Quotes:Keightley, Archibald
Zirkoff, Boris
Keightley, Dr. Archibald (1859-1930). *“A Law of Life: Karma,” Lucifer, Vol. I, September and October, 1887.
Source: Boris de Zirkoff, «H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings», vol. 8, p. 461
Keightley, Dr. Archibald. English Theosophist and physician, one of the most faithful friends of H. P. B., in the London days. He was born in Westmorland, England, April 19, 1859. His father was Alfred Dudley Keightley of Liverpool, brother of Bertram Keightley (vide infra), of Swedenborgian stock. His mother, Margaret Wakefield, belonged to a family of Quakers. He was educated at Charterhouse and in Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he took the degree of B.A., after natural science tripos. He then became a licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians, London (1886), and later a member of the Royal College of Surgeons, and a Master of Arts and Doctor of Medicine of Cambridge. He served his medical apprenticeship at “Bart’s,” in London, which was, in the opinion of many, the best medical school at the time. In later years, from his consulting rooms and home in Brook Street, Grosvenor Square, he carried on a large practice in London, gaining wide experience and an outstanding reputation in chronic cases of all kinds. Subsequently, he passed the necessary examination and qualified as a physician to practise under the laws of the State of New York.
While a student at Cambridge, he became interested in the phenomena of Spiritualism, as indicating the existence of unseen forces in which he instinctively believed. He experimented in alchemy, and studied the mystical and philosophical works he could find in the Library, as well as neo-platonic philosophy. Noticing an advertisement of Sinnett’s Esoteric Buddhism, he bought a copy, eagerly devoured its contents, and obtained an introduction to the author. This was in 1884, and it was in Sinnett’s house that he met William Quan Judge who was then on his way to meet H. P. B., in Paris, before continuing his journey to India. The same year he was admitted, together with his uncle, Bertram Keightley, into The Theosophical Society, by Col. H. S. Olcott himself, who was in London at the time. 428 Archibald Keightley first met H. P. B. at a special meeting of the London Lodge which was held in Mr. Hood’s rooms in Lincoln’s Inn, for the purpose of electing a new President. He writes:
“. . . . The reason for the meeting lay in differences of opinion between Mr. Sinnett on the one hand and Mrs. Kingsford and Mr. Maitland on the other. Colonel Olcott was in the chair and endeavored to adjust the differences of opinion, but without success. By him were seated the contending parties, Mohini M. Chatterji and one or two others, facing a long narrow room which was nearly filled with members of the Society. The dispute proceeded, waxing warm, and the room steadily filled, the seat next to me being occupied by a stout lady who had just arrived, very much out of breath. At the moment someone at the head of the room alluded to some action of Mme. Blavatsky’s, to which the stout lady gave confirmation in the words ‘That’s so.’ At this point the meeting broke up in confusion, everybody ran anyhow to the stout lady, while Mohini arrived at her feet on his knees. Finally she was taken up to the end of the room where the ‘high gods’ had been enthroned, exclaiming and protesting in several tongues in the same sentence, and the meeting tried to continue. However, it had to adjourn itself and so far as I know, it never reassembled. Next day I was presented to Mme. Blavatsky, who was my stout neighbour of the evening. Her arrival was totally unexpected and her departure from Paris was, she told me long afterwards, arranged ‘under orders’ only half an hour before she left. She arrived at Charing Cross without knowing the place of meeting, only knowing she had to attend it. ‘Followed my occult nose,’ she told me, and by this means got from the station to Lincoln’s Inn and found her way to the rooms on foot. . . .”[1]
Other accounts of this meeting differ somewhat from this one, as seems to be the case with many accounts by “eye witnesses.”
Archibald Keightley was then in the midst of his medical studies, and, living outside London, had very little time to spend in visits. So he did not see H. P. B. very often at the time. During the autumn of 1884, however, when H. P. B. returned from Elberfeld to London, she rented rooms in Victoria Road, together with Archibald’s close friends, Mr. and Mrs. A. J. Cooper-Oakley, and he joined their household for a short time prior to H. P. B.’s departure for India. He accompanied H. P. B. and the Cooper-Oakleys as far as Liverpool and saw the steamer leave the docks on the Mersey.
429 Archibald Keightley stood the test of the so-called Hodgson exposure without flinching. He was present at the meetings of the Society for Psychic Research at which the Report was read, and derived from it the impression of a poorly written “detective story.” The only effect produced on his mind was a still greater contempt for circumstantial evidence, hearsay reports, and working hypotheses, than he had before.
