Between 21st to 30th December 1899, Swami Vivekananda had given eight lectures and classes at the ‘Home of Truth’ in downtown Los Angeles of which Mr. Bransby was the head. The members associated with the ‘Home’ were not permitted to smoke there. One evening the Swami was invited for dinner along with several other persons who were all opposed to the use of tobacco. After dinner the hostess was absent from the room for a few minutes, when the Swami, perhaps due to his ignorance of the rule about tobacco, took out his pipe, filled it up, and began to puff. The guests were aghast, but kept quiet. When the hostess returned, she asked Swami if God intended men to smoke would he not have furnished the human head with a chimney for the smoke to go out. “But he has given us the brain to invent a pipe,” the Swami said with a smile.
Mr Bransby wrote an article in the Unity magazine mentioning his association with Swamiji :
“The Swami himself looks anything but an ascetic. He reminds one rather of the good hearty monks one reads about as having flourished at the time of the Crusades.”
He mentioned that “there is combined in Swami Vivekananda the learning of a University President, the dignity of an archbishop, with the grace and winsomeness of a free natural child.”
Mr. Bransby too remembered the Christmas Day lecture that the Swami delivered at the ‘Home of Truth’ : “We had a lecture on the Christmas Day from the Swami entitled, ‘Christ’s mission to the world’, and a better one on the subject I never heard. No Christian minister could have presented Jesus as a character worthy of the greatest reverence more eloquently or more powerfully than did this learned Hindoo.”
Interestingly, Mr Bransby, after about thirty-five years, again shared his memories of the Swami which, it appears, did not fade with passage of time : “The Swami spoke with great charm and spirit. He spoke as one having authority; as one who had an inexhaustible reservoir of knowledge to draw from. Speaking in a language not native to him he manifested a fluency seldom, if ever, attained by those whose natural speech is English. The first time at the Stimsons’ Mansion of Figueroa Street I was introduced to a man who was the embodiment of poise and dignity. Handsomely dressed in black relieved by spotless linen the Swami overwhelmed me by his presence and personality. The next time I called on Swami the conditions were different. Instead of the home of luxury the setting was a small cottage in poor part of the town. The Swami seemed like another man. Gone was the broadcloth – gone the starched collar and cuffs replaced by an orange coloured robe that looked jolly comfortable…He was engaged in the humble pastime of eating roasted peanuts. He avowed with a merry laugh that they would give him indigestion.”
But Mr Bransby, while being an admirer was also a bit conflicted in his outlook towards the Swami. There were occasions when his behaviour or remarks were marked by a sullen streak. He once quipped at the Advaitic idea of one-ness of everything by asking what was the difference between a cabbage and a man if everything were same. Swamiji, ever so sharp in catching the drift of such questions responded : “Stick a knife into your leg and you will know the line of demarcation.”
Alice Hansborough also recalled that one of Mr Bransby’s criticisms was that the Swami was breaking the rules of traditional monasticism by having some of his lectures and courses charged with a fee – this was crucial for him as it was through this only that he intended to raise resources for the recently started Ramakrishna Mission, which hardly had any resources. In this context a noteworthy instance that of those days in Los Angeles could be mentioned. One day Miss MacLeod found the Swami in a depressed mood and upon inquiry, the latter revealed with great sadness, that he had received a letter informing that his brother-disciples back in India did not have enough resources even for their meals. Hearing this, Miss MacLeod told him that she had saved 800 dollars and promptly gave the sum to Swamiji to be sent to the Math.
Thus when Alice shared Bransby’s comment regarding breaking the rules of the Hindu monastic orthodoxy, the Swami, who at that time was chanting something, stopped and smiled. “Yes, it is true”, he said; “But when the rules don’t suit me, I change them.”
It was characteristic of Swamiji to remain unmoved in face of criticism. In this regard Mrs Hansborough recalled an interesting incident which she thought was the finest gesture she ever saw from him. It was in connection with some slander about him, doubtless brought into circulation by his detractors, during his Los Angeles stay. Professor Baumgradt, the gentle polymath, and his wife had come to see him one morning and the subject came up in conversation. They had heard of it but did not think anything about it. Alice recalled : “We were all seated in the dining room except Swamiji, who was walking slowly up and down the room. Finally he said, ‘Well, what I am is written on my brow. If you can read it, you are blessed. If you cannot, the loss is yours, not mine.’”
