DES MOINES TRIBUNE, 1927
Franklin’s ears must have been burning as he listened. He was, after all, a California kid, and Besant had singled out California kids as heralds of the coming golden race.
Several days later, in the Theosophical Society’s American headquarters in nearby Wheaton, Ill., Besant was introduced to 12-year-old Franklin, “in whom she had recognized a very special spark,” Radha Rajagopal Sloss wrote in “The Story of Happy Valley.” since I was 2 years old. Counsels me and looks after me.” His lecture tour with Harden was such a success that Franklin was invited to meet with the famous inventor Thomas Edison, a Theosophy enthusiast who shared with Franklin his own experiences with the occult. Franklin even did a command performance at the White House, during which his impersonation of the vaudeville star Will Rogers elicited a chuckle from the usually taciturn president, Calvin Coolidge. Ray Harden provided Franklin with some unusual experiences. A friend of Franklin’s would recall that the boy “grew up under the tutelage of a guardian who one day took him to the top of the Woolworth Building in New York City, then the tallest structure in the world, and hung him from his ankles from the top!” Most youngsters would have been utterly terrified to be dangled from the pinnacle of a building that was nearly 800 feet tall. But Franklin, according to his friend, “could only remember the exhilaration he experienced at the time.” The highlight of Franklin’s career as a Theosophist prodigy came in August 1929, when he and Harden arrived in Chicago to attend the Theosophical Society’s World Congress. Besant had traveled all the way from her home base in India to preside over the gathering. In her speech welcoming the delegates, she focused on her Ojai project. “Two years ago, I bought a large tract in California,” she said. “I call it Happy Valley because that is a beautiful name, and life ought to be beautiful and happy, and would be if people lived as they ought to live. I want to use it as a colony to attract families with children of the new type. By later intermarriage between them, the growth of the superior race will be hastened.”
It is interesting to note that Besant only a month earlier had lost her messiah-in-training when Krishnamurti publicly rejected the role and dissolved the Order of the Star. Krishnamurti had only been 14 when Besant first proclaimed him the future World Teacher; perhaps now she was auditioning possible replacements from among the supposedly golden youth of California. In any event, nothing came of her brief encounter with Franklin, who never saw her again.
ALDOUS HUXLEY never encountered Besant even once. But he was born (in 1894) into a family that took a dim view of Theosophy. Aldous’s paternal grandfather, Thomas H. Huxley, was a scientist famous for his aggressive defense of Charles Darwin’s then-controversial theory of evolution. Among Grandpa Huxley’s sparring partners was Helena Blavatsky, co-founder of the Theosophical Society, who insisted that humans evolve not just physically but also spiritually, guided by metaphysical masters who dwell in hidden valleys in Tibet.
In her book “The Secret Doctrine,” Blavatsky sneeringly referred to Grandpa Huxley as “the great man of Science,” who supported “with all the weight of his scientific authority the most ‘absurd’ of all theories – the descent of man from an ape!” Some years after Blavatsky’s death, her protégé Besant took over the Theosophical Society. Aldous Huxley, raised in his grandfather’s rationalist tradition, regarded Blavatsky as an outright
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