In 1887, when H. P. B. was staying at Ostende, Dr. Keightley wrote jointly with a few others, urging her to make her headquarters in London; he made two trips to see her, and on his second trip accompanied her to England, together with Bertram Keightley who had gone over for the same purpose. Both the Keightleys, and later Countess C. Wachtmeister, organized H. P. B.’s household, first at Norwood, and later at 17 Lansdowne Road. This was the time when Archibald Keightley and his uncle Bertram became busily engaged in preparing H. P. B.’s MSS. of The Secret Doctrine for the press, as well as helping her with the magazine Lucifer.
In the Spring of 1888, at H. P. B.’s own request, Dr. Keightley went to the U.S.A., to attend the first Convention of the American Section, T.S., which was held at Chicago. Arriving a little ahead of time, he was able to do some work for the Society on the Eastern Coast of America. Directly after that Convention he returned to Europe. Next year, in 1889, it was again suggested that Dr. Keightley should visit America, but at first H. P. B. was opposed to his doing so. One Sunday night she said so “finally.” At half past six next morning, however, she sent for Dr. Keightley and asked him: “When can you start for America?” “By the next steamer,” he replied. The following Tuesday he sailed, visiting Chicago, Cincinnati, Boston, Washington and Philadelphia, where he first made the acquaintance of his future wife, who was then a widow, Mrs. Julia Campbell Ver Planck. She was obliged to live in Philadelphia for family reasons, but none the less gave most valuable help to W. Q. Judge in editing The Path in New York, besides contributing invaluable articles as “Jasper Niemand” and under other pen-names.[2]
Towards the end of 1890, Dr. Keightley travelled to Australia and New Zealand, accompanied by his sister who was in rather poor health, spending six months in New Zealand. From there he went to San Francisco, visiting the Branches on the Coast 430 lecturing on Theosophy wherever he went. In spite of his devoted care, his sister died, this being one of the greatest sorrows of his life. Crossing the continent, he attended the Boston Convention of 1891, as delegate for the British Section, and returned to England in the summer of that year. H. P. B. had passed away, and his stay in England was but of brief duration. He was soon back in America, marrying Mrs. Ver Planck in the autumn of 1891, and settling in New York, where he practised his profession while giving as much time as he could to lecturing and other work for the Society.[3]
In the Spring of 1893, Dr. and Mrs. Keightley moved to London, where he began to build up a practice which increased steadily as the years passed. He did this, partly to please his aging mother and to be within easy reach of her in Westmorland, and partly because Judge wanted Mrs. Keightley to supervise a department of the work at the headquarters of the Society in London, during the prospective absence of Annie Besant in India. They resided for a while at 17 Avenue Road next door to the headquarters building, but moved away at the time when troubles had started in connection with the so-called “Judge Case,” and great tension arose among the residents at headquarters. Judge found them at Richmond, when he arrived in London in connection with the so-called “trial,” in July, 1894. Dr. Keightley was the foremost of Judge’s representatives at this “trial” and remained loyal to him. Later, after Judge’s return to New York, Dr. Keightley used his home at 62 Queen Ann St., Cavendish Square, where he lived and practised, as an unofficial headquarters for all those in England who had sided with Judge. After the Boston Convention of 1895, when the American Section declared its organizational independence and became the Theosophical Society in America, Dr. Keightley was elected President of this organization in England, July 4-5, 1895, and his home became the official centre for the activities of this Society.
Dr. Keightley continued to hold this post after Judge’s death in 1896, and the election of Ernest T. Hargrove, April 26-27, 1896, as President, to succeed Judge. He was re-elected for another term of office at the Second Annual Convention held in London May 25, 1896. For a while, both Dr. Keightley and his wife gave wholehearted support to Katherine Tingley and her activities, and even came over to the U. S. A., in April, 1897, when she had completed her tour around the world. They attended the Convention held in New York, April 25-26, 1897, and soon after returned to England. In the course of succeeding months various frictions ensued, and Dr. Keightley resigned as President of the English 431 T. S., November 17, 1897, first without giving any reasons whatsoever, but later stating them somewhat vaguely as being due to the inability of performing his duties and adhering at the same time to the principles to which he was dedicated.
