MRS BESANT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22065, 22 September 1933, Page 6

MRS BESANT

Whatever opinions may be held—and they must necessarily be very divergent —regarding the views and aims and controversial methods of Mrs Annie Besant, whose death at an advanced age is announced by cable, there can be no question that she was a remarkable and, if the epithet is permissible, picturesque woman. She played many parts, and in all or most of them she won a notoriety which sometimes verged on the better kind of fame. She started public or semi-public life when she was very young, and was prominent as far back as 1871 in connection with the successful demonstration of the London match-workers against the tax of a halfpenny a box which Robert Lowe, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, wished to impose upon lueifers. Separated (without ground for scandal) from her husband, an English country clergyman, she cooperated for some years with Charles Bradlaugh in a so-called “ social science ” and secularist propagandism which was not without its unsavoury side. But she did not possess the order of temperament which can be permanently controlled by materialistic persuasions. It has been said of Bradlaugh, no doubt with justice, that “ his great defect was a lack of imagination.” Some people might be of opinion that one of Mrs Besant’s chief defects was a too plentiful supply of imagination, and might suggest that she passed too easily from hai’d scepticism to ready credulity. When she joined the Theosophical Society in 1889, Bradlaugh, who was near the close of his career, observed : “ Mrs Besant has adopted a line of thought in which I cannot follow her, but I am convinced that she will always be absolutely sincere.” And indeed, so far as we know, her sincerity has never been challenged even by those who regard some of her doctrines, both political and pseudo-religious, as fantastic and dangerous. Her passionate interest in the theosophical cult led her to take up the study of various problems relating to Indian life and governments —a study for which perhaps she was not entirely suited either by 'temperament or by training. It is not from the Blavatskys and Besants of cloudy mysticism that practical people look for the convincing word on great questions of racial and political import. But whatever her mistakes and "extravagances and delusions may have been, Mrs Besant is likely to live for some time In social history by virtue of her sympathetic verve, her philanthropic earnestness, and her imaginative fervour. ,