“Hau,” said Goose, in the Siouan custom. He shook hands with General George Armstrong Custer, and sat down. Custer looked every inch a soldier, except that he wore his hair in long curls. He was a young man still, very tall, and erect, and typically carried himself well.[1] Typically. Custer meekly faced Goose. It was a week before their departure on the Black Hill Expedition. Goose, one of the Ree guides engaged in the expedition, had entered Custer’s office in... Read more
RUSSIA’S LEGENDARY LORE XIV. ⸻ “I have never seen anything more beautiful and original than Moscow in all of Europe,” said Charley, admiringly. He and Verochka were strolling through the streets of Moscow with the Zhelikhovskaya sisters, Nadezhda and Elena. “Kreml’ ochen’ krasivyy,” said Charley, purchasing another souvenir print of the city. In the weeks since his arrival, it became his habit to wander endlessly around the Kremlin, studying the history of all the towers, temples, palaces, and... Read more
THE SÉANCE ON CHEYNE ROW XII. ⸻ The masons were busy at No. 24 Cheyne Row, and ladders were up in front of the house when W.T. Stead and his companion from the Pall Mall Gazette turned in from the Embankment. It seemed as if the familiar old house, rendered sacred by its association with Thomas Carlyle, was undergoing a restoration. The address had certainly changed, it used to be No. 5 Cheyne Row.[1] Cheyne Row.[2] ... Read more
EVEN IN NEW ROOMS XIII. ⸻ The S.S. Clyde arrived in Suez on September 15, 1888.[1] Moniya was not sea-sick but had grown restless in the eleven days since leaving Bombay. He was unaccustomed to speaking English, and every passenger in the second saloon (with the exception of Srijut Mazmudar,) was English. When these other passengers tried to engage him in conversation, he could barely follow their remarks (and even when he did understand them, he could not reply.) Moniya... Read more
INTENDED FROM ABOVE XI. ⸻ Colonel Olcott was writing, at a side table. Blavatsky was playing Patience (as she did nearly every evening.) Charley sat opposite her, talking about the East, with Colonel Olcott, who arrived the day before, on August 26, 1888.[1] From Brindisi Olcott had taken the overland route to England, (stopping briefly at the castle of Count Mattei, but Mattei was unavailable.)[2] In the brief time spent together since his arrival, Olcott’s Yankee paternalism won the... Read more
THE REINCARNATION OF E.D. WALKER On April 28, 1890, a telegram was sent to the family of Edward Dwight Walker in Brooklyn. It said that Walker went missing on April 26, but his baggage and effects were still at the Coast Line Hotel in Weldon, North Carolina.[1] Walker’s brother-in-law, Willis Van Valkenburg, “Van” as he was known by friends, arrived in Weldon on May 1, to personally supervise the search.[2] Being a shorthand crime reporter in New York, Van... Read more
ANNA MILLER STABLER & THE HARLEM BRANCH (H.P.B. BRANCH.) Though it did not officially begin until April 1892, the seeds of the H.P.B. Branch (Harlem Branch) were planted on the night of Blavatsky’s death, “a time when the outside world was waiting to see whether Theosophy would die with her or continue to exist.” (Left) Anna Miller Stabler. (Right) 125th Street, west from Seventh Avenue.[1] Anna Miller Stabler, President of the Harlem Branch, was a young... Read more
INDO-GOTHIC YOGA X. ⸻ Colonel Henry Steel Olcott (pronounced all-caught by the natives and all-talk by the Europeans) left the Theosophical Headquarters in Adyar on August 4, 1888. After a two-day journey by train, he was now approaching the new Victoria Terminus in Bombay.[1] He would have celebrated his fifty-sixth birthday two days before he left, but as he was still recovering from an illness, it was more reflection than festivity. The recent letters from William Quan Judge... Read more
PUNK ~ Irvine punching logs in Pensacola, Florida.[1] Irvine’s last job in the South was working as a longshoreman in Pensacola, Florida punching logs in the harbor for a dollar and six “bits” a day. On the beach, amid the wreckage of Hurricane that devastated the coast in the summer of 1906, Irvine met two of the peons in the recent trial involving the Jackson Lumber Company. Aftermath of the “Great Hurricane” 1906. (c/o) UWF Historic Trust.... Read more
GALLAGHER’S HELL ~ The new “Gallagher’s Hell” was a few months old. The old camp, “the scene of the most brutal lawlessness and disorder,” was a mile away. It was deserted in the summer of 1906. “Gallagher’s Hell” was christened in Federal Court by a peon who meant to say, “Gallagher’s Hill.” In any case, it was a more fitting name, for it was more characteristic of Robert ‘the bull of the woods” Gallagher. He was the foreman of the... Read more
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