After the Convention held by The Theosophical Society in America, at Handel Hall, Chicago, February 18, 1898, when Katherine Tingley launched a new Organization called The Universal Brotherhood and Theosophical Society, Dr. Archibald Keightley and his wife preferred to remain with the small minority which did not accept the new Constitution. They continued for years to be active in that body, in literary and other capacities, contributing many articles to the Theosophical Quarterly, which had been started by C. A. Griscom in New York, in 1903.
In October, 1915, Mrs. Julia Keightley died, after some years of suffering, leaving her husband with many warm friends but without the companionship of anyone with whom he had been associated in the early years of the Movement. As was almost to be expected, Dr. Keightley found his way back to New York, where he settled permanently in 1920, and proceeded to build up yet another practice, and a very successful one.
He passed away on November 18, 1930, at St. Luke’s Hospital, New York, as a result of a heart condition which had caused him much trouble over a period of months. His end came suddenly and apparently without suffering, and his body was cremated on November 20, after a service at the Chapel of the Comforter.
An anatomist such as few are, with an immense experience in medication, open-minded and ready to use Homeopathic, Eclectic, and other remedies, as those of his own school, so long as he found them to be effective, Dr. Keightley was above all “a born healer,” as H. P. B. said of him. His patients loved him for his wonderful kindness, for his sympathy and ready understanding. His knowledge of Theosophy enabled him to act as physician to weary hearts and blighted souls, as much as to diseased bodies. He was not wealthy, but at least half of his time and labour were given for love of his work and of his fellow human beings, without financial recompense. One of the outstanding traits of his character was his profound humility, both in regard to his professional knowledge and his Theosophical services.
When H. P. B. presented him with the two volumes of The Secret Doctrine, as soon as she saw him after their publication, she wrote in the first:
“To Archibald Keightley, a true Theosophist—the friend, helper, brother and occult child, of his true and faithful—through her last aeon—
H. P. Blavatsky∴ February 1st, 1889.”
432
and in the second volume:
“To Archibald Keightley, my truly loved friend and brother, and one of the zealous editors of this work; and may these volumes, when their author is dead and gone, remind him of her, whose name in the present incarnation is
H. P. Blavatsky
“My days are my Pralayas, my nights—my Manvantaras.
H. P. B., Feb. 1, 1889
London.”
SOURCES: Dr. A. Keightley, “Reminiscences of H. P. Blavatsky,” Theosophical Quarterly, New York, Vol. VII, October, 1910, pp. 109 et seq.; E. T. Hargrove, “Archibald Keightley,” ibid., Vol. XXVIII, January, 1931, pp. 289-93; C. Wachtmeister, Reminiscences, etc. (London, 1893), pp. 96-100; Dr. A. Keightley, “In Memoriam,” Lucifer, Vol. VIII, July, 1891, pp. 362-64; and “From Ostende to London,” The Path, New York, Vol. VII, November, 1892, pp. 245-48; “Dr. Keightley Speaks,” reprinted from the New York Times in The Theosophist, Vol. X, July, 1889, pp. 595-601; “Faces of Friends,” The Path, Vol. VIII, Sept., 1893, pp. 177-78; brief items in The Path, Vol. X, Aug., 1895, pp. 165-66; Theosophy (cont. of The Path), Vol. XI, July, 1896, pp. 126; August, 1896, p. 131; November, 1896, p. 255; and Vol. XII, May, 1897, p. 64; June, 1897, p. 126; The Theosophical Forum, New Series, Vol. III, February, 1898, pp. 25-27.
Source: Boris de Zirkoff, «H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings», vol. 9, pp. 427-432
- ↑ Dr. A. Keightley, “Reminiscences of H. P. Blavatsky,” Theosophical Quarterly, New York, Vol. VII, October, 1910.
- ↑ It was to “Jasper Niemand,” i.e., Mrs. Julia Keightley, that W. Q. Judge wrote the letters published first in the pages of The Path, and later in book-form, under the title of “Letters That Have Helped Me.” Their authorship has been wrongly ascribed to different people, including Mrs. Keightley herself.
- ↑ The reader is referred to the biographical account of Julia Ver Planck under Keightley, Julia, in the present Appendix.
Keightley, Dr. Archibald (1859-1930). See Vol. IX, Bibliogr. Index, for comprehensive biographical sketch.
Source: Boris de Zirkoff, «H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings», vol. 11, p. 579