ॐ वीरेश्वराय
विद्महे विवेकानन्दाय धीमहि । तन्नो वीर: प्रचोदयात् ।
Miss Gibbons was telling regarding Swamiji
after 25 year of Swamiji's Mahasamadhi.
Out of the Old
World of India forty years ago came a young, courageous, and
handsome man in whose face shone the light of triumph over self.
He came to the New World of America uninvited, unheralded, unknown.
How Vivekananda proceeded serenely on his hazardous pilgrimage —
though more than once lacking food and change of raiment; how he
was admitted as a delegate at the final session of the Congress of
Religions; how he electrified the assemblage with the simplicity
and beauty of his message: how on the following morning the
metropolitan press of three continents exhausted their powers in
proclaiming his spiritual stature among the great teachers of the
world — all of this is still remembered by generations now living.
My personal story of Vivekananda — hitherto unpublished — seems to
stand alone. When I met him he was twenty-seven years old.* I
thought him as handsome as a god of classic sculpture. He was dark
of skin. of course, and had large eyes which gave one the
impression of "midnight blue". He seemed larger than most of his
race. who often to us appear slight of frame, because they are
small-boned. He had a head heaped with short black curls. At our
first meeting I was struck by the emphasis of our colour contrast.
I was twenty-four, fair, tall. and slender, with golden hair and
grey-blue eyes. Probably there could have been no greater
contrast.
Our meeting was rather unusual. After his triumph at Chicago he
was, of course, showered with invitations to come to New York,
where the great of all the world are entertained. Here lived at
that time a very famous physician. Dr. Egbert Guernsey, genial,
literary, and ideally hospitable, with a spacious and very
handsome house on Fifth Avenue at Forty-fourth Street. It was Dr.
Guernsey's pleasure, heartily endorsed by his charming wife and
daughter, to introduce celebrated visitors from abroad to New York
society. It was to be expected that he would pay special honour to
the great Swami, whose ideal of closer relations between the East
and the West in the interest of religion and world peace so
strongly appealed to him.
Dr. Guernsey accordingly arranged to give a Sunday afternoon
dinner party at which every guest should represent a different
religious creed, he himself holding the view-point of Robert
Ingersoll, who was absent from the city. His Grace the Cardinal
was interested but declined to dine or to appoint a substitute
from among his clergy. So it happened that I, being a Catholic and
trained by the noted Jesuit Priest, William O'Brien Pardow, S.J.,
had the privilege of being a guest at that famous Sunday dinner.
Dr. Guernsey, who was my physician, sent for me to uphold
Catholicism. Dr. Parkhurst was there, and Minnie Maddern Fiske,
the famous American actress, who was staying with the Guernseys at
the time. I remember that there were fourteen at table.
There was, of course, a tacit understanding that everyone should
he polite about his or her religious differences with the Swami
and his so-called non-Christian ("Pagan" is a hard word!)
attitude. Alas! as the dinner progressed, the most heated dispute
was not with the Swami at all. All of the differences were
confined to the Evangelical brethren!
I was seated beside the Swami. We looked on in amused silence at
the almost comical intolerance of the Creeds. Now and again our
host would adroitly make some wise or humorous remark that kept
the conversation on a plane not actually injurious to the function
of digestion. The Swami would make from time to time a little
speech apparently in explanation of his native land and the
customs of its people, so different from our own, but always to
gain his point in philosophy and religion. A more broad-minded and
tolerant man surely could not have been found anywhere in India to
carry out the mission of founding Vedanta Centres in America.
He wore on that occasion his orange cassock, a tincture of deep
rose-red silk, and his turban of white shot with threads of gold.
His feet, otherwise bare, were covered by sandals of soft brown
leather.
It was at this dinner that our friendship began. Afterwards. in
the drawing-room, he said to me, "Miss Gibbons, your philosophy
and mine are one; and the heart of our faiths is the same."
I then lived with my mother at the Beresford Apartments at 1 East
Eighty-first Street, overlooking Central Park. My mother was
Southern, of the royal French blood, from Charleston, South
Carolina, and a famous beauty, dark of eyes and hair. She was a
witty woman and delighted in the social pleasures centering about
the Church of England, to which, she maintained, all the
aristocratic world belonged. Thus the Swami and I were outside the
fold. I told my mother of him on my return home from Dr.
Guernsey's dinner party, and what a splendid mind he had. I dwelt
on the great force which had come to us. To which she replied.
"What a terrible dinner party, with all those Methodists,
Baptists, and Presbyterians, and one black Pagan in orange
cloths!" But she grew to like Vivekananda, to respect his
view-point, and afterwards joined one of the Vedanta Centres. She
was awfully amusing to him, and I can sec him now, after all these
years, laughing so gaily at her remarks about him.