Alice particularly pointed out the distinctive quality that Swamiji possessed in abundant measure – that was to see positive lying hidden in people. “He seemed to like all people. He was most compassionate; it seemed as if he didn’t see the difference between the duck and a man! He talked, acted, and moved in such a way”, she recalled. “It was clear that he saw everything imbued with God,” she added.
Another incident which Alice Hansborough mentions was when after a lecture or class during which Swamiji had risen to a very high spiritual mood a young man rushed forward and prostrated at his feet, touching him. Swamiji jumped back, as if stung by the touch. “Don’t ever do that,” he exclaimed, admonishing him with vehemence, and repeated “Don’t ever do that again.”
At the beginning of the New Year Swamiji shifted the venue of his lectures to the Payne’s Hall, a block south of the Blanchard Hall. According to Mrs. Hansborough he did that possibly because he did not feel free to speak his mind about metaphysical ideas with the ‘Home of Truth’ being the host venue. As the new century arrived, Swamiji continued to work strenuously as it is evident that from 2nd to 8th January, he gave nine lectures and classes – five morning classes and two lectures at the Payne’s Hall including powerful and now well-known ones titled ‘Work and its Secret’, ‘The Open Secret’, and ‘Powers of the Mind’, and two lectures about India at the Blanchard Hall titled ‘India and its People’ and ‘History of India.’
But the most famous lecture of this time was delivered at the Payne’s Hall, most likely at the demand of many who had missed the Christmas Day lecture at the ‘Home of Truth’. This lecture titled in ‘The Complete Works’ as ‘Christ’s Message to the World’ was delivered on 7th January. Here he emphasised on the supreme divine power that flowed through that great teacher. “The best commentary on the life of a great teacher is his own life”, he said. “He was a soul – nothing but a soul, working a body for the good of humanity; and that was all his relation to the body. The ideal may be far beyond us, but never mind, keep to the ideal. Let us confess that it is our ideal, but we cannot approach it yet. It does not matter at all whether the New Testament was written five hundred years of his birth, nor does it matter even, how much of that life is true. But there is something behind it, something we want to imitate. There must have been a nucleus, a tremendous power that came down, a marvellous manifestation of spiritual power – and of that we are speaking.”
But something happened after this lecture, which possibly altered his plan of work in downtown Los Angeles and caused him to move his work to the northern suburb of Pasadena. Mrs Hansborough, a participant and witness to this incident, has recalled it as follows : “The lecture drew a tremendous crowd. More than a hundred people were turned away. The Mr. Blanchard for whom the hall where Swamiji gave his first lecture was named, was present at this one, and the size of the audience was not lost on him. When Swamiji had finished, Mr Blanchard, came up to me on the platform, where Swamiji was talking to some people. ‘I would like to make some money out of this man – for him as well as for myself,’ he said. ‘Could I announce to the audience now that he will speak next Sunday at Blanchard Hall?’ I told him I could not give him such permission. He then went to Miss MacLeod, who did give him permission. So while Swamiji was still there, Mr. Blanchard announced from the platform that Swami Vivekananda would speak the following Sunday at Blanchard Hall, and that the admission would be ten cents. Mind you, there had been no admission charge at this lecture.
“When Swamiji heard this announcement, he turned and asked who gave the man permission to make it. Somehow Miss MacLeod crawled out of it, and Swamiji turned on me. He was thoroughly annoyed and looked quite angry. He said the man should not have been allowed to make such an announcement. And he could not be persuaded to give the lecture at Blanchard Hall. He pointed out that he had had no end of trouble trying to get rid of people who wanted to make money out of him. We learned later more than one hundred people went to Blanchard Hall nevertheless, and waited on the steps.”
