inviting a few friends to her house to hear a Hindu Swami speak. Will you come?'
Swami Vivekananda had already been a topic of discussion among certain members of
the Sesame Club. Mr. E.T. Sturdy and Miss Henrietta Müller had told of his
extraordinary success in America as a preacher and orator.
Miss Noble first met Swami Vivekananda on a Sunday evening in the drawing-room of
Lady Isabel Margesson, situated in the fashionable West End of London. He was to
address a group of people on Hindu thought. Miss Noble was one of the last to arrive.
Fifteen people sat in the room in absolute silence. She nervously felt as if all eyes were
turned on her, and as she took the first vacant chair, she gathered her skirt to sit down
without making any noise. The Swami sat facing her. A coal fire burnt on the hearth
behind him. She noticed that he was tall and well built and possessed an air of deep
serenity. The effect of his long practice of meditation was visible in the gentleness and
loftiness of his look, which, as she was to write later, 'Raphael has perhaps painted for
us on the brow of the Sistine Child.'
The Swami looked at Lady Isabel with a sweet smile, as she said: 'Swamiji, all our
friends are here.' He chanted some Sanskrit verses. Miss Noble was impressed by his
melodious voice. She heard the Swami say, among other things: 'All our struggle is for
freedom. We seek neither misery nor happiness, but freedom, freedom alone.'
It was at first difficult for Miss Noble to accept Swami Vivekananda's views. But
before he left London she had begun to address him as 'Master.'
Recalling those first meetings in London, and their decisive influence on her life,
Nivedita wrote in 1904 to a friend: 'Suppose he had not come to London that time! Life
would have been like a headless dream, for I always knew that I was waiting for
something. I always said that a call would come. And it did. But if I had known more
of life, I doubt whether, when the time came, I should certainly have recognized it.
Fortunately, I knew little and was spared that torture....Always I had this burning voice
within, but nothing to utter. How often and often I sat down, pen in hand, to speak, and
there was no speech! And now there is no end to it! As surely I am fitted to my world,
so surely is my world in need of me, waiting — ready. The arrow has found its place in
the bow. But if he had not come! If he had meditated, on the Himalayan peaks!...I, for
one, had never been here.'
Swami Vivekananda and Mr. Sturdy soon began an English translation of the Bhakti
aphorisms of Narada. At this time the idea came to the Swami's mind that a religion
could not have permanent hold upon people without organization and rituals. A mere
loose system of philosophy, he realized, soon lost its appeal. He saw the need,
therefore, of formulating rituals, on the basis of the Upanishadic truths, which would
serve a person from birth to death — rituals that would prepare for the ultimate
realization of the supramental Absolute.
His stay in England was very short, but his insight enabled him to appraise the English
character with considerable accuracy. He wrote to a devotee on November 18, 1895:
'In England my work is really splendid. I am astonished myself at it. The English do