Elbridge Gerry Brown
According to Readers Guide to The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett:
Brown, Elbridge Gerry, editor of the magazine Spiritual Scientist in Boston. Referred to in ODL and early letters from the Egyptian Adepts to HSO. Apparently he was one of the three selected by the Brotherhood to start the TS movement through an interest in spiritualism. "Educated but very poor; for, to become a Spiritualist and editor of a spiritualistic paper, he had quarreled with his family" (SH, p. 68). Later, when HPB and HSO were trying to wean the public mind away from spiritualism, Brown decided to go his own way and keep his belief in "Spirits." HPB said "he might have become a Power" but preferred otherwise (SH, p. 71).[1]
Some references exist in Blavatsky's letters to Hiram Corson and in Olcott's Old Diary Leaves. Madame Blavatsky's third scrapbook includes a bankruptcy notice for Brown summarized in this way by Mary K. Neff:
Creditors list includes Col Olcott ($590), Mme. Blav. ($150), to which HPB has red pencilled a note: "And several hundred more given without asking for a note. HPB." Also: "A constant shower of abuse and sneering in his paper against us, and in other papers to, and bankruptcy to end the whole without a single line of acknowledgment, excuse or regret. Such is Gerry Elbridge Brown, the Spiritualist." (Total debt of Brown: $3710)[2]
Notes
- ↑ George E. Linton and Virginia Hanson, eds., Readers Guide to The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett (Adyar, Chennai, India: Theosophical Publishing House, 1972), 221-222.
- ↑ Mary K. Neff, "H.P.B.'s Scrapbooks," a summary of the scrapbooks written about 1934. Quoted from Boris de Zirkoff Papers, Records Series 22, Theosophical Society in America Archives.