After a few days, Baba met with Donkin in private and revealed,
"I would prefer for you to remain here for some days more and be in my close contact. I love you very much. I want to give you something special. But considering the circumstances here, I cannot give you the intimate contact I wish at this time as so many people are coming and going."
So on 31 August 1937, Donkin was sent back to London. Baba urged him to continue his medical studies and to come back to Cannes later for 25 days. Baba also instructed Donkin to take Bellarmino back to Paris and the English maid (whom Kitty had brought to Cannes) back to England, because Baba had found her unsuitable. Donkin was to return to Cannes, and the experiences he had then of being with the Master would bring him within two years to live with Meher Baba in India.
Alfredo and Consuelo Sides also left the next day, returning to their home in Paris.
Beatrice Wanger, an American expatriate modern dancer (and the older sister of a famous Hollywood producer, Walter Wanger) came to meet Baba on the 29th. Another visitor that day was Marie Clews, the wife of the American sculptor Henry Clews, who had died the previous month. Marie was more understanding and responsive to Baba. She expressed her concern about the "tremendous forces of evil" at work in the world. Baba reassured her,
"This in itself is a sign of the good that is to come. Good souls [Realized beings], although very few, are always working and do a great deal to help humanity through their good thoughts, words and acts. The time is fast approaching when they will be victorious."
Later Marie told Chanji, "I always wondered what the smile of Buddha was. When I saw Meher Baba's expression, I understood what it meant."
Marie invited Baba to visit her home, the Château de la Napoule , near Cannes, and Baba was driven there a week later by Elizabeth in the afternoon of 6 September, accompanied by Chanji, Jean and Norina. Marie and her husband had spent eighteen years restoring and renovating the enormous and imposing medieval fortress. Part of the castle had been converted into her husband's studio. All were highly impressed by the beauty of the place and by Clews' work.
Clews' pieces, depicting evil, greed, and cunning, among other human traits, represented, as Baba put it in a nutshell, "philosophized art."1
Footnotes
- 1.One description of the home states: "Fountains and topiary embellish the formal gardens laid out by Marie Clews. It is Henry Clews' sculptural decor, combining wit and turn-of-the-century sensibility, that makes the Château de La Napoule, registered as a national monument, such a fascinating excursion into architectural history." (A few sculptures by Henry Clews are featured at Brookgreen Gardens, Myrtle Beach, which Baba later visited.)