The Shocking Bolter: Lady Idina Sackville
Catherine Wathen – USA
Theosophy was highly influential in the early twentieth century among upper-class Britons. That influence is alluded to in a new biography of one of the most scandalous members of the time and class: Lady Idina Sackville (1893-1955). The biography, by Lady Idina’s great-granddaughter, Frances Osborne, is entitled The Bolter (New York: Knopf, 2009). The title is an allusion to the fact that Lady Idina had five husbands from whom she bolted whenever a new male caught her fancy. Note that it was not Idina who was influenced by Theosophy, but her mother and some others of her kith and kin!
Ms Osborne is unfortunately badly informed about Theosophy and so makes a number of wrong generalizations about it. Those errors have, in the interest of faithful quotation, been left in the following extracts from the book. But readers of Theosophy Forward will know that, pace Ms Osborne, Theosophy is not “a religion,” but a spiritual philosophy; it is not a “cult” (which is a dismissive term for religious bodies one does not like); it is considerably more than a combination of Hinduism and Buddhism; and it certainly has nothing to say about a “God” that one can communicate with. A number of simple factual errors have been omitted from the following quotations or simply passed over to save the need for correcting them. But here, with various of its misconceptions and factual errors, are some of the book’s observations about Theosophy among the flappers of the Jazz age:
“[Idina’s mother] Muriel then took to a new religion. Her mother had brought her up to pursue two things: the vote for women and scientific knowledge. Muriel now made her own mark by breaking away from the latter dramatically. She took up with an Irishwoman called Annie Besant, who was in the process of attempting to overturn almost every convention she encountered. Besant, who had long been separated from her own husband, had been an advocate of Marxism, then social democracy. She had organized a groundbreaking strike by the young women working for the match manufacturer Bryant and May, in which she succeeded in helping them improve their pay and conditions. She had then been put on trial for publishing a book advocating birth control. She was freed on appeal, but the court case had lost her her own children; full custody of them was given to her estranged husband. She then published a book, The Law of Population. This also argued for birth control, and declared that abundant recreational sex within a marriage was healthy for women.
Harry's specific quest in this book is to save Sirius, who was James Potter's best friend and is Harry’s godfather. Harry achieves this quest by using the Patronus Charm and by establishing harmony with the hippogriff Buckbeak. The Patronus [Latin for “protector, defender, patron”] is a silvery form projected by a wizard and embodying hope, happiness, and wellbeing to counteract the effects of Dementors, who drain all joy and happiness from others. (Dementia is "mental deterioration and emotional apathy" with no known cure; it includes Alzheimer's and has been called "the greatest medical challenge of the 21st Century.") The Dementors are faceless beings, having only a mouth with which they suck the soul, sense of self, and memory out of their victims, leaving them as the living dead. Harry at first has great difficulty with this very advanced charm, but finally, when he himself is attacked by Dementors, sees a familiar-looking figure in the distance working it perfectly to scatter the threatening Dementors. At first he thinks the figure is his father. But later he realizes the figure was actually himself when he had used the Time-Turner to come back to save Buckbeak and Sirius. As a result, he can use the charm consciously and effectively, having discovered his own positive force.
