As the Los Angeles work came to a halt, it was suggested to Swamiji that he should move his work to Pasadena, a suburb about twelve miles from downtown Los Angeles. There he had been in contact with one Mrs Emeline Bowler, a very wealthy woman, who was the President of the Shakespeare Club, an important literary and intellectual circle of the area. Swamiji stayed with Mrs Bowler for a few days, but apparently did not quite enjoy that stay. However, in Pasadena he delivered more than a dozen lectures and classes at the Shakespeare Club, three lectures at the Green Hotel and a few at other locations.
The first lecture Swami delivered in Pasadena was at the Green Hotel. The Green was a very elegant hotel marked out by its splendid Moorish and Roman architecture. There was no charge for admission for these lectures. There are no available transcripts of any of the three lectures he gave there. The titles of only one of them – ‘Bhakti Yoga – the Religion of Love’ is known.
Alice Hansborough remembered one incident from one of the Green Hotel lectures. ‘Professor Baumgradt was talking with some other gentlemen before the lecture began. One of them asked him about Swamiji: “He is a Christianised Hindu, I suppose”. With considerable pride in Swamiji, the Professor replied. “No he is an unconverted Hindu. You are going to hear about Hinduism from a real Hindu.”’
It was in the rooms of the Shakespeare Club that the Vedanta Society of Pasadena was formed. Mrs Hansborough had suggested that but Swamiji had no interest in organizing a society there. “It won’t last,” he had said, Mrs Hansborough recalled. “Nevertheless, we went ahead with the project. He was present at the organization meeting, but as I say, he was not interested in the proceedings. I had drawn up a set of proposed by-laws, in which a proposal was included that each member pledge to contribute to the Society for a period of ten years. Mrs. Bowler objected to this, on the grounds that a member might die during the ten years. I said that would be all right: the deceased member would then be excused from further contributions. This amused Swamiji greatly.”
Mrs. Bowler used to specifically ask that the Swami wear his turban during the lectures – by then he was quite often appearing without it. Once before a lecture Mrs Hansborough asked the Swami, ‘”Do you have to wear the turban?” “Don’t you understand?” he said. “She (Mrs. Bowler) wants the whole show!”‘
Alice Hansborough also recounted, “‘Mrs. Bowler was perhaps overly interested in the financial affairs of Swamiji’s lectures. Later, when I had begun to help Swamiji with arrangements for hall rentals, placing the newspaper advertisements, and so on, she once asked me, ‘How much are you getting for this?’ I told her the truth: ‘The privilege of paying for the halls. And we are not wealthy people, Mrs. Bowler.’” One cannot remain unmoved by the earnest dedication the Mead sisters had for Swamiji’s mission which during his period of stay there, the Meads made their very own mission.
It was during the days of his lecturing in Pasadena that he faced a major confrontation with some present in his audience who were bent upon discrediting him. It was during his well-known lecture titled ‘Women of India’ on 18th January. Mrs Hansborough described the incident in considerable detail : “He did not have a previously announced subject on that occasion. So when he came on the platform he asked the audience what they would like to have him speak on. I noticed several women and a man conferring together, and the man finally stood up and asked if Swamiji would speak on Hindu women. So Swamiji took this as his subject.
“Well, it was clear afterward that the group who had asked for this subject had done so in an attempt to trap Swamiji into saying something that would discredit him. We learned later that they belonged to some group who had missionaries in India. The questions they asked were along the line always taken by those trying to discredit India: the claim of abuse of Indian women, child marriages, early motherhood, and so on.”
Upon reading the transcript of this lecture (given in the Complete Works) one notices that Swamiji was unsparing towards the notions of western superiority that a section of his audience possessed. He roared, “Western people, say what you have to say. This is your day. Onward, go on babes,; have your prattle out. This is the day of the babies, to prattle. We have learnt our lesson and we are quiet. You have a little wealth today and you look down upon us. Well, this is your day. Prattle, babes, prattle – this is the Hindu’s attitude….Says the Hindu, “Yes, we have buried all the old nations of earth and stand here to bury all the new races also, because our ideal is not this world, but the other. Just as your ideal is, so shall you be. If your ideal is matter, matter shalt though be. Behold ! Our ideal is the Spirit. That alone exists. Nothing else exists, and like Him, we live for ever.”