The false announcement leading to public inconvenience resulted in breaking the momentum of the work in Los Angeles area. The Swami did not deliver any more lectures in downtown Los Angeles, barring just one more on the day following the Christ lecture. He had planned a course of lectures on Raja Yoga but after what was supposed to be the first of the series, he dropped the course. “Well I am very sorry to announce that for several reasons it has been thought best to drop this course of lectures altogether; so of this course, this is the first and the last. I am very thankful to you for all your kindness and am sorry that it should have to be dropped, but it has to be and there is no way out.”
The Swami always knew he had a message to deliver and he would do it in his own fashion. Mrs. Hansborough recalled this ever-present streak in Swamiji :
“In connection with the work, I always saw him before and after the lectures and classes. I remember one evening when we were going home after a lecture, he asked me how I had liked it. He had been very outspoken that evening in criticism of the West, and I said that I had enjoyed the lecture but feared that he sometimes antagonised his audience. He smiled as if that meant nothing to him. “Madam,” he said, “I have cleared whole halls in New York!”
She also mentioned that it was always quite a challenging task to note Swamiji’s lectures. Some of his lectures were taken down by Mr Bagley, the nephew of Mrs. John J. Bagley with whom Swamiji had stayed in Detroit in 1894 who said Swamiji was “very hard to follow.” Then was one Miss McClary, who followed Swamiji everywhere. About Ms McClary, Mrs. Hansborough would recount a funny incident, which was actually a common experience the Swami had to face in the West, so much so, that he began to tackle it in his own masterful way :
Miss McClary once asked Swamiji if it were true that Hindu mothers threw their babies into the Ganges because they did not want them. He answered, “Yes, Madam, but I was one who escaped.’” After a moment he added, “Nowadays all the babies are born of men.”
The Swami had faced this question on multiple occasions right from his first visit to America. And this led him to add wit to his sharpness in responding to this utterly inane question. In 1894, in Detroit, he was asked why only females were given to the crocodiles, he had answered, “Probably they are softer and more tender and can be more easily masticated.”
Once again he said, “I was such a fat little baby that the crocodiles refused to swallow me. Whenever I feel bad about being a fat monk, I think of how I was saved from crocodiles and am comforted.”
When the same question was asked in Minneapolis, he responded, alluding to a Biblical myth, “Yes, madam, they threw me in, but like your fabled Jonah, I got out again.”
Later, during his visit to the Bay Area of Northern California, a woman asked him in a lecture he delivered in Oakland, “Is it true Swami? I have heard you throw new-born babies into the Ganges.” The Swami replied, “Madam, we have heard that at Thanksgiving you serve new-born babies!”
If such displays of wit were seen while the Swami responded to stupid questions that were born out of complete ignorance about matters related to India, there would be occasions – and they were in plenty – when he charmed everyone through employing a more mild variety of humour. During a lecture in Los Angeles a woman abruptly interrupted him while he was speaking saying, “Swami, who is that supports monks in your country? There are so many of them, you know.” It took a flash for the Swami to reply : “The same who support the clergy in your country madam – the women!” The audience laughed and the Swami proceeded with the lecture in his unruffled manner.
Amusements and Excursions around Los Angeles
On the evening of Saturday, December 23rd, Swamiji along with Professor Baumgardt, Miss Macleod, and Alice Hansborough, went to watch a play at the Los Angeles Theatre on the city’s Broadway. This was no ordinary play. The central theme of this play, a farce-comedy, was lionising of a celebrated Indian monk by New York’s high society – doubtless modelled on Swamiji’s earlier stay in New York during hiis first visit. The play had successfully opened in New York in 1896, exactly around the time Swamiji was there and had also run in other parts of America as well as in England. Mrs Hansborough recounted that the “play was really very funny, and Swamiji enjoyed it hugely. Professor Baumgardt said he had never seen anyone laugh so hard or so much as Swamiji did.”
One might mention that Swamiji also went to watch a vaudeville, which was then the most popular form of entertainment in the United States, referring to a variety of short unrelated performances by singers, dancers, acrobats, fancy bicyclists, trained dogs, jugglers, dramatic artists of all sorts, and magicians. What brought this about was the personal invitation of a 16-year old girl who was a performer in the vaudeville. The girl and her mother had attended Swamiji’s lectures in London three years back and had had a deep impress upon their minds. Such an affectionate invitation Swamiji could not have declined.
