De Zirkoff on Charles Johnston

Boris de Zirkoff · Theosophy and Theosophists Series · 10 pages

Ten pages carrying Boris de Zirkoff's bio-bibliography of Charles Johnston, from his edition of the Collected Writings volume IX, pages 422 to 426. *It is one of a run of short biographies by de Zirkoff in this section*, all built the same way — dates, parentage, education, career, and then the theosophical connection.

Johnston was an Irish Orientalist, theosophist, writer and traveller, born at Ballykilbeg, County Down, on 17 February 1867. His father, William J. Johnston, was member of Parliament for Belfast, a famous Orangeman and a leader of the temperance movement; his mother, Georgina Barbara Hay, was the daughter of a Scottish baronet. He was educated at Derby and at Dublin University, and in August 1888 passed brilliantly the notoriously stiff final examination for the Bengal Civil Service. The theosophical connection is close and familial: soon afterwards he married, in London, Vera Vladimirovna de Zhelihovsky, daughter of Blavatsky's sister by her second marriage, whom he had met while mother and daughter were visiting Blavatsky in London. In October of the same year the couple sailed for India on the same steamer as Colonel Olcott. 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 about two years after arriving. The most memorable passage in the account is one he told a friend: that whenever a particularly bad attack of fever had him in its grip, a yogi would emerge from the depths of the jungle, squat on the veranda near him and smile sympathetically, occasionally discussing philosophy but more often saying nothing — and that the effect of the man's presence was most soothing, seeming always to quiet the fever and make it more endurable. Back in Europe with his Civil Service career at an end, he had to recover his health while making a living without mercantile or professional training; he turned to writing, connecting himself with English journals as a foreign correspondent and contributing to more serious reviews.

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