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A BRIEF ACCOUNT OF THOMAS BREAKWELL
BY MAY MAXWELL
HOW poignant are the records of the early days of the Bahá’í Faith in the West, when the freshness and beauty of the spiritual Springtime awakened the souls and led them, quickened and aflame to the knowledge of Bahá’u’lláh, often to the very Presence of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in the Prison of ‘Akká. Such is the record, the divine significance of the conversion of Thomas Breakwell, a young Englishman living in the Southern States of America, holding an important position in a cotton mill, spending his long summer vacations in Europe. During his vacation of 1891 he crossed on the steamer with Mrs. M., and as she found him interested in Theosophy she mentioned a group of friends in Paris whom she said were interested in kindred subjects. Although she knew nothing of the Bahá’í teaching and had closed her ears to its message, yet she was impelled to bring this youth to see me on their arrival. I was at that time in a small apartment connected with the beautiful home of Mrs. Jackson—which she had placed at my disposal, when my family had left for the summer.
My dear Mother—although broad and fine in all matters, had resented my constant work in the service of the Bahá’í Cause, especially since my pilgrimage to the Prison of ‘Akká, and when ‘Abdu’l-Bahá had refused, at her urgent appeal, to permit me to accompany her during the summer to Brittany, saying that I must on no account absent myself from Paris, my unhappy and indignant Mother had closed our home and left me alone.
Thus it was on a lovely summer day that, in response to a knock I found Mrs. M. and Thomas Breakwell standing at my door, and my attention was riveted on this youth; of medium height, slender, erect and graceful, with intense eyes and an indescribable charm.
As they entered, Mrs. M. said smiling, “He was a stranger and she took him in.” We spoke together for about half an hour of Theosophy—his work, his projected trip through Europe, and I discerned a very rare person of high standing and culture, simple, natural, intensely real in his attitude toward life and his fellowmen. Although no word of the divine Revelation was spoken, and he assumed I was interested in Theosophy, yet he studied me with a searching gaze, and as they left, he asked me if he might see me the following day. He arrived the next morning in a strangely exalted mood, no veil of materiality covered this radiant soul—his eyes burned with a hidden fire, and looking at me earnestly he asked if I noticed anything strange about him. Seeing his condition I bade him be seated, and reassured him, saying he looked very happy.
“When I was here yesterday he said I felt a power, an influence that I had felt once before in my life, when for a period of three months I was continually in communion with God. I felt during that time like one moving in a rarefied atmosphere of light and beauty. My heart was afire with love for the supreme Beloved, I felt at peace, at one with all my fellow-men. Yesterday when I left you I went alone down the Champs Élysées, the air was warm and heavy, not a leaf was stirring, when suddenly a wind struck me and whirled around me, and in that wind a voice said, with an indescribable sweetness and penetration, ‘Christ has come again! Christ has come again!’ ”
With wide startled eyes he looked at me and asked if I thought he had gone crazy. “No,” I said smiling, “you are just becoming sane.”
What hours we spent together; how readily he grasped the full import of the Message; how his thirsty soul drank in every
A Captain of the Salvation Army who has recently embraced the Bahá’í Faith. Taken with one of her former Lieutenants in the Shetland Islands.
An early group of the Bahá’ís of America. Reading from left to right: Katherine K. True, Mrs. Gorman, Mr. True, Mrs. Corinne True, Mr. Harlan F. Ober, Mrs. Cecelia Harrison, Miss Davies, Mrs. Eardley, Mr. Charles Sprague, Mr. Carl Schefiler, Mr. Wood worth, Mr. Percy Woodcock, Mme. Aurelia Bethlen, Mr. Brush, Mrs. Brush, Mr. Thornton Chase.
[Page 709]
word; I told him of the
youthful Báb, His exalted Mission, His
early martyrdom, of
the thousands of martyrs in whose sacred
blood the Faith was established; I told him
of Bahá’u’lláh, the Blessed Beauty Who shone
upon the world as the Sun of eternity, Who
had given to mankind the law of God for
this age—the consummation of all past ages
and cycles.
I gave him all the little we had to read, and told him of my visit to the Prison of ‘Akká, the days spent in the presence of the Master, until his heart was filled with such longing that all his former life was swept away, he gave up his journey, canceled his plans, and had but o"ne hope in life, to be permitted to go himself and behold the face of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá.
