Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

by Charles Johnston

I first met dear old “H. P. B.,” as she made all her friends call her, in the spring of 1887. Some of her
disciples had taken a pretty house in Norwood, where the huge glass nave and twin towers of the Crystal
Palace glint above a labyrinth of streets and terraces. London was at its grimy best. The squares and
gardens were scented with grape-clusters of lilac, and yellow rain of laburnums under soft green leaves.
The eternal smoke-pall was thinned to a gray veil shining in the afternoon sun, with the great
Westminster Towers and a thousand spires and chimneys piercing through. Every house had its
smoke-wreath, trailing away to the east.  (more . . .)