After the discontinuation of the practical Raja-Yoga lectures in the second week of January, Swamiji was left with some more spare time which his earlier packed engagements of classes and lectures hardly gave. Hence eked by Miss Macleod and her elder sister Betty Leggett, Swamiji also went on a couple of excursions.
The first one, on 13th January, was to Mount Lowe, originally called Oak Mountain, a 5600 feet summit on the southern fold of the mountainous range of San Gabriel, about seventy miles north-east of Los Angeles. The peak was renamed after Professor Thaddeus S.C. Lowe, who was the first person to set foot on the peak and plant the American flag there. He was instrumental in building the Mount Lowe Railway in 1896 which was a great engineering marvel considering the challenging incline it had to negotiate and no wonder the feat became hugely celebrated. The man after whom the peak was named and who had resolved to take the railway up the peak was himself a fascinatingly accomplished man, and it would not be out of place to speak about him in some detail here.
Thaddeus Lowe (1832-1913), was an American Civil War aeronaut, scientist and inventor, who had largely been an autodidact, tutoring himself in the fields of chemistry, meteorology, and aeronautics, and a pioneer of military aerial reconnaissance in the United States. In July 1861, i.e. during the American Civil War, Lowe was appointed Chief Aeronaut of the Union Army Balloon Corps by President Lincoln.
He is most famous for the Lowe’s process (named after him), a method he designed in 1873, by which large amounts of hydrogen gas could be produced from steam and coke for residential and commercial use in heating and lighting. This gas provided a more efficient heating fuel than the common coal gas, or coke gas, which was then used in municipal service. He was also able to run successful businesses in cold storage, as well as products which operated on hydrogen gas. These patents and ice making machines made him a millionaire and subsequently he relocated to Southern California, building himself a mansion in Pasadena. He opened several ice-making plants and founded Citizen’s Bank of Los Angeles.
While Prof. Lowe was in Pasadena he joined hands with David J. Macpherson, a Canadian civil engineer, specialising in railway engineering, and their common dream of taking rail up the San Gabriel range led to the incorporation of the Pasadena & Mount Wilson Railroad Company in 1891. The railway opened on July 4, 1893, the day of national independence.
It was on this funicular railway which originated from the foothills, a day after his 37th birthday, that Swamiji with his friends – Professor and Mrs. Baumgardt, Mrs. Leggett and Miss MacLeod travelled. They were brought to the hotel, the celebrated Echo Mountain House having 70 rooms, also built by Prof. Lowe.
It is interesting to know that Swamiji was one of the last few visitors to the hotel as just three weeks after his stay it got burned down in a kitchen fire. The smoke of the burning hotel could be seen from Pasadena for many hours and was a major newspoint of the time and a spectacle for residents of Pasadena.
The Mount Lowe Observatory had a huge telescope, not a common thing then, and it is certain that Swamiji and his friends had a view of the stars from there. They spent the night at hotel. The hotel took the advantage of the presence of its illustrious guest and arranged for him to deliver a talk in the morning. After the lecture, Swamiji and his party, boarded a small trolley car which took them up the mountains. The three and half mile ride offered beautiful views of canyons and ravines and brought them to Alpine Tavern. Another mile from the Tavern was the summit of Mount Lowe.
The Mount Lowe remained a much visited location and still features in the National Register of Historical Places.
After the excursion to Mount Lowe Swamiji went on a trip to Redlands on 16th January, accompanied by Miss MacLeod and Mrs. Leggett. It was a day visit only and he returned to Pasadena to deliver a lecture in the evening. Redlands was a small town some seventy miles east of downtown Los Angeles. It, then was a much sought out place in Southern California. They had lunch at the grand and famous Casa Loma Hotel, which was an important social and cultural centre, and honoured by the visits of several United States Presidents. The group also visited the Canyon Crest Park, considered to be a horticultural splendour.
The Swami found the atmosphere in Los Angeles to be very India-like and remarked that it was very ‘restful’.
▶Next Chapter: Work begins in Pasadena