The Helena independent. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1875-1943, 1890-11-02
As seen BY 4 WOMAN.
Queer Things and Queerer People
Of the Great and Foggy
Metropolis.
Miss Blind, the Translator. Ex-
plotting in Selections From
the Bashkirtse6
Mime. Blavatsky, Mrs. Stanley, Victoria,
Grace Greenwood, Mrs. Nicholson,
Miss Westover, Mrs. Carnegie.

Especial Correspondence of THE INDEPENDENT.l
LONDON, Oct. ga new fad will enslave
London absolutely. but it must have time.
.sMarie Bashkirtseff' Journal has run its
wild course in New York and is being for
gotten. In London Miss Mathilde Blind.
its translator, has been reading select raw
ings from it all summer as an enlivenment
at afternoons and "at homes" and the
interest, at FIRST as weak as the tea, has now
stepped sufficiently to go we'll with the gun
POWDER brand Of the national beverage.
Miss Blind herself is more interesting than
her readings, which rouse such belated en-
thusiasm. The mother of the strange
young Russian gave her copy of the jour
nal at Nice in the autumn of 1887, and she
began at once to exploit her find in print,
thus discovering" the frank and fascinat-
ing Marie. She has written lives of George
Eliot and Nine. Roland. and that oracle,
the London Times has praised her poems;
she considers 1.-THE Ascent of Man, her
browning effort, and her admirers quote
Mr.. Alfred Russell Wallace as comparing
that ambitious epic of Darwinism with
.the glorious poetry of Tennyson's In
Memoriam.'"
Miss Blind is pretty woman. Her home
is in q pleasant spot far above the smoke Of
London, almost at the top Of Primrose Hill.
Ivy clusters about her study windows, birds
twitter and trees wave. Here she will tell
at Brompton she used to sit as q child lis
tening to his talk open mouthed. She is
one of the modern athletic women who
shoulder knapsacks and explore the Widest
hooks of Europe untroubled by trains and
time tables. She was 10 when she went
L.
alone. You would hardly susrect her of
these unconventional rambles when in pale
green silk, an aesthetic and decorous figure,
she decorously recites to an audience Of
deoorous matrons Marie Bashkirtseff's very
INDIGENOUS utterances.
It is odd, by the way, that the statement
should be going the rounds Of the press that
the French government has Just bought
Marie Bashkirtseff's picture, 1.-THE Meet
ing" In point of fact, that group of street
urchins has hung for some time in very
good position in the galleries of the Luxem-
bourg, where it is always surrounded by
emulous girl copylsts. The Luxembourg has
Q sketch of her mother.
1kme. Blavatsky and Co Operative House,
keeping.
was out at st. Johns Wood the other
day, that pretty and quiet suburb Of Lon
don where, in the novels of the day, the
beautiful and wicked sirens who ALLEVIATE
weak husbands affections commonly live
In bijou residences. st. Johns Wood has
in good truth one strange household at
present. that in which Nine. Blavatsky,
grown stout, slouchy and elderly, sits down
at meat with clipper and chirpy Mrs.
Cooper Oakley, the Girton girl who goes in
for thsosophy and millinery. The estab-
lishment of these strangely mated spirits is
conducted on the cooperative plan. Not
that the high priestess has the physical en-
Iergy or the fashionable milliner the
time for much Soiling of hands
with dishwashing, but it has seemed
good to the ladies of the Theosophi-
Gal society of London to experiment with a
sort of Brooke farm, where theosophical
sweetness and light shall pervade the at
mosphere. Some proteges of Mrs. Cooper
|Oakley-poor girls, one or two of them
broken down in London shops-woman the
kitchen, Mrs. Annie Besant comes out to
tea and Nine. Blavatsky smiles. She has
reason, for since leaving New York she has
reposed in clover fields. Mrs. Cooper Oak
ley has supplied her with good deal Of
money, and seems likely to continue mani
Testing her faith in the same agreeable
manner. The st. Johns Wood establish
ment is modest brick house buried in
trees.