Foul Conspiracies and Blatant Lies against Madame Blavatsky

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Down to Earth Series · 8 pages

A letter to Light of 10 August 1889, reprinted in Blavatsky Collected Writings XI. Its framing device is the run of initials: that three persons bearing the letter C — Colenso, Coues and Coulomb — had a malevolent influence on her and on the Theosophical movement. She opens by putting the blame for her frequent appearance in the paper's columns on the editor rather than herself, since he cannot expect to fill Light week after week with malicious and false statements about her and find her leaving them uncontradicted.

The distinction she draws about what she will tolerate is the most quotable thing in the file, and is worth having when reading the rest of her polemical writing: that she does not object to any amount of even unfair criticism within the limits of fact and truth, but does not choose to submit to being lied about in every issue. On the legal position she is sardonic — that if Colenso's false statements escape the law of libel, and she is not sure they do, it is because in a country of paradoxes a libel has to contain truth and fact to become one, so that the more true it is the more it is held libellous. She then declines to dwell on the individual charges, which is itself the point: the letter is about the pattern, not the particulars.

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