At that time a young Bahá’í, Herbert Hopper, had received permission to go to ‘Akká, thus they planned to travel together, and Thomas Breakwell wrote the following supplication to the Master.
- "My Lord, I believe, forgive me,
- Thy servant Thomas Breakwell.”
In its depth and simplicity this petition was characteristic of his whole short and vivid life, although not until later did I learn the full significance of his appeal for forgiveness.
I wrote the Master enclosing the words of Breakwell, begging Him to send his reply to Port Said, to which Port these two young pilgrims eagerly embarked.
That evening I went to the Concierge of our apartment to get my mail, and there lay a little blue cablegram from ‘Abdu’l-Bahá! With what wonder and awe I read His Words. "You may leave Paris at any time!” Thus by implicit and unquestioning obedience in the face of all opposition the Master’s Will had been fulfilled, and I had been the link in the chain of His mighty purpose.
My feet were winged as I returned to tell the good news to Mrs. Jackson, and to prepare to leave the following morning.
How gratefully my heart dwells on the divine compassion of the Master, on the joy and wonder of my mother as I told her everything, and when she read the Master’s cablegram she burst into tears and exclaimed, “You have, indeed, a wonderful Master.”
When in the autumn we gathered once more in Paris, the influence of Breakwell made itselfffelt in an ever widening circle of friends.
Those days in the Prison of ‘Akká, when the Master's all consuming love and perfect wisdom had produced that mystic chgnge of heart and soul which enabled him to rapidly free himself from all earthly entanglement, and to passionately attach himself to the world of reality, brought great fruits to the Faith.
He had become the guiding star of our group, his calmness and strength, his intense fervor, his immediate and all penetrating grasp of the vast import to mankind in this age of the Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh, released among us forces which constituted a new Epoch in the Cause in France. In the meetings he spoke with a simplicity and eloquence which won the hearts and quickened the souls, and the secret of his potent influence lay in his supreme recognition of the Manifestation of God in the Báb and in Bahá’u’lláh, and of the sublime Center of the Covenant, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. Not by reason but by faith did he triumph.
When he and Herbert Hopper arrived in the Prison of ‘Akká, they were ushered into a spacious room, at one end of which stood a group of men in oriental garb. Herbert Hopper’s face became irradiated with the joy of instant recognition, but Breakwell discerned no one in particular among these men. Feeling suddenly ill and weak, he seated himself near a table, with a sense of crushing defeat. Wild and desperate thoughts rushed through his mind, his first great test, for without such tests the soul will never be unveiled.
Sitting thus he bitterly lamented: Why had he come here? Why had he abandoned his projected journey and come to this remote prison, seeking--he knew not what? Sorrow and despair filled his heart, when suddenly a door opened, and in that opening he beheld what seemed to him the rising Sun. So brilliant was this orb, so intense the light that he sprang to his feet and saw approaching him out of this dazzling splendor the form of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá.
He seldom mentioned this experience which transformed and transfigured his life.
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In the course of his
interview with the Master, he told
Him briefly of his position in
the cotton mills of the South, his
large salary, his responsibility,
and his sudden conviction of sin,
for he said, “These mills are
run on child labor.” The Master looked at
him gravely and sadly for a while, and then
said, “Cable your resignation.” Relieved of
a crushing burden, Breakwell eagerly obeyed,
and with one blow cut all his bridges behind
him.
He seemed to have no care for his future, burning like a white light in the darkness of Paris, he served his fellow-men with a power and passion to the last breath of his life.
So abandoned was he to the mighty creative forces latent in the revelation of Bahá’u’lláh, that he was moved spontaneously in the smallest actions of his daily life to pour out that spirit of love and oneness to all.
Well I remember the day we were crossing a bridge over the Seine on the top of a bus, when he spied an old woman laboriously pushing an apple-cart up an incline; excusing himself with a smile, he climbed down off the bus, joined the old woman, and in the most natural way put his hands on the bar and helped her over the bridge. The rock foundation on which the Bahá’í Revelation rests, “the oneness of mankind,” had penetrated his soul like an essence, taking on every form of human relationship, imbuing him with an insight and penetration into human needs, an intense sympathy and genuine love which made him a hope and refuge to all. Those afflicted with sorrow and difficulties, beset with human problems, were drawn to him as to a magnet, and left him with shining eyes and uplifted head.
