Lydia Alexandrovna de Pashkov

Countess Lydia Pashkov

Portrait by Konstantin Egorovish Makovsky

Countess Lydia Alexandrovna de Pashkov (1845-19xx) was a Russian writer who was an early friend of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. She wrote in French under the name Lydie Paschkoff.

Personal life

Lydia Glinsky was born in 1845. She was married to Teleshov and later to Count Pashkov. Writing mostly in French, she produced novels, plays, and travelogues, and was at one time correspondent of the Paris Figaro.

A journalist and Theosophical Society member named Curtis wrote of her visit to The Lamasery, the residence of Madame Blavatsky in New York:

Madame Blavatsky was entertaining, in better than royal style, a friend and compatriot, like herself a traveller in strange lands, like herself a firm believer in the occult, and a Russian Countess, Madame P-------, whose card, blazoned with her ancestral arms, bears three legends and a tantalizing “ &c.” in delicate type, is in her way as wonderful a woman as her hostess. According to one of these legends she is “ Member of the Geographical Society of France.” Another tells that she is a correspondent of the Figaro, and a third that she is corresponding member of the Tour du Monde [French travel magazine]. She has spent years in tho East, and was the guest in Egypt of the Khedive, whose mother presented her with a rare souvenir of friendship at parting. It is an immense pearl that now hangs from the Countess’s breast-piece in shape and size not unlike the largest molar tooth of [P. T. ] Barnum’s giant. Other jewels, distinguished among them her black eyes, gleamed as she half reclined in gorgeous raiment on a divan, pretending to smoke a cigarette.

Friendship with Madame Blavatsky

Around 1870-1872, Madame Blavatsky was in Odessa. She received a telegram from her friend Lydia that Agardi Metrovich had gone to Ramleh [now in Israel] and had become very ill from typhoid fever or possibly from poison. HPB hurried to Alexandria, Egypt by steamer to bring him back to her relatives in Odessa, but was too late.

In her account in Tour du Monde, Paschkoff says she left Egypt on March 9, 1872, by sea, arrived in Damascus at the beginning of April, and then spent about a month making the circuit to Palmyra and then back through Keratein, Emèse (Homs), Baalbek and Beirut. It must then have been on the final legs of this trip, down the Bekaa Valley, probably in early May 1872, that Paschkoff met H.P.B.,

The Countess wrote of experiences with Madame Blavatsky while traveling in 1872 in Lebanon between Baalbek and the river Orontes. Their parties met and camped together in the desert.

In her account in Tour du Monde, Paschkoff says she left Egypt on March 9, 1872, by sea, arrived in Damascus at the beginning of April, and then spent about a month making the circuit to Palmyra and then back through Keratein, Emèse (Homs), Baalbek and Beirut. It must then have been on the final legs of this trip, down the Bekaa Valley, probably in early May 1872, that Paschkoff met H.P.B.

There was a great monument standing there near the village of Dair Mar Maroon. It was between Lebanon and the Anti-Lebanon [Mountains]. On the monument were inscriptions that no one could ever read. Mme. Blavatsky could do strange things with the spirits, as I knew, and I asked her to find out what the monument was.

We waited until night. She drew a circle and we went in it. We built a fire and put much incense on it. Then she said many spells. Then we put on more incense. Then she pointed with her wand at the monument and we saw a great ball of white flame on it. There was a sycamore tree near by; we saw many little flames on it. The jackals came and howled in the darkness a little way off. We put on more incense. Then Mme. Blavatsky commanded the spirit to appear of the person to whom the monument was reared. Soon a cloud of vapor arose and obscured the little moonlight there was. We put on more incense. The cloud took the indistinct shape of an old man with a beard, and a voice came, as it seemed, from a great distance, through the image. He said the monument was once the altar of a temple that had long disappeared. It was reared to a god that had long since gone to another world. "Who are you?" asked Mme. Blavatsky, "I am Hiero, one of the priests of the temple," said the voice. Then Mme Blavatsky commanded him to show us the place as it was when the temple stood. He bowed, and for one instant we had a glimpse of the temple and of a vast city filling the plain as far as the eye could reach. Then it was gone, and the image faded away. Then we built up big fires to keep off the jackals and went to sleep.

Madame Blavatsky edited this account when it was published in The Theosophist in April, 1884. She added editorial notes explaining that "It was the Syrian ascetic who drew the circle, not she," and produced the other wonders.

Writings

Using the French name Lydie Paschkoff, she wrote novels, plays, and travelogues. She was at one time correspondent of the Paris Figaro. These are some examples of her work.

• Moeurs Russes. La princesse Vera Glinsky, la Nìanìa Marpha, Un divorce en Russie. Paris: Calmann Lévy, 1876.
• La pension Vera Glinsky – Un divorce en Russie. – Moeurs Russes St. Petersburg, 1876-77.
• En Orient, Drames et Paysages. St. Petersburg, 1879. Paris: Sandoz et Fischbacher, 1880. Available at data.bnf.fr
• La Princesse Vera Glinsky. Paris: C. Lévy, 1876. Available at data.bnf.fr
• La niania Marpha. Paris: C. Lévy, 1876.
• Un divorce en Russie.
• Moeurs Russes.
• Fleur de Jade. Paris: C. Lévy, 1890. Short stories set in China, Japan and the Far East.
• Cinderella. ca1892. Scenario for a ballet, commissioned by Lev Ianov.
• Le roman d'un grand-duc. Paris: Ed. Calmann-Levy, 1902.
• Revue Internationale
  • "Promenade à Hong Kong et à Canton." October, 1884, pg. 289.
  • "Chine et Russie." November, 1884, pg. 677.
• "Voyage a la Nouvell-Zemble." Tour du Monde. 1894. Pages 81-96. Written by N. Constantin Nossiloff and abstracted by Lydia Paschkoff.

Additional resources

• Caldwell, Daniel H. The Esoteric World of H. P. Blavatsky Chapter 3.
• Deveney, John Patrick. "Who Knew H.P.B. When?" Published in Theosophical Encyclopedia, Theosophy Forward. March 4, 2020.
• de Zirkoff, Boris. "Pashkov, Countess Lydia Alexandrovna de" H. P. Blavatsky Collected Writings Volume I (Wheaton, Illinois: Theosophical Press, 1966), 521.
• Hodgson, Barbara. "Middle East: Desert Queens" in No Place for a Lady: Tales of Adventurous Women Travelers. Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 2002. See this website.
• Johnson, K. Paul. The Masters Revealed: Madam Blavatsky and the Myth of the Great White Lodge. State University of New York Press, 1994.