Judge and de Zirkoff on George Robert Stowe Mead

William Quan Judge, Boris de Zirkoff · Theosophy and Theosophists Series · 11 pages

Eleven pages holding two portraits of the same man. The first is by William Quan Judge, published in The Path volume VIII, January 1894, pages 305 to 306, and republished in Dara Eklund's Echoes of the Orient; the second is de Zirkoff's later note. G.R.S. Mead's translations appear elsewhere on this site — his work with Anna Kingsford's circle and his editions of the Gnostic material — so this file supplies the man.

Judge writes about him as a colleague at work: Mead is General Secretary of the European Section and works day in and day out at the Avenue Road headquarters in London. He was English, born in 1863, son of Colonel R. Mead, late deputy commissioner of Her Majesty's Ordnance — so, as Judge puts it, his childhood was spent among soldiers, sailors, cannon shot, shell, guns and bayonets. Educated mostly at King's School, Rochester, he won a scholarship and a sizarship to Cambridge and went up destined to read mathematics, which was supposed to be his forte; pastors and masters said he must be a wrangler. Instead, in Judge's phrase, he took the bit in his mouth, threw mathematics to the dogs, and read for the Classical Tripos, taking classical honours. Life so far, Judge says, was aimless and creedless, though unconsciously he was looking for something real. Offered a place in an uncle's long-established legal practice, he refused it and taught at a large preparatory school while he looked about him. The turning point is dated exactly: in 1884, coming down from Cambridge, he read Esoteric Buddhism, wrote to Bertram Keightley, saw Mohini, and was put on the track of Hindu philosophy — where, Judge writes, he felt as if at home. He read everything he could find, with no taste for phenomena though he studied those too as a necessity. After three years of teaching he grew restless, entered Oxford as an undergraduate to read for classical honours and take up philosophy, intending to win a fellowship and then come out for theosophy — and after reading fourteen hours a day for five months, rest became necessary.

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