Madeleine Slade (Mirabehn) (22 November 1892 – 20 July 1982), daughter of the British Rear-Admiral Sir Edmond Slade, was a British woman who left her home in Britain to live and work with Mohandas Gandhi, the leader of the Indian independence movement. She devoted her life to human development, the advancement of Gandhi’s principles and the freedom struggle in India. In doing so, Gandhi gave her the name Mirabehn, after Meera Bai, the great devotee of Lord Krishna.Mirabehn was born into an aristocratic British family in 1892. Her father was an officer in the Royal Navy who was posted in her early years as the Commander-in-Chief of the East Indies Squadron.[1] She spent much of her childhood with her maternal grandfather who owned a large country estate and was from an early age a nature and animal lover.[2]Mirabehn’s autobiography is titled The Spirit’s Pilgrimage. She also published Bapu’s Letters to Mira and New and Old Gleanings.[7][8] At the time of her death she had also left behind an unpublished biography of Beethoven, the Spirit Of Beethoven.[9]This craving for Beethoven, after some years, led her to Romain Rolland, in order to get more knowledge, about Beethoven. She met Rolland in Villeneuve, where he lived with his sister. In this meeting Romain Rolland mentioned India in context of a small book he had just written, called
Mahatma Gandhi,which she had not read then. The other great passion of the young Mirabehn was the music of Ludwig van Beethoven. She took to the piano and concerts and even went on to become a concert manager. In 1921 she even arranged for a German conductor to lead the London Symphony Orchestra in concerts featuring Beethoven and helped bring about an end to the British boycott of German musicians that followed the First World War.[1]These words went deep, but she stored them away and went on her voyage to Alexandria.
Back from Alexandria, she came to Paris, bought the book of Rolland from a bookshop, and finished reading it on…