| Ms. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and
Col. Henry S. Olcott, who met by chance on a Vermont farm, went on to found in New York a
Society to spread the message of Universal Brotherhood round the world. Seven years later they arrived in Madras and in 1882, on the thickly
wooded southern bank of the Adyar river they acquired a garden house, two smaller houses
and a 30-acre estate. There, in Huddlestone Gardens, they established in 1886 the world's
headquarters of a spiritual movement which searches for Truth in all the great religions
of the world.
From the rear Huddlestone gardens still looks as it did
then, the brids nesting and feasting in the waters it overlooks. But to its front was
later developed the magnificent Great Hall of the Theosophists with its splendid facade
picked out with elephants heads. A picture of elegance, it is one of the handsomest
old-world structures in the city. |
