjects for the New York Times, from 1917 on. In 1908 he was special lecturer in political economy at the University of Wisconsin. He lectured also at Cooper Union, and for the New York Board of Education, and at one time taught at the Russian Seminary. He was a member of the American Oriental Society, and during the years 1918-19 was a Captain of the Military Intelligence Division of the U.S. Army. A great lover of nature and science, he was especially interested in ornithology, and was a valued member of the Linnaean Society. Towards the close of his life, he was one of the Editors of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Charles Johnston became a widower in 1922 or 1923, when his wife Vera passed away (she was born in 1864). She was buried in the small churchyard of the Old St. David’s Church (Episcopal), at Radnor, Penna., where the grave is marked by a white stone with her name on it. Mrs. Vera V. Johnston’s signal contribution to the Theosophical Cause was an English translation of the greater part of Part I of H. P. B.’s Russian serial story entitled From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan. It is a good translation as far as it goes, but it is only a partial one, with many passages eliminated for some unknown reason.

Charles Johnston suffered from a heart ailment for about a year before he died. He passed away October 16, 1931, at St. Luke’s Hospital, New York. Services were held at the Chapel of the Comforter, New York, by Rev. Dr. Clarence C. Clark. The body was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in New York. Charles Johnston was survived at the time by two sisters, one in Ireland and another, Mrs. Samuel Brew, in British Columbia. The Johnstons had no children.

The New York Times, in an obituary notice, stated that Charles Johnston was “at one time identified with the Theosophical Movement.” This gem of an understatement has reference to the 46 years of his sixty-four years of life, during which he was dynamically engaged in the work of the Theosophical Movement, 425 having joined the Society when only 18 years of age. While a student at Dublin University, he had as friends a notable group of young Irishmen, including the poets W. B. Yeats and G. W. Russell (Æ), who shared his enthusiastic interest in Theosophy. With them, and backed by the encouragement of William Quan Judge, he collaborated in the formation of the Dublin Theosophical Society in April, 1886. His dynamic efforts on behalf of the Movement spanned therefore close to half a century. The leaven of his work, his particular genius and gift, especially as an Orientalist and linguist, remain a permanent portion of the Movement, an integral part of that “corner stone, the foundation of the future religions of humanity,” which was laid down by H. P. B. and her Teachers.

The first strictly Theosophical essay of Charles Johnston’s, entitled “The Second Wave,” was published as the leading article in The Theosophist, Vol. VIII, December, 1886, when the author was but nineteen years of age. It was succeeded by 15 other essays in the same Journal. He contributed 27 articles to Lucifer, five of which comprised his first translations from the Upanishads, and eight half-pages of translated aphorisms. He wrote 15 articles for The Irish Theosophist, 20 for The Path and 8 for Theosophy, which was published for two years following the original ten volumes of The Path. In November, 1893, William Q. Judge enlisted him for the task of translating systematically and commenting upon, the Upanishads and the writings of Samkaracharya, for the benefit of the American Oriental Department Papers, which Mr. Judge had inaugurated as early as February, 1891. Johnston supplied these Papers with 53 translations from the Sanskrit. Another 53 contributions have been identified in The Theosophical Forum, 26 of which were translations. In addition to the above, he contributed 242 articles and essays to the pages of the Theosophical Quarterly, founded by C. A. Griscom in New York in 1903 (Vols. 1-35, July, 426 1903—October, 1938). All of his Theosophical writings were a voluntary contribution to the Cause he loved so well.

The Theosophical and Oriental writings from the pen of Charles Johnston which are known to have been published in book-form are as follows: The Theosophy of the Upanishads. London and Benares: Theos. Publ. Society, 1896. 203 pp.—From the Upanishads. Dublin: Whaley, 1896; 2nd ed., Portland, Maine: Thos. B. Mosher, 1897. 60 pp.; 3rd ed., ibid., 1913. 69 pp.—The Memory of Past Births. 5th ed., New York: The Metaphysical Publ. Co., 1899. 55 pp.—Karma, ibid., 1900. 56 pp.—The Song of Life. Flushing: The Author, 1901. 69 pp.; also New York: The Quarterly Book Dpt., 1910.—The Parables of the Kingdom. New York: Quart. Book Dpt., 1909. 31 pp.—The Bhagavad-Gītā (The Song of the Master), 1908; also publ. serially in the Theos. Quarterly.—The Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali. New York: The Author, 1912. 119 pp.—The Great Upanishads. New York: Quart. Book Dpt.: Vol. I, 1927. ix, 245 pp.; Vol. II, published later.—The Crest-Jewel of Wisdom, orig. publ. in the Oriental Department Papers; also pub. by The Theos. University Press, Covina, Calif., 1946, 163 pp., together with several other Oriental Scriptures in translation, and several of Johnston’s essays from the Orient. Dpt. Papers and Judge’s Path magazine.

Of the non-theosophical works of Charles Johnston mention should be made of the following: Kela-Bai: An Anglo-Indian Idyll. New York: Doubleday & McClure Co., 1900. 106 pp.—Ireland, Historic and Picturesque. Philadelphia: H. T. Coates & Co., 1902. 393 pp.—Ireland Through the Stereoscope. New York: Underwood & Underwood, 1907. 260 pp.—Why the World Laughs. New York & London: Harper & Bros., 1912. 388 pp.—Ireland’s Story. In collaboration with Carita Spencer. Boston & New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1905. 414 pp.; new and enl. ed., ibid., 1923.

Charles Johnston translated from the German Paul Deussen’s The System of the Vedānta, and from the original Russian, What is Art?, by Count Leo N. Tolstoy (1898), and Julian the Apostate, by D. S. Merezhkovsky (1899).

There can be no doubt whatever that Charles Johnston was a first rate scholar in his chosen field of Orientalism, a devoted student of the Ancient Wisdom, a man of high courage, keen sense of humour, and steadfast aspirations, and an indefatigable worker for the dissemination of the ageless wisdom. The modern Theosophical Movement owes him a great debt of gratitude.

Source: Boris de Zirkoff, «H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings», vol. 9, pp. 422-426