Very kind Sinnett Sahib — many thanks and salaams for the tobacco-machine. Our frenchified and pelingized Pandit tells me the little short thing has to be cooloted — whatever he may mean by this — and so I will proceed to do so. The pipe is short and my nose long, so we will agree very well toge[ther] I hope. Thanks — many thanks.
The situation is more serious than you may imagine and we will want our best forces and hands to work at pushing away bad luck. But our Chohan willing and you helping we will scramble out somehow or another. There are clouds which are below your horizon and K.H. is right — the storm is threatening. Could you but go to Bombay to the Anniversary68 you would confer upon K.H. and myself a great obligation, a lasting one — but that you know best. This meeting will be either the triumph or the downfall of the Society and a — gulf. You are wrong too about the Peling Sahib69 — he is as dangerous as a friend as an enemy, very very bad as both — I know him best. Anyhow you Sinnett Sahib reconciled me to a good many things; you are true and true I will be.
Yours always
M.
Letter No. 25 (ML-73) October, 1881
This concerns the letter which the Mahatma K.H. had apparently dictated to Damodar before he left on his retreat, and which Damodar garbled.
Mr. Sinnett — you will receive a long letter — posted Sunday at Bombay —
from the Brahmin boy.70 Koot-hoomi went to see him (as he is his chela) before going into "Tong-pa-ngi"71 — the state in which he now is — and left with him certain orders. The boy has a little bungled up the message so be very careful before you show it to Mr. Hume lest he should again misunderstand my Brother's real meaning. I will not stand any more nonsense, or bad feeling against him, but retire at once.
We do the best we can.
M.
Letter No. 26 (ML-102) October, 1881
Sinnett had apparently questioned the Mahatma M. about the possibility of altering the letter from Damodar so that Hume could see it (see Letter No. 25 [ML-73]). It isn't clear whether Sinnett had yet received the letter or whether it was still in the possession of the Mahatma.
Received Simla, 1881.
My dear young friend, I am sorry to differ from you in your last two points. If he72 can stand one sentence of rebuke he will stand far more than what you would have me alter. Ou tout ou rien—73 as my frenchified K.H. taught me to say. I have thought your suggestion No. 1 — good and have fully adopted it, hoping that you will not refuse some day to give me lessons of English. I had "Benjamin"74 stick a patch in the page, and made him forge my calligraphy while smoking a pipe on my back. Not having the right to follow K.H. I feel very lonely without my boy. Hoping to be excused for writing, and refusal, I trust you will not shrink from telling the truth, if need be, even in the face of the son of "a member of Parliament." You have too many eyes watching you to afford making mistakes now.75
M.
Letter No. 27 (ML-101) October, 1881
Perhaps, again, Sinnett had made a suggestion about really altering the letter which Damodar had written.
Received Simla, 1881.
Your letter received. I believe you had better try and see whether you could not make your ideas less polemical and dry than his. I begin to think there may be some stuff in you, since you are able so to appreciate my beloved friend and brother. I have attended to the Brahmin boy's letter and erased the offensive sentence, replacing it with another. You can now show it to the Maha Sahib; him so proud in his bakbak76 humility and so humble in his pride. As for phenomena you will have none — I have written through Olcott. Blessed is he who knows our Koothoomi and blessed is he who appreciates him. What I now mean you will understand some day. As for your A.O.H. I know him better than you ever will.
M.
Letter No. 28 (ML-74) October, 1881
Apparently, Sinnett had received the letter and he asked where the correction had been made. The Mahatma satisfies his curiosity.
If you are so anxious to find out the particular spot where I erased and precipitated instead another sentence last night at post-office I can satisfy your curiosity, Mr. Sinnett, "but that it was the Chohan's KNOWLEDGE that neither you nor anyone cared for the real object of the Society, nor had any respect for the BROTHERHOOD but only a personal feeling for a few of the Brothers. So you cared only for K.H. personally and phenomena; Mr. Hume to get at the secrets of their philosophy and to assure himself that the Tibetan Mahatmas — the Lhas — if at all existing outside of Mme. B.'s imagination — were connected any way with certain adepts he had in his mind."
All this is what K.H. said, what I had to write and precipitate instead of that which stood then written by the boy in a phraseology which would have called out from Mr. Hume a whole torrent of fine words and the word "ignorance" applied to my Brother. I would not have even the desert wind listen to a word said at low breath against him who now sleeps. Such is the cause of the tamasha produced by me and for no other cause.
Yours
M.
Letter No. 29 (ML-29) October, 1881
This is the Mahatma M.'s longest letter, addressed to both Sinnett and Hume.
In its issue of September 3, 1881, The Saturday Review, an English Spiritualist publication, attacked H.P.B. and Olcott as "unscrupulous adventurers." Hume wrote an article in their defense, apparently ignored by The Saturday Review but later published in the December 1881 and January 1882 issues of The Theosophist. In this article, Hume referred to letters to H.P.B. from her uncle, Major Gen. H. Fadeev and from Prince Dondoukoff Korsakoff. We come a bit later to H.P.B.'s own mention of these letters which helped to establish her identity at a time when she was being accused of being a Russian spy, an adventuress, and so on. It may have been this article by Hume which occasioned the Mahatma' s sense of obligation to him. The Mahatma himself says that he regards the debt of gratitude as so sacred "that I now do for her sake, what I might have refused doing even for the Society."