Free Madame Blavatsky: The Woman Behind the Myth by Marion Meade

the age of thirteen, her defenses seemed to be reinforcing each other and pulling her even further from facing the problem. Now, instead of roussalkas and invisible children, she saw an adult male—handsome, virile, wise, protective and... invisible. A psychiatrist might have contended that she had devised a father figure, but Helena had a completely different interpretation of the events that began to take place.
    The first of these incidents happened before the family portraits in the reception hall of the governor’s mansion. One particular painting, hung far up near the ceiling and covered by a curtain, intrigued Helena, but when she asked to see it, she was refused. Waiting until the room was empty, she dragged a table over to the wall, set a smaller table on it, then placed a chair atop both. Mounting this unstable platform, she leaned one hand against the dusty wall and jerked aside the curtain with the other. The movement threw her off balance and as she began to fall, she felt herself losing consciousness.
    When she awakened she found herself lying on the floor, unhurt. The tables and chair were back in their usual places, and the curtain again covered the portrait. Had she not left a hand print on the dusty wall, she might have thought she had dreamed the whole incident. To Helena, this was evidence of the intervention of supernatural agencies, capable of coming to her aid during times of crisis.
    A similar kind of rescue occurred during the summer that she turned fourteen. A horse that she was riding in her usual reckless style suddenly bolted, and she fell with her foot entangled in the stirrup. Under normal circumstances, she might easily have been killed. But there was what she described as “a strange sustaining power” 44 around her that seemed to hold her up in defiance of gravity, and the horse was mysteriously brought under control.
    Both of these episodes happened at times when Helena Petrovna was engaged in some activity for which she could have expected a scolding. Obviously, such fine distinctions between good and bad behavior were not important to her invisible guardian.
    Even after living with her grandparents for three years she never gave up on Peter von Hahn. In 1886, looking back on that summer of 1845, when she became fourteen, she wrote that “father brought me to London to take a few lessons of music.”
     
Took a few later also—from old Moscheles. Lived with [von Hahn] somewhere near Pimlico... Went to Bath with him, remained a whole week, heard nothing but bell-ringing in the churches all day. Wanted to go on horseback astride in my Cossack way; he would not let me and I made a row I remember and got sick with a fit of hysterics. He blessed his stars when we went home; travelled two or three months through France, Germany and Russia. In Russia our own carriage and horses making twenty-five miles a day. 45
     
    There was, however, another version of the reunion with her father. 46
    That summer, according to Vera’s diary, von Hahn visited his children for the first time since his wife’s death. They were shocked to find they had difficulty recognizing him because he had aged so considerably. According to Helena’s account of the events, Peter immediately whisked her away, leaving Vera and Leonid behind, even though in reality a journey from Saratov to London would have meant a major sacrifice of von Hahn’s time and money. Helena boasted that he thought enough of her musical ability to arrange for lessons with Ignaz Moscheles, the renowned conductor, composer and teacher of Mendelssohn. Actually, her studying with Moscheles that summer would not have been impossible, since he had in fact returned from Germany in March, 1845, to conduct the London Philharmonic.
    Despite that, Helena’s lessons fall into the same fantasy category as her later boast to Henry Olcott that, while in London, she played a charity concert with Clara Schumann and Arabella Goddard, performing a Schumann piece