As far as handling of some rather insidious questions was concerned, Mrs. Hansbrough further remembered that Swamiji answered several such directly; then when he saw the direction the questioner was taking, he said “that the relationship between the husband and wife in India, where the basis of marriage was not physical enjoyment, was so entirely different from that of a married couple in the West that he did not think Western people could understand it. As the questioner continued to press him, Swamiji really became angry. It was the only time,” recalled Mrs. Hansborough, “I ever saw him angry on the platform. At one point, to emphasize a statement, he hit his knuckles on the table so hard that I really feared he would break the skin. ‘No, Madam,’ he burst out, ‘that relationship in which children creep into life amidst lust, at night and in darkness, does not exist in India!’
“Finally, the woman openly called him a liar. ‘Madam,’ Swamiji replied, ‘you evidently know more about India than I do. I am leaving the platform; please take it yourself!’ He was thoroughly aroused. We had already gotten up, for we feared anything might happen now, and our only thought was to see him safely out of the building and home. He started up the middle aisle, but the woman with her friends blocked him and tried to continue her argument. Again he told her to take the platform herself. At last we got through, but as I passed her the woman turned on me and exclaimed: ‘You little fool! Don’t you know he hates you?’ I said no, I hadn’t found that out yet. One woman in particular set out to corner him. She started talking about how the English were trying to reform India, and Swamiji simply said: ‘Madam, I am a monk. What do I know about politics?’”
This was the only instance during his second visit to the West when he was confronted in such a way by groups who did not want notions rampant about India in India set right.
‘Skin Paring’ with Mrs Melton
During his stay in Los Angeles, an interesting character named Mrs Melton features in the Swamiji’s story. On the insistence of Miss MacLeod, Swamiji began to undertake a strange type of treatment under this Mrs Melton. This therapy, bordering on the bizarre, was referred to as ‘magnetic healing’. Mrs Melton’s services were prominently advertised in the Los Angeles paper. She was called the woman who had the greatest magnetic power than any other living person in the world. It was also claimed that the vibrations from her hands were ‘as perceptible as from electric battery’. She was hailed as having the ability ‘to cure the most stubborn chronic diseases without medicines or instruments.’ She had come from the Bay Area but was said to be originally hailing from Texas. She spoke in an African dialect. Miss MacLeod was such a strong champion of Miss Melton’s healing prowess, that she later also had her elder sister, Mrs Leggett, visit Los Angeles all the way from East Coast only to have treatment for her own foot ache. Mrs Melton, apparently, had divined the reason for this problem, even before she had seen the patient.
One is given to understand that Mrs Melton’s application of her much hailed powers could be rather tough on her patient-clients. Her method was to her fingers through the bodies of her clients in a way which could be acutely painful. Swamiji referred to her method as ‘skin paring’ and at Miss MacLeod’s behest, he had these on several sessions during the weeks he lived at the house of Mrs Blodgett. The Swami, accompanied by Miss MacLeod, used to walk to the Georgia Street which was Mrs Melton’s dwellings. Never quite enjoying these sessions, nor drawing any perceptible benefits from it, he however, did not lose the comedy of the affair. He did not quite have any conviction whatsoever, in the benefits of this treatment and it was largely in deference to the affectionate persuasion of Miss MacLeod that he continued with the therapy.
Mrs Melton found mention in many of Swamiji’s letters of that period. “You know who is healing me?”, he wrote in December. “No physician, no Christian Science healer, but a magnetic healing woman who skins me every time she treats me. Wonders — she performs operations by rubbing — internal operations too, her patients tell me.” And again later, “Moreover, with all Joe’s enthusiasm, I have not yet found any real benefit from the magnetic healer, except a few red patches on my chest from scratching!”
“As for me, I had a slight relapse of late, for which the healer has rubbed several inches of my skin off.”
Mrs Melton kept featuring in many of Swamiji’s letters when he later went to the Bay Area too. Swamiji mentions about people, who were recommended to the healer by Miss MacLeod, and who were disillusioned with their experience. In one letter, full of humor he described how he sometimes had to face the brunt in absence of Miss MacLeod. He wished Miss Macleod “learn wisdom from an old adage not to recommend medicine to any one’ and remarked that ‘doing good is not always smooth.”
But this was not the end of the matter – Mrs Melton reappeared as Mrs Walden (reason for change of her surname was not clearly known) when Swamiji later went to Paris in July 1900. She had been taken there by Mrs Leggett and stories of her gifts generously broadcasted by her hostess even there. Clearly, the Leggett family’s confidence in this mystery-woman never waned.
▶Next Chapter: Four weeks with the Meads: The Swami’s Californian family