He was the first in the West to pay the Huqiiq, the tithes of the Bahá’í Religion, and living in a cheap and distant part of Paris he walked miles to the meetings and to the homes of friends to save his fare and make his contribution to the diffusion of the teachings.
Although we were fellow Bahá’ís and devoted friends, with everything in common, yet when he came to our home he gave his whole loving attention to my beautiful Mother, with but a scant word for me, yet as he took my hand‘in farewell, he slipped a little folded note into my palm with words of cheer and comfort, usually Words of Bahá’u’lláh. He knew well the secret of imparting happiness, and was the very embodiment of the Master’s Words, "The star of happiness is in every heart. We must remove the veils, so that it may shine forth radiantly.” He burned with such a fire of love that his frail body seemed to be gradually consumed; he in the deepest sense shed his life for the Cause by which he was enthralled, and in a few brief months shattered the cage of existence and abandoned this mortal World. His traces are imperishable, his spirit, alive forevermore with the Attributes of God, lives, not alone in the hearts and memories of Bahá’ís, but is welded into the very structure of the World Order, which has arisen on the foundation of such lives.
In the following Eulogy to Thomas Breakwell ‘Abdu’l-Bahá has immortalized this youth.
O thou who art rejoiced at the Divine Glad-Tidings!
Verily I have received thy last letter and thanked God that thou didst reach Paris protected and guarded (by Him). Thank thou God that He assisted thee to behold the brilliant faces of the believers of God and favored thee to meet them in American countries. For, verily, beholding those shining countenances is a divine gift; by it the hearts are dilated, the souls are rejoiced and the spirits are attracted toward the Supreme Concourse!
Do not lament over the departure of my dearly beloved Breakwell, for verily, he hath ascended to the luminous rose-garden in the Abhá Kingdom, near the mercy of his Lord, the Almighty, and is crying out with the loudest voice: 'O that my people knew how my Lord hath forgiven me and made me one of those who have attained (to the meeting of God)!’
O Breakwell, my beloved! Where is thy beautiful countenance and where is thy eloquent tongue? Where is thy radiant brow and where is thy brilliant face?
O Breakwell, my beloved! Where is thy
enkindlement with the fire of the love of
God and where is thy attraction to the
[Page 711]
fragrances of God?
Where is thy utterance for
the glorification of God and where is thy
rising in the service of God?
O my dear, O Breakwell! Where are thy bright eyes and where are thy smiling lips? Where are thy gentle cheeks and where is thy graceful stature?
O my dear, O Breakwell! Verily thou hast abandoned this transitory world and soared upward to the Kingdom, hast attained to the grace of the Invisible Realm and sacrificed thyself to the Threshold of the Lord of Might!
O my adored one, O Breakwell! Verily thou hast left behind this physical lamp, this human glass, these earthly elements and this worldly enjoyment!
O my adored one, O Breakwell! Then thou hast ignited a light in the glass of the Supreme Concourse, hast entered the Paradise of Abhá, art protected under the shade of the Blessed Tree and hast attained to the meeting (of the True One) in the Abode of Paradise!
O my dearly beloved, O Breakwell! Thou hast been a divine bird and forsaking thy earthly nest, thou hast soared towards the holy rose-garden of the Divine Kingdom and obtained a luminous station there!
O my dearly beloved, O Breakwell! Verily thou art like unto the birds, chanting the verses of thy Lord, the Forgiving, for thou wert a thankful servant; therefore thou hast entered (into the realm beyond) with joy and happiness!
O my beloved, O Breakwell! Verily, thy Lord hath chosen thee for His love, guided thee to the court of His Holiness, caused thee to enter into the Riḍván of His Association and granted thee to behold His Beauty!
O my beloved, O Breakwell! Verily thou hast attained to the eternal life, never-ending bounty, beatific bliss and immeasurable providence!
O my beloved, O Breakwell! Thou hast become a star in the most exalted horizon, a lamp among the angels of heaven, a living spirit in the Supreme World and art established upon the throne of immortality!
O my adored one, O Breakwell! I supplicate God to increase thy nearness and communication, to make thee enjoy thy prosperity and union (with Him), to add to thy light and beauty and to bestow upon thee glory and majesty!
O my adored one, O Breakwell! I mention thy name continually, I never forget thee, I pray for thee day and night and I see thee clearly and manifestly, O my adored one, O Breakwell!
Tablets of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Vol. II